White Butterfly (4 page)

Regina let me hold her. She buried her face against my neck while I worked off my shorts and shirt. But when I moved to enter her she turned away from me. All of this was new. Regina wasn’t as wild about sex as I was but she would usually come close to matching my ardor. Now it was like she wanted me but with nothing coming from her.

It excited me all the more, and even though I was dizzy with the alcohol in my blood, I cozied up behind her and entered her the way dogs do it.

“Stop, Easy!” she cried, but I knew she meant “Go on, do it!”

She writhed and I clamped my legs around hers. I bucked up against her and she grabbed the night table with such force that it was knocked over on to the floor. The lamp was pulled from the electric plug and the room went dark.

“Oh, God no!” she cried and she came, shouting and bucking and elbowing me hard.

When I relaxed my hold she pushed away and got up. I remember the light coming on and her standing there in the harsh electric glare. There was sweat on her face and glistening in her pubic hair. She looked at me with an emotion I could not read.

“I love you,” I said.

I passed into sleep before her answer came.

IT WAS AFTERNOON IN MY DREAM. That golden sort of sunny day that they only get in southern California. Bonita Edwards was sitting under that tree with her legs out in front of her and her hands, palms up, at her side. There were birds, sparrows and jays, foraging through the grasses around her. A little breeze put the tiniest chill in the air.

“Who did this?” I asked the dead girl.

She turned to me. The bullet hole showed sky-blue in her head.

“What?” she asked in a timid little voice.

“Who did this to you?”

Then she started to cry. It was strange because it wasn’t the sound that a woman makes when she cries.

Regina was leaning up against the tree with both hands. Her skirt was hiked up above her buttocks and a large naked man was taking her from behind. Her head whipped from side to side and she had a powerful orgasm but making the same kind of strange crying noises that Bonita Edwards made.

I hated them all. I could feel the hatred down in my body like a deep breath. I grabbed Bonita by the lapels of her pink party dress and lifted her. She hung down, heavy like the corpse she was, still crying.

Crying in that strange way. Like a kitten maybe. Or an inner tube squealing from a leak. Like a baby.

I opened my eyes, feeling chilly because I had kicked off the blankets. Edna was crying in little bursts. I got up and stumbled to the door. At the door I looked back to see that Regina had her eyes open. She was looking at the ceiling.

I was frightened by her. But I dismissed the fear as part of my dream.

Soon it will all be over, I thought. They’ll catch the killer and my nightmares will go away.

I WENT TO THE KITCHEN to put Edna’s formula on the stove. Then I got a diaper from the package that Jesus brought home every other day from LuEllen Stone.

Edna was crying in the corner of the living room where we’d set up her crib. I turned on the small lamp and loomed over her. That silenced the cries for a moment. Then I leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. That got a smile and a coo. I carried her back to the kitchen, where I laid her on a sheet rolled out over the kitchen table. I filled a red rubber tub with tepid water and undid the safety pin of her diapers.

She was crying again but not angrily. She was just telling me that she felt bad. I could have joined her.

I washed her with a soft chamois towel, saying little nonsense things and kissing her now and again. By the time she was clean all the tears were gone. The bottle was ready and I changed her fast. I held her to my chest again and gave her the bottle. She suckled and cooed and clawed at my nose.

I turned toward the door to see Regina there staring at us.

“You really love her, don’t you, baby?” she asked.

I would rather her call me that sweet name than make love to any other woman in the world. It was like she opened a door, and I was ready to run in.

I smiled at her and in that moment I saw something shift in her eyes. It was as if a light went out, like the door closed before I got the chance to make it home.

“Baby,” I said.

Edna shifted in my arms so that she could see her mother. She held one arm out to her and Regina took her from me.

“I need some money,” Regina said.

“How much?”

“Six hundred dollars.”

“I could do that.” I nodded and sat down.

“How?”

I looked up at her, not really understanding the question.

“I asked you how, Easy.”

“You asked if I could get you six hundred dollars.”

When she shook her head her straightened hair flung from one side to the other and then froze there at the left side of her head.

“Uh-uh. I said that I needed that money. I ain’t ax you fo’nuthin’. You coulda wanted t’know why I needed it. You coulda wanted to know how much I already have.”

Out of the small back window, over the sink, the sky was turning from night to a pale whitish color. It felt like the world was getting larger and I wanted to run outside.

“Okay. All right. What you need it for?”

“I need clothes for me an’ the baby, I got bills t’pay for my car, and my auntie down in Colette is sick and needs money t’go to the hospital.”

“What’s wrong with’er?”

“Stones. That’s what the doctor said.”

“An’ how much you already got?” I almost felt like I was in charge.

“Uh-uh, Easy. I wanna know where you could get yo’ hands on six hundred dollars,” she snapped her fingers, “just like that.”

“I don’t ask you ’bout the money in yo’ pocket, baby. That’s your money,” I said. “It ain’t got nuthin’ t’do with me.”

“You don’t need t’ask me nuthin’, Easy Rawlins. You know I work right down at Temple. I get there at eight every mo’nin’ an’ I’m home at five-thirty every day. You know where my money come from.”

“An’ you know I work fo’ Mofass,” I argued. “I might not have reg’lar hours like you but I work just the same.”

She snapped her fingers at me again. It made her furious that I could tell such a lie. “Ain’t nobody clean an’ sweep fo’ a livin’ could come up wit’ that kinda money. You think I’m a fool?”

We had both come from hard times.

Regina was the eldest of fourteen Arkansas children. Her mother died giving birth to their last child. Her father disintegrated into a helpless drunk. Regina raised those children. She worked and farmed and smiled for the white store owners. I don’t know the half of it but I do know that her life was hard.

She had once told me that she’d done things that she wasn’t proud of to feed those hungry mouths.

“I ain’t no criminal,” I said. “That’s all you gotta know. I could get your money if you need it. You want it?”

Edna, who was now cradled in her mother’s arms, laughed loudly and threw her bottle to the floor. Her eyes and smile were bright and mischievous.

Regina bit her lip. That might have been a small concession for some women but for her it was capitulation to a bitter foe.

“You should tell me what I wanna know, Easy.”

“I ain’t hidin’ nuthin’ from you, baby. You need money an’ I could get it. That’s because I love you an’ Edna and I would do anything for you.”

“Then why won’t you tell me what I wanna know?”

I stood up fast and Regina flinched.

“I don’t ask you about Arkansas, do I? I don’t ask you what you had to do? When you tell me your auntie needs money I don’t ask you why, at least I don’t care. If you love me you just take me like I am. I ain’t never hurt you, have I?”

Regina just stared.

“Have I?”

“No. You ain’t laid a hand on me. Not that way.”

“What’s that s’posed to mean?”

“You don’t hit me. It wouldn’t matter if you did, though, ’cause I be out that door right after I shoot you if you ever laid a hand on me or my daughter.” The defiance was back. It was better than her pain. “You don’t hit me but you do other things just as bad.”

“Like what?”

Regina was looking at my hands. I looked down myself to see clenched fists.

“Last night,” she said. “What you call that?”

“Call what?”

“What you did to me. I didn’t want none’a you. But you made me. You raped me.”

“Rape?” I laughed. “Man cain’t rape his own wife.”

My laugh died when I saw the angry tears in Regina’s eyes.

Edna stared at her mother wide-eyed, wondering who this new mother was.

“An’ that ain’t all, Easy. I wanted to name our daughter Pontella after her great-grandmother. But you made us call her Edna. You said you just liked the name, but I know that you namin’ her after that woman yo’ crazy friend was married to.”

She meant EttaMae.

She was right.

“All I wanna know,” I said, “is if you want that six hundred dollars. I’m willin’ t’get it but you gotta ask me.”

Regina raised her beautiful black face and stared at me. She nodded after a while; it was a small, ungrateful gesture.

And an empty victory for me. I wanted her to be happy that I could help when she needed. But what she needed was something I couldn’t give.

I MADE MYSELF SCARCE for the next few evenings. I’d go out to different bars and drink until almost eleven and then come home. Everybody was in bed by then. I could breathe a little easier with no one to ask me questions.

Never, in my whole life, had anyone ever been able to demand to know about my private life. There was many a time that I’d give up teeth rather than answer a police interrogator. And here I was with Regina’s silence and her distrust.

At night I dreamed of sinking ships and falling elevators.

It got so bad that on the third night I couldn’t sleep at all.

I could hear every sound in the house and the early traffic down Central Avenue. At six-thirty Regina got out of bed. A moment later Edna cried in the distance, then she laughed.

At seven the baby-sitter, Regina’s cousin Gabby Lee, came over. She made loud noises that Edna liked and that always woke me up.

“Ooooo-ga wah!” the big woman cried. “Oooogy, ooogy, oogy, wah, wah, wah!”

Edna went wild with pleasured squeals.

At seven-fifteen the front door slammed. That was Regina going to her little Studebaker. I heard the tinny engine turn over and the sputter her car made as she drove off.

Gabby Lee was in the bathroom with Edna. For some reason she thought that babies had to be changed in the bathroom. I guess it was her idea of early toilet training.

When she came out I said, “Good morning.”

Gabby Lee was a big woman. Not very fat really but barrel-shaped and a lighter shade than about half of the white people you’re ever likely to meet. She had wiry strawberry hair and definite Negro features. She reserved her smile for other women and babies.

“You here today?” she asked me—the man who paid her salary.

“It’s my house, ain’t it?”

“Honeybell”—that was one of the nicknames she had for Regina—“wanted me to do some cleanin’ today. You bein’ here just be in my way.”

“It is my house, ain’t it?”

Gabby Lee harrumphed and snarled.

I went around her to relieve myself in the bathroom. There was a dirty diaper steaming in the sink.

The newspaper on the front porch was folded into a tube shape held by a tiny blue rubber band. I got it and started a pot of coffee in the old percolator that I bought three days after my discharge in 1945.

Jesus kissed me good morning. He had his book bag and wore tennis shoes, jeans, and a tan short-sleeved shirt.

“You be good today and study hard,” I said.

He nodded ferociously and grinned like a candidate for office. Then he ran out of the door and tore down out to the street.

He was never a great student. But since the fifth grade they put him in a special class. A class for kids with learning problems. His classmates ran a range from juvenile delinquent to mildly retarded. But his teacher, Keesha Jones, had taken a special interest in Jesus’s reading. He sat up nearly every night with a book in his bed.

I poured myself a cup of coffee and settled down to the breakfast table intent on making some decision on what to do about Regina. Who knows, I might have gotten somewhere if it wasn’t for the headline of the
Los Angeles Examiner.

Robin Garnett was last seen near a Thrifty’s drugstore near Avalon. She was talking to a man who wore a trench coat with the collar turned up and a broad-rimmed Stetson hat. The article explained how she was later found in a small shack that sat on an abandoned lot four blocks away. She was beaten and possibly raped. She had been disfigured but the article didn’t specify how. The article did explain why this murder was front-page news where the previous three were garbage liners—Robin Garnett was a white woman.

I found out that Robin was a coed at UCLA. She lived with her parents and had attended L.A. High. What the article didn’t say was why she was down in that neighborhood in the first place.

I lit a Camel and drank my coffee. I opened the shades so that I could see them coming when they came.

At about nine, Gabby Lee emerged from my bedroom with Edna all dressed up for the park. I held out my arms and Edna screamed joyously. She reached for me but Gabby Lee held back.

“Bring my baby here to me,” I said simply.

I held Edna and she held my nose. We made sounds at each other and laughed and laughed.

“We gotta go,” Gabby Lee said after a while.

“I thought you was gonna clean?”

“I gotta be alone for that,” she snapped. “Anyway, it’s a nice day out there and babies need some sun.”

I handed my daughter back to the sour woman. Gabby lit up with Edna in her arms. That baby was so beautiful she could make a stone statue smile.

When they left the phone started ringing. It rang for a full minute before the caller disconnected. After that I took the phone off the hook.