Page 44 of If Looks Could Kill
Pearl’s snakes rose as one, craning over and around her to take in the sight of the fallen man. They darted and danced in unison, like coordinated swallows in an autumn sky.
What had been Pearl gazed down at me, open-mouthed. Horror and exultation, mingled. Red eyes, rimmed with tears. A thin forked tongue darting between her teeth to taste the air.
She was a monster.
Run away, Tabitha. Run, and don’t stop running.
They’ll kill her.
This isn’t your problem. She’s not your problem. Get far, far away from this devilry.
But they’ll kill her.
“What’s going on up there?”
“Get a move on!”
“Whatsamatter, bub? Shake the reins!”
Voices began to clamor. We’d snarled traffic. Passersby were starting to stare.
I pawed the cabbie until I’d flopped him onto his back, his lifeless eyes staring upward.
Medusa. The monster woman with snakes for hair, from Greek myth, whose gaze turned people to—oh my goodness… was hedead? Was Pearl amurderer?
I clutched at my own face. Not made of stone. I prodded the cabbie. Not turned to stone.
I began slapping furiously at his cheeks. “Wake up!” I cried. “Wake up!” Nothing.
Pearl leaned forward, crouching down to study her handiwork. She looked like a cat who’d just caught a pigeon. Proud, and with her mouth watering. Good God.
I dealt the cabbie a wallop that would leave a mark if he were alive. “Wakeup!”
He stirred, slightly. His breath entered in a snort. He was alive.
Not a murderer, then. But still, they would kill her.
I took Pearl’s hand and pulled her toward me.
She resisted, sniffing at the cabbie.
I took my scarf and wound it around Pearl’s head. When the snakes were concealed enough, I bundled her down the two steps to the ground, sprinkled three nickels over the slowly rousing cabbie’s belly, dragged her up the stoop to our tenement building, and pushed her through the door.
Tabitha—Now What?(Sunday, December 2, 1888)
“Good afternoon, girls,” Emma Bown called to Pearl and me from the kitchen as we crossed the landing of our apartment. Pearl stopped in her tracks and turned her head toward the sound of Emma’s voice, but I steered her all the more urgently toward our own bedroom. We went inside, and I locked the door.
Footsteps approached. I waited with held breath as Emma turned the knob. The lock held.
“Everything all right, Tabitha?” Emma called through the door. “Pearl? Are you ill?”
“Fine,” I called back. “Just… tired.”
“Oh.” Emma sounded taken aback. “Maybe it was too soon for you both to be about.”
“Yes.” I grasped at this like a drowning man to a life rope. “We’ll take naps.”
“An excellent idea.” I heard her footsteps retreat from our door. “There seems to be some sort of commotion out on the street. Did you see anything before you came in?”
