Dusssie (3 page)

Was
she a murderer? If it was self-defense? Was
I
a murderer? Maybe not exactly, even though I felt like I was. I mean, I hadn't known what was going to happen at the time. It was basically an accident, manslaughter or something.

We sssaved you
, complained a snake inside my head.

Show sssome gratitude
, added another.

“Shut up, creeps,” I told them. I hated them; I hated everything—
why
hadn't Mom warned me what might happen?

I knew the answer to that one: because she hadn't wanted me to know about—about her.

Because she didn't want me to know what she was.

And what she wasn't.

The more I thought about it, the worse I felt. We rushed along hard sidewalks leading deeper and deeper into confusion, and I just stared at the concrete. I felt so hopeless.

Finally we reached a corner near my school. Flashing lights—red, blue, white, yellow—caught my eye.

I looked up.

And almost screamed. Mom grabbed my wrist, stopping me where I stood and silently warning me to be quiet, her fake fingernails digging into my skin.

So I just stared—at two NYPD cruisers with their light bars blinking. And a rescue truck. And an ambulance with
its
flashers going. All pulled up zigzag at the mouth of the alley where I'd dumped Troy.

“Is that where …” Mom whispered.

I nodded.

“Too late,” she breathed. “Somebody must have seen.”

I stood there as if Troy had turned
me
to stone.

“Come on. We don't want them to notice us.” Mom tried to tug me away.

But just then some guy let out a yell from inside the alley. Even half a block away, we could hear him. “This thing has air going in and out of its mouth!” he shouted.

Mom gasped. I whammed both hands over my own mouth to keep from screaming out loud.

“What the hell?” one of the cops yelled back. “It's just a stone—”

“It's stone, all right, but its mouth is open and it's breathing. I can feel the air moving. Get the ambulance over here!”

“You're crazy.”

“No, he's not,” said a different voice, a medic, maybe. “There's a heartbeat. This thing is alive!”

By evening I felt so schizo glad, sad, mad, bad, and scared I had turned off my cell phone so my friends couldn't call anymore to tell me about What Had Happened—I couldn't handle talking with anybody, not even Keisha or Stephe. I couldn't stand to watch the news anymore, either. It was
so
all about Troy, who was lying in NYU Medical Center with a dozen specialists trying to figure out what was the matter with him.

“Mom, can we turn it off?”

“… hospital spokesperson has now confirmed,” the anchorwoman was saying breathily, “that SoHo teenager Troy Lindquist has suffered some unknown disease, accident, foul play, or possibly even terrorist attack that has partially turned him to stone. While the mysterious incident has left his internal organs functioning normally, externally his entire body is now composed of a porous form of white marble, leaving him unable to move, eat, speak, or …”

I'd heard it a dozen times. “Mom? Off? Please?”

Perched beside me on the sofa, leaning toward the TV, she shook her head. “Not until I'm sure nobody saw you.”

“Look, they
said
—”

“I know.”

They had actually interviewed the kids. Friends of Troy's on their way to school had recognized the “statue” lying in the alley. When Troy hadn't showed up for homeroom, they had told the teacher, and she'd thought they were talking about a body or something, so she'd called 911.

“… stone clothing and shoes inseparable from the stone of his skin,” the anchorwoman was saying. “His fingernails, hair, and eyes also appear to have been turned to stone. While it is assumed he cannot see, his brain scan indicates heightened mental activity. There is no indication yet as to whether his condition might be contagious or criminally induced. The mayor is assembling a special task force to determine the cause of this unusual circumstance, and meanwhile, the governor is urging citizens to stay calm—”

“Mom, please.” I wasn't staying calm. I started to shake again, like I'd been doing off and on since the “incident.” One minute I'd feel
so
glad and thankful that Troy was still alive, which Mom said had never happened in her case. She thought it must be because I was half-human that I hadn't completely turned him to stone, just petrified his outer layer. But then the next minute I'd feel awful, because how was Troy supposed to live like that? I mean, they had drilled holes in him for tubes to feed him and stuff, and he couldn't even blink his blind eyes to show whether he knew what was happening. Poor Troy, they
had
to find a way to make him better.

But then—this was what scared me—if they
did
help him and he got better, what would he tell them?

If they found out about me, what would they do to me?

I trembled so hard the sofa shook.

Now the TV screen showed a middle-aged man and woman with rainy gray faces. “The afflicted teenager's parents have agreed to be interviewed.”

I closed my eyes and hid behind my hands.

What'sss the matter with her
? a snaky voice complained in my head. I felt crawly movements on my scalp—but also a movement beside me as Mom reached for the remote and killed the TV.

Silence, except for the ragged sounds of my own sobbing. I hadn't even realized I was crying.

Mom put her arms around me, but I stiffened and pulled away.

Mom's arms fell into her lap like I'd shot them down.

Silence.

Then, in her most controlled voice, “It's not your fault, honey,” Mom said.

“I don't care.” I wanted to tell her it was all
her
fault, actually, but I didn't. “I've got to help him.”

Isss she crazy?
somebody hissed in my mind.

Mom said, “You can't. Dusie, have some sense. You can't let them find out about us.”

Us.

Oh. Oh, my God.

If they took me away, they'd take Mom, too.

No.
No
. None of this could possibly be happening.

But it was.

As if something were choking me, I could barely talk. I whispered, “But, Mom, I have to do
something
—”

“What can you possibly do that will make any difference for that boy?”

I shook my head. I had no idea.

“Dusie, look at me,” Mom said.

When Mom told me to do something and she really meant it, I couldn't
not
do it. And this was one of those times when she meant it. So I faced her.

My mother. Like a classical sculpture. But not stone. All too alive, with deep, deep eyes. Something in those depths I could not read.

“Dusie,” Mom told me, “You have to accept the way things are for you now. You'll come to see the good side. Being my daughter, you have a very long life to look forward to.”

Oh,
terrific
. “Look
forward?
” I almost screamed. “Putting people in the hospital? With snakes on my head?”

“Honey, you'll learn to cope with your—”

I put my hands over my ears, loathing her. She wasn't a great sculptor. She wasn't anything she'd let me believe she was. Her whole life was a humongous lie. She wasn't even—
my mother
wasn't even
human
. I hated her worse than ever, yet I needed her so bad I couldn't stand it.

I jumped up and stamped my foot so hard it hurt. “Mom,” I begged, “what are we going to do?”

But I already knew she had no answers for me. Because she wasn't my perfect parent anymore.

Sure enough, she said, “I don't know.”

“Mom—”

“Sweetie, I don't know. I never had a daughter before.” A tear rolled from each eye. And Mom never cried. Never. But never say never. “All those years,” she said, “and I never had a child.”

“Please,” I whispered, because she had always been so strong, her pain hurt me even more than I was hurting already.

“I think we need to go to the Sisterhood,” she said.

THREE

At midnight we strode into Central Park. “Don't be afraid,” Mom told me.

“Of what?”

She didn't answer, just kept walking. She was wearing an emerald silk gown and a matching headdress that framed her Greek-goddess face. I just wore a thin scarf over my snakes, and they coiled close to my scalp—because of the cold, I guess. I mean, I'm a city girl, and what I knew about snakes was mostly from horror movies, but it seemed to me I'd heard something about snakes sunning themselves. They were reptiles, not like me, and they didn't do cold very well, apparently. They were finally silent.

“Don't be afraid of what?” I insisted, so bummed I didn't really care; I just wanted to argue. “Gangs?”

But Mom actually chuckled. “Testosterone-prone youths are the last thing we have to worry about.”

“Unless they're carrying mirrors and swords,” said another voice. By the pale light of a thin moon, I saw a tall woman step out from between the trees to walk on the footpath by my side.

I said, “Hi, Aunt Stheno.”

“Sis, I don't want to hear another word about mirrors and swords,” said my mother in knife-edged tones. “Get over it.”

“I'll never get over it! The three of us living peaceably at the very end of the known world, minding our own business, and that Perseus comes after us like—”

“I don't want to hear it!” Mom barked.

“Dusie has a right to know.” Aunt Stheno stopped walking and grabbed my arm, turning me to face her. “Like a trophy hunter on safari, that's what, and for no reason except that we were accursed to be ugly. ‘Ew, Gorgons, let's go hunt them,' as if it were the same as bagging a warthog or a rhino. Kill a Gorgon, take the head home to Athena. He—”

“Stheno,” said Mother with iron in her voice, “that is
enough.
”

Aunt Stheno turned away and strode on. “Hurry up. They'll be waiting,” she grumbled.

She and Mom walked so fast I had to trot to keep up, as they led me along a winding path to a secret place between three giant boulders. There they stopped. Looking around, at first I saw nothing except the zigzag silhouette of the Dakota building in the distance, rocks all around and bare trees holding the sickle moon in their twiggy fingers.

“Greetings, Medusa,” said a voice overhead. I looked up and gasped as an angel, no, a monster—a birdwoman—flew in and thumped down to stand beside me on scaly clawed feet that would have looked better on an ostrich. “Sorry,” she told me, seeing that she had frightened me. “I don't get much chance to fly anymore. Daytime, I—”

“Greetings, Medusa,” interrupted a honeyed growl from atop a nearby craggy stone. I jerked around to look. A woman's head stared at me with glittering topaz eyes, her chin resting on her—paws. Great golden, clawed paws. Lion paws.

Even before I felt Mom's knuckles nudge me in the back, I knew that this was what I was supposed to not be afraid of. “Greetings, Sphinx,” I said shakily.

A ripple of womanly laughter, approving and amused, washed around me. On top of another boulder I saw something with the head and arms and breasts of a woman but the body of a huge, thick snake. Atop a third boulder I saw a woman standing on all fours, her hands serving as forelegs, her haunches those of a dragon. And flying down out of the crescent moon came another birdwoman, this one with spiky white feathers around her neck. And then another, spreading black wings, and more, landing on the rocks or standing between the trees until I lost track of how many, until I heard my mother saying, “Are we all here?”

“Siren can't make it. She has a gig,” somebody said.

“She's a nightclub singer,” Mom said to me, and then she started making introductions as if this cold, moonlit hill were our living room and I had walked in while she was having some friends over. “Everyone, I'd like you to meet my daughter. Dusie, sweetheart, take your scarf off.” She wanted them to see the evidence, I guess. Pressing my lips together to keep from saying anything rude, I yanked the covering off my head, but my snakes just huddled on my scalp, cowering. Which was pretty much what I felt like doing at the time.

“Everyone, this is my daughter, Medusa,” Mom announced. She turned to me. “Honey, you've already met Sphinx—she's a Grecian sphinx, not Egyptian, and she's a Broadway consultant. And here are the Lamia sisters.” Mom nudged me toward the serpent woman and the dragon woman, both of whom nodded at me. “They are performance artists. It's not a coincidence that we're all here in New York; many of us are members of the artistic community.”

I heard Aunt Stheno mutter, “As if I'm a sculptor?” Aunt Stheno worked as a bookkeeper. But all of a sudden I realized that probably some of Mom's “works of art” were really Aunt Stheno's petrified people. I mean, she used to do it, too, right?

Or maybe—maybe she still did?

“Stop,” I whispered to myself, feeling like I couldn't take much more.

Mom continued as if she hadn't heard. “The Eumenides sisters. Nemesis is a member of the American Academy of Poetry.” Turning to me again, she smiled at the winged woman who had landed first, and I winced again at the sight of those big, scaly bird feet with thick gray claws.

She must have seen me looking, because she said, “It's amazing what you can hide under a caftan.” Her voice was ancient, as dry and warm as bones bleaching in the desert sun.

I blushed so hotly that my snakes squirmed. “Um, excuse me,” I whispered.

“Not at all, little daughter. Take a good look, and be grateful for your own pretty feet.”

“And be grateful you don't have wings,” added the Lamia with the dragon tail and, yes, bat wings.