The Knife and the Butterfly (6 page)

But a different window in the observation room is lit up this time. It’s about halfway between the one for Lexi’s cell and the one for the meeting room. When I walk over, I see Lexi sitting in a circle with maybe twelve other girls. A couple of them are dog-ugly, but most of them are easy enough on the eyes. I think about whipping out my gun when I see this one girl who looks like she could be Becca’s older sister, but then I think of Pakmin watching from the set of windows behind me. That kills the mood.

It’s the usual group therapy setup, same as what I got put through at the Youth Village. Blackboard screwed to the wall, chairs all in a circle, some hippie fool running the show. This guy’s somewhere in his thirties. He has combed brown hair and a face so bland that you forget it every time you stop looking at him. He’s spouting the usual counselor crap. Right now he’s talking about how everyone has an equal voice in the group. Like just saying that makes it true.

He looks all mellow until Lexi cuts in with, “Then how come you get to make the rules? Or does that mean we can bust up this circle and sit like we want?”

“We’re glad to have you with us today, Alexis,” is all he says.

Some of the girls roll their eyes, but most of them just sit there.

He pulls a stuffed dolphin out of his briefcase and reminds the girls that they can discuss anything except events related to their cases. But if life lands you in lockup, doesn’t that mean everything is related? And besides, how am I supposed to figure out what they think I should know about Lexi if she never even says why she’s in here?

But the leader didn’t really mean “anything,” because two seconds later he writes the word “disappointment” up on the chalkboard and asks the girls to go around and say what the word makes them think of. “How about starting, Maritza?” he says and passes the stuffed dolphin to the black girl to his left.

Her hair is bleached a coppery color and done up in cornrows. She squeezes the dolphin in her fist like she wants to see its cotton guts dripping out.

“Yeah, sure. It really kills me when there’s no OJ at breakfast,” Maritza says and tosses it real fast at the next girl without even turning to look at her.

“Bitch,” the next girl says catching the dolphin just before it hits her in the face.

“Janela,” the leader says in a warning voice that makes me think of kindergarten.

“Pass,” Janela says, staring at him.

The girl next to her has her hair cut short, and her tits are smashed flat as a board. She stares daggers at the leader. “Your ugly face disappoints me.”

When the dolphin gets to this Vietnamese chick, she pops her gum and shrugs. “How I suppose know what word means?”

A tall, skinny Hispanic girl with her hair combed halfway in front of her face takes the dolphin and slams it down onto the floor. “I hate it when my boyfriend cums and I don’t!” She busts out laughing, and a couple of other girls join in.

The leader kind of scrambles to the middle of the circle to pick up the dolphin. “That’s enough,” he says. “Let’s pause here. Remember, group is what you make it.”

One girl calls out, “Then let’s make it a party and get us some shit to smoke in here.”

“I think you know what I mean, Taneesha,” he says. “Let’s keep going, but focus on experiences that may help us understand ourselves better. Let me give you an example. My dad used to say, ‘I’m going to take you fishing.’ I’d get all excited and think, it’ll be this weekend for sure. I’d get my rod ready and wait. But whenever I asked about it, he’d make up an excuse. The weather, or his back, or he can’t borrow the boat, always something. It got to where I knew it wasn’t going to happen, but I kept on hoping. And he kept on letting me down. That’s what ‘disappointment’ makes me think of.”

He could be a shrink on a talk show; I don’t believe that crap about fishing with his dad for a second. Sounds like made-up junk he cribbed from some counselor book. He probably knows as good as everybody else that he’s full of bullshit. When he smiles, I see that he’s got teeth so bad that I know his mom must’ve thought DISAPPOINTMENT big time when she saw them coming in all crooked.

“Candezz?” he asks, tossing the dolphin across the room to the girl next to Taneesha.

“My mom ain’t showed up even once for a court date. She act like I’m dead instead of her daughter.”

“Thank you, Candezz.” He nods, and she hands the dolphin over to the next girl. She just stares at a spot on the floor, moving the dolphin from one hand to the other.

Finally she speaks up. “I don’t get to see my baby but twice a year. There, you happy? Now I feel like shit.”

It goes on like that until they’ve been around the circle twice. Whenever the dolphin comes to Lexi, all she does is uncross her arms and pass it on.

CHAPTER 13: NOW

I don’t know why, but it seems like Lexi hasn’t been out of her cell in a couple of days. Just lies there all day long with her notebook, which means that the White Girl Channel has been boring as hell.

Finally today the door to her cell opens and Janet walks in. She sits down in the chair by Lexi’s desk.

“You okay?” Janet asks.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Lexi doesn’t even sit up; she just stays stretched out on her bed.

“Sad news, about the girl in C-block.”

“Didn’t know her.”

“What do you think about people dying young?” Janet says it easy, like it’s a normal thing to wonder.

“Don’t matter. You got a game or something for us to do?”

Janet opens her bag and tosses Lexi a container of Play-Doh.

“Bad ass, I haven’t played with this since I was like seven,” Lexi says. She peels back the lid and drops a green lump into her lap.

Lexi sits there fiddling with the Play-Doh, rolling pieces into long ropes, crisscrossing them, mashing it all back together. Janet pulls out some papers and starts filling out forms on the desk. After a while, she looks at Lexi and asks, “You religious?”

“Hell no. Why?”

Janet points at Lexi’s lap. She has the Play-Doh laid out in a crooked cross.

Lexi rolls her eyes, then balls the cross up and squeezes the Play-Doh in her fist. “Better?” she asks.

Janet doesn’t say anything, and after a while, Lexi goes back to messing with the Play-Doh. She’s making something that looks like devil horns to me, or maybe a moon, but with spikes on the side. Then she mashes that up, too.

“Your lawyer told me about Theo,” Janet says finally.

“Yeah, well, Theo didn’t do a damn thing.”

“But it hurt you to lose him.”

“No shit, Sherlock.”

“You think you’re to blame?” Janet asks.

“I’m in here; how the hell can it be my fault?” she says. But I don’t believe her. Because when Lexi says this, she looks at the drain by the toilet. I swear she’s wishing she could disappear down it and out of her cell, away from that question.

I’m watching for what will happen next and wondering who this Theo is to Lexi, but Pakmin comes and gets me before I can find out.

During rec, me and Baby Tigs chill together, talking shit and doing pushups until our knuckles are bloody with gravel.

“That’s killer,” Tigs says. He jumps up and wipes his fingers across his county issues, then drops back against the fence and slides down until he’s sitting on top of some ratty-ass weeds grown up through the chain links.

“I’m getting nowhere with this ho they got me watching,” I say.

“Man, don’t start up on that again. Nobody gets nowhere with their obs, far as I can tell.”

“What gets me is how they act like we should be figuring shit out. What the hell, you know?” I say, but I can tell Tiger isn’t listening. He’s got this far-off look on his face.

“Tigs?” I ask.

He looks at me funny. “What?”

“Where’d you go, man? You tripping on something you’re not sharing?”

He shakes his head. “Just trying to remember. Always trying to remember.”

About thirty minutes after he brings lunch, Gabe walks back my way. I shove my black book under the mattress before his footsteps get too close.

I’m already waiting by the bars when he comes up and unlocks my cell.

“What’s up?” I ask him.

“You wanted to see your file again,” he says.

“That’s tight, man, thanks.”

I stare at the perfect white of his uniform as I go out of the cell. I can’t find a single speck of dust or nothing on it. Shit, when I wear white, every not-white thing in the world flies at me and gets on my clothes. I wonder if maybe Gabe’s got a wrinkle-faced old wife to help him keep his things so nice.

Gabe takes me back to the conference room where I talked to Pakmin, then we pass through into the giant reading room. He sits me down at a table and pulls out a few rolled-up sheets of paper and a pencil from his pants pocket. He sets everything in front of me and says, “Wait.”

A minute later he comes back with the same folder Pakmin gave me last time.

“I don’t know how long I can give you, son,” he says. “But when I come back, you have to leave. No extra time.”

I shrug and reach for the file. “I’m cool.”

I try to read faster than before, but I hear myself saying the words out loud like I’m some little kid in second grade instead of 15. Even if there ain’t nobody around to hear me, it’s still embarrassing as hell.

I go through the rest of my school files real fast. I skim counselor referrals from fifth grade, shitty test scores, and truancy write-ups from middle school.

Then there are police reports from the times I got picked up for questioning, then the stuff about the auto theft trial that landed me in juvie. I know it’s stupid when I’ve got this whole big-ass file to read, but I start thinking about Pájaro. Everything that happened, it’s not in here because I didn’t get caught. But I ain’t forgot it.

I don’t even know what happened to Pájaro’s girl, Trippy. She lived with her mom and a little brother, and one night they just disappeared.
Se borraron
. Probably gone back to El Salvador, some people said. I didn’t even know until Becca told me on the phone while I was in juvie. I was going to do like Trippy asked, find that Mexican and make him pay for what he done to Pájaro. I even bought a piece off of a guy to do the job. Then the next day they picked me up for grand auto, for something I did almost a year before me and Pájaro stole that damn stereo. After I got out of juvie, I found out that other homies took care of things, sent a real strong message. But I wasn’t there. Becca said that was a blessing in disguise because otherwise I might’ve got killed. The thing with Pájaro still weighs me down real bad, though.

Gabe is probably coming back any second, so I grab the last few pages from my file and sandwich them between the pieces of paper he gave me for notes. I roll it all up again like it was when he handed it to me. I barely have time to stick the pencil in the waistband of my pants before he comes back through the door.

Gabe doesn’t search me when he takes me back to my cell, doesn’t say a thing about the missing pencil. In the Youth Village they had every sharp numbered; no way of getting out of the GED room with a “weapon” like a pencil. Maybe old Gabe forgot, or maybe he gets that a person needs something to do with the long hours on the inside.

First thing I think about is looking at the papers I took from the file. But then I decide I got to make my reading material last at least a little. I flatten the pages out and hide them under the mattress. The pencil goes there, too. Then I lie down, liking the fact that there’s secrets I can keep even in lockup, secrets hid right under my toes.

CHAPTER 14: THEN

I pressed my face against the driver’s side window. One glance and I knew this kind of stereo was good, none of that anti-theft crap on it. I stepped back and nodded to Pájaro. He smashed the window with a pipe and opened the door on the driver’s side.

“Now yank that shit out,” he said.

I pulled the stereo box forward, and Pájaro slashed the wires. He reached over the seat and grabbed a stack of CDs from the back and shoved a handful of change from the cup holder into his pocket. Two seconds later we were flying down the street in Pájaro’s mom’s Sentra, laughing like hell. It was maybe three months after I got clicked into MS-13, and everything seemed hilarious and badass at the same time.