When Women Were Dragons(80)

“This is ridiculous,” I said.

The dragon down the street began to sing. A lullaby from the sound of it. A window opened and a man shoved his head out. “Get out of here! I already told you! You left and we don’t need you! Go away or I’ll call the cops!” The window slammed so hard the glass shattered. The dragon seemed to deflate. Her head fell heavily into her paws and she began shaking with sobs.

I glared at my aunt. I crossed my arms across my chest. “Listen. This is my family and my rules and my life. Beatrice is my sister and we only have each other. I’m going to college next year somehow, and Beatrice is going with me and that is the end of it. You can go back to . . . well, wherever you were. We will be fine on our own. We’ve always been fine on our own.” Even as I said these words, I knew they weren’t true. We had been fine on our own for all of two and a half years, but only when someone else was paying for it. And the truth of it was we weren’t really all that fine.

There was no good answer, but I certainly wasn’t going to voice my doubts to a goddamned dragon. I turned on my heel and stomped back to the building door. It wasn’t until I opened it that I realized my aunt was laughing at me. I turned at her and glared.

“Oh, honey. You are so like your mother. Big plans but no thought to the details.”

My face grew hot. How dare she?

“Did you ever wonder how your mother paid for her education? Or rather, who paid for her education?” The dragon began winding the unknit yarn back into its neat ball and zipped her needles and sweater back into her voluminous purse.

I started to say something, but nothing came out. Obviously I knew. But that wasn’t the point. I was practically grown, or felt grown, but the longer I stayed near my aunt, the more childlike I felt. And the more I felt it, the more angry it made me, and the more childish I became.

Marla tilted her head and pressed her hands to her heart. “She was my little sister, after all.” Her eyes shone. “There was nothing I wouldn’t do for her, nothing I wouldn’t sacrifice. I gave up the work I loved, the life I loved, and I did it happily.” She shook her head and sighed. She opened her purse and hunted around until she found a handkerchief (really, it was a scarf that had been folded to look like a handkerchief) and began to dab at her eyes. Then she extracted a lipstick and a mirror from her purse’s outside pocket and began to reapply. She gave me a hard look. “I’ve been gone too long. I’ve neglected my duties. I realize that now.” She stopped, held my gaze for a long time. “I know it’s hard for you to accept, Alex, but we are family, and you need me. You’ve been needing me. And now I’m here.”

Ridiculous, I thought. No thank you. What kind of help could a dragon give me? Light my future on fire? Fly Beatrice to school and back? For all I knew, her only intention was to abandon me yet again. My life had no room for dragons in it.

“I don’t want—”

I was about to tell her I didn’t want a single thing from her, but several police cars and fire trucks came tearing around the corner and raced toward us. My aunt looked up and called to the other dragon.

“Clara, honey,” she said. “This isn’t a time to linger. Either he’ll come ’round or he won’t, but you can’t force it either way.” She turned to me, sliding her arm into her purse’s hook and securing it in the hinge of her elbow. “We’ll be back tomorrow.”

“Don’t bother,” I said. But my voice was lost in the great whoosh of wings and heat and wind. Despite their tremendous bulk, they launched skyward with astonishing speed, shaking the earth and cracking the sidewalk as they kicked off. In the air, my aunt flew close to the other dragon. Their necks stretched forward and their heads tilted toward each other, resting gently jowl to jowl. Their taloned claws curled round each other with a tenderness that I would not have thought possible.

The fire trucks and police cars screeched to a halt and the officers came out. The dragons flew swiftly over the low-slung buildings and empty trees, sliding into the clouds, bright with the lurid colors of sunset. They were—oh, god—so beautiful. I shivered in spite of myself. And then, in the space between a breath in and a breath out, they vanished. Obscured by clouds, maybe. Or some sort of magic. It was hard to tell with dragons. I’m sure I must have made a sound—a small gasp or a wounded sigh—because one of the officers turned to me. His eyes were red and his cheeks were wet, but his face had hardened.

“Nothing to see here,” he said.

“What?” I said.

“Move along.” His voice was cold, and rigid.

I went inside.



The next day, I swiped Mr. Watt’s newspaper and read it in the girls’ bathroom at school. There was no mention of the dragons. There was a report of several police units being called to investigate a “suspicious disturbance.” But that was all. I guess I wasn’t surprised. It wasn’t polite to speak of such things, after all.





Dear colleagues,

I would first like to thank our beloved librarian for delivering this message to you. It has been some time since my unceremonious removal from the National Institutes of Health, and my fall from grace thanks to the actions of the House Un-American Activities Committee. I lost my title and my license and my lab, but I retained my soul, ethics, and backbone, and I protected the names and work of my colleagues and friends in the collective. It will remain, above all else, my most important achievement.