Scent of Butterflies (17 page)

Blurry faces bend over me. My eyes can't focus on Oni, Mansour, the paramedics. My throat is locked up. I can hardly breathe. Why are they wasting time sticking me with wires? It's not my heart. I struggle to find my voice, form words, explain what happened.

“Don't fall asleep.”

I yank the wire from under my left breast. Point to my mouth, to the atrium, to my stomach; struggle to cough out one word.

“Common procedure.”

I don't have time for common procedures. I press my palm to my neck, inhale, and rasp out, “Poison.”

They rush me into an ambulance, bound like a mummy, stuck with an IV. Sirens echo in my head. I can't lose consciousness. Help me, Aziz. Help! I conjure him up with the last vestiges of my slipping breath. His sleepy eyes, olive-soap scent, smoke-shattered voice, searching tongue…in her mouth.

Click.

Someone presses the oxygen mask to my nose.

Mansour's face is pale with fear.

I will not die. Not yet.

Senseless questions are thrown at me in the emergency room. What do they want? I am a foreigner without credit card or medical insurance. Without an identity. I possess an international driver's license and a new checkbook in my purse back home. Check number 28. My signature at the bottom of one check can purchase a wing of this hospital. But I have no credit history. They are having discussions among themselves as if I'm already dead. I've managed to escape my husband, but not my stupidity, the clamor in my head, or the laws and regulations of this strange country. I am a rich immigrant who will die in a UCLA emergency cubicle.

“Bank America.” The words scratch my throat. I can pay cash. A piece of plastic card shouldn't be worth more!

“Your name?”

“Soraya.”

“What day of the week is it?”

As hard as I try, I can't recall what day it is, yet I am able to summon the scent of candles and Butterfly's perfume with all of its cloying nuances. I fight the wedding band on my left finger. Twelve one-carat marquis
bleu-blanc
diamonds set in platinum. Mansour comes forward and gently removes the ring. I point to Mamabozorg's amber chain around my neck. He places the ring and necklace in the nurse's hands. Thirty-five exquisite amber beads, kernels of precious memories. A token of a once mighty Shah. And the nurse hands them back to Mansour as if they are plastic beads.

“Stay with us!”

“Don't sleep!”

“Maintain respiration and blood circulation…!”

“Exposure? Through the veins? Lungs?”

“Did you ingest something?”

They rinse my face with a cold liquid. I am shaken into semi-consciousness. Trembling. Sweating. Excited.

“Concentrate. It's important! What did you eat today?”

Today! What is today? I didn't eat anything. I try to think in the ensuing silence, to concentrate, stop myself from drifting away. Remember the name of the plant.

“Some kind of food?”

I nod. My eyelids are heavy.

“Gastric lavage!” someone shouts.

“Induce vomiting!”

“Twenty milligrams syrup of ipecac!”

***

I rest against pillows and sip cranberry juice, a cleanser. The nurse croons in a sweet, tiny voice, as if she's talking to a child. Her cherubic red curls surround plump, flushed cheeks and a heart-shaped mouth enhanced with lip liner. A single flap of fabric separates me from the chaos in the hallway and a patient in the next cubicle who asks for painkillers. A nurse reminds him that he has already been admitted, inebriated, three times this week and that she will not administer any more narcotics.

“I'm in pain, bitch!” he shouts.

I would have liked some narcotics myself to kill the dissonant waltz in my head, a cacophony of trumpets and rumbling drums that commands me to return to the flower before it dies. Find a way to preserve the potency of its poison until I lure her to America.

“I'm ready to go home,” I tell the nurse.

She pats my hair into place. “No, sweetie, not yet. Drink another sip. You can't be discharged until a doctor sees you.”

“But I'm fine. Stronger than ever,” I lie.

“We'll let the doctor decide that,” she replies.

My heart makes a double flip and refuses to settle. My liver or kidneys must have been affected. I ask the nurse what the problem is, but she tells me the doctor will answer all my questions soon. Soon seems an eternity in a foreign country, in an emergency cubicle, with a body that brims with poisons that no gastric lavage will manage to cleanse.

The doctor is far too young and too handsome to be allowed to examine female patients. Good-looking men should be banned from medical schools. They traumatize us. Suddenly, my hair feels oily, my legs too exposed, and I smell medicinal and bitter.

He appears no older than thirty, at least five years younger than me, but he addresses me as if he were my Baba. Does every patient regress to childhood here?

“Are you up for a few questions, Soraya?”

I am not. But I nod agreeably.

“Can you tell me what you ate?”

“I was gardening and a flower fell in my glass of water. I didn't think much of it first. Left it there. But then removed it and took a few sips.”

“Could you tell what kind of flower?”

“Not really, but I know plants and this one looked harmless.”

“How are things at home, Soraya? Are you under pressure? Any thought of…suicide?”

“Suicide! I am in love, doctor. Desperate to go back home to my husband. Why would I want to kill myself?”

“Yes, of course. Well, whatever you ingested was super toxic. Your condition deteriorated fast. We were very concerned.”

I touch the bluish bruise on my forearm, noticing it for the first time. “You drew blood?”

“To identify the toxin.” He rests his hand on mine.

“And?” I ask.

“Considering the circumstances, it's strange that we didn't find traces of poison in your blood.”

“None?”

“None! Whatever caused the symptoms was excreted quite rapidly from your system.” He pats my icy hand. “You were lucky. A few more sips of that water and you'd have gone into shock.”

“Shock? Is that dangerous, doctor?”

“Yes, Soraya, very. It could lead to death.”

I shudder at the thought, not so much of death, but at the thought of leaving my work unfinished.

The doctor gazes down at me. “Soraya, sometimes when the body is under stress, one's immune system becomes weak and everything affects it faster. I will dismiss you on condition that you promise to rest.”

I nod. A reassuring smile. I promise. Pull myself up and sit at the edge of the bed and wait for a spell of vertigo to subside.

A profound silence hovers over my home, and the sky is darker than steel. This beast called smog, which, I'm told, is a combination of smoke and fog, chokes the hills, devastates the trees, and depresses the horizon.

I miss Tehran's sky, the imprint of a pale moon on the canvas of dawn. I miss the chilled juice we sucked out of a hole in a pomegranate during early morning hikes, the ritual of star watching at the base of the Alborz Mountains in the evenings.

—Make a wish,
Jounam
, and the stars will obey—

I've lost the ability to make wishes, but not the longing to hear Aziz murmur in my ear.

—I want to melt into you,
Jounam
, lick sea salt off your skin—

Mansour brakes to a stop at the gate and turns back to face me. He gestures toward the house at the end of the driveway. “I have to warn you,
Khanom
. There's a smell in the house. Oni washed and scrubbed all day. I even called a cleaning crew, but the
booyeh
moteafen
stink is still strong.”

“Thank you, Mansour. Any mail from Iran?”

“Yes,
Khanom
, I put it on your desk.”

“Please drop me off at the door, and tell Oni to take the rest of the day off.”

Mansour gives his forehead a hard slap. “Please,
Khanom
, you are still weak. You need to rest. Your life was about to slip away in the emergency room, God forbid, may my tongue be silenced. You'll need Oni to take care of you.”

“I am fine, Mansour. Take the day off, too. Please drop me at the door.”

I need to take a shower, wash off the smells of hospital, sweat, vomit, and the constant waltz that tumbles in my head like Iranian chickpeas in an American blender.

A slap of dank air assaults me when I enter the house, walk straight into the library, and lock the door behind me. I sort through catalogs, magazines, newspapers, and endless bills on my writing desk until I find the expected letter.

Butterfly's pinched handwriting strikes me with a painful rush of memories. Clutching my belly, I double over and shove my head into the wastepaper basket to vomit the bland hospital breakfast I forced down this morning. Vomiting is nature's warning, Mamabozorg believed, a sign that we've gorged on non-kosher food. I put my head on the desk and wait for my guts to settle before I return to the letter.

Butterfly is so very grateful, so very excited, hardly able to contain her joy at the prospect of seeing me. She accepts my invitation, of course, with great pleasure. She will arrive in a week.

I crumple the letter into a ball and shove it in my pocket.

Is there enough time to prepare for her? A plan is shaping. The guest bedroom has to be properly decorated, the children's quarters, too, for maximum impact.

I step out of the library and walk into the foyer. The odor of rotting flesh and vegetation slaps me in the face. I run ahead, afraid the Corpse Flower might have withered and been rendered useless in my absence. Rush straight to the veranda that leads to the courtyard and come to a halt at the top of the stairs.

I gasp at the sight below. The Corpse Flower's fecund smell has injected renewed life into every root, branch, and flower. Leaves are deeper green, flowers more vibrant, kaleidoscopes of butterflies basking all around.

I descend the stairs and tiptoe catlike into the atrium.

The Amorphophallus titanum has acquired an added magnificence as if, in my absence, it has been haunted by sorcerers and painters.

The flower is voluptuous, the stem proudly erect, the odor of bitter almonds gripping. But not for long. The flower, I understand, will hardly last more than forty-eight hours after blooming. Then, it will wither and fall limp, its active properties rendered useless.

Enough time has been wasted.

Returning to the library, I search the rows of encyclopedias for information. Poisons. Toxic plants. Conserving poisons for medicinal purpose. Distilling essence. Condensing sap. Bind the essential quality of the toxin in a few drops of alcohol and bottle. No. None of these will do.

My interest is piqued by a few legible, embossed letters on the spine of a tattered, leather-bound book.
A
Book
For
Private
Considerate
…
Reading
…Medical…Derangement…Herbal. I leaf through the table of contents: The Baseness of Medicinal Adulteration. Impure Vaccination. Consumption. Common Sense Herbal Remedies. Science of Poisons, Venoms, and Toxins: Autumn Crocus, Bleeding Heart, Angel's Trumpet, Monkshood, Castor Oil Plant, Delphinium, Giant Arum…

I can hardly contain my excitement. Giant arum is another name for the Corpse Flower. And right here, in Chapter XXI, are instructions for drying toxic plants for medicinal purposes. Dried herbs and plants have a longer shelf life, I know, and for my purpose this is of utmost importance.

Dry flower on grates placed in a warm, shady area. Grind dried petals in a clean mortar. Store in sealed jars. Steep a teaspoon of dehydrated petals in slow-boiling water when needed. A thin layer of oil, distillate of the toxin, will float on top. Use a half teaspoon to alleviate chronic dysentery, ailments of the gut, abnormal heart palpitation, and internal bleeding. Fatal in large doses.

Gardening shears in hand, I return to the atrium, walk back and forth and around to gauge which part of the Amorphophallus to behead so as to cause the least damage. If severed from the base, I muse, the heart might suffer and that will certainly cause the plant to wither and die. Then again, the plant's heart must be the reservoir in which most of its precious poison resides.

I unlock the shears with a metallic screech.

A flock of ravens darkens the sky outside. A rat scurries away. A squirrel scampers up the climbing jasmine. My owl's talons click on the glass dome overhead.

I keep my eyes down to avoid her yellow stare.

Khodaya!
I hear Mamabozorg in the deepest chambers of my heart: What in God's name are you doing, Soraya?

I glare up at her and shout in a clear, loud voice that carries itself beyond the atrium. “I'm following your advice, Mamabozorg. Don't tell me you forgot! I'm not resting on my haunches while my life bleeds away. I'm taking control of my life. Isn't this what you wanted me to do? Now, shoo! Off you go. Let me be.”

The owl flaps its speckled wings and rises to slowly circle the dome, so close its underbelly bumps with heavy thuds against one, then another pane, and for a second I'm afraid the glass will break. Finding me seemingly indifferent, she swoops down and settles on the door handle outside. I count the pecking sounds on the door, as if decoding Morse code that might explain her assessment of the situation or the level of her disapproval.

With a low, guttural bark of disgust, she finally takes flight, cutting through the fiery canvas of the sky, where the sun is still high among the colorless clouds. A flash of lightning breaks across the sky and the clouds shimmer unnaturally. There is a clap of thunder, but no rain. There is a disturbance out there.

I lower my head in the plant's presence and beg for forgiveness, pray with every remaining gram of compassion left in me for the Amorphophallus to survive the violation I am about to inflict.

Hands trembling, I summon the necessary strength and courage to amputate what took years of care to grow to this stage. I am not completely present because I cannot tell whether my eyes are shut or open when I embark upon the process of maiming the plant. I am not certain whether it will require one, two, or numerous attempts. I am aware of a
harjomarj
mayhem, but not certain if it occurs in my head or in the atrium. And then, I hear it with painful clarity. The drawn-out, mournful exhalation of the Corpse Flower. And I know that my job is done.