by Kathleen Latham
When we were ten, my friend Nina and I stumbled upon a rattlesnake warming itself on a sun-drenched boulder in Pickens Canyon. We heard the dry seed rattle of it before we spotted its bullet-shaped head, coiled-belt body.
“Don’t move,” I told her, as if she needed the instruction.
The snake watched us through slitted eyes. Tasted the air with its tongue. Weighed our fear against its own.
“It won’t hurt us,” I said, thinking I was brave.
This was long before I understood the relativity of danger, before Nina’s father died and she fled east. We were young still, and every time I slept over, we ate boiled hot dogs under a poster of a matador posed like a dancer: slippered feet, satin pants, his billowing red muleta concealing his sword from a head-bent bull. At bedtime, Nina would point out how to escape her room in case of emergency and her mother would lead us in prayer, her breath like medicine.
“I’ve taken out the parts about you dying in your sleep,” she’d begin.
The thought grew wings in the room. It beat against the ceiling when the lights went out. Nina kept her door locked, trapping it inside.
The sleepovers ended when Nina’s mother ran a stop sign in front of my dad’s Lincoln Continental one morning on the way to school: Lock of brakes. Jerk of wheel. Me, pitching forward into the safety rail of my father’s arm. Nina’s pale moon face peering over the dashboard of her mother’s car as they sailed through the intersection.
“Plastered at breakfast,” my father swore, the words echoing in my head like a key in search of a lock.
Funny, that I remember Nina’s face then, but not on the day of the snake. I remember white sun on rock, wind in trees. That segmented tail quivering its warning as I crept backwards. But not Nina.
What she did. What she said. How she escaped.
I’d like to think it was a lack of perspective and not a lack of empathy that kept me from seeing Nina’s life as she lived it. I was a child, sensing the undercurrents without grasping their meaning. The coiled snake. The barreling car. Bookends of danger—out of order, missing the whole—haunting me, nonetheless. How much more did I miss?
“Don’t move,” I told her, as if she needed the instruction.
The snake watched us through slitted eyes. Tasted the air with its tongue. Weighed our fear against its own.
“It won’t hurt us,” I said, thinking I was brave.
This was long before I understood the relativity of danger, before Nina’s father died and she fled east. We were young still, and every time I slept over, we ate boiled hot dogs under a poster of a matador posed like a dancer: slippered feet, satin pants, his billowing red muleta concealing his sword from a head-bent bull. At bedtime, Nina would point out how to escape her room in case of emergency and her mother would lead us in prayer, her breath like medicine.
“I’ve taken out the parts about you dying in your sleep,” she’d begin.
The thought grew wings in the room. It beat against the ceiling when the lights went out. Nina kept her door locked, trapping it inside.
The sleepovers ended when Nina’s mother ran a stop sign in front of my dad’s Lincoln Continental one morning on the way to school: Lock of brakes. Jerk of wheel. Me, pitching forward into the safety rail of my father’s arm. Nina’s pale moon face peering over the dashboard of her mother’s car as they sailed through the intersection.
“Plastered at breakfast,” my father swore, the words echoing in my head like a key in search of a lock.
Funny, that I remember Nina’s face then, but not on the day of the snake. I remember white sun on rock, wind in trees. That segmented tail quivering its warning as I crept backwards. But not Nina.
What she did. What she said. How she escaped.
I’d like to think it was a lack of perspective and not a lack of empathy that kept me from seeing Nina’s life as she lived it. I was a child, sensing the undercurrents without grasping their meaning. The coiled snake. The barreling car. Bookends of danger—out of order, missing the whole—haunting me, nonetheless. How much more did I miss?
Kathleen Latham is a native Californian who currently lives outside of Boston. A highly commended winner of the Bridport Prize for flash fiction, her work has appeared in multiple journals and anthologies including The Ilanot Review, Brilliant Flash Fiction, and New Flash Fiction Review. She tweets from @lathamwithapen and can be found online at KathleenLatham.com.
Emerge Literary Journal 