The Knife and the Butterfly

by Ashley Hope Pérez

  “Yes?”

  “Could I maybe get a little more info about her?” I nod to the lit-up meeting room window where Lexi is sitting. While we’re watching, she pulls a wad of gum out of her mouth and sticks it under the table.

  Pakmin frowns in her direction. “What did you have in mind?”

  “I don’t know. . . . I see her writing sometimes in this notebook. Maybe that would help. But probably it’s nothing, right?” I don’t want to seem too eager.

  “Interesting thought,” Pakmin says before stepping back out. He closes the door, and the lock slides into place.

  The speakers crackle on while I’m still staring at the door. When I turn, I expect to see Janet coming into the room where Lexi is waiting. Instead, a guard walks in with this female who’s older but also way skinnier and sexier than Janet. She has long wavy black hair and tits about four sizes too big for her tiny waist.

  “Hi, peanut,” she says to Lexi. “You hanging in there?” Her voice is all birds and rainbows, but she doesn’t really look at Lexi. Like she’s scared to.

  “Yeah, no thanks to you, Mom.” Lexi says “mom” like it’s this huge joke. “Jesus, Shauna. What took you so long?”

  “Mr. VanVeldt thought that it would be better if—”

  “You didn’t want to see your only kid? You forgot me that fast?”

  “Lexi—”

  “Just like you forgot Theo.”

  The lady’s face goes white, and she stares down at the table. From Lexi’s smirk I can tell she’s proud of herself.

  After a minute, Lexi’s mom finally says something. “I will not tolerate that kind of speech. I’m sorry you’re here, Lex, but it’s not my fault. Your grandma and I have put everything on the line, borrowed from everybody we know just to pay for your lawyers.”

  “Did I ask you to?”

  “Jesus, Lexi, you’ve got to grow up. This is no picnic for me. We’re on the same side.”

  “Really?” Lexi says. She raises her eyebrows. “It looks to me like we’re on opposite sides of this fucking table.”

  The guard steps forward. “Another outburst like that and you’ll be back in your cell.”

  “No problem,” Lexi says, but she stares at the guard. For once I’m on the county’s side. Slap that bitch into solitary for disrespecting her ma like that. But no way am I going to risk getting into trouble with Pakmin on her account. I keep my mouth shut, but my hands turn to fists.

  “So what’s up?” Lexi smiles like this is an innocent question, but anybody can see she’s messing with her mom.

  “Just try to stay out of trouble. We need a perfect report from your unit supervisor. Perfect.”

  “Did Theo—where’s he buried?”

  Lexi’s mom hesitates.

  “Don’t tell me you put it off on someone else! He was family.” Lexi glares at her mother.

  “Of course I took care of everything. Just about. Meemaw picked out the marker. We buried him on the family land.”

  “Christ, Shauna, now I’ll have to go two hours just to visit him. Awesome.”

  “Well, we picked a spot under this real big pecan tree. I think he’d have liked it.”

  “And?” Lexi asks.

  “The landlord at the duplex repainted the fence. You can’t even tell about . . . It looks just the same as before.” Lexi’s mom glances up and meets her gaze head-on for the first time.

  For about half a second I think that Lexi might apologize for how she talked earlier. You don’t treat your moms like that. You just don’t. But it’s like Lexi catches herself and the chance to do right by her ma disappears.

  I’m not saying I’m some kind of saint. When me and Eddie stay with Pelón, I’m not going to lie, we make a real mess of his ma’s house. Dirty clothes everywhere, half smoked joints hid under her couch, dishes all over. His moms spends half her time yelling at us. But she helps us out even if we drive her crazy.

  One time when I unloaded some cell phones and got a little cash, I went to the grocery store and spent every penny on food. When I came back to Pelón’s place and she saw all them shopping bags and realized I bought the stuff just because, she gave me a big hug and called me a buen hombre. That made me feel real good.

  There’s a way you treat moms, and a way you don’t. And Lexi’s on the side of the don’t. But at least I know one more thing about her: some dude she knows named Theo got cut down recently. Maybe even in the rumble. Somebody died that day; that’s the only way any of this makes sense. Maybe it’s her brother? I’ve heard the name, but where? From Janet? Lexi’s been keeping her mouth shut, and tight.

  Theo, I tell myself, Theo. Need to keep that name in my head.

  CHAPTER 22: THEN

  When Regina was little, me and Eddie watched out for her just like we promised we would. We had our ways of getting things done. Like dinner was the same every night. Eddie made the bologna sandwiches while I did the PB&Js. Regina put down the plates and got out the glasses for the milk. That was how it always was, even when our pops didn’t come out of the bedroom to tell us what to do. For a couple of middle-school kids, we were doing an alright job.

  That night the three of us sat down at the little square table, Regina with two phone books to boost her fouryear-old self up to the table. She played around with her sandwich for a while, then set it down and put her eyes on me. “How come Papi won’t hardly look at me?”

  I could tell that she’d been thinking about it for a while. I glanced at Eddie.

  “You can explain it better,” he said.

  And I was about to tell her, real gentle, about how much it hurt Pops to lose our ma, but then he came up behind us from the hall. I didn’t see him at first because of where he was standing, but I smelled him right off. The stink of stale cigarette smoke, old-man body, and booze. Saturdays were the worst because he didn’t work.

  “Wanna know?” he slurred. “You look too damn much like your ma, lo entendés vos? Now shut up and eat your sandwich.”

  Regina started to whimper. Pops took one look at her, then he grabbed her plate and threw it on the floor. Lunch meat flapped against the linoleum, and the plastic dish bounced once. The front door slammed.

  Regina cried real hard after that. We did our best to make her feel better, but what my dad said was something uglier than any little kid should ever have to hear. That night me and Eddie called our abuela in Los Angeles and then our Tía Julia. It took us two weeks, but finally we worked it out for our aunt to come on the bus to get Regina. Papi went on a long drunk afterward, but he didn’t fight it. Maybe we should have done it a lot sooner. And maybe we should have saved up and gone to California, too. But we didn’t.

  CHAPTER 23: NOW

  I think Pakmin likes messing with me because he’s got me stuck in the observation room with nothing to observe. I close my eyes, but for once I can’t even get into a nap. I count the chairs scattered around the long observation room. Thirteen. Most people would say that’s unlucky, but for me it’s a damn good number. Maybe something good will happen today. Probably not.

  Finally the light comes on in the group-therapy room, and I’ve got something to look at. There’s Lexi’s lame ass in one of the chairs. I check for my Becca look-alike, but she’s not in the circle today. Another person gone, like Tigs? Or maybe she just had a court date or something.

  The group leader writes “out of place” up on the board. I guess he figured out that big words get him nowhere because he doesn’t write “anxiety” or some other complicated shit.

  He’s still annoying as hell, but seeing the girls is a bonus. They take my mind off of Lexi and her stupid snitch self.

  This girl named Melissa with soft brown hair tells about how it was before she had her baby. “The judge said I had to go to parenting class. This was before I got locked up. Only because I was living out in the suburbs with my boyfriend’s parents, I had to go to this place where everybody else was white and old, like at least twenty-two. I had to sit there with my big brow
n belly sticking out from under my tank top while they looked at me like I just took a shit on the floor. Like I was nothing.”

  The leader nods and makes some sympathetic noises. “Sounds like you’re still feeling some anger from that experience.”

  The Vietnamese girl takes the dolphin from Melissa. “She got right to feel mad, I think.”

  “Hell, yeah, she does.” A black girl I remember from the last time snaps her fingers to get the other girl to toss her the dolphin.

  “Taneesha?” the leader says once she catches it.

  “I can’t get over this time when my whole family was going to go to Six Flags. I helped get my cousins ready and everything and we was walking out the door when my mom pulled me back and told me I couldn’t go, that my Aunt Jasmine thought I’d be a bad influence because I’d been in juvie. I wanted to fight with my mom over it, but that’d just have proved my aunt right. So I stood there on the porch and watched them drive away. What hurt the most was that my mom didn’t stand up for me or nothing. She went without me.”

  The leader goes around the circle like before. I wait for Lexi to say something, anything that might give me a clue, but like always, she keeps her arms crossed and her mouth shut.

  Everything hits home again when I’m back in my cell. I’ve read Becca’s letter so many times I think I’ve got it memorized. I try to stop myself from looking at it because it doesn’t help things none, but I keep pulling it out anyway. Every time it takes more and more chin-ups and sit-ups and push-ups to get her words out of my head.

  It cuts me deep because Becca was the only one who told me to do things or talked to me straight for my own good. I never thought she’d get fed up with me so fast. But she ain’t lying, neither. I promised all kinds of shit to her. With her it was easy to dream of things being different, to imagine going straight. I could even pretend myself into the future. Like me being the badass who hangs out with the little guys at the YMCA and tells them how things really go down and what they got to do to live clean.

  I always thought I’d be a real good dad, not like my pops, always coming after us with a belt. Not like my Tío Beto, neither. Becca said I hated Beto just because he was making me go to school after juvie. But that wasn’t it. My tío decided a long time ago that I was bad. He wouldn’t let me forget it for five minutes. Sometimes I’d be talking to Becca real quiet on the phone, thinking he couldn’t hear me. Telling her about my dreams. Then I’d hang up and he’d walk by and say some shit like, “Hummers don’t fall out of the sky, Martín. You’d better start thinking about your future.”

  Beto wouldn’t call me Azael. That really pissed me off. He said, “I stood next to your mother’s bed when she named you Martín. No way am I going to call you by some street apodo.”

  Right now, Beto is probably laughing with Tía Roxann, saying, “¿Qué dije? I told you he was going to get back into that shit.”

  I hate it that Beto was right, and I want to do something to get him out of my head. I think about drawing, but then I remember the busted pencil. I pull it out anyway. First I just pick at the splintered wood, then I start scraping it against the sharpest edge of the cot. I get a little chunk of wood off with each scrape. It’s going to take me a long time to get a point again this way, but time is one thing I’ve got plenty of.

  CHAPTER 24: THEN

  I’d been out of the Youth Village for maybe three weeks. I was doing good every day, dragging my ass to Pasadena High like a pinche schoolboy. But this one morning I just needed a vacation from my new straight-edge life. Just one day off.

  I was up to my balls in sleep when Beto busted into the room that he let me and Eddie use. When I opened my eyes, I saw a vein popping out of his forehead. He was shouting, “Huevón! Levantate, vos!”

  He yanked the covers back with one hand and pulled open the curtains with the other.

  “C’mon, don’t,” I mumbled. I crossed my arms over my eyes against the bright light.

  “Get your goddamn ass out of bed,” Beto yelled. “Ass out now. I didn’t sign you out of juvie, didn’t bring you into my own home for you to start this shit back up again. ¿Escuchá, vos?”

  “I hear you, I hear you,” I said. “I’m sick, man, cut me some slack.”

  “You wasn’t sick when you went out last night. Now get up.”

  I was going to get up and go like he told me to, but he just kept ragging on me, saying I was going to land back in juvie, saying my ma would be ashamed, calling me a bad influence on Eddie.

  “Fuck it, man! I don’t need this shit.” The words sailed out of my mouth. Once they were out, I couldn’t reel them back in.

  “You want to repeat that?” Beto growled at me.

  “I said, fuck it. I’m fuckin’ out of here.” And then I was throwing my shit in my backpack. Just like that, I quit him, and I quit school again. I quit the Reform Azael Program and caught the 40 bus back to Pelón’s house where I could be halfway in peace. A week later, Eddie showed up, too, and we were back with our crew.

  CHAPTER 25: NOW

  With Tigs gone, I’ve got even more time to kill when I’m stuck in the cell. I think about sketching something out in my black book. I’ve got a point back on my pencil, but then I remember what happened before, Lexi sneaking in through my pencil. No way I’m going to let her screw up the last page in my book.

  Instead, I burn up some hours planning what I’d do with these cell walls if they’d give me some cans. Maybe what I’d paint is a kind of map of my life, different times laid out like neighborhoods. This is what life looks like with my moms around: lots of green, a park where they give away cinnamon pastelitos and balloons to little kids. There’s me and Eddie and Mami standing by a fountain that really works. There’s Pops walking to work with a lunch sack and a clean uniform. This is what life looks like after my moms died: dark colors, the Bel-Lindo buildings leaning all crazy like they’re going to fall down, broken balconies hanging loose. Eddie and me are sitting in a courtyard, circled around baby Regina. She’s the one bright spot with her pink and yellow dress. Pops is walking away from us carrying a fifth of tequila. I think about what’s next—Regina going away, clicking in with MS, Pops getting picked up, meeting Becca. That’s a lot of hoods. Already I’ve got way more than I can fit on these cramped-ass walls.

  This happens to me a lot when I’m thinking out a piece. Lots of times I can’t find a wall big enough for everything I want to put in. I get caught up in details I want to add, but when you’re working with cans, it’s the little stuff that’s hardest to paint. Even with super-thin caps. But I like the challenge. For me, canning is about a lot more than tagging up a wall. Sure, getting my tag up in a heaven spot gives me a high, and I make it my business to do throw-ups any time I’ve got a can. But what I really like is working out a good piece. It’s this whole process. First you plan your shit out in a black book, then you look for the right wall. After that, you’ve still got to rack your colors.

  If you’re underage, you steal your cans because there’s all these crazy restrictions on selling aerosols. That’s thanks to fools like Pelón huffing paints and getting mommies and daddies in the suburbs all worried about their brats’ brain cells. I can walk into any ghetto pawnshop on the Southwest Side and buy a knife without getting asked questions, but Wal-Mart won’t sell me a 97-cent can of spray paint.

  CHAPTER 26: THEN

  Me and Eddie sprawled out on Pelón’s bed, his cell phone between us. It must have been a weekend because Pelón said we could talk as long as we wanted, and he only did that when it was free.

  We had the phone on speaker, and it was on maybe the fourth or fifth ring.

  “Shit,” Eddie said, “they’re not answering.” He reached for the phone like he was going to hang up.

  I pushed his hand away. “Just give it a second, man.”

  We were calling Regina out in California because it was her birthday. A couple of rings later, our grandma answered. After I said hello and she called for Regina, I could h
ear her saying, “Go on, talk to him, that’s your hermano.” Finally Regina got on the phone.

  “Hello?” Her voice was soft, and I could barely hear her over the shouting and laughing in the background.

  “Hey, chiquita! Feliz cumpleaños!” Eddie said.

  “Yeah, how does it feel to be seven?” I asked.

  “Abue and Tía Julia made me a cake. With ice cream inside.”

  “We’re gonna send you a present real soon, okay? Just tell us what you want,” I said.

  “I’ve already got lots of presents,” she said. There was even more noise, and she started laughing. Somebody was singing in the background. “Stop it, Tío!” Regina giggled.

  “You still there, Regina?” Eddie asked. “You want more presents, right? Everybody wants more presents.”

  “No, that’s okay. They’re calling me now to do the candles. I got to go. Bye.”

  Then Abue came back on the phone. “She’s just excited about her party, mijo,” she said. “Don’t take it wrong.” But she knew just as good as we did that Regina didn’t really want to talk to us anyway.

  After we said good-bye, we just stayed there on the bed for a while, not talking. It was like we both knew that we weren’t really part of Regina’s life anymore, but we didn’t want to say it out loud. I sat there thinking back to how small she was when she came home from the hospital. I could still remember how it felt to hold her, how me and Eddie were scared we might hurt her just by looking at her.

  There was this one time me and Eddie had to figure out how to cut her fingernails. At the beginning, Tía Julia did it, but when she went back to her family, it was up to us. We sat there for the longest time staring at the clippers and her perfect little claws that were scratching us up. But it turned out okay because Regina started laughing at the click sound the clippers made when they closed on her nails.