Blood Ink

Alex

For the next two weeks, Martina flew high on her mother's love. She could feel her mother everywhere, even smell her in the room when she woke up. Happiness overwhelmed her. No matter what happened now, her mother was always there beside her, a hand on her shoulder.

Martina turned in her next English paper the day after it was assigned. She got an A on that, and an A on her History paper and an almost perfect score on her Spanish vocabulary quiz. She even got an A minus on a math test. Anything was possible with her mother by her side.

The tattoo was unusually quiet . After a bit of tumult, it had settled into the pattern of an old-school, 1940s-style flamenco dancer pin-up – a woman with a simple, severe cartoon face, rocket breasts, and a flowing dark dress, holding two dark clamshells aloft. Occasionally the tattoo blinked––Martina knew this when she saw the blood scabbing over its eyes. 

Her mother made herself known in ways large and small. One day, unprompted, Mr. Dekcart described "the butterfly effect" in math class. The next day, Mrs. Grossman put up a photograph of a butterfly behind her desk. The day after that, Martina was in the library, studying, when she looked outside and saw a butterfly decal on the glass of the window. She had never seen that before.

Martina's father found a gardening club for her to go to on Wednesday nights and Saturday mornings. She went to the first meeting; all the women were older, older even than her mother would be if she were still alive, but they all smiled at her and welcomed her. At the end of the first meeting, they all gave her hugs.

Martina learned, online, that butterflies were attracted to flowers which gave off plenty of pollen and nectar. Bees were, too, but it was worth a thousand scary bees to see one butterfly. She could keep her mother around her always if she only maintained a garden of wild flowers, if she built nesting boxes and brought out red, purple, and yellow flowers for them to enjoy. They would bring her mother to her, so she would never have to be alone.

She saw Dr. Diane once more, near the end of the second week. 

"You seem to be doing better," Dr. Diane said.

"I am," Martina said. "I saw a butterfly – no, I heard someone sing about a butterfly, and since then I've been seeing them everywhere."

"A – remind me the significance of the butterfly again – "

" – When my mother died, she told me that – "

" – Oh, right. Of course."

"I see them everywhere now," Martina said, light shining from behind her eyes. "Somethign had to...snap me out of this funk I've been in." 

"How's school?"

"School's been going well. I've had all As, almost. But I think – I think I might get good grades this semester."

"What do good grades mean to you?"

"I dunno," she said. "Not top of the class."

"Why not?"

"We're almost halfway through the semester already, that's why not. And it's only been a couple of weeks since...before this happened, I never did my homework, I didn't pay attention in class, I just...floated on nothing. But now that mom is always with me, anything is possible. If I keep this up, I might get...B pluses, maybe? A few As, I think."

"And no more sweating blood. No more...no recurrences of those issues."

The tattoo blinked at her shoulder. A manic certainty possessed Martina. She would show Dr. Diane the tattoo – she wouldn't tell her everything, but she would tell her enough. She couldn't tell dad, could she? No – only if she was a threat to herself or others. And a tattoo wasn't a danger, not in that way.