When Women Were Dragons(103)

I did this, I thought. I am doing this. I tried to keep my thoughts on the present. But it was difficult.

“Hi, Beatrice, honey,” Sonja said.

“Nice to see you too,” I said. Beatrice walked right past us. No hug. No thousand stories. No impromptu songs. She didn’t leap onto rocks or pirouette on park benches. Her dragon aunties had combed out her curls and wound them into two tight buns on the sides of her head, like a Valkyrie, into which Beatrice had stuck four pencils, two crayons, six markers, and a compass. I was surprised her toothbrush wasn’t in there. Beatrice scowled and kept walking home without a word. Her eyes got dragony with emotion, but returned to normal before I said anything.

How many times had I begged her to refrain from dragoning at school? And for what? Was it worth it? Beatrice sniffed and rubbed her eyes. Golden scales appeared briefly along the back of her neck and vanished.

I had three dragons in my physics class and another four in my Western civ recitation. There were dragon student workers in the library and several in the nuclear engineering lab and at least two professors who had dragoned in the middle of their lectures at some point in the semester and had simply returned to their notes and proceeded as normal. How many times had I wanted to tell Beatrice all of this? Nearly every day. But I didn’t want to confuse her, so I kept this information to myself, which made her feel more alone.

“Would you like to stick around for a little while?” I asked. “It looks like some of your friends are playing in the playground.” I wasn’t actually sure if those were her friends. I realized with a start that she hadn’t been playing with other children lately. “Sonja and I could play too.”

“No, thanks,” Beatrice said. Her normally active face was leaden and slack.

“Oh. Okay,” I said, trying as hard as I could not to sound hurt, but clearly failing. “I’m sorry you had a hard day.”

Beatrice glared again. Dragon eyes. Dragon mouth. They went back to normal. “I didn’t. It’s just . . .” She looked at the ground. “The other kids in my class don’t have their big sisters walking them home. Like babies.”

Sonja squeezed my hand and let go. She put her arm around Beatrice for a moment. “You know, Beatrice, I was planning on walking home with you, but I completely forgot that I have to help my grandmother move something very heavy.” She caught my eye and raised one eyebrow. Sonja was always a particularly perceptive person. Far more so than I ever was.

She leaned over and kissed my cheek. “You two have a lot to talk about,” she whispered, her lips brushing my ear. My skin buzzed, heating me through. And she walked away in the snow, her touch lingering on my body, like a ghost.

Beatrice gave Sonja a brief wave, and then stumbled forward under the weight of her backpack. I leaned over and hoisted it off her shoulders and carried it instead. “I’m sorry, Bea,” I said. “I keep doing everything wrong.”

“It’s fine. Just forget about it. I want to walk by myself.” She quickened her pace to walk ahead of me. I didn’t try to match it. I just let her walk on, observing the upward thrust of her step, the slight arch to her back. As though she was waiting for the moment that her wings would simply erupt. Waiting for that moment to fly away, unhooked from the limitations of gravity, her silhouette etched against the sky. I knew what it was like to be left behind—when my aunt dragoned, when my mother died, when my father shunted us into that apartment and didn’t look back. Each left a gap, a lack, a hole in the universe where love should be. What would it be like for me if Beatrice left? I imagined myself standing on the ground, watching for her—craning neck, shaded eyes, a squint creased permanently into the face. Was that what my life would be?

When we arrived home, Beatrice wrenched the heavy steel door open with surprising strength and ran toward the stairs, pausing briefly to look back at me, point, and say, “Don’t follow me,” and after a pause she added, “please,” and then sprinted away. I could only watch her go.

Dragons were protesting all over the country. So too were the families of dragons. And the supporters of dragons. And what was I doing? I went into the great room and found everyone hard at work, baking bread and shaping cookies and marinating the meat. They sang carols and encouraged one another.

I listened as Beatrice stomped up the rickety stairs and slammed her bedroom door behind her. I leaned against the brick wall and slid my bottom down to the floor. I rested my chin on my knees and did my best not to cry.

My aunt looked up and noticed my face.

“Alex,” she said. “Alex, honey. What’s wrong?” The other dragons stopped what they were doing. They wiped their paws on towels and surrounded me, their faces flooded with care and concern. My family. Of course I couldn’t do this alone. Of course I needed to discuss it with them. I sighed, and I reached out and put my hand on Marla’s paw. She squeezed my fingers.

I rested my chin on my knees and pulled my ankles close to my body. “Ladies,” I said. I stopped and shook my head. “I mean, my darling aunties. If you could have stopped yourself from dragoning—you know, like a switch—would you have done it?”

Marla made a sound as though she was kicked in the stomach. She crossed her forelimbs and turned away from me.

“What about you, Jeanne? If some doctor showed up and said, ‘Here’s some medicine to make you un-dragon!’ Would you take it?”