When Women Were Dragons(34)

Once we finished her yard, we tramped over to mine, singing at the tops of our lungs. What had gotten into us? Neighbors peeked through their curtains, shaking their heads and sucking their teeth. We rested our arms on each other’s shoulders, our heads tilted inward, our cheeks nearly touching. I wasn’t much of a singer, but I belted out every song I knew, and felt the melody vibrate along the length of my bones. Sonja’s arm slid down around my waist, holding me tight. It felt so good, so good, I thought, to have a friend.

Sonja waited in the front yard as I went around to the shed to find rakes, my heart thumping pleasantly as I raced back. We had a wide oak tree in the side yard and two maples in front, which meant that the leaves were thick and plentiful. Beatrice came out with her rubber boots and crocheted sweater and took great armloads of leaves, throwing them at the sky. We built a mound of leaves the size of a Ford truck.

“Jump in!” Beatrice yelled, but then she started sneezing and my mother called her inside. My mother was always admonishing Beatrice for nearly catching her death of something.

Sonja and I looked at the pile of leaves. Her hair glinted in the October sun. “Ready?” she said, sliding her hand into mine. The breeze made the empty tree branches groan and stirred up the leaves on the ground, making them spin and twirl around our feet. The air was sweet, and damp—the smell of apples and soil and pleasant rot and everything that once was green loosening and falling and giving itself over to the ground. My breath caught, and I had no words. I just squeezed her hand and we ran, leaped, and landed in the papery softness of color and dust and light.

How do I pin down a memory like this? How do I know how to shelve it or categorize it? It felt impossible to me then, and it feels impossible to me now.

This is how I remember it:

The sky was so blue it broke my heart and the world smelled of something beginning. We landed in the leaves, which pillowed around us. There were leaves in her bright hair, framing her face. The empty branches held up the sky. I remember how they curled around her head like a crown as she leaned over me, catching my arms and telling me I was her prisoner, and oh, Sonja, what a willing prisoner I was! I remember rolling in the leaves, the whispery rustling sound they made beneath me and the paleness of Sonja’s arms next to the dirt on my own, and the delicacy of Sonja’s tapered fingers next to the stubby brusqueness of my own, and Sonja’s cheek against my cheek and Sonja’s hair in my hair and Sonja’s mouth brushing against my mouth, and oh, Sonja, Sonja, Sonja.

And then she screamed.

My father, standing over us, had grabbed her by her upper arm and wrenched her to her feet.

I remember Sonja’s face as she was pulled away—a harsh, livid picture of astonishment and fear and pain. I reached for her, but my father was too fast and my hands clasped at nothing.

“Time to go,” my father said.

“But,” I began.

“Time to go,” he said again, taking great strides across the yard as she stumbled behind.

And he took her away.



I wasn’t allowed to see Sonja for the rest of that day. Nor the day after. Long days passed.

“When?” I pleaded.

“Never,” my father said, his voice quick and final, like a slap.

I told my parents that I would just sneak over, but they informed me that Sonja’s grandparents also would not allow it.

“Why?” I asked. The room swam. My eyes swamped. My breath was sharp and heavy in my chest.

“You’ll understand when you’re older,” my father said as my mother stared at her hands.

My father sent me to my room.





17.

My parents grounded me for two weeks. My mother walked me to school each morning and met me on the school steps at the end of the day. I trudged in sullen silence, my hands shoved in my pockets and balled into fists. I would not look at her face. She never once attempted to engage, which just enraged me more. Other kids at school paused and stared when we walked by. No one else had their mothers pick them up. We were in eighth grade, after all. We were practically grown. They knew that the only reason she would do such a thing was because I had done something terrible. None of them could imagine what it could possibly be.

I still didn’t understand it.

At home, my mother set me with arduous and pointless and futile tasks. Scrubbing the grout. Sweeping and dusting the basement. Buffing the chrome fixtures. Polishing silver flatware that we never used, and honestly, what on earth was the point. Washing the windows until they gleamed.

She tied a new knot around my wrist, abandoning the yarn, and opting to use a thin length of leather cord instead. It was stiffer than the yarn, so it took longer to tie. Also, it smelled weird. I wrinkled my nose. The leather took effort and tenacity to set in place. It felt like it was meant to stay.

“What’s this for?” I asked her.

She shrugged. “It’s just a knot.”

“Can I take it off?”

“No.”

“So what’s it for,” I asked again.

“It’s pretty, don’t you think? Look. Beatrice has one, too.” Beatrice worried at hers as though it itched, but didn’t take it off even though she clearly wanted to. If there’s one person on earth she loved more than me, it was my mom.

Our mom, I mean.

My mother then taught me how to make patterned knots and gave me an impossibly old book called Lady Sylvia’s Book of Macramé Lace (she had an identical copy of her own, but hers was crowded with notes and equations and bullet points and handwritten papers stuck inside the pages, and I was not allowed to look at it). She also gave me a basketful of yarn and bade me tie knot after knot after knot from a constantly replenishing pile of string. I spent hours each day looping and twisting and pulling tight.