Dusssie

by Nancy Springer

  Milk snakes, corn snakes, all the snakes my mother had mentioned were North American snakes, and it would make sense if all the snakes on my head were American, so to speak, because I was. I bet all the snakes on my mother’s head were Greek.

  I held up the mirror by its engraved silver handle to look at my snakes, and there they all were, heads up, looking back at me. A babble of snaky voices burst out.

  There she isss!

  No ssscales!

  I stuck out my tongue at them. They all flickered their forked tongues like mad.

  She’sss tasssting usss!

  She callsss that fat thing a tongue?

  She’sss sssmelling usss!

  She’ll find out we’re classsy sssnakesss!

  No hognossse sssnakesss on thisss head!

  No worm sssnakesss.

  No low classs—

  Blah blah blah, yada yada yada. I rolled my eyes.

  How doesss she do that?

  Enough already. I set down the mirror, opened the book, and started looking through the pictures. All the weight on my head shifted forward as the snakes looked, too, shading my face like the bill of a baseball cap.

  “There’s one of them,” I muttered, recognizing bright red-black-yellow-black bands. I started reading.

  Lampropeltisss triagulum elapssoidesss? complained the regal voice in my head. What sssort of name isss that? I am Ssswift-Ssstrike, I am Ever-watcher, I am Doom-Dealer. I am—

  Scarlet king snake. I should have known. I kept reading.

  I have ssscales ssso sssmooth they ssseem shiny and polished, bragged the king snake, picking up the words from my mind, I guess. They were the words I was reading in the book. I have red dorsssolatera bandsss. I can be differentiated from the poisssonouss coral sssnake by remembering the ssslogan “Red by black meansss friend of Jack.” I have an undivided anal plate.

  “You don’t have any anal plate. Unless it’s buried in my head.”

  I am noted for my ophiophagousss inclination, he said, hesitating only slightly. He didn’t know what that meant. I didn’t know what that meant. But he was still bragging.

  She, the scarlet king snake corrected me.

  Sure, okay, fine, whatever. My scarlet king snake was female. I jotted some notes, then flipped pages, looking for more of my snakes.

  Four hours later I was still there, and the list, with lots of scratch-outs and corrections, looked like this:

  Scarlet King Snake, 1, female, bossy, look up “ophiophagous.” King snakes eat small mammals, birds, fish, frogs, love turtle eggs. Ick.

  Milk Snake, 1, similar to K.S., doesn’t really suck milk from cows. Whirs tail & strikes if provoked.

  Eastern King Snake, 2, bright yellow & black. Robust neck and jaw muscles. If molested will bite w/ great determination. Aaagh

  Corn Snake, 3, docile, (yay!) kept as pet, bright yellow w/ orange blobs, eats rats in corncribs

  Pine Woods Snake, 1, solid amber, eats lizards, frogs, salamanders

  Garter Snake, 4, it’s garter, not garden, like the thing guys used to wear to hold up their socks. Striped. Hangs out by streams, eats minnows, frogs, salamanders.

  Ribbon Snake, 3, gracile (?) small-headed, does not bite unless seized, when might nip firmly. 1 w/ blue stripes 1 w/ red etc. etc. getting tired of this

  Black Racer, 3, noted for alert demeanor, readiness to bite, and speed. Aaagh. Climbs well. Swallows prey alive. Eats baby birds out of nests, frogs, insects etc. etc.

  Blue Racer, 2, similar, dark turquoise color

  Yellow-bellied Racer, 1, sage green on top, eats cicadas

  Indigo Snake, 1, shiny ink blue. Lives in burrows w/ gopher turtles. Hisses, flattens muscular neck vertically, and strikes. Oh, great, just great. Pretty, though.

  “Aaaagh!” I stopped, shocked at myself, calling a snake pretty? I was supposed to be finding a way to get rid of my snakes, and here I was writing down that they ate cicadas and they were pretty.

  All through this, the snakes kept gabbing like deejays. I was starting to learn to tune them out like background noise, like the radio or the television if somebody left it on in the next room.

  I had twenty-two snakes listed so far, and I was tired and cranky but almost finished. “Okay, you other stripy ones,” I muttered. Two of them, one sticking its blunt little face out from behind each of my ears. They had pretty yellow and tan stripes on their sides, but their tops were solid black. “You’re not garter snakes. What are you?”

  I was talking to myself, but they replied in my head. We are Quick-Flick, Sssky-Bridger, Water-Ssstrider.

  Ssswift-Ssswimmer.

  crayfisssh-Killer.

  I mumbled, “Crayfish,” and turned to the index. There was only one reference. Page 171. A second later I yelped, “You’re queen snakes!” Regina septemvittata. “Are you by any chance female?”

  No, they were guy queen snakes. I sensed it right away. But before they could really answer, the scarlet king snake, who was female, cut in.

  Bearersss of live young, she sneered. Blood-Birthersss, like mammalsss. There’sss nothing regal about them.

  I ignored her and moved on. “Okay, almost finished. You green snakes are Green Snakes, I guess?” All the snake names in the book were capitalized.

  We are Hatchlingsss of the Ssssun, one of them said. We are Sharp-Sssight.

  We are Tree-Climber, said another.

  They sure were, but according to the book, the Smooth Green Snake, aka grass snake, was more likely to stay on the ground and hunt crickets, caterpillars, grasshoppers, and so on. The Rough Green Snake climbed trees to hunt bugs, hanging in a loop from a branch to sleep at night.

  I liked the idea of the shining green snake hanging like a hoop earring in a tree. And the book said green snakes didn’t bite. Without thinking, just curious, I asked, “Are you guys rough or smooth?” and put up a hand to find out.

  To touch.

  I touched my snakes.

  Oooh, scales, like a thousand polished, diamond-shaped fingernails, warm and cool at the same time, with strong, strong muscles rippling underneath, steely, alive. The touch zipped like an electric shock straight to my heart. I snatched my hand away, but the feel of snake tingled and lingered on my fingertips the way the feel of my first kiss, last summer, had lingered for hours on my lips.

  FIVE

  A big box arrived at the apartment door the next day, which was really bizarre, because it was Sunday. No mail, no UPS, no messenger service, and anyway, we hadn’t buzzed anybody in. But when I opened the door to go get Mom a newspaper, there it sat.

  Not cardboard. Black enameled wood, with a lid and a fancy padlock. Like a treasure chest. A hinged, arched lid with “Miss Medusa Gorgon” painted on it in curly white letters.

  “Cool!” I exclaimed.

  “What in the world?” Mom wondered aloud.

  We dragged the box into the apartment, and of course I had to see what was in it right away. A little key hung by a jewelry chain from the padlock. I opened it.

  “Hats!”

  Or head coverings, anyway, lots of them, wrapped in white tissue paper. There was a big puffy-crowned hat with a ruffled brim, all royal blue crushed velvet. There was a wide-brimmed, denim hippie hat with embroidered daisies. There was a real sunbonnet like from Little House on the Prairie, only in posy-print electric lavender. There was a silky sort of modesty wrap like Muslim girls wear. There was a big shawl in bright-colored stripes with long, beaded fringe. There was a Cat in the Hat hat. There was a fake fur hat with dangling purple ermine tails. Just to mention a few.

  Sssweeet, hissed one of the corn snakes. I was starting to be able to tell them apart in my head.

  Looksss like a prey item, remarked a king snake.

  “Shut up,” I told him. His comment smelled like a gerbil cage but the fake fur hat was the sweetest. They were all way cool, all the hats, which was as bizarre as the box itself. What I mean is, usually when I get a present, I feel good and everything because somebody gave me
something, but almost always it’s the wrong color or the wrong size or just not for me, you know? But these hats were perfect. All of them. I never would have thought of them, yet they were so me. It was like somebody was reading my mind.

  And there was no card or anything to say who had sent them.

  As I unpacked them, my mother watched with her eyebrows arching higher and higher until she looked like a McDonald’s sign. “My sister?” she wondered aloud.

  I think we both knew better, because Aunt Stheno is kind of resentful most of the time, like, she and Mom don’t get along that great. But I ran for the phone anyway. “Aunt Stheno,” I demanded when she answered, “are you the one who sent me a big box full of hats?”

  No. No, she hadn’t. She wished she could have, but bookkeepers, unlike certain famous “sculptors,” don’t earn that kind of money.

  So much for Aunt Stheno.

  After I hung up, I looked at Mom. The hats had to come from somebody who knew what I had to cover up. And my heart swelled, because I thought I had the answer. “Mom,” I said, kind of choked up because I’d been feeling so hateful about her, “it was you, wasn’t it?”

  She shook her head. “Dusie, when was the last time I gave you anything you actually liked? No, it wasn’t me.”

  What was I thinking? Of course my annoying mother couldn’t do anything right.

  But if it wasn’t her or Aunt Stheno, who was it?

  By the worry line deepening between Mom’s eyes, I could tell she was wondering the same thing. Which just made me pissed at her, because the hats were great, so what did it matter where they came from, really? I stopped thinking about it, just grabbed one hat after another and tried them on in front of the full-length mirror. I settled on the blue crushed velvet hat as my absolute favorite and stood there staring at myself.

  I looked almost kind of cute with the snakes covered—

  Crap. No matter what I did, it was all going to be cover up, cover up, from now on. Lying all the time, pretending to be—I was so never going to be normal. Only half-human. Hiding my head, hiding my—

  Guilt.

  Even if I never did anything else horrible, look what I’d already done.…

  My happy mood had evaporated, but I kept staring in the mirror, at the blue hat.

  “Mom,” I said without turning around, “can we go to the hospital and visit Troy?”

  I heard a crash, like she’d dropped something.

  “Nobody’ll see the snakes if I keep my hat on,” I said.

  Actually I wasn’t sure I would keep the hat on if I could get a minute alone with Troy. Maybe I needed to make the snakes apologize and take back what they had done to him. No, that seemed lame … but still, I felt like it was up to me and my snakes to help Troy somehow, in spite of what the Sphinx had said. I mean, she had sounded so doom-and-destiny sure about Troy, but she was a mythological creature and this was New York City in the twenty-first century, you know? There ought to be some way to break her rules. Or, if she wanted to run things by fairy-tale rules, wasn’t I pretty much a mythological creature myself, with snakes on my head? So shouldn’t there be something mythical or fairytale—like I could do? Go on a quest or something to save Troy? Give Troy a kiss on his stone lips, like he was Sleeping Beauty?

  “Absolutely not,” Mom gasped.

  “But, Mom—” I turned to argue with her, but stopped when I saw her face. She had gone chalk white.

  “Dusie, no. You must not go anywhere near that boy. Right now you’re safe, but if anybody connects you with him …”

  “Whatever,” I mumbled.

  “There’s no telling what might happen. And there’s nothing you can do for him anyway.”

  “Um …”

  “Dusie, you are not to put yourself in danger. I mean it.”

  “I can tell you mean it,” I grumbled. She looked scared stiff. So okay, I’d let it go. For today. And I wouldn’t mention it to Mom again. But I couldn’t let her run my life anymore, no matter how much she meant what she said, because look how she’d lied to me and what a mess she’d got me into. I was going to have to figure out things on my own from now on, and I would visit Troy. The minute I got a chance.

  I couldn’t manage it the next day because Mom stayed home to take me to the shrink.

  I heard her on the phone, telling somebody she couldn’t make it to her shift at the food pantry and could they please fill in for her?

  Huh. My mother did volunteer work? I guess she’d mentioned stuff like that before, helping at the homeless shelter or raising money for animal rescue, but I hadn’t paid much attention. Everybody knew celebrities did charity work to look good, and I had thought she really was a sculptor, a famous one.

  Whatever, because what she really is, is a gorgon. And even if she spent all day feeding homeless people, it wouldn’t change that. I kept reminding myself of this, because watching her drift around the apartment with her “be strong” look on her face as she polished the glass tables and silver chrome picture frames—just for something to do—I felt scared that I might start trusting her again. I still had feelings for her in my heart, I really wanted—

  But I had to remember: She was the one who had gotten me into this mess.

  I made sure to keep that in mind pretty much all day. In the apartment. In the taxi. At the doctor’s office.

  After seeing the shrink I headed into DeLucia’s Deli with my funky-colored fake fur hat on, to get me and Mom some paella with extra yellow rice and a couple of eclairs. They make the best eclairs. Anyway, the reason I mention it is that, right inside DeLucia’s, at one of the cafe tables, sat the little old man from the library.

  New York City being NYC, I’d assumed I’d never see him again. But there he was. Just my luck, he probably lived in my neighborhood. I noticed him right away, like, ow. But he didn’t see me, because he was bent over his plate eating his cream of broccoli soup.

  I wanted to back out the door. I’d been so rude to the old guy, I wanted to run away. Then I remembered how bad I’d felt that day, and it kind of surprised me to realize I felt way better now—maybe because my period was almost over, or because of the hats? I don’t know. Anyway, feeling better kept me from ducking out the door. Instead, I walked over to him.

  “Um, sir,” I managed to say.

  He looked up and smiled like I was his best friend.

  “Um, I want to apologize,” I blundered on. “I mean, I’m sorry I was such a—” I stopped myself from saying the word that came to mind. He might not appreciate it. “I’m sorry I was, um, so rude the other day—”

  “That’s all right. We all have those days.” He had the greatest voice, correct yet breezy bright. “Sit down, sit down!” He gestured to the other chair at his table.

  Why not? I sat.

  “Anybody could see you were having a bad day,” he said, laying his soup spoon aside. “Don’t give it another thought. Did you finish your report on snakes?”

  That hurt, because I missed going to school, or at least I missed seeing my friends, especially Keisha and Stephe. I mean, they were still phoning, and sending me text messages and e-mails and stuff, but what was I supposed to tell them? Hey, c’mon over; send pictures of the new me with your cell phone; I’ll bead your hair and you can French braid my snakes?

  So all of a sudden I was by myself almost all the time. I didn’t even like to IM anymore. Being grounded drives me crazy, but this was even worse, because I was basically grounding myself. Now that I knew I was only half-human, I didn’t think I could ever come out of exile. I just had too many secrets. The only ones who knew the truth were the Sisterhood, including Aunt Stheno and Mom, and I didn’t want to talk with them—especially Mom—because they were freaks and they were sooo annoying and I didn’t want to be like them. But I needed somebody to talk with so bad that here I was chatting with a bony old guy in a deli.

  Letting him assume I had been working on a report, I nodded, and to be polite I asked, “Are you taking the herp, uh, herpe
s—”

  “Herpetology. Study of snakes.”

  I nodded like sure, I knew that. “Are you taking it?”

  “Herpetology class? Yes, I am. It just started this morning. Fascinating.” He sat up almost straight, beaming. “The professor gave us some cultural background. Did you know that almost all ancient peoples worshipped snakes?”

  My snakes must have picked up the words from my head. I felt crawlies under my hat, and in my head someone said, yesss!

  “They almost all had a myth of the world serpent,” the old guy went on. “A giant serpent coiled around the world with his tail in his mouth. The rainbow was a sky-serpent drinking from the ocean. The mother goddesses wore serpents. Even to the classical Greeks, the serpent was a symbol of wisdom and healing …”

  My snakes were hissing all sunny yellow, Sssky ssserpent, yesss! Goddesss Demeter, healing, wisssdom, yesss!

  Next they’d be bobbing around under my hat.

  “Um, I gotta go,” I said, starting to get up.

  The old man lifted a skinny hand to stop me. “Am I boring you? We’ll talk about something else. I am curious, why are you here at this hour? Did you not have school today?”

  “I don’t go to school anymore,” I said.

  “You don’t? An intelligent young lady like you?”

  “I have a medical excuse.” This was true, or it would be in a few days. Talking to the psychiatrist, I had told him quite truthfully that I heard voices in my mind coming from the snakes that were growing out of my head instead of hair. He had asked me to take off my hat and show him the snakes. I had told him I couldn’t because that would kill him. Well, the Greek mythology stuff I’d found on the Internet said a gorgon was so ugly that just looking at one would turn a man to stone. Really made me feel good. Although actually, Troy hadn’t turned to stone just from looking at my snakes. He’d still been okay till I, you know, glared at him. If looks could kill and all that. But I felt pretty annoyed at the therapist, so I wasn’t taking any chances. I had to make sure that it never happened again. Never.

  So after I’d told him about the snakes and the voices, et cetera, the doctor had said I definitely needed a medical excuse from school and also a referral to a shrink specializing in adolescents. On the way home, Mom had said we’d worry about that later. One crisis at a time.