When Women Were Dragons(98)
“Alex?” Sonja said. Her spangle freckles had darkened since I saw them last, and stood out on her skin like jewels. Her cheeks and lips had brightened in the bite of the November wind. She was wearing a fringed jacket and boots that had been hand-painted with flowers and mountains and trolls, and a University of Wisconsin T-shirt. For crying out loud, I thought. We go to the same school. She’s been here the whole time. Sonja blinked. She was crying. “It’s you! Alex, I can hardly believe it.”
“Sonja,” I managed, but I didn’t have to say anything more, because she had thankfully thrown her arms around me and pulled me into a hug. She smelled of cinnamon and clove, and a dark, metallic smell that I would later identify as her paints from her art studio. Even in that moment, I noticed the colors embedded in the cuticles around her nails.
“Aren’t the rest of us going to be introduced?” Milly complained. Arne apologized and gave everyone’s names, and suddenly I remembered to look at my watch.
“Shit,” I said. “I’m late.” I didn’t want to leave. I hesitated, hugged Sonja once more, and then I hugged her yet again, and it felt as though the world ceased its spinning for a moment and everything stopped—the wind, the shouts of the crowd, the peppered questions from my friends, all of it gone. What was time, anyway? The only thing that could possibly exist was now. There was only this very second. Everyone around us shivered and stamped their feet in the cold, but all I could feel was the warmth of her body in my arms, the heat of her cheek against my skin. It hurt to step away. I pointed at Arne. “He can give you my number,” I said to her, my voice harsh and desperate. “I wrote you so many letters, and—” I clenched my teeth and stopped. I didn’t trust my voice. Sonja took my hand. And my other hand.
“I did too,” she said, shaking her head. “My grandmother didn’t let me send them. She said it would get you in trouble. I wrote to Beatrice too. Alex, I kept them all. Every single letter. I have a whole box. I was so scared you would forget me.” She hugged me again. “I can’t believe it’s you.”
The crowds surged around us. Young men threw rocks and fights broke out between the opposing sides. I found out later that there were several arrests that day. A small fire burned at the center of the street. People swore and jeered at one another. I didn’t notice any of it. I held Sonja’s hands in mine. I couldn’t bear to let go.
“Call me as soon as you can,” I said. “I have to go, but I need to see you. As soon as possible. I have so much to say.”
I turned on my heel and headed to class at a run. I paused, briefly, to look back, and saw that someone had given her a sign that said WE ARE ALL PRECIOUS with the silhouetted figures of people and dragons holding hands. She held it aloft, like a flag.
I don’t think my feet touched the ground for the rest of the morning.
Over the next month, I saw her every single day, many times a day. We had no classes in common—she was an art student, with a minor in literature, and her classes were all in an entirely different section of campus—but we had breaks around the same time and could meet in the library, or in a nearby diner, or in one of the lounges. We walked along the lake and sat for hours on a bench, watching the snow blow across the thin sheets of newly formed ice. She came to my house and met my family. It was the first time I ever called them my family. Marla tried to play it off, but I could see her turn away and wipe her face with the tip of her tail and then hunt through her purse for a handkerchief.
And it wasn’t just when Sonja was around. I became more present with everyone. I stopped and had conversations with Jeanne. I helped Edith with the bread. I asked Marla about engines. I didn’t roll my eyes when the four of them lounged together with their limbs entwined, reading literature out loud—Dickinson or Shelley or Proust.
My aunt, obviously, was thrilled with this development and made sure to compliment Sonja and invite her to dinner whenever possible. Beatrice insisted that Sonja sit next to her at the table and occasionally showed off her partial dragoning—but only occasionally since it exhausted her so, and because the other dragons objected so vociferously. Beatrice then insisted on organizing drawing workshops with Sonja, or playing board games on weekends, or inviting Sonja to sit out on the roof with our dragon aunties and roast marshmallows. Sonja and I sat for hours up there, feeding the fire and watching the stars, or the snow, the weight of her body leaning against mine and my cheek resting on her shoulder, talking about the world and everything in it until the deepest part of the night.
We spent every minute together we could. There weren’t enough minutes in the day. In a lifetime.
Her grandfather had died two years earlier, but her grandmother lived and painted nearby in a small apartment in Madison not too far from campus. Sonja went to see her every Sunday. Mrs. Blomgren didn’t want to see me, though—my father was the one who evicted them, after all, and some hurts are difficult to let go. I tried not to take it personally. Sonja never mentioned her mother, and I still hadn’t asked. She regarded my dragon family shyly at first, and then with a growing curiosity, and then closeness. She helped with the breadmaking and learned about their brickwork. She even took up glassmaking.
“She fits right in, don’t you think?” Marla said one evening while we were finishing the dishes. Sonja and Beatrice were on their bellies on the floor, drawing pictures of castles. Sonja rested her cheek on her fist and glanced over at me. She smiled. I blushed. Marla flared her nostrils and suppressed a grin of her own. “As I said,” she muttered.