The Patron Saint of Butterflies(11)

Now, back at the East House, Christine clears her throat and adjusts the rope of braid along her shoulder, all business again. “Well, then you’re just in time. We’re about to start making the banners for the Ascension March.”

I bite my lip, stifling a scream. There’s no way I can sit around now and start making banners. My head is pounding and it feels as if it has been stuffed with cotton. I’ve got to get down to the butterfly garden or I’m going to freak out. “Did you know Nana Pete’s here?” I ask, thinking quickly.

Christine blinks. “Yes, I know. Agnes’s mother came down a little while ago and told me.”

I look up with my best pleading stare. There is no need to explain to Christine the special relationship I have with Nana Pete—it was Christine who let me tag along whenever Nana Pete took Agnes out of the nursery for a visit. But she winces now, as if reading my mind.

“And … you want me to let you go visit with her?” she asks. “Now?”

I nod my head vigorously.

Christine puts a hand on her hip. “Honey, you just missed the whole afternoon prayer service. During Ascension Week!” She lowers her voice. “I can’t keep giving you special treatment all the time. Emmanuel is going to find out about it.”

“Just this once,” I beg. “Please, Christine. It’s a surprise visit, which means she’s probably not even going to be staying very long. I just want to go down and see what the story is. Please let me go.” Unlike Agnes, I’ll lie until I’m blue in the face if I have to. Anything to get out of here. Christine takes a deep breath and looks uneasily around the room. Peter and the boys are in deep conversation again about the new Mercedes. Amanda Woodward is sitting in the opposite corner of the room, reading a book.

“All right,” she whispers finally. “I guess it is sort of a special circumstance.” I quell the urge to jump up and down. Christine grimaces and lowers her voice. “And find your shoes before dinner, got it?”

I nod. “Got it.”

Cresting atop the wide hill behind the back door, I glimpse the slanted roof of the Milk House, where I have lived with Winky Martin for the past seven years. Unlike the other houses on the compound, which are set in a kind of semicircle around the Great House, the Milk House sits alone in an opposite field, an island adrift in a grassy sea. Its name originated years earlier, when Emmanuel founded Mount Blessing with his first ten followers, and they used the house for storing milk from the community’s three cows. As the community grew, the cows were sold off and the house was left empty. The Milk House itself is tiny, with just a first floor and side steps leading up to an open loft. The original shelves used to store the milk bottles still run the length of each downstairs wall, and wide wooden beams meet in a V across the ceiling. When it rains, a smell like damp hay and violets fills the rooms.

When I was first sent to live in the loft here at the age of seven, which is the cutoff age for the nursery, I cried for a week. It was the first time since I had been born that I was going to be separated from Agnes, who was going back to live with her parents. (Another Mount Blessing rule dictates that all children be separated from their natural parents at six months of age and raised in the nursery until the age of seven. This is supposed to ensure that Emmanuel remains the primary parental figure.) I would still spend the majority of my days in school, and Christine was instructed to come down every night to make sure that I was in bed, but without Agnes next to me in the little cot we shared for so long, I literally thought I was going to disappear. Even worse than that, now I was going to have to share space with Winky Martin.

I saw Winky just about every day as he pushed a mop around the floors of the Great House, but I, like the rest of the kids, had always kept my distance. I wasn’t really sure what it was, but there was definitely something wrong with Winky. In the head, I mean. Some people even said he was retarded, but I just found him frightening. He grunted and wheezed, his meaty face shining with perspiration as he moved his mop back and forth across the floor. Even under his blue robe, his heavy, awkward shape was apparent, and when he walked, he led with his head, swaying it back and forth like a giant agitated bear. Agnes clutched me when we heard the news, her blue eyes big and round. “It’ll be okay,” she whispered. “Don’t worry. Just hide under the covers whenever he comes in.”

I did just that for the first week, listening to his muffled grunts from under my blankets, squeezing my eyes shut and clutching George so hard my palms got sweaty. I stared at my little yellow night-light and waited for Winky to climb the steps up to my room and do something horrible to me. But the dreaded footsteps never came. In fact, it seemed as if Winky didn’t even realize—or much care—that I was there in the first place. And then one night, after I climbed into bed, I noticed a strange book under my pillow. It was large and heavy, like a dictionary, with an enormous orange and black butterfly on the front cover. Over the picture, in an arc, was the title The Encyclopedia of Butterflies. The inside was jammed with information about every butterfly known to man. It was the most beautiful book I had ever seen. I pored over it, savoring every drawing and photograph, memorizing whole passages about the flight patterns and mating habits of the tiny insects. There were butterflies with fantastic names, words I had never even heard before: whirlabouts, skippers, emperors, sulphurs, and monarchs. It took me two weeks to read the book from cover to cover, still under my blankets, with George perched on the mattress next to me.