The Patron Saint of Butterflies (2 page)

Next to me, Dad beamed.

In the last two years I’ve read
The Saints’ Way
at least six or seven times all the way through, earmarking the stories I like best. Now I turn to Saint Rose of Lima, who has become one of
my favorites. Born in South America, she spent her entire life trying to make up for the sins she committed. Her tolerance for pain and suffering was nothing short of spectacular. Skimming the list of her favorite penances, I try to determine which one I will do tonight:

•
Tie a length of rope around the waist until it is tightly uncomfortable.
Check.

•
Fast for three days. (Only water and the occasional citron seed.)
Check.

•
Sleep on a bed of broken glass, rocks, or other sharp objects.

Placing the book back inside the front of my pants, I retie the itchy string around my waist, tightening it until it cuts into the soft flesh. I started wearing the waist string three months ago, after I got mad at Benny and yelled at him. Now, every time I feel it chafe against my skin, I offer up the pain for any failings I have committed that day. I also fast pretty regularly—skipping breakfast and dinner at least three days a week. Fasting is a big thing with saints in general. Saint Francis of Assisi and Saint Catherine of Siena used to go weeks without any solid food. My personal record is four days, but then I fainted in the pool and almost drowned, so I had to start eating again. But I have never slept on a bed of broken glass or rocks. I’m sure it will hurt, but like the others, it will be a great test of my will.

Smoothing my robe back into place, I stand up slowly, taking care not to distract anyone, and walk toward Christine in the back of the room. Christine Miller, an older woman in her late fifties, is in charge of all the kids at Mount Blessing. She has three or four young women who help her—especially with the little kids—but she’s the one who calls the shots when
it comes to us coming and going. She watches me wind my way through the room, narrowing her eyebrows a little. Her long black braid hangs over one shoulder and little wisps of loose hair curl around the sides of her face. I stop in front of her, hesitating as her lips pause midchant.

“I have to go lie down upstairs,” I whisper, rushing over the words. “My stomach is killing me.”

Christine studies me for a moment. I am counting on her knowledge of what went on this morning, hoping it will persuade her to let me leave. She and I will never talk about what went on inside the Regulation Room—or that the reason the three of us were summoned there at all was because she went and told Emmanuel that we were misbehaving—but I know she feels bad about it. She always feels guilty when one of the kids has to go to the Regulation Room. She’s been in charge of all of us for fifteen years now, but she’s still pretty much a softie.

“Go ahead,” she whispers, reaching out and straightening the belt cord around my robe. “I’ll come up later to check on you.”

Afternoon prayers won’t end until 2:45, which means I have a little over an hour to find Honey, assess the situation, and get the two of us back before Christine realizes I’ve left the building. I sneak out the back door, fastening my hair into a bun at the nape of my neck, and head toward the barn, which is where Honey escaped to the last time. The barn is all the way on the other side of the grounds, only a ten- or fifteen-minute trek if I use the main path. But since it is Ascension Week, I walk along the back road, staying low to the ground to avoid being seen.

The sky is a brilliant bowl of blue. I hate that. On days like
this, when everything hurts the way it does, I wish the sky would turn black and that it would rain and rain until I felt better again. I move as quickly as possible, bent over at the waist, clutching the hem of my robe in one hand, pausing briefly to stuff my pockets full of small stones. The welts on my rear end and the backs of my legs make the awkward movements painful. I grit my teeth and offer up the pain for the lie I have just told.

The smell of green is everywhere. The five or six apple trees that line the path are just starting to blossom; from a distance, they look like enormous pink cotton balls. Bright gold petals dot the field like splayed fingers, and every few moments the lonely
caw
of a crow splits the silence. Up ahead is the schoolhouse, a large brown building shaped like an A-frame, where all the children at Mount Blessing attend school. Honey, Peter, and I are in ninth grade this year. There are only two other kids in our class: Amanda Woodward, who is incredibly smart, and James Terwilliger, who can swim three lengths of the pool underwater. I like that we have a small class. Benny’s first-grade class has seventeen kids in it, and Honey told me once that public schools can have as many as thirty kids in one room. That would drive me crazy. I don’t know how I would think!

Honey complains about it all the time, but I love living here at Mount Blessing. I can’t imagine living anywhere else or being anything but a Believer. That’s what we’re known as, the Believers, because that’s what we do. We believe. Specifically, we believe in two things: Christianity and Emmanuel, which, when you think about it, is everything we could possibly need or want. I’ve never left the grounds of Mount Blessing, but I wouldn’t want to. I actually get hives when I think about it. It’s so huge and dangerous out there, and so full of sin. How
could anyone possibly be a saint with all those temptations surrounding them? I feel sorry for the men at Mount Blessing who have to go into the outside world to work so they can help pay the bills. My father, for example, works at a mattress company in Fairfield. I asked him once what it was like having to leave every morning and sell mattresses, and he touched my cheek with his finger. “There’s no place in the world I’d rather be than right here,” he said. “But if Emmanuel wants me to work, then that’s what I’ll do.”

There are rules here that we all have to follow, like wearing the blue robes, going to three daily prayer services, not eating red or orange food (which is symbolic of the devil), and things like that, but they’re not a big deal. When you think about it, if a place with two hundred and sixty people living in it didn’t have rules, it would be chaos! The really important rules—ones we abide by to live as holy a life as possible—are the ones that really count, anyway. These are known as the Big Four, and they were probably the first things we learned when we started to talk. The Big Four is what being a Believer is all about:

I.
In all things, strive for perfection
.

II.
Clothe the body, adorn the soul
. (This is the reason for our robes. We need to spend our time worrying about perfecting our souls, not our wardrobes.)

III.
Waste nothing
.

IV.
Tempt not, lest you be tempted
. (Temptations include things like television, magazines, radios, or anything at all that has to do with bringing the outside world into our community.)

Emmanuel created these rules, and there is nothing more important to a Believer than following them. It’s not always easy, especially the striving for perfection one (as you can see), but like Emmanuel says: The only thing worse than not being perfect is not trying to be perfect. So I keep trying.

It really bugs me that Honey doesn’t. Try, I mean. And not only does she not try, but in the past year or so it feels like she has just turned her back completely on everything having to do with Mount Blessing. Honey’s always been kind of a rebel—once, when we were about six years old and Emmanuel invited all the kids into his room to listen to him play the piano, she stood up in the middle of a very slow, beautiful piece, and said, “I’m bored!” Can you im
a
gine? Just to be invited into Emmanuel’s room is in itself a huge deal. But being in there
and
getting to listen to him play the piano is doubly special—like getting to celebrate your birthday twice. Dad says that listening to Emmanuel play is like hearing the voice of God whisper in your ear, and I couldn’t agree more. Lately, though, Honey’s contemptuousness toward Emmanuel has been getting worse and worse. I don’t know what started it or if it’s going to end, but I get horribly upset whenever I think about it.

She also does nothing to hide her scorn for what she calls my “saint-wannabe” campaign. She thinks that trying to become a saint is a first-class joke or something. “Human beings aren’t supposed to be perfect,” she says whenever I remind her of the first of the Big Four rules. “You’re just beating your head against a wall, Agnes. The whole point of being human is to make mistakes. That’s just the way it is.” But
that’s
not
just the way it is. Emmanuel says that most of us are using only an eighth of our capacity as human beings, and that if we really tried, we could do so much more—even attain perfection. Honey guffaws whenever I try to argue about it with her, and she usually ends up storming off. It’s maddening; it really is.

But my resentment vanishes now as I spot her in the tall grass. She is lying on her side, facing away from me, behind the red barn. Her blue robe is a few feet away, flung in a heap beside a cluster of dandelions. The back of her white T-shirt is streaked with grass stains, and her jeans are smudged with mud. For some reason she is missing her shoes. I look around, but they are nowhere to be found. Her breathing is slow and steady and when she inhales, a small whistling sound comes out of her nose. I lie down silently in the space behind her, being careful not to touch anything. I am not sure where it hurts the most. It amazes me that even after all these years my body still fits along the curve of her back. The front of my knees still align perfectly with the backs of hers and there, right along the slope of her neck, is the little freckle I used to stare at just before I drifted off to sleep next to her in the nursery every night. I lean in a little closer until the tip of my nose touches one of her long red braids. Her hair smells like wet grass. Around us, the air pulses with the steady thrum of singing crickets and the sun, warm as bath water, caresses our skin.

“Did Christine send you out looking for me?” Honey’s voice, drifting out from beneath her arm, is clotted with sleepy tears.

“No.” I pause. “She didn’t say anything. I think she
knows you needed some extra time today.” This is most likely true. It is no secret that as Mount Blessing’s only orphan, Honey is Christine’s favorite. After Honey’s mother ran away one night—leaving three-week-old Honey behind in the nursery—it was Christine who took care of her. Even when Honey got too old to stay in the nursery and was sent to live in the Milk House with Winky Martin, Christine came down every night to tuck her into bed. And while it’s been years since Christine has gone down to check on her, it is obvious that she still holds a special place inside for Honey.

Now Honey snorts. “How big of her.”

I stay quiet. It
was
Honey who had gotten us in trouble this morning, Honey who was caught kissing—with her
tongue!
—Peter behind the pool. She made me stand watch, but then Amanda Woodward—who is always sticking her nose into everyone else’s business—had popped out of nowhere and started yelling about how she was going to tell on us and so we all paid the price. But it was Honey who had gotten the worst of it.

“Well, if Christine didn’t send you, how’d you get out of afternoon prayers?” Honey asks, finally removing her arm and turning over to face me. Her forehead is dirty, her cheeks streaked with dried, salty tear tracks. The white, crescent-shaped scar above her lip is the only unsoiled spot on her face.

“I said I had a stomachache. Christine told me to go lie down. She thinks I’m upstairs in the East House.”

Honey’s eyes narrow. “
You
lied?”

I sigh heavily. The waist string is cutting so tightly into
my skin that the area around it feels numb, and my pockets, bulging with stones, are pulled tight against my thighs. “Don’t remind me, okay? I was worried. You’d been gone for so long. I didn’t know what happened.”

“Wow,” Honey says. “Didn’t you almost tell a lie last week when Christine asked you where your consecration beads were?”

I nod, automatically moving my hand to the wooden beads around my neck. “But I didn’t.”

“Still. An
almost
lie last week. And now a real, full-blown one. What’s happening to you, Agnes? You’re never going to end up in
The Saints’ Way
if you keep going like this.”

For a moment I am genuinely stung. After everything I have just gone through for her, she is still not going to give me a break.
Still.
I open my mouth, ready to tell her off, when she turns her head. A blue bruise has blossomed on her cheek, wide and dark as a plum.

“Oh, Honey.” I reach out to touch it with my fingertips and then, thinking better of it, withdraw my hand. “Does it hurt?”

Honey pokes at the mottled skin roughly and then winces. “Sore.” There is a pause. “But not half as sore as my ass.”

I bite my lip. Given the situation, now is not the time to start reminding her of the sinfulness of curse words. “He was hard on you,” I say quietly. “After Peter and I left, I mean.”

Honey gives me one of her
Sometimes I can’t believe we’re even friends, you’re so stupid
looks. “Um,
yeah
.” She takes a deep breath and then shakes her head.

“Do you … want … to talk about it?” I ask gently.

“Well, you know, the man’s a perfectionist,” Honey says. “Gotta get it just right every time. The bastard.” I gulp hard. It makes me nervous when she speaks ill of Emmanuel—even if he did just punish her. Emmanuel never punishes us unless we really deserve it. Honey may not think so, but kissing a boy—with your
tongue
no less—is definitely a sin. A carnal one, too, if you want to get really technical about it, which is one of the worst kinds.

“But I screamed my head off,” she continues. “Made a whole big scene, just like I always do. Pissed him off royally.”