A Tired Butterfly - short story

Miss Winson was very thin, almost flat in the shape of her shoulders. Her pale eyes were translucent white discs. Every Thursday afternoon, when she came to Velu's Bakery at the corner of Warden and Finch, her green and white rectangular bag dangled on her left arm, which was held stiff and pressed into her side. When Velu saw her, he hurried forward; his eyes darted from rack to rack, calculating in a few seconds what she must want and how he must reach it.

There were two standard items. One was the loaf of freshly baked Sri Lankan bread. The other was six fish cutlets.

Then there were the special extras. Sometimes it was a new piece of cake, at others it was fried snacks like chick peas or strings of dough. Whatever it was, Velu brought them to her attention with the style of a proud mother. He explained them passionately. He offered samples and nutrition information. People came to the Bakery for the quickness of his actions as much as for the taste they could buy.

Miss Winson had known him for a long time now, from when he first came to the bakery as a shy young immigrant. When the bakery was called 'Bakers' Corner' or something like that.

She had just then returned from Sri Lanka where she had worked for two years as a missionary. In Jaffna, when the violence started.

One day, at twilight she was walking with a couple, a husband and a wife. The man walked ahead and the woman walked beside Miss Winson. They were telling her about their children. Two sons and a daughter. In a clever way, the couple had managed to send them to Toronto and the woman laughed as she said how the elder boy had stolen through immigration.

Now they were waiting for their own papers to come through, and there in the orange darkness, they spoke their dreams in the middle of sirens and bombs and landmines and traps. When they turned the street corner, the man who was still in front, stumbled and fell forward and then the pieces of his head spattered the women behind.

Miss Winson tried to drag the wife into a compound nearby, but the woman had a lunatic intensity and she went after the body that twitched on the ground and covered it with her self. Nothing else happened after that, and within a while some people who lived there came and started the funeral arrangements.

A few weeks later, Miss Winson returned home. When she saw the bakery, she stood outside, lost in a different time, in unforgettable colors and smells; she studied the details of the bread, the savories, and the slender, midnight-black young man who seemed genuinely pleased to see her, who cared for and served her as she had been cared for and served in Jaffna. He held doors open for her, packed her purchases into her bag and always wished her with a bright smile. She made the usual comments about the weather or the Toronto transit and sometimes, when she was capable she tried to talk of his country, of where he came from. But Velu did not want to be reminded very much of that and he was brief in his answers.

At about this time, Miss Winson learnt to use a computer and some programs and busied herself in creating various documents for the non-profit charitable agency where she worked as many things, administrator, legal and medical assistant and sometimes an information coordinator. She found the green and rectangular bag at a yard sale and she soon established the routine of her Thursday afternoon visits to Baker’s Corner.

One day, one December, when she went to the bakery, she did not see Velu. At first, she thought maybe he was sick. When more than a month passed by, she asked the owner what happened.

"Velu's gone off to get married, Miss Winson. This is the good month for marriages and his mother found a good bride for him back home. In fact," the man consulted the calendar on the wall which had a picture of several grinning Sri Lankan fishermen displaying their immense haul of fish which looked like tuna, "he must be married by now. They are waiting for the girl's papers. He'll be coming soon."

When Velu returned, Miss Winson congratulated him. He smiled his thanks and brought her loaf and cutlets and packed them with his usual deft, clean strokes.

The next living thing that happened to Miss Winson was the cat. He was sitting on her doorstep, a strong, tall, completely black cat, with a wild bruise on his shoulder. To Miss Winson's surprise he acted with great familiarity. She took him to the vet for his pink and flashy bruise and for some time was extremely busy with nursing him back to normal.

It was quite a human cat, adjusting to her ways more easily than she would have thought possible. But the bruise would not heal; it spread upto his shoulders and even began to affect his good nature. The vet said that nothing could be done and they would have to end the business very soon.

Shortly after, the cat was gone; Miss Winson kept forgetting that – she would wait to give him dinner or she would suddenly run to check if the balcony doors were locked. She tried to think what she could do about her behavior.

One day, when Miss Winson was just finishing a project on drug abuse and popular culture, she was posted to Etimbe, a remote village in Kenya, where there was a severe outbreak of cholera and famine. Miss Winson was housed in a clean and comfortable colonial type of villa. The weather was almost quite pleasant and in the evening there were splendid sunsets. She visited the hospital and the makeshift sheds for the diseased and everyday she watched a human being die.

Sometimes it was a mother and a few hours later it was the child; or it was a man, his sister, his children and finally his wives. Miss Winson’s face created its own expression to handle these situations.

An old woman who managed to stay on for two weeks and then grew stronger and stronger, gave Miss Winson a gift. It was a blue and magenta kaftan.

Miss Winson smiled but her heart was a slab of granite that is cracked and in which the crack is slowly spreading. Finally, she begged for mercy and requested to be relieved of her work; when she was finally released, she drove to Nairobi and took the Saturday flight to Toronto Pearson International airport.

It was the middle of winter. The world was a parade of bare branches disguised in snowflakes. The windchill was breaking records. She came down with a fever and had pneumonia. She almost died.

After more than two months, when her doctor had finally said she could be normal again, she sorted her closet and found the turquoise blue and magenta kaftan that the old Etimbe woman had given her. Miss Winson passed her shrunken hands over the softness of the material and then she carefully slid it over her head.

When she looked in the mirror, she saw that the veins on her face and neck and on her eyelids were bluer and brighter, and so was the redness of the fine blood vessels that lay just beneath the surface of her skin.

She stepped out into the spring day, a tired butterfly, carrying the sunshine in the folds of her kaftan. The bakery at the corner of Warden and Finch had a new name - Vel's Bakery. She pushed against the smudge of finger prints which covered the glass door and came to the counter. Velu was behind the counter talking to the two Sri Lankan women who stood in front.

How much he has grown, thought Miss Winson. His cheeks had spread across his face and his belly squeezed up out of his jeans. A well groomed moustache dominated the once clean shaven face; rings, one with a fairly large, blue gem, were on his fingers, a thick gold bracelet swung on his left wrist. Even his blackness was gone, he was now bleached to a dark brown.

Beside the counter was a little girl about five or six years old, who fixed her big black eyes on Miss Winson. Miss Winson looked away and down at the array of baked items in the showcase. The child's gaze went on unblinkingly.

The two women left with their purchases and Velu, face to face with Miss Winson, opening with his customary, "And what can I...." gasped, "Miss Winson."

"It is Velu?" She said her attention wandering back to the child who stared unbrokenly.

"My niece, Miss Winson," Velu's voice said with pride. "My sister has come with her family. Neeta, say hullo to Miss Winson."

But Neeta took no notice. Her gaze solidified some more; Miss Winson leaned against the counter. In a slightly stern voice, Velu said, "Come Neeta, go in and get me the newest loaf of bread you can find."

When Neeta did not move, Miss Winson shuffled her feet awkwardly and said in a fragile voice, "Maybe she has seen me somewhere."

By this time, Velu had come round the counter.

"Her mother is a country woman. She has not taught her any manners. Please excuse, Miss Winson." His plump fingers applying increasing pressure on Neeta's right ear, he pulled her through the door marked Private in parenthesis.

There was the sharp sound of a slap followed by, "What are you looking at. Why are you so rude? Your mother has spoilt you too much. Do you think it is good to stare like that?"

"It's not my fault. I didn't do anything. I thought she couldn't see, like your mother," Neeta's voice rose and fell as she squirmed in her Uncle's grasp.

Limp within her blue and magenta kaftan, Miss Winson looked around her. She looked at the painless blue sky in the picture on the wall. When Velu returned, he asked, "Is it the usual, Miss Winson?"

"Yes. And that, I haven’t seen that before, have I? What is that, Velu?"

"Shark, Miss Winson. Hot, spicy shark, a great delicacy back home. My wife had the idea for that. The recipe is famous in her village and it’s a very big success since she started. One hour more and it’ll all be gone. Have you ever had shark, Miss Winson?"

"I don’t believe I have, Velu. I am about to try."

"It's really too, too spicy."

"It won't kill me, will it?"

Velu laughed. "No, Miss Winson. Only your eyes will water, your heart will burn, you will turn red. But that’s all, you know."

He deftly punched in her bill. As he arranged her items in a brown paper bag, he said, “Many people don’t eat sharks, Miss Winson. You know why?” Velu lowered his voice a little bit. “They excrete the urea through their skin. But my people, we just cut it out, the skin, cut it out, nice and neat and take only the part we want, the good part and then we have such a great delicacy, who cares.”

“Thanks, Velu. Nice and neat, I will remember that,” Miss Winson said and waved at Neeta who was watching her from behind the door.