From the correspondence between Angelica M. Liederson, Practicing Psychiatrist of the Tri-City Psychiatry and Mental Health Clinic, and Ephram Carson, Part-Time Raiderville School District Janitor, and Raiderville Cemetery Custodian:

Dear Angelica,

Thank you for your last letter. I enjoyed it immensely, perhaps more than you can know. Everyone needs someone to talk to, so feel free to confide in me any time, as long as you’ll allow me the courtesy of confiding in you.

Anyway, as you requested, this is what I know about Janey Peters:

Two young boys drowned in the culverts early that spring, twenty-one years ago, and so you can understand that the community was painfully aware of the graduation of the eighth graders in the beginning of June, especially considering the weather. It was generally regarded as a strange but accurate truth –you know the way small towns get, with little superstitions and traditions– that the eighth grade graduation would be rainy. Folks had been arranging their weekends around that strange meteorological fact for countless generations of little graduates. You can call us uneducated and backwoods, and I know it might appear that way, but it worked, you know?

The point is, for the first time in maybe forever, and never since, the ceremony was held outside. A drought had set in and clear skies were predicted for a week in either direction around that day, and it seemed like our luck as a community was turning. Turning, as in, finally the ground would dry out from the winter and maybe all that troublesome mud would clear up.

But where was that drought a few months ago when the flooding took those two boys? Too much in one season and too little in another. You can call the whole thing ominous now, that uncharacteristic change, but at the time the sun was greeted with amusement and light-heartedness. The weather-casters sure were making a big deal out of it on the local news, what with the sun breaking a record and all. Hadn’t shown itself on that particular weekend for coming up on fifty years.

I, of course, wasn’t amused, but I had to set folding chairs out on the field in that heat. Would have preferred to be inside with the air conditioning, but no, it was chairs for the kids while their families gathered stiffly on metal bleachers. After the depression of a long winter (drawn out painfully with storms and then the disappearance of those boys, weeks of tense searching, and finally the shocking discovery of their drowned bodies), the graduation seemed an end to a painful year, and the unexpected appearance of the sun felt like a rebirth. I know, Angelica, because I was thinking it, and everyone around me seemed to be thinking it, too.

Everything was progressing normally; the graduates marched on the field to a tune of applause and tears, seated themselves, fidgeted, the microphone was adjusted and soon the thing was well underway with speeches and the like. And then it happened.

The ceremony was progressing as normal as could be expected. Principal Chalmers began calling names, and the stiff, paper programs had already been read too many times by a bored audience. Monotony was creeping into the cramping leg muscles of parents and siblings. The novelty of an outside graduation was wearing away to distress under a hot sun whose unusual presence was no longer welcome. It was a strange place and time for it, Angelica, but in the middle of the ceremony a miracle happened.

As the first butterfly fluttered over the crowd of seated graduates, few were paying enough attention to notice, and of those few almost all managed to retain the politeness not to appear distracted. When it landed on Janey Peters, only the kids around her shifted self-consciously in their seats, trying to look without appearing to look. I’m sure little Janey herself could hardly breathe.

When the third landed on her robe, kids from even rows ahead were attempting to subtly look back at the spectacle, word passed up to them through whispers and nudges.

By the time the fifth arrived, teachers on either side of the rows were having to shush the students, and that attracted attention from the bleachers. A good-natured tittering rippled through the crowd. Graduates were ascending and descending onstage, but more attention was being paid to the stream of butterflies haphazardly floating closer to the area. They came from all sides, flying over our heads and tempting the toddlers present to grab for them, and I mean maybe as many as twenty pudgy fists in the air, begging for a piece of the magic. But no, the butterflies were all dead-set on hovering over Janey, just Janey, alighting to touch her cheeks, her hair, to rest on her shoulders.

“Someone’s wearing too much perfume,” a father whispered to his wife.

“Must have fallen in a field of flowers before coming here,” someone jeered darkly.

“Isn’t that Janey Peters? Poor thing; I heard she only just managed to graduate,” one member of the PTA muttered to another.

I know because I was sitting in the bleachers, too, admiring my handiwork, see? Three years of my own work had gone into each of those kids. Three years of cleaning up after them in the halls, of making their lunchroom nice for them, of mopping their puke and sterilizing their bathrooms.

“Is it her perfume?”

“It must be her body spray.”

Funny how folks can get resentful and tear down other folks.

“Poor thing. How embarrassing!”

“Someone should tell her a little dab’ll do ya.”

Janey’s classmates knew she wore no perfume, and I, sitting quietly and saying nothing, knew it, too. She’d thrown up enough times in school for me to be personally well acquainted with her. It’s true enough that she was a strange little girl. No one could smell the way she did and do it consistently enough to be wearing perfume. If there was such a manufacturable scent, no one would willingly choose to wear it, and by that I mean no woman I know of. It wasn’t a bad smell so much as it was a strange smell: sweet, musky, almost pleasant but at the same time repulsive. Like dead things. You never forget that smell, Angelica, never fail to retch, yet there’s a part of that stink that’s almost appetizing. Meat is, after all, meat. I suppose it appeals to our primitive brains, in all forms, whether rotting in death or sickly from contamination of the mind.

The point I’m making is, you couldn’t say Janey was a very popular student.

The kids around her started blowing on her, shuffling a little, even flapping their hands at the butterflies in an effort to make them go away. In the throes of something amazing everyone felt it was more proper to ignore what was considered a problem, to attempt to rectify –and quietly- something out of the usual. Isn’t that funny, Angelica? I’m sure there’s a term for that. Something about smelling the roses and peer pressure.

But, you know, however much they waved and shooed, all that was accomplished was the occasional rising up of the tiny insects, but they hovered and soon landed again. Janey’s face was bright red, from embarrassment and excitement. She knew it wasn’t right, wasn’t traditional, and that she shouldn’t be making a scene or a distraction, but these beautiful things were crowding around her, begging to touch her! How could she ignore the remarkable when she lived her life caught in the doldrums of what was less than mediocrity?

Of course, she never said anything to that effect, but it was obvious that was how she felt, what she was thinking. I know. I was there. I can sympathize with a girl like Janey. Growing up was no cakewalk for me, either, Angelica, and I’ve always had a soft spot for butterflies, for all truly beautiful things. It’s easy enough to put myself in her shoes; should be easy for everyone, but it’s funny how so few folks bother to do that.

Finally her row was called, and I can tell you there was never in that school a student cheered for louder (even if it was mostly catcalls), never a student who had been more neglected, or who, based on what the busybody PTA mothers were muttering, had struggled harder to get to that moment. A million days of school and despair and feeling confused and helpless, and today, in the magical sun, in front of all these people, God Himself was touching her.

Was I jealous of a little thirteen-year-old girl, clumsily dressed and built, who smelled like something strange and wasn’t all right in the head? I tell you there wasn’t a single person on that field who wasn’t jealous of her. The eyelashes of God were kissing her, just as Mama always described a good day at church as being. The world had come alive to love her. Tell me truly, Angelica, wouldn’t you have changed places with her in that moment? Wouldn’t anyone?

Janey accepted her fake diploma from the distressed and sour principal in a glittering cloud of sun and butterflies, orange and black and red and yellow and white and blue, like the flowers from all those prissy town lawns grew wings and left their stems behind to be just blossoms floating in the air, her own personal decorations and jewels.

“A miracle,” the crowd breathed, amazed at the final result though they could not understand its beginnings.

They would speak of it for months, for years, long after butterflies had ceased to be seen as positive, long after little Janey Peters left the small town for big-city institutions and hospitals, having developed, at puberty, a rare and untreatable mental disorder that poisoned her body with its sickly-sweet smell, much as a late-stage schizophrenic radiates the scent of goat.

At least, that’s what I read.

Even in small towns a man can see things he never should, and live through more than is fair for him to take. Even for a guy like me. What I mean is, I was part of the search group that found those boys. Two little men, all sinew and clean skin, water-gorged and torn to pieces. I mean, it was me who helped fold those poor boys into the body bags, and it was me who had to clean up the gunk from the smooshed bodies and torn wings after the ceremony, when the school administrators furiously scraped all those pretty little things off Janey. Right there behind the bleachers, they scraped the loveliness off her. The stripped her of beauty and uniqueness and condemned her to uniformity.

Jesus said to suffer the little children. God has strange gifts for His children, Angelica. Even miracles have no guarantee of being blessings instead of curses. Those beautiful wings coated Janey until she dripped with hundreds of quivering petals all aching to get a taste of her, until she wore a robe of a thousand colors, like Joseph in the Bible, singled out and decorated, beloved, beautiful.

Of course, when Joseph was destroyed he came back wise and powerful. Janey will never come back. That gift, the sweetness, the colors- they took her far away, and from destruction like that you and I both know there is no return.

-

Return to Go Look There