Part 84 (2/2)

You know how many girls actually keep that pledge? I was going to. I meant to. But not just keep it until I got married. I meant to keep it forever, and then I'd never have to tell anybody.

No, I was right the first time. I'd rather be alone than have to explain. Besides, if you're having a baby, you should have the baby for the baby, not for you.

Isn't that right, Mom?

The harpy has a kingdom.

It's a tiny kingdom. The kingdom's just the alley behind my building, but it has a throne (the dumpster) and it has subjects (the winos) and it has me. I know the winos see the harpy. They talk to it sometimes. But it vanishes when the other building tenants come down, and it hides from the garbagemen.

I wonder if harpies can fly.

It opens its wings sometimes when it's raining as if it wants to wash off the filth, or sometimes if it's mad at something. It hisses when it's mad like that, the only sound I've ever heard it make outside my head.

I guess if it can fly depends on if it's magic. Miss Rivera, my bio teacher soph.o.m.ore year, said that after a certain size things couldn't lift themselves with wings anymore. It has to do with muscle strength and wingspan and gravity. And some big things can only fly if they can fall into flight, or get a headwind.

I never thought about it before. I wonder if the harpy's stuck in that alley. I wonder if it's too proud to ask for help.

I wonder if I should ask if it wants some anyway.

The harpy's big. But condors are big, too, and condors can fly. I don't know if the harpy is bigger than a condor. It's hard to tell from pictures, and it's not like you can walk up to a harpy with a tape measure and ask it to stick out a wing.

Well, maybe you could. But I wouldn't.

Wouldn't it be awful to have wings that didn't work? Wouldn't it be worse to have wings that do work, and not be able to use them?

After I visit the harpy at night, I go up to the apartment. When I let myself in the door to the kitchen, Mama Alice is sitting at the table with some mail open in front of her. She looks up at me and frowns, so I lock the door behind me and shoot the chain. Luis should be home by now, and I can hear music from his bedroom. He's fifteen now. I think it's been three days since I saw him.

I come over and sit down in my work clothes on the metal chair with the cracked vinyl seat.

”Bad news?”

Mama Alice shakes her head, but her eyes are s.h.i.+ny. I reach out and grab her hand. The folded up paper in her fingers crinkles.

”What is it, then?”

She pushes the paper at me. ”Desiree. You got the scholars.h.i.+p.”

I don't hear her right the first time. I look at her, at our hands, and the rumply paper. She shoves the letter into my hand and I unfold it, open in, read it three times as if the words will change like crawly worms when I'm not looking at it.

The words are crawly worms, all watery, but I can see hards.h.i.+p and merit and State. I fold it up carefully, smoothing out the crinkles with my fingertips. It says I can be anything at all.

I'm going to college on a scholars.h.i.+p. Just state school.

I'm going to college because I worked hard. And because the state knows I'm full of poison, and they feel bad for me.

The harpy never lies to me, and neither does Mama Alice.

She comes into my room later that night and sits down on the edge of my bed, with is just a folded-out sofa with springs that poke me, but it's mine and better than nothing. I hide the letter under the pillow before she turns on the light, so she won't catch on that I was hugging it.

”Desiree,” she says.

I nod and wait for the rest of it.

”You know,” she says, ”I might be able to get the state to pay for liposuction. Doctor Morales will say it's medically necessary.”

”Liposuction?” I grope my ugly plastic gla.s.ses off the end table, because I need to see her. I'm frowning so hard they pinch my nose. ”For the hump,” she says, and touches her neck, like she had one too. ”So you could stand up straight again. Like you did when you were little.”

Now I wish I hadn't put the gla.s.ses on. I have to look down at my hands.

The fingertips are all smudged from the toner on the letter. ”Mama Alice,”

I say, and then something comes out I never meant to ask her. ”How come you never adopted me?”

She jerks like I stuck her with a fork. ”Because I thought ... ” She stops, and shakes her head, and spreads her hands.

I nod. I asked, but I know. Because the state pays for my medicine.

Because Mama Alice thought I would be dead by now.

We were all supposed to be dead by now. All the HIV babies. Two years, maybe five. AIDS kills little kids really quick, because their immune systems haven't really happened yet. But the drugs got better as our lives got longer, and now we might live forever. Nearly forever.

Forty. Fifty.

I'm dying. Just not fast enough. If it were faster, I'd have nothing to worry about. As it is, I'm going to have to figure out what I'm going to do with my life.

I touch the squishy pad of fat on my neck with my fingers, push it in until it dimples. It feels like it should keep the mark of my fingers, like Moon Mud, but when I stop touching it, it springs back like nothing happened at all.

I don't want to get to go to college because somebody feels bad for me.

I don't want anybody's pity.

The next day, I go down to talk to the harpy.

I get up early and wash quick, pull on my tights and skirt and blouse and sweater. I don't have to work after school today, so I leave my uniform on the hanger behind the door.

But when I get outside, the first thing I hear is barking. Loud barking, lots of it, from the alley. And that hiss, the harpy's hiss. Like the biggest maddest cat you ever heard.

There's junk all over the street, but nothing that looks like I could fight with it. I grab up some hunks of ice. My school shoes skip on the frozen sidewalk and I tear my tights when I fall down.

It's dark in the alley, but it's city dark, not real dark, and I can see the dogs okay. There's three of them, dancing around the dumpster on their hind legs. One's light-colored enough that even in the dark I can see she's all scarred up from fighting, and the other two are dark.

The harpy leans forward on the edge of the dumpster, wings fanned out like a cartoon eagle, head stuck out and jabbing at the dogs.

Silly thing doesn't know it doesn't have a beak, I think, and whip one of the ice rocks at the big light-colored dog. She yelps. Just then, the harpy sicks up over all three of the dogs.

Oh, G.o.d, the smell.

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