by Alisa Alering
Snake and girl stared at one another across the dirt floor. The snake's eyes were blue, like milk with the cream squeezed out, and they gleamed in the starlight. The girl wanted to scream, to hit it. Her parents were in the next bed doing love's work. If she screamed, her father would leap up, uncovered, and beat her. She would see her mother, and her mother would know that she had seen. The girl gathered her fear into a tight ball, and made herself swallow it down like a dried pea. Between her mother's soft whimpers, she heard the snake scratch across the dirt and flow back into the night.
The snake came early in the next night. Her father and brothers were asleep outside. This night she would not suffer for waking them to the danger. But perhaps she did not want to call them. She had seen her husband-to-be in the corn fields today. His lips were so ugly, like fat grubs. It might be better to let the snake bite her.
The snake slid to the front of her pallet. She rattled her bangles experimentally. The snake's tongue flicked out, tasting the vibrations. She lay back and waited for the cold rope body to slide up and put an end to her. She counted the stars and wished the heat would end. She didn't know how long had passed. She opened her eyes and sat up. The snake was gone.
She dreamed of snakes, deep pits of them writhing darkly, sliding through her nose and out her mouth. She was riding the snakes, like Shiva on the back of the world. Maybe the snake had bitten her after all. She examined her body, but her skin was clear and unmarked.
She spent the day in the garden, rooting out the weeds from the packed yellow ground. She threw down the hoe and attacked the sucking vines with her hands, clawing at the roots that were stealing the last drops of water from the withered beans and melons. She imagined her betrothed, Harjeet, crouching between the stalks of neighboring corn, hidden, watching her sweat.
That evening when she milked the cow, she poured off a measure of the milk and hid it behind a stone at the end of her pallet. This night was hotter than the last, giving no rain and no wind. The men dragged their charpoys outside again, but they could get no relief. They complained back and forth and sang rude songs to pass the time. Her mother held the baby in the next room, fanning it with her chunni, pleading with it to stop fretting. The poor thing had a terrible rash. The girl lay in her bed, sweating through her thin cotton shift, and wondered if the snake would come.
The men had lit a fire of neem leaves outside to chase away the biting insects, and the smoke drifted in the open doorway. The girl sat up. She knew the snake was there, though she had heard nothing. She uncovered the vessel of milk and set it before the snake. Her arm trembled, and she held onto her bangles with her other hand, so they would not shake. The snake swayed its head back and forth across the milk, then lowered its neck and drank.
Every day she kept some milk back for the snake and every night it came and drank. The heat was growing; the rains were later than ever this year. The cow had to walk miles for the remaining water and the grass was dried up and brown, so she gave only a little milk, and that grudgingly. Still, the girl saved a few drops for the snake.
She didn't care if it never rained. When the fields were rich and green and the village was assured another six months of survival, people would want to celebrate again, and she would be wed. It was better to scorch up and be blown away in a puff of dust.