“Just living is not enough,” said the butterfly.
“One must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower.”

~HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN~

The master suite guest room is rarely used. We don’t hardly have guests anymore. Grammy Claire used these rooms when she came to visit, but it’s been a year. Yet I can still smell the faint scent of her perfume lingering, against a backdrop of lemon furniture oil.

I spot a dried-out bouquet of roses on one of the bureaus. Dusty petals lay scattered on top of the wood.

The room has a four-poster tester bed with damask drapes that reek of the decade Before the War. I remember Grammy Claire telling me that a long time ago every plantation mistress wanted one of those expensive beds. I guess my great-great-great-grandfather did pretty good at sugar cane if he could purchase such a bed.

The rugs under my feet are worn and thin, the flowers fading inside the pattern. Ancient tables and bureaus and coat racks and gilt mirrors are stacked and shoved everywhere. I let out my breath and pivot on my toes, right smack in the middle of all those dusty, musty antiques.

So where is she? Thought for sure I’d see her bawling her eyes out on the pillows, but there’s no one on the bed. The sheets and duvet are rumpled. The pillowcase looks sort of gray. Maybe all those scratchy noises I heard earlier weren’t Mamma at all. Maybe it was just the automatic sprinkler system coming on. Creaks and groans from an old house with arthritis and a bad case of plumbing.

My bare feet don’t make any noise as I cross the room, jumping softly from one rug to the next.

And then I see her.

The French doors are open, and my mamma is sitting on the upstairs porch that wraps around the back of the house.

“Mamma?” I call out real soft.

She doesn’t move.

I walk closer and see her small figure wrapped in a blue sheet, knees tucked under her chin, eyes behind dark glasses, pale skin, and no makeup. She’s staring at the fountain in the center of the lawn, which makes small gurgling noises. Masses of flowers spread out in five directions in the shape of a star from the fountain’s shushing pool of blue. At least the perennials come back every year, or we probably wouldn’t have any flowers at all anymore.

At the bottom of the lawn, the Bayou Teche runs sluggish and brown. A nutria paddles right down the middle, carrying a branch in his mouth. The rickety slave shacks from Before the War have gloomy black sockets for windows, giving me a shiver.

My mamma used to be president of the Garden Club, but nobody in Bayou Bridge knows she suffers from melancholy, especially since Daddy left us for the glamour of Hollywood and some woman named Crystal. Yeah, like the chandelier. But I realize that Grammy Claire dying hurts worse than my daddy leaving.

“Mamma, you okay?”

She’s so silent my heart grips the inside of my chest like it’s got sharp claws.

I kneel on the planks of the porch to get right in her face, but her eyes are closed behind the sunglasses, mouth turned down like she’s in agony.

“Mamma, it’s Tara.”

There’s a scary moment of silence while I wonder if she forgot how to talk, then she draws out a sigh and nods.

“How you doin’?” Feels like I’m five years old again, scared and small, even though I’m starting middle school at the end of summer. I want to ask a thousand questions, but I don’t think she’s going to give me any answers.

She shakes her head, tight and nervous.

“You been up here since the funeral?”

“Yeah,” she whispers, her voice scratchy like she hasn’t talked in days.

“You got something to eat?”

She shrugs and her thin fingers clutch the chair arms like she’s afraid that lawn chair is going to launch her right over the balcony.

“Bet you haven’t eaten at all,” I accuse her. “Want me to bring you some lemonade? Or tea? Or cookies?”

“Miz Landry’s comin’ later.”

Miz Landry is our once-a-week housekeeper, although she usually shows up more often than that. I guess Mamma might get hungry, but she won’t starve.

I think about Riley making that crack about the Doucet Family Trust Fund.

“Mamma, how can we afford to pay Miz Landry still? I know we’re keeping up appearances on the outside, but what happens if you gotta go to a hospital? How we gonna pay?”

My mamma’s eyes are two dark holes behind those sunglasses, just like the slave shack windows. “A proper-bred lady doesn’t worry about finances, Miss Tara.”

“Well, you know you’re gonna make yourself sick, Mamma.”

“Riley says that, too. Thank goodness you girls are under your daddy’s medical insurance.”

“Riley’s been here?” The words burst out of my mouth. Riley knew Mamma was here all along and never told me? That just irks me so bad I want to hit something.

“Gave her that note so you girls won’t worry.”

I rise to my feet, spittin’ mad. “Riley is a stinking liar! She said you’d gone and disappeared to a hotel and left that note on your bureau! Some days I just hate her to pieces. Some days, I want to run away, too.”

Mamma makes a noise in her throat, and for the first time since I came out here, she turns her head toward me. “Riley’s just — Riley,” she says in a strangled voice. She sounds sick. Tired. Worn-out. I don’t even know what to call it.

I pace up and down the porch, then bang my forehead against one of the peeling white-painted pillars. The sprinklers come on, shooting sprays of water over the grass. I wish I was a little kid again running through the sprinklers while Daddy takes home movies of me in my Barbie swimsuit.

Finally, I go back over and lay my head in Mamma’s lap. I try to see past the dark glasses, staring at her colorless lips and small, pointed chin. “Mamma,” I bawl, clutching at the sheet. “I want Grammy Claire. She shouldn’t have died. It just isn’t fair!”

Mamma doesn’t answer. There’s a wall of silence like I never said anything.

Something catches the corner of my eye and I glance up, my hair sticking to my face in the heat. A butterfly dances along the tops of the elephant ears on the banks of the bayou. It’s small and blue, so delicate and tiny, if I blinked I might miss it. The blue butterfly crosses the lawns and darts around the chugging sprinklers.

“Look, Mamma,” I breathe out. “It’s so darling. So pretty.”

I’ve got her attention. She lifts her chin and looks out. I can see her eyes watching the butterfly behind the sunglasses.

The blue butterfly comes closer, looping over the railing of the porch and then spinning around our heads. It circles Mamma’s chair, and she lets out a tiny gasp. Her lips begin to tremble into a smile.

Time seems to stand still and then the butterfly pauses, as if listening to something in the breeze. Zooming back over the porch, it skims across the grass and disappears down the bayou again.

The spell is broken. Mamma shifts in her seat, pushes my hands off her lap, then stumbles back into the dark room. Throwing herself on the bed, she jerks at the draperies to close herself in like a cocoon.

“Mamma! Don’t! What’re you doing?” I run over and grab her arm to stop her from shutting me out.

She rips off her sunglasses and takes my hand in her cold fingers. Her eyes are bloodshot and puffy and wrinkled. Like she’s been crying nonstop for days.

“Well, haven’t I been crying for days, too?” I cry out. “But I don’t hide away and shut out the world.” Anger builds inside my chest, like I got a ticking bomb inside me. I want to scream and scream, but she looks so frail, and so pathetic, I can’t do nothing.

I pick up one of the empty vases stacked on a table and turn toward the wall, ready to smash it into smithereens just to get her attention. To snap her out of the hateful melancholy.

Mamma gives up on the curtains and falls back onto the bed. “Go on now, Tara. Do what Grammy Claire tells you to do.”

I glare at her. “You know about that butler guy downstairs?”

She nods with her eyes closed. “Riley told me.”

I make a face.

“I can’t help you right now, just go — go!”

She rolls over onto her side. The mound of pillows smells unclean, as if Mamma hasn’t showered in three days neither.

Words shoot out of my mouth like sharp, pointed needles. “Everybody always tells me to go! Go, go, go! You and Riley are the bosses of everything and keep all these secrets, but you don’t care at all about how I feel! Maybe I will go! And maybe I’ll never come back! How’d you like that?”

I pause to catch my breath and realize that the only thing I’m shouting at are the heavy burgundy drapes surrounding the bed. Nothing but a bunch of velvet folds Mamma’s hiding behind. Shouting at my mamma who’s sick, but won’t go to a doctor. Mamma who says she cares, but is so broken she don’t know up from down.

And I’m a girl who never shouts at her mamma. Last time it happened I was four years old and got a mouth full of Ivory soap. I’m so mad I want to spit, too, and I’ve never been tempted to spit in all my life. I don’t know whether to drag her out of bed or slam the door until the walls fall down around our heads.

I decide to storm out.

Don’t even say good-bye.

Except a few last hateful words come flying off my tongue: “Only Grammy Claire cared, and now she’s gone, and I wish you’d died instead of her!”

Silence rings, hovering in the air, buzzing at the molding, curling up the carpet. I’m horrified, and let out a ragged gasp. But I don’t take it back. I can’t. Not yet.

Instead I grab at the knob with both fists, whip the bedroom door open, and crash right into Miz Landry coming in. I’m moving so fast, we smack heads and I see stars and diamonds and little black flecks. Tears spring to my eyes, but I’m so upset at my mamma that I hold in all the dumb tears. I let out a hiccup and start coughing. “I’m so sorry, Miz Landry!”

“Ah, honey, just an accident, darlin’,” she says in her soft, mothery voice. “You hurt, baby?” She holds me, stroking my hair with her thick fingers and gentle way. I’ve known her since I was born. Mamma’s known her since she was born.

I regret yelling at Mamma, but I don’t turn back to apologize. I just want to crawl into a hole myself like she always does.

“Any better?” Miz Landry says.

“I’m okay,” I mumble, my hair falling over my face, not wanting to look at her.

“Think you got yourself a goose egg on that noggin of yours.” Miz Landry shuffles me down to the hall bathroom and gets a cold cloth to press against my forehead. When she opens the cupboard door, it falls off its hinges and clatters to the floor. “Tsk, tsk,” she clicks her tongue. “This house fallin’ down ’round our heads. One day you gonna wake up to rubble and dust surrounding your beds and nothin’ in the pantry to eat.”

I stare at her. “Really? Are we actually poor?”

She gives a snort. “Now I don’t know nothin’, but I know your mamma’s hidin’ here in this house thinking all her problems gonna go away. And they ain’t. That trust fund has gone and disappeared over the years. Shoulda sold out long ago, got rid of all them antiques while they was worth something. Sold off some property.”

“Maybe my daddy can give us some money.”

Miz Landry blinks her big brown eyes. She snorts again and rolls her eyes like Riley. “Oh, Miss Tara, when that happens it’ll be the Second Coming!”

A slow heat crawls up my neck. “But he does! Child support or something, right?”

“I suppose so, child, I suppose. Maybe buys a bag or two of groceries at the Piggly Wiggly once in a blue moon.” She tsks her tongue again and lets out a mighty sigh. “Listen to me talkin’ ’bout your family like this. It’s wrong of me. Sinful. He’s your daddy, and I suppose he’s got some qualities. After all, he’s got two beautiful daughters, right? The prettiest in all of Bayou Bridge and beyond.”

I allow myself a tiny smile, but all my worries rush right over again like a Gulf wave sucking me out to sea. “Oh, Miz Landry, what if Mamma has to let you go? What will we do without you? I can’t leave with that butler if Mamma is gonna be here all alone!”

“I ain’t goin’ nowhere, child. You can count on that. Me and my mamma — bless her soul — been watching over this family of girls for three generations now.”

Miz Landry squares my shoulders and looks me in the eye. “So I don’t want you worrying ’bout anything. You mind me, Miss Tara? You hearin’ what I’m tellin’ you?”

Slowly, I nod, realization washing over me. “Mamma isn’t paying you, is she? Hasn’t been for a while. Am I right?”

Miz Landry stares into my eyes, shrugs her big shoulders, then briskly rubs her warm hands up and down my arms. “Gotta check on Miz Becca and get some food down her and then give her a bath and make sure she sleeps tonight.”

I’m right, but she won’t admit it. Miz Landry been coming here helping my mamma for a long time, and doing it all for free. “You really do love my crazy mamma,” I say softly.

She laughs and her belly shakes a little under her girdle. “That I do. And I loved your Grammy Claire with all my heart, too. And I love you, Tara. Love all my crazy, wonderful Doucet women.”

I have to admit that I kind of like being called a Doucet woman.

“If I have to bar the doors and man the battle front with pistols in both hands to keep this house from being lost to your mamma and you girls, I’ll do it without blinking twice.” Miz Landry takes my cold hands in both of her strong, chapped ones. She leans in real close and whispers, “Can’t help worryin’ ’bout you and Riley going off now. Even if I do trust your Grammy Claire with all my heart and soul. Just remember, Miss Tara, if you need me, I’ll be there in a jiffy. You can count on it.”

I look into her eyes. “Make Mamma get out of bed and sit on the porch every day. And watch out for blue butterflies.”

Miz Landry’s eyebrows jump into her hairline.

I shrug. “Trust me.”

“I’ll do that, Miss Tara.”