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Chasing The Butterfly

By Jayme H. Mansfield

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Run, 1931




I learned to run that day, really run. I gathered my scattered papers, knocking over the glass holding my new paintbrush. The blue-tinted water pooled around my knees and soaked the hem of my dress as it filled crevices between the stones on our front porch. I ran across the lawn and on to the gravel road leading to the center of town. It didn’t matter that the bottoms of my bare feet stung from the jagged stones.
I couldn’t stop. If I did, I’d never find her—she’d be gone. My long hair tangled
and caught in the tears streaming down my face. Pushing it out of my eyes, it flew out behind me like a windstorm. My pale yellow sundress twisted between my legs and threw me to the ground. I lay there trying to breathe, then pushed myself up, hiked my dress to my waist, and ran full stride down the center of the road. My head was down, determined—running for my life.
I raised my head in time to see Papa’s car swerve onto the soft shoulder and skid to a halt. Except for the strained car engine, there was silence. I froze, gripping the hem of my dirty dress with one hand and my crumpled paintings in the other. Silhouetted by the setting sun, Papa leapt out of the car and ran to me. I tried to focus but my eyes were drowning.
“Ella! What are you doing? I almost ran you down.” Papa wrapped me in his arms. “Your feet are bleeding. Oh, dear God, what happened?”
My lips quivered, and my entire body began to shake.
Papa held me tighter. He sat cross-legged in the road and gathered me into his lap. He breathed hard against my neck. “Did someone hurt you? Tell me, Ella.”
He took my face in his large hands and pushed the tangles of hair from my eyes. My breathing slowed and I felt a momentary calm like the sea before a storm.
“She’s ... I know she’s gone.”
“Who?”
I shook my head slowly from side to side. “Mama.” I stared into his soft, brown eyes. “She didn’t come back,” I whispered the vicious words. “She said she was going to the market after you left for Marseilles. She was dressed up, Papa, wearing her pretty blue dress and red lipstick.” I ran my tongue over my lips, tasting the dust and tears. “I said, ‘Mama, why are you dressed up?’”
"Bet she just wanted to look pretty.” Papa winked an eye and forced a smile.
“That’s what she said. She said, ‘Ella, I want to be pretty again.’"
"Again?" Papa's smile faded.
I nodded. “I told her she’s always pretty."
Papa tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “Yes, she’s a pretty girl, just like you.”
“But I waited for her on the porch all day.” I lowered my eyes. “And I heard you and Mama yelling last night.”
“Your mother and I had a little disagreement. That’s all. It’s fine now.”
“No. She had her travel case. I was coming up the path from the pond and saw her put it in the front seat.”
“Did she tell you where she was going?” Papa stared hard at me.
“I tried to ask but she didn’t stop. I ran after the car as she drove away.” I breathed in deeply and stared back at Papa’s widening eyes. “I tried. I ran fast but I couldn’t catch her.”
Papa squeezed me. “Oh, Lord, she didn’t.” I watched his eyes fill with tears. He pressed his mouth into my hair and whispered her name as though wishing her back home. “Marie.”
But his voice confirmed the truth. I wrapped my arms tightly around his neck and felt a damp spot forming on his shirt as the tears rushed from my eyes.
Finally, he gathered me up and stood to his full height. He turned towards the sun as it cast its final light on the hills. Like many evenings, we watched the color of the hills intensify to a deep crimson. Tonight they looked as if they were bleeding hearts. Then slowly, the color darkened and the hills beat their last bit of life.
Papa carried me back to the car. My body was limp like the injured baby bird I tried to rescue last spring after a windstorm had knocked its nest out of a tree. Opening the passenger door with one hand, Papa placed me gently on the front seat.
“We’re going home, Ella.”
“Back to New York?”
“New York?” Papa’s forehead wrinkled. “Of course not. Why would you ask that?”
“Mama says this isn’t our home.” I whispered.
Papa sighed. “Ella, the farmhouse is our home. Roussillon is our home.”
“But, you told Mama she’d be happy here.” I waited for him to say something, but his open mouth was silent. “Remember, you said we’d live happily ever after in the sweet smelling vineyards and...”
“I know. And the far-reaching lavender fields in the south of France.” Papa’s eyes filled with tears, but he quickly wiped them away with the back of his hand.

As we pulled back into the center of the road, I looked out the dust-tinted window in time to see my paintings spiraling on the side of the road as a gentle wind lifted them in unison. They chased in circles as if trying to catch and hold on to one another. I don’t know when I set them free. Perhaps I let them go the moment Papa also realized she was gone—I knew then my gifts for her would never be received.
As Papa drove slowly down the road, I turned and knelt on the seat so I could watch my papers through the rear window. My paintings danced—beckoning me to return and play some day. As they floated to the ground, they waved a final time, fluttered a last breath, and then lay scattered and lifeless, like the pieces of my seven
year-old heart.

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