When Women Were Dragons(50)

There was a reason why my mother didn’t want to hear any mention of dragons.

You, a small, shaking voice said, deep in the center of my being as the memory loomed large in my mind. You left us. You abandoned us. I didn’t know toward whom this was directed. My mother. My father. My auntie Marla. All of them, maybe. A rage I did not know I was capable of burned inside me. I could feel my skin start to bubble with it.

The air in the room electrified.

“Alex?” Beatrice said timidly. I shoved the folder and the papers into my bag. I turned wildly toward my sister. I didn’t know the feeling I had right then. But it was hot and sharp and mean.

“Inappropriate,” I hissed.

Don’t leave me, said a voice deep inside me. I ignored it. I didn’t think about it. I pretended it wasn’t there.

“But—”

“Inappropriate.” My voice had edges and weight.

Please don’t leave me. You can’t leave me. We only have each other.

“But Alex.”

“It isn’t true, what you wrote.” I stood. I paced the room. I felt like I could barely fit inside my own body. I didn’t know exactly what was bothering me. Only that I was bothered.

“I know, but—”

“It will never, ever be true.” My voice was hard and sharp and fast. It hit her like a slap. “It cannot ever be true.”

Beatrice started to cry. “Alex, I didn’t mean—”

I grabbed Beatrice by the hand, and we walked out of the room. I wanted to punish her. I wanted to contain her. I wanted to rewind time, to never have to feel this way again. I slammed the door with a terrific crack and Mrs. Magin nearly jumped. I gave her a cold stare.

“He’s not back yet,” she stammered, but I held up my hand.

“Please tell Mr. Alphonse that I have seen enough, and that I quite agree. This behavior will not continue. Let him know that I am putting a stop to it.” I gave Beatrice a piercing look. “Instantly.” Beatrice began to sob. I ignored her. “This will never happen again.”

“But, I don’t think you should be—”

“I won’t stay in this building for another moment.” I strode toward the door and burst into the hall, dragging Beatrice behind.

“Be careful!” Mrs. Magin shouted, but I only half heard her. There were people in the hall talking quickly, and a semicircle of firemen blocking the door to the teachers’ lounge. I barely saw any of them. I marched Beatrice to the front door, and we pushed out of the gloom of the elementary school. Into the light.





21.

I felt bad, obviously. I never behaved more like my mother than I did in that moment. It almost felt like it was her voice coming out of my mouth.

After spending over an hour in opposite ends of our small apartment, pouting in silence, Beatrice and I slowly found our way to the middle. My anger had given way to sorrow and exhaustion. I sat on the floor and took her hand.

“I’m sorry,” I said to her.

“I’m sorry,” she replied.

I didn’t say exactly what I was sorry for, and neither did she. I didn’t have the language to understand my own feelings. Beatrice laid her head on my lap. My leg was instantly wet from her tears. “Please can we be friends again, Alex,” she said. “I won’t do anything wrong again. I promise.”

I had already thrown her drawings into the trash, but each image remained pinned in my memory. I couldn’t look away. It can never be, I said to myself, over and over and over again, my discomfort deep and visceral and persistent. I couldn’t understand it any better than Beatrice could.

I gently sat Beatrice up and held her gaze as I took her hands in my own and gave them a little squeeze. I kissed her knuckles, one at a time.

“All we have is each other,” I said.

“All we have is each other,” she responded. It was our mantra. The only thing that was true.

“It’s Beatrice and Alex, rulers of the world.” She grinned and hugged me, and for a moment, everything was okay. Or okay enough.

To make it up to her, I packed a picnic dinner and we went to the park.

It was one of those fine late-summer evenings, all deep green and yellow. Goldenrod crowded the boulevards and the leafy hollows, and floated lazily in the air, giving everyone red eyes and runny noses. Birds gathered in great conferences in the oaks and elms, making migratory plans in the summer heat. There was enough of a breeze now to make the humidity bearable, and this of course promised a coming storm. Dark clouds gathered along the horizon. It would come, I thought, after nightfall.

“Look how fast I am, Alex!” Beatrice called as she took off across the field. “Look how fast!” And she was—a blur of heat and motion and possibility. Beatrice was uncontainable; she was that moment of change when potential energy becomes kinetic power. I pitied her teachers. I had no idea how it could even be possible to keep such a child in docile lines and sedated rows. How can you teach long division to a whirlwind? And yet, they seemed to do so. And yet. Those pages gave me pause.

I am a dragon, they asserted.

No, you are not, my heart insisted.

I am a dragon. I shook my head at the thought of it. Beatrice, while far from a perfect child, was a fastidiously honest one. She would not have written those words unless she deeply felt they were true.