Psyche in a Dress (5 page)

T
he house was built on the side of the hill, so it seemed perpetually to be sliding off. It was mostly glass so that one could see wooded hills and smoggy skies from almost every room. Eros’s mother had decorated the house all in purple. There were purple velvet couches and chairs with purple silk beaded pillows, purple Persian carpets, giant purple candles and huge natural amethysts reflecting the light that poured through the windows. There was a terraced garden that Eros had planted with banks and banks of lavender, hyacinth, pansies and hydrangea—with pennies buried at their roots to make them the right color—and little fountains and statues of Eros’s naked mother hidden among the foliage.

Eros was not unhappy. But as he grew older his mother began to suffocate him with her love. She couldn’t help it. She had never loved anyone as much as herself before. No one had seemed perfect enough. He was perfect. But he felt as if he couldn’t breathe. People acted strangely around him. They saw his face, smelled his skin and hair or touched his hand and something happened to them. It was as if all their senses were coming to life. It was too much for Eros sometimes. All that wanting.

He read the myths and learned that the god of love is not only the son of love and beauty but the son of chaos.

Eros felt empty, as if he had no soul. So he went looking for her.

He didn’t have to go far. It was his mother who led him to her.

“My boyfriend’s daughter goes to your school,” she said. “She’s featured in every single damn film. You should introduce yourself.”

Psyche was the long-legged girl who kept her head bent as if to hide her face with her black hair. She always seemed so sad. He tried to talk to her but she wouldn’t look at him. She hurried past in her odd dresses.

Eros could not help himself. He found out where she lived
and he crawled in her window one night. He knew she was the part of him that was missing but he didn’t know how to explain it to her. He thought that if she saw him she would send him away. Is beauty monstrous?

His mother said, “I heard that girl I told you about eats boys alive. She likes them really good-looking to feed her ego. Then she dumps them. You’re so sensitive, sweetie. It’s a beautiful quality. I just don’t want you to get hurt.”

When his soul finally lit the candle he felt betrayed, but he would have stayed anyway. It was she that sent him away. Afraid that she was not enough.

Eros packed his things and left. He traveled across the country. He shaved his head and ate only rice and vegetables until he lost so much weight that every bone showed. He practiced yoga and chanted. He went to museums and read books and saw films. He did not touch anyone. His skin broke out and he lay in the sun to burn away the red bumps. This left shadowy scars on his cheeks. He was called a freak more than once. Love is freakish to those who fear it. He was beaten up and his nose was broken. Love is a threat.

This was all right with Eros. Eros did not want to be a god.
He wanted to be a man. A writer would be nice, too.

Eros wrote about the girl who was his soul and in this way he felt his soul inside of him. He sent the book to his well-connected mother who sent it to her publisher friend. There was really only one reason Eros wanted the book to be published.

It was like writing a letter and putting it in a bottle and sending it out to sea.

Eros’s mother had not told him about her new employee, the girl he had lost.

When he found her again he wanted to stay forever in that hotel room in the deserted city. He never wanted to leave her. But he was afraid that she would leave him. That she still felt she was not enough.

He might have tried, though.

Joy changes everything.

I
awaited Joy in our tiny cottage

I made little films for my unborn daughter, little myths

Girls were transformed into flowers, trees and birds

but they always came back—

better singers, more fragrant, full of the earth’s power

I stopped working for Aphrodite

I was afraid she might turn me into something

and not turn me back

There were other available slaves and witches to help her

and when you are about to become a mother

you just can’t take as many chances

Even so, secretly, I wept for Eros

Part of me wished I had remained a flower

Passive, trembling in the sunshine

closing with the darkness

Waiting for some bee to pollinate me

It would have been easier than being a woman

much easier than being a mother

But I couldn’t have stayed with Love

Although he had become a man he was still a god to me

And I?

I was a mere mortal

I was not a goddess

After I gave birth to Joy something changed, though

something I could not have predicted

There in the hospital room

I held her to my breast

and she took my nipple into her mouth

she looked up at me with long, still eyes

too large for her face

her fingers wrapped around mine

there was no one else in the world

Then I knew I could live without Love as a man

I had taken him inside me

and given him back to the world

in the form of a girl

I was hers—

my daughter’s—

I was divine

T
hey say we turn into our mothers

When my daughter became Persephone

I was Demeter

Just because I had loved Hades

doesn’t mean I was prepared

when my child found her own hell god

He had one white eye and his nails and his teeth

were filed to points

Sometimes he wore plastic breasts on his bony chest

or a plastic phallus over leather pants

He wailed about carnage in a raspy voice

This is the one who took her from me

All I can think of is how, when she was a baby

she cried for me all the time

I was the only one she wanted

When I held her I didn’t even need my hands

She clung to my neck with her arms

to my waist with her legs like a little animal

She slept in my armpit, her mouth on my nipple all night

It was the only way she would sleep

We woke in each other’s sweat

She smelled like little white flowers

and baby soap and me—my milk

I had never been so important

to anyone

I felt as if I could make the world blossom

I had

I had made the world bloom with her

Then he came with his teeth

his nails painted black, his rubber clothes

his one eye behind a white lens like a blind man

He smelled of sulfur

He had a metallic gold limousine

and a driver with white gloves

This is the one who took my daughter away

I remember how we spent our days together

We had picnics with the dolls

on a red-and-white-checked cloth in the garden

ate off their china tea set

the tiny, bitter strawberries that grew in the clay pot

miniature carrots, tomatoes and sprigs of mint

drank homemade lemonade from seashells

We filled the birdbath with rose petals

and watched their reflection on the water

We painted our faces with rainbows

and wore giant heart-shaped rings

and wings

of gauze

We went to the library and read books

about baby animals

searching for their mothers

We sang songs of tiny stars, lambs, cakes

What was I thinking?

That this would be enough for her forever?

My mother had hoped the same thing

She had been wrong

My daughter screamed, “You’d say that about any man.

No one is good enough unless he’s exactly like you.”

She left the house

I want to believe that he put a spell on her

bit her

drugged her somehow

forcibly carried her away on his black motorcycle

But she went by herself

They broke glasses just to hear them shatter

and tore sheets with their hands

like animals with claws

They stayed up all night watching videos of him

dressed as a schoolgirl

His pieces

were about children killing each other with machine guns

about rape and explosions

bodies falling from burning buildings

People blamed him for inciting more of these things

but she said, “He is just a shy kid who was beaten up in

high school. A poet. He re-created himself to point out

the hypocrisy. He sees the world the way it is. You

pretend none of this exists. You live in a dream.”

I wanted my dream

I wanted, more than anything

to make a dream and give it to her

to live in, always

But I didn’t try to hide her from the world

She wasn’t happy at school so I taught her at home. I took her to foreign movies, gave her all kinds of books. I let her wear lipstick and nail polish from the health food store, although I told her she didn’t need it. I let her go to parties, even. I even let her go to that performance of his. I wasn’t too strict. I didn’t cause this, did I? I just wanted her to be happier than I was.

My own father swallowed me

and then vomited me back up

I blame him for what happened to her

If he had loved us she would never have gone away

with the god of hell

And I would not have needed my Hades

Or maybe it is my fault

I doubted myself

I let her real father go away twice

When she left I sat in the garden and lit a cigarette

smoked half of it and let it drop

thinking I could make a small pyre

a performance piece, almost

But the fire started to spread

After the fire department came

I felt guilty, of course

All those nice, strong men

who risked their lives to help people

Not clean up after some crazy, grieving mother

The ground was scarred and barren

She was gone

I thought, this is how I will repay life

for taking her from me

I will never grow another seedling

I will shrivel up in the darkness

and the flowers all die with me

Then one day I went to see

my daughter’s Hades

He lived in a dark palace with iron gates and fierce dogs

A huge bald man let me in

He was smiling to himself, I knew

Smirking

Another mother trying to drag her stray child back home

He didn’t think I was anyone to fear

I had not been a goddess before Persephone was born

Now I was a goddess enraged, protecting my child

A slender young man came down the staircase

He spoke softly and asked if I wanted a drink

I fingered the knife in my pocket

had imagined this moment so differently

Facing the hell god, slitting his throat

slaying him, bringing her home in my arms

All my fury at fathers and gods

would make me invincible

Instead I just stood there

looking at him with his soft unwashed hair

his stubbled chin and two blue eyes

like my daughter’s eyes

He played the piano for me

a bunch of narcissus, white in a vase

The smell made me swoon, so I steadied myself

He sang of a mother and child

looked up at me, grinning, and said

“I could never put this on an album, though.

Reputations involved here”

She came down the stairs, in his shirt

Her legs so small and bare

When she saw me she looked

as if I were her hell

Then he reached out for her

took her in his arms

folded her up

I remembered

how light she once felt

and warm, perfect, safe

I thought

maybe any man who held her would be

like a hell god to me

maybe I can never

give her up

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry for coming here”

I let the knife fall from my fingers back into my pocket

I turned and left her there

I knew that I could never bring her back

The child I wanted to bring back with me was gone

It was winter

I took a bath in the claw-foot tub

and put on a white silk kimono with red poppies

I made corn, squash and garbanzo bean soup

on my hot plate

I watched the film I had rented

about a biker poet in a leather jacket

His wife went to the underworld

and he had to battle Death

who was not a man

but a pale woman with long black hair

I looked at myself in the tiny mirror on the door

I was no longer beautiful

I did not look like a former starlet

but I looked like an artist

a director of small, strange films

someone you could tell your story to in a bar

someone who had borne a daughter

(a perfect daughter)

someone who knew about planting

and pyromania

I looked like someone whose father had almost killed her

whose lovers had almost destroyed her

whose mother had tried to save her

had saved her as much as a mother can

whose daughter had saved her by being born

and then left her to save herself

One morning I was sitting in the garden

planning where I would plant the sweet peas

and the tomatoes when the weather changed

I heard someone coming up the hillside

My heart felt the way it did when she was a baby

and I had been away from her for a few hours

maybe she was just napping in the next room

but I hadn’t seen her face or heard her voice for a while

and then she came in or called for me

and I would fly to her

needing her so much, missing her so much

I didn’t try to touch her

She came and sat next to me on the singed wicker chair

“What happened?” I asked her. “Did he hurt you?”

“No. But I’m afraid he will leave me.

There are so many girls all the time.”

“What makes you think he wants any of them?”

“I am not a goddess,” she said. “You are.”

This is what I told her

I have been young too

I have been Psyche, I have been Echo

I have been Eurydice

I have been Persephone, like you

I thought I was not a goddess

My mother was a goddess

Now I am Demeter, like my mother

Because of you

My Demeter tried to save me from Hades

That man you have is Eros too

I let my Eros, your father, leave

because I didn’t think I was enough

But you must remember you are everything

We all are

Psyche
means soul

What more is there than that?

Echo never stops her singing

Maybe it was Eurydice’s choice to fade away

when Orpheus looked back

so she did not have to return with him

Persephone is a goddess of the bridge between

light and dark, day and night, death and life