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Jane’s back started itching Thursday night, but it was so faint she barely noticed.
She was sitting on the porch swing, watching as clouds crept over the night sky. The day was warm and the air felt thick and sweet; everything seemed to be layered in dust and silence. Summer was just begging for a storm in this heat, she thought, and rubbed the spot between her shoulder blades against the rough wood of the swing. A sudden gust of wind echoed the sentiment, lifting faded curtains away from the living room window so that a snatch of the nightly weathercast furrowed into the silence of the night. A tornado watch is in effect for most of the viewing area. Residents are advised to seek shelter and stay away from windows. Jane wondered how well the local weather-woman affected seriousness through her white-washed hair, her orange-red lips.
Jane barely noticed the door creaking open, barely registered her mother’s aching self standing in front of her, wearing an expression of exhaustion mingled with fear and worry. Her mother stood there for a moment, waiting, Jane supposed, for her to say something, to acknowledge that she was standing there.
She finally gave up with a deep sigh and sat down next to Jane. “Your eyes are darker than the sky is,” she said, pulling her threadbare robe tightly around her bony frame.
If that was true, Jane thought, the tornadoes would come out of my eyes instead of the sky, and they would sweep you, me, everything away. She didn’t say it. She just continued staring forward, and didn’t bother to fix anything when the wind tangled her black hair with her thick lashes.
They sat there for a moment, both staring out at the sky. Jane was uncomfortably aware of the invisible line between them, like a separation of past and future. Twenty years and she would be her mother, a tired woman barely scraping up a living, sighing deeply and wondering how to reach her recalcitrant daughter.
Her mother stood up. “Could you just come inside, honey? The weather lady says there are tornadoes everywhere. It’s dangerous to sit out here.” Her mother’s arms were crossed, and a flash of exasperation lit her eyes.
Jane doubted it was any safer inside the house, where the walls were so thin that in the winter no amount of heat could keep them warm, where the windows rattled when the wind pushed and shoved at them. She didn’t even look at her mother as she stood up. Her eyes were vacant, focusing on the small mole that curved around her mother’s jaw.
“Could you scratch my back?” she asked, offering her back to her mother. “I’ve got an itch right between my shoulder blades. I can’t reach it.”
*
When Jane went to bed that night, the town was unscathed by tornados. The clouds had barely yielded any rain, she discovered the next morning. They were still swollen with the rain, stuffed full and jostling for position in the dark sky. The sun seemed to have gone into permanent hiding, and the streets were drained of color. Even the bright yellow clapboard shutters shielding the windows at Mrs. Trapman’s house across the street seemed dingy in the gray light.
Jane sat on the couch, the drone of Jerry Springer a dull and fitting background for the day. Jane watched an old woman take off her shirt on screen and begin fighting with her outraged son. Put it back on, put it back on, the crowd chanted. The sound of a mooing cow filtered over the mayhem and the audience dissolved into cheers and laughter.
Jane shifted, struggling in the couch for position. She felt suddenly heavy, like she was mired in quicksand and well beyond escape. A moment later, the house rumbled as thunder leaked in through the crevices of old wood and drooping window panes.
"I can’t believe you watch this,” her mother said as she walked into the room. “It’s so trashy.”
Jane ignored her mother and tugged at a worn thread hanging from the old black t-shirt she wore. The quicksand feeling increased and she sunk deeply into the couch.
Her mother sighed, her brows furrowed into a line of disapproval. “You’ve got to change that t-shirt, Jane,” she said. “It’s been what, a month now?”
Jane’s heart thumped sluggishly against the bottom of her ribcage. “I don’t want to talk about this with you, Mom,” she said, scratching the top of her head.
Her mother’s voice seemed to explode from the back of her throat. “You’re not even trying, Jane! Stop moping! Wash your hair! Get out and do something!” Jane looked up at her mother in surprise. Rather than the anger she expected, her mother’s eyes were ringed and alight with worry. For the first time in a long time, Jane felt tears welling somewhere deep inside the dry valleys of her body.
Face softening, Jane’s mother reached out and placed a hand on Jane’s knee. “Give yourself a chance,” she said so quietly it could have been addressed to no one, a thought she didn’t intend to voice. “One of these days, you’ll see what you’re worth. You’re going to blossom, Jane, I promise, and your world will be full of color. You’ll be…”
…the most beautiful creature, Jane filled in silently, mind tracing over the speech she’d heard over and over again since she was a little girl. Each time her mother fed her the speech, it lost some of its luster. When she was younger, and she’d come home crying from another rejected crush, the speech filled her with hope. Her mind was bright as she imagined herself older. Her hair went from dark to blonde, her eyes went from dark to blue, her skin was deeply tanned and she had a laugh that everyone wanted to hear. As she grew older, though, and she had nothing to do on a Friday night but sit in her room and read or watch television, the speech made her bitter, angry. She knew she wasn’t going to change, because nothing ever did.
“Fine,” her mother was saying, tramping over Jane’s thoughts. “We don’t have to talk.”
Jane started, surprised. She stared at her mother wordlessly as she grabbed her purse and headed for the front door. For once, Jane thought she would leave without saying anything, but her mother hesitated, hand resting on the doorknob as she stood in the open doorway.
“Try and get out today, okay? Please?”
Jane shrugged, and her mother pressed, “Please?”
“Okay,” Jane said, less a promise, more to get her mother to leave for work. Her head was starting to hurt with an ache that started in her scalp.
“Have fun,” slipped through the disappearing crack in the doorway as her mother pulled the door quietly shut behind her. Jane sighed and sunk further into the couch. In her little town, there was nothing much to do on a Friday afternoon. Plus, her back was hurting, aching dully around her shoulders.
*
Jane rose fuzzily from the depths of sleep, and for a moment everything around her was rich and vibrant. The old furniture echoed the colors in her dream, then gradually settled into focus. Everything seemed darker then, darker than before she’d fallen into her nap. It took her a moment to realize that the phone was ringing.
“Ouch,” she winced as her hands found the cracked, tan plastic of the corded phone. She must have slept in the wrong position; the area below her neck and between her shoulder blades was tight and constricted. A dull ache radiated down her spine.
“Hello,” she managed to utter into the receiver.
“Hi, Jane,” came a cheery, female voice from the other end. “It’s me.”
“Me who?” she asked, even though she knew who it was.
There was a pause, and the voice sounded annoyed. “Your best friend, duh.”
She stretched her shoulders, rolling them in tight little circles. The ache subsided a little, and she fell back into the couch with a sigh. Her head was beginning to hurt again. She pressed a hand firmly on the top of her head, seeking to ease the pressure. It felt like she was pressing a pimple that had yet to break the surface, and she quickly took her hand away. “What do you want?” she sighed.
“I guess…well, do you want to do something later? Go to a movie?”
“Go to a movie?” Jane repeated the words; they fell out of her mouth dry as desiccated moths. She shifted uncomfortably into the couch as she listened to her silence; something was poking her in the back. Balancing the phone between her ear and shoulder, she turned to see what was jabbing her. After lifting the cushions, she found a few pennies, an old pen. Nothing that could jab her that way. She wondered if it would bruise.
“Jane, please, I’m worried about you.”
Jane dropped the pennies and old pen on top of the coffee table, leaned back into the couch, and lunged forward immediately when she felt the same jabbing in her back. Right between her shoulder blades. Suddenly the voice in her ear seemed far away as she reached an arm behind her, trying to find what could be stuck to her back. Her fingers tried desperately to climb further down, past her neck, which was feeling somehow hot and tender to the touch. Almost…almost.… She strained until she felt her shoulders stiffen to their fullest. There! Sloping just where her fingertips could reach, on either side of her spine, were twin, swollen knots, hot and angry beneath her fingertips.
She didn’t want to move her hand because it had taken so much just to reach the bumps. “I have to go,” she said, voice stiff and constrained. She hung the phone on the cradle before her friend could protest.
Careful not to move her hand, Jane walked to her mother’s bedroom. On the other side of the bedroom door was a full-length mirror, and Jane turned her back to it. Craning her neck around her shoulders, Jane could see only a bit of red creeping up from the collar of her shirt. Her heart sounded an alarm, blood sirening through her veins, as she took off her shirt for the first time in two days.
Her back was swollen. Or parts of it, actually. Two thick, parallel welts were bulging on the insides of her shoulder blades, like she’d been branded by a vertical equal sign. She edged closer to the mirror, trying to get a better look at the bulges, as if discovering the detail would help unravel the mystery of what they were. Getting closer yielded the smallest of details; little blue veins fractured her red flesh. At the peak of the welts, the skin looked nearly translucent. She wasn’t sure, but in the dim light of her mother’s bedroom, she thought she could see two ridges in the middle of the welts, as if something was planted there. Even more faintly, Jane thought that her spine looked dark. Like someone had shaded her skin a few shades darker, straight down the middle of her back.
Jane’s heart was skidding haphazardly in her ribcage and up into her throat. Maybe I’m sick, she thought, frantically trying to rationalize the welts. Maybe this is some weird cancer? Maybe something’s broken back there? How could I not know something was broken back there?
In the midst of her racing thoughts, the front door clamped shut, announcing her mother’s arrival from work. Jane’s reflection flitted out of the mirror as she grabbed the shirt that lay at her feet and frantically worked it over her head.
“Jane,” her mother called. Jane silently left her mother’s room and dashed into her own room across the hall. “I’m home! Is chicken okay for dinner?” Seconds later, her mother appeared in her doorway, a cheerful smile stamped into her wan cheeks. Her eyes were melting into tired lines at the corners. “How’re you feeling, hon?”
Jane heaved a deep sigh and settled against the headboard of her bed without thinking. Her back was hurting worse every second; lines of fire tingled straight up and down her spine. It was if she was sunburned and the welts were full-blown blisters. She leaned forward with a gasp, trying to swallow away her pain and discomfort.
Her mother’s face sharpened with worry. “Are you okay? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Jane answered quickly. At her mother’s doubtful look, she continued, “I took a nap this afternoon and I must have slept funny. I think I pulled a muscle or something.”
Jane carefully scanned her mother’s face, searching for a sign that she didn’t believe her. Luckily, Jane had said something else for her mother to focus on. “You took a nap? So did you get out this afternoon like I asked?”
Rolling her eyes, Jane slipped easily into silence. She looked down at her hands instead of at her mother, a clear dismissal.
“Fine, Jane. I give up, no more from me.” Her mother stood in the doorway for a moment before she left, silently padding down the hall.
*
The next day, Jane awoke feeling feverish. She’d barely slept that night because her whole body was aching and burning, no matter how she positioned herself. The welts on her back had thickened over night, and the bulges were much larger. Her head felt split in half by a monstrous headache, and she had two more bumps there. These were smaller, and the pain was more concentrated. When she looked in the mirror that morning after her mother left for work, her spine had darkened to almost black.
Jane couldn’t sit down. She paced the small confines of the house, listening to the sound of a storm building outside. Wind gusts rattled the house. Jane felt like the house was growing darker, that the furniture had darkened into shadowy echoes of itself. She felt like she was burning with color, with change.
“I should tell someone,” she said aloud, and in the next breath, “I can’t tell anyone; everyone would think I’m a freak. They would want to cut me open, study me.”
The house was starting to tighten around her until she felt locked in a cocoon. She had to get out of there. Fast.
*
She found herself at the Food Safe up the street, the corner market that everyone in the neighborhood went to for milk and eggs or greasy hamburgers from the grill in the back. The store was clogged with Saturday afternoon shoppers. Jane passed familiar faces without recognizing them or registering the alarm etched plainly on their faces. She walked on, feet skimming to the back of the store where the butcher shop was. Sweat moistened her skin and wet her clothes, but she scarcely felt it; to her, her skin was dry, too dry. Her skin felt tight over her body, as if her insides had grown too big for the outside. As if she would break apart at any second. Her legs were starting to hurt, especially at her thighs. Like they were breaking from her body. Her stride slowed to almost nothing.
Oh god, my back is tearing. Jane felt pain rip the skin down her back. Blood seeped down her back and trailed the floor. The pain crippled her, doubled her so that she fell to her knees on the cracked linoleum. I’m dying. I’m going to die in this washed-out grocery store, with everyone staring at me, slack-jawed and stupid.
“Mommy, what’s wrong with her?” she heard a little girl ask, voice wavering with fright.
Jane scarcely heard the answer. The ripping pain in her back had spread to the top of her head. She pulled a trembling hand to her scalp, and her fingers met warmth, moistness. Her whole body felt seized in a tight convulsion; everything inside of her was straining, bulging. Something has to give, her mind railed at her desperately. You can’t stay like this. It’s too much.
Jane’s vision was failing her. Everything was flashing from gray to black.
“Mommy!” The little girl again. Her voice this time was shaking with sobs.
The tension in Jane’s body was stretched as taut as it could go. A stretched rubber band, an over-inflated balloon. A rope in the middle of a tug-of-war. And then the rubber band snapped. The balloon popped. The rope frayed apart in the middle.
Something gave.
Two wings, long and delicate, broke free from the confines of her skin. They hung there, poised and drying in the stale air of the grocery store. The fluorescent lights illuminated their brilliant color, radiant yellow traced splashes of cobalt blue and tiny pearls of green. There was a long moment of silence in the grocery store. Everyone seemed stuck on a held breath, until the figure in front of them seized once again. Antennae, slender as reeds, ascended from her head and wafted in the air. After that, the changes occurred in rapid fashion. The things protruding from her body overwhelmed the tenuous hold her skin had on her, and her body simply split in half.
Standing amid the ruins of her body, wet and weak as a newborn baby, was a butterfly.
The people cleared a wider circle around the creature. No one said anything. Eyes were wide, caught between horror and wonder. Everyone standing there felt their worlds descending into peculiar darkness. They felt faded, pale imprints of themselves. All except the little girl.
“Look, mommy,” she shouted, clapping her hands in glee. Her mother thought her face never looked brighter. “She’s a butterfly!”
The butterfly’s wings were moving tentatively in the air.
“Shh,” the mother managed to respond weakly. “I think she’s going to fly away now.”
The butterfly’s wings fluttered, picking up speed. Then, in one swift movement, she ascended into the air above everyone’s heads. There was a collective gasp as the butterfly’s wings began great, birdlike movements. Everyone forgot the pain they had just observed, watching in awe as the butterfly flew out the front doors and into the light tapping of rain falling from the sky. She was as bright as the sun would have been.
“Mommy,” the little girl said, tugging on her mother’s hand as she ran after the butterfly, hoping to watch it fly away. “Will I get to be a butterfly when I grow up?”
“You already are,” the girl’s mother said, dropping to her knees and pulling her daughter close. “The most beautiful creature.”
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