Butterfly
by Kathleen Cassity
Dad likes the blinds open so he can enjoy winter’s few hours of daylight, but it’s pointless now. Twilight will soon be gone, and he’s fallen asleep “resting comfortably,” to use the official jargon, though when I look at the needles in his arms and the sweat on his face, “comfortable” isn’t the first word that comes to mind.
It’s snowing again, for the third time this week. Dad won’t like that. He hates snow, ice, and everything that goes along with it. Winter precipitation used to cause Dad to drop his genteel persona and try his best impersonation of an American macho man, though with his British vocabulary and Indian inflection, he never quite managed to pull it off. “What is this nonsense?” he’d growl. “It’s not supposed to snow here. The atlas says this is a mild climate. Liars and fools, the lot of them! Next year,” he would say, “next year, we are outta here!”
“Sure, Dad,” my
little brother Danny and I would say as we prepared for sibling warfare,
packing the snow into compact balls with our tiny gloved hands. We knew we
wouldn’t be “outta here” next year. Mom had been born and bred in
Dad, on the other
hand, is a transplant, which is why he hates snow. Not that he likes the gray
Northwest drizzle any better. He’s a
tropical boy, spent the first twenty years of his life in the south of
I twist the blinds closed, shutting out the sickly orange dusk. The chill doesn’t seem to bother him tonight, though all he’s wearing is a flimsy cotton nightshirt, white with pale blue snowflakes. His face, once tawny, has grown sallow, his skin covered in sticky sheen.
They stuck in the biopsy needle on the patch where his head is shaved. Afterwards the doctor said there was a butterfly-shaped mass in his brain, spreading like moss in a rainforest and lodged so deep that it could never be excised. Dad had screamed; I’d felt flushed and chilled at the same time. For weeks after, I couldn’t keep food down and neither could he.
Since then Dad has decided he’d better consume as much curry and chutney as possible before he is called up to heaven where, Mom assures us, Indian food is unavailable. Mom believes heaven serves the same food we get at Sunday-school potlucks: tiny sandwiches made with Wonder bread; jello mixed with marshmallows; cream or cottage cheese moulded into various Tupperware shapes. These last few weeks, I’ve brought Dad food from his favourite ethnic restaurants. The hotter, the better, he says.
It’s not that Dad doesn’t like Mom’s food. He’ll eat anything. But he doesn’t always want the same thing, especially when “the same thing” means bland. Dad’s preferences notwithstanding, “the same thing” is usually what we got. But he wasn’t easily defeated. I was in kindergarten when, on a family vacation in British Columbia, Dad discovered a store named Woodward’s with an entire basement devoted to exotic foods. Somewhere below street level, he discovered a hot mango pickle so potent that when he opened the jar, anyone within a two-block radius could not only smell it but taste it too. We had to clear enough space in the Oldsmobile to haul home several cases of “the junk,” as Mom called it, and the semi-annual trek to B.C. for “more junk” became a family tradition.
From then on, no matter what Mom made for dinner, whether tuna and noodle casserole, Swiss steak, a nameless mixture of ground beef, green beans, cream of something-or-another soup and Tater Tots, Dad’s portion was always smeared with so much hot mango pickle that he broke into a sweat while he ate.
“Ah!” he would say, removing his napkin from his lap to mop his brow, then leaning back with his hands folded over his belly in a regal pose that reminded me of Henry the Eighth. “Now that’s what I call a hot pickle!”
Mom would screw her nose up, “Honestly,” she’d say, “I don’t know how anyone can eat that junk.” She associated Indian food with Indian religion, which was foreign, heathen, and therefore, wrong.
Nowadays, Dad’s sweat is no longer a sign of pleasure. I mop his brow with a corner of his blanket, a limp white rag. When his eyes open, a light shines, dimmer, I notice, than yesterday.
“You’re here again.”
“Been here all day.”
“I shouldn’t blame you if you’d rather be elsewhere. I surely would too.” He winks. “Tell you what, we shall escape together. You could spring me from this pit, set the old man free.”
“You don’t want to go anywhere today,” I say. “It’s snowing again.”
“Blast,” says Dad in a stronger voice. “What rubbish. Next year, I’m telling you…”
“I know,” I say, “next year we are outta here.”
“Jolly well right!”
“Did you know,” I say, “that normal people like snow?”
“Normal people?” Dad groans. “Normal people are blasted idiots.”
“What about Irving Berlin? He dreamed of a white Christmas, where the treetops glisten and children listen to hear…”
“Cars colliding
and pipes freezing and little old ladies falling and breaking their hips,” says
Dad. “Irving Berlin was a fool. One
can’t very well keep one’s balance on ice, now, can one? Blasted idiot, that
The S-word might not sound shocking to a lot of people, but in my thirty years with Dad, this is the first time I’ve heard him use it.
“You’re bad.”
“I am bad,” he chuckles, “much more bad than you know. Do you know what I did with that Hawaiian nurse last night?”
“What Hawaiian
nurse? We’re in
“We’re in
“No, Danny’s in
“There’s a Hawaiian nurse, and she wants me,” says Dad. “They all want me. They’re a randy lot, these nurses, always after my you-know-what.”
“I think they just want to sponge-bathe you.”
“Nonsense,” he says, “I’m a dying old man. What do I need a bath for?”
“Don’t say that,” I protest, “and anyway you still need a bath. What would you need a woman for at a time like this?”
“Get up to a little hanky-panky.”
My face feels warm. What is this? Making up for lost time after a lifetime of repression? Not that I’m a prude, but this is my father, for God’s sake. “Dad, how’s about a cup of coffee? They got Starbucks in that Family Lounge.”
“Ah,” he smiles, “now you’re talking. I’ll have no more of that rubbish that fellow with the pimples brings me. I’ve never tasted such horseshit.”
I head for the Family Lounge, a place designed to feel like home that doesn’t. A few years ago the hospital board decided they needed a place for people to “die in comfort,” so they re-modeled this wing and named it Hospice. But the transformation is partial; a hospital by any other name still smells like a hospital.
They’ve replaced the white roll-down shades with pleated shades in fashionable pastels and covered the tile floor with plush carpet. Tasteful, low-slung sofas have replaced the attached rows of orange vinyl chairs, and the kitchen is nicer than what’s in most houses, a designer job with oak cabinets, white tile countertops, and appliances in gleaming black. There’s a giant-screen TV with built-in speakers and a VCR, and a selection of movies designed to appeal to the “clientele”: “Terms of Endearment,” “On Golden Pond,” “Steel Magnolias”.
There’s even a library; two modular bookshelves stocked with tattered copies of Robert Ludlum and Stephen King, plus an array of death-related self-help books. Surviving Bereavement. When Bad Things Happen to Good People. The Five Stages of Grief. As if you can explain this in five stages.
Dad’s swearing, for instance. He’s always been a proper gentleman. In my entire life I never heard him swear, not a single such word, until yesterday when he used the F-word in front of Mom and two church deacons. (Usually I manage to sneak down the hallway whenever I see the church people heading our way, but this time I hadn’t been quick enough.) The two men sat grimly by the hospital bed with Bibles in their laps, both wearing grey suits that coordinated with their silver hair. They struggled to maintain an appearance of holiness while Dad unleashed a stream of recently discovered swear words.
“Brother, perhaps you would like to celebrate the Last Supper,” said one of them, and Dad replied, “Up yours, fool. If this is my last meal, I’m not celebrating jack shit.”
Mom winced like she’d just bitten a hot chili pepper, “It’s the brain tumor,” she whispered pointing furiously to the back of her own head.
The men nodded solemnly. “Lord bless him,” one of them said.
Dad meanwhile had rolled over, turning his back on them to face me. He caught my eye and winked.
“Excuse me,” I coughed, covering my face with my hands as I made a beeline for the door. As I charged out of the room, I heard one of the deacons murmur: “If she knew the Lord, she would know joy even in her suffering.”
I crashed through
the swinging door into the ladies’ room and exploded with laughter. Leave it to my dad to use the brain tumour as
an excuse. I knew there were things he’d
been wanting to tell them for years. The face in the mirror smiled back at me: eyes
dark as
When I got back to the room, Dad was snoring, Mom was curled into the recliner like a cat, and the men in grey had vanished.
* * * * * * * *
Ever since then, I’ve been trying to remember all the crazy things Dad has said since the butterfly came to lodge in his brain. His words haunt me like a song stuck in the head, while I try to figure out how much is organic brain damage and how much is true. Some of it may be, but not all of it can be. And the butterfly is definitely there. I saw it on the MRI, wings and all.
I’ve always known
a lot of my childhood was a lie. The part about miracle cures and faith healings, especially. Danny figured it out before I did. He stopped believing in magic about the time
he moved to
I’ve thought about calling Danny, ever since I first realized there might be chunks of truth buried like gold nuggets in the soil of Dad’s ramblings. But I decided not to pester him. Unlike me, Danny isn’t one to spend time in the Family Lounge, drinking coffee and pondering questions of truth. Danny prefers to ride these things out, like the waves.
A wooden structure on the hospice kitchen countertop displays a cheerful selection of coffee mugs designed to facilitate positive thinking. I choose one painted with a sunrise that reads “Today Is the First Day of the Rest of Your Life.” Another is covered with birds in flight and tells me, “If You Can Dream It, You Can Become It.” After I pour the Starbucks, I open the designer fridge and retrieve a carton of flavoured coffee creamer that promises to transform ordinary coffee into an exotic European specialty.
My mind plays and replays Dad’s nonsensical utterings. First, the Hawaiian nurse. Doubtful. More than likely, that stems from Danny’s Hawaii connection. Next, Dad getting laid by the Hawaiian nurse. Impossible. That would be taking the concept of dying in comfort a little too far.
Dad says that last night, the guy across the hall kept yelling, “Will one of you motherfucking nurses please help me!” Possibly true. Despite the hospice rhetoric of “passing away peacefully,” swear words still prevail here. Next, Dad says he went across the hall, strangled the guy with a telephone cord, and smothered him fatally with his own pillow. Chalk that one up to wishful thinking. Dad can’t even get out of bed, and last time I checked, the guy across the hall was still breathing.
Then there are other things. “I should never have come to this god-awful country.”
“This marriage was a big mistake.”
“Your mother’s God is an evil monster.”
Dad used to say that, as a boy in India, he’d always wanted to live in America, to build airplanes, to have a family. He was happy in America, he would say, like he was as a child, before his dad dropped dead and his mom went nuts that summer of ’47 when all India went mad. After that Anglo-Indians had a hard time, so they went to England, and got a bit of a hard time there, too. After studying avionics at a polytechnic north of London, Dad had been recruited by an airplane company in Seattle.
He’d come for a year-long adventure, but by then he’d covered half the planet and was tired of roaming. In America, they said, you could remake yourself. Erase your past. Start fresh. The future is limitless. If you can dream it, you can become it.
According to the official story, my father randomly picked a church out of the phone book one Easter Sunday. As he sat in the pew contemplating the Resurrection, he noticed the organist, a frail woman with pointed cat’s-eye glasses and a Christmas-tree smile. The following Sunday he returned, arranged an introduction to the organist, and became a true believer. My parents were married a few weeks later, despite the objections of my maternal grandmother, who disapproved of olive-toned skin and foreign accents.
“Just tell people he’s from England,” Grandma used to tell me. “It’s easier that way.”
Dad naturalized when I was eight, and Mom was so proud that she made Swedish meatballs, her favourite dish. Dad said they were his favourite, too, as he smothered them with hot mango pickles. Mom and Dad had been happy. At least that’s what they said.
There was some happiness. I do remember that. I also remember shouting matches followed by long silences. Dad’s frequent Sunday headaches. Dad sipping his evening tea, while absentmindedly spinning the world globe that sat prominently on our coffee table.
* * * * * * * *
“Here’s some decent coffee,” I say, handing Dad the sunrise mug before realizing “Today is the first day of the rest of your life” might be pushing it. I give him the bird mug instead. “If You Can Dream It, You Can Become It.”
Dad sips and smiles. “Ah,” he says, and for a minute I’m seeing the father I remember from childhood, the regal king after a satisfying meal. “Now that’s what I call a cup of coffee. Mark my words: Never drink bad coffee, never skip the sugar, and never eat rubbish.”
“Life is too short,” I agree.
“Right you are,” says Dad, “too short for eating anything that tastes like shit.”
“I’ll try and remember that.”
“You won’t just try,” he says firmly, “you will do as I say.” There are few phrases I hate more than that, but I can’t deprive him of the little paternal authority he has left.
He leans against his pillow. “Do you remember the first time I took you and your brother for an Indian meal?”
It was a family milestone, back in the 1960s, when India started becoming popular in the West. The Beatles had gone to the sub-continent to study with some yogi, come back, and started writing songs featuring sitars. A small Indian restaurant, Seattle’s first, had opened on University Avenue (“The Ave”, as it’s known locally). Mom refused to eat there, and she didn’t like the idea of Dad taking us there either not just because it was Indian, but because The Ave was swarming with “people who need Jesus,” with long hair, swirling t-shirts and sandals worn with socks
Dad insisted that Danny and I dress up for the occasion, and we agreed because Mom’s disapproval suggested the possibility of real adventure. We’d strolled proudly down The Ave, looking like a 1950s sitcom family that had escaped through the TV set and been whizzed into the ‘60s through a time machine. Danny wore a white shirt and little plaid bow tie, I was in a blue pinafore and saddle shoes, and Dad sported his usual crisp shirt, jacket and tie, even on a Saturday afternoon. We surged through the psychedelic crowd, past stores with names like “Planet Cosmos” and “The Weed Patch.”
I still remember what I ate the first time: jingha, a prawn curry with yellow rice and puffy fried bread called puris, and we’d all had gulab jamuns, little spheres of chewy dough soaked in sticky rosewater syrup, for dessert. Dad had solemnly explained each dish to us, then proceeded to tell us Indian ghost stories something he was forbidden to do at home, because Mom thought they had something to do with Satan.
“Yep, I still remember,” I say to Dad. “Jingha, puris, and gulab jamuns.”
“Ah,” says Dad dreamily. “See if you can get your hands on some for me, will you?”
Someone knocks. “Howzit, Mr. Smith, I’m back. Time for one sponge bath.”
I’ll be damned. It’s a nurse, with long black hair, brown eyes, and a nametag that reads “Leilani.”
“What did I tell you?” Dad chuckles. “You see? Here she is, and I know what she’s after!”
“Shame on you, Mr. Smith,” says Leilani. She explains to me in a conspiratorial whisper, “All da men patients are like dis, yeah?”
“Geez, what a job you have,” I tell the nurse, “what a bunch of pervs. I’ll be back in the morning. I’ll bring Mom.”
Dad rolls his eyes. “Just don’t let her bring those clowns from church round here again.”
“No Last Suppers?” I taunt him.
He tries to laugh, but instead he has a coughing fit. There’s lots of fluid in his lungs, and the doctor says that will probably be the “immediate cause of death,” as they call it. Dad’s signed a Living Will, and no heroic measures are to be taken. That’s another reason he’s in this hospice wing. At least here, they let you go.
Leilani fills a Dixie cup with water and cradles Dad’s head while he drinks. When the coughing stops, he has a request. “No, no Last Suppers,” he says, “but...perhaps you could smuggle in some gulab jamuns and hot pickle. You won’t believe the horseshit that passes for food around here.”
“I’ll see what I can do.” The Indian restaurant is still on The Ave, now three times its original size, with a famous chef and a write-up in Sunset Magazine. “You didn’t hear that,” I say to Leilani.
“Hear what? I nevah hear you,” she winks.
I’m almost out the door when I hear Dad calling after me: “Be careful out there.”
“I’m always careful.”
“I know, but the ice, you see, and the snow,” he persists, “it’s the most dangerous thing in the world, you know, the cold.”
“I know.”
“Deborah?”
“What?” I snap, struggling to keep my patience.
“You must take very good care of your mother.”
“I know.”
“You don’t understand,” he continues. “She is haunted by monsters.”
“What?”
“God,” says Dad, growing agitated. “God is a monster.”
“You’d better not let her hear you say that.”
His grey, tired head sinks back into the mattress. “I had to stay, you know.”
“What are you talking about?”
“To make it okay for her,” says Dad. “I had to stay.”
“Be careful,” says Leilani, “it’s cold. Ooh, it’s cold. Makes me wan go back Hawaii, yeah? Slippery, too. Ooh, so slippery. And still snowing, too. Ooh, it’s cold.”
“Utter rubbish,” says Dad. “But next year, you see...the butterfly causing all the mischief will fly away, and next year…next year, we’re outta here.”
I drive to my parents’ home on a sheet of ice, the car sliding and careening as huge flakes settle on the windshield. I can’t see where the hell I’m going. Good thing the roads are nearly empty.
Walking to the porch, I struggle to maintain balance. Inside, red coals smoulder in the living-room fireplace. Mom is already asleep, stretched out on the couch in the same clothes she has worn all week, jerking her legs like a frightened child in the midst of a bad dream.
* * * * * * * *
The day we buried my father, the ground was frozen so hard it refused to yield. The gravediggers had to wait for the thaw. The ritual was moved inside to the mausoleum. Even inside, the cold stung so bitterly that the Scripture readings were cut short.
The memorial
service was later, with dripping candles and profusions of unseasonable spring
flowers. The preacher said Dad had been
a happily married husband, a devoted father, a true Christian, a real
American. He is in heaven today, the preacher
assured us, and in his final moments, he was comforted by his unwavering faith
in an all-good, all-powerful God, the same God who made
Back at my parents’ house, I sat with my mother in front of the fireplace, silent, while a Presto-Log burned in every colour of the rainbow. After she drifted off, I wandered into the kitchen, rummaging through the cupboards until I found the last jar of hot mango pickle. I opened the jar and inhaled, lungs pierced by the pungent aroma that contains my entire life. I pressed my nose against the icy windowpane. The fire inside my belly glowed and spread, threatening to thaw the deep, deep freeze within.
Outside the snow was falling, in a world shrouded in silence.
* Butterfly won the prose prize in an international literary contest sponsored
by CTR Inc. Publishing. It first appeared in the recently published anthology
of Anglo-Indian writing, Voices on the Verandah, and is reprinted here
with permission. Kathleen Cassity has written
previously for the IJAIS. She lives in
E-mail: kcassity@hawaii.edu