The Truth About Butterflies: A Memoir (7 page)

I peeled off
my wet clothes and lay across the bed to rest a bit before taking a shower, but
I had fallen into a deep sleep.  When I awoke, it was well after midnight.  The
deluge continued, and I thought surely the whole city must be flooded by now.  I
stood in the hot shower and wept.  The thunder was so violent that the house
vibrated with each bolt. 

As I stood
with the shower pouring over my head, it came to me very clearly that Nicole
might not have been dead when they buried her.  The more I thought about it, I
was certain of it.  Dr. Akwari hadn’t really listened long enough to be sure
Nicole’s heart had stopped.  There was no autopsy, no embalming, no way anyone
could’ve been sure that she was dead.  Images of her waking up and realizing
that she’d been buried alive filled my brain.

I jumped
from the shower and wrapped a towel around myself.  I needed to get to the
cemetery, and I would need to call 911 because there was no way I could dig
Nicole out on my own.  I scrambled to find my cell phone.  I put my coat on
over the towel.  In the distance, the rain had grown louder as if a window was
open, but I realized that I’d left the shower running.  I went into the bathroom
and turned off the water, and this simple act of turning off the water gave me
just enough pause to realize I was out of control. 

I sat on the
side of the tub barefooted, wrapped in a towel and a coat, dripping from head
to toe, and I prayed, “God, please help me!”  I could feel myself slipping into
a place I didn’t want to be, but in spite of my attempts to reason with myself,
the urge to get in my car and drive to the cemetery was unrelenting.  I needed
something physical to focus on, so I dropped to my knees and started counting. 
I learned that night that I had 6217 mosaic tiles on my bathroom floor, 6242 on
the second pass.  I counted until I couldn’t count anymore, until my head was
filled with numbers, and until the images of my daughter clawing her way out of
a muddy grave began to wane.  The next morning, I called the grief counselor.

After Nicole
died, the hospice grief counselor had called and left messages, but I had been
reluctant to return her call.  What would I tell her, that I was afraid to go
to sleep at night because of nightmares and if it wasn’t the nightmares, I was
startled awake by Nicole’s voice calling to me? 

Sometimes, Nicole’s
voice was a soft call, and at other times it was a desperate call, the way she
called when she had fallen or was having trouble breathing.  Either way, I
would spring from the bed and run to her room before realizing that she wasn’t
there.  I was learning to control it, though.  When I heard her call me, I
would bolt up out of a dead sleep but would stop short of getting out of bed. 
I would gather myself and lie back down, my heart pounding in the back of my
throat.

The
nightmares had become more frequent, and I was afraid to go to sleep, so when I
arrived home from work, I would shower and have dinner and then sit on the sofa
with a blanket.  I’d turn the volume up on the TV hoping the sounds would fill
my head and prevent any nightmares from forming.  This is how I’d grown
accustomed to sleeping.

I made an
appointment with the counselor and left work early to visit her.  It would be my
first time returning to the hospice center since January 11, the day Nicole
died.  I was anxious and unsure if I could express myself coherently.  On the
long drive, I rehearsed what I would talk about but quickly began evaluating:
If
I say that, she’s going to think I’m crazy
.  By the time I arrived, I was
no closer to knowing what to say than I was when I started.

I walked in
the front door and the receptionist called for the counselor.  From her
messages, I knew her name was Marlo, and from her accent I knew she was from
New York or somewhere close.  When I saw her walking toward me, I was at ease. 
She was my age, and her smile grew the closer she came.  “Nancy, I’m so glad
you made it.”  I followed her into a small counseling room where she formally
introduced herself and shared some of her background.  Then she asked about me,
how I was coping with Nicole’s death, what emotions I was feeling, what kind of
support I had. 

I didn’t
tell her about the nightmares or that I slept sitting in front of the TV to
keep from having them.  I didn’t tell her that when I dozed off, I could hear
Nicole’s voice calling to me, and I didn’t tell her about the night of the
storm.  I did, however, talk for a solid two hours about everything else.  I
felt better afterwards but was reluctant to make another appointment.  “I
really think we should schedule another visit,” she said, but I was sure that
continuing to meet was unnecessary.  Instead, I offered to send her an email to
let her know how I was doing.

“You call me
if you need me,” she said

“I will.”

I kept my word and emailed once every couple weeks to let her know
how I was doing and to reiterate that I didn’t need to meet with her. In truth,
I was plummeting. I was losing the battle for hope. Something in the universe
had shifted, and I was dissolving. I was becoming lost to myself. Routines I
had done every day were quickly becoming foreign. How do I turn on my
windshield wipers? Which key unlocks my front door? Where did I put my blood
pressure medicine? What is my dad’s phone number? I've forgotten my doctor's
name.  That red light means STOP. I felt my life was over and that I’d
never be happy again. I wished Nicole had taken me with her.
I emailed
Marlo routinely and told her that I was doing well.  

Weeks
after my visit with Marlo, Dr. Akwari, who had been checking in on my progress,
invited me to a formal dinner hosted by her church.  It wasn’t the first time I
had gone out since Nicole had died; Eunice and Cynthia had designated Fridays
as Girls’ Night Out, Fernbank one night, The High another.  We would meet up
after work and head over to “Martinis & IMAX” to take in a jazz quartet or
watch people Merengue and Tango.  But this dinner was a formal affair, and I
looked forward to dressing in my steppin-out clothes and doing something
different.  The event was everything I thought it would be.

Arriving
home, I felt like I’d turned a corner and that things were going to be okay
after all.  I decided not to sleep in front of the TV, so I showered and
climbed into bed.  I thought back on the events of the evening and drifted off
to the beautiful images of young Nigerian girls curtsying out of respect before
their elders.

When I
opened my eyes, it was 5 a.m. the next morning; I had slept soundly through the
night.  I was elated as it had been more than two months since I’d slept in my
bed.  I drank a glass of water and then got back into bed.  It was Sunday
morning, and I wouldn’t need to be up until eight o’clock.  Little did I know
that when I drifted off, the mother of all nightmares would be waiting. 

I dreamed
that Nicole was in the hospital.  Though her room was on the main floor, it
looked more like an attic.  It was dark and dank.  There was a vented window that
was open to the alley outside, and we could see trash blowing by.  I told
Nicole that this couldn’t be healthy for her because she was already having
breathing problems.  I told her to get dressed, that we were going to ask for a
different room.

She put
on her jeans and t-shirt, and we went out into the hall to find a nurse. 
Everyone was busy, and Nicole began to feel faint, so we turned around and headed
back to the room.  Because Nicole is so tall, I was having trouble holding her
up, and I cried out for someone to help me, but no one even looked up.

When we
made it back to the room, she began to fall sideways onto the bed.  As she
began falling, she also began to disappear.  I watched as her body grew
fainter, and by the time she landed on the bed, she’d completely vanished. 
Only the clothes she was wearing remained in my hands. 

I called
out to her, and she answered, “I’m right here, Mommy.”  But I couldn’t see her,
and I asked her if she could see me.  She said no, but that she could hear me. 
I continued asking her where she was, and she kept saying, “I’m right here.” 
Then the communication shifted.  I could hear her, but she couldn’t hear me. 
She was crying, “Mommy, can you hear me?” And though I was answering yes, she
could no longer hear me and continued to call for me.  Soon, her voice was gone
altogether. 

I ran
into the hallway and told the doctors and nurses that Nicole had disappeared,
and I needed help finding her.  No one moved.   I pleaded, but it did no good. 
“Look, Nicole has probably run off somewhere, and we don’t have time for games.” 
I couldn’t tell them the truth, that she had vanished in my arms, because they wouldn’t
have believed me. 

I ran
outside and began looking around the premises.  The sky was overcast.  The
building was a small two-story brick building that sat on a hill.  I searched
everywhere.  I walked down to the bottom of the hill.  There was on old
weathered, wooden sign with “Thompson” painted in black letters; the sign was
very old and the paint was peeling.  Just adjacent to that sign was another
hand-painted sign: “Welcome to the Low-lands.”  I thought it strange that they
referred to the area as low lands when it was on a hill.  Anyway, it seemed I
had been outside for at least a couple of hours, so I called inside to see if
they had found Nicole.  Whoever answered the phone said they had found her.  I
ran up the hill and back inside. 

Once
there, no one seemed to know anything about my phone call; they all just looked
at each other.  “You haven’t even looked for her, have you?” I asked.  One of
the doctors became angry and said, “Nicole is hiding somewhere trying to make
fools out of us.”  I begged the doctor to believe me.  Still reluctant to tell
them that she had literally vanished right before my eyes, I simply told them
that she wasn’t hiding or trying to make fools of them, but that she was
missing and I needed help finding her.  “We’re not doing it,” he said, and he
sat back down to finish his work.

I walked
outside and used my cell phone to call for help.  I didn’t want to call the
police because if I had told them that Nicole vanished, they, too, wouldn’t
have believed me.  Instead, I called Eunice, but someone else answered her
phone.  I pulled the phone away from my ear to double check the number I had
dialed, and it was indeed the correct number.  I could still hear the woman saying,
“Hello, is anyone there?”  I returned to the call and told the lady that I
needed help and that I was trying to call my friend.  She said, “You’ve reached
the right person.”  So I told this lady everything that happened, exactly as it
happened, and she said she was on her way, and that we would get to the bottom
of it when she arrived. 

She
arrived very quickly.  She was a Black lady, and she looked official, but she
wasn’t someone I knew.  She asked to go inside and see the room where it
happened.  I took her inside and into the room.  She covered her mouth and nose
with a cloth because the air quality in the room was so bad.  We walked into
the hallway.  “This isn’t good,” she said.  She asked a few more questions and
looked around a bit more.  The hospital staff didn’t seem at all concerned that
this stranger was snooping and asking questions.  The lady said we should drive
around the entire area to see if we could find anything.

Though I
don’t remember having a car up to that point, we got into my car, and I began
driving away from the building.  I told the lady how the doctors wouldn’t help
because they didn’t believe me.  She listened attentively.  She didn’t strike
me as having any expert knowledge in what was going on, but she was the only
one who listened and tried to help me. 

Less than
a mile away from the building, I got a text on my cell phone: We found her.
“Come see.”  I was filled with relief as I showed the message to the lady.  I said
to her, “See how they put ‘Come see,’ in quotation marks?  Maybe Nicole was
hiding after all, and now they’re going to rub it in my face.”

“Don’t
worry about that now,” she said.  “We’ll just get her and go.”

As we
approached the building, we could see the doctors and nurses gathered outside
but facing away from us and toward an alcove in the building.  We couldn’t see
what was in the alcove until we got closer.  The lady began to scream, “Oh my
God!”  I kept saying, “That’s not Nicole,” but it only took seconds for me to
realize that it was her, hanging by her neck.  She was dressed only in a
hospital gown that looked like a tent on her thin body.  There was absolutely
no movement, just her head bowed and her limp body dangling against the red
brick. 

My mouth
was open to scream, but I couldn’t muster a single peep.  There was nothing
left in me, as if the breath had been vacuumed out of my body, and without
regard for my passenger, I pushed the gas pedal to the floor and aimed the car
for the brick wall.  With any luck, I would be thrown through the windshield,
and it would be over quickly.  The closer the car came to the building, the
better I was able to see the horrible images of my daughter.  At that instant,
the screams finally came, and I bolted up in bed, wet with sweat, screaming at
the top of my voice.

Images of
Nicole’s dangling body were all I could see for hours after I awoke, and I was
unable to calm the panic that filled my chest.  I thought about calling the
counselor, but it was Sunday.  I immediately dressed and left the house; I
drove around, I sat in the park, I went to the office, but nothing eased the dread. 
Out of options, I called Marlo.  Without letting on that I was in trouble, I asked
if I could meet with her the next day.  She paused momentarily before saying, “No
ma’am, you’ll meet with me today.”  I was apologetic but grateful.