Dusssie Read Free Page B

startlingly vital they were, coming at the viewer with weapons as if to kill, all so lifelike— Spartan Warrior with actual sword wounds, Gladiator with whip scars—done with what the critics called “nearly supernatural authority,” as if she had been there …
    Well, she had been there. Hundreds of years ago.
    And I knew now how the “artworks” had happened, and even to me my voice sounded dead. “Your sculptures. All so realistic. All in stone.”
    â€œHush,” Mom said.
    I couldn’t hush. All of a sudden I hated her. I mean really, really hated her, because when I was a little girl I’d wanted to grow up to be just like her, but now—since “becoming a woman”—ow, it hurt. “Where are we going to take Troy?” I demanded. “To your studio?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œOh, lovely . Are you going to exhibit him? Give him a title? ‘Schoolboy Stricken with Horror of Hideous—’”
    â€œStop it,” Mom ordered, and even though it wasn’t time yet, she signaled the cab driver. “Let us out here.”
    I managed to keep my mouth shut until she’d paid him and he drove away.
    Then I demanded, “How many people have you—”
    â€œ Stop it , Dusie.”
    We strode, hurrying, through the hardest, grayest place I’d ever been to. Hard gray street and hard gray sidewalk in the cold shadow of gray buildings under a gray winter sky.
    In a gray voice Mom said, “I’ve managed not to—not to lose control for centuries now. The sculptures are from long ago; I keep them in storage and bring one out when I need a new work.”
    My mother had been lying to me. All my life. She’d let me think that while I was in school she spent her days at some studio somewhere, chipping away like Michelangelo, when really … really she was a serial killer, sort of.
    â€œMost of them deserved it,” she added, glancing at me, hard-eyed.
    â€œMom!” Suddenly I was almost crying. “Mom, no!”
    â€œI’m not a murderer , sweetie. It just happened. Usually to some thug who was trying to kill me. The ‘Attackers’ are just enemies I had stashed away. A couple of dozen in the last four thousand years; that’s not so bad.”
    â€œ Sure it’s not.”
    â€œMerciful heavens, honey, when I was your age, the king of Gaul used to kill more people than that on an average day before breakfast.”
    Was she a murderer? If it was self-defense? Was I a murderer? Maybe not exactly, even though I felt like I was. I mean, I hadn’t known what was going to happen at the time. It was basically an accident, manslaughter or something.
    We sssaved you , complained a snake inside my head.
    Show sssome gratitude , added another.
    â€œShut up, creeps,” I told them. I hated them; I hated everything— why hadn’t Mom warned me what might happen?
    I knew the answer to that one: because she hadn’t wanted me to know about—about her.
    Because she didn’t want me to know what she was.
    And what she wasn’t.
    The more I thought about it, the worse I felt. We rushed along hard sidewalks leading deeper and deeper into confusion, and I just stared at the concrete. I felt so hopeless.
    Finally we reached a corner near my school. Flashing lights—red, blue, white, yellow—caught my eye.
    I looked up.
    And almost screamed. Mom grabbed my wrist, stopping me where I stood and silently warning me to be quiet, her fake fingernails digging into my skin.
    So I just stared—at two NYPD cruisers with their light bars blinking. And a rescue truck. And an ambulance with its flashers going. All pulled up zigzag at the mouth of the alley where I’d dumped Troy.
    â€œIs that where …” Mom whispered.
    I nodded.
    â€œToo late,” she breathed. “Somebody must have seen.”
    I stood there as if Troy had turned me to stone.
    â€œCome on. We