Or any of them.
I felt my heart shrink. “Cy,” I whispered, “I don’t know about this.”
“I’m almost certain it won’t hurt you, Dusie.”
“It’s not that.” I tried to look at him, but I had to stare at the tablecloth instead. I had been thinking about sneaking my snakes into the reptile house at the Bronx Zoo, so they could ogle the pythons and stuff. I had been thinking how I would help them peel off their old skins when it was time for them to shed, and how their new scales would shine. I had been trying to think of some other stories they might enjoy, like, a snake who put his tail in his mouth and rolled like a wheel, something like that. What I couldn’t figure out was how to explain any of this to Cy. Finally I mumbled, “I don’t really hate my snakes anymore. I kind of like some of them.”
“You’ve started to think of them as pets?”
“I, um …” Maybe. I didn’t know. I’d never had any pets except a goldfish.
“Well, that’s very natural, Dusie, but you can’t go getting sentimental about them.” Cy reached across the table and touched my hand to make me look at him. Very serious, he said to me, “Your future is at stake.”
“I know.”
“I’ve tried to keep an optimistic outlook, but truly, you will not be able to live any sort of normal life with snakes on your head.”
He was right, of course.
“Let alone any question of what happened to that Lindquist boy.”
Oh, my God, what I’d done to Troy must never happen again. Never to anyone else. Never ever.
I knew I had to get rid of the snakes.
I knew I had to choose one of them to start with.
But at the same time my mind was thrashing around like a drowning person, and my snakes were so, so quiet. Guys? I appealed to them inside my head. Are you there? I need …
I needed their advice, which was pretty ridiculous, asking my snakes what I should do.
But, get this, they answered me.
We can’t help you, Dusssie, said a corn snake in a voice like morning mist over a meadow, soft and golden.
Just as gently the indigo snake said, Dusssie, you have to do what’sss right for you.
There was a whisper of agreement from all of them. Yesss. Yesss.
We trussst you, said the milk snake.
In a cloud-white thought the scarlet king snake told me, It’sss up to you Dusssie.
And a little garter snake said, We all love you, Dussie. No matter what.
TEN
The rest of that day and into the evening I just sat on my bed staring at the jar of greenish stuff Cy had given me. I hadn’t touched it other than to take it home and set it on my dresser, between my pile of hats and my Cinderella doll from F.A.O. Schwarz. Next to her the green goo looked disgusting. I shut myself in the bedroom with it, closed the door, and wished it had a lock, but I didn’t open the jar of herpetological metabolism inhibitor. I just plopped on my bed, hugged my knees to my chin, and looked at it, trying to figure out what to do about my snakes …
Of course I need to get rid of them. Like Cy said, I’ll have no future.
But the Sphinx has a career. And the others.
It’s not like I want to be president or something.
What do I really want to do with my life?
I had no idea.
But then all of a sudden I did have an idea. I wanted to work with animals. Even though I had never even owned a pet, I wanted to be a veterinarian, or work for one. Or in a zoo or something. Or, I thought, maybe at an animal rescue shelter …
But that’s crazy. All that hair and poop/pee/puke and stuff on my clothes and under my fingernails … If finding somebody to love was all about hair, makeup, and nice clothes, then how did people who do that kind of work, ever …
But obviously they did.
Maybe I was wrong about what it meant to “become a woman”? Or be a girl?
Or even to be human?
Or—or maybe being half-human meant I could be more instead of less?
Like, maybe, being different meant I should stop feeling sorry for myself and start thinking about what I could do? Such as, fight crime?
It wasn’t my snakes giving me any of these ideas, either. My snakes were as quiet as daylight.
But nothing else in me was calm. My muscles ached and my skin sweated salty wet, yet my throat felt dry. My heart thumped. My thoughts flew back and forth like a Ping-Pong ball: I don’t care! I don’t want to be Super Snakewoman. I don’t want to be a reptilehead and that’s final. No, it isn’t …
Do I really want to kill my snakes?
I don’t want to be a cartoon character. I want to be normal, have a life—
But maybe I’m immortal …
So what. Do I want to be like my mother? Wait four thousand years for somebody to love me?
My chest hurt. My gut felt watery. My head ached and my brain started to churn like a washing machine, sloshing so hard I couldn’t think. I mean, I had snakes on my mind in the most literal possible way, and all I wanted to do was crawl into a hole and hibernate until the whole thing went away. I wanted to stop thinking but I couldn’t.
If I get rid of these snakes, does that mean I’m not immortal anymore? Will I get old and die?
I don’t even know if I really am immortal.
What’s the use of being immortal if I hate my life?
But maybe—like, look at Cy …
Cy had lost everybody he loved, yet he had a life and he still loved living. I could do that, too, I knew I could, especially if being half-human meant being more instead of being less. It would be a lot of work, but—
But nothing, I thought, and my anger came zinging back. I’d rather be dead.
Ping-pong went my brain: No, not really …
That’s another thing, I thought, the snakes make me safe. If somebody tries to hurt me, I can scare them silly.
But what if I lose control? I don’t want to petrify people, even partially. I don’t want to hurt people.
So I want to kill my snakes?
No, what I really wanted to do was scream. My heart hurt. I felt bad all over. I mean, bad, as in, evil. Like the way I felt after I semipetrified Troy. Like this kind of thing shouldn’t be happening, something was horribly wrong. Even my fingertips felt bad.
“Dusie?” Mom called when she got home.
I didn’t answer her.
“Dusie, are you here?” She peeked into my room. “Oh, there you are.” I could hear the relief in her voice. “What are you doing?”
Couldn’t she see I was sitting on my bed staring at a jar of green goo? “Nothing, Mom.”
“Do you want something to eat? We could order Thai food.”
Thai food was my favorite, and she knew it. But I shook my head.
Mom went into her room and changed into her silk pj’s and sleep turban. She came back in maybe half an hour.
“Dusie?”
I didn’t answer.
“Dusie, aren’t you hungry at all?”
“No.”
“Honey, what’s the matter?”
“Nothing.”
“Come on, sweetie, what is it? Please tell me.”
“Nothing! I’m okay, Mom.”
She went away, and I sat there and stared at the green goo snake lotion until I wasn’t seeing it anymore. Instead, I was looking inside myself, trying to negotiate some kind of deal between my befuddled head and my aching heart …
Do I need a special boyfriend to be happy?
Yes. I need somebody to love.
And to love me.
But who could love me when I have snakes on my head? What about me would anybody love?
Well, I suppose I’m kind of nice sometimes …
At that point I really felt like I was pretty much nothing but a monster. But then all of a sudden, after all their silence, my snakes spoke up.
Dusssie, ssstop that! the scarlet king snake burst out all fire colors, like lightning had struck.
I felt all my snakes rearing up on my head.
You’re ssstrong, Dusssie! said another king snake.
You’re sssweet, said all the corn snakes at once.
Nice. Gentle, said a milk snake, whispering like white dawn light.
You’re bright, Dusssie! cried the ribbon snakes. You’re rainbow, like usss!
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 h
er 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.
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