Page 48 - WTPVol.XI#4

Three Snakes and Dinner with Pedro
Pedro brought the snakes with him that summer, slipping them into Joanie’s apartment the same way he did, one foot over the threshold, and before the second shoe landed against the soft spot in the hardwood—the floorboards emitting the smallest
of groans—he and the snakes had settled in for the summer. It was as simple as that. Pedro on the left side of Joanie’s lonely bed, closest to the door. He
was only in town for the growing season, working
the dark, rich soil the locals called the Mucks, know- ing that September would take him and his snakes back home. Joanie understood this too but still she cleared out the top drawer in her dresser so Pedro could unpack his duffle bag. She also made room for his snakes, setting the three small tanks on TV trays in the living room. During the week, when I babysat for Joanie’s twin boys—products of a brief fling that propelled Joanie into a City Hall ceremony with a man who escaped one month after they were born—I was careful that the twins rough-housed away from the snakes hanging out in their glass homes propped on rickety foundations.
“What?” Pedro liked to tease, that word expanding as if his mouth were full. “You don’t like snakes?” And when I shook my head, he would laugh and tell me how those snakes wanted to be my friends.
That summer I managed for the most part to ignore the snakes, each day evaporating steamily into another. The heat had begun to radiate in waves off the sidewalks, afternoons as thick and still as sludge. The start of 10th grade in the fall felt as distant as
the seagulls that looped over the lake, far out on the horizon, their colors and shapes indistinct, their cries ethereal. Sometimes I felt an ache pull at me so intensely that I had to lean into myself and squeeze my legs together as it rippled up and down like my insides were being strummed. One afternoon when the twins were napping, the ache was so bad I tip- toed into Joanie’s bedroom. The bed had been made in haste that morning, the blanket only half-covering the pillows. I stood by the door, imaging the tumult, the sheets damp and wrinkled, the smell of heat and something undefined in the air. I let myself down onto the bed—on Pedro’s side—my bare legs against the thin blanket, my head on Pedro’s pillow. The tang of his aftershave clinging to the pillowcase.
Afterward I wandered into the living room and lin- gered beside the snake tanks, welcoming the danger.
That night as Pedro drove me home, I was aware of the closeness between us in the front seat. His blue jean leg stretched out against the pedal, the taut line of burnished muscle along his forearm as he held the wheel. I told him I worried I was pregnant, that there was a boy. I don’t know why I said such a thing, given my innocence. Given the lack of any boys, let alone one in particular. But the windows were rolled down to the hot summer night—and there was that ache, and the words slipped, sweating, off my tongue. Pe- dro looked at me, concern clouding his eyes, his dark hair slicked back away from his forehead.
“This is not good for you,” he said. ~
The next day of course I worried Pedro would tell Joanie, who would then tell my mother. She and Joanie were old friends, their stories taking them back to high school days with futures that looked entirely unlike the ones they’d landed in. My mother, I knew, would make a scene. Tearful laments and outraged threats. And disappointment, lots of disap- pointment. Which she was used to after my father took off not long after I came along, the push of a second child down the birth canal strong enough to knock the desire out of him. Plunging into the folds of life he landed far enough away so we couldn’t find him. Back then, though, who cared enough to try? Most men we knew were on the run, heading out in rusty Chevrolets and crumpled packs of Marlboros.
41
linDa mary Guyette