chapter 11
What are you supposed to do with information like that?
Alix, Stephanie, and I explode in laughter. Ambrosia just told us that we aren’t ordinary human teenage girls with massive social problems and some of the worst frizzed-out hair at Hunter High. We are straight out of mythology, goddesses who avenge, retaliate, punish, haunt, hunt, and don’t stand around being victims, but make things happen. We are kegs of untapped, unstoppable power. What else did she say? We walk in the dark, or something insanely insane like that.
It’s so ridiculous that I start pogoing around the surfer statue. I don’t believe a word of it.
But at the same time that I don’t believe it, I do believe it. I want to believe it. It explains not just about He-Cat and all the strange things at school but something even more important. It means that everything I want to believe about myself, what I hope for and pray for, is true. I am blossoming. There’s something strong and powerful ready to come out. A me who can stand up for herself and who can right wrongs and who never has to be afraid. The real me, a Fury me.
I think that Stephanie and Alix are also bouncing between the two poles of not believing a word and total certainty. We keep dancing and shrieking a thousand oh my Gods, and under a darkening sky we pump Ambrosia with questions:
“Are you nuts?” (Alix)
“What exactly are the Furies?” (Stephanie)
“How do we use this power?” (Alix again)
“If we are Furies, who are you?” (me)
“Who else knows about this?” (Alix again)
Ambrosia gives us one straightforward and four not-exactly-straightforward answers:
“No.”
“You have a lot of soul-searching to do to answer that question.”
“You harness it.”
“I am the one who called you out of your sleep.”
“Me and a certain busybody.”
Ambrosia hands us each a few sheets of paper. “Your job description. FAQs about Furies. For future reading,” she says. “But now, dance, celebrate! Enjoy the cosmic moment.”
So that’s exactly what we do. By the time the sun sets, I’m charged with an exciting new energy, a sense of hope and optimism that maybe my life truly has been turned upside down. I am not who I think I am. We aren’t who we think we are.
What do we do next? What happens after you get information like this?
“You’re not putting us on?” Alix asks again.
“Don’t take my word for it,” Ambrosia says. “See for yourself. You need to test your powers, play with them, learn what they can do.”
“I have another question.” Stephanie’s dreads are puffed out, like they gorged themselves on salt air and our energy. “Is anyone else starved? I mean, really starved?”
“Yeah,” Alix agrees. “I gotta get home and make dinner for my little brother. It’s burrito night, his favorite.”
This doesn’t seem like an appropriate ending to a day like this one, but I guess it’s what happens after any event that blows apart what you think you know about life and about yourself. Everything changes. Maybe we really are Alecto, Tisiphone, and Megaera.
But right now we are also Alix, Stephanie, and Meg, who have chores and homework. I, for one, am going to get in massive trouble with the Leech for being so late.
We wind up doing what ordinary girls do. We promise to call each other. We make plans for tomorrow and then, after one more squealing oceanfront dance, we head off in our different directions to think about what just happened.
* * *
I can’t go to the Leech’s house yet. I’m not ready to face her. This is too wild not to talk about. I duck into a deserted playground, sit on the bottom of a slide, and phone Raymond. Even though he’s coughing and his ears are clogged, I make him shut up and listen. My words gush out. I know I’m not making total sense.
“It hasn’t sunk in yet, but I think it’s true,” I say.
“What hasn’t sunk in?”
“What I just told you! What Ambrosia said.”
“Slow down, Meg! She said what?”
“I’m the undisputed master of holding a grudge.”
Cough. “You?”
I pace the playground. I need to keep moving. Too much energy. “She said that I have to practice more than the others because everyone boils at different degrees. When it comes to fury and outrage, Stephanie and Alix are hotter cauldrons than I am.”
“That’s for sure.”
“But I’m at a breaking point. Plus, I have all the raw talent. Nothing to worry about. She said so.”
“Gee, that’s a relief.”
“Are you being sarcastic?”
Sneeze. He changes the subject. “Ambrosia’s role in all this is…?”
I sit on a toddler rocking horse, some sort of made-up creature, part dinosaur, part giraffe. It’s purple with big yellow spots. “She’s the one who called us. That’s what she said. Plus, she’s in charge of the paperwork.”
Raymond snorts, and I get a flash of irritation. He’s already made up his mind and thinks it’s all a crock. “Don’t snort! You think this isn’t possible!”
“I don’t think anything yet. I don’t have all the evidence.”
“You think Ambrosia’s messing with me! You think I’m gullible. You think I’m what you see is what you get.”
“Meg, calm down. I’m trying to keep an open mind without my brains spilling out. By the way, that wasn’t a snort at you. It was a big hunk of phlegm.”
“Gross.”
“Imagine what it tastes like. Tell me more about the paperwork.”
I move to a bench with an overhead streetlamp and read something random from a section titled “Anger Exercises.” The typeface is small and tight. “If you feel your mind softening or taking pity, don’t listen to it. Don’t sympathize.”
“Why wouldn’t you listen to your own mind? What’s wrong with sympathy? Why would…” Another sneeze.
Another flash of irritation. I shouldn’t have to explain this to Raymond. A best friend should understand without me needing to spell it out. “I shouldn’t listen because my mind keeps telling me to put up with being treated mean and unfairly.”
“That’s not what I—”
“Because if people do something wrong, they should feel guilty about it. They should be punished.”
“Of course! But—”
“But not by me? That’s what you’re saying! You don’t think I have any special power.”
“You think you do? You actually believe what Ambrosia says?”
I hate Raymond’s tone. I don’t like it at all. He can be such a know-it-all. That’s why he gets on everyone’s nerves. And his sarcasm! He’s making fun of me. He’s putting me down. When I don’t answer right away, he changes the question: “Do you want to believe what she says?” Pause. “’Cause Meg, if you do, I want to believe her, too.”
And just like that, the anger drains out of me. It’s gone. My pulse settles down. I move from the bench to a swing, wondering why I got so pissed off at him. How did that happen? It came on so fast, flared up, and I felt so right and justified. But then he said the right thing in the right way, and it all evaporated. I’m so glad. I don’t want to be mad at Raymond, not ever. He’s my best friend. He’s there for me. He wants what I want.
“You still there?” he asks.
“I understand why you’re skeptical,” I say, my voice softer. “I’m skeptical, too. I’m not a total fool.”
“Of course not!”
“We’re not supposed to take Ambrosia’s word for anything. She did her part by calling us together, but now it’s up to us. We need to play with our power on our own, test it, figure it out.”
“She said that?”
I nod even though he can’t see me. “She said that’s the only way we’ll really accept who we are and what we’re capable of doing.”
We talk a little more, and then after saying good-bye I inch my toes behind me on the swing. I let the momentum take me, just like a ball in the Newton’s cradle on Mr. H’s desk. Only I don’t bang into anything, except gravity. My energy is all mine. It carries me forward, and at the highest point I pump my legs to go even higher. I tilt backward, practically hanging upside down. The ground whooshes up to meet me.
* * *
Luck is with me tonight. I get into the house without a Leech attack, sneak into the bedroom, and lock the door. She hates locked doors and will probably come pounding on mine soon, but right now I don’t care what she hates. He-Cat is curled up on my pillow. Poor thing. Mistreated little guy. I bet he hid out here all day to avoid her nasty temper. It’s so unfair. When I sit on the bed, the cat snuggles closer and turns into a purr machine.
I eat some peanut-butter crackers, brush the orange-colored crumbs off my lap, and boot up my computer. I’ve never been this excited about homework. I’ve never had homework that has so much to do with my life.
Internet search: The Furies.
Definition: In Greek mythology, the Furies are female earth deities of vengeance and supernatural personifications of the anger of the dead. From one website, I learn that they are also called the Erinyes, which translates as “the angry ones” or “the avengers.” Avengers! From another website, I discover that they are sometimes referred to as “infernal goddesses” who pursue, persecute, and represent regeneration and creation. In the Iliad, they are described as “those who beneath the earth punish whosoever has sworn a false oath.”
The pictures I find are especially awesome. It turns out that the Furies are all over classical art. On some statues, their heads are wreathed with snakes and their eyes drip with blood. On one old vase in a museum, they have the wings of bats or maybe it’s birds; on a piece of pottery, the artist portrays them with the bodies of dogs.
There are so many cultural references to the Furies.
They are major characters in the final part of the Oresteia, a trilogy of Greek tragedies written by Aeschylus, which concerns the end of the curse on the House of Atreus. There’s a film, a Western from the 1950s, called The Furies, and a 1976 historical novel by someone named John Jakes. And it’s the name of the newspaper of The Furies Collective, a Washington, DC–based organization. I’d like to know more about that.
At femalefury.net, I learn about an all-girl third wave proto-punk band, based in Athens, Georgia, that’s now defunct. Discography: 1986: Debut album: “The Furies Rise.” The title track and another cut, Born from the Balls of Uranus, received strong airplay on college radio stations and the band toured (small clubs and campuses) until disbanding due to personality and artistic clashes. Rumors persist that the group is planning a comeback. They maintain a small but passionate cult following. It’s too bad they broke up. I wonder if I can find a video or their CD.
There’s lots more. Furies. Infuriated. Furious. I stroke He-Cat’s fur as my printer spits out everything I can find. I want to be prepared for tomorrow, our first scheduled practice session, even though we haven’t figured out a place to meet yet.
The lair of the Leech is obviously out of the question. When I call Stephanie, she complains that her parents work at home a lot. Alix says no way are we meeting at her place. No explanation why, and she’s cagey about it. I get the sense that she’s embarrassed about where she lives.
“You want me. You need me,” Raymond says with a clogged nose when he volunteers to host what he is calling The Great Power Shift. “To your gathering I will bring a healthy skepticism, a runny nose, and a mom who will serve her world-famous triple ginger cookies.”
* * *
So that’s how we wind up at Raymond’s house the next day after school. When we step inside the front door, a cascading scale of violin notes from upstairs greets us. Raymond must be feeling better. His mom makes a special point of giving me a big hug and asking how I am. She does that every time she sees me, and I’m getting used to it. It’s not phony at all. Then she hands me a plate of cookies and leads us to Raymond’s room. She blows each of us an individual kiss before shutting the bedroom door behind her.
“Gawd, I just love my mom,” Raymond says. He’s propped up in bed, pillows fluffed, violin at his side, and wearing his favorite pjs with the retro cowboy pattern. I notice Alix and Stephanie exchanging glances. That’s one more thing we have in common: none of us has ever publicly declared love for our mom, and not because it’s an uncool thing to do but because we don’t have moms like Raymond’s. I’d give anything to have a parent who feels about me like she feels about him. She gets a kick out of Raymond being Raymond, exactly the way he is. You can just tell that she doesn’t want to change a thing about him.
Sneeze. Cough. Raymond doesn’t waste another minute before getting down to business. “My research on the matter in question,” he announces. “There’s a lot to be said for being home sick. School can definitely get in the way of an education.” He opens a computer file and reads, “Those Who Walk in Darkness, blah-blah-blah. Alecto, Tisiphone, Megaera.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.” Alix reaches for one of Raymond’s stuffed animals, a cross between a bear and a chicken, and puts it behind her head as a pillow.
“Hold on, Ms. Patience. I have more. Female deities of vengeance and anger. Horrible to look at. Blood dripping from their eyes. Snakes in their hair. What they lack in good cheekbones they make up in horrendous BO.”
“Hey!” I protest.
Raymond mimes giving me a reassuring hug, and then explains that the horrible part is only one aspect of the Furies’ image. Artists and playwrights throughout history sometimes portray them as gorgeous temptresses, a trio of luscious-smelling goddesses.
“That’s more like it,” I say.
“And what personalities! Sheer determination. Without mercy, they punish all crime. They mess with your mind. They leave no foul deed unavenged. They are”—he picks up his violin and plays a dramatic, high-pitched da-da-da-da—“the Furies.”
I add an interesting tidbit from my own research. “Furies, as in furious. And infuriated. Derived from—”
“Enough grammar.” Alix is on her third cookie. “I don’t care what they call them or why. I wanna know if it’s true about us. What can we do and when can we start doing it?”
“If we can do anything,” Stephanie emphasizes. “I obviously want it to be true, but I’m not totally sold.”
Alix, chomping into ginger cookie number four, fans her mouth: “Spicy! Compliments to the chef. Anyway, we’ll never know anything if we sit around like a bunch of motor mouths.”
Raymond agrees. “Despite my proclivity for blabbing, I’m in full accord. Let’s turn to the scientific method, and commence the Great Power Shift experiment.”
He nods with extreme seriousness in my direction. I take it as the signal to begin reading from Ambrosia’s recommended exercises. “Practice number one. Start small. A bug perhaps, some worthless member of a particularly despicable subspecies whose minuscule size is in inverse proportion to the amount of irritation and pain it causes.”
“In plain English?” Alix asks.
“A flea,” I say.
“Or a dung beetle,” Alix suggests.
Stephanie looks unhappy. “I value all creatures large and small. Each and every one has a role to play in the environment. Without the dung beetle, there would be—”
Alix interrupts by grabbing the paper from my hand. For someone who’s submerged in water so much, her nails are incredibly dirty. She squints like she’s reading the fine print at the end of a legal document. “Tell any friend of the dung beetle that sometimes something has to be sacrificed for the greater good. Tell her that by doing one little experiment on a stupid bug that nobody will ever miss, she might discover her power to save an endangered llama or even the whole planet.”
Stephanie lunges for the paper, misses. “Where does it say that? It doesn’t say that.”
“Naw, it doesn’t,” Alix confesses. “But let’s say you can save only one thing, an endangered llama or a flea. Which lives?”
“Llamas aren’t endangered.”
Alix hurls the stuffed animal at Stephanie. “You know what I mean! Would you sacrifice Mr. Itchy Welt Maker to save Never Hurt Anyone Little Llama?”
Stephanie thinks hard. She’s running her tongue along her braces. “This is tough. It’s not just about one bug. It’s a whole moral and political question about power.”
“Give me a break.” Alix groans. She notices an ant crawling on the nightstand. “How about that?” With the tip of her fingernail, she nudges it to the center of the table. “One stupid little ant,” Alix insists. “We don’t even know what’s going to happen to it.”
“Probably nothing, right?” Stephanie nods a reluctant okay, and Alix pumps her fist in triumph. Raymond volunteers to read the directions so the rest of us can concentrate. Ambrosia’s paper doesn’t say to lock the bedroom door, but we do it anyway. It doesn’t say to sit next to each other, but the three of us move closer to the table, the sleeves of our shirts touching. We’re ready. This is it. Raymond reads Ambrosia’s directions:
“Step one: Isolate the victim. Step two: Follow the victim’s movement. Put all your hate on it. Then double that hate. Triple it.”
Honestly, I don’t start out feeling any special hate for the ant, definitely not the double-triple variety. There are plenty of things in life that deserve to be hated, but how do you hate an ant? Still, I decide that I want to try this, and that means putting aside any resistance and not listening to my doubts. I want to give it my all.
If you feel your mind softening or taking pity, don’t listen to it.
So I don’t. As indifference comes to the surface, I replace it with contempt. As sympathy for the ant arises in my mind, I dash it away. It’s like setting a radio in my head to station HATE. I turn down the volume on acceptance and crank up the blame. I think of picnics ruined and food wasted. I imagine ants crawling all over me, their filthy feet and disgusting segmented bodies. Someone has to take revenge on them. Ants would take over the world if we didn’t.
It turns out that hardening my mind—moving it in the direction of judging, despising, detesting—is a lot easier than I thought it would be. It’s a snap. Once I let go and give it permission, I feel myself go there naturally.
Step three, step four. I follow the sound of Raymond’s voice until his words lose focus, just as my vision does.
That’s when I hear a hint of static, far away but moving closer, deeper, louder, and, embedded in the chaotic sound, I can pick out a melody. It’s the tune. Notes rising and falling. I hear a voice join in, and it’s strong and clear, and it takes a while before I realize that it’s my own voice. The others are humming, too. There are words now with the song.
Our binding dance. The malignant music unfolding the terror.
I know that I haven’t moved from Raymond’s bedroom, but I also know that I’m somewhere else, somewhere I’ve never been before.
In.
Deep in.
But not alone.
In. With them. My others.
Their voices, the swirl of their hair against my arms, legs, and face.
I need them. We need each other.
To do what we were born to do. To move things to our will. To punish. To control.
My hair. It has come undone, the strands twisting with other hair, twisting with our voices, with the music, to create an inescapable net.
We trap the target.
We spin him with confusion and delirium.
We never touch. We never push.
And yet …
And yet …
Two words reach in and yank me back to the surface of somewhere.
Out.
Raymond’s bedroom. I touch my hair, surprised to find it still clipped back and braided, tight against my scalp, under control.
The two words are “Holy crappola!” and Raymond is yelling them over and over. “Holy crappola! Look at this. The ant is going nuts.”
We lean in and watch the bug. It runs left, stops short, then runs right. Then it begins moving in tighter and tighter circles, as if all its instincts have been short-circuited.
“So it’s true,” I say.
“I’m convinced. I’ve seen enough.” Stephanie hugs the stuffed animal to her chest. I know she’s feeling badly about the ant, but there’s also a conflicted look on her face. She’s fighting it, but it’s winning. Like me, like Alix, she’s proud of what we just did. And I know that also like me, she’s wondering what else we can do. And to whom? How far can this thing go?
Alix slams her palm on the table, crushing the ant, putting it out of its misery.
Raymond tunes up his violin. His slack jaw and dim eyes tell me that he’s slipped into deep concentration. He plays the tune that he heard the three of us singing. The nine notes played twelve times, the malignant music, the binding dance.