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illīs quī mūtātī
By birth we mean beginning to re-form,
A thing’s becoming other than it was
—OVID
Turn and face the strange
—DAVID BOWIE
DAPHNE
Open the cabinet. Move the cinnamon. Move the nutmeg. Move the coriander, the cardamom pods, the cumin, the cloves. Move the small dark bottle of vanilla extract and the oregano and the garam masala you’ve only used twice. There, the small jar with whole leaves the length of your pinky. Those are me, mine. I was the first of all the laurel trees, and my bay leaves still season your sauces and stews. Dried, I smell of tea and salt and thin-sliced meat and your grandmother’s pantry, with lemon at the edges; it’s something like the way a museum sometimes smells, all those perfect things preserved. But the way you know me now, I wasn’t always this way. When I was young and in a different form than this, I kept what I understood quiet, but I understood so much.
For one: I knew when they wanted me. Some people can’t tell. Some people are blind to this. Not me. That heat behind the eyes. I could see it. Heat and hunger. That was always part of it. Eyes that lingered even when I wasn’t the one talking. That crackle in the air, that elevated energy of desire as though the particles around us were speeded up. I could smell the friction. I could feel it behind my ribs. They’d lean in, wanting us to share our smells, or lean back, wanting to show their shoulders. It was so plain. Most of all, the biggest tell: the weakness. The way we are when we’re at the mercy of our want. It’s hard not to feel a little tender at that point, but this was also when things could get bad. They’d feel that weakness, some of them, and not know that’s what they felt, but they wouldn’t want to feel it, feared it—how frightening desire can be, how scary want, we’re rendered raw and open to wound like a just-hatched bird with all those veins. To want something is to enter into the risk that you might not get it. They wouldn’t know it was fear they were feeling, but they wouldn’t like what they felt and they’d want to make themselves feel brave and strong. They were overbold to hide it, to try to prove—mostly to their own selves—how tough they were, how courageous, how dominant. Hey, pretty girl. You busy tonight? Is your father immortal? Is your mama from Mount Olympus? I’d like a taste of that. I’d like to fuck that.
I always knew.
No chance. I wanted the woods. I wanted the weight of game on my shoulders. I didn’t brush my hair. I wore a simple white band to keep it out of my eyes. Do you understand?
“You owe me a son-in-law,” my father, Peneus, a river god, said. He thought I was in his debt, maybe the way some parents think that about their kids, that they’re owed something for giving them life. “You owe me grandsons,” he said.
I owe you nothing, I thought. You think this is the achievement of a life, a woman’s only purpose? Wrong. Marriage is bondage. A crime. Can’t you see how free I am? But I was soft-spoken and kind when I told him, Dad, listen, I’m sorry, please understand who I am, that the woods are my home, I’m devoted to Diana, what I need is the air and the hunt and the hills. I can’t be someone’s bride, shackled to the stove, shoving babies out. I know I disappoint you, but I hope your love for me allows you to hear what I’m saying. He got tears. We both felt weird. He looked me up and down and said quietly, “The way you look is going to make what you want impossible.” I ignored it. I dodged one bullet, but was hit by another.
* * *
When men are weak and they’re scared, they’ll try to prove themselves, which is how Apollo came to insult Cupid and Cupid came to seek revenge. Apollo had just killed a massive python, shot it with an arrow, and, feeling all puffed up and powerful, he happened upon Cupid. And to feel even bigger, it helped him to make someone else feel smaller, the true sign of the weakest sort of man. He started bragging to Cupid about his kill using words like “infinite shafts” and “swollen snake,” and you didn’t need much imagination to know what he was getting at. He told Cupid that the bow he was holding was way too big for him. “You can’t handle it, man,” he told him. “You’d need shoulders like mine to use it,” and he grabbed the beef of his own shoulders and laughed. “You even work out? Don’t try to compete with me, boy,” he warned, suspicious (fearful!) of this small god. He had to make him know, I’m bigger, stronger, better.
“Your arrows slay, mine transfix,” Cupid said. “Think you’re such a big man. You’re no match for me.”
So, a pissing match. Whose is bigger? Whip it out. Show me.
Both small.
Cupid, stung by Apollo’s insults, made two arrows. One tipped with lead, that would render its target disgusted by love, and the other tipped with gold, which would make someone love to the point of madness. Apollo got gold. Guess who got lead. My interest in men had been none before; it was rendered even less so now. The arrow hit me in the thigh, a dull poing and then a hotter pain as the rounded tip split my skin and touched my blood.
He couldn’t help himself, that’s what people told me afterward. And my father’s words, the ones I’d ignored, about my looks preventing my freedom, had their ring of truth.
First thing Apollo said to me, “Do you know how beautiful you’d be if you brushed your hair?” A burn disguised as a compliment. Some might’ve heard just how beautiful and none of the if you did this thing that adheres to what I find beautiful. Some might’ve felt flattered, noticed. Not me. I heard it for what it was and his eyes moved like hands all over my body. My neck, my wrists, my bare arms, and I could see him imagining what he couldn’t see below my clothes. A tightness took hold in my body, all the alarms rang at once, and my muscles were flooded with the juice that says run.
So I did. And he followed.
“You’re like a lamb running from a wolf,” he said, and I could hear the smile in his voice. “You’re like a deer running from a lion. You’re like a dove flying away from an eagle. You don’t get it! That’s not what this is about! Just slow down! I’m not going to hurt you, baby. I promise I won’t ever hurt you.”
I kept running.
“You’re going to scratch your legs,” he yelled from behind me. “There are all these brambles! You’re off the path. I don’t want you to fall. Hold up! You’re going to get hurt!”
I knew the pathless places and I didn’t care if thorns tore the skin of my calves.
I kept running.
“I’m not some scraggly goatherd,” he said. “I’m not some dirty bearded farmer who lives on a mountain and only bathes twice a year. Don’t you know who I am?”
And this is when I knew I was fucked.
The smile went away from his voice—he was getting frustrated, mad that I wouldn’t stop. It was making him feel small, and when men feel small they are dangerous. I could hear him closer behind me.
“You’re running because you don’t know who I am. Don’t you know that? You into music? It exists because of me. What music are you into?” He was tryi
ng to sound nice, but there was something frantic and cruel now in his voice. “Hey, hey, I invented medicine, honey, but there’s no herb I know that’s gonna cure the fever I caught for you.”
I kept running.
“MY SHAFT IS SURE IN FLIGHT!” he yelled and I could hear the twigs cracking beneath his feet right behind me. “STOP RUNNING.”
I kept running.
I was fast, but the gods are tireless and Apollo was fueled by Cupid’s spell. I could feel him right behind me. I could feel him at my shoulders. And he laughed, a short laugh that came from deep in his guts because he knew he’d caught me. I could feel his breath through my hair on my neck. His fingertips brushed my arm, then my hips. From somewhere I didn’t know existed in me, some well that holds fear, my body gave me more speed. I pulled ahead for another moment. He kept coming.
Fire in my lungs. Fire in the muscles above my knees. The only thing I wanted was to disappear. To evaporate into the air, to dissolve into a mist and settle on the moss and the leaves. I just wanted to be gone. To explode into vapor. To turn and shove him so hard he’d fly halfway around the world.
“I’ve got you,” he said.
We were reaching the shores of my father’s stream. I cried out to my father. “Change me. Take away this shape. Please! Now!” He did what he could to help—those who love us can never protect us all the way, but they will try and try. As soon as I said the words I was stilled. All of my muscles stopped moving and all feeling drained out like sap and seeped into the earth. My arms flung above my head and grew and grew. Out of my fingers, twigs began to grow, my arms thick branches that rose toward the sky. Every sensation exited through my feet, which were suddenly descending into the dirt, deeper, deeper, penetrating into the warm, wet soil. My legs, which moments before had burned in flight, fused together. My hips narrowed. Over all of my skin a surface of papery bark. I could feel my chest rise and fall from the chase, and from the deepest relief. But my lungs were quick to press against a new sort of casing. Pressed on all sides.
I laughed to myself. I’d won. Stick your dick in this and you’ll get splinters.
It didn’t stop Apollo, though. He rubbed up against me, his hands explored me up and down, his fingers in every notch, his palms in each crotch between branches. He licked me where my armpit would be and I felt his hard dick against me. He reached around me, gripped me, and pulled me into him. I edged away as best I could. I disappeared myself into this new form. I’m not here, I thought. I’ve gone. He can’t hurt me. He kept rubbing me, pressing and grinding himself into me. I’m not here. You’re too late.
As he thrust and ran his hands up and down the length of me he whispered to me. “You’re not going to be my wife, but you’re never going to forget this. Do you know what that means? It means you’re always going to be my tree.” He squeezed a burl and bent one of my branches until it almost snapped. He groaned as he released it and it went snapping back against the others. His breath was hot and smelled like dandelions and earthworms from licking me. “I’m going to wear your leaves in my hair,” he whispered, his lips against my bark. “I’m going to have you on me all the time. And you’re never, never going to lose those leaves. You get it? They’re going to stay through every season like that unbrushed hair of yours. You understand?”
And I shook my leaves. I shook them and all of them rustled. My whole crown. These leaves would wreathe the heads of the victorious. Because I was victorious. I’d won. I shook and shook. As if I were nodding. As if I were telling him yes.
ARACHNE
Growing up, cousin Phip sold puppies from the alley by the deli there. He leaned out from the alleyway and said, “Doggies have ’em have ’em” quietly as people walked past so it sounded less like someone wanting to sell you something and more like the idea of it came from inside your very own head. This was smart selling. You never knew what sort of puppy you were getting. Sometimes it’s foxes, sometimes it’s dog, sometimes it’s wolfies, sometimes something in between. He got out of poor, did Phip. But then he became not rich, not poor, just nothing, because they sent him to jail. They didn’t like him selling the breeds on the street. Another cousin, Ruby, she had her business. She used the bed in my dad’s room for her business. She went in, came out, and flashed a palmful of cash. “So easy,” she’d say. Lie.
My dad worked dyeing fabric and purple stained his fingertips. The skin on the tips and the skin below his nails. Like all the blood was gone to all his fingertips in the moment when they’re purple before they turn white and fall off. The way cousin Phip did with the dog tails sometimes. Elastic banded them. Red purple white, flimp, off they fell. Tails on the ground. My dad, though, bent over barrels of purple and breathed in the purple particulars—I think that’s what they’re called—all day. He had purple specks around his mouth when he came home, and purple specks on his neck. My dad had purple freckles. He leaned over a barrel all day with cloth in his hands and he leaned over the sink soon as he was home. Some of the purples washed off him down the drain. Some stayed on his skin. Always on his fingertips. And purple in his lungs, inhaling it that way. The particulars float up. Just because you can’t see a thing doesn’t mean it isn’t there. Back bent, fingers stained, lungs stained, and my dad was good at the work and proud of the work and he’d come home and tell me some piece of cloth he’d dyed had sold for a bag full of cash to some rich-bitch princess wanting deep color for a cape—except he never called her a rich-bitch princess, that’s what I’m calling her. He showed nothing but respect, and I always wanted to ask, if they buy it for so much, how come you make so little. But I never asked it.
He brought home scraps and he showed me sewing. He showed me how to weave. He told me, “Not like Phip, not like Ruby. You don’t sell dogs on the street. You don’t wear lipstick if you don’t want. You find your way.” He said those words a lot. You find your way. They’re words that don’t make a lot of sense even if you think hard about them, that only come to make sense out of a long time and thinking about it, but not in a direct way, like letting it sort of linger at the side of your brain instead of it occupying the center of it. You find your way. It was always there in my brain and I didn’t know what it meant, but then I did.
I liked the loom from when I was small. I learned early and it’s most of what I did. I got taught the basics, then I taught myself more and I just kept doing and doing and I impressed my own self. I’d finish up a tapestry and I’d lay it down on the floor. I’d stand above and think, Goddamn. It wasn’t there, now it is. Every time it felt like a miracle. I’d look at the skeins in a heap by the loom, all their separate threads, and I’d think, Goddamn, first strands one by one, then this all together. This thing whole. Something out of something else. I made this transformation. The act of art is metamorphosis. It’s where I found my pride.
And it turned out I wasn’t the only one impressed. Neighbors on the block, when they stopped in, maybe to bring a casserole, maybe to bring some pastry, maybe to just see by me to make sure I was okay (no mom, good-but-gone-a-lot dad, people’s concerns), they saw, too. And they said, “Oh oh ooooooh. Look at you. Look at what you’ve done.” And first I thought, this is just nice people being nice. But nice isn’t telling others and having others tell others about how wowed they were. That’s when you can start to believe it might be good.
So people started coming. They came to look and I’d sit there and take their praise. Oh the colors oh the way they bleed one to the next oh the detail oh the scene it’s like a painting it’s like it’s real, you got a gift, you were touched by the gods, you own skills like no one’s ever seen. One thread on top of the next, one hour on top of the next, I just kept bettering. You find your way. This was my way. I was young but my name was known, and not just on my block and not just in my village, but in places miles away. People heard some things about me. They heard I was good.
They heard I was the best.
Rich people, besides money, got options. They’ve got options so much they
don’t even realize the options they’ve got. Poor, less options, sometimes none. I think people forget that it’s not just money. So my dad sells a purple robe to some fancy dan, and this fancy dan sees the color’s special and he’s feeling all puffed up for having good taste enough to find my dad. He thinks the difference is that he can afford to buy this robe, and my dad can’t. That’s a difference, but that’s not the difference. Fancy dan has time to figure out what his path is. He has time to wonder: What do I want? How do I get it? Poor, harder to think about what you want. Less time wondering, more time worrying. More time making sure enough purple cloth is made so there’s money enough for food and roof. Plus, you think too much about what you want, you’re swallowed whole. Rich, you’ve got to worry less about having to sell puppies from a box by the alley and whether they’ll take your body into jail for it. Rich, you’ve got to worry less about being bent over a barrel so your back’s curving even when you’re not bent over the barrel. Rich, you’ve got to worry less about questions of roofs, questions of sweaters, questions of bread.
I paid attention, I stayed awake, I knew about options, what it was to have them, what it was to not, and I knew I wanted some. One way to options is being fine at something, being finest best of all. So each day I sat at my loom and sometimes it’s the last place I ever wanted to be, but I sat there for knowing it was the one way to get better, to keep doing and doing.
I watched the people I knew reach the limits of their options. Again and again. It was as though the kids I grew up with, my pals on the block, from the village, it was like all of a sudden there were these walls erected, these tall, smooth white walls, and they’d be walking along, living their lives, and then, slam, straight into this wall. And there was no going over and no going around, just dead-ended a hundred percent. Eagle, Ben-Ben, Paulo, they went to prison. Kevin, he got killed by the police. Spice Rack, Henrietta, they got killed that way, too. Alma went wrong in her head because she kept drinking from this one well we knew had the poisons, but she drank anyway because that’s the way she always did it and there was nothing that would change her mind. Gloria got sick and the doctors said, We’ll cure you, but you need this much. She didn’t have that much. She died. Sylvia talked so much about being tired. “It’s tiring being poor,” she said, and then one day she gave herself permanent rest. Sometimes when things go so bad, when there’s no hope of bettering, that’s where you get led. Maybe where my mom got led. Or where she led herself. To her own end, that is.
Wake, Siren Page 1
