The Butterfly Garden by Dot Hutchison

allowed in the Garden once a week, and only under his father’s supervision, though he defied that as often as he thought he could get away with. It didn’t last long, anyway.
    Breakfast was served in the kitchen at seven-thirty, and we had until eight o’clock to eat so Lorraine could get everything cleaned up. You couldn’t get away with skipping meals—she watched us eat and reported it to the Gardener—but one meal in a day you were allowed to be “not as hungry.” If you did it twice, she’d show up in your room to do a checkup.
    After breakfast—except those two mornings of maintenance, when we were stuck behind walls—we were free until twelve, when lunch was served in another half-hour window. Half the girls went back to bed, like they thought sleeping through the days would make them go faster. I usually followed Lyonette’s example, even after she was in the glass, and made my mornings available for any girls who needed to talk. The cave under the waterfall became an office of sorts. There were cameras everywhere, and mics, but the crash of even such a small waterfall made it too difficult for conversation to come across clearly.

    “And he allowed this?” Victor asks incredulously.
    “Once I explained it to him, sure.”
    “Explained it to him?”
    “Yes. He sat me down to dinner one evening in his suite to ask about it, I suppose to make sure we weren’t fomenting rebellion or something.”
    “And how did you explain it?”
    “That girls needed some semblance of privacy for mental well-being, and as long as those conversations kept the Butterflies healthy and whole, why the fuck did it matter? Well, I expressed it a little more eloquently than that. The Gardener liked elegance.”
    “Those conversations with the girls—what were they like?”

    With some of them it was just venting. They were restless and scared and pissed off and needed someone to talk all that feeling from them. They’d pace and rage and pound the walls, but at the end, if their hands and hearts were sore, they were at least a little further from breaking. These were the girls like Bliss, only they lacked her courage.
    Bliss said whatever she wanted, wherever and whenever she wanted. Like she said the first time I met her, the Gardener never asked us to love him. He wanted us to, I think, but he never asked us to. I think he valued her honesty, just as he came to value my straightforwardness.
    Some of the girls needed comfort, something I was not especially good at. I could have patience with the occasional tears, or the tears that came of that first month in the Garden, but when it went on and on and on, for weeks and months and even years . . . well, that was generally when I lost patience and told them to get over it.
    Or, if I was feeling magnanimous that day, I sent them on to Evita.
    Evita was an American Lady, her back inked in faded oranges and dull yellows before the wingtips spread to intricate black patterns. Evita was sweet, but not quite bright. I don’t say that to be mean, but because it’s true. She had the understanding of a six-year-old, so the Garden was a daily source of wonder for her. The Gardener only came to her once or twice a month because she always got so confused and scared by what he wanted from her, and Avery wasn’t allowed to go near her at all. Every time the Gardener came, we all worried that she’d end up in glass, but that simple sweetness was something he seemed to treasure.
    That simple sweetness meant you could go to her, bawling your eyes out, and she’d hug and stroke and make silly sounds until you stopped crying; and she’d listen to you pour your heart out, without saying a word. For those girls, being around Evita’s sunny smile always made them feel better.
    For my part, being around Evita just made me sad, but when the Gardener came to her, she came to me, and she was the one person whose tears I could always forgive.

    “Do we need to get a special needs advocate to