When Women Were Dragons(41)

“I could have done it too, you know.” Her eyes wandered. I was pretty sure she couldn’t see me.

“You could have done what?” I asked. Her hands were so cold.

“I could have done it too. Any of us could have. I chose—” My mother took a deep breath, but she didn’t say anything after that. I waited for another breath. I waited for her to continue. I waited for a long time. And then her fingers unclasped, and she released me, she released . . .

She breathed once more, and then never again.

My mother’s hospital room had four beds, two of which were unfilled. One had an old woman who was, at that moment, fast asleep. Beatrice was asleep. My mother was dead. I was the only person awake. People walked back and forth in the hall, but I did not call out. I had no words to explain what had just occurred. I had no frame of reference to make sense of my situation. How can you tell of the death of your mother? I couldn’t. It was unspeakable.

I went to the chair and scooped up Beatrice and held her on my lap for a long time, the dense heat of her small body radiating into my skin, warming up my bones. My mother was so still, and growing colder by the minute. I didn’t call the nurse. I didn’t call my father. Instead I thought about my aunt. I hadn’t thought about her for a long time. But I imagined Marla bursting into the room, restarting my mother the way she used to restart old cars. I imagined my aunt punching the doctors who failed us. I imagined my aunt flying into the side of the building and bursting in through the window in a spangle of broken glass, her eyes flashing like rubies, her dragonish scales a brilliant contrast to the thin hospital light, her muscles rippling across her flexible frame. An astonishment of light and heat and violent intellect. I gasped at the thought of it.

But then I shook my head. She wasn’t coming. Of course she wasn’t. No one in their right mind thought the dragons would ever come back. Dragons never came back. It was one of those self-evident truths. Still. I found myself glancing toward the window all the same.

Beatrice didn’t wake up. She just sighed and murmured in her sleep, the warmth of her body heating me through, like I was cradling Prometheus’s fire in my arms, carrying it safely home from heaven until the wrath rained down.



Exactly one month after my mother passed, my father woke Beatrice and me up early, and told us to get dressed. He brought us downstairs. It was very early. A woman sat on the couch. She wore a generously cut housecoat, which still barely covered her round, distended belly. She looked nothing like my mother. She was very tall, with blond hair, large breasts, and deep-fleshed thighs. Her lipstick was red, like Marla’s. She leaned toward the arm of the couch, and rested her cheek on her fist. I remember the way her skin rippled and waved around each knuckle as it sank into the softness of her face. She was beautiful, the way that abundant food is beautiful. My father looked at her hungrily. My mother was fragile and cold, like the etching of frost on a winter window. This woman was nothing like my mother.

“Girls,” my father said. “You remember Miss Olson.” The woman gave half a smile.

Of course we didn’t remember her. Miss Olson was my father’s secretary, and perhaps we would have met her if we ever were allowed to visit my father at work. But we never did. We had heard her name, of course, in tight, angry whispers coming from my parents’ bedroom.

“It’s nice to see you, Alexandra,” she said. “Your father speaks so highly of you.” She didn’t say anything to Beatrice. I took my sister’s hand. I waited for an explanation. None came.

My father tipped his hat, told Miss Olson that he’d be back soon (I should have noticed that he didn’t say we), and took us to visit Mother’s grave. We stayed there for a good long while, my father and I sitting on the bench, and Beatrice stalking through the grass and flower beds, trying to get the squirrels to eat a nut from her hand. Eventually, she gave up and knelt by my mother’s headstone, laid a piece of paper over her name, and used an unwrapped crayon to cover the paper with color, allowing my mother’s name to emerge in relief.

BERTHA GREEN the paper read. I found myself mouthing my mother’s name, rolling it over my teeth and tongue. I had never said her name out loud before. Her name was only “Mother.” What else had been taken away from her, I wondered, besides her name?

We didn’t go home after that. My father brought Beatrice and me to a small apartment just three blocks down from Beatrice’s elementary school and a short bike ride to my high school. He said nothing as he stopped the car. He said nothing as he motioned for us to go inside, and walk up the stairs. The apartment was on the third floor. There was a small Polish market on the building’s ground floor, next to an accountant’s office, one that dealt exclusively with Polish-speaking clients. I learned this later. I couldn’t read either sign. Two men carried boxes in and out, in and out. Some of the boxes said “Girls” on the outside. Another said “Books.” One said “Kitchen.” One said “Papers.” They put a bed in the tiny bedroom—it was little more than a closet. And shoved in a dresser. They brought up my desk.

I stared at my father. I didn’t have any words. Where would I even start? Beatrice took my hand and waited, a sense of calm enthusiasm radiating from her body, as though this was simply a normal day.

“Where should we put the other one?” the men asked as they carried up a second bed.