Chapter Text
"Maybe I love him. I get butterflies when he looks at me...I get butterflies when he don't."
From earliest memories of mama and daddy's warm embraces, to the things I wondered about late at night in bed, I remember wanting to know about love. I suppose that is to say, I was like every other girl. I would whisper with my friends—daring hushed exchanges of unsubstatiated hearsay—and read books about brave heroes and blushing damsels and wonder if I would ever get to experience it for myself.
In a world of arranged marriages and convenient coupling, the very notion of being swept off my feet felt more like one of those feminine reveries than an actual possibility. Little did I know that the journey west, with all of its perils, would bring with it opportunity first in the form of a cheeky, blue-eyed cowboy.
When he approached me, all bluster and show, and using his best lines, I realized how easy a game flirting could be, our banter as natural as breathing. What astonished me most, however, was the power it gave me; nervousness radiated off of him when we'd speak, and with a single word I realized I could make his day wonderful or terrible, I affected him so deeply. More often than not though, I simply teased him, never letting him have the last word, but never going far away. Ennis made my heart soar in a way I had never experienced before.
How quickly his attentions took root in my mind; even as I feigned ambivalence those first days, I found myself caring for my appearance in a different way. It was as if I was seeing myself for the first time. But instead of thinking on how tidy my hair was, or how straight I was standing, or which rule of etiquette I was forgetting, I took note of the pink on my lips after I had bitten them, the sway of my hips as I moved in the saddle, the way my hair felt as it brushed across my skin; the things well-bred ladies shied away from.
Knowing his gaze followed my every move made me feel beautiful and sensual, and I wanted to chase this foreign feeling as much as I could, now that the prairie afforded me the freedom civilization had not.
Ennis brought with him a buzzing sensation, one that ran up my spine and radiated to my limbs. He was everything: handsome, rugged, quick, charming, and I couldn't get enough. The coveted butterflies, those that I had only heard rumors about, fluttered like mad in my stomach when he looked at me, but were even worse when he did not. It was as if my entire body was on high alert, too excited and nervous for this new frontier to deny itself even for a moment of rest. I was like a child on Christmas morning, and he was the best present I had ever gotten.
In hindsight, I suppose, our first kiss had not been as flawless or sparkling as my younger self had envisioned in fanciful moments, but I would not have changed a thing about it. The way he looked at me in the moonlight made me feel like my heart was going to pound right out of my chest; but in my bones I knew this was simply a natural continuation of our relationship, and my curiosity had no inclination stop it, so I began to sing to the cattle once more, thanking the cover of darkness for hiding the blush creeping up my cheeks. It was as if nothing else mattered; it was just him and I in that moment.
"Do it again."
What a foolish thing it had been to say, but it fell from my lips before my mind caught up to my body. I never would have thought that something so primitive as putting your mouth to a stranger's could so completely change the way you perceived the world; it was as if I had been living in shades of gray, and only just now found true color. There, on that hill, that night, I fancied I could spend my whole life kissing this boy.
I remember trying to explain to my mother the way I felt for Ennis, but found myself lacking the words. How did I explain the gooseflesh that prickled when he was near? The intoxicating allure of kissing him? How my only desire when he held me was for him to hold me tighter? I knew it was impossible to do in a way that my mother, who viewed me as her child, could understand. She saw my newly blossoming womanhood as a dangerous thing, something to regulate and smother until it resembled a proper Tennessee courtship.
The wisest advice she gave me was that day bathing in the creek; she told me to follow my heart. Of course, I suppose she hoped I was still, at my core, the Elsa she knew: the pianist, the polished young lady who enjoyed bending the rules but would eventually succumb to her role as "woman" in conventional society. The way she had.
But I was already metamorphizing into something new, like the butterflies in my stomach, that started off as helpless little caterpillars only to become wild and beautiful.
Her words had given me a confidence in myself and my feelings for Ennis. My heart never deceived me before, and it told me to go to him, to experience that elusive, secret thing that couples did under blankets, in the anonymity of darkness.
I did not fear the unknown, because fear didn't do anyone any good out here. Fear got you consumed by the land: bitten by the snake, and drowned in the river, and I would not be consumed. Looking back, I realize that it was easy to allay the worry that tried to make its home in my belly, because the person I chose to share the experience with was just a boy in my mind, a wonderful, wonderful boy. To hear that he was as virginal as I was had been as surprising as not, and I loved him for it.
Much like our first kiss, love-making with Ennis had been as perfect as it could have been. Two people, drawn to each other like magnets, feeding off of the feelings that they inspire in the other, lost in the exhiliration of closeness. I did not notice the hard ground against my back, or the sting of pain at our union. Neither of us had the experience to know if something was missing; all that mattered was that I had reached what I believed to be the pinnacle of womanhood, with the only boy in the world I wanted to share it with.
He was gentle and depthless, like the butterflies he inspired in me. Floating into my life on a turn of the wind, he just happened to land on my shoulder. Everything about us was here and now, and I had not truly imagined our future in any solid terms until the day it was no longer a possibility.
After his death, I realized I had done little but seek my own violent end. I had not known how grief could twist your heart until it felt as if it were going to rip apart. Hollow inside, my brightly-colored world was again a dreary wasteland, and I a phantom watching as it went on around me. I was one of the privileged few who had never felt the icy hand of death touch someone dear to me, until Ennis.
The idea of loving another seemed impossible in my solitary numbness. I ate, slept, and breathed, but it was as though my heart couldn't bear the thought of one more emotion, and chose instead to withdraw into itself, especially with the cramping in my gut that served a painful reminder that I would not be bringing any part of the man I loved into the future with me.
I had no notion of how many hours or days passed; my grief had no use for timekeeping. It felt like I was lost inside a shattered part of myself for eternity before someone spoke a language I could understand. And a deep part of my heart, secret even to myself, was happy to be soothed by Shea's words about grief and loss, and sharing little pieces of soul. It allowed me to begin filter to the color back into my world.
It allowed me to recognize my husband's face when I saw it.