Free Lady Oracle by Margaret Atwood Page A

that,” she said.
    “I thought they were my friends,” I said.
    “Friends wouldn’t tie you up like that, would they? And in that ravine. Who knows what might have happened to you. You could’ve been killed. You were just lucky that nice man came along and untied you when he did, that’s all.”
    “Mother,” I said solemnly, eager to redeem myself in some way but unsure how to do it – perhaps by demonstrating that she was wrong? – “I think that was a bad man.”
    “Don’t be an idiot,” she said. “That nice man?”
    “I think he was the same one. The daffodil man.”
    “What daffodil man?” she asked. “What have you been doing?”
    “Nothing,” I said, backpedaling frantically; but it was too late, the first worm was out of the can and the rest had to follow. My mother was not pleased. In addition to everything else, I was now accused of sneaking around behind her back: I should have told her immediately.
    I still wasn’t sure, though: was it the daffodil man or not? Was the man who untied me a rescuer or a villain? Or, an even more baffling thought: was it possible for a man to be both at once?
    I turned this puzzle over in my mind time after time, trying to remember and piece together the exact features of the daffodil man. But he was elusive, he melted and changed his shape like butterscotch or warm gum, dissolving into a tweedy mist, sending out menacing tentacles of flesh and knotted rope, forming again as a joyful sunburst of yellow flowers.

CHAPTER SEVEN
    O ne of the bad dreams I used to have about my mother was this. I would be walking across the bridge and she would be standing in the sunlight on the other side of it, talking to someone else, a man whose face I couldn’t see. When I was halfway across, the bridge would start to collapse, as I’d always feared it would. Its rotten planks buckled and split, it tilted over sideways and began to topple slowly into the ravine. I would try to run but it would be too late, I would throw myself down and grab onto the far edge as it rose up, trying to slide me off. I called out to my mother, who could still have saved me, she could have run across quickly and reached out her hand, she could have pulled me back with her to firm ground – But she didn’t do this, she went on with her conversation, she didn’t notice that anything unusual was happening. She didn’t even hear me.
    In the other dream I would be sitting in a corner of my mother’s bedroom, watching her put on her makeup. I did this often as a small child: it was considered a treat, a privilege, by both my mother and myself, and refusing to let me watch was one of my mother’s ways of punishing me. She knew I was fascinated by her collectionof cosmetics and implements: lipsticks, rouges, perfume in dainty bottles which I longed to have, bright red nail polish (sometimes, as an exceptional bribe, I was allowed to have some brushed on my toes, but never on my fingers: “You’re not old enough,” she’d say), little tweezers, nail files and emery boards. I was forbidden to touch any of these things. Of course I did, when she was out, but they were arranged in such rigid rows both on the dressertop and in the drawers that I had to be very careful to put them back exactly where I’d found them. My mother had a hawk’s eye for anything out of place. I later extended this habit of snooping through her drawers and cupboards until I knew everything that each of them contained; finally I would do it not to satisfy my curiosity – I already knew everything – but for the sense of danger. I only got caught twice, early on: once when I ate a lipstick (even then, at the age of four, I was wise enough to replace the cover on the tube and the tube in the drawer, and to wash my mouth carefully; how did she know it was me?), and once when I couldn’t resist covering my entire face with blue eye shadow, to see how I would look blue. That got me exiled for weeks. I almost gave the whole game