The Knife and the Butterfly (11 page)

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.

In the old days, we took care of Regina and taught her everything, even how to tie her shoes. And now she didn’t even want to talk to us. Maybe I should have been glad that she had a new life away from us so we couldn’t mess things up for her. It wasn’t like me and Eddie were Boy Scouts. But I couldn’t help wishing she missed us just a little.

CHAPTER 27: NOW

I’m sick of trying to get my brain to play that day at the park. The trying keeps taking me places I don’t want to go. I feel like giving up on remembering because it’s too damn hard, but there’s no way I can handle Pakmin right until I know what’s behind me. What I did or didn’t do. Right now I can’t even remember enough to work up a good lie.

Who knows, maybe they even gave us some drug to make us forget so that they can tell us whatever they want. Like the opposite of truth serum.

But I can’t think that way. Job #1: remembering. Who’s the patron saint of things you forgot? Ma used to sing us some song with the names of saints in it. There’s a patron for everything, she said. For TV repairmen and orphans and people with broken hearts, for dogs and cats, for people who sleep on park benches, for lost causes. Me, I’m my own fucking lost cause.

A name finally pops into my head: San Antonio. Ma telling me and Eddie when we lost our remote-control race car,
hacemos una oración a San Antonio
. A prayer to San Antonio for a lost thing.

Close enough. I imagine that my missing memory is a lost thing. I picture it as a cardboard box, the kind you get in first grade to hold your pencils and crayons. The box is in a big room filled with junk, but I know it’s in there somewhere. Show me where it is, I think, please show me where it is. Dear San Antonio. Please. Amen. I almost laugh out loud, that’s how bad my prayer sucks. But it’s been about a million years since I prayed. Shit, it’s been a while since I talked to anybody but Gabe and Pakmin. After Tigs disappeared, the only time I say anything is to ask the new arrivals about Eddie.

Maybe I’ll try the prayer again, but I don’t need nobody looking at me. I spread my blanket out so it hangs from the top of the mattress down to the floor, and then I think small and pull myself under the cot. The concrete floor smells of sour piss and sweat. For a second I’m back on the Southwest Side running down an alley, the high of canning mixing with the fear of getting caught. Then I’m here again, and all I see is the wobbly weave of the blanket. The sounds of the cell block filter in to me. Instead of praying, I end up listening to the shifting of mattresses, the clearing of throats, the bouncing of springs that means somebody’s jacking off.

“Come get your lunch, son,” Gabe calls to me. I open my eyes and see his white pants legs and black shoes through the fabric of the blanket. I roll out from under my cot, feeling like an idiot. But Gabe doesn’t say anything about me sleeping on the floor, just stands there with his mystery-man smile. It’s creepy at first, but almost nice once you get used to it.

Usually Gabe just leaves the food, but if he wants to talk to me, I’d better get my ass up and take advantage. Today he’s holding the tray all funny. Instead of holding onto the sides like normal, he has his hand underneath it like a waiter. When I reach over for it, he uses his free hand to pull my right hand to the underside of the tray. “There you go,” he says. His eyes lock with mine, and I feel a hard metal coil against my fingers. “Until tomorrow morning,” he says.

“Thanks, Gabe,” I say. I give him a nod to show him how much I mean it.

Once he’s gone and I’m sure the hall is empty, I slide Lexi’s notebook out from under the tray. I fire a thank-you in San Antonio’s direction just to be on the safe side, but I’m not dumb enough to believe that prayers work this fast. I’m pretty sure this is all Gabe.

Even though I don’t feel like eating, I choke down my sloppy joe and the apple so that nothing will seem weird. Then I lie down on the cot, pull the blanket over my head, and start reading. I figure I’ve got at least an hour before rec.

Get this, Gray Suit says I should keep a journal. First he brought out this sunflowered piece of shit with a yellow ribbon to tie it shut. No way was I gonna touch that. I told him to give it to his grandma or shove it up his ass.

When he came back with this one, I took it just to shut him up. But if I write in here, it’s because I want to.

There’s nothing else to do anyway. So far my day is eat, shit, and sleep. That and cross my fingers that Meemaw and Shauna will get me out fast.

The thing is, I’m in here, but I don’t even know what exactly went down.

See, I like my life a whole lot better if I’m on a little something to soften the edges. My favorites are Xannies. They mess me up good.

One time Cartoon told me that I let him and Slots touch my tits when I was tripping. “Bullshit,” I said, “in your dreams.” My boys call me a tease, but the truth is that I don’t like being touched. That’s for reasons I don’t feel like writing about. So I thought for sure Cartoon was lying, so I punched him hard in the gut.

Then he leaned over and whispered something about the scar. It’s on my left tit, from an open-heart surgery when I was a baby. And I never talk about it. It’s something he’d only know about if he’d seen it.

Anyway, me and Cartoon are pretty tight. He calls me before something goes down. Then sometimes he turns around and acts like a pussy. Tells me to beat it, says there’s no bitches allowed.

“What about you, faggot?” I say, and play it off. But it hurts me when he says shit like that. Makes me feel like somehow he doesn’t really think I’m down. Like I’ve always got to be proving myself to him, and he’s supposed to be my friend.

Meemaw came today, but Shauna still hasn’t shown her ugly face. Meemaw says to be patient, but she doesn’t know when I’m going to be getting out of here. She asked me if I wanted her to pray with me like she always does when I’m in trouble. I didn’t, but I said okay because I know it’s what she wanted to hear.

Here’s how being in here is like living with Shauna:

#1 – It’s only temporary.

#2 – The walls are blank.

#3 – I’m lonely.

#4 – I’m bored.

#5 – There’s shit to eat.

#6 – Shauna’s not around.

I could add a lot more to this list, but I’m already feeling mega pissed at Shauna. Yeah, so I call my mom by her first name. So it’s kind of disrespectful, so what? She hasn’t done a whole lot to earn my respect. Some role model. Always telling me to do the right thing, whatever that is, when she can’t keep her own life straight. No way I can take her serious.

Like when she says that I need to work on my attitude, I just roll my eyes real big at her and say, “What attitude, Shauna?”

That pisses her off, and she throws the remote down. I just smile and go, “Easy there. Looks like you’ve got some attitude too.”

Sometimes that gets her laughing, and the lecture’s over. But lots of times we just fight. Like last week she asked me, did I skip summer school today? Which of course I did, but no way was I going to admit it. I just walked out of the kitchen and headed for my bedroom.

Then she shouted after me about getting the call from the school. Goddamn attendance office.

I fought back fast. “Who you gonna believe? Your own daughter or some goddamn secretary?”

Then she came into my room talking about responsibility. Blah, blah, blah. Her voice goes all whiny when she says this kind of crap. The funniest is when she starts in about trust. It’s all total bullshit.

I don’t care if she wants to talk about this shit, but she has to be ready to feel it where it hurts. Like when I remind her that she’s the one who got fired off of three jobs for coming in drunk. She starts to cry, and her mascara globs up in the wrinkles around her eyes. God, she’s pathetic.

I show no mercy, just go in for the kill. I tell her that the mistakes started with her. We’d both be better off if she’d just gotten an abortion. Had me vacuumed out. But she didn’t. So I tell her to stop trying to ruin my life now. Then I grab Theo’s leash and he comes running. A second later we’re out the door and out of her reach.

I toss down the notebook. Is this a fucking joke? Theo’s a damn dog. Shit. The way she was talking about him with her mom before, I had him pegged for some kind of family, a brother or some
primo
at least. So much for that.

I don’t get how some people are about dogs, acting like they matter so much. Whenever Pops saw dogs nosing around the trash at the Bel-Lindo, he’d give them a good kick in the ribs. Regina didn’t like that, but we just told her those were mean dogs, not like the ones on TV. Me, I can’t see how anybody could have a dog unless they was rich. Why waste good food on a mutt? But you see it all the time, especially with white people. It’s like they think having a dog makes you a good person. I’m not buying it. Having a dog is just having a dog.

I think about Lexi on the street with her
pinche
dog crapping in the neighbor’s bushes and I feel a little better, so I go back to reading.