Maureen o’leary

Asland University MFA Candidate

A SNAKE ON THE DOOR

Paula’s mom said that she was going to take a nap on the couch, which Heather was glad to hear because it meant that they would have access to the porn in Paula’s parents’ bedroom.

     “Don’t wake me up for any reason,” Paula’s mom said. “I have a migraine.”

     Paula and Heather pretended to play Barbies for a while, but only pretended. They were going into seventh grade in the fall, and they were too old for Barbies. When they heard light snoring from the living room, they tiptoed to the master bedroom with its waffle weave maroon curtains and lush brown carpet. Heather thought going into Paula’s parents’ bedroom was like walking into someone’s mouth. 

     A calendar with a photo of a naked lady hung above Paula’s dad’s desk in the corner. The naked lady wore a nurse’s white hat and white knee socks. Her legs were spread and Heather could not keep her eyes off the hair there and the pink opening between.

     “Are you a lesbian?” Paula asked. “Because you keep staring.”

     Heather shook her head but her eyes were magnetized to the naked lady. “Don’t be stupid,” she said. Privately, she sometimes wondered but she didn’t want to touch the blonde in the nurse’s hat. She wanted to be her.

     “Don’t be dorky,” Paula said. She opened the blush on her mother’s vanity and swirled the brush across the rose-colored pan.

      “Why does your dad even have that? Your mom is really pretty. She should be enough for him.” Paula could sometimes be diffused by adult-like talk. She could be made to forget that she thought Heather was a dork.

      “My mom doesn’t care.” Paula ran the blush brush in a streak across her cheekbone. 

      They both stared at the naked lady, their heads tilted as though they were observing fine art. Heather broke the spell by leaving to use the bathroom down the hall. She pushed her small breasts together between her palms in front of the mirror but even doing that couldn’t make cleavage.

     They tiptoed past Paula’s mom on the couch. Her hand dangled to the floor like a dead woman. Her hair covered her face like a veil.

      “I don’t feel like playing anymore,” Paula said. Heather knew she was being dismissed but she didn’t want to go home where it was boring so she stood at the window in the family room for a second to see if Paula really meant it. 

     The big picture window in the family room looked out onto the wide porch and the lawn and the street. The house was L-shaped and the front door was visible from where Heather was standing. A long, thick snake draped itself across the doorjamb, its head poised downward as though to kiss whoever happened to go through.

      “Look.” Heather pointed. “A snake.”

     Paula bent to nudge her mother’s shoulder with a hard jab. “Mom,” she said. “It’s an emergency.”

     “I told you not to wake me up no matter what.” Paula’s mom was very angry. Her face was pushed in and red and wet by her mouth where she had been drooling.

     “There’s a snake on the door.” Paula was full of importance. Clear in her justification.

     “There is no snake on the door. Can I get just a minute of peace?”

     “It’s moving,” Heather said. 

     Paula’s mom hauled herself off the couch and squinted through the curtains. Her hand flittered to her mouth. 

     Ten minutes later the girls watched from the white hot sidewalk as the neighborhood men stood around the porch, Paula’s dad with a shovel in his hand.

      “It’s just a gopher snake,” he said. The other men nodded. Experts in neighborhood snakes.

     Heather knew it was a gopher as well because it had a sleek head. Rattlers had solid triangle heads. It was impossible not to know what you were looking at when you were looking at a rattlesnake. When Paula and Heather played in the hills they avoided rattlesnakes but found gopher snakes when they were lucky and twined them around their arms like bracelets. The snakes freaked out if the girls held them too long and squeezed their bodies inward, expelling long tubes of shit that smelled like tuna. The trick was to put them down before they got sick of being held.

    Heather stepped forward, thinking she would offer her snake handling services but Paula placed a hand on her shoulder. She nodded up the street as a boy from school approached them on his bike.

     “What’s going on,” he asked.

      “Snake,” Paula said. “Rattler maybe.” 

      “Rattler?” The boy’s hair was brown and flopped across his forehead. He wore knee socks with black stripes on them, shorts, and a t-shirt for the Raiders.

       “Maybe,“ Paula said. “Me and Heather almost walked right into it.”

      Heather watched what her friend was up to, a coil of pleasure tightening in her belly.

      “Aren’t you Steve?” Paula asked. 

      “Yeah.”

       Before going outside Paula had taken the hem of her t-shirt, pulled it over the collar and tugged it through. Now her stomach was showing and her top was turned into a bikini. Paula had actual breasts, and long blonde hair made even paler by the chlorine from the public pool where their swim team practiced. Heather looked down at her own t-shirt, clinging to a sweaty chest as flat as Steve’s. The sun prickled her arm hairs and made them feel like cactus spines.

     “Tell me one thing Steve,” Paula said. “Do you like blondes or brunettes?”

     Heather touched the ends of her own brown hair then put her hand on her hip and stuck it out. She wished she had on her jeans cutoffs. Her pink shorts were babyish.

      “Blondes,” Steve said. “But I like brunettes too,” he said quickly, nodding at Heather. “Your hair is nice too.”

      Paula shrugged like she didn’t care but her skin flushed even redder under the streaks of blush. Heather felt cold despite the heat. He’d said blondes first. Her hair would never be blonde because her mother would never let her dye it and she would never grow boobs either. She smoothed her shirt over her round belly. She wondered what it would be like to have her picture taken for a man she didn’t know to look at while he did work at his desk. What it would feel like to be that wanted.

      Paula’s dad lifted the snake with the shovel so it draped over the spade. He kept the snake as far away from himself as he could as though he were a handler of cobras. 

     “Don’t kill it,” Heather said. Paula elbowed her hard. 

     “Don’t worry about it.” He answered without raising his eyes to the girls.

      The other neighborhood dads kept a good distance away. Paula’s dad moved to the side of his own house, careful as a tightrope walker. The men followed. 

      He would release it to the cow pasture on the other side of their backyard fence, Heather thought.  

      There was a thud and a clang. The men cheered.

      Heather’s throat stiffened. Her eyes burned. She tried to sniff quietly, but the image in her mind of the poor snake’s sleek head cut off from its body, flicking its tongue in the dirt was so sad. All it had wanted was a cool place to rest. She lifted the collar of her t-shirt to dab at her eyes.

     “Are you crying?” Paula asked, grinning. She elbowed Steve in the side. “Oh my god, she is. She’s crying. Over a snake. That’s hilarious.”

     Steve grinned too, looking between them as if he didn’t quite get the joke. But when Paula said to laugh, people laughed. So he did.

     Heather blushed. She looked towards her own tooth-colored house baking in the hot sun. She could be there within thirty seconds, inside with the air conditioning blasting the way her parents liked it. There was no porn in her parents’ bedroom. She could march up her own driveway, go to her own room where she had her Teen magazines full of pictures of girl models smiling at each other and having fun in cute outfits. There were no dead snakes in those magazines. No friends who turned mean with no warning. 

     But she turned away from her house, and away from Paula and Steve. She followed to where the dads had gone through the side gate to Paula’s yard. The men stood in a circle near the woodpile and found that the snake had not been cut in two. It writhed at their feet, still intact. It was too quick for Paula’s dad. He tried again to drop the shovel tip into the snake’s neck, but instead hit only ground. The men jumped back, none of them willing to hold the snake down, none of them willing to touch it. The shovel fell and the neighborhood dads cheered again, though Paula’s dad had still not hit his mark. His face was sweaty, and the men yelled encouragements, their sudden combined purpose focused on the sleek scaled back, the dust kicked up under their flip flops and sneakers. 

     Paula called her name but Heather didn’t answer. Instead she darted between the men, crouching down to scoop the snake into her hands. The dads hollered as she gripped the snake behind its head to keep it from biting her and ran across the back lawn until she hit the redwood fence which she scrambled over with just one hand so that she could with the other drop the snake gently into the pasture grass where it slithered away to safety and was gone. 

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MAUREEN O’LEARY IS A WRITER AND TEACHER LIVING IN CALIFORNIA. HER MOST RECENT WORK CAN BE FOUND IN THE ANTHOLOGIES THE HORRORZINE'S BOOK OF GHOST STORIES, AND MONSTERS WE FORGOT VOLUME 2, SCOUNDREL TIME, HOWLING MAD REVIEW, AN UPCOMING PANDEMIC ANTHOLOGY FROM STORIES ON STAGE SACRAMENTO, AND THE JULY 2021 ISSUE OF COFFIN BELL JOURNAL. SHE IS AN MFA CANDIDATE IN FICTION AT ASHLAND UNIVERSITY.