Part V: Snakes – Snake #10 (Chapter 94)
“Look, I’m gonna give it to you straight: stay away from Snake Bodine.”
Mother sits on the sofa, and I, a safe distance
away, plop on the floor.
“He’s poison.”
“Says who?”
“Just trust me, Sam.”
And I want to say,
Why
should I trust you? When have you ever been there to trust?
But I don’t. I fold my arms and do not look at
her. I rock back and forth, my long hair tickling my knees.
“He’ll break your heart. He’ll use you and toss you away like an old shoe. And he’ll never look back.”
Something in Mother’s voice forces me to listen to
her words but not their meaning. I can’t comprehend their meaning. And even if
I could, their meaning would have to apply to someone else, perhaps another man
with a diamondback snake coiling down his chest.
But never Snake Bodine.
I study the patterns in the rug, my eyes following
the ice blue sculptured whorls, the kind that look like conjoined fat worms
bursting open, their guts rupturing and splattering all over the room.
Soon!
Soon! Not soon enough!
My body springs from the floor, though it doesn’t
really feel like my own body, but the body of someone with unlimited power over
her destiny.
This new body stands over my mother, its hand on
hips, leaning over a tiny figure in the middle of a flowered sofa, a figure
that seems to be sinking deeper into the cushions.
“FUCK
YOU!”
It sounds like my voice, but I can’t tell if it’s
my internal voice or my actual voice, but from her open mouth and wide eyes, I
know Mother has heard, and time is running out, so I must run, run, run, run,
run, as fast as I can, back to Snake, back before the spell of my young flesh
has been broken.
I turn away; I fly out of the house, my feet
barely touching the ground.
I run past the pool; I sense that it’s filled with
snakes, and, suddenly, I’m no longer afraid of such creatures; they are not the
monsters of my childhood, that real dangers are not always coiled or crawling
on the ground, that true dangers are often disguised and live among us without
our knowledge, until one day it’s too late.
I dash for the diving board and spring at the
edge.
Up, up, up, up, into the air, I reach for the
cosmos, my fingertips above my head, I nearly touch a star, my body arcing
downward, toes, en pointe, stretch for the sky. My fingertips yearn for the
creatures swimming below; I will swim with them now, no longer afraid.
My fingers break through the surface; the
creatures freeze, their attention focused on only me, my long, uncoiled body.
Without a splash, I cut into the water.
Reaching, reaching, reaching for the bottom, I am
Queen of the Water Snakes.
The creatures move out of my way, diamondbacks on
one side, copperheads on the other, creating a path for their new kin,
accepting me in their midst.
For hours, I swim underwater with them, only this
time, I am the one who coils and hisses....
As I surface, my hair grows long and sleek; I climb out of the pool, my hair covering my upper torso like a silk skin.