Free Bearded Women by Teresa Milbrodt

the pillow more tightly over my head. The snakes lean against the wall, feel the vibrations from the partygoers upstairs.
    My snakes are cranky in the morning, nip at each other as I dress and wash my face. I give them bits of toast and grape jelly. They nibble pieces out of my fingers but are still in a sour mood, so I buy a double mocha for us on the way to work. Whatever they eat goes into the rest of me, whether it’s toast or coffee or mosquitoes, but I only taste what I put into my own mouth. By the time I get to the library my snakes are so hyped up on caffeine they bump into the big glass door at the entrance, reminding me why I don’t give them coffee too often. When my snakes get nicked or squeezed it hurts like hell.
    In the afternoon I go to City Park to help the Garden Society with our annual weeding and planting. Being outside cheers me a bit, and it cheers my snakes because they get to eat the little bugs that circle my head. I love plants but can’t have many in my apartment because there’s too little light and not enough room.
    I scare new Garden Society members, older ladies who are nice enough when they get to know me, but sometimes it takes a while for them to be cordial. It helps if I keep the snakes mostly covered by a big kerchief. The ladies and I have plenty to chat about since we all love plants and have to budget carefully. We all have low incomes so we’re the same sort of almost-desperate, get exactly enough money to survive each month, our hands clenched around every dollar. We all pray nothing will go wrong and force us to pay more money that we don’t have.
    On Wednesdays my Garden Society friend Violet takes me grocery shopping. She knows I don’t have a car, and she’s happy to give me rides. Wednesday is senior day so she gets fifteen percent off everything.
    “My oldest girl wants me to move into one of those assisted living places,” she says, “but they’re so expensive. I want to stay in my apartment. It’s pricey enough.”
    I sigh. “My rent just went up. I don’t know how I’m going to balance that and my class fees and books. I can’t take time off work and just go to school.”
    Last night my friend Katie was complaining about her debt again, saying that if she’d known she wouldn’t be able to do much with a bachelor’s degree in history she wouldn’t have gotten it in the first place.
    “Now I have to worry about car payments and house payments and kid payments,” she says. Katie and her boyfriend just had a son, and children don’t come cheap.
    Too many people who frequent the bar have student loans they’ve been supporting for ten years, which is part of the reason they want to drown their worries in beer. I can’t end up like that. I have to think about the stress I’d be causing myself and the snakes. I have to keep plugging away at my coursework. At both jobs. At my lingering credit card debt. But every time I push the stone up the hill, it rolls back down.
    My Greek mythology class meets on Thursday nights. The prof is an older guy. At first I thought he was nice, but when I stopped by his office to discuss my paper on how Odysseus was a total jerk, my prof asked if I wanted to chat about our course readings over drinks.
    “I didn’t think they let students and professors do that,” I said.
    “It would be strictly academic,” he said, “just in a more relaxed environment.”
    I told him I’d think about it.
    Tonight in class he asks my opinion on the story of Orpheus and the Greek concept of the afterlife. I hate how he acts like I’m an authority on everything Greek, mumble something about the River Styx and Charon and how I picture him as a surly New York cabdriver. My prof nods and smiles and says that’s a very interesting idea. The other students roll their eyes.
    “Are you fucking him or something?” mutters the guy who sits beside me.
    This rankles my snakes. They start hissing, which turns the heads of everyone who wasn’t