Butterfly Soup

Glued, mounted and hanging on the wall beside her bed is a photo puzzle. Valley stares at herself, age three, sitting on her mother’s lap in a ruffled dress, her hair gathered in a duck barrette and sticking straight up like a fountain. The jigsaw had divided her face in two, one eye and her nose on one piece, the other eye on its interlocking mate. Maybe that’s her problem. She’s dumb-looking and schizophrenic.

“What do you think, Gerald?” she asks her current caterpillar—a spicebush swallowtail who is snacking on a sassafras branch in his stocking-covered jar. “Am I crazy?” The caterpillar continues eating, his mandibles nibbling away on the leaf. He looks bigger today. She sees the split exoskeleton, marking the fourth instar she’s counted. He’ll pupate soon. She’ll get some fresh leaves for him today. Maybe she can find him a buddy, too.

Valley throws the quilt aside and heads to the bathroom.

“You’re going where?” her mother asks while Valley rummages around the kitchen for something to eat. From her mother’s tone, Valley might have announced she’s headed somewhere outrageous—like prison. As she pours Cheerios into a ceramic bowl, she listens to the plinking sounds, so different from the tiny thuds they made falling onto plastic.

“You know the Harpers. Over on Walnut. Mrs. Harper stopped me on my way home from school and asked me to babysit today. It’s only for a few hours. I’ll still have time to practice my flute.” Valley opens the fridge for the milk. She hears her mother crinkle the box’s paper liner, then grovel around in the box for a handful. Her mother’s teeth crunch rhythmically on the mouthful as Valley pours milk into the bowl, scattering the Os to the perimeter of the dish. The no-eating-between-meals rule doesn’t apply to mothers.

“You really should have asked me first.”

Valley rolls her eyes. Does every little decision have to go before the governing board? She modulates her voice to sound like her father’s—the voice of reason calming an excitable woman. “Her sister’s getting married. Her mother-in-law caught the flu and can’t babysit. Mrs. Harper is counting on me.”

Her mother takes a package of chicken breasts from the fridge. “Mrs. Harper has an infant, Valley.”

“Yeah. So?”

“So you’ve only watched older children. You don’t know what you’re doing.” She removes the cellophane from the chicken and drops it in the sink. Watery chicken blood pools in the plastic tray beneath the mottled yellow pieces.

Valley’s lip curls at the sight. “I’m sixteen, Ma. It can’t be worse than the Johnson twins. I get one into bed and the other one’s out running around again.” Her mother is ridiculously cautious. She hadn’t allowed Valley to go to overnight parties, either—until two years after her friends were allowed. Then when she finally went, it was no big deal. So you didn’t sleep that night. You went home and took a nap.

The chicken has disgusting yellow fat in globs around the edges of the skin. Her mother pulls them off with her fingers. It looks nasty, but Valley can’t tear her eyes away. “Do you have to do that while I’m eating, Mom? It’s sooo gross.” Why is her mother wearing a nice dress to do such a messy task?

Her mother runs tap water over the breasts. “It’s only chicken. How’ll you change a diaper if you can’t stand chicken?” The blood in the tray dilutes to a pale pink.

“Lots of my friends babysit infants, Mom. Half those girls aren’t as smart as I am.” Valley puts a spoonful of Cheerios into her mouth. Joanie is regularly left to watch the Cranfords’ sprawling farm full of kids and animals.

“They have little brothers and sisters to learn on.” Her mother strips the thick skin off a breast. The flesh beneath has a vulnerable bluish-purple cast. Valley’s hand involuntarily flattens to her chest.

“Is it my fault I’m an only child?” It’s a cheap shot, and Valley feels a twinge of guilt—but mostly satisfaction—poking at the soft spot in her mother’s armor. Her mother would have loved a whole houseful of kids.

“Just don’t expect it to be easy. You can’t throw him in the crib and talk on the phone.”

“I wouldn’t do that. I’m not like that Diane Locklear. Why are you always lumping me with the crazy kids in the news?”

“I don’t. I brag about you all the time. About your flute playing. And how well you speak French.” She looks up, her face the picture of motherly pride.

“We speak English in this country, Mom. And no one in Eden cares that I play the flute.”

It’s true, what she’s saying, why she will never be popular.

“What do you think? That everyone’s going to gather at Millie’s on Saturday night to hear me play Mozart? Or how about at the Pizza Carryout? I could toodle away in front of the road map while the dropouts sprinkle mozzarella.”

“That’s honest work, Valley. And I certainly don’t insist you play the flute. You can quit this minute. I have more to do than drive you to Dayton every week for your lesson.”

“I don’t want to quit, Mom. That’s not the point.” What would she do without her flute? Being an only child is no fun at all. “And I could drive myself if you ever let me take the car out of Eden.”

Her mother lets out a long sigh. “How was your date last night? Did that boy behave himself?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Don’t get huffy. I just asked And take that necklace off. Babies break necklaces. You don’t want to lose it.”

Her mother now turns a bar of soap over and over in her palms and rubs it around between her fingers and under her nails. The suds drip on the chicken skins, and Valley grits her teeth, as if soap and chicken should somehow be kept separate.

Valley drops her bowl into the chicken mess. “I’m going to be late. Goodbye, Mom.” She listens with satisfaction when the screen door thwacks shut behind her.

Joey Harper starts fussing the second his mother hands him to Valley. Mrs. Harper retrieves her pocketbook from the dish-cluttered table and wipes her brow with her forearm. “Will you be all right?”

Valley nods. Mrs. Harper has walked her through Joey’s routine, demonstrating how to lower the gingham blind, raise the crib rail, fill the humidifier and wind the teddy’s music box. “My mother’s home in case anything happens,” Valley assures her, though she has no intention of calling home. When it comes to nervous moms, she knows the script.

Mrs. Harper looks back at the two of them on her way out the kitchen door. “He’s just been changed and fed. The phone numbers are on the wall next to the phone, and there’s a Coke for you in the fridge next to his bottle. I threw clean rompers in the dryer. They’ll be done in a bit if you need one.”

Valley crosses her arms around Joey’s diapered bum while he waggles his face into her chest. He’s a cute little guy, especially when he isn’t fussing. “I’ll be fine. Enjoy the wedding.”

Mrs. Harper sends Valley a tired smile. Valley goes to the door, shifting Joey to her hip so they can wave. She pumps Joey’s arm up and down. Joey yowls and strains toward his mother. “Hush, Joey.” Valley grips his chubby thigh. “Mummy will come back.”

Mrs. Harper backs out of the narrow driveway, honks twice, and heads down the street. Valley’s used to crying kids. At first the Johnson twins fussed when their mother left, but they’re four now and cry when their mother returns. Joey scrunches his fists into his face. Valley thinks he’s settling in, but he surprises her and exhales another loud howl. He sounds, in fact, as if he’s just warming up. Valley jiggles him on her hip. A high-pitched squeal pierces his longer wailing, dividing it in sections. She stops jiggling. The squealing continues. The pitch ascends half an octave higher on the next breath. A sweat breaks out on her upper lip. She lifts him from her hip to her chest, cuddling his head under her chin, but his screaming is too close to her ear. “Jeez, Joey, you sound like Joanie’s pigs.” She imitates the pigs. Joey stops, looks at her, then takes a breath and yowls louder. Valley tilts her head away. The roots of her hair tingle. Just when she thinks it can’t get any louder, he pulls out another stop. “This little piggy goes to market. This little piggy stays home,” she chants in his ear. Joey shrieks back. She’s heard of pitches high enough to shatter glass. Mrs. Harper will come home to a house full of broken windows.

She spies a vacuum cleaner on the dining room floor. From the crumbs on the rug, it looks as though Mrs. Harper never got to use it. Valley switches the canister on with her foot. Its whine breaks into Joey’s crying. He snorts a minute, body shuddering, then lowers his pitch to match it, just missing. The interval is awful. Valley switches it off, heads to the living room rocker and sits down. He arches his back and flails his arms, toothless gums spread wide around his bawling. His legs pedal at her stomach and thighs. He is hard to restrain, but she rocks anyway. How can a four-month-old baby be so strong? With the chair still moving, she doubles over him and shhs in his ear, but Joey can’t hear. His blue romper is damp with sweat. Tears streak down his cheeks.

Valley sings “She’ll Be Comin’ Round the Mountain” at the top of her lungs, clapping his hands and adding a “wheeha!” at the end of each line. The Johnson twins love that. Joey wails.

Facedown at her feet is a fluffy teddy bear. Valley seizes its behind and snuggles it up to Joey. “Look, here’s your bear, Joey. Let’s name your bear.” Joey bats the bear away, arms flailing. “How about Sebastian?” Valley has a bear named Sebastian. But Joey hates the name. He arches his back and howls. She tosses Sebastian on the couch.

Panic flits at the edge of her consciousness. What is wrong with him? With her? How hard should it be to rock a baby? The TV commercials with the mother smiling at her sleeping baby play lullabies in the background. It looks so serene. Chalk up another way television romanticizes everything. She should have known.

What if her mother is right? What if she can’t manage an infant? Valley’s arms feel numb, as if her blood is too thick for her veins. Her heart thuds, trying to push it around. Joey’s voice rises and falls like a siren, its overtones playing tag around the edges of her mind. She can hardly hear the voice in her own head. He’s too young to bribe with a Popsicle as she does when Mary Jane Walker has a temper tantrum. “Man, you’re really on a roll.” She tries to calm herself by laughing at him. “Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.” She bobs her head up and down as if he has her doubled over. He out-yowls her laughter. What should she do? Weddings go on and on. He’s showing no signs of fatigue. What had her teacher said about this in Home Ec? She can’t think. If Joey would shut up, maybe she could remember.

Valley gets up and tromps around the living room, jostling Joey with every step. Snot is smeared down his romper. His face has turned an ugly red-purple, and she wonders that a mere fifteen minutes ago she thought he was cute. Her toes curl with every shriek. She holds him away from her ear. He looks like a slimy beet. “Stop it!” she hollers. She’s instantly ashamed.

She lays Joey on the couch next to Sebastian and watches Joey thrash while she takes several deep breaths and decides to try a bottle. His mother said he just ate, but anything is worth a try, and with all the hollering, he might have worked up an appetite. She runs to the kitchen, finds the bottle in the fridge and sticks it in the microwave. “Never mind. I’m coming back,” she yells, though she doesn’t know why it matters. Joey doesn’t care. He cries whether she’s there or not.

While the microwave ticks off the slowest minute on record, she goes to the living room door to check on him. Joey has scooted to the corner of the couch, his noise muffled slightly by Sebastian’s fur. “Good job, Sebastian.” It’s mean to say it, but it’s how she feels. Joey can’t hear her.

In the kitchen the microwave is counting down from twenty-seven seconds. Joey’s cranking isn’t as loud with the microwave humming in her ear. Twenty seconds to go. His squalls are intermittent now. Maybe she’s the problem, and he’s better off alone. Maybe she should stay in the kitchen and let him work it out. The seconds count down. The turn-table rotates, and Valley watches, mesmerized, as the bottle circles round and round. When the microwave clicks off, the house is quiet. Valley waits while the overtones of the humming die away, then inhales deeply, as if silence has become a component of air. She’s done it. Joey has finally quit howling. The silence is more than a reward. It’s heavenly bliss. She collapses into the counter. It’s been a long morning, but Joey has finally, finally gone to sleep.

She tiptoes to the living room and peeks around the doorway at him. He is a different child. Her mother always talks about how she liked to watch Valley sleep. She pulls Sebastian away from his face gently so as not to wake him. She’ll go upstairs and get his blanket. Let him nap right here. But as she’s about to leave, something about him strikes her as not quite right. For a baby that was flailing two minutes back, he is awfully still. She watches his back. Surely his back should be moving.

Holy Mother of God.

Valley runs to the phone. Dials home. Hangs up before it rings. Dials the hospital. “Middleton Community Hospital.” It’s an older woman. Valley can’t force words out. “Hello? Hello? Can I help you?” Valley hangs up. Runs to the window. Looks up and down the street. Old Mr. Carmichael is on his porch. He can’t help. He can hardly get out of the rocker.

Images of Joey in a casket rise in her mind’s eye. The room is closing in, but she refuses to faint. She snatches Joey up. His head lops to one side. She lifts him higher, his chest to her cheek, but can hear nothing but the ringing in her ears. His body is so heavy. “Oh, God,” she shrieks, thumping his back. “Someone help me!”

Joey shudders. One leg pedals.

At least she thinks so. She may have jostled him. She thumps his back again. Rubs in a circle.

He sputters. Coughs.

Tears pop to Valley’s eyes.

Joey takes a deep breath. A year passes while Valley waits. He exhales.

“Good boy, Joey. You are such a good boy.” The tears break from her eyes and disappear in the nap of his sleeper. Joey inhales again. Exhales. Double shudders. Inhales.

He is breathing. In, out. In, out. He opens his eyes. Looks into her face. Screws up his face and mewls at her. She runs to the phone. Dials home. “Mom. I need you to come. Joey’s having a bad time.”

The familiar thrum of the Galaxy engine out on the Harpers’ driveway comforts Valley—like the pendulum of the cuckoo clock over the couch at home. Joey is still sobbing when her mother bursts through the door. “It’s awful hot in here, Valley,” she says. “Take your vest off, lamb. You’ll die of the heat.” She takes Joey and cuddles him to her bosom, crooning lulling nonsense into his ear. He nuzzles into her like a favorite pillow, wiping snot all over her dress. Valley retreats to the couch, stuffing the guilty Sebastian behind her.

“Don’t smother him, Ma.”

“He’s just rooting around, goosie. You don’t have to worry.” Her mother stands in the middle of the room, swaying gently. Joey’s sobs, muffled by her breast, change to rhythmic whimpering, then slow to occasional gasps.

“Has he been doing this long?” Her mother looks straight at her for the first time.

Valley nods and looks away. She takes a Good Housekeeping from the end table as an excuse. There’s a picture of Princess Diana on the cover, in a green maternity dress with huge white polka dots and a white sailor collar. Motherhood is everywhere.

“You should have called me sooner,” her mother says. “A baby always knows inexperienced arms.” She looks at Joey. “Hasa been ’creamin’ and hollerin’, lambkin? Whatsa matter widda big boy? Huh? Whatsa matter?” she croons into the top of his head, punctuating each question with kisses on top of his head. “I think he wants a bottle, Valley. Did Mrs. Harper make one up?”

Valley gets the bottle from the microwave. Her mother settles into the rocker and tickles his cheek with the nipple. He turns and takes it into his mouth, sucking eagerly. She sings “Rock-a-bye Baby” in her thin soprano as he sucks.

Valley pictures Joey dumped from the cradle and lying limp on the ground, blue as a Smurf. “Mom, don’t sing that. It’s awful.”

“It’s just a song, silly. He doesn’t understand the words.”

“Well, I do. Don’t sing it.”

“He got you real upset, didn’t he, lamb? I don’t know who needs the rocking more—Joey or you.”

Valley folds her hands, clenching her muscles around the knot in her stomach so it won’t unravel and give her away. The rocker’s creaking and the sound of Joey’s sucking calm her. She suddenly feels exhausted.

“Look at him, Valley, honey,” her mother says. “Isn’t he precious? Look at his little wrists. Like someone put a rubber band around his plump little arm. And his knuckles. Little dimples. Everything perfect.”

Valley looks at the two of them, Joey’s body merging into her mother’s flowered dress.

“And he smells so good. Aah. You smelled so good I thought I’d go wild. Your scent was all over your blankets, and when I went to put them in the washer, I’d stand there and grieve that I was about to wash you away. I had to go cuddle you as soon as I’d done it.”

Valley can’t imagine sticking her face in peed-on baby blankets. Face it—whatever it is that makes women go ape over babies and cancel their lives for slavery to poop and snot, she doesn’t have it.

Joey falls asleep with the bottle in his mouth. Her mother removes it and gets up from the rocker, his head cradled in her elbow and his bottom in her other palm. “Sit down here, Valley. You take him. He’s fine now.” She motions to the chair with her head.

Valley seats herself in the chair and takes Joey back. He stays asleep, though during the switch his head lolls dangerously to one side.

“That’s right. There.” Her mother props Joey’s head between Valley’s small breast and her arm. Valley tenses so his head won’t move. “Perfect.” Her mother stands back and regards the two of them with her head cocked to one side.

Valley’s arm aches, but she doesn’t move.

“Now rock, lamb. Relax. It feels good. Enjoy the motion.”

Valley pushes off with her toe.

“You should be fine now. Call me back if you need me.”

Valley wishes her mother would stay. She doesn’t want to be alone with Joey. Doesn’t trust herself. But now that Joey is sleeping, her mother will be suspicious if she asks her to stay. She can’t risk that.

The Galaxy disappears down the road, and Valley is left with Joey and the creaking rocker. She looks down at the sleeping child. How long had her Home Ec teacher said a baby could go without oxygen before brain damage? Was it five minutes? Fifteen? Longer for babies than for adults? How long had Joey gone without breathing? Valley mentally retraces her steps once it got silent—to the living room, to the phone. She accounts for the time it takes to dial the two calls, allows herself some time to think. It can’t have been that long. Not fifteen minutes.

Joey looks so peaceful, lying in her arms. The rocker creaks and Valley hears a rhyme.

Little Boy Blue, come blow your horn;

The sheep’s in the meadow,

The cow’s in the corn.

Where’s the little boy that looks after the sheep?

He’s under Sebastian, fast asleep.

CHAPTER 4

R ose drives home in a daze, choosing to take the long way around. She can feel Joey’s plump calf in the hollow of her palm and his hot breath on her neck. His body had grown weightier as he’d relaxed, like in Valley’s infancy when the two of them had napped together. Valley nursed, then dropped off to sleep in Rose’s arms. Rose dozed, too, in a blissful half sleep, wakened by Valley’s slightest movement. Those were the days. She knew exactly where Valley was every minute.

Farmland stretches out for miles on either side of the roadway. The fields, usually nappy with soybean plants by the second week in June, are bogs of puddles. Rose wonders if the seeds have rotted in the ground. Her tires zhush through a puddle, throwing water onto the wild grapevine growing over the roadside fence posts. The stench of hen manure from Gabriel’s turkey farm is stronger downwind. The sky arches overhead in a blue dome, its clouds unaffected by the humidity that rises from the swampy earth like bad breath.

The summer Valley was conceived was different—hot but not humid. The water in Kaiser Lake was silky and warm; the perfume of lilac and honeysuckle hung in the air. Dishes clinked on screen porches around the lake as people lingered late over coffee and dessert, listening to the hiss of locusts. On such a night, Rose thinks, no one should be held responsible for what happened. And though she’d been terrified at the time, Valley was a keeper. If a baby was the punishment for her sin, she should sin more often. It was no wonder she couldn’t confess it.

Rose sees a woman standing in the road ahead, waving her arms frantically. She knows it’s Helen from the long legs and hair even before she’s close enough to see her features. Rose brakes and pulls up next to her friend. “I thought you’d be at work.”

“My car’s in the garage, so I’m walking home for lunch. Bethany’s home alone.”

Rose has never seen Helen eat anything but yogurt, standing at the fridge in the Laundromat office—unless you count the sunflower seeds she bakes to chew on when she can’t smoke. To Rose, yogurt isn’t lunch. Certainly nothing to walk home for. But that’s why Helen has pretty thighs and hers are all mottled.

“Get in. I’ll drive you. I meant to call you anyway. I may be gone for a few days—on a church retreat—so don’t worry if you can’t reach me.” She’s not really leaving home, but if she admits to secluding herself, Helen will think she’s as crazy as the old woman robbing the church Dumpster.

Helen plants her tidy hips on the seat. “Oh, too bad. Just when Rob’s arrived. Have you seen him yet? He stopped into the laundry with his stuff for me to wash, and guess what? He recognized me!” Rose glances at her. Helen looks great in the sleeveless black tank she’s wearing with her jeans. At times like this, Rose can’t think what she likes about Helen. They wouldn’t be friends if they hadn’t been sitting together pregnant in Dr. Burns’s office that year. Eleven months after she married Carl, Helen delivered Bethany and left the hospital wearing her jeans—which, at the moment, seems like a pretty good reason to hate her.

“He said he’d know my hair anywhere,” Helen brags. Her hair really is pretty, but it’s sickening how she relishes every little detail like Joanie Cranford. Helen wastes what little money she has on fancy botanical shampoos so her hair smells of windfall apples one day, ripe peaches the next.

“He called me Helen Dudley,” Helen prattles on. “Maybe I should have changed my name back when Carl left, but after all those years of being called Milk Dud and Dudley-Do-Wrong, I was glad enough to be rid of it. He hadn’t heard I’d married. He says he remembers the name Slezac, but only the name—he couldn’t put a face to Carl. When you’re not in the same class you don’t really know each other. Anyway, he was sorry to hear about my divorce.”

“Is he married?” The question comes out in a little half voice, and Rose clears her throat to cover, as if she’s fighting a frog.

“He didn’t say so.” Helen prides herself on being the first to know the town gossip, and Rose eggs her on with a few more questions. “There’s nobody with him,” Helen says. “No woman, I mean. He’s got some kid along, though.”

Rose lets that sink in. “What do you mean kid?”

“Just some boy.” To Helen it’s a toss-off. “You know. Sixteen, maybe.”

“Oooh, Bethany’s age,” Rose says, filling her voice with innuendo. Really she’s worried that Valley has a half brother. What if he looks like Valley?

“You don’t really think—” Helen says, though she’s obviously conjuring a romance for Bethany. “Maybe I should invite them over. You know, for a friendly dinner.”