Dusssie (11 page)

You're brave
, declared the black racers.

But it'sss okay to be ssscard sssometimes
, added the yellow-bellied racer.

The black racers turned on him.
Shut up, you! Even. when Dusssie's ssscared she'sss ssstill gallant
.

I interrupted. “Huh?” Gallant?

Gallant! Bold! Brave, like usss, to go sssee Troy, to sssave Cy.

Oh. Cy.

Okay, it was true, I could have run away instead of trying to help.

And I remembered what Cy had said. That I was a nice girl with my heart in the right place.

And it was true, that I wanted … I wanted good things for people. And I never wanted to hurt anyone.

We are your ssserpents
, put in the indigo snake.

We are usss
, said a green snake,
becaussse of you
.

Then they were all talking at once again.
No hognossse sssnakes on thisss head! No worm sssnakes! No ssslug sssnakes! No vipersss Look at usss
!

I didn't have to. I knew. They were beautiful. Every bright yellow azure turquoise rings shining golden stripes one of them.

Ssso what are you?
demanded the scarlet king snake.

“I'm—I'm Dusie.”

But through their wild spines deep into the bone of my skull and right to the heart of my mind I knew some things now. I knew that my corn snakes were kind because I was. I knew that my king snakes were strong and bossy because I was. And my black racers were bold because I could be bold when I had to be. But also I was gentle like my milk snakes and timid like my yellow-bellied racer and shy like my garter snakes and sweet like my little queen snakes and … blue, bright, funny sunny storm night and day, all of it was in me. So much that didn't depend on a hairdo.

“Oh!” I whispered.

Oh. Oh, my gosh, I wanted to remember this moment forever.

Yet, I still had to kill them.

And it would feel like killing myself.

But what choice did I have?

I was still in the same place, slumped on the bed, when Mom opened the door again. “Sweetie, are you sure you don't want something to eat?”

Something was making my throat choke up so I couldn't talk. I shook my head.

Mom opened the door wider and came into my room. For some reason she'd changed back into her street clothes, and not just any old outfit, either. She wore her best turban, crimson satin, and the rest of her was kind of draped and sashed and scarfed and shawled with crimson and gold and black and sequins and bugle beads and stuff. I guess if you were raised in ancient Greece, you knew how to wrap and drape. She looked like she was going someplace important, and also, even to me, she looked way beautiful.

She said, “Okay, then come on, Dusie.” It was an order, but a gentle one. She put out her hand to me like I was still a little kid. “Come with me,” she said in the same way. “We're going out.”

I stiffened and pulled away from her.

“Dusie, come on,” she repeated. “I'm taking you to meet your father.”

I think my breath stopped for a moment. I stared at her, and she stared back. She said, “It's the only thing I can think of that might help.”

I didn't know whether it would help, but it was the only thing that could possibly have gotten me moving.

I got up and reached for the nearest hat, which was a silver taffeta one. I jammed it onto my head, tucked my snakes into it, and followed Mom out the door.

ELEVEN

We sat silent for what seemed like a very long subway ride. I just slumped and let myself get jounced around. Finally Mom touched my arm to tell me we were pulling into our stop, and I followed her off. At the top of the stairs I breathed deeply of the night air and looked around to see where we were.

Fifth Avenue. Mom turned uptown. We walked side by side along the edge of Central Park.

It took me a long time to work myself up to it, but eventually I asked, “Where are we going?”

Mom took a long look at me but didn't answer. In the streetlamp light I saw her mouth tweak into a Mona Lisa smile. She said, “You look a little like my sister Medusa.”

Of all the times for her to get mysterious and annoying. “Wonderful,” I grumped.

“Before Athena put the curse on her, I mean.” She stared up Fifth Avenue. “And I will have you know that my sister Medusa was exquisitely lovely. Her beauty rivaled that of any goddess. That is why Athena grew jealous and angry, because Poseidon's eyes turned to my sister.”

“Whatever.” Why was she telling me all this ancient history?

“But guess what, Dusie?” Mom turned toward me again, looking for a response. When I just kept on walking, she kept on talking. “Even at the height of her beauty, when she bloomed like a rose, Medusa never felt truly loved. She had many sweethearts, but what if they loved her only for her fair face, her golden hair, her body, and not for herself? Do you see, Dusie?”

I could not keep a sullen edge out of my voice. “Are you telling me I should be grateful to be an ugly snakehead?”

“I am telling you there is little blessing in being loved for the sake of beauty.”

I sighed, wondering how much worse things could get. Mom was supposed to be helping me with my problem but she was lecturing, and now I felt cramps deep in my gut. Great. Just wonderful. Had it been a month already? I glanced at the sky, all linty with stars. Yes, there was the new moon, a thin crescent that looked stuck, like, on a black tablecloth, as if a careless goddess had thrown a fingernail paring there.

“Athena was superlatively beautiful,” my mother was saying, “but she did not feel sure of Poseidon's love. Medusa had sweethearts, but when Athena cursed her to make her ugly, they all left her.”

“Well, snakes for hair,” I burst out, “no wonder!”

“True. And it's no wonder, either, when a man falls in love with a pretty woman. But think of the greatness of the wonder when a man loves a gorgon.”

Oh.

I started to get it, even though I didn't want to.

We walked another dark block before I managed to say, “Are we talking about my father?”

“Yes. There is love and then there is true love. There is the love of a man for a pretty woman, and then there is the kind of love your father gave to me.”

“
Oh,
” I breathed.

Now I was listening.

She started slowly to tell me about my father. “He was not an American.” Past tense; was he dead? “Maybe because of his native culture, he was very different than most American men. He was very intuitive. So intuitive that at times he seemed telepathic.” She gave me a soft glance. “Maybe you get that from him.”

“Huh?”

“Hearing your snakes talking.”

I goggled at her. “So you believe me now?”

“I stopped sending you to doctors, didn't I?” Then she added more gently, “Yes, I believe you.”

Yesss
, whispered somebody on my head.

“Your father would have wanted me to believe you.”

Yesss!

Shhh!

Lisssten!

“He was a remarkable man,” my mother went on. “Most people didn't realize, because he looked ordinary and he did ordinary work, any kind of honest work he could get—but he himself wasn't ordinary. He was a magic man. A miracle man.”

My snakes were very quiet, and so was I. Almost afraid to breathe, afraid she might change her mind and stop talking, I listened with my whole heart.

She told me how she and my father, when they first met, just talked and talked about art, theater, religion, philosophy, ways to change the world. How he had courted her with poetry, addressing his love to her soul. How he had waited a long time for her to learn to trust him.

At Seventy-fifth Street we turned away from Central Park. I am not sure when I began to know where we were going.

“He told me his secrets,” said my mother. “For one thing, he was in this country illegally, and likely to be deported, and if that happened, if he was sent back to his home country, he would be tortured and killed.”

Tortured. Killed. The words gave me a chill. If that had happened to him … but she would never have let that happen to him.

“And, in time,” my mother went on, “I told him my secrets. All about me. Everything.”

There it was. The Whitney Museum. And looking at us in the pale glow of the security lights, from behind the glass of the locked entrance, stood my mother's masterpiece, a life-size stone man,
Beyond
.

“Beyond belief,” explained my mother softly. “My miracle man. Beyond understanding.”

Sssee, Dussie?
whispered the scarlet king snake inside my head, and her thought smelled gentle and peach-colored, like sunrise.
Sssee?

I saw. I had seen him before of course, but then I had not known it was my father who stood there with his soul in his stone-sculpture face—yearning, quizzical, tragic, quirky, and above all, loving. He gazed at me with such love that I started silently to cry, tears slipping down my cheeks.

Yesss
, murmured a chorus of serpents, hushed, like dawn.
Yesss, you. sssee
.

Yes. I did. Although I could not have put into words what it was that I saw. Or sensed, like catching a whiff of cinnamon on the breeze. Or heard echoing faintly from the horizon of my mind, like music from a wild wooden flute.

When I had taken a moment to think, I turned to my mother. “They came for him?” I asked. “The immigration people?”

“Yes. And his peaceful soul would not let me do this to them, not even to save him. So … he wanted it this way.”

I gazed into his gentle stone eyes awhile longer, and when I glanced at Mom again, she was taking off her turban. And oh my God, the serpents on her head—they made my snakes look like pretty little hair ribbons by comparison. Rippling, muscled like weight lifters and thick as cables they reared their viper heads. I took a step back; I couldn't help it. But then I stood still and gazed, amazed: those serpents on my mother's head, every ugly one of them, swayed upward to stretch and yearn toward my father's beyond-this-world face.

I waited around the corner to give my mother a little time alone with my father.

And to give me a little time alone with me. Dusie.

Deep in my belly I felt cramps crawling as if I might give birth to something.

I stared up at the sparkling dark sky.

Then Mom walked up to me, turban covering her head, her face as peaceful as moonlight.

I felt myself smile, looking at her. “Do you come here a lot?”

“Almost every day.”

I nodded, then pointed up at the silver crescent of new moon in the sky. “Is that the maiden moon?”

She looked, and gasped. “I forgot!” she exclaimed. “The Sisterhood!”

TWELVE

By the time we got back to Central Park, the Sisterhood had already assembled. I heard a murmur of voices as Mom and I strode down the winding footpath, then silence when, I guess, they noticed our footsteps approaching. Stepping into the hollow between the three giant boulders, I looked around, blinking in the dim light—but these beings gave off their own luster. The Sphinx lay on her crag as before, her topaz eyes gleaming down at me, her great lion paws flexing so that the hooked claws slid in and out. A Lamia spread her dragon wings on top of another boulder, and on the third one—it had to be Siren, the one I hadn't met before, with a delicate angel face atop huge condor wings. On all of them glimmered a sheen more than just moonlight. Magic.

I knew I needed to be there, yet I started to sweat.

Then I saw others. Aunt Stheno stood beside my mom. Birdwomen—fates, furies, harpies?—perched all around, on rocks and trees and a few of them on the ground, too close to me. Nemesis, the one with ostrich feet, smiled at me as if she might eat me. I wanted to run. My heart hammered. I couldn't think.

Let usss sssee, Dusssie?
whispered a garter snake.

I pulled my hat off, holding it in both hands as if I were hanging onto it for support, and it helped me think of something to say. Facing the lion woman with glittering wise eyes, I told her only a little shakily, “Thank you for the hats, Sphinx.”

Deep in her silky throat she gave a growl—no, she chuckled. A murmur of surprise went around the Sisterhood. Out of the corner of my eye I saw my mother standing next to me, looking at me, wide-eyed. But my snakes, like me, had known for a while. I mean, it had to have been somebody who knew, somebody in the Sisterhood, and who else could read me like the Sphinx? Also, the Sphinx had connections on Broadway, with costume makers. So no big deal.

In her honey-dark voice the Sphinx told me, “Good for you, young Gorgon. But have you yet found the answer to my riddle?”

She'ss ssso inssscrutible
, murmured the smooth green snake, my storyteller.

And ssso golden
, added a pine woods snake enviously.

“I—I'm not sure.” Actually, since Cy had given me the green goo, I had forgotten about the Sphinx and her riddle. “You mean about getting rid of my snakes?”

“Assuredly, yes.”

“Well, um, a lot has happened.” Now that I had managed to start talking, I blundered on, because I felt like I ought to clear up some things with her and the Sisterhood. I mean, I'd sworn to them I was going to get rid of my snakes. “I've met a nice old man, a scientist, and he …” I felt my mother staring at me, which made it hard to concentrate, but I kept going. “He thinks it'll be okay if the snakes aren't cut off but just die on their own. And he's come up with a, um, a metabolism inhibitor medicine. If I put it on them, he believes they'll starve and die.”

Several members of the Sisterhood gasped as if they had won the lottery. And my mother cried, “Dusie, how wonderful!”

Looking at the Sphinx was not easy, but at this point I found it better than looking at my mother. I kept talking as if I hadn't heard Mom. “But I've decided not to do it,” I said.