Butterfly (10 page)

you invent, whether it’s with a burglar or a Confederate officer. The mask suppresses
you,

Dr. Linda Markus, and allows another self to take over. You’re afraid of sex, Linda, or

rather you’re afraid of rejection during sex, because of the scars. Getting rid of the fear is

one of the most important steps toward enjoying sex.”

“But will it work?”

“You have to give it time. And you have to learn to relax.”

Linda fell silent. She was already mentally sketching out the next scenario—with her

masked lover.

6

El Paso, West Texas: 1952

Rachel eyed the platter of doughnuts hungrily. From what she could see through the

glass, there were the glazed kind, a few dusted with powdered sugar, some thickly coated

with chocolate and nuts, buttermilk twists, and, her favorite kind, the fat round sugary

ones stuffed with red jam. She had been in El Paso for two days now, and hadn’t eaten

since she got off the Greyhound bus. If it hadn’t been for someone stealing her purse, not

only would she be eating right now but she would be back on the bus and heading in the

right direction—toward California.

But she was broke and all alone in a strange town, tired, hungry, and dirty, without the

faintest idea of where to turn to next.

Out of the corner of her eye she watched the man behind the counter. He was deep-

frying burritos and serving up huge plates of refried beans. The last place she had tried to

spend the night the proprietor had physically tossed her into the street. But this Texas

border town that looked across the Rio Grande into Mexico was a dangerous place for a

fourteen-year-old girl all on her own. Rachel had tried to keep on the move during the

day, going through the Mexican bazaars, where tourists bought Jose Cuervo tequila and

crepe-paper flowers, wishing she had a few pesos to buy some tortillas and beans, and rest-

ing occasionally in Catholic churches, where Mexican and Indian women prayed with

black shawls over their heads. Now it was night and the tourists were safely in their hotels

and Rachel was trying to be as invisible as possible in the smoky café, hoping they would

leave her alone and let her sit at the table all night, out of the cold wind, reading her book.

Even though she hadn’t bought anything to eat. Not even a cup of coffee.

It would never occur to Rachel to order food and eat it without being able to pay for

it, and face the consequences afterward. Her innate honesty prevented that.

It was midnight, and the noisy cafe seemed to be a gathering place for insomniacs.

Most of them looked unsavory and desperate, which was also why Rachel tried to be as

small and unnoticeable as possible, hunched behind a plastic palm tree, her face wedged

between her fists, her eyes firmly riveted to the pages of her book. She was coming to the

end of
The Martian Chronicles,
to the last story, “The Million Year Picnic,” and then she

wouldn’t even have the book as consolation.

She thought about her mother. A lot. Rachel had cried on the bus, all the way from

Albuquerque, and several times had nearly jumped off to run back home. But she knew

her mother was right. He had done it to her once. There was no reason he wouldn’t do it

to her again.

40

BUTTERFLY

41

If only she hadn’t gotten on the wrong bus! But Rachel had been so distraught, crying

nearly all the time, that it wasn’t until they pulled into El Paso, Texas, that she had realized

her mistake. She was supposed to be going to California! And then she had gotten off the

bus to get something to eat, only to find her purse missing. All her money, and the

address of the woman who owned the beauty parlor in Bakersfield! She didn’t even have a

dime to call her mother.

She looked up and saw a stranger eyeing her from the counter. He wore a leather

jacket and had a pockmarked face. And she didn’t like the way he was looking at her.

Rachel tried to concentrate on her book. Ray Bradbury had written: “Mother was

slender and soft, with a woven plait of spun-gold hair over her head in a tiara…” And

Rachel began to cry.

“Hey, girlie, whatsa matter?”

Startled, she looked up. Leather-jacket was standing over her, leering down. Rachel

suddenly felt small and defenseless.

“Wachoo doin’ out so late, little girl?” he said, grinning. “You need some company?”

She gulped back her tears. “N-no, thank you. I’m all right.”

“Yeah. I can see that.” He pulled out a chair and sat down. “Howdya like to have some

fun with me?”

He smelled strongly of beer.

Rachel looked frantically past him, hoping to catch the eye of the man behind the

counter. But the man wasn’t there, just a few sleepy customers hunched over coffee mugs.

“C’mon,” he said, impatience creeping into his voice. “My place ain’t far. You and me

can have a good time. I got some friends would like you, too.”

Rachel’s heart thumped; she felt trapped.

“You must be starved, skinny little thing like you. I got food at my place.”

“N-no thank you.”

“I’ll bet yer running away. That’s against the law, y’know. I call the cops, they’d arrest

you.”

Her eyes flew open.

He took hold of her wrist. His grip was hot, moist. “C’mon. I promise you we’ll have

fun.”

“No! I’m…I’m waiting for someone!”

“Yeah? Who?”

“M-my boyfriend.”

“Boyfriend! You?” He laughed up at the ceiling. “Listen, girlie, I seen some dogs

before, but you take the prize. You got a boyfriend, then I’m the Pope.”

“Excuse me, Your Holiness,” came a voice from behind.

Rachel looked up. A slender young man with almost-reddish hair was smiling faintly

down at Leather-jacket. “That happens to be my girl’s wrist you’ve got your hand on.”

There was an instant of charged silence, then Leather-jacket jumped up, said, “Hey,”

with his hands outspread, and hurried out.

“He won’t be back,” said the friendly stranger. “You okay?”

Tears filled Rachel’s eyes. She wanted her mother so badly.

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Kathryn Harvey

“Hey,” he said, sitting down. “Come on now. Shoot, it can’t be as bad as all that, can

it?”

Something in his voice, something tender in his eyes, stopped her tears and made her

take a better look at him. Rachel wasn’t good at judging adults’ ages, but he looked like

the trailer park manager’s son, who was nineteen. But he was better-looking than the

manager’s son. He was
handsome,
in fact. And he had a dazzling smile.

“What’s a pretty little thing like you doing out this late on her own?” he asked.

And Rachel fell in love.

“You know,” he was saying fifteen minutes later over tacos and enchiladas and bottles

of orange Nehi, “I used to always say that running away never solved anything. But shoot,

in your case, I think you did the right thing.”

True to her nature, because she knew no other way to be, Rachel had poured out her

whole story, the stranger nodding occasionally in sympathy.

Now he shook his head and said, “You poor thing.”

His name was Danny Mackay and he was on his way to San Antonio. She knew he

was a Texan because of the way he would end a sentence going up, as if it were a question.

Things like, “I’m on my way home?” and “I been in California a year?”

He lit up a Camel and said, “Just got discharged from the Army. Fort Ord, out in

California. Shoot, didn’t see no reason to be stayin’ there. So I come home to Texas. You

wanna come along?” he said as he paid the bill. “Along the way, we might could figure out

a solution to your problem.”

But Rachel was no longer worried about her situation. Danny Mackay was the kindest

person she had ever met, and he had said he would take care of her. And she believed him.

*

*

*

They stopped at a motel off the highway and made love. It wasn’t spectacular—in fact,

if Rachel had been more experienced, she would have found him to be a very disappoint-

ing lover—but Rachel didn’t know or care. Nor did she care about the loss of her virgin-

ity at age fourteen. She was filled with hope, with the happiness of having been held in

someone’s arms, of having been comforted by the warmth of another human being, of

having experienced her first kisses while being told she was pretty. Never mind what went

on down there, or that it hurt (not as bad as what her father had done, however, because

she sensed that this was a natural pain, part of what women were expected to bear). All

Rachel Dwyer, deliriously happy for the first time in her life, cared about was that she

finally had someone to love.

The next day they crossed the Rio Grande and drove down into a Mexican border

town, and there Rachel experienced another first.

She got drunk.

She also experienced a new kind of pain.

“Hold still, darlin’,” she vaguely heard Danny’s voice saying. She was scared, but not

too much, because for one thing she was drunk nearly to unconsciousness, and for

BUTTERFLY

43

another she sensed in her stupor that she was doing something for Danny. He had

brought her to this strange room above a
cantina,
had given instructions to the fattest

Mexican woman Rachel had ever seen, and now sat holding her hand while a white-hot

pain seared the inside of her thigh.

He told her the next morning that she had passed out and that he had carried her back

to the motel. He was worried about her now, solicitous of her discomfort—he had even

gotten her some aspirin for the pain.

“I’m proud of you, darlin’. Some women don’t take it well.”

She went into the bathroom to see what had been done to her, and received a shock.

There, on the inside of her right thigh, just inches from her private place, was a tattoo.

A little butterfly.

And it was so realistic, so lifelike that one might swear it had fluttered down to that

pale flesh and now quivered there.

“What do you think?” Danny said from the doorway.

“It hurts.”

“That’ll go away.”

She looked up at him. “Why, Danny? Why did you do it to me?”

He came in and pulled her into his arms. Kissing the top of her head, he said,

“Because I want you to belong to me. And this is my way of making you all mine.”

Words like that she couldn’t resist. Pain or no pain, violation of her body notwith-

standing, Rachel had never wanted anything more in her life than to belong to somebody.

And if that’s what the butterfly meant, then she was glad it was there.

They arrived in San Antonio the next day.

Rachel had sat proudly and happily next to Danny in the old Ford, watching the Texas

terrain gradually change from desert to lush farmland, the long stretch of highway cutting

through flat expanses of caliche, a whitish clay type of soil that nothing could grow in,

and tracts of low mesquite and huisache. And finally Hill Country, where there were

mesquite trees instead of bushes, and where, Danny explained, there was now a cow to

every five acres instead of fifty acres. The desolation gradually gave way to settlement—

filling stations, ranches, old Mexican adobe dwellings—and Rachel hoped that now that

they were at their final destination, wedding bells were the next order of the day.

She loved to watch Danny while he drove. The more she looked at him, the more