I Chose a Snake the Night My Brother Died

I knelt on the wet grass, fingers trembling as I reached into the wicker crate to choose a snake. Not from fear of the snakes—they lay coiled on damp cloth, their scales catching the firelight from the kitchen, strangely still. What I feared was my mother standing beside me, her breathing growing rougher and rougher, like someone working an old bellows.

Vera said nothing. She leaned against the edge of the sink, a dry linen cloth I’d given her wrapped around her shoulders. Her eyes rested on the snakes the way one might gaze at a flock of lost lambs.

"This one." I pushed my hand deep into the crate and touched a length of cool, solid muscle. The snake turned over in my palm but did not bite.

My mother peered down, grinned. "God help us, that's a fat one." She reached out to touch it. The snake snapped its head up and hissed. My mother snatched her hand back, swore, then kept grinning. "It works. It works."

Vera said only, "No salt."

That evening, when I carried the stew upstairs, Marcus's door was already shut. The broth was pale white and smelled faintly of earth, a scent nothing like anything my mother had ever cooked. Marcus took the bowl and glanced at me—not a questioning look, but a look of show. He knew everything already, knew it sooner than I had.

I didn't stay in the hallway to listen.

The next morning, Vera came out of Marcus's room. She was barefoot, her eyes red-rimmed less from crying than from being smoked for hours. Behind her, Marcus leaned against the doorframe, buckling his old leather belt, his face wearing that greasy, sated look.

I went up and asked if she was all right. Before the words had even hit the ground, my mother came charging from the stairs and kicked me flat against the base of the wall. Her bare foot kicking hurt; a toenail cut my shin.

"Why 'you'? Call her sister-in-law."

I shrank into the corner and looked up at Vera. She didn't look down at me. She only pulled the linen cloth higher, covering a bruise the color of a storm cloud below her collarbone. I faced her feet and called out, "Sister-in-law."

Vera did not answer.

Over the next weeks, Marcus's complexion did improve. My mother told everyone the snake stew was God's grace, that Vera was the good daughter-in-law she'd plucked from the wild. Father Aldo from the village came by once, inspected the wicker crate in our yard, and frowned, saying such things were unclean. My mother smiled and brought out a bowl of stew. The priest never came again.

I don't know if Marcus knew that Vera had raised those snakes herself. Every evening at dusk she went behind the chicken coop to feed them bits of meat and raw egg. The snakes crawled over her hands, tamer than her own hair. I once hid behind the barn door and watched. She lifted her head and looked directly toward my hiding place, but said nothing.

She didn't tell me to leave.

After that, I started carrying water for her.

On the third day of carrying water, she spoke suddenly at the well. "Are you afraid of me?"

The bucket wobbled in my hands. I said I wasn't.

"Then you're afraid of your brother."

I said nothing. She said nothing more. She only rolled up her sleeve and showed me an old burn scar on the inside of her forearm—not Marcus's doing, left long before, shaped like a dead leaf.

That night I heard again the muffled laughter from the room upstairs and the steady rhythm of the bed frame. I lay on my bed, folded the pillow over my ears, and held it there a long time before I understood it wasn't working, because the sound had already gotten inside my bones.

When the season turned, Marcus's hair began to fall out.

My mother said at first it was just the change of season and made him even more snake stew. Vera did not object. She chose the snake, killed it, made the stew, and carried it upstairs exactly as before. As Marcus drank, the hollows beneath his eyes darkened. He no longer leaned in the doorway to show off. He lay all day in bed, blankets pulled to his chin, fingers gripping the sheet the way a man grips grass at the edge of a cliff.

My mother finally stopped kicking me. She started kicking Vera.

Vera was knocked down by the sink, her forehead striking the stone, a thread of blood running. I rushed over to block the next blow, and my mother swung a slap that landed on my ear, setting the whole left side of my head on fire with a ringing noise.

"It's her! All those filthy things of hers!" my mother screamed, jabbing a finger at Vera.

Vera slowly pushed herself up from the floor. She did not wipe the blood from her brow; it ran down along the ridge of her eye socket. She looked at my mother and smiled, a soft smile, like a snake flicking its tongue.

"You did say it was useful, didn't you, Mrs. Helga?"

My mother stumbled back as if choked, knocking over the wicker crate. The snakes spilled out, one after another, gliding across the stone floor of the kitchen. None of them paid us any mind.

Marcus died that winter.

The funeral was small. Father Aldo came again, said nothing about stew this time, only sprinkled holy water on the coffin and left quickly. My mother stood at the edge of the grave. She didn't cry. Her hands gripped each other, knuckles white.

Vera did not attend the funeral. She stayed up in the attic, packing the last few snakes back into their crate. When I found her, she was fastening the iron clasp.

"You're leaving," I said.

She didn't turn around. "Your brother is dead. Helga will not keep me."

I stood there, palms sweating. I wanted to say many things, but they jammed in my throat, a single hard stone. In the end I only said, "That fattest snake. I was the one who chose it."

Vera's hands stopped. She turned and looked at me. Her eyes were still red-rimmed, but not from smoke this time, and not from crying. She looked at me for a long time, then pushed the wicker crate toward me and lifted the lid.

"Pick one," she said.

I looked down at the snakes. They lay coiled in stillness, their scales catching thin glints of light. I reached out. My hand did not tremble. This time I knew what I was choosing.

I chose a small one, the color of old copper. Vera shut the crate, rose, and walked past me. At the top of the stairs she paused and looked back.

"You called me sister-in-law once."

I didn't answer.

She left. I heard my mother's sharp cursing downstairs, then the slam of the front door, then nothing.

The small snake coiled slowly in my palm, cool and solid. Not a tonic, not a lust, not anyone's grace. Just a snake. The one I had chosen.

It rained that night. I sat in the barn, pressing the snake to my chest, listening to the rain hammer on the tin roof. I found myself remembering that rainy dusk when Vera stood in the doorway, soaked through, a crate in her arms, looking up at me.

She had said something then. Only now did I hear it clearly.

What she said was: "Will you help me?"

What I had said back was: "Come in."

Now I sat with the snake against my heart and said those same two words over again. But there was only the rain in the barn, and the slow, unhurried heartbeat of the snake.