From the wombs
of true believers,
I came out faithless
a godless decadent
heathen but somewhere
in my foggy ancestral memory
I recall that women
used to worship
snakes. We’d put out
milk for cobras hoping
they’d leave the baby
in the crib alone
and if they drank from
our offering, we
were guaranteed good
luck for a week, but
that was long ago
before the Eve-hating
white men came with
injections of snake
fear shot right into
our pagan faith. Now
when we see a cobra
in the house, we scream
and the neighbors run
over with hoes and
machetes. One time
when I was little
I saw one the size
of my arm slithering
on our veranda
and I got to scream
cobra! cobra! snake!
everyone! and they
all came, men yelling
to save me, my
grandfather wielding
a kitchen knife and
hacking the cobra
to bits right there in
our backyard garden.
My mother’s mother’s
mother lived to be
one hundred, insisted
on sleeping in her
own house until the
very end. But my
mother is afraid of
snakes and as a
child tormenting
her was a favorite
pastime. I’d beg snake
toys from relatives
and chase her. I’d twist
snakes out of
newspapers and old
scarves. Watching my mother
scream and run away,
I laughed. I know now
that it’s a phobia,
that she had no control
over her reaction
but back then her
revulsion was a
sign of weakness, and
I could feel like the
strong one. I guess I’ve
always had a serpent
tongue, though I learned early
to silence its bite. This, too,
is a gift from the women of
my family. I
can cut through a
lover’s blood during
any fight. This is a liability,
this ability
to destroy a person.
When I told my mother
I wanted to be
a writer, she said
nothing. She didn’t
have to. We come from
a country where writer
means dead child. In
Harry Potter, speaking
serpent tongue meant
you were evil, but really I
think JK Rowling
couldn’t imagine
herself out of her Christianity-
addled brain, like how
Ray Bradbury could think up
LCD wall TVs, but not
a world in which women
had careers. My mother
tells me to write nice
stories, to keep my
serpent tongue caged. This
is her wisdom: in this new
world my ancestral power
is to be feared. I’m
young and I ignore
her, but she still goes
to sleep every night
thinking dead child dead
child dead child
— SJ Sindu (From Honey Literary)