by Paula Guran
The shop door was open, revealing the lino floor that curled up at the corners. It was a shade of blue that verged on grey, or maybe it was just dirty. I could see the lights from the tanks. The fish were darting flashes of wild color or else they drifted on gossamer fins. I was drawn in. The man behind the counter looked up and smiled, but to his credit he didn’t try and talk to me, otherwise I would’ve run.
Then I saw it, a long tank along the back wall. I went closer. The snake was magnificent, from the pale skin on her belly to the brown scales on her back.
She slithered closer, eyeing me and then raised her head and the front third of her body lifted up as if suspended on invisible thread. I put my forehead against the glass.
“She likes you,” the man murmured.
She moved up the side of the tank. I realized that I was swaying in time with her, feeling unity in the motion. I was aware of her body, each muscle moving beneath her skin, her very skeleton. I looked into the snake’s black eyes and could see out of them into my own. The world was on the tip of her forked tongue; my curiosity, the shopkeeper’s sweat and kindness, the soft flavor of the mice in the tank behind the counter.
A hand gripped my shoulder, hard, jerking me back to myself. It was Kathy.
“Get away from that thing.” Her fingers were digging into me. “Don’t you ever come in here again, understand?”
She looked at the snake, shuddering. “God, it’s disgusting. What’s wrong with you?”
She shouted at me all the way home, for putting the wind up her, letting her think some pervert had taken me. I didn’t realize just how afraid she was. That she was looking at me like she didn’t know what she’d birthed.
The novelty of motherhood soon wore off. Ami sat in the armchair of our flat, her toenails painted in the same tangerine shade as her maxi dress. She was sunbed fresh and her lips were demarcated in an unflatteringly pale shade of pink. Her hair was in fat rollers ready for her evening out.
“Guess where I went today?” she asked, her voice bright and brittle.
“Where, doll?” Kath puffed on her cigarette, blowing a stream of smoke away from us.
If Ami was slim, Kath was scrawny. The skin on her neck and chest was wrinkled from the lack of padding and twenty-five cigarettes a day. She wore a series of gold chains and her hands were rough and red from perpetual cleaning. Her face was unbalanced: nose too small and large ears that stuck out. Round eyes that never saw make-up. I forget sometimes, that she was only twenty-four then.
“To see Kenny.”
Tallulah got up and I thought she was leaving me for Ami but she was just fetching her teddy. When she sat back down next to me, she wriggled against me to get comfortable. Ami bought Tallulah’s clothes. Ridiculous, expensive things to dress a toddler in, old fashioned and frilly.
“Kenny always asks after you.” Ami filled the silence.
“Does he?” Kath tipped the ash from her cigarette into the empty packet. God love her, she didn’t have many vices.
“He never says but he’s hurt. It’s all over his face when I walk in and you’re not with me. You’re not showing him much respect or loyalty. All he wants to do is look after you and Lola, like he looks after me and Tallulah.”
“I don’t want Kenny’s money. He’s not Robin Hood. He beat a man to death.”
“He’s our brother.”
Which was funny, because I didn’t know that I had an uncle.
Kath’s face was a shutter slamming shut.
“He loves to see pictures of Lola.”
“Photos? You showed him photos?” Kath was blowing herself for a fight.
“I only showed him some pictures. He wanted to see her. What’s up with you?”
“Lola’s my business. No one else’s.”
“Well, I’m taking Tallulah for him to see next time.”
“No, you’re not. Not to a prison.”
“She’s mine. I’ll take her where the fuck I want.”
“You’ve done well to remember you’ve got a daughter.”
“What’s that mean?”
“You’re always out with your bloody mates. You treat me like an unpaid baby sitter. She spends more time here than with you and then you’ve got the cheek to tell me to mind my own.”
“So it’s about money?”
“No,” Kath threw up her hands, “it’s about you being a selfish, spoilt brat. I’m your sister, not your mum. And it’s about how you treat Tallulah.”
“At least I know who her dad is.”
Kath slapped her face. A sudden bolt that silenced them both. It left a red flush on Ami’s cheek. Whenever I asked about my dad, Kath told me that she’d found me in a skip.
“I’m sorry, Ami . . . ” Kath put out her hands. “I didn’t mean to. I mean . . . ”
“Tallulah,” Ami snapped, holding out her hand.
Tallulah looked from me to Kath, her eyes wide. Ami pulled her up by the arm. She screamed.
“Be careful with her.”
“Or what, Kath?” Ami lifted Tallulah up, putting her under one arm like she was a parcel. “Are you going to call Social Services? Fuck off.”
Calling Social Services was a crime akin to calling the police.
Tallulah was in a full on tantrum by then, back arched and legs kicking. Fierce for her size, she proved too much for Ami who threw her down on the sofa. She lay there, tear stained and rigid. Ami had started to cry too. “Stay here then, see if I sodding care.”
There are times when I feel lost, even to myself, and that what looks out from behind my eyes isn’t human.
I’m reminded of it each day as I go to work at the School of Tropical Medicine.
Peter, one of the biochemists from the lab downstairs has come up for a batch of venom. He watches me milk the snakes when he can overcome his revulsion.
Michael, my assistant, tips the green mamba out of her box. I pin her down with a forked metal stick, while Michael does the same, further along her body. I clamp a hand just beneath her neck, thanking her silently for enduring the indignity of this charade. If it were just the two of us, she’d come to me without all this manhandling. I’ll make it up to her later with mice and kisses. She’s gorgeous in an intense shade of green, her head pointed.
“You have to stop that work when you get too old,” says Peter, “you know, reflexes getting slow and all that.”
The deaths of herpetologist are as fabled as snakes are touchy. There’s no room for lax habits or slowness. Handled safely for years, a snake can turn on you, resulting in a blackened, withered limb, blood pouring from every orifice, paralysis and blindness, if not death.
Peter’s a predator. He’s been a swine to me since I knocked him back. I turn to him with the snake still in my hand. She hisses at him and he shrinks away.
I hook the mamba’s mouth over the edge of the glass and apply gentle pressure. The venom runs down the side and collects in a pool.
What Peter doesn’t know is that when my darlings and I are alone I hold them in my arms and let them wind around my neck. Our adoration is mutual. They’re the easy part of my job.
“They like Eliza,” Michael is offended on my behalf. There’s not been a bite since I’ve been here.
“Concentrate.” I snap at him as he brings the mamba’s box to me. I regret my churlishness straight away. Michael is always pleasant with me. He never takes offence at my lack of social graces but someday he will.
Snakes are easy. It’s people that I don’t know how to charm.
Tallulah trailed along beside me. She looked like a doll in her school uniform; pleated skirt and leather buckled shoes. I didn’t begrudge her the lovely clothes that Ami bought her. She jumped, a kittenish leap, and then she took my hand. We swung arms as we walked.
We turned onto Cathcart Street. Laird Tower was ahead of us, dwarfing the bungalows opposite. Those used by the elderly or infirm were marked out by white grab handles and key safes.
A pair of girls sat on a wall. They ju
mped down when they saw us. School celebrities, these playground queens, who knew how to bruise you with a word. They’d hurt you for not being like them, or not wanting to be like them.
“Is she your sister?” Jade, the shorter one asked Tallulah.
“No,” Tallulah began, “she’s . . . ”
“Of course not,” Jade cut across her, keen to get out the rehearsed speech. Jade didn’t like my prowess in lessons. I tried to hide it, but it occasionally burst out of me. I liked the teacher. I liked homework. I even liked the school, built in red brick that managed to still look like a Victorian poorhouse.
Jade was sly enough not to goad me for that, going for my weakness, not my strength. “You’re too pretty to be Lola’s sister. Look at her ugly mug.”
It was true. I remained resolutely strange; my features had failed to rearrange themselves into something that would pass for normal. Also, my sight had rapidly deteriorated in the last few months and my thick lenses magnified my eyes.
“Be careful.” Jade leaned down into Tallulah’s face. “You’ll catch her ugliness.”
Tallulah pushed her, hard, both of her small hands on her chest. Jade fell backwards a few steps, surprised by the attack. She raised a fist to hit Tallulah.
My blood was set alight, venom rising. Water brash filled my mouth as if I were about to be sick. I snatched at Jade’s hand and sunk my teeth into her meaty forearm, drawing blood. I could taste her shock and fear. If she was screaming, I couldn’t hear her. I only let go when her friend punched me on the ear.
After I’d apologized I sat in the corner of the room while Kath and Pauline, Jade’s mum, talked.
“I thought it would be good if we sorted it out between us, like grown ups,” Pauline said.
Social Services had already been round to confirm that I was the culprit.
Has she ever done anything like this before?
No, Kathy was calm and firm, Lola wasn’t brought up that way.
“I’m so sorry about what happened.” Pauline lifted her mug of tea, her hand trembling a fraction. She took a sip and set it down, not picking it up again.
“Why?” Kath sat up straighter. “Lola bit Jade. I’m sorry and I’ll make sure that she is too by the time I’m done with her.”
“Yes, but Jade was picking on her.”
“That’s no excuse for what Lola did. She should’ve just walked away.”
“It’s time that someone cut Jade down to size.”
“My daughter bit yours.” Exasperation raised Kathy’s voice a full octave.
“She was asking for it.”
Kathy shook her head. Then, “How is she?”
Jade had lain on the pavement, twitching. Red marks streaked up her arm, marking the veins.
“She’s doing okay,” Pauline swallowed. “She’s on antibiotics. She’s a bit off color, that’s all.”
“The police and Social Services came round earlier.”
“I’ve not complained. I’m not a nark. I’d never do that.”
“I didn’t say you had.”
“You’ll tell Kenny, won’t you? We’re not grasses. We won’t cause you any bother. I’ll skin Jade if she comes near your girls again.” We were known as Kathy’s girls.
“Kenny?” Kathy repeated dully.
“Please. Will you talk to him?”
Kath was about to say something but then deflated in the chair.
“Ami’s says she’s visiting him soon, so I’ll make sure he gets the message.”
Kathy closed the door after Pauline had gone.
“What did you do to her?” It was the first time she’d looked at me properly since it had happened.
“It wasn’t her fault.” Tallulah stood between us. “She was going to hit me.”
“What did you do to her?” Kathy pushed her aside. “Her arm swelled up and she’s got blood poisoning.”
“I don’t know,” I stammered. “It just happened.”
She slapped me. I put my hands out to stop her but she carried on, backing me into the bedroom. She pushed me down on the floor. I curled my hands over my head.
“I didn’t bring you up to be like that.” Her strength now was focused in a fist. Kathy had hit me before, but never like that. “I swear I’ll kill you if you ever do anything like that again. You fucking little monster.”
She was sobbing and shrieking. Tallulah was crying and trying to pull her off. Kathy continued to punch me until her arm grew tired. “You’re a monster, just like your father.”
We stayed in our bedroom that night, Tallulah and I. We could hear Kathy banging about the flat. First, the vacuum hitting the skirting boards as she pulled it around. A neighbor thumped on the wall and she shouted back, but turned it off and took to the bathroom. She’d be at it all night, until her hands were raw. The smell of bleach was a signal of her distress. There were times when I thought I’d choke on the stench.
The skin on my face felt tight and sore, as if shrunken by tears. Tallulah rolled up my T-shirt to inspect the bruises on my back. There was a change coming, fast, as the shock of Kathy’s onslaught wore off.
It hurt when Tallulah touched me. It wasn’t just the skin on my face that felt wrong. It was all over. I rubbed my head against the carpet, an instinctual movement as I felt I’d got a cowl covering my face. The skin ripped.
“I’ll get Kathy.”
“No, wait.” I grabbed her wrist. “Stay with me.” My skin had become a fibrous sheath, my very bones remolding. My ribs shrank and my slim pelvis and limbs became vestigial. My paired organs rearranged themselves, one pushed below the other except my lungs. I gasped as one of those collapsed. I could feel my diaphragm tearing; the wrenching of it doubled me over.
I writhed on the floor. There was no blood. What came away in the harsh lamplight was translucent. Tallulah held me as I sloughed off my skin, which fell away to reveal scales. She gathered the coils of me into her lap. We lay down and I curled around her.
I couldn’t move. I could barely breathe. When I put out my forked tongue I could taste Tallulah’s every molecule in the air.
The morning light came through the thin curtain. Tallulah was beside me. I had legs again. I put a hand to my mouth. My tongue was whole. My flesh felt new. More than that, I could see. When I put my glasses on the world became blurred. I didn’t need them anymore. The very surface of my eyes had been reborn.
My shed skin felt fibrous and hard. I bundled it up into a plastic bag and stuffed it in my wardrobe. Tallulah stretched as she watched me, her hands and feet splayed.
“Tallulah, what am I? Am I a monster?”
She sat up and leaned against me, her chin on my shoulder.
“Yes, you’re my monster.”
I ache for the splendid shabbiness of my former life, when it was just Kath, Tallulah, and me in the flat, the curtains drawn against the world and the telly droning on in the background. Tallulah and I would dance around Kath, while she swatted us away. The smell of bleach and furniture polish is forever home. Kath complaining when I kept turning the heating up. Being cold made me sluggish.
Endless, innocuous days and nights that I should’ve savored more.
“How was your test?”
“Crap.” Tallulah threw down her bag. “Hi, Kath.”
“Hi, love,” Kathy shouted back from the kitchen.
Tallulah, school uniformed, big diva hair so blond that it was almost white, a flick of kohl expertly applied at the corner of her eyes.
“I’m thick, not like you.” She kicked off her shoes.
“You’re not thick. Just lazy.”
She laughed and lay on her belly beside me, in front of the TV. She smelt of candy floss scent she’d stolen from her mum. Tallulah was the sweetest thing.
There was the sound of the key in the door. I looked at Tallulah. Only her mum had a key. We could hear Ami’s voice, followed by a man’s laugh. A foreign sound in the flat. Kathy came out of the kitchen, tea towel in hand.
Ami stood in the
doorway, flushed and excited, as if she was about to present a visiting dignitary.
“Kath, there’s someone here to see you.”
She stood aside. I didn’t recognize the man. He was bald and scarred. Kathy sat down on the sofa arm, looking the color of a dirty dishrag.
“Oh, God,” he said, “aren’t you a bunch of princesses?”
“Kenny, when did you get out?” Kath asked.
“A little while ago.” He took off his jacket and threw it down. A snake tattoo coiled up his arm and disappeared under the sleeve of his T-shirt. It wasn’t the kind of body art I was used to. This hadn’t been driven into the skin in a fit of self-loathing or by a ham fisted amateur. It was faded but beautiful. It rippled as Kenny moved, invigorated by his muscles.
“Come and hug me, Kath.”
She got up, robotic, and went to him, tolerating his embrace, her arms stiff by her sides.
“I’ve brought us something to celebrate.”
He handed her a plastic bag and she pulled out a bottle of vodka and a packet of Jammy Dodgers.
“Just like when we were kids, eh?” he grinned.
“See, Kenny’s got no hard feelings about you staying away.” Ami was keen to be involved. “He’s just glad to be home.”
They both ignored her.
“Now, girls, come and kiss your uncle. You first, Tallulah.”
“Well, go on.” Ami gave her a shove.
She pecked his cheek and then shot away, which seemed to amuse him. Then it was my turn. Kath stood close to us while Kenny held me at arm’s length.
“How old are you now, girl?”
“Eighteen.”
“You were born after I went inside.” He sighed. “You’ve got the family’s ugly gene like me and your mum but you’ll do.”
For what? I thought.
Kenny put his fleshy hand around Kath’s neck and pressed his forehead against hers. Kathy, who didn’t like kisses or cuddles from anyone, flinched. I’d never seen her touched so much.