Butterfly (7 page)

they had lived in five others since then. But it was different only in that sense. Otherwise

it looked exactly like all the rest: cramped, dingy, listing slightly to one side, haunted by

the smells and disappointments of previous transient occupants.

Her dad had been out drinking all day. Rachel prayed that the downpour would keep

him out all night. In the glow of a dim, flickering bulb, she was deeply involved in
The

Martian Chronicles.
She was desperately in love with Captain Wilder, and was wishing

BUTTERFLY

27

herself clear across the sky, on the bank of an ancient Martian canal. Her mother had

gone down the highway to the motel, where, in the manager’s office, a new Philco televi-

sion set brought the
Texaco Star Theater
to the far-flung citizens of the Southwest desert.

After three hours of eye strain, Rachel was forced to lay the book aside. She had

cramps and her stomach was hurting. “It’s what we women have to go through, honey,”

her mother had explained as gently as possible the year before, when Rachel’s period had

started. Having missed the sixth and seventh grades in school, Rachel had not had the

benefit of what they called feminine hygiene education. The bleeding had alarmed her;

Mrs. Dwyer had found her daughter crying one day, declaring that she was dying. But

then Mrs. Dwyer had brought out her box of pads, shown Rachel how to wear one, and

then had tried, awkwardly, to explain what it was all about. “Pain seems to be our lot,

honey. Women get used to pain. We have it all our lives. And having babies is the worst

pain of all. That’s why I never had any more, after you.”

“Why?” Rachel had asked in all innocence. “Why do we have to have pain?”

“I don’t know. Something about it in the Bible, I seem to recall. Punishment, I guess,

for what Eve did.”

“What did Eve do?”

“Why, she led Adam into sin, honey. He was pure, and she made him impure. We

women have been paying for it ever since.”

Mrs. Dwyer had then haltingly gone on to draw the connection between menstrua-

tion and making babies, but hadn’t done a good enough job, being rather ignorant herself

of the female body and its workings. And so Rachel had come away from the private talk

having learned little.

On this rainy night, as she laid aside her book to fetch a couple of aspirins, she secretly,

guiltily hoped that her mother would be kept at the motel because of the storm. That way,

Rachel could read all through the night, and burn the precious electricity they could ill afford.

When she went into the cramped little kitchenette, she realized she was hungry. The

cupboards were rather bare, as usual. But there was some ground chuck in the icebox. If

Mrs. Dwyer was a plain, hard-used woman who looked like any of the desperate itiner-

ants that crossed the Southwest desert, she was possessed of one gift that set her apart. She

made fantastic hamburgers. The recipe was from an old woman for whom she had kept

house as a teenager. “The secret to making good-tasting food,” the old lady had said, “is

in the spices.” Mrs. Dwyer had learned to give life to hamburger with tarragon and

thyme, a dash of rosemary, a mention of paprika. Over the years she had so perfected her

spice recipe that she could no longer pass it on to others or write the formula down. It was

something she did as naturally as breathing. And wherever the Dwyers roamed, folks

always raved about Mrs. Dwyer’s hamburgers.

The art had been passed on to her daughter. And Rachel’s mouth began to water now

as she thought of sinking her teeth into a juicy, spicy hamburger with ketchup and a

slathering of mustard.

While the patties sizzled in the pan she continued to read the Martian saga under the

dim stove light. A few minutes later, as “the moon held and froze” Captain Wilder and his

crew in a deserted Martian city, Rachel heard the sound of a car approaching the trailer.

28

Kathryn Harvey

Thinking it was her mother, she thought, Ma is going to be cold and wet. I’ll boil

water and we’ll have some tea. But then, thinking it might be her father, being driven

home by some barfly acquaintance, Rachel was filled with dread.

He hated her books.
Resented
them. And she didn’t know why. “It’s because of his own

lack of education,” her mother had explained one night when he had thrown an armload

of library books out the window. “He never went beyond the fifth grade. He’s embar-

rassed by that. He says it’s what keeps him from holding down a job. To see you read like

that, so easily and all, well…”

Rachel never understood her father’s animosity toward her. On occasion, she would look

up from what she was doing—the dishes, mending, fixing dinner—and she would find him

studying her with a dark, unreadable expression. He’d have a can of beer in his hand, or, on

days when the government check came, a tumbler of bourbon. She would find his rheumy

eyes watching her, and she would feel, inexplicably, a chill run through her.

He was her father and yet, curiously, he was a stranger.

They had lived together for fourteen years, but she didn’t know him. She had cooked din-

ner for him, washed his clothes, heard him urinate in the bathroom, and he remained as

unknowable to her as any stranger on the highway. According to the novels, she was supposed

to be his “little girl,” but he didn’t seem to notice her. He came and went like some mysteri-

ous boarder, waking with a groan and a curse, and setting off for who knew where, while her

mother spent the day anxiously looking at the clock and glancing through the curtains.

It was, in fact, only two years ago, when Rachel was twelve years old, that she realized

her mother was afraid of him. Not that this should have come as a surprise. What Rachel

remembered witnessing when she was only a little thing in diapers continued to occur

with sickening regularity. The sound of his shoes over the cheap floor, the slamming of

the bedroom door, which would shake the whole trailer, and then her mother, softly

pleading, ineffectually, because then the slaps would come, and finally the sobbing. The

next morning, there would be bruises on Mrs. Dwyer’s face; he would stomp out and

maybe not come back for three or four days. And Rachel would observe it all with wide,

uncomprehending eyes, and suffer it silently, because that was what her mother did, never

once thinking that the situation could be changed, because her mother also did not seem

to entertain such a thought. If her mother didn’t fight him, neither would Rachel.

But then—he had never laid a hand on Rachel.

She stood now, frozen by the stove and listening to the car engine harmonize with the

driving rain. A door slammed. Someone shouted good night. Wheels slid in the mud and

the motor grinded away. Footsteps on the wooden steps. Finally, the door handle jiggling.

Rachel found herself suddenly afraid. Was it because of the storm? Or was it because

she had cramps, because she was so
female
at the moment and therefore vulnerable? She

backed up against the tiny kitchen counter and watched the door, her heart pounding.

She already knew it wasn’t her mother, home from the motel.

The door flung open and she caught her breath. Dave Dwyer swayed for a moment on

the threshold, then he sort of fell in, closing the door behind himself. He didn’t look at

Rachel, didn’t seem to notice she was there. Dripping wet like some shaggy dog, he made

his way to a cupboard, pulled out a bottle, and retreated to the torn Naugahyde sofa.

BUTTERFLY

29

When he kicked one of her books aside, Rachel said, “Don’t touch that!” And

instantly regretted it.

His red eyes finally focused on her. “Wassat?”

“It’s…a library book. If I return it…damaged, I have to pay for it.”

“Pay for it! What do you know about money!” he boomed. “You’re nothing but a fuck-

ing parasite! If it weren’t for me you’d starve. Why don’t you go out and get a job, a grown

girl like you.”

She was terrified into speechlessness.

He narrowed his eyes, as if seeing her for the first time. “How old
are
you anyway?”

“You should know, Daddy.”

“‘You should know, Daddy,’” he mimicked. “HOW OLD ARE YOU?”

“F-fourteen.”

His eyebrows shot up. “Izzat so?” He looked her up and down. Rachel was painfully

aware of the shorts she was wearing, of her bare legs, of the Peter Pan blouse with a but-

ton missing.

“You gotta boyfriend, Rachel?” he asked, surprising her.

Boyfriend! How was she supposed to meet boys, cooped up in this trailer all day?

Besides, boys and their pimples couldn’t compare with highwaymen and Roman centurions.

For some reason, her silence angered him. Or perhaps it was her fear. The way show-

ing fear sometimes made dogs get all riled up.

He got to his feet; she inched back along the counter.

“Heck of a thing,” he growled. “A girl afraid of her own father.”

She tried to manufacture some courage, for show. “Y-you don’t intimidate me.”

“Intimidate!” he said with a laugh. “Hoo! Listen to her. Always using big words! You

like big words, don’t you, little girl?”

She continued to back away.

He kept coming.

“Christ, you’re ugly. Look at you!”

“Please, Daddy. Don’t—”

“Don’t you daddy me! How I could have spawned such an ugly bitch like you is

beyond me!”

He was close now, looming, smelling of liquor, unsteady on his feet. “What a namby-

pamby bitch you are. Just like your mother. She’s such a doormat I could puke! And

where
is
my loving wife tonight? Why isn’t she here to wait on me, to serve my every need.

God, you women make me sick!”

He reached for her. The first time he missed. She jumped back; his fingers brushed her

arm. But he was steadier than she thought. The second time he went for her he guessed

her move and caught her, painfully, by the wrist. “Whyncha use some more big words,

huh? It turns me on to hear you use them. Better’n talking dirty.”

“DADDY!” She tried to wrench free. He caught her by the other wrist and spun her

around.

The rain came down on the tin roof of the trailer. It sounded like machine-gun fire, or

a thousand hailstorms. Then thunder cracked and the trailer shook. It also shook when

30

Kathryn Harvey

David Dwyer spun his daughter around and, holding both wrists behind her back with

one hand, tugged at her shorts with the other.

“You like big words, bitch? You liked to use em’ before we got married. Remember

that? Remember how you tried to humiliate me in front of our friends? You with your

college edyu-cation!”

“No, Daddy!” she cried. Rachel struggled. But he held her fast. She felt her shorts tear

beneath his powerful fist. He wrenched them down around her thighs.

“Remember the first time I did this, huh?” he shouted. “That night when you told me

we couldn’t have no more kids. When you blamed me for getting rid of the other baby?

Christ, you bitch, we kept the wrong one! Rachel’s ugly. WE GOT RID OF THE

WRONG ONE! Well, if you don’t want no more babies, I can take care of that. And here’s

a new word to add to your impressive vocab-yulary. Sodomy! How do you like that one?”

Pain.

Rachel screamed.

The door flew open and rain rushed in. Thunder cracked just as a second sound filled the

night—a kind of soft splitting sound, like a watermelon hitting the pavement. And then her

father let go of her wrists; he dropped away from her, and the pain slipped out of her body.

Instinctively, Rachel fell forward and groped for her shorts. She stumbled, sobbing,

toward the narrow bedroom door, blindly, not thinking, aware only of the pain he had

inflicted, a pain worse than cramps or having babies or even, she knew, than dying.

He had done it to her.
He had done it to her.

When hands reached again for her, Rachel fought like a crazed cat. But when she

heard her mother’s voice saying, “No, honey! It’s me!” she went limp.

There seemed to Rachel to be a moment of soothing darkness, and then she opened

her eyes and found herself on the sofa, her mother gently washing her. On the kitchen

floor, sprawled against the lower cabinets, was her father.

“Is he dead?” Rachel said.

“No, honey. He ain’t dead. I hit him with the frying pan. But he’s still alive.”

Rachel began to cry, softly and bitterly, with her face buried in her arms. “Why did he

do it, Ma?
Why did he do that to me?”

Mrs. Dwyer couldn’t speak at first. She gathered up the towels and basin of water and

said, “You’ll heal. After a few days, it won’t give you no trouble.”

Rachel looked up, her face streaked with tears. “You let him do this to you! All the

time!”

“I have no choice, honey. I have to let him.”

“And have
you
healed?”

Mrs. Dwyer turned at the kitchen sink and looked at her daughter. Suddenly, the

dreaming fourteen-year-old had the eyes of an adult. “You don’t understand, honey.

There’s things between a husband and wife that—”

“If he were my husband,” Rachel sobbed. “I’d kill him.”