The Butterfly Sister: A Novel Paperback by Amy Gail Hansen

Author:Amy Gail Hansen
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780062234629
Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks
Published: 2013-08-06T00:00:00+00:00

Shakes out her rain-drenched hair,

Tho’ you should lean above me broken-hearted,

I shall not care.

I shall have peace as leafy trees are peaceful,

When rain bends down the bough,

And I shall be more silent and cold-hearted

Than you are now.

Tia spoke first. “It’s a suicide note,” she said.

Professor Barnard leaned against the edge of her desk. “What makes you say that?”

“Her word choice, When I am dead and Over me. I imagine a cemetery plot on a rainy spring day. I mean, where else would you be dead with a tree hanging over you?”

“What about the rest of you? Is it a suicide note?”

No one responded.

“Well?” the professor prompted.

Becca raised her hand again, and the professor called on her, seemingly annoyed by the formality. The girl twisted in her desk to address the majority of the room.

“I think I speak for the entire class when I say this conversation is uncomfortable,” she said. “It’s inappropriate, considering . . . what happened.”

The room erupted in head turns and sideway glances.

“Considering what happened, it’s completely appropriate,” Professor Barnard countered. “I know everyone, including the administration, wants to pretend nothing happened last night. In fact, I’ve been instructed not to talk about it with you, to teach class with a huge elephant in the room. Reunion weekend is supposed to be fun. And we can’t have fun if we live in reality, can we? But the fact is, a girl almost died last night. She almost took her own life. And it’s all any of us are thinking about today. You want Common Sense, Becca? It’s only common sense that we process our thoughts and feelings. And what better way to do that than reading poetry?” She cleared her throat. “So, I’ll ask the question again. Do you think Teasdale’s poem is a suicide note?”

Several students squirmed in their desks, me included.

“No,” Becca finally answered.

“Why not?”

“It’s a fantasy. She’s only imagining what it would be like if she were dead.”

“If that’s the case, she would have said if,” Tia argued. “And she said when.”

Becca pondered this. “But she doesn’t sound depressed. She sounds angry. She wants revenge. She doesn’t want to die; she just wants to make him feel bad for how he treated her. She wants him to suffer. She wants him to kneel beside her tombstone broken-hearted.”

“He?” The professor crossed her arms. “Why do you assume it’s a man? She could be talking about a woman. Her mother, her sister, her friend?”

Becca shook her head. “She’s too angry. A woman can’t make another woman that angry. Only a man has the power to bring out such feelings of dejection.”

“Oh really? What if she’s a lesbian?” Tia asked.

Becca rolled her eyes. “Was she?”

“Not that we know of,” the professor interjected. “She married a man, but later they divorced.”

“Okay, to be politically correct, let me rephrase,” Becca went on. “I’m talking about romantic love. That’s the kind of love that makes us most vulnerable, the kind that makes us angry and vengeful. And since we know she was heterosexual, I’m going to presume the you in the poem is a man.

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