This is the second and concluding chapter of Kissing the Butterfly. If you haven't already done so, I recommend reading part 1 as otherwise much of this chapter won't make sense. This chapter describes Katy's life between leaving her brother's house and being picked up by him six years later, as well as bringing her story up to date.
We would like to thank all those many people who have contacted me, urging that we publish this account, this is for you.
Minnie.
**********************
October 2016
The day I opened the door to find my parents stood outside I wanted to scream!
But I didn't, instead I let them in, tried to stay calm. Aunt Frieda led the way into the living area. Mother and father both stopped before sitting and looked around, it was my father that first noticed the canvas print on the wall.
"I hardly think a picture of that nature suitable for a lounge wall!"
"Oh, where do you think it suitable for?" Asked Frieda .
Peering closely at the canvas and presumably seeing the just noticeable labia below the tattoo, my mother answered the question
"A fire, obviously, it's highly offensive!"
"I think it's beautiful!"
Both my parents turned and looked at me.
"I hardly think your opinion is required!" Sneered my mother.
So, that was the way this meeting was going to go, well not if I had my way!
"I think it's a beautiful picture of a beautiful woman, one who is obviously not ashamed of her body, or her sexuality!"
"Well I think it is disgusting, such brazen behavior should be outlawed, and pictures like that burned, whoever took the photograph in the first place should be locked up and the hussy who modelled for it birched!"
So much for my mother's opinion.
My father suggested taking it off the wall!
"I think you are both forgetting that you are guests in this house." My father's sister reminded them both.
An argument ensued about the rights of parents to comment on their offspring's taste, I listened for a few minutes, wondering how my father and my aunt, his younger sister had ever been raised together?
Fed up with hearing my parents narrow minded opinions I asked if that was the reason for this visit, to question Robert's taste in art?
I think it was my father that took the hint.
Between them my parents explained that they had come to offer me the chance of forgiveness, and the opportunity to go home with them. I could once again be part of a good Christian household and the larger Christian community!
FORGIVENESS! I could barely contain my anger, my rage, and to be honest, my amazement.
I rounded on my oh so caring parents.
Why would I be seeking forgiveness, I'd been just a child when I'd felt I had no choice but to leave, I'd tried three times to go back home and been turned away each time, they apparently didn't see the irony in that! And as for the wider Christian community, I'd managed to get a bed for a night of two, here and there, with acquaintances from the church, or friends from school, not that I'd had many, but I'd still ended up homeless and on the street.
"Do you know who took me in, after I'd slept in a shop doorway for two nights? A prostitute, only a common whorehouse prostitute offered me any shelter!"
My mother interrupted my tirade by stating that Frieda had suggested that I too had resorted...
"Yes mother, I too resorted to that, I became a whore, I sold myself to stay alive, do you have any idea how cold it is at two in the morning in a shop doorway? Because I do! And I know the feeling of being pissed on to wake me up!"
I needed to calm down, so I offered to make us all a drink, fortunately the coffee machine that I'd finally learned to use had some decaffeinated coffee to go with it.
As I stood in the kitchen my mind wandered, back over six years to that day.
******************
May 2010
I'd been woken from a fitful sleep, wrapped in old newspaper as added insulation from the cold, I found myself warmer, and wet. A young man was pissing on me, I was soaked in urine as he laughed out loud and told me that that would help keep me warm. He quickly moved away when he saw a couple of policemen coming along the sidewalk. One of the policemen turned out to be a woman and she told me to get up and move, if they came back in ten minutes and found me there I'd be arrested.
I moved on, soaked and stinking of pee I found a sheltered spot behind a car showroom and tried to get some more sleep. I cried myself into a fitful slumber.
The following morning found me tired and still wet at a small supermarket buying hotdogs in a jar, minutes after they had opened. As I came out I bumped into a girl about two or three years older than me. She was very pretty.
She said hello, I said hello, we got to talking.
She was a whore, she freely admitted it, she worked just up the road in what was an unlicensed, therefore illegal brothel. Simply known as a whorehouse. She said they were always on the lookout for young pretty girls like me and that I could do a lot worse.