From the Chrysalis (2 page)

Against her will, she liked him even better this way, with sweat trickling down the smooth planes of his face. She especially liked his determination to follow her anyplace. He smelled of starch and deodorant and something else, something not unpleasant at all. For the first time in her life, she wished it would rain. He reached for her hand, but she pushed him away.
You
, she thought,
are becoming too used to getting your own way.

Butterflies were following them. Common as monarchs were, they were her favourites. Some people called them Wanderers because they migrated to Mexico every year against all odds, although it was a mystery how they found their wintering grounds. She knew from an old
National Geographic
article that it wasn’t from memory. Somehow they just knew what to do. There was no record of a monarch living long enough to return to its wintering place the following year.
 

Did monarchs rely on their own instincts and built-in biochemical forces? Or were they led by the moon and the stars? And why? It was 1966, but nobody knew. Did they even have a choice? The returnees might be the grandchildren of the generation who had flown south, their forebears having made the ultimate sacrifice for their descendants, but nobody knew for sure.
 

Whoever said butterflies were free?
she wondered, watching the boldly coloured insects navigate through the tall grass.
 

Liza watched her cousin clear a path for her through overhanging branches. She wondered if he thought about things like that.

Dace seemed mesmerized by the monarchs, too. He tried to catch several in his cupped hands, but they escaped him. “I don’t want to hurt them,” he explained when she laughed. “They’re so free.”

“No, they’re not.” She contradicted him, although she had a feeling that wasn’t exactly what he’d meant to say. “They look free, but they just do what they’re told, what they know. They fly all the way to Mexico just because.”
 

She broke off, hating the way she sounded like a show off. She wasn’t actually convinced he was interested in anything she had to say.
 

“Really?” Dace asked, reaching out and briefly touching her arm. “All that way?”

Liza glanced sharply at him, walking innocently at her side. Was he mocking her? She didn’t think so, but …
 

“Yes,” she said, deciding to continue. He snapped a blade of grass in half with his teeth. “They make their great migration against all odds, blessed with only one advantage: they are partly protected by their body chemistry. As a caterpillar, each monarch feeds on milkweed leaves. The chemicals in the plant make both the caterpillar and the butterfly distasteful to birds. The black and orange markings tell predators about this defence, so the birds didn’t even try. The smaller ones, the Viceroys, mimic the monarchs, so they share the same protection.” She stopped again, afraid of boring him.
Never mind about the Viceroys,
she thought.

He stopped and stared at a brown bump on a low-hanging branch. “Look,” he said. “I almost didn’t see him.”

Liza hesitated, wondering if she should continue sharing what she knew. “That’s a stick insect,” she finally said.
What’s your protection?
she wanted to ask.
By now she knew almost every living creature had evolved a protective camouflage, all except humans. They were far more complicated and varied in their defences. This implied humans had some choice. Was Dace’s secretiveness a protective device, or was he just being bad? He was more complex than a monarch or a stick insect, though. They both were. His behaviour had been learned.
 

As had hers, she thought, her throat aching with unshed tears. She didn’t know for what, except back in the farmhouse kitchen he had looked so sad. It came to her then how much she’d wanted to see him again. What had gone wrong since the last time she’d seen him? Was there no way she could help him? Was there nothing she could do?

Besides burst out of her own skin, that is.

Minutes later they emerged from the tall grass onto a rutted dirt road where pioneer wagons had once rolled. Before that it had been walked by Ojibwa natives. In lieu of pummelling Dace—she didn’t dare—she aimed several vicious kicks at a border ditch of yellow snapdragons, pink phlox, Queen Anne’s Lace and milkweed, watching in satisfaction when silken strands from the milk pods exploded in midair.
 

“Whoa, girl,” Dace said, prompting her to move farther away. She hated the stupid smile on his face. A part of her was still angry at him for ignoring her all afternoon, no matter what his reason.

“Why don’t you get lost on your bike?” she asked, glad she couldn’t see the expression on her own face.

“Well, sure, if you come too. It’s exciting, you know, the wind in your face. You don’t look like the kind of girl who would be worried about mussing up her hair. A little free spirit like you …”

Maybe he wasn’t the one with the problem, maybe she was, she thought, refusing him the satisfaction of an answer. First she’d wanted him to talk to her, and now she didn’t. She would have ridden with him on his bike earlier, but now she was too scared.
When, oh when, were her parents and brothers leaving?
she wondered, smacking a black fly as it buzzed in circles around her head. Dace caught the bug in his large hands and crushed it. She
hated
being stuck here, being at the mercy of her parents’ decisions. At home there were books to read, dreams to dream and, somewhere in the future, a man to love.
 

Clearly she had been mistaken, entertaining fantasies about this boy. It was sad, but it looked like she had nothing in common with her cousin D’Arcy Devereux anymore. Just like she had nothing in common with anybody else here.

She’d asked many times if she were adopted, but her mother had bemoaned her first pregnancy and labour far too many times for her to belong to anyone else. Trapped. Liza was trapped with these people, and there were a hundred or more here today. Why on earth had her grandmother had so many children? She slapped at another insect, a bloodsucking female mosquito this time.
 

Liza just about boiled over with pent-up frustration. She was crammed into the hull of a sailing boat which had pulled to a shore she had never seen. She was sandbagged in a wagon and crossing rough terrain. She was pulled to places no sane girl would visit on her own. Well, the Devereux had immigrated before. All the way from County Wexford, Ireland in 1818. No wonder. If she got the chance, she’d leave her homeland, too. There were lots of other places besides Canada and loads of other people.

“That’s it. We can’t go any farther,” Dace said, motioning at an electrified fence strung on the horizon, just above the small pond. They stopped and stared at the slime-free water and shared the same thought: Uncle Tom had been through here with a back hoe and cleaned up the place. Yellow flowered lily pads floated on the surface, bluish purple pickerel weed poked through bulrushes near the shore, and a Great Blue Heron glided in for a landing on the opposite shore.
 

“Maybe it’s as far as
you
can go,” she said, kicking off her shoes. They fell just short of the spongy earth at the pond’s edge. Briefly she considered pushing him into the bulrushes, but she was afraid of his reaction. He would do something worse to her for sure. She sensed there was something in him waiting to be unleashed. The same thing was in her.
 

A cicada sang in the trees. It was usually a rather pleasant sound, but she found it annoying now. It was too soon, wasn’t it? The bullfrogs sounded even worse. Guttural, almost obscene. Mating, she supposed. As she eased a foot into the cool water, he unbuttoned his wrinkled shirt, damp now under the arms.
 

“What are you doing
that
for?” she snapped, though she was enchanted by the subtle movements of his chest muscles in the sunlight. She blinked, determined to keep her eyes above his waist. Her twin brothers were only twelve. She had never seen a grown man naked. She didn’t want to now. Not even Dace.

“Don’t,” she said, anticipating he would remove his shoes and the rest of his clothes. She squeezed her eyes shut when he did.
That thing.
It was somehow incongruous. And much bigger than she had expected. Almost another entity, in fact. And why was it so red?

He laughed, a changed person, stretching his arms towards the sky, unfettered, free. Like he owned the world, no matter what had happened, no matter what he couldn’t quite confess. He grinned at her, raising an eyebrow. “Let’s go swimming.”
 

She couldn’t look him in the face. “My parents would kill me. I didn’t bring a bathing suit,” she demurred, realizing her continued presence had already implied consent. It was too late to run.

“Uncle Eddie and Auntie Maeve are busy. Eddie’s with his brothers and Maeve’s in the kitchen.”

“My mother’s always in the kitchen.”

“Go behind those old rosebushes and take your clothes off. Everything, little Liza. I promise not to look.”

Hearing the strength in his voice, she almost obeyed. She wanted to, but she couldn’t. Because it was wrong. “Oh, c’mon. I read books,” she said, folding her thin arms across her chest and watching the Great Blue Heron.
 

“Really?”

“Yes, and that’s what all the boys say. Besides, the farm is an
aunt
-hill of relatives today. Somebody might see us. It’s broad daylight, you fool.”

“An aunt-hill. Hey, that’s good.”

“Well, it’s not mine. It’s from Louisa May Alcott’s
Eight Cousins
.”

“Another book, eh? Don’t you want to live life instead of reading? Look, we can’t wait for cover of dark, little darling,” he countered. She couldn’t help but notice his organ, that
thing
, was still doing a salute. “If we come back tonight, the mosquitoes will eat us alive. Besides, what does a girl like you care what other people think?”
 

Glancing at him sideways, she smiled. He had her there. She didn’t care what other people thought about her. She never had. If she had, she would have been in an Italian or Ukrainian clique at school.
 

Besides, the water looked inviting, and he had used an endearment even after she’d called him a fool. He didn’t care what other people thought either. Come to think of it, the two of them had always done what they wanted to do when they were small. And although she had been younger, it wasn’t always clear who was following whom.
Liza
, Dace’s Mom had threatened on more than one occasion,
you need a smack
.

“I don’t know. I don’t like other people knowing my business, that’s all,” she protested. A part of her wanted to oblige him, but she was reluctant to remove her clothes in front of him and lose face. And what if he didn’t like what he saw?

“Me either, although in my case, it might be a little late for that,” he said, staring across the pond, where the Blue Heron had taken up residence on one foot.
 

Liza folded her arms across her chest and groaned. “Oh, here we go again, all cloak and dagger. You’re like the mystery guest on
Front Page
Challenge.
I’m sure it’s all right, whatever you’ve done.”

“Well, I’m going someplace next week,” Dace said, moving closer to her as he talked. “Don’t believe what you read in the
Maitland Spectator
or the
Toronto Star
if it goes that far. My father’s convinced everybody already knows. But I don’t know. Why would they? They don’t want to know stuff like that about me, about one of their own. Still, he’s madder than a hatter. Worse than that, he’s just so
low.
Not that I blame him. Never mind, Liza. But the thing is, I’m not sure when I’ll see a girl again.”

Ignoring his nakedness, she stared him in the face. “But why?”

“You have breasts now. Show me you’re not a little girl,” he whispered, slipping behind her. He unzipped the back of her dress so fast she didn’t know what had happened until she felt cooler air kiss her back. Shrugging a little, she stepped out of the dress and plunged into the water in her bra and panties, just to cover up.
 

“I told you to take everything off,” he said, following. He caught her around the waist and gave her a look that almost scared her. His eyes had narrowed and his mouth looked tighter.