Wake, Siren Read online

  This story is easy enough to tell. It’s not hard because it’s not mine. But this is the moment when my story takes root with theirs.

  I was a girl and my dark hair was long and it shined in the light. I lived far from Mount Olympus alongside fertile Persian pastures, and to walk the streets was to be swept along on clouds of scent, saffron, rose water, dried limes, the lemony musk of sumac. I was home inside these smells. I wish I could linger here.

  But the story goes on. Venus cursed Helios so that the god of the sun, the one who watches all the world, could only aim his eyes on me. So the light rushed to the eastern sky above me and lagged in moving west. Our winter days grew longer. One night, while his horses grazed, feeding and resting to gather strength to pull the sun across the sky again, Helios arrived at my home. I will tell this part of the story in as few words as I can. I was in my nightgown brushing out my hair; the women of the house were with me. Helios, disguised as my mother, told the women to say good night, that time alone with a daughter was needed. As soon as the door shut behind them, he revealed himself as who he was.

  “I am the world’s eye,” he said. “You look especially beautiful when you’re scared.”

  And then, just radiance. A light so bright it entered all of me.

  Is it rape if you don’t realize what has happened until afterward?

  I vowed to never, never speak of this. If no words were given to it then it could stay less real than a dream.

  But I wasn’t the only one to know what happened. Pouring all his light my way meant that he left other loves in shadow, like Clytie, who missed feeling the sun god’s warmth. In her jealousy, she spread the word of my shame. Something I wanted locked in darkness, she pulled into light. It was my secret to keep, not hers to tell. But she told and told and told. And she made sure to tell my father.

  I kneeled at his feet and begged. I used the word force. I used the word trick. I used the word rape. Raising my arms at the unrelenting sun who wrecked me, I pleaded with my father. Please, please, it was not my fault. He said nothing. He looked at me and there was nothing on his face. Not pain. Not rage. Not love. Nothing. He stood in silence and walked away from me. I followed at a distance, and begged.

  Then he grabbed a shovel and it was as though a door was slammed on the room that held my words, a room now locked and inescapable. All the words, all my pleas, echoing off walls with sound that would never penetrate. My words entombed by horror.

  The sound of the spade eating a hole into the sandy dirt, metal through the earth, lasted from the afternoon deep into the evening. My father grunting as he plunged the shovel. The blisters on his palms. The sweat through his shirt. The hole was deep and dark. I watched my father dig my grave.

  I lay facing up into the night sky, hands bound, small rocks digging into my back. Some feet above me, my father stood, leaning into his shovel. The stars blinked at me. I couldn’t see the moon. The first shovelful hit my shins. A dusting. Pebbles and dirt. It smelled like rain-damped garden where I was, my face so close to the walls of dirt. It smelled like roots and ash. It smelled like childhood. Another shovelful. The dirt riding down my feet, collecting by my ankles. He aimed his load at my hips, sent it sliding off the shovel and down onto me. A pelting on my flesh. I looked at the stars. I breathed in the dirt. It fell in piles. And at first it was nothing. Like sitting still in a snow flurry. A dusting. But with each shovelful the heap increased. Soon dirt filled my ears. The weight of it pressed my chest. My hip bones felt about to turn to dust themselves, pulverized under the weight. Soon to breathe was to fill my mouth or nose with dirt. Soon the weight was too much for my lungs to fill with breath. The stars disappeared. Shovelful after shovelful. Scoop, slide, fall, pile, press. The rhythm of the night, the song of my death. My grave filled. My body crushed in darkness. My body buried in darkness. Permanent night.

  Helios, sorry and still fixed on me, took pity. The next day, he shined his rays hot enough to burn a pathway through the dirt that I might free my head and breathe again. Too late. He tried to warm my gone-cold body. Too late.

  He grieved. He wet the earth with nectar. It seeped down, darkening the soil, to where my lifeless body mingled with the dirt. My skin drank it in. A changing. Limp crushed body turning, coiling, twisting and twisting, harder and tighter, round and round. Then a rising, a gnarling, a rooting, and a pushing. Part pressed up through the dirt, back into the light—too bright, too bright—spreading up and out as a knotty low-flung frankincense tree, all knucklebone. And the roots went down as though pulled by the strong gentle hands of the man who keeps his feet in the core of the earth. The spread of my branches is not my arms raised in exultation or relief; they are not opening up toward the light. It is more a dismissive flick of the wrist. I keep my tears inside.

  People come to take them. They make an incision into me, they cut a gash, and tears of milk run thick right toward the opening. Once they reach the light, they harden like pearls. And the human hands pluck them like the jewels they are, and the tears scent the air.

  As for Clytie, the Sun was repelled by how she’d told. Deserted and bereft, she sat naked on the earth and set her eyes on the sky as the Sun arced every day across it. She did not eat or drink. She just stared at the Sun until the earth started to swallow her, grow around her, and she changed into a flower, pale and violet-shaped, that turns its face to follow the light.

  Me, I dread every sunrise. I spend each evening wishing night will never end. Shame lives inside the body as hot rough hands made of tar that close around the throat, a tar so pitch it repels the light. I wish I could’ve stayed buried lifeless with my secret, there in perpetual night. Now, I know my violator with every sunrise; each dawn reminds me of my attacker, of my father, his shovel, his blistered palms, of the growing weight of the sand on top of me, of my shame. It is no surprise that my tears, molten and alive inside me, harden when they are touched by light. It is no comfort either.

  Each dusk: let this be the last night. Let this begin darkness without end. Each dawn: come cut me open then, come release my tears.

  ATALANTA

  I had Olympian thighs.

  You wanna race? You wanna race? You wanna race? A starting line drawn in the dirt with a stick. The finish line marked by a juniper branch. Warm. The blood moves. On your mark. Muscles ready. Get set. All tensed. Every sense awake for the word Go. Press against the earth, push through the air with the arms, and then take off. Or that’s how it felt. Each step leg thrust foot land arm swing. Two things in consciousness: where can I find more speed; that finish line.

  Where can I find more speed? I’d ask. Sometimes it lived in the big muscles of my thighs. But usually it was in the space between the belly button and the mound, the dark hollow of lowest, deepest guts. That place held more when I needed it. Go faster, Atalanta, I’d tell myself. Go a little faster. You can, can’t you? Where’s the speed? There it is, low down, get it. A hollow where the speed lives. No one’s feet were faster.

  I liked to win.

  One coach I had trained me this way: forget marriage. You are not a wife. If you marry, you will lose yourself.

  I did not like to lose.

  Unwed. I was. But plenty pursued. To end the ongoing chase, I made a contest. You want to marry me? You have to race me. If you win, a wedding. If you lose, you die. I made the rules.

  Unbeatable. On race day. All these men hoping to cross the finish before me. People cheered and yelled. I could run across a pond so fast I would not sink below my ankles. Men came. Men raced. Men died. They got into what they knew they were getting into.

  Then: “You wanna race?” A young man from the stands asking to compete. Hippomenes with wide strong shoulders, strong long legs, a wild reckless smile. Great-grandfathered by Neptune. “You wanna race?” he asked again, because silence had been my first answer. And all at once, everything slowed on down. All except the strong muscle in my chest which thumped at a pace only running had brought it till now. His voice vibrated in a cert
ain way. It hit different. Young, he was, but with wise eyes. Bold as a lion. I was myself, but in myself something whoa so new. And it sent my mind down two different roads, each one ending in a question mark. Each one ending in pain. Do I want to win? Could I want him to?

  That question—that it even came into my own head—brought other questions. Does he have a death wish? What do I lose if I lose? What do I win if I win? What do I lose if I win? What do I win if I lose?

  Brave and young. He knew it: the gods help those who dare. All the posters in all the coaches’ sweat-sock-stinking offices. Can’t win, don’t try. Fortune favors the brave. Second place, first loser. Sometimes the finish line is only the beginning. Forget me, I thought. I did not want him to die. Go find another wife, don’t waste your beauty and youth on a race you won’t win. But also, he makes his own decisions. I am not in charge of his mind, same way no one but me’s in charge of mine. I liked the way it felt to stand near him. I heard the words of coach: you lose yourself. Before I race I keep my mind clean. Now, my mind was cramping like a hamstring. My mind, racing.

  In some part of myself I hadn’t known, some dim hollow of my body and my brain, came some unfamiliar sense. I want for once to be outrun. I want him to run faster. This small hollow is where love lives and in me it’s felt for the first time and it fills and fills and fills and there is no bottom to it. No bottom to that hollow at all.

  I saw Hippomenes kneel before the race, lips whispering in some prayer, some humble plea to Venus, bowing down to her because she’s the goddess who most loves love. He spoke sweetness she couldn’t resist. She gave him strategy and tips to win. She nestled herself close to him and handed him three apples made of gold from her sacred grove and told him how to use them. Was it his sweetness that swayed her to help? Or was it that she was eager to force a love-shunner to un-shun love? I have my own mind, though, is the thing. I knew what I was doing.

  On your mark. Starting line drawn in the dirt. Get set. I could smell his sweat and I liked it. Go. I did not know how to lose. The race at first as they always were: leg foot arm lung full flight. Where’s the speed? There it is. A little more? There it is. And more? Get it. Hippomenes was fast. We both knew I was faster. He held my pace but I knew from his breath he wouldn’t for long. It was then that he tossed a golden apple in the path. It glinted in the sun as it rolled, and I grabbed it. So many gold medals hung on my mirror, here it just took a different form. But to bend and swift it off the ground, I sacrificed a step, lost some of my composure. But I regained it, found my feet, and passed him once again. I was myself. Only myself. I knew where to look for more speed. I knew what my body could do. I knew so well my own mind.

  He threw another golden apple in the path and I understood that this was his way of winning, this was how he’d been coached. Another gold medal, another trophy for my mantel, another gleaming testament to my speed, a souvenir from another win. I leaned to reach it, grabbed it in my hand. I knew my speed and knew I could play his game and win. I lost a step, another. I saw his back. Atalanta, you’re unbeatable. And I found the speed and he saw my back.

  He threw a third apple, this one way off the track. Two choices. Win. Or get the third apple. I had the power and the energy and I knew how to execute the race. I could cross the line first if I wanted.

  I chose. Veered. Dashed. Grabbed. Apple. Hand. Blazed back to the track and saw the line. I felt young and light and fast. There was more speed, get it, it’s the only thing I knew how to do. But this other hollow, the one newly swelled with love, checked my pace by a step. What will it feel like to lose? I wanted to see.

  His back. Across the line. I one step behind. I lost. Streak broke. Who was I if I wasn’t winning? A moment panting panicked, everything I’d known about myself shattered when his body crossed the line before mine. Who am I? My breath slowed. I was myself. I had lost. A race. I had won. A love. A hollow newly filled.

  A wedding and all was right and I was who I was. But who was the man I married? He had Venus to thank for his victory, for coaching him the way she did, for showing tricks. But he didn’t thank her. He forgot all about it. As though he beat me on his own. As though any man could beat me on his own. Why couldn’t he have just said thanks? Lit a stick of incense? Kneeled in prayer? Where’s his gratitude? Aim it right. But he didn’t and who could blame her for her anger.

  After the wedding, we went for a run together. No race. Long and slow, our muscles moving, keeping pace with each other, each able to dip into the other’s strength. Love, I thought. That’s what it is. Each able to dip into the other’s strength, each made stronger by the other. We braked, weary, and our sweat dried quickly in the sun.

  I want to kiss the salt off you, Hippomenes said. Love high, body spent. Venus, in reaction to his lack of gratitude to her, filled his body with desire, immediate, unfightable, in this place where she knew it was a crime.

  Not here though, I said. We were in a sacred place. Just as Venus had planned.

  Here, he said. And he pulled me toward a cave. Inside, small wooden sculptures of the gods lined the walls.

  Not here, I said.

  Here, he said. And he ran his tongue along my neck. Salt harvest. That was enough and we gave ourselves to each other. In the shadows, the sculptures turned their heads.

  We sullied the place. We profaned what was sacred. Cybele, the goddess whose cave it was, in fury at what we’d done there, dissolved our human forms. Hair turned fur, tongues roughened, two-footed to four-pawed, fierce-jawed. Not enough time to say: Why didn’t you just say thank you? I lost myself.

  * * *

  Now, I bite. I eat prey whole. I put claws into the low dark guts and pull the insides out. Roar and race, we drag Cybele’s chariot, lion and lioness.

  Unbeatable. I was. And am. Will be. Worse fates. Could’ve been turned into a mountain unmoving. Could’ve been turned into a snail.

  IPHIS

  “Thanks for doing this with me.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “Your father still doesn’t know what happened.”

  “I don’t have a problem with that.”

  “Do you think I should tell him? It feels strange not to tell him.”

  “I think he would freak.”

  “You’re right. He would freak out. You know before you were born, he said that if you came out a girl, he’d kill you.”

  “Mom, you’ve told me that literally a thousand times.”

  “We didn’t have the money for a dowry. He said we couldn’t afford a girl. Does that make you hate him?”

  “Do I hate Dad? No, of course not. Does it seem like I hate him? They were different times.”

  “They were different times.”

  “I’m glad he didn’t kill me.”

  “I saved you.”

  “I know, Mom.”

  “You wouldn’t be here if—”

  “I know. Mom. I’m not sure I can thank you in a way that will make you believe that I’m grateful.”

  “When you came out of me, I felt like I’d just been absorbed into a cloud made of love.”

  “Gross.”

  “Not gross. Really nice. Maybe the nicest thing I’ve ever felt. And when I saw you were a girl, I thought—or not even thought—I knew that I wasn’t going to let him take you away from me.”

  “I’m really glad about that. It’s hard to imagine.”

  “I told the doctor and nurses to tell your father you were a boy. We were so happy. I’m telling you, I’ve never seen anyone as happy as your dad the day you were born. We were so happy!”

  “That’s really nice to hear. You hadn’t told me that before.”

  “And it wasn’t hard to keep the sugar. I kept your hair short, and I dressed you in little boy clothes and we gave you a name that could’ve been for a boy or a girl and you were a boy.”

  “I wasn’t a boy.”

  “No, I know. I mean, everyone understood you to be a boy. And you had this face, these high broad bones, those dark eyeb
rows—”

  “That’s still my face.”

  “No, I know. Just that you would’ve been beautiful if you were a boy or a girl. You don’t say thank you to that?”

  “It doesn’t actually feel like a compliment, so.”

  “Well, it is a compliment, sweetie. You’re beautiful.”

  “Please stop touching my hair.”

  “For heaven’s sake.”

  “I thought you wanted to have this conversation so you could know better how all of this has been for me.”

  “I do, I do, I just thought it’d be good to establish the history.”

  “Don’t you think I know the history?”

  “Well, you were a baby. You were just a little boy. I don’t know what you remember.”

  “Girl.”

  “Okay. Yes.”

  “If I was a boy—don’t you understand?—we wouldn’t be having this conversation. I don’t think you understand how hard things were.”

  “I do, sweetie, I do.”

  “No. You can’t.”

  “But it all worked out.”

  “It all worked out? You asked me to tell you what this has all been like for me. Not how things are now, but how they were. If you want to go on believing everything was fine and the regular amount of hard, go ahead. They weren’t.”

  “Things were hard for me, too, you know. Keeping this sugar. From your dad. From everyone.”

  “I hated that we called it that.”

  “You did?”

  “Why couldn’t we just say secret?”

  “It was our secret language. Our code. It was our way of talking about it. Secret can sound so dirty. So shame-y. I didn’t want you to feel like it was something dirty.”

  “We could’ve said secret.”

  “It was hard, keeping it, whatever you want to call it. And it was hard when you got to an age where you couldn’t hide certain things.”

  “Are you talking about breasts?”

  “I am.”