When Women Were Dragons(90)

I was part of them. But I was separate, too. I was aware of myself being separate. It hurt. But it was interesting, too. The memory of that moment is tangled with all my other memories—my own Gordian knot. The flush of those cheeks and the plump of those lips intersect with my mother’s last rattling breath, my father slumped by the bottle, the look on Sonja’s face when she was taken away, the shuddering sobs of Beatrice in my arms, they all are stuck and unstuck in time, experienced all at once. I reached. I wept. I longed. I grasped. I spun away.

In the windows the dragons sighed. And how could they not? They were beautiful, these girls. They were so, so beautiful. And maybe so was I. I lifted my arms and began to twirl. It felt so good, just for second, to let go. Completely.

The guitar player stopped playing. So did the drummer. The horns hadn’t noticed. They pushed doggedly on.

“Stop it this instant!” Sister Leonie gasped.

“Girls,” Mr. Reynolds called. “Stop dancing.”

They didn’t.

I looked closer. I began to observe the way a scientist observes: dispassionately, and set apart. Even with only partial music, the girls’ dancing increased in fervor and intensity. I stood still. I watched. And then I understood. Their mouths glittered. (I touched my mouth. It didn’t change.) Their eyes widened. (I touched my eyes. They were as they always were.) They lifted their faces to the sky. There was a smell of cinnamon and clove and phosphorus. Hot smells. Maeve O’Hara’s fingernails lengthened and curled prettily into points. Loretta Nowak’s smile turned gold. I suddenly found myself wishing I had a notebook to write it all down. Record the observations. Follow the data. I looked at the windows. The dragons had begun to tap the glass.

“Oh dear,” I said.

Marlys Larsen found Betty Shea’s pretty mouth and kissed it hard. The nuns were transfixed. No one, save the dancers, moved. Alice Cummings stared in wonder at the talons growing out of her open-toed shoes. She ran her thumb down the front of her prom dress and sighed as it fell away. She stepped forward. Bare feet. Bare legs. Slightly lopsided breasts, but lovely all the same. A delicate curl at her pubis—even the trickle of blood making its way down the curve of her thigh was beautiful. I nearly choked. She was so beautiful.

Randall Hague, with his two glasses of punch in his hands, found his voice. “HEY NOW,” he shouted.

“Shut up, Randall,” I said. I pressed my hands to my heart. There was so much beauty. My knees started to wobble.

I noticed with a start that the music had stopped. I didn’t know when. Time didn’t mean much anymore. The girls may have been dancing to silence. Or they may have been dancing to music they made themselves. Was it true that my mother could have dragoned? I thought about the nuns at school and Mrs. Gyzinska and my stepmother and the widow lady minding Beatrice at this very moment. Did everyone hear the call? Would I? Would I go if I did? Could it be that some people heard it but didn’t understand it? Could it be that some women weren’t called? I ran my hands along my mother’s lace, each knot like a promise. I imagined her fingers tying each one. A knot connects two disparate things into one immutable whole. Was I my mother? Was my mother me? Was she here with me, her fingers on the knots that my fingers now held? I didn’t know. I was dizzy. There was so much beauty everywhere.

Eunice Peters suddenly had teeth made of diamonds. She didn’t seem to notice. One of the nuns began turning green. No one noticed that either. In that tangle of cries and motion, of heat and change, of transformation and velocity, I stood, rooted to the ground, perfectly still. A fixed point in an otherwise chaotic universe. The dragons held vigil. The moment swirled around me. They would all change, I understood, deep in my bones. And I would not. I didn’t know why. But I knew it was true.

Alice slid her thumb between her breasts, and my heart broke. I looked away. I couldn’t bear to see them go.

The room grew hot. Faces flushed and skin slicked. A dragon blinked on the dance floor. Alice wasn’t Alice anymore. Or no. She was more than Alice. She was Alice unbound. She was Alice compounded by Alice. She was infinite degrees of Alice. She opened her brand-new wings. She let out a scream of joy. It shattered the windows.

Glass shards, hard and bright as memories, rained suddenly down. They spangled and glittered on the ground.

The dragons flew in.

New dragons flew up.

Dresses littered the floor. Undragoned girls danced in the nude. Girls with dragon eyes and dragon mouths. Spikes erupted from vertebrae. Tender skin grew bright scales. Talons curled from painted toes.

I stepped away. The boys couldn’t move. My hands were my hands and my mouth remained my mouth and I wasn’t dragoning at all. My hands were on my mother’s knots. I couldn’t let her go. I walked backward, one slow step at a time. Maeve dragoned. Eunice dragoned. Marlys and Loretta and Emeline and Betty and six nuns all dragoned. I stepped right into a large black and green dragon. It was my aunt.

“Marla,” I whispered. Beatrice hung around her neck. Little-girl arms. Little-girl legs. Dragon eyes. A dragon mouth. My head swam.

“No, Beatrice!” I shouted. “Absolutely not!”

Don’t leave me when I can’t follow, my heart sobbed. Don’t leave me alone. Please.

The brick wall groaned. Two boys screamed. The back side of the gym collapsed.

My aunt gave me her paw. “This place is going to get dangerous in a minute. Let’s go.” I climbed onto her neck, holding Beatrice in the circle of my arms, and my aunt leaped into the night.