The Truth About Butterflies: A Memoir by Nancy Stephan Page B

sons would always stop by
when they got off work before heading to their own homes, and one by one they
drilled me about the dog.  They looked at my legs; they wanted to know what the
old lady was doing while the dog was attacking me, if she got up to help or
tried to call the dog off.  I told them that the old lady just kept saying,
“You better not hurt my doggy.”
    My mom
worked the afternoon shift, so around midnight she came by to pick me up; we
went home, and the next day was like any other day.  But a few days later, the
old lady’s dog turned up dead.  Its small, white body was lying in her yard
stiff as a board, its leash still around its neck.  Whether my mother and
Katie’s boys had anything to do with it, I’ll never know.  What I do know is
that when provoked, my mother and the boys didn’t play nicely with others.  Up
until that time, the neighbors had called my mother a nigger lover.  After the
dog was found dead, they started calling her a witch.
    All of these
things, my mother had said, were done not because I was Black, which was never
even mentioned, but because people were jealous of me.  Of course, I believed
her.  It made perfect sense that my brilliance and beauty would drive people
mad.  However, I wouldn’t say that my mother’s explanation was purposeless. 
Because of what she told me, I wholeheartedly believed I was just a bit prettier
and smarter than everyone else.  This belief was further nurtured by Aunt
Betty’s insistence to my three cousins, “You boys should do better in school,
like Nancy.” So when I arrived in foster care, I had a very strong, if not
over-inflated, self-image. 
    Other than
issues with racial identity, I was a rock-solid eight-year-old girl.  I had no
concept of racial barriers as I had no concept of race.  I’d never been taught,
like many Black children were, that I could be whatever I wanted, that I could
go to any college I wanted, that I could hold the sun in my right hand while
shaping the moon with my left.  For me, these things went without saying.  That
the world was my oyster was simply a given.  Had I suffered with self-esteem
issues, my transition into foster care, as well as into a new culture, would
likely have had a very different outcome. 
    After what
seemed like an eternal afternoon with Erma Lee, the other foster children
arrived home from school.  Around five o’clock, her husband came in from work. 
When he came in the front door, the other kids rushed to greet him, calling him Paw-paw ! 
    “Hello!
Hello! Hello!”  He patted them on their heads.  Then he turned to me, “Hello,
little girl.”
    “Hi.”
    “What’s your
name?”
    “Nancy.”
    “Nassy?”
    “NANCY.”
    And he
repeated it under his breath a few times, “Nassy, Nassy, Nassy…”  I was annoyed
that he wasn’t pronouncing it correctly, but my annoyance gave way to
fascination; I’d never heard of anyone being called Paw-paw .
    In the course
of an otherwise uneventful October afternoon, I had moved in with a Black
family, was told that my womanish behavior was unacceptable, and was informed,
contrary to my own unanimous opinion, that I myself am Black.
    Though it
didn’t take long for me to come to terms with being Black, I had a very faulty
understanding of Black-White relations.  Because it’s not something we learned
in school, like The Boston Tea Party, I had made assumptions about the
country’s racial state of affairs.  As a 4 th grader, if I had to
write an essay on slavery in America, it would’ve read like this:
    A long
time ago, the Blacks and Whites in America got into a war, and the Whites won. 
Therefore, the Blacks had to become their slaves. 
    Then
after many generations, the government realized that slavery was wrong and
outlawed it, but the Whites wanted to keep their slaves, so they did horrible
things to Black people. 
    The
government still refused to bring back slavery, and that’s why Whites hate
Blacks to this