When Women Were Dragons(5)
Once, when I was supposed to be napping, I crept out of bed and tiptoed into my father’s study, which adjoined the master bathroom, which adjoined my parents’ bedroom. I opened the door just a crack and peeked inside. I was a curious child. And I was hungry for information.
My mother lay on the bed with no clothes on, which was unusual. My aunt sat next to her, rubbing oil into my mother’s skin with long, sure strokes. My mother’s body was covered in scars—wide, deep burns. I pressed my hand to my mouth. Had my mother been attacked by a monster? Would anyone have told me if she had? I set my teeth on the fleshy part of my fingers and bit down hard to keep myself from crying out as I watched. In the places where her breasts should have been, two bulbous smiles bit into her skin, bright pink and garish. I couldn’t look at them for very long. My aunt ran her oily thumbs gently along each scar, one after another. I winced as my mother winced.
“They’re getting better,” Auntie Marla said. “Before you know it, they’ll be so pale you’ll barely notice them.”
“You’re lying again,” my mother said, her voice small and dry. “No one’s meant to keep on like—”
“Oh, come now,” Marla said briskly. “Enough of that talk. I saw men with worse during the war, and they kept on with things, didn’t they. So can you. Just you wait. You’ll outlive us all. After all my prayers, I wouldn’t be surprised if you turn immortal. Next leg.”
My mother complied, turning away from me and lying on her side so my aunt could massage oil into her left leg and lower torso, the heels of her hands going deep into the muscle. She had burns on her back as well. My mother shook her head and sighed. “You’d wish me to be Tithonus, would you?”
Marla shrugged. “Unlike you, I didn’t have a big sister to browbeat me into finishing college, so I don’t know all your fancy references, Miss Smartypants. But sure. You can be just like whoever that is.”
My mother buried her face into the crook of her arm. “It’s mythology,” she explained. “Also it’s a poem I used to love. Tithonus was a man—a mortal—in ancient Greece who fell in love with a goddess and they decided to get married. The goddess, though, hated the very thought that her husband would die someday, and so she granted him immortality.”
“How romantic,” my aunt said. “Left arm, please.”
“Not really,” my mother sighed. “Gods are stupid and shortsighted. They’re like children.” She shook her head. “No. They’re worse. They’re like men—no sense of unintended consequences or follow-through. The goddess took away his ability to die. But he still aged, because she hadn’t thought to also give him eternal youth. So each year he became older, sicker, weaker. He dried out and shriveled, getting smaller and smaller until finally he was the size of a cricket. The goddess just carried him in her pocket for the rest of time, often completely forgetting he was there. He was broken and useless and was utterly without hope that anything could change. It wasn’t romantic at all.”
“Roll all the way onto your stomach, darling,” my aunt said, eager to change the subject. My mother groaned as she readjusted herself. Marla tinkered with my mother’s muscles the way she tinkered with cars—smoothing, adjusting, righting what once was wrong. If anyone could fix my mother, it was my aunt. She clicked her tongue. “Well, with this much oil, I can’t imagine you drying out all that much. But after the scare we had, after you almost—” Auntie Marla’s voice cracked just a bit. She pressed the back of her hand to her mouth and pretended to cough. But even then, as young as I was, I knew it was pretend. She shook her head and resumed her work on my mother’s body. “Well. Carrying you around with me in my pocket forever doesn’t sound half-bad. I’d take it, actually.” She cleared her throat, but her words became thick. “I’d take it any old day you like.”
I shouldn’t remember any of this exchange, but strangely, I do. I remember every word of it. For me, this isn’t entirely unusual—I spent most of my childhood memorizing things by accident. Filing things away. I didn’t know what any of their conversation meant, but I knew how it made me feel. My head felt hot and my skin felt cold, and the space around my body seemed to vibrate and spin. I needed my mother. I needed my mother to be well. And in the irrational reasoning of a child, I thought that the way to do this was to get my aunt to leave—if she left, my thinking went, then surely my mother would be all right. If Auntie Marla left, then no one would need to feed my mother, or do her tasks around the house, or rub her muscles, or make sure she got dressed, or keep her safe in any kind of pocket. My mother would simply be my mother. And the world would be as it should.
I went back to my room, and I thought about the dragon in my neighbor’s yard. How it seemed to marvel at its clawed hands and gnarled feet. How it peered behind itself to look at its wings. I remembered the gasp and the Oh! I remembered the way it curled its haunches and arched its back. The ripple of muscles under iridescent skin. The way it readied its wings. And that astonishing launch skyward. I remember my own sharp gasp as the dragon disappeared into the clouds. I closed my eyes and imagined my aunt growing wings. My aunt’s muscles shining with metallic scales. My aunt’s gaze tilting to the sky. My aunt flying away.
I wrapped myself in a blanket and closed my eyes tight—trying as a child tries to imagine it true.