Butterfly's Child by Angela Davis-Gardner

Author:Angela Davis-Gardner [Davis-Gardner, Angela]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-679-60458-7
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2011-03-07T23:00:00+00:00

Kate was ill with mother’s sickness, vomiting every morning into the chamber pot beside the bed. As soon as this phase passed, she would leave; she had to leave this place, the gossip, the humiliation, Aimee and her tribe relishing the exposure of the elaborate lies she had told about Benji’s origins. She could see them in Aimee’s parlor, gathered for the women’s circle meeting, their tea growing cold, their eyes glittering as they leaned forward, devouring morsels of fact and rumor. Mrs. Cassidy would declare she had never been so shocked. I always suspected it, Aimee would say, setting off a clamor of excited agreement: Her Christian duty, indeed!

They would whisper at church, and Reverend Singleton and his wife would discuss the scandal at their dinner table. If only she had confided in Reverend Singleton, he might be able to help her now, but it was too late. There was no help.

She kept to her room, sleeping much of the day with the aid of the tonics Frank had brought her.

One day she dreamed about Benji, that she had given birth to him herself. He was bleeding from his mouth, and she was covered with his blood. She jerked awake, pulled down the covers, and looked—nothing—then fell back onto the bed. She could hear Mrs. Pinkerton downstairs, cleaning, scraping chairs about. Kate got out of bed, put on her robe, and went to stand by the window, putting her forehead against the cold pane. There was a freezing drizzle, the ice beginning to coat the trees, the limbs shining in the cold light of late afternoon. The garden had buckled, the coneflowers, the black-eyed Susans, the lettuces shriveled. She thought of Benji huddled against the door of a shop in some strange town. He might die of exposure in this weather; he might already be dead. She felt a wave of vertigo; it was too much to think about. She went back to her tonic and to sleep.

Sometimes Mary Virginia tiptoed into the room and wriggled into bed with her. “All right,” Kate said, “if you be quiet and go to sleep.” Mary Virginia would lie still, her hot sweet little breath on Kate’s face, and stare at her. “Is Mama sick?” she said one day.

“No. Mama is just waiting for the stork.”

“Why?”

Kate closed her eyes, saw the air thick with orange butterflies. “Why, Mama?”

“The stork is going to bring us a baby.”

“I’m the baby.” Mary Virginia thrashed and kicked. “I’m the baby.”

“Go on, now.” Kate gave her a nudge. “Go help your grandmother. Mama needs to sleep.”

One evening she woke to see Franklin at the door. He was on his way to bed, holding a candle. His shirttail was out and his trousers were too short. He’d grown without her noticing.

“When is Benji coming back?” he said.

“I don’t know.”

“Will he come back?”

“No,” she said, in a sharper voice than she’d intended, and Franklin slid away. “I don’t know. How could I possibly know?” she called after him. “Franklin?” When he didn’t return, she took out the tonic and drank herself back to unconsciousness.

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