The Butterfly’s Daughter (15 page)

A wry smile crossed Mariposa's face as memories rushed back. Maria hadn't been an attractive girl. She'd had her good points—her mother's beautiful hair and skin. But she also had her father's round, flat face and small, beady eyes that always reminded Mariposa of an armadillo and made her glad Luis was not
her
father. In contrast, Mariposa had been an exceptionally pretty child and grew into a beautiful young woman. Mariposa had discovered early how beauty gave her power over males. She'd been a terrible flirt, young and foolish, without a clue about the pain of heartbreak. That harsh lesson she'd learned later, and learned well.

“Did Mami love me best? I liked to think so.” She leaned back and crossed her arms, remembering the fireworks between her mother and half sister that eventually fizzled out to cold noncommunication. “Their rift went deeper than that, though. Maria was furious when Mami came to Milwaukee to live with me. She felt it was selfish of me to ask her to come. But the truth is, I never did. I didn't have to. Mami just showed up when I needed her most.”

“That's when you were pregnant?” Sam asked.

Mariposa tightened her lips and nodded, feeling suddenly the same shame now, so many years later, that she felt when her lover had skipped out on her, leaving her as if she were a pet he'd grown tired of and left by the side of the road.

“Mami never meant to live in Milwaukee permanently, just until I had the baby and was strong enough to travel. But she got a job
as a cook at a nice restaurant and made good money, more than she ever could back home. She needed a job. She was a widow at this time. My father died a few months before.”

Mariposa looked up at the sky. Soft, white cumulus clouds floated by like masts on a sailboat. She'd always wondered if her running away from college with Max had caused her father's sudden heart attack. Her mother said he'd been hurt, of course, but no, it wasn't her fault. Mariposa didn't believe her, and it was yet another guilt she'd have to carry.

“So she stayed,” Sam prodded.

Mariposa looked back sharply. “Yes. Mami sold her house in Mexico and with that plus some money she'd saved, she bought a little house in Milwaukee for us to live in. Maria went through the roof. She'd wanted us to move to San Antonio. By staying in Milwaukee with me, I think she felt Mami took sides. Things fell apart between them.”

“Maybe she felt abandoned,” Sam said.

Mariposa's face clouded at the word, which elicited a world of guilt in her heart. She struggled to keep her voice even. “Maybe. I don't know . . .” She looked off in the distance. “It was a long time ago.”

“But when you came out of rehab, when you felt ready to make that important first contact with family, you called your half sister, who you felt estranged from. Not your mother.”

Mariposa nodded slowly.

“Why? Why not your mother, if you were close to her?”

“It's
because
I was so close to her,” she exclaimed in a heated tone. She stood up and walked a few paces to stand beside the trunk of the nearest tree. “When I left, I hurt her. Badly. And it's been such a long time.”

“How long? Fifteen years? Twenty?”

Shame shut her down. She felt the old coldness slide over her. Her face was impassive and her voice empty. “Sixteen. I left when my daughter was five.”

“After all that time, why didn't you want to call her yourself?”

“I thought”—she felt her back stiffen and she turned to meet his gaze—“I hoped maybe it would come easier for her to hear from Maria first.”

“To hear what?” Sam's dark eyes held hers, unyielding.

Mariposa looked down at her boots. They were scuffed and dusty and the heel was worn low. She said nothing.

“To hear that you were alive?”

Mariposa cracked. “Yes! Okay? Yes!” She turned her back to Sam, unable to face him. “She didn't know if I was alive or dead. I'd called a few times at first, just to let her know I was okay, but later I got in with a bad group. I . . . I couldn't call. Or write. After a while, I was too ashamed. I couldn't bring myself to tell her what I'd become. Better that she thought I was dead.”

There was a long silence. Sam knew her history. Knew she got caught up in the world of drugs—using and selling. It was a vicious circle that was near impossible to break from without dying or being killed. For her, landing in jail turned out to be a blessing. Hard time and rehabilitation had led her to this moment of reconnection. But first she had to own her history. To accept it and talk about it. No more running or escapes. Sam wouldn't allow her to hide any longer in her silences.

“So,” he said in a soothing voice, “it was easier for you to contact Maria because she meant less to you than your mother did.”

Mariposa swallowed the emotion rising in her throat and shook her head. After a minute she said vacantly, “I didn't think of it that
way. I don't try to make things easier for myself anymore. It just made sense to call Maria. She was here in San Antonio. I could talk to her face-to-face.” She stopped, rubbing her arms in thought. “In a way, it was like a practice run. To see if I was strong enough.”

“Strong enough to confront your mother.”

Mariposa nodded and closed her eyes. “And my daughter.”

There it was. Sam didn't have to reply because they both knew this was the crux of it. Her daughter, Luz.

“And are you? Strong enough?”

“I thought I was. Now I'm not so sure. Maybe it was too soon.”

“But you met your sister. How did that go?”

Mariposa recalled the day she took the bus to Maria's house. She'd been extremely nervous. They'd only talked a bit on the phone, largely because Maria was shocked speechless to hear from her sister after so many years of thinking she was dead. Likewise, Mariposa was shocked to see Maria. The years had not been kind to her sister. Maria had gained a lot of weight after her divorce and her eyes were now gleaming slits in her face with dust-colored smudges beneath. But when she smiled her face lit up and they hugged spontaneously. Maria's fleshy arms held Mariposa tight and she smelled of vanilla, a scent reminiscent of their mother. In that moment all the disagreements of the past had dissipated into the ridiculous.

“It went well. She was kind and considerate. Gracious, even. I was surprised by that. She's divorced and her children have moved off. After all these years, after all our differences, we both ended up alone and in San Antonio.” She shrugged in a manner that spoke of the irony of fate.

“So you asked her to call your mother for you,” Sam said.

Mariposa took a breath and leaned against the tree trunk. “Yes.
And she did. Maria told me she called the next day. She said Mami had broken down in tears when she heard I was alive.” Mariposa looked off at the lake. She couldn't think of that scene without getting choked up.

“What happened next?”

“Maria and my mother talked for only a few minutes more when they were interrupted by Luz coming in.” Hearing the name of her daughter cross her own lips gave Mariposa pause. She pushed her hair from her face, feeling the moisture gathering at her brow and lip. “Mami didn't want Luz to find out about me like that, so suddenly and unprepared. So they got off the line quickly. She told Maria she'd call back.”

Mariposa swung her head around. “But she never did! Why wouldn't my mother call back?” she demanded to know, straightening to stand with her fists at her sides. “Could she be so angry with me that she wouldn't want to see me again?”

“Yes,” Sam said evenly.

Mariposa's eyes flashed with pain. Sam's calm suddenly infuriated her.

“You don't know her!” she shouted back at him. “You don't know anything!”

At the sound of Mariposa's high-pitched shouting, Opal immediately jerked up her head and eyed her with worry.

Once again, Sam gave her time to collect herself. She didn't look at him. She picked up a stone and tossed it into the lake. It made a soft, plopping noise as it fell into the water. Mariposa watched the ripples spread out, farther and farther. The effect was, she knew, like her decision to leave her daughter. She had to face the consequences of so many ripples from that one selfish, irrational decision.

“I'm sorry,” she said, still facing the water. “I didn't mean to yell. I was taking out my frustrations on you. But you're wrong.”

Sam didn't reply.

She looked over her shoulder at him. His face was as brown and weathered as a well-worn saddle. When he squinted in the sunlight, as he did now, long lines carved his skin from the corners of his eyes to his jaw.

“It's pretty here,” she said calmly.

“Yep,” Sam replied, his gaze shifting from her face to the lake beyond. “I do believe this is one of the prettiest spots in the Hill Country,” he said without boasting.

A gust of wind stirred the dust around them and lifted the ends of Mariposa's long hair. She blinked and turned her head. Her attention was caught by the sight of a single monarch flapping its wings against the breeze to reach the blue sage a few yards away.

“Look!” she exclaimed, heartened. “A monarch!”

Sam turned his gaze to where she was pointing. “We should be getting a lot of them passing through soon.”

She nodded.

He smiled. “That's right . . . you raise monarchs, don't you?”

“It's no big deal. It's just something I'm interested in.”

“Your name . . . Mariposa. That means butterfly in Spanish, doesn't it?”

“Yes. So? You think that's why I like the butterflies?”

Sam smiled again. “Just curious, is all. Did your mother love butterflies, too?”

Her face softened at the memory. She could still see her mother in her mind's eye, out in her beloved garden, searching for caterpillars, bringing them indoors to raise in her habitats, teaching Mariposa how to clean the cages, watching with her the metamorphosis
in wonder. Over the years she'd witnessed the cycle hundreds of times and never grew tired of it. “Oh, yes. She taught me everything I know about butterflies.”

“Ah. The mother-daughter cells at work.”

“The
what
?”

“The mother-daughter cells. Basic mitosis. Each time a cell divides, the mother cell passes on genetic material to the daughter cells.”

“Are you implying I'm like my mother? I'm not a fraction of the woman my mother is.”

“Don't be so sure. The cells are not exactly alike. It's complicated, and I'm sure I can't explain it very well. But I've always found the passing on of information from one generation to the next fascinating. A great mystery. Just look at the butterflies you're so fond of. If I remember correctly, in the spring the female monarch mates, then leaves the sanctuary to travel north, to right here in Texas. She lays her eggs on milkweed leaves, then dies. It's the next generation, the daughter, that follows the milkweed north to lay eggs again, then her daughter continues the cycle, leapfrogging north to repopulate. There's no map handed down, no powwow to discuss the plan. Just knowledge, instinct stored deep that guides the butterfly north. That's the mother-daughter cells at work.” He looked off into the distance. “Nature is so beautiful.”

Mariposa thought that somehow, the cells got screwed up in her. Where was the genetic link motivating her to love and care for her child? She couldn't bear to talk about anything that had to do with the connection between mothers and daughters. What was Sam doing with this mother-daughter cell discussion, anyway? Falling into an old habit, Mariposa put on a blank face and looked out at the lake.

Sam spoke again. “Why don't you try calling your mother yourself?” he asked. “Today?”

She shook her head brusquely.

“Why not?”

“For all your talk about genes, I'm not like my mother. I'm not that strong.”

“Yes, you are. You've gone through rehab and stayed clean. That takes plenty of strength. And courage.”

“Don't praise me, Sam. I can't bear it.” Her voice was low and trembling as she fought for control.

“So now you're beating yourself up again?”

Her fragile hold on composure broke. “Sam, I let my mother and daughter think I was dead. I left my child!” she blurted, furious with herself for the tears burning in her eyes. “My little girl. She was only five years old and I left her for some man I can't even remember. He was just a link in a chain, who promised me a new life, away from the drudgery of the foundry and the machines. And the cold. I hated the cold.”

“And, of course, there were the drugs.”

He said the words plainly, with the cool precision of a surgeon, and they cut like a scalpel, leaving her raw and exposed. She turned to stare straight into his eyes. They were like two deep, dark pools of water, without judgment or condemnation. She wanted to shock him. To see his placid face stiffen with disgust. To make him hate her, like she deserved.

“Yeah, there were always drugs. That's how it was for me,” she told him bitterly. “One man after another. One worse than the other. But I didn't care, as long as I got my fix.” She felt so cold and rubbed her arms. She cast a sidelong glance at his face. He remained as impassive as stone.

“I hate myself for what I did. What kind of woman does that?”

“An addict.”

Mariposa choked back a cry and put her face in her palms. “I'm so ashamed. I don't deserve to ask their forgiveness.”

“That's in your past. Mariposa, you have to let the past go. It's a bad place of guilt and self-recrimination. You have to live for now. In the moment.”

“I can't. I keep thinking of them. Wondering why she hasn't called back.”

“What's so different today than three weeks ago when you made the decision to call your mother? You were ready to communicate.”