The Patron Saint of Butterflies (23 page)

Nana Pete and Lillian talk softly up front. I wish they would turn around and talk to me. But hours pass and there is no indication of any shared conversation. I pull out my butterfly notebook and start sketching a White Skipper from memory. It ends up looking terrible, like a distorted balloon instead of a butterfly. I close the book, lean my head back against the seat, and pretend to sleep.

“He hasn’t said a word since the operation,” Nana Pete is
saying. Her voice is hushed and she is talking out of the side of her mouth. “Not one single word.”

“He’s in shock,” Lillian says. “It happens to children sometimes. I think it’s just because they have no words to describe certain things. It’s too much.”

“Do you think he’ll snap out of it?”

Lillian nods. “I’m sure he will. We just have to give him some time.” I glance over at Benny. He has his first two fingers of his good hand stuck in his mouth and he is sleeping soundly. For the first time, I realize just how young he is. I wonder how helpless he must have felt when Emmanuel lifted him off the table and carried him into his room. Like a lamb being taken to slaughter. I put my hand on his knee and keep it there until he stirs again.

After a while, Lillian pulls through a fast-food place called Captain D’s and orders two buckets of fried fish, some weird little bally type things called hush puppies, and french fries with vinegar. I eat everything quickly, even licking the inside of the paper wrapper the fish comes in. It’s delicious. Lillian, Benny, and Nana Pete eat their fish, too, but Agnes doesn’t touch a thing. She’s probably started another fasting period. Let her. I don’t even care anymore.

“You wanna play Guess Who?” Lillian asks after everyone has finished eating. She’s looking at me in the mirror.

“What’s that?” I ask.

“It’s a guessing game. I think of a famous person and you get to ask twenty questions until you think you’ve figured out who it is.”

“I don’t really know any famous people,” I say.

“You could do saints,” Agnes mumbles.

I roll my eyes. “Forget it.”

“No, I think that’s a great idea!” Nana Pete says, turning around. “Don’t you, Lillian?”

Lillian slides a look over at her mother and nods. “I don’t know how far I’ll get, since I don’t know much about them, but I’m sure I’ll learn a great deal.”

“You start, Mouse,” Nana Pete says.

“No, I don’t want to play,” she says, shrinking back against the seat.

I turn, glaring at Agnes. “Spare me. You want to play so badly you can taste it. Now, just play. I’ll even sit this one out.”

So Agnes starts. Nana Pete and then Lillian ask questions until it’s disclosed that Agnes’s saint of choice is a girl who died when she was only twelve …

“Saint Agnes,” I blurt out.

“Hey!” Agnes yells. “You’re not even playing!”

“You’re so predictable, Agnes,” I say meanly. “Think of another one.”

“Why did she die so young?” Nana Pete asks.

“Oh God,” I say. “Here we go.”

Of course Agnes tells her the whole story of her namesake, Saint Agnes, a story she has told me over and over again since she got
The Saints’ Way
. I close my eyes and brace myself.

“Well, okay,” she starts softly, but as she gets into it, her voice picks up. “Saint Agnes was a very beautiful girl. And a nobleman from Rome wanted to marry her—they married really young back then—but she said no, because she wanted to be a nun and devote her life to God.”

“Like someone else we know,” I murmur.

“Honey.” Nana Pete glares at me. “Stop.”

“Okay, okay,” I answer. “Not another word.”

“Go ahead, Agnes,” Nana Pete says.

“So the man was really upset that Agnes wouldn’t marry him and to get back at her, he accused her publicly of being a Christian, which was against the law in those days. She was arrested and brought before a judge and the judge tried to get her to deny it. He even went easy on her because she was so young. But she wouldn’t budge. Then they threatened to torture her by peeling off her skin and burning her alive, but she still wouldn’t deny Christ. Finally she was ordered to be executed. When she was brought up to the block, the executioner got really nervous, because she was so young and beautiful. He even begged her to reconsider, but she wouldn’t.” Agnes sighs and leans back in the seat. “And so she died a martyr for Christ.”

“Good Lord!” Nana Pete says. “How terrifying! I wonder what that poor child was thinking as they led her up to the chopping block.”

I stare out the window. Fields of wheat rush by in a haze of gold. I’d give anything right now to be standing in the middle of one of them, flying a kite.

“She was smiling, because she was so overjoyed to be dying for Christ,” Agnes says.

I give Agnes as disgusted a look as I possibly can. “Agnes. Come
on
. The girl was twelve years old. She wasn’t smiling. She was probably peeing in her pants! She was about to get her head cut off!”

Agnes narrows her eyebrows at me. “Well, that’s what the book said, Honey. I didn’t make it up.”

“Whatever the case, there’s certainly no doubt Saint Agnes
was incredibly brave,” Nana Pete says. “I don’t think I could be that brave if I was faced with execution.”

“No one could,” I retort. “And Saint Agnes probably wasn’t, either.”

“Don’t you dare defame Saint Agnes!” Agnes shouts. “I mean it, Honey!”

“Girls!”
Nana Pete grabs her handkerchief and starts blotting. The two of us sit for a while, seething in silence. I’m so sick of Agnes’s holier-than-thou attitude about saints and martyrs that I could puke. I wish I could just rip that whole part of her out and toss it out the window. Instead, I watch the landscape pass by. There are no gold fields anymore; now everything is flat and green and still. I miss Winky.

“Here we are!” Lillian yells out suddenly in a singsong voice. She points to a green sign on the side of the highway. “Look—Savannah!” Twenty minutes later, she pulls into a wide gravel driveway. On the right is a weirdly angular yellow house edged with a white picket fence. She parks the car and looks over at Nana Pete. “Home sweet home.” She smiles. “We made it, Ma.”

The largest part of Lillian’s house looks like a big box with a slanted roof. There is a door and two windows on the right side and a closed-in deck that protrudes out from a second-floor window. Next to the big box is a slightly smaller attachment with a single rectangular window in the middle. A large tree with draping, heavy boughs hangs over the side of the house like a dark green umbrella.

“That is one weird-looking house,” I say, getting out of the car behind Lillian. She has her arm around Nana Pete and is
helping her to the front door. Nana Pete is shuffling her feet and leaning her whole weight against Lillian.

“That’s because it used to be an old carriage house,” Lillian says over her shoulder. “Back in the day when people drove horse and buggy carriages, this is where they would store the carriages.”

“Are there any carriages in there now?”

Lillian laughs and shakes her head. “I barely have enough room inside that place for myself and Mr. Pibbs. No carriages.”

“You live with a man?” I ask.

“Nope. No guy. Come on in. You’ll see.”

Agnes, Benny, and I follow her through the front gate of the picket fence, stepping carefully along a set of cracked, flat stones that lead up to the front door. Big green bushes sit like boulders in front of the house. I pause, trailing my fingers over one of the strange fern-shaped spikes growing out of the top of the bush closest to the door. I’ve never seen anything like it before. Tiny buds cling to the tips of the spiky growth, hard and green on the outside with streaks of pink underneath.

“Those are my summer sweet,” Lillian says. She is fiddling with the lock, watching me out of the corner of her eye. “They need a few more weeks to bloom, but when they do, the whole front yard will smell like apple pie.”

I raise my eyebrows. “Apple pie? Really?”

Lillian turns the key in the front door. “Yep. And sometimes, at night, if you sit really still on the front porch here and watch, you’ll see hummingbirds flying in and around the bushes. And butterflies, too.” She gives the door a deft push with her hip. “Here we are, Ma. Come on in and have a seat.”

Agnes takes Benny’s hand and leads him inside, but I
pause as a cat darts out suddenly from behind the door and, weaving between my legs, makes a run for the front gate.

“That’s Mr. Pibbs!” I hear Lillian yell from the inside. “Grab him, Honey, will you? He’s not allowed out!” I grab the small animal around the scruff of the neck just as he is about to disappear around the picket fence.

“Gotcha, you little bugger!” He mews piteously, but I clutch him against my chest and walk back toward the house. The cat turns its head to look up at me and when he does, I almost drop him. He’s a Siamese, with blue eyes and brown markings on his ears and face.

Exactly like George.

AGNES

The amount of space Lillian has inside her carriage house doesn’t seem big enough to hold a horse, let alone a bunch of buggies. Or whatever it was they drove back then. Benny and I stand next to one of the bright red counters inside her tiny kitchen and wait while Lillian helps Nana Pete onto a large couch covered with a cabbage-rose print. I hold my arms out. My fingers can reach the countertop on the other side of the kitchen.

“I know. I know,” Lillian says, walking in. She opens the refrigerator. “It’s smaller than a gingerbread house in here, but it’s home.” She shrugs, holding a glass jar full of green liquid. “I’m getting Ma a drink. You guys want some? It’s limeade. I just made it yesterday.”

I don’t say anything, but Benny nods eagerly.

Lillian blows inside a glass, shrugging as a pocketful of dust emerges from the bottom, and fills it with the limeade. “Don’t worry,” she says. “I’ll take this one.” Pulling out another glass from the cupboard, she rinses it out in the sink and fills it. Then, after plopping in several ice cubes, she hands it to me. “Come on in here. We can sit down.”

We follow her into a slightly larger room with pale yellow walls. Lillian plops down on the couch next to Nana Pete. The arms are so threadbare that I can see pieces of wood beneath the stuffing. Nana Pete is perspiring more than usual and her mouth is drawn in a straight line. When we
walk into the room, she looks up at us, but her lids are heavy, as if they are weighted on the inside.

“Listen, Ma.” Lillian reaches over and smoothes Nana Pete’s hair off her forehead. “I’m not gonna go into King’s tonight so I can stay with you and—”

But Nana Pete cuts her off with a wave of her hand. “Don’t be ridiculous, Lil. I’m tired from the trip, is all. You didn’t go in yesterday to come meet us in Raleigh, and I don’t want you to call in again. I remember the mess you came back to the last time I visited. Besides, it’s no big deal. We’re all just going to sleep anyway. It’s not like I have to
do
anything.” She glances over at me and winks. “Except maybe watch my snoring.”

Lillian studies her mother for a moment and then sighs. “All right,” she says softly. “If you’re really sure … ”

Nana Pete nods her head firmly. “I’m really sure,” she repeats. “Now git. You have about twenty minutes to shower and get down there before they start panicking.”

Lillian plants a kiss on her mother’s forehead. “You really do remember from last time, eh?”

Nana Pete nods. “How could I forget? We barely got any time to visit.”

Lillian hesitates again and then drains the last of her limeade. “Well, it won’t be like that this time,” she says. “I’ll push through tonight and then I’ll be off for three days in a row.” She stands up. “We’ll all have plenty of time together when I get back.”

Whoopee,
I think.
One big happy family.

Honey comes in a few minutes later, carrying a little Siamese cat. Her face is pale for some reason, as if she has
just seen a ghost. But Nana Pete sits up when she sees the animal, and claps her hands.

“Mr. Pibbs!” Honey releases her grip and the cat scrambles over next to Nana Pete. “Oh!” Nana Pete says, scratching him between the ears. “Hello, my little man! Mama hasn’t seen you in so long!”

“Is he yours?” Honey asks softly.

Nana Pete shakes her head. “No, no. He’s Lillian’s. I bought him for her after she … came … ” She bites her lower lip and looks up at us. Her eyes seem a little brighter than they did earlier. “He’s been good company for her.”

I watch as Benny sits down on the couch and starts stroking the cat’s white fur. Mr. Pibbs tilts his head back and closes his eyes, clearly relishing the attention.

“Where’d Lillian go?” Honey asks suddenly.

Nana Pete rubs the animal’s throat. “She has to go to work for a while. She’ll be back in the morning.”

“Work?” Honey repeats. “She’s going to
work
?
Now?”

Nana Pete puts her finger against her lips. “Shh … don’t let her hear you. She’ll feel bad. She wanted to call off, but I told her not to. She’s been at King’s for quite some time now. She works very hard. They depend on her. She has to go in.”

Honey’s face gets dark, like a storm cloud passing over the sun. Then she plops down heavily on a battered rocking chair in the corner and stares out the window.

“Are you all right?” I ask.

She nods but doesn’t take her eyes off the window.

“It’s late,” Nana Pete says. “Come on, everyone, time for
bed.” She kisses each of us and holds Benny close for a long time, stroking his hair. Then she walks up the stairs and closes the door.

Lillian has instructed Nana Pete to sleep in the only bedroom, which is on the second floor, so Benny, Honey, and I are sprawled out downstairs on the living room floor, on top of a stack of blankets. I’m a little spooked sleeping in this weird woman’s house, even if she is my father’s sister, and so I start my litany of evening prayers to help take the edge off. After a bit, Honey throws her blankets off and stands up.

“Hey,” I whisper, leaning up on one elbow. “Where’re you going?”

Honey whirls around. “To the kitchen, okay? I need something to drink.” Her tone prevents me from asking anything more—or from following her after more than forty minutes pass and she doesn’t reappear. I’m not sure what’s bothering her. All of a sudden, for some reason, it seems like she’s shutting down the way Benny has. Could she possibly be having second thoughts about everything?