Dusssie (10 page)

yesss, we do
, said a blue racer.

And other snake voices spoke.
Jussst be yourssself
, said the smooth green snake who told stories.

We love you jussst the way you are
, said the indigo snake.

We'll ssstick with you
, said a milk snake.

Yeah, they were stuck with me, all right. As they spoke I caught a whiff of their green-smelling thoughts of how it might feel to be free snakes, wild snakes, complete snakes, snakes with tails to shake, snakes with grass and leaves under their bellies, snakes with real meals—rodents, eggs, soft-shelled baby crayfish—sliding down their long gullets, snakes with pits to hibernate in, snakes with other snakes to mate with. They thought all this, yet they felt my hollow heart and they said to me,
We love you, Dusssie
.

Sounding kind of like a jewel of wisdom, rigid but shining, the queenly scarlet king snake spoke for the whole head.
Dusssie, we all love you
.

I sat stunned. I couldn't think what to do about them. Couldn't say a word.

NINE

The next morning Cy met me at his apartment door, smiling. “Dusie, I do believe I may have it licked.”

“Have it licked?”

“Licked!” Cy repeated, his smile widening clear across his face. “I may have figured out how to get rid of your snakes.”

Then my heart started pounding.

And all twenty-seven snakes coiled tense and quiet under my lavender posy-print sunbonnet.

“Here, I'll show you.” Cy waved me into his apartment with his right arm, the one that wasn't in a sling.

I followed him inside, taking off my hat, and sat at the table, trying not to let myself think too much that if this worked, I could go back to having friends and being normal, maybe even someday finding a boyfriend …

Cy sat down across from me, gesturing with his good hand, all excited. “I've been working on this day and night,” he said. “I didn't say anything to you before because I didn't want to get your hopes up.”

“Working on what?”

“Okay.” He leaned toward me in a teaching sort of way. “Let's start from the beginning. This riddle the Sphinx addressed to you, you win some, you lose some, whatever it was—”

“To lose I have to win, and to win I have to loosen.”

Cy nodded. “I must say that it makes no sense to me at all. Sounds like personal poetry. I decided to disregard it.”

I had a feeling he shouldn't do that, but I couldn't say anything, because I didn't know what the Sphinx was talking about, either.

Cy went on. “And after all my reading in mythology, the only thing that seemed certain was that the snakes cannot be cut off your head without exceedingly negative results.”

“Right.”

“My instinct is that the same would apply if one attempted to remove said snakes via surgery, cauterization, laser, acid, et cetera. I do not think we can risk any such methods. Do you follow so far, Dusie?”

“Sure.”

Sure
, whispered a king snake, all brown and thorny. Mostly, my snakes seemed bummed, listening without comment.

Cy went on. “So I began to focus on snakes as such, in scientific terms. In herpetology class I have been learning about the life cycle of snakes, and I began to think—you know I hold a doctorate in chemistry. I worked in pharmaceuticals for over forty years.”

Geez, I didn't know. I'd never thought to ask. I mean, I'd never talked to old people much, and I'd kind of forgotten to think Cy might have had a life.

“So I've been up nights studying herpetological biochemistry,” Cy said, “and here's my thinking: Your snakes are drawing their sustenance from your bloodstream, just like a fetus in the womb. But if I could come up with some sort of inhibitor that would affect their metabolism but not yours, it would cut the umbilical cord, so to speak. If they were no longer being fed, they could not go on living indefinitely. They would simply starve and die.”

I felt my snakes grow even more intensely still, like the boa constrictors on TV when they're about to strike and coil. But my snakes didn't strike. Or speak. I felt only their silence.

“Once I got on the right track, it wasn't hard at all,” Cy continued, all eager and happy like a terrier. “I just needed a few basic chemical compounds in the proper proportions, and an emulsifier, and voila, a herpetological metabolism inhibitor to be applied externally.”

I should have cheered or something, I guess, but I just sat there.

He must have seen how blank I looked. He tried to explain. “You know, their scales are just outgrowths of their skin. They have to be able to flex, so under and between their scales is soft skin a lot like yours. Porous. So I formulated the metabolism inhibitor as a kind of—you could call it snake lotion. Here it is. Look.” He held out a glass mayonnaise jar full of greenish goo. “You just dab some of this on them.”

Everything was happening so fast that I just stared at the jar in Cy's hand.

“Rather,” Cy added, “on one of them. We ought to start with just one until we're sure it works as expected and that it has no adverse side effects on you.”

I tried to think which snake I would want to kill. Not any of the king snakes. I couldn't help admiring them because they were so bold, their markings, their personalities. But not the timid garter snakes either, or the shy, pretty ribbon snakes, or the little queen snakes. And not the corn snakes, so kind, always trying to encourage me. Or the smooth green snake, the storyteller. Or my beautiful, bossy indigo snake, or my fraidy-snake yellow-bellied racer, or my pure amber pine woods snake, or …

Or any of them.

I felt my heart shrink. “Cy,” I whispered, “I don't know about this.”

“I'm almost certain it won't hurt you, Dusie.”

“It's not that.” I tried to look at him, but I had to stare at the tablecloth instead. I had been thinking about sneaking my snakes into the reptile house at the Bronx Zoo, so they could ogle the pythons and stuff. I had been thinking how I would help them peel off their old skins when it was time for them to shed, and how their new scales would shine. I had been trying to think of some other stories they might enjoy, like, a snake who put his tail in his mouth and rolled like a wheel, something like that. What I couldn't figure out was how to explain any of this to Cy. Finally I mumbled, “I don't really hate my snakes anymore. I kind of like some of them.”

“You've started to think of them as pets?”

“I, um …” Maybe. I didn't know. I'd never had any pets except a goldfish.

“Well, that's very natural, Dusie, but you can't go getting sentimental about them.” Cy reached across the table and touched my hand to make me look at him. Very serious, he said to me, “Your future is at stake.”

“I know.”

“I've tried to keep an optimistic outlook, but truly, you will not be able to live any sort of normal life with snakes on your head.”

He was right, of course.

“Let alone any question of what happened to that Lindquist boy.”

Oh, my God, what I'd done to Troy must never happen again. Never to anyone else. Never ever.

I knew I had to get rid of the snakes.

I knew I had to choose one of them to start with.

But at the same time my mind was thrashing around like a drowning person, and my snakes were so, so quiet. Guys? I appealed to them inside my head. Are you there? I need …

I needed their advice, which was pretty ridiculous, asking my snakes what I should do.

But, get this, they answered me.

We can't help you, Dusssie
, said a corn snake in a voice like morning mist over a meadow, soft and golden.

Just as gently the indigo snake said,
Dusssie, you have to do what'sss right for you
.

There was a whisper of agreement from all of them.
Yesss. Yesss
.

We trussst you
, said the milk snake.

In a cloud-white thought the scarlet king snake told me,
It'sss up to you Dusssie
.

And a little garter snake said,
We all love you, Dussie. No matter what
.

TEN

The rest of that day and into the evening I just sat on my bed staring at the jar of greenish stuff Cy had given me. I hadn't touched it other than to take it home and set it on my dresser, between my pile of hats and my Cinderella doll from F.A.O. Schwarz. Next to her the green goo looked disgusting. I shut myself in the bedroom with it, closed the door, and wished it had a lock, but I didn't open the jar of herpetological metabolism inhibitor. I just plopped on my bed, hugged my knees to my chin, and looked at it, trying to figure out what to do about my snakes …

Of course I need to get rid of them. Like Cy said, I'll have no future.

But the Sphinx has a career. And the others.

It's not like I want to be president or something.

What
do
I really want to do with my life?

I had no idea.

But then all of a sudden I did have an idea. I wanted to work with animals. Even though I had never even owned a pet, I wanted to be a veterinarian, or work for one. Or in a zoo or something. Or, I thought, maybe at an animal rescue shelter …

But that's crazy. All that hair and poop/pee/puke and stuff on my clothes and under my fingernails … If finding somebody to love was all about hair, makeup, and nice clothes, then how did people who do that kind of work, ever …

But obviously they did.

Maybe I was wrong about what it meant to “become a woman”? Or be a girl?

Or even to be human?

Or—or maybe being half-human meant I could be
more
instead of less?

Like, maybe, being different meant I should stop feeling sorry for myself and start thinking about what I could
do?
Such as, fight crime?

It wasn't my snakes giving me any of these ideas, either. My snakes were as quiet as daylight.

But nothing else in me was calm. My muscles ached and my skin sweated salty wet, yet my throat felt dry. My heart thumped. My thoughts flew back and forth like a Ping-Pong ball: I don't care! I don't want to be Super Snakewoman. I don't want to be a reptilehead and that's final. No, it isn't …

Do I really want to kill my snakes?

I don't want to be a cartoon character. I want to be normal, have a life—

But maybe I'm immortal …

So what. Do I want to be like my mother? Wait four thousand years for somebody to love me?

My chest hurt. My gut felt watery. My head ached and my brain started to churn like a washing machine, sloshing so hard I couldn't think. I mean, I had snakes on my mind in the most literal possible way, and all I wanted to do was crawl into a hole and hibernate until the whole thing went away. I wanted to stop thinking but I couldn't.

If I get rid of these snakes, does that mean I'm not immortal anymore? Will I get old and die?

I don't even know if I really am immortal.

What's the use of being immortal if I hate my life?

But maybe—like, look at Cy …

Cy had lost everybody he loved, yet he had a life and he still loved living. I could do that, too, I knew I could, especially if being half-human meant being more instead of being less. It would be a lot of work, but—

But nothing, I thought, and my anger came zinging back. I'd rather be dead.

Ping-pong went my brain: No, not really …

That's another thing, I thought, the snakes make me safe. If somebody tries to hurt me, I can scare them silly.

But what if I lose control? I don't want to petrify people, even partially. I don't want to hurt people.

So I want to kill my snakes?

No, what I really wanted to do was scream. My heart hurt. I felt bad all over. I mean, bad, as in, evil. Like the way I felt after I semipetrified Troy. Like this kind of thing shouldn't be happening, something was horribly wrong. Even my fingertips felt bad.

“Dusie?” Mom called when she got home.

I didn't answer her.

“Dusie, are you here?” She peeked into my room. “Oh, there you are.” I could hear the relief in her voice. “What are you doing?”

Couldn't she see I was sitting on my bed staring at a jar of green goo? “Nothing, Mom.”

“Do you want something to eat? We could order Thai food.”

Thai food was my favorite, and she knew it. But I shook my head.

Mom went into her room and changed into her silk pj's and sleep turban. She came back in maybe half an hour.

“Dusie?”

I didn't answer.

“Dusie, aren't you hungry at all?”

“No.”

“Honey, what's the matter?”

“Nothing.”

“Come on, sweetie, what is it? Please tell me.”

“Nothing! I'm okay, Mom.”

She went away, and I sat there and stared at the green goo snake lotion until I wasn't seeing it anymore. Instead, I was looking inside myself, trying to negotiate some kind of deal between my befuddled head and my aching heart …

Do I need a special boyfriend to be happy?

Yes. I need somebody to love.

And to love me.

But who could love me when I have snakes on my head? What about me would anybody love?

Well, I suppose I'm kind of nice sometimes …

At that point I really felt like I was pretty much nothing but a monster. But then all of a sudden, after all their silence, my snakes spoke up.

Dusssie, ssstop that!
the scarlet king snake burst out all fire colors, like lightning had struck.

I felt all my snakes rearing up on my head.

You're ssstrong, Dusssie!
said another king snake.

You're sssweet
, said all the corn snakes at once.

Nice. Gentle
, said a milk snake, whispering like white dawn light.

You're bright, Dusssie!
cried the ribbon snakes.
You're rainbow, like usss!