Butterfly Woman

Missing September, 2008 The long drive to my sisters’ farmhouse was filled with anxiety, unanswered questions and nervous chatter. I kept seeing Lou Lou, in flawless clarity-walking beside the white line on the side of an abandoned road enveloped in darkness; she was walking towards me, staring blankly at the bright lights of our oncoming vehicle, her mahogany curls dripping wildly down her shoulders, her clothes soaked and cold, the wind striking her hard, attempting to effect some reaction. An upturned canoe, drenched lifejacket, and tackle box floating casually in the muggy, black water. The lonely, antique, baby blue Ford perched on top of a bumpy hill overlooking the rugged man-made boat launch. Her faded jean jacket strewn haphazardly across the torn bench seat sits waiting for her warmth to re-envelop it. The flashes terrified and comforted me as we drove closer to her farm. I searched frantically into the dank, night air needing so badly to see her, never to have her materialize. Was it her lost soul in between dimensions, calling out to me for help? When we arrived I sobbed for my vanished sister, I sat on her deck and screamed silently into the darkness. Her black lab, Dr.Jones laid his head tenderly on my lap and stared helplessly at me. As torturous sobs escaped my lips his deep brown eyes connected with mine and he placed his damp paw up on my shoulder and crept in close to my body. I wanted to find her, hold her and never let go. Drenched with wet snow I opened the door that led into her office in the mudroom. Her handwritten notes were still tacked to the walls, to do lists still left unchecked, her Day-Timer opened to yesterday’s date. My hot tears warmed my clammy cheeks as I looked painfully at the calendar I made her hanging from a rusty old nail. The pale green construction paper framed a photo of her dressed up like Amy Winehouse, holding a bottle of wine with a hysterical expression on her face wearing a bright neon green sweater and a white crinoline skirt. I stroked the image and willed her to walk in the door behind me. In the kitchen, hung haphazardly on her mahogany cupboards were 81/2 X 11 sheets of paper, with wildflowers, weeds and flora scotch-taped and labeled in her handwriting, a learning tool created for her four children. I heard sniffles and the faint sound of a woman’s voice humming coming from the living room adjacent to me. As I entered the dimly lit room I saw her four year old daughter still awake and she stared at me with tortured sadness in her innocent eyes; those eyes plead violently for me to take the pain away. She whispers sweetly in her tiny voice, “My mommy went away, and she hasn’t come back, she doesn’t know you’re here!” She curls her body into the curves of her daddies mom and opens one eye slightly to look at my confused stare as I hold in the floodgate of tears that is about to flow out of me. I bend down to kiss her exposed cheek and I whisper “I love you” in her ear. I sit silently in the room trying to stifle my tears in front of my niece. When she falls asleep, her grandmother brings her to bed and my tears turn on like a violent faucet. Her husband Eddie’s mom shushes me saying “maybe she just ran off, it will be OK.” I try to stifle my emotions but reality has hit me hard. Lou Lou’s face and form standing there, lost on the side of the road, lit in the abyss of the night only by a set of headlights. Flickering on and off like an antique motion picture with no sound. The image of her started to fade away as I fought to keep myself awake propped up on the oatmeal sectional, threatening to dissipate into the confines of my mind. When the early morning dawn awoke me with a start, the daylight stole my vision away viciously, leaving me empty and hopeless. Lavender Butterfly Psychiatric Ward Winter 1989 She rubs the sleep out of the corners of her eyes and faces the sterile wood veneer cabinet with its rounded stainless steel handles. The bedroom is a tiny cubicle with its walls a muted shade of green, the colour of sickness, and triple paned glass windows. She hopes that this was a nightmare and eventually she’ll wake up in a different skin, with a different life, maybe 15 years into the future. She reaches into the drawer of the dresser with the rounded corners and takes out the tiny change purse whose fabric is a cheap rendition of an Asian tapestry. She folds back the fabric and runs her fingers over the round metal hinges, they are as sharp as she fantasized them being. Like an ‘Exacto’ knife penetrating cardboard, she pushes a frigid hinge hard into her ivory skin, her crimson blood seeps out from under the surface of her wrist, first the left, then the right. Denial... Opening the tiny drawer inside the closet she runs her hand over the lavender angora sweater, inherited from her elderly Scottish neighbor Moira. It is cozy and the arms are long so they will cover up the fresh wounds on her wrists. Hide your pain you weak Bitch! Hannah leaned back on the tiny cot, running her right hand over the fresh wounds on her left forearm, she closed her eyes… Scrub, scrub, scrub, the dried on black hash, from all the hot knifing, won’t come off the element on the Shane’s friends filthy stove. I can hear them in the next room, laughing, laughing while I am here scrubbing, scrubbing and it’s not even my fucking apartment. They will think I am really cool, me being in grade nine and them in grade thirteen, I am lucky to even be here. I’ll keep scrubbing; scrubbing it is worth it to look cool. Grabbing, grabbing…hands that are unfamiliar…hands that are not my boyfriends. My body seizes up, seizes up, I can ignore it…this uncomfortable feeling in my chest will go away. My boyfriend comes in and I feel his hands, but their eyes…eight pairs of eyes watching, wanting… Thrown down, down to the filthy, greasy smelly floor that has not been washed in months. Rip, rip, rrrrriiiiipppp, clothes are torn, I reach to cover myself and eight sets of hands, so strong from all the football, basketball, arm wrestling played… clamp down my hands, feet, arms and legs. Trapped, trapped, my boyfriend is thrusting himself in while his friend forces his penis into my mouth… Blind rage, blind rage, a super human strength…suddenly I am outside the house, shoeless, sockless, standing in the hard packed snow, clothes dangling from my bruised body…scrape, scrape, scrape…my skin detaches as I rub it swiftly down the stucco on the side of the house. Laughter, laughter, hideous laughter coming from inside the house. I thought he loved me… Home, home, this is not even my home, it is my house where no one knows I even exist or what just happened. I run up to my bedroom and slam the door, blocking it with the cheap glossy white bureau, ‘No more pain, I’m gonna end this pain now!’ Searching, searching for something, anything to inflict pain…a dirty butter knife, encrusted with old peanut butter…‘that’ll do!’ Breathe, breathe, I can’t breathe, I am hyperventilating. I need AIR! I wedge the frozen window open and punch the screen off with my bare hands. I sit out on the icy two-story window ledge, scraping, scraaaaping, cutting my flesh, trying to release the demons in my head. Rock, Rock, rock…back and forth… Hannah awoke with a start four days later in a room she could not recognize. If only that had been a nightmare and not the reason she was on the psychiatric ward of the town’s only hospital. Magda had seen the back of Hannah’s torn white t-shirt and the steam from her daughters breath out her front bedroom window…her screams filled the tiny hallway as her and Daniel tried to push the bureau backwards and get in through Hannah’s door…Finally Daniel moved the bureau back enough that Magda could squeeze herself into the room.