The Bottled Butterfly (or Mariposa)
Liberty Scott
Liberty Scott
Mother always said, to make me behave, that every time I did something terrible another fly would come and land on my body when I died. And I was a horrid little girl, always asking Mother for more milk with my breakfast when I knew there was none, crying when she didn’t come to my stupid school plays. But that didn’t stop Mother from loving me.
Mother always said that the other children had no real way of knowing that their parents cared about them. She said I was lucky. Lucky that I could roll up my sleeves and look at her love on my arm. The first seven times I cried when she lit the match. Cried and kicked and screamed until she had to blow it out and threaten me with the flies.
“Tater,” she said, her words were sweet like the iced tea from front porches that wrapped around and weren’t missing the bottom two steps like ours was. “The flies can come for you early, make no mistake, they’ll be there when you die, and the worse you are, the more you fight your mother, the more flies you’ll have. They’ll come. “
She lit a match again. “It doesn’t matter how you die,” she started saying.
I flinched as the fire touched my skin. “You might die a hero, but the flies will still come. And if you are a bad person, no one will mourn you, no one will notice that you are gone until they smell you or come looking for rent money.”
She seemed satisfied with the angry red bubble that rose on my skin. Every day when I returned home she would ask to see my arm.
“Don’t pop it, baby. Really try to keep it just like this. Do you remember how it felt?”
“It burned, Mother. It was hot.” I’d always say.
“And my love for you burns a thousand degrees hotter. The sun is a space heater compared to the warmth of my love.”
“Yes Mom--ther.”
The blister only lasted a few days each time, a week if I was lucky. And then I’d come in from school, roll up my sleeve and Mother would say nothing. And I knew later she’d have to make a new mark.
I walked home everyday, and checked the rusty mailbox at the end of our driveway. It was always empty. Then I’d go inside and every day, after she asked about my mark, she’d send me off to play. I had to go outside, no matter what. And as soon as the back door slapped shut, knuckles came rapping around front. I knew not to come in until the car motor purred in the driveway and faded out of earshot.
I counted the glass bottles that lined the up high shelf every day right before going back inside. Thirty two, three more than last week. I asked Mother once for a sip, she drank so much and it seemed to make her so happy. But she told me no, and she said that a fly would come for me asking, and that if ever I did take a sip, each drop would add another fly.
I’d open the door, neck sunburnt in the summer months, cheeks fiery red from the wind in winter, to the table set. Some days it was a 9x9 pan of meatloaf with one piece taken out, a casserole missing a corner, but I liked it when we had soup best, so I couldn’t see it’s incompleteness.
Mother and I would sit down, and she would ask about my day, reminding me of the flies I’d earned when necessary. And if I asked her what she did while I was at school, she’d look at me at the other end of the table, her blue eyes cool. I shivered.
“You want the flies, don’t you?”
“No, mother.” I said, but she just shook her head, and left the table.
I finished my meatloaf and found her in the living room, sitting in her seventies style green butterfly chair, smoking a cigarette. “Mariposa, we have to make a new mark. Go get the light.”
She had come to prefer the candle lighter best, matches were too quick and a lighter was less control. The candle lighter was precise.
“You know I hate your name,” she said that night.
“I know, Mother. Is it because my father gave it to me?”
“Yes, but you will get a fly for mentioning him, I told you to never think of the man.”
But truthfully, I had very little to think of. I had never seen my father, not even in a picture. I didn’t know if he was tall and sauntered when he walked. If he was confident, like the man in the neat tan suit who knocked at Mother’s door every day after school, and smiled at me when he caught me peeking through the backyard fence. Or if he was short and wore vests like Mr. Armani, the arithmetic tutor who pulled me out of class for an hour at school to explain numbers to me. I wondered if he would crinkle his nose when he talked or put his hand on my leg like Mr. Armani sometimes did. Maybe my father was more like Jackson, the boy who sat behind me in class and pulled my pigtails and cried when he lost his watch.
Mother said once, “Your father is coming.” She started cleaning the house, top to bottom, moved all of the furniture, and bought new curtains. I wasn’t allowed to touch anything. It was a week before her birthday.
That year I saved up a little money and bought her something from the thrift store. The lady that ran the store sniffed when I walked in. I surveyed the long white isles, touching each item gently. The lady sniffed again. At the end of the longest row there was a clear glass heart shaped box. The lid lifted off and at the bottom was a shiny mirror.
It was beautiful and I bought it for $1.25. I hid it in my room under my pillow and every day after school I checked to make sure mother hadn’t found it. Two nights before her birthday the lid fell off into the floor and chipped one side, just a little. I knew I couldn’t cry, because of the flies, but I wondered if one would come anyway for me breaking it.
When I got home on Mother’s birthday a fine mist blew through the air. She was sitting on the front porch in one of the two big red rockers. Her chair was still but the wind moved the empty one, just slightly. Her eyes were fixed on the end of the driveway.
She didn’t say anything, but she was smiling. I didn’t see one of her bottles though. I ran inside and reached under my pillow. Earlier at school, I asked my teacher if I could have two pieces of yellow construction paper. I wrapped Mother’s present hoping that my flies would cancel out, especially since I’d remembered to get her favorite color.
I walked back out to the porch and lifted the gift to her lap. “Happy birthday Mother,” I said.
“Thank you, Tater,” she said. She unfolded the paper. “You may play in the front yard today.”
The front yard was littered with yellow weeds and wishing flowers. I made myself a flower crown and at least a hundred wishes.
I wish the flies will never come.
I wish that after today Mother will take her heart-shaped box to her room and put the two rings on her bathroom sink inside.
When the sun had set and I was waiting to see if there would be any lightning bugs, Mother yelled at me. “Mariposa, go inside.”
I did and it was strange to see the table empty, even more incomplete. Mother stayed on the porch; I sat on the couch and looked out at her. After a long while I watched her take out her pack of cigarettes and start smoking. The porch light was dim, almost pale next to the red glowing embers in Mother’s hand.
I watched Mother take off the lid of her heart-shaped box and shake ash into it. I cried on the other side of the window and hoped she couldn’t hear. She lit another and I ran to my room.
The next morning when I left for school Mother was sitting in the butterfly chair and three empty bottles were sitting beside her on the coffee table.
At school I answered three questions correctly in math class, and when Mr. Armani came to the door, my teacher told him I didn’t need to go with him anymore.
The walk home that day seemed longer than usual, and when I got to the mailbox it wasn’t empty. There were two envelopes inside. One looked like a card, blue envelope and the stamp on it said “Happy Birthday.” The other was a plain white envelope with a big red stamp above our address that read, in all capital letters “PAST DUE.”
When I got home mother was still in her chair. Quiet. She didn’t ask to see the bubble which I had popped somehow accidentally.
I walked over to her and her eyes were open, but she wasn’t looking at anything or seeing me. The front of her pants were wet and she smelled like a bathroom. I watched her chest to see if it rose and fell with breath, but she was still all over. I couldn’t move.
The man came knocking like he always did. I opened the door and he stared down at me with his mouth open. He had a pink bouquet in his left hand. After some time he bent down to his knees and hugged me.
His embrace was like an oven. His hand brushed my arm like burning coals, when his cheek touched my face it sizzled.
“I guess...I mean, you are Mariposa? My daughter. I wondered if I’d ever get to meet you.”
“Mother didn’t let me, and she doesn’t like pink flowers.”
“Oh she doesn’t?” He was genuinely disheartened. “Where is she?”
I took his hand. We walked over to the green chair. Mother’s head had slumped lower in the chair. When I counted the bottles beside her there were twelve, nine more than this morning.
I looked at Mother’s freezing blue eyes as my father went over and closed her eyelids. A tiny gnat was buzzing at the edge of one of them, deciding if it was going to land. It did, and I wondered what Mother had done to deserve it.
Mother always said that the other children had no real way of knowing that their parents cared about them. She said I was lucky. Lucky that I could roll up my sleeves and look at her love on my arm. The first seven times I cried when she lit the match. Cried and kicked and screamed until she had to blow it out and threaten me with the flies.
“Tater,” she said, her words were sweet like the iced tea from front porches that wrapped around and weren’t missing the bottom two steps like ours was. “The flies can come for you early, make no mistake, they’ll be there when you die, and the worse you are, the more you fight your mother, the more flies you’ll have. They’ll come. “
She lit a match again. “It doesn’t matter how you die,” she started saying.
I flinched as the fire touched my skin. “You might die a hero, but the flies will still come. And if you are a bad person, no one will mourn you, no one will notice that you are gone until they smell you or come looking for rent money.”
She seemed satisfied with the angry red bubble that rose on my skin. Every day when I returned home she would ask to see my arm.
“Don’t pop it, baby. Really try to keep it just like this. Do you remember how it felt?”
“It burned, Mother. It was hot.” I’d always say.
“And my love for you burns a thousand degrees hotter. The sun is a space heater compared to the warmth of my love.”
“Yes Mom--ther.”
The blister only lasted a few days each time, a week if I was lucky. And then I’d come in from school, roll up my sleeve and Mother would say nothing. And I knew later she’d have to make a new mark.
I walked home everyday, and checked the rusty mailbox at the end of our driveway. It was always empty. Then I’d go inside and every day, after she asked about my mark, she’d send me off to play. I had to go outside, no matter what. And as soon as the back door slapped shut, knuckles came rapping around front. I knew not to come in until the car motor purred in the driveway and faded out of earshot.
I counted the glass bottles that lined the up high shelf every day right before going back inside. Thirty two, three more than last week. I asked Mother once for a sip, she drank so much and it seemed to make her so happy. But she told me no, and she said that a fly would come for me asking, and that if ever I did take a sip, each drop would add another fly.
I’d open the door, neck sunburnt in the summer months, cheeks fiery red from the wind in winter, to the table set. Some days it was a 9x9 pan of meatloaf with one piece taken out, a casserole missing a corner, but I liked it when we had soup best, so I couldn’t see it’s incompleteness.
Mother and I would sit down, and she would ask about my day, reminding me of the flies I’d earned when necessary. And if I asked her what she did while I was at school, she’d look at me at the other end of the table, her blue eyes cool. I shivered.
“You want the flies, don’t you?”
“No, mother.” I said, but she just shook her head, and left the table.
I finished my meatloaf and found her in the living room, sitting in her seventies style green butterfly chair, smoking a cigarette. “Mariposa, we have to make a new mark. Go get the light.”
She had come to prefer the candle lighter best, matches were too quick and a lighter was less control. The candle lighter was precise.
“You know I hate your name,” she said that night.
“I know, Mother. Is it because my father gave it to me?”
“Yes, but you will get a fly for mentioning him, I told you to never think of the man.”
But truthfully, I had very little to think of. I had never seen my father, not even in a picture. I didn’t know if he was tall and sauntered when he walked. If he was confident, like the man in the neat tan suit who knocked at Mother’s door every day after school, and smiled at me when he caught me peeking through the backyard fence. Or if he was short and wore vests like Mr. Armani, the arithmetic tutor who pulled me out of class for an hour at school to explain numbers to me. I wondered if he would crinkle his nose when he talked or put his hand on my leg like Mr. Armani sometimes did. Maybe my father was more like Jackson, the boy who sat behind me in class and pulled my pigtails and cried when he lost his watch.
Mother said once, “Your father is coming.” She started cleaning the house, top to bottom, moved all of the furniture, and bought new curtains. I wasn’t allowed to touch anything. It was a week before her birthday.
That year I saved up a little money and bought her something from the thrift store. The lady that ran the store sniffed when I walked in. I surveyed the long white isles, touching each item gently. The lady sniffed again. At the end of the longest row there was a clear glass heart shaped box. The lid lifted off and at the bottom was a shiny mirror.
It was beautiful and I bought it for $1.25. I hid it in my room under my pillow and every day after school I checked to make sure mother hadn’t found it. Two nights before her birthday the lid fell off into the floor and chipped one side, just a little. I knew I couldn’t cry, because of the flies, but I wondered if one would come anyway for me breaking it.
When I got home on Mother’s birthday a fine mist blew through the air. She was sitting on the front porch in one of the two big red rockers. Her chair was still but the wind moved the empty one, just slightly. Her eyes were fixed on the end of the driveway.
She didn’t say anything, but she was smiling. I didn’t see one of her bottles though. I ran inside and reached under my pillow. Earlier at school, I asked my teacher if I could have two pieces of yellow construction paper. I wrapped Mother’s present hoping that my flies would cancel out, especially since I’d remembered to get her favorite color.
I walked back out to the porch and lifted the gift to her lap. “Happy birthday Mother,” I said.
“Thank you, Tater,” she said. She unfolded the paper. “You may play in the front yard today.”
The front yard was littered with yellow weeds and wishing flowers. I made myself a flower crown and at least a hundred wishes.
I wish the flies will never come.
I wish that after today Mother will take her heart-shaped box to her room and put the two rings on her bathroom sink inside.
When the sun had set and I was waiting to see if there would be any lightning bugs, Mother yelled at me. “Mariposa, go inside.”
I did and it was strange to see the table empty, even more incomplete. Mother stayed on the porch; I sat on the couch and looked out at her. After a long while I watched her take out her pack of cigarettes and start smoking. The porch light was dim, almost pale next to the red glowing embers in Mother’s hand.
I watched Mother take off the lid of her heart-shaped box and shake ash into it. I cried on the other side of the window and hoped she couldn’t hear. She lit another and I ran to my room.
The next morning when I left for school Mother was sitting in the butterfly chair and three empty bottles were sitting beside her on the coffee table.
At school I answered three questions correctly in math class, and when Mr. Armani came to the door, my teacher told him I didn’t need to go with him anymore.
The walk home that day seemed longer than usual, and when I got to the mailbox it wasn’t empty. There were two envelopes inside. One looked like a card, blue envelope and the stamp on it said “Happy Birthday.” The other was a plain white envelope with a big red stamp above our address that read, in all capital letters “PAST DUE.”
When I got home mother was still in her chair. Quiet. She didn’t ask to see the bubble which I had popped somehow accidentally.
I walked over to her and her eyes were open, but she wasn’t looking at anything or seeing me. The front of her pants were wet and she smelled like a bathroom. I watched her chest to see if it rose and fell with breath, but she was still all over. I couldn’t move.
The man came knocking like he always did. I opened the door and he stared down at me with his mouth open. He had a pink bouquet in his left hand. After some time he bent down to his knees and hugged me.
His embrace was like an oven. His hand brushed my arm like burning coals, when his cheek touched my face it sizzled.
“I guess...I mean, you are Mariposa? My daughter. I wondered if I’d ever get to meet you.”
“Mother didn’t let me, and she doesn’t like pink flowers.”
“Oh she doesn’t?” He was genuinely disheartened. “Where is she?”
I took his hand. We walked over to the green chair. Mother’s head had slumped lower in the chair. When I counted the bottles beside her there were twelve, nine more than this morning.
I looked at Mother’s freezing blue eyes as my father went over and closed her eyelids. A tiny gnat was buzzing at the edge of one of them, deciding if it was going to land. It did, and I wondered what Mother had done to deserve it.
//
Liberty Scott is currently in her second year of study for a Bachelor's degree of English with a concentration in creative writing at the University of Missouri. She writes both short fiction and poetry occasionally, but up until this point, has yet to be published in either.
Liberty Scott is currently in her second year of study for a Bachelor's degree of English with a concentration in creative writing at the University of Missouri. She writes both short fiction and poetry occasionally, but up until this point, has yet to be published in either.