Glen was the same age as I was when she was thrown out from the third floor
window and then run over by a truck. We’d fought over a boy. Glen tried to tell
him bad things about me and Uncle Rat told me it was fine to get rid of her.
Sal was a girl five years younger than me. She called me a whore. So I shot
her dead. I didn’t have to ask Uncle Rat this time.
All three had good reasons for being killed, good reasons to die, said Uncle
Rat.
***
When bella moth larvae metamorphose into adult moths, they carry their
toxic alkaloids with them. They continue to use them as a means of defense
against predators.
I was eighteen, an adult of the gang, selling all three of the things that I
knew I would be selling, always running away from someone or something: blue
suits, walkie-talkies, sirens, bloodhounds.
I wanted to unzip my cocoon and slip out of it. My adulthood was a mere
continuation of my early years, a toxic cycle I could never break away from–
yet, it also was what the Aunties and Uncles would call survival. Defense. Now
the kids were calling me Auntie.Someone started calling me Auntie Belle after
watching the movie; and again, no one knows for sure who started that. I did not
want to be an Auntie Belle. At first I wanted to be just plain Ursula, but I soon
began to hate both.
But from the very beginning I was meant to be an Ursula, and I was meant
to metamorphose into this Auntie Belle, said Uncle Rat. And I was meant to go
down this lane, no matter how fast it was.
The utetheisa ornatrix, more often referred to as the Bella Moth, is
characterized by bright orange wings with white stripes studded with black dots.
They got me when I was twenty. The orange uniform suited me well. I was
served only the meals that I deserved, and was given a cell just big enough to fit
my body.
I looked out of my cell window and saw a brick wall. It made me smile. It
was my life. My adulthood, my outcome. Nothing had changed, and I was still
the pink grublike baby, the tiny ragdoll looking through the dumpster for food,
the confused teenager loading her gun with crudely manicured fingernails.
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