The Patron Saint of Butterflies(17)
My little brother whimpers and then slumps down behind the backseat, disappearing from view. Nana Pete turns off the car engine.
“What exactly,” she asks, staring at me, “is the Regulation Room?” She says the last two words very slowly, as if something bitter has just filled her mouth. My nose starts to wiggle. “Agnes? Talk to me.” Nana Pete never calls me Agnes unless something is seriously wrong. I swallow hard and shake my head.
“It’s nothing. Really. It’s nothing.” The sting of tears pinches the back of my throat.
My grandmother reaches out and grabs my hand. “Agnes. Darlin’. Look at me. Please. Don’t tell me it’s nothing. I know that’s not true.”
But I just shake my head harder. My nose is going into overdrive thinking about having to tell another lie today, a frantic little knob of a thing that is moving so hard that I am afraid it’s going to take flight off my face. I grab the door handle and yank it open.
“Mouse!” Nana Pete pleads.
Slamming the door behind me, I break into a run, ignoring the white-hot burning of my legs, and disappear into the house. It is not until I get into my room that I realize she has not followed me. I listen to the Queen Mary’s engine as it revs furiously, like a rabid animal growling, and then fades into the distance.
Slowly I take the stones out of my pocket, lining them up one by one on top of my bed. Then I lie down, trying not to wince as they dig and poke into my back. If Saint Rose could do it, then so can I.
HONEY
Winky’s butterfly garden is my favorite place to be. Not only is it beautiful—even in the pale light of winter when the furrowed, frozen earth looks like the surface of the moon—but it is also a complete little world all its own. The butterflies’ whole cycle of life—from beginning to end—takes place here. The Believers refer to it only in a patronizing kind of way; I’ve actually heard some of them call it “Winky’s little hobby,” which makes me want to scream. Like he’s down here digging in the dirt with a spoon or something. They have no clue how complex the whole thing is, or how much work Winky has put into it over the years.
The garden itself is divided into two parts: a weed section and a nectar section. The weed section, which is filled with plants like snapdragons, turtleheads, thistles, wild fennel, mint, sassafras, and violets, is basically one big food source for the caterpillars, which have hatched from eggs the female butterflies have laid earlier. The nectar section consists of flowering plants and bushes, which have been carefully chosen according to the butterfly population in our part of the country. Purple phlox and aster, for example, are some of the Clouded Sulphur butterfly’s favorite flowers. Violets and sassafras are favored by the admirals. We have to check the nectar source plant leaves every day when it starts to get warm, because sometimes the caterpillars wander over there and start eating. When we find them, we transfer them back into the weed section so the nectar source plants have a chance to grow big and healthy.
This is what Winky and I do for the next hour, pushing back the leaves of every single nectar source plant—there are at least fifty—searching for caterpillars. We work silently, peeling off the tiny worms one by one and, when our palms are full, transporting them back to the opposite end of the garden. Every so often, I look over at the top of Winky’s head, hoping he will raise it again and talk to me, but he stays quiet. I’m not sure which situation he is angrier about: that I have been watching his television without asking, or that I have been watching soap operas again. But I don’t want to ask. I’m afraid it might make things worse. Winky has been angry with me before; once we got into an argument and I blurted out that he was an idiot and he refused to talk to me for two days. They were the two longest days of my life. I did not sleep, and for some reason, the ache inside for my mother, which most days I am able to put on a back burner, intensified like a sharp stick poking at me from the inside out.
“Hey, Wink?” I venture now. “You still mad?”
He straightens up, holding a palmful of tiny green worms, and looks directly at me. “Yup.”
“How mad?” I watch as he turns and strides toward the weed section. Without his belt cord, which he always removes before working in the garden, his robe flaps open in the middle, exposing his ample belly. I make my voice louder. “Sorta mad or mad like you’re not going to talk to me for two days mad?”
Instead of answering, he pushes the worms from his palm onto a sassafras leaf and then leans down, double-checking to make sure none of them have fallen into the dirt. When he is satisfied, he turns, and as if he has all the time in the world, strolls back toward me.
“Sorta mad,” he says finally, and then he grins and I know that everything between us is still okay. I smile back at him and then head over toward the weed section with my own worms.
“Why’re you walking funny?” Winky asks. “You hurt yourself?”
For an eighth of a second, I wonder what would happen if I broke down and told Winky what Emmanuel and Veronica did to me this morning. But I dismiss the thought just as quickly. What good would telling Winky do? It’s not like he’d be able to do anything about it. I don’t even know if he could comprehend the details. And, oddly enough, the Regulation Room has been Mount Blessing’s dirty little secret for so long that talking about it would feel really weird. I mean, even Agnes and I barely talk about it.