Butterfly (19 page)

A cold pain filled Rachel’s chest. The night was suddenly black and empty and sinis-

ter. The music booming downstairs sounded discordant; the laughter sounded like mock-

ery. For the first time in a year Rachel felt small and vulnerable and abandoned, and for a

moment she felt what Carmelita was feeling. And she, too, thought that maybe dying was

the best way out.

But then she remembered her evening with Danny and his wonderful secret and how

good she had felt coming home and running up the stairs to tell Carmelita the good

news. And suddenly Rachel was full of hope and optimism again, so that she laid a hand

on her friend’s arm and said, “You have a lot to live for, Carmelita. You don’t want to die

now. Not for a long time yet.”

Carmelita rolled over and glared at Rachel with tear-filled eyes. “Who are you kidding!

We’ve got nothing to live for! Nobody cares about us! We’ve got no family, no friends.

Even our boyfriends treat us like shit! When are you going to wise up, Rachel! You think

this is the first time Manuel did this to me? You think it’s the last?”

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Rachel bit her lip. Danny might have smacked her around a bit, but he had never hurt

her as badly as Manuel had hurt Carmelita. “Listen,” she said, “I found out the most

wonderful thing tonight. Danny is going to school!”

Carmelita looked away. “So what.”

“It means he’s going to improve himself. It means we aren’t going to be living like this

forever! It means he has dreams and ambitions, and with dreams and ambitions you just

have to go on to better things.”

Carmelita smiled sadly. “You’re a dreamer, Rachel. But don’t you know dreams ain’t

real? All they are is dreams, nothing else.”

“No they’re not. You can
make
them real! Don’t you see?”

“That’s just wishful thinking.”

“For some people, maybe. But dreaming can also show you what you can be. You

know my dream, Carmelita. To be Danny’s wife and live in a nice house and have chil-

dren. And it’s going to come true, you know it is. What’s your dream? Tell me about it.”

“No.”

“Tell me your dream about the office.”

“I don’t have no dream.”

“You do. You’ve mentioned it. Please, I want to hear it.”

Carmelita stared up at the ceiling. She drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. Her

body trembled. She was close to tears again. “I imagine myself working in a nice office,”

she said softly. “You know, like Feldman’s Realty or the Let’s Go Travel Agency. Whenever

I walk down the street and pass those places, I look in and I see the girls at their desks,

talking on the phone or typing or smiling at customers. And I see myself—”

Carmelita closed her eyes.

“I see myself sitting at one of those desks. There’s a carnation on it. Maybe a card from

a grateful client, telling me how nice I had been. I have a real fancy typewriter, one of

those new electric ones, and everyone calls me Miss Sanchez.” Carmelita sighed again.

“What are you wearing?”

“Something real nice. Maybe a skirt with a matching jacket. And
gloves.
And when I

walk down the street, men don’t whistle at me ’cause I’m respectable. But it’s only a

dream—”

“And it’s a wonderful dream. If you think about it hard enough and step inside it and

live
it, you can make it come true.”

Carmelita’s head rolled from side to side. “It’s just fantasy, Rachel. And fantasy ain’t

real.”

“Listen to me—”

“No! You listen to me!” Carmelita turned eyes full of pain on her friend. “You go

around with your head in the clouds, Rachel. Don’t you know the score yet, after a year of

living at Hazel’s? There ain’t no way out for any of us!”

“I refuse to believe that.”

“How’m I gonna get a job in a office, Rachel!
I can’t even read!”
Carmelita started to

cry. “I’m sixteen and I can’t even write my name!”

“But you’re good with numbers, Carmelita, and that’s a start.”

BUTTERFLY

79

“That don’t help me if I can’t read.”

Rachel gazed down at her friend, at the beautiful face Manuel had ruined. She listened

to the music downstairs and the laughter of the other girls—faked laughter, most of it,

because they too had dreams and wanted to be anywhere else but at Hazel’s. Rachel

watched the anguish in Carmelita’s eyes and felt it wash over her, like a cold morning

mist. And she tried to think of the words, what to say, to help her.

And then—it came to her.

“Carmelita,” Rachel said, suddenly excited, “I’ve got the answer.”

“Leave me alone.”

“Listen to me!” Rachel put her hand on Carmelita’s shoulder. “You can
learn
to read.”

“Are you crazy? Leave me alone! I already told you, I tried that once. It didn’t work.

And Manuel got mad. And besides, when have I got the time to go to night school!”

“But you don’t have to go to night school! You can learn right here and Manuel will

never know.”

Carmelita looked at her. “What are you talking about?”

“
I’ll
teach you to read.”

“You?” Carmelita stared at Rachel for a moment, then she looked away. “It won’t

work. I’m too old.”

Rachel jumped up from the bed and ran to her dresser. Picking up a book, she came

back and held it up to Carmelita’s face. “Look. Do you see this letter?”

“So?”

“Do you know what that letter is?”

“No.”

“It’s the letter C. It’s the letter your name begins with. And look”—Rachel flipped

open pages and pointed to random words—“here it is again. C. And whenever you see it,

you make a
k
sound, like in cat. Look here,”—she turned pages,—“and here. And here.

Carmelita, what’s this letter?”

She squinted at where Rachel was pointing. “I don’t know.”

“Sure you do. What is it?”

“A C?”

“C for Carmelita! Now you already know one letter!”

“How many letters are there?”

“Twenty-six.”

Carmelita laughed softly and murmured, “
Santa María.
”

“You can learn them, I know you can. I’ll teach you. We’ll have lessons between cus-

tomers and in the mornings and on our days off. We’ll go to the library and I’ll show you

all the books they have. Carmelita, the library has books on how to become a secretary,

how to type, how to do office things! When you know how to read there’s nothing you

can’t do!”

Carmelita stared at the book in Rachel’s hands. It was a dog-eared paperback that

Rachel had been buried in for the past few days. And Carmelita had been envious—to be

able to escape from reality for a while! To be able to read stories, to be able to open a book

and
learn
things. Like how to type and how to work in an office and how to be

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respectable. And Carmelita experienced a sudden rush of hope. She forgot her pain, in

her heart and in her wrist, and suddenly wanted to learn all twenty-six letters and put

them together to form words and then read books and make her fantasy come true.

“I don’t know,” she said, uncertain but interested now.

“We can do it, Carmelita. Together! I’ll help you!”

“All right,” she said softly. “I’ll try it. As long as Manuel don’t find out.”

Rachel reached down and hugged her friend. “Don’t worry. It’ll be our secret.”

Just like Danny’s wonderful, wonderful secret.

11

It is one thing to plan an act of defiance, quite another to carry it out.

As Jessica walked through the busy men’s shop toward the rear, where an attendant

was to meet her, she felt surprisingly, inexplicably afraid. Outwardly she looked like any

young successful career woman, dressed conservatively, with purpose in her stride and

confidence in the swing of her short brown hair. But internally Jessica found herself sud-

denly full of misgivings. She felt as if invisible phantoms tugged at her.

To hold her back. To keep her from stepping into that forbidden elevator.

There was her father, a man who, all through Jessica’s childhood, had withheld affec-

tion from his children until they earned it through high achievement and special honors,

a man for whom she had once starved herself in pursuit of his approval and love. There

were the priests of her schools who had ruled over the nuns and therefore over the all-girls

student body, distant, formidable men whose word was law and who called all the shots.

And there was John, whom she believed she loved but who confused her and frequently

filled her with self-doubts.
They
didn’t want her to go upstairs to Butterfly’s secret rooms.

But didn’t Trudie repeatedly say that Jessica needed to be her own woman? That it was

time for John to turn over her reins to her? For eight years Jessica had believed she was an

individual, even within her marriage, that she maintained an identity separate from her

husband’s. Her law office, her clients, her days in court proved that. Didn’t they? And yet,

ever since the specter of Butterfly had crept into her life, taking a place in her mind where

it couldn’t be shaken free, Jessica had begun to question. And her first question had been:

Why
can’t
I join? I’m free to do so, aren’t I? That was when she had discovered that her

autonomy had really been an illusion all these years, that her identity was something John

had carved out for her, that she was, after all, not her own woman. And so she had

decided to take the first step toward selfhood. Today, Jessica was actually doing some-

thing, for the very first time in her life, for which she had not received permission.

“Good afternoon, madam,” said the attendant with the butterfly embroidered on her

blouse. “Will you come this way, please?”

What would John/her father/the Church do if they found out about this? As the ele-

vator doors began to close behind her, shutting off the bustle of Fanelli and the noise of

Rodeo Drive traffic, Jessica gave the phantoms that dogged her a mental shove, cutting

them off, leaving them out there, and suddenly she was alone and free and riding up to

meet her fantasy.

“What do you do at Butterfly?” she had asked Trudie. “Do you just walk into the

room and there he is?”

“You do whatever you want. You have to tell them how you want it to be.”

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How I want it to be…

As she followed the attendant down the carpeted hallway, Jessica looked at the closed

doors they passed. No sounds came from any of the rooms; a strange kind of silence hung

in the air. Were there women behind those doors right now? she wondered. And what

dreams were they acting out?

The attendant came to a stop before a closed door and said, “If you will please go in.”

Jessica realized that her heart was racing. The door looked like the door to any hotel

room. What on earth was she going to find on the other side?

She opened the door and stepped in.

Right into her fantasy.

It was just as it was in her dream: the sawdust on the floor, the plain tables, the jukebox

playing Kenny Rogers, the dim lights, the bar at one end where a lone cowboy stood with

one foot on the brass rail, wearing jeans and a Western shirt with his black Stetson pushed

back on his head. He was listening to the music and bringing a drink up to his lips.

When the door closed behind Jessica—closing out the attendant, the hallway, Rodeo

Drive, and reality—the cowboy looked up. And a slow smile lifted his mouth. “Howdy,”

he said quietly.

She twisted the strap of her purse. “Hello.”

“Can I buy you a drink?”

She looked at the bar. There was a large mirror behind it, making the room look big-

ger than it was, with liquor bottles lining the shelves. She hesitated for a moment—how

her heart was pounding!—then she walked up to the bar and set her purse down. “There

doesn’t seem to be anyone here.”

“No, ma’am. We’re all alone. What can I get you?”

She looked at him. He was young, in his twenties, and smiling in a kind of self-con-

scious way. He slowly removed his hat and ran his hand through his sandy hair.

“White wine, please,” she said.

As he went around the bar and reached underneath he said, “What’s the weather like?