olbigjim

            Mangled Mythology

Before we get started, I’d like to say one thing on behalf of snakes: they are better company than most heroes.

A snake will hiss at you honest. A hero will smile, ask for directions, and then try to remove your head in the name of destiny.

I’ve been called a monster, a horror, a cursed woman, a cautionary tale, and once, by a poet with more confidence than eyesight, “the serpent-tressed doom of men.” That last one sounds expensive, but it don’t mean nothing more than he was paid by the syllable.

Now I won’t stand here and tell you my appearance was conventional. It wasn’t. There are women who wake up with curls, other women who wake up with frizz, and then there are women who wake up with a scalp full of reptiles discussin’ breakfast. I was in the third category, and I handled it with more grace than history has credited me.

Any of y’all ever try to put a ribbon on a viper?

Don’t do it; it’s a trick.

But let’s address the chief complaint, which is that I turned men to stone. This has been reported as if I woke up every blessed morning stretchin’ my arms and sayin’, “Reckon who I might mineralize today?” That’s a slander with sandals on.

I didn’t go out huntin’ heroes. I didn’t set up a booth at the village fair. I didn’t advertise “Free Petrification, Ask About Our Group Rates.” I lived in a cave at the ragged edge of nowhere, which is exactly where society tells a woman to go when it has finished bein’ offended by her face.

And still they came.

One by one, two by two, all polished shields and family expectations, clankin’ up the path like cookware in a thunderstorm. They came with swords. They came with spears. They came with prophecies, which is what men call gossip when a priest is involved.

Not one of them brought a covered dish.

They’d stand outside my cave shoutin’ brave things. “Come forth, foul creature!” “Face your doom!” “For honor and glory!” Glory is what young men call stupidity after it survives long enough to be embroidered.

Most didn’t survive.

I would step outside, sometimes still wearin’ my house shawl, and there they’d be, pointin’ weapons at me while expectin’ courtesy. Then our eyes would meet, and there went another marble statue in a helmet.

I was blamed for this, naturally.

Nobody said, “Maybe we oughta quit sendin’ boys up there.” Nobody said, “Maybe the lady with the snake hair has made her boundaries plain.” They just kept dispatchin’ men with better cheekbones than judgment, then actin’ shocked when my front yard began to look like a military cemetery planned by a sculptor.

And then came Perseus.

Now Perseus was different. I will give him that. Not wiser. Not kinder. Just better sponsored.

That boy arrived with divine assistance the way a county fair pie arrives with ribbons. Athena gave him a shield. Hermes gave him winged sandals. Somebody gave him a magic bag, which I still say sounds suspicious. He had a sword, a helmet, instructions, prophecy, and the kind of confidence that comes from never once wonderin’ who washed his tunic.

They call that heroism.

Listen here; where I come from, if a man shows up to a fight with half of Olympus furnishin’ his equipment, that ain’t bravery. That’s a committee decision.

I heard him before I saw him. Winged sandals make a whispery flappin’ sound, like laundry tryin’ to escape. The snakes heard it too and got all stirred up, which is their way of contributin’ to household security.

“Company,” hissed one.

“Armed,” said another.

“Male,” said a third, with the weary tone of a librarian seein’ peanut butter on a book cover.

I sighed.

There are days when a woman wants nothing more than to sit quietly in her cave, oil her scales, and not become part of a young man’s personal development. This was one of them days.

Perseus did not enter like a guest. A guest knocks. A guest says, “Good afternoon, ma’am, I appear to have been sent here by morally questionable gods.” Perseus crept in backward, starin’ into that shield so he wouldn’t have to look at me directly.

That part gets told as cleverness.

Maybe it was. But there’s somethin’ deeply insulting about a man comin’ to murder you while refusin’ eye contact. Even assassins ought to have better manners than that.

I said, “Can I help you?”

He nearly dropped the shield.

The stories never mention that I spoke. Monsters rarely get dialogue unless they are threatenin’ to eat somebody. It complicates the embroidery too much.

He swallowed and said, “I seek the head of Medusa.”

“Well,” I said, “That’s too bad; I’m usin’ it.”

The snakes appreciated that. Several laughed. A laughin’ snake is not a sound I recommend in enclosed spaces, but it was supportive.

Perseus squared his shoulders. “It’s my destiny.”

That word.

Destiny has been used to excuse more trespassin’ than any word in any language. A man says “destiny” and expects locked doors, weddin’ vows, common sense, and basic decency to fall over dead right in front of him.

“Your destiny,” I told him, “might ought to have written ahead.”

He advanced.

I backed away, which history records as menace because history was takin’ notes for the winner. My hair reared up, not from wickedness but because snakes dislike blades and sudden movement. Any sensible animal would do the same thing.

He kept his eyes on the shield, watchin’ my reflection. Imagine that. My last conversation with a man who had come to kill me, and he spent it talkin’ to the household silver.

“You don’t have to do this,” I said.

“I do,” he said.

They always do.

That’s the thing about heroes. They arrive claimin’ the gods made them, fate pushed them, kings ordered them, mothers begged them, honor required them. Nobody ever says, “I chose this foolishness myself, and I am prepared to be judged accordingly.”

I won’t describe the end in detail. There are children present somewhere, and besides, poets have feasted on it long enough. I will only say that Perseus swung, Athena’s shield flashed, Hermes’ sandals fluttered, and my head and I parted company under circumstances I found downright insultin’.

Then, because apparently decapitatin’ a woman with snake hair was not enough of an errand for one afternoon, he put my head in a bag and went off to use it on other people.

Now, I want you to think about that for a second or two.

When I turned men to stone by accident, in self-defense, or as a consequence of them invadin’ my property, I was a monster. When Perseus carried my severed head around like portable artillery, he was resourceful.

That’s public relations for you.

He turned enemies to stone. He rescued maidens. He impressed kings. I was finally useful once I no longer had opinions attached.

And still the stories say he defeated me.

No, honey. He harvested me.

There’s a great big difference.

I don’t deny I was dangerous. Of course, I was dangerous. So is a cliff. So is a fire. So is a mother who has already told you twice. Danger by itself ain’t evil. Sometimes danger is just what happens when the world has mistreated a thing and then refuses to leave it alone.

If the old poets wanted a moral, they might have chosen this one: don’t walk armed into a woman’s house and expect her to apologize for the consequences.

But morals are seldom written by the person sweepin’ up the statues.

So, they made me the monster. They made Perseus the hero. They made my hair into a warnin’ and my death into an adventure. They carved me on shields, painted me on jars, stuck my face on temples, and called it protection.

Protection.

After a lifetime of bein’ feared, hunted, and blamed for what men did when they came too close, I became a charm to keep danger away.

There’s a joke in that somewhere, but I ain’t obliged to laugh at it.

Still, I will say this: even now, when some hero lifts a sword and sees my face starin’ back from his shield, I hope he feels a little chill.

Not the chill of fear exactly.

Recognition.