The Butterfly Man (1) It has been seven long years since I was last in this town. Seven years spent hidden away in hospitals and institutions where I was monitored and observed. Seven years in which I talked with earnestness about me, and what drives me to do what I do. Seven wasted years of psychoanalysis and treatment for my condition. What is my condition? You tell me, I certainly do not know. All I know is what I have been told over these seven years. What I have taken in through my drug-fogged brain, that I am a self-abuser, a damaged mind with a determination to do harm to myself. A basket case in short. I could have told them that, but why do I do it? That is something none of us knows. Seven years ago it started. I was thirteen and beginning to grow. My mother, who was so uncomfortable in her puritanical, narrow-minded little world with such words as puberty and hormones, euphemistically referred to my changes as growth spurts. When I think back now, even the word spurts had a believed or imagined connotation to it that made her uncomfortable. She was never comfortable with sex. God alone knows how her and my father ever managed to get it together to produce me. I imagine they probably did it by polite letters. Now that conjures up some strange images. Best not go there. I was a normal child. Well, as normal as any child could be coming from my family. We attended a Church that was so grievously anti-sex that it even had edited versions of the bible, where any begetting was edited out to read acquiring. So, that was it. I was acquired. Figures I suppose. Sex was never mentioned in our house or out of it for that matter. Even my friends were vetted for suitability. I was only allowed to play with certain children. The children of others from our Church. Then it began. It started slowly and I cannot remember exactly what triggered it. That is part of what my shrinks have been trying to uncover all these years. I began to hurt myself. At school was the first time I remember consciously doing it. I cut my arm badly with a craft knife in art class. Of course, my teacher thought it an accident, but one of my few friends later told them that she had seen me roll up my sleeve and cut myself with the knife. It had taken her a few weeks to confess. Poor kid was scared half out of her mind by what I did. Then it started to get worse, as did my behaviour in general. The doctor asked me why I had hurt myself like I did? But all I would say was that I didn’t do it. It was someone else. Not someone else physically harming me, but someone else all together who was hurting themselves. I was in denial of what I was doing. My mother had to watch me like a hawk. We would be in the kitchen, preparing dinner and she would turn her back on me for a second, and the next thing she knew, there was blood all over the floor and I was stood there with a kitchen knife in my hand and my wrist bleeding. It really freaked her out when I did it. I often wonder if that was why I did it. To get to her. Not to hurt her, but to get her to love me, to notice me. She was such a cold fish and showed me no affection, other than an occasional light peck on the cheek at bedtime. Never a warm embrace or hug. My father was just as bad, you would think I had some terrible disease the way he avoided touching me. I remember once getting out of the bath, putting a towel around me and going to the living room where he was reading his paper in front of the fire. I tried to climb into his lap for a hug, but when he saw me, mostly naked with the towel around me, he flipped, throwing me to the floor and jumping up like I had poured boiling water into his lap or something. God, I was only six years old. There are some things I remember with happiness about my life before hospital. Even though my friends were chosen for me, they were good friends and we had a great time together. In particular I remember Susanna Morris. She lived up on the hill, a good half-mile from our house. I remember her with particular clarity, but it was her father who sticks out more in my mind. We used to call him “The Butterfly Man.” We would go to Susanna’s house, about five of us from Church, where we would play and have fun like kids are supposed to. Her father was widowed and he was much less authoritarian than my folks. He was a kind man. He gave us lemonade on hot days, something my parents never did. He would let us play inside the house on cold days, my mother could not tolerate five little girls running around the house getting things out of place and messing up her rugs. But most of all, I remember the butterflies. In his cellar, he had what seemed to my young eyes, hundreds of display cases with butterflies pinned to green baize backing. The colours were incredible. Each one was neatly labelled with its Latin name and genus and its more common name beneath it. Benches were filled with the paraphernalia of his hobby. Jars and tools, each one laid out with care, everything had a place and it was always so neat and tidy down there. Susanna would invite us round to play, but we would nearly always end up in the cellar with her father, watching him as he mounted a new specimen or gazing on in childish admiration as he tended to his caterpillars and chrysalis. He would tell us about how butterflies were born. How each one laid eggs on different plants and leaves. How the egg became a caterpillar and eventually, when full of food, it would become a chrysalis and go into stasis, only to be reborn and emerge as the beautiful butterfly that he had in the jar before us. I loved going there. One day, I asked him why he had to kill them? Why didn’t he just keep them in the wire cages he had made for them? He laughed at my stupid question and threw his arm around me and gave me a hug. Probably the only time a grown up had ever hugged me spontaneously like that. I wanted it to go on forever, never to stop. I wanted him to be my real dad and to hug me like that everyday of my life. He explained to me how certain butterflies only live for a few days, some only for hours and how some lived for months, even a year or more. He took me over to the wire cages were a vast variety of coloured wings fluttered around from leaf to leaf. He pointed to the bottom of the cage where two or three butterflies lay on the bottom, for all the world like they were asleep. They were in fact dead. He opened the cage with care and took them out. “You see, Rebecca. The butterflies I have die naturally, I don’t have to kill them. Some collectors put them in a jar with ether to kill them painlessly, but mine just die of old age. Then I take them out and mount them in the cases.” I looked at the dead butterflies and wondered how old they were. I wondered if they did the same with old people some place. When they died, did they put them in glass box and display them for their families? I told Mister Morris and he laughed again, giving me another hug. He carried them to his workbench and set them out for displaying. We were alone, as the others had become bored with watching and wanted to play upstairs. He gently spread their dead wings and pinned them to the baize in a half-empty case. He had labels ready and stuck them in with all the care of a surgeon attending a human patient. I loved to watch him work with his beautiful butterflies. There was also the time when I was at their house and Susanna and I were in the cellar with her father. He went upstairs to get something and he called Susanna to come up as well, leaving me alone down there. I went to the wire cages and watched as the butterflies flitted around inside. I realised that they had the butterfly equivalent of the easy life here. No predators trying to eat them, just as much as they wanted to eat and then a nice quite death and then preserved for posterity in a glass case. I opened the door to one of the cage to put my hand inside, as I had seen Mister Morris do. I wanted the butterflies to land on my hand the way they did on his, as if they knew he meant them no harm and they loved him for it, like I loved him for hugging me like he did. But it didn’t work like that. As soon as I opened the cage door, I realised it was a stupid thing to do. The majority of the butterflies flew straight out and took off around the cellar. I almost yelped with surprise when they did that, and I tried to catch them and put them back again, but I forgot to close the cage door and more escaped. By the time Mister Morris came back again, I was crying because of what I had done. I thought he would send me home in disgrace. But no, he just laughed gently. Closing the cellar door, he began to collect them all up with a small net and he put them back in the cage. Once he had them all safe and sound, he came to me and knelt down. He took out a handkerchief and dried my tears telling me it was OK, that I shouldn’t cry, it was an accident. I felt so stupid that I cried even more. He reached out and took me in his arms and gave me the biggest hug ever until I stopped crying. But that was all seven years ago. Since then I have been in hospitals all over the state. My parents were not rich or well insured for that matter, so my medical care was in some pretty rough places. After I began to hurt myself, a string of doctors examined me and talked to me. They wanted to know why I did it. My arms were now a mass of crossing scar tissue where I kept on cutting myself. Then I started to behave badly. It started out with small things, like peeing my pants in class or taking my clothes off outside in the street. But it got a lot worse. I started to hurt other kids, I became a bully and I was banned from playing with my few Church friends, all except Susanna Morris, her dad still let me come to their house and play with her. She was the only one I did not try and hurt for some reason. Then I really did the big number. It was just before Christmas one year. My mother convinced my father to get a tree for the house. In years gone by he had always refused, saying it was a pagan ritual and not at all the Christian thing to do. But one of the elders of the Church proclaimed it OK to have a tree for the symbolic value, and that we could, if we tried hard, imagine it to be the cross on which our Lord had died. So, we had a tree that year. I don’t doubt that the change in heart had something to do with the fact that the Church elder’s brother-in-law had the concession to sell Christmas trees that year. Dad did not get any lights for it, but he did get candles and holders. He said that lights and tinsel were not appropriate and that candles were his limit for decorations. He set it all up and we lit the candles. It was, for the first year ever, something like a real Christmas. I rushed around and put the scant few gifts I had received under the tree. My father did not approve of that either, but he let me do it when he saw that look in my eyes. He didn’t want to spend Christmas day at the hospital while they stitched me up again. We went to bed and dad put the candles out for the night. I couldn’t sleep. I wanted to see the tree again, and so I got out of bed and went downstairs. In the living room stood the Christmas tree. I did not want to turn on the lights, in case my mother or father should wake up and see the light from downstairs and come to investigate what was going on. I found the box of matches that my father used to light the candles with and I took one out. I held it between trembling fingers and struck it, the acrid smell of burning sulphur assailed my nostrils. I wondered if this is what Hell smelled like? Fire and brimstone for all eternity. I reached out gingerly to light just one of the candles. I had to see the magic of the tree lit up again. I lit one, then I thought, why not light another. So I did, then another and another and then another match and then I had all the candles lit. I stood back to see the tree in all its splendour. I was entranced by it, I had never seen anything so wonderful in all my life, maybe with the exception of the butterflies. Then I heard the sound of footsteps on the stairs and my farther calling out, asking who was downstairs this time of night? I panicked and rushed to the tree, frantically trying to blow the candles out before he got to the room. I stumbled and fell into the tree, knocking it over. It only took seconds really. Some of the drier branches of the tree caught and then the sticky sap began to burn and flared up, so the curtains caught as well. Soon the windows were on fire, the tree began to burn as well. My father ran into the room and cried out in alarm. He rushed to the kitchen and came back with a bowl of water, which he threw on the tree, dousing the worst of the flames. I was paralysed with fear because of what I had done, I was rooted to the spot as he ran back to the kitchen for more water. Once the fire was out and my mother had come down to see what the fuss was all about, they turned their attentions to me. My father had never really struck me before. I believed it was because it would mean having to touch me that he didn’t do it. But his time there was no such illusion. He gave me the thrashing of a lifetime. His worries about spending Christmas in the hospital with me were soon to be a reality. I think now that if my mother had not pulled him off of me, he would have killed me. He did manage to break my arm though, and I ended up in County Hospital for Christmas day. While I was in hospital, I cut myself again. I broke a glass and cut my face with it. This was really the deciding moment. I had doctors in with me everyday. Shrinks, normal doctors even the police came to see me and then they told me that once I was better, I would have to go to another hospital for a while. Just until they found out why I kept hurting myself like I did. The rest as they say, is history. I spent the next seven years in one institution or another, being examined and questioned and drugged until they decided I was a hopeless case. A year after they took me away, my father died. The cancer that took him was a quick death, thankfully for him. It was diagnosed and within three months he was dead, leaving my mother alone in that big old house. She stopped coming to visit me after that. I suppose she blamed me for everything that happened, but I didn’t care anymore. As long as she left me alone I was happy. Then last year, she died too. The official cause was heart failure. The doctor that examined her and who issued the death certificate was a member of our Church, and he hushed up the fact that the heart failure was brought on by the massive overdose of pills she had taken. Suicide was frowned upon almost as much as sex within our Church, so they decided to reduce the stigma of having a member, a respected member, kill herself. A nice clean godly death was what was needed. On hearing the news, I don’t really remember how I felt. I think relief was foremost in my mind, but it did not register as that at the time. The doctors kept a very careful watch on me for several weeks afterwards. I was now deemed to be at high risk of doing myself serious injury. But I never did. If anything I began to feel better and to get better too. I was morose and depressed in hospital, but my personality lifted and I began to take an interest in life again. So now, a year on, they have let me out. Back into the community to become as one doctor put it, “A valuable member of society again.” What a pile of BS. I came back to the town where I grew up, as I really had no other place to go. Remember I had been in hospitals for the last seven years of my life. I grew up from age thirteen in hospital and I had no social skills, other than dealing with doctors and nurses. I had no job, no prospects of one and I had missed a great part of my education. So, coming back here, where I had inherited the house that we all used to live in together was the only viable option for me. I had support from the Church. They wanted me back in it I suppose. They helped me get settled in and they gave me second-hand furniture and some money to keep me going, but once I made it clear that I had no intention of coming back into the fold, they soon lost interest in me. Now here I am. Alone and living in this house, where the memories of a dead past life still linger in the very fabric of the building. But what else do I have? I was left a very modest inheritance in financial terms, but I get support from other areas as well. I still have to see a doctor on a regular basis, you know, in case I start to do it again. But it is not that bad. He has even come to the conclusion that hypnotherapy might be good for me. He thinks that now I am out of hospital, I might be more receptive to treatment. A way to resolve some of the issues that are obviously still haunting me. I think I am beginning to agree with him. I do not know what made me hurt myself like I did, but I sure would like to find out, so as it can’t happen again. *** This is a small town and people have small minds but they also have long memories. My return has started a wave of half stares from across the street, murmured comments when I pass by. The usual stuff you would expect from people who’s own lives are so dull and tedious that they seek whatever refreshing entertainment they can in the misfortunes of others. The Germans even have a word for it. They call it Schädenfreuder. I can almost hear what they are saying, in my own mind. There she goes, that’s her. The self-abuser. They sent here away because she was mad. It killed her father and mother, and now she’s back here. I don’t really care all that much what they say, as long as they leave me be to get on with my life. I have started to renovate the house. I say renovate, but that is misleading. I have put up new curtains and such like. I can tell you, hanging curtains on that window in the living room was not an easy task. I can still smell the smoke and the resinous stink of burning pinesap. But it has to be done, it is a kind of therapy in itself, out with the old and in with the new. But in truth I am only fooling myself into believing it is different. It will still be their house and it will always have an overwhelming feel of them about it. I will just have to learn to live with that. I was in the local hardware store the other day, buying paint. I don’t know if it is my subconscious at work here, but I swear I can still see the black and charred wood around the window frame. I want to give it another coat of paint to cover it up. That way I can be sure it is gone forever. I was heading for the counter when I saw him. My heart jumped a beat. It was Mister Morris, the only person in this town that I remember with anything approaching affection.
Copyright © 2001 David Godden |