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And I watched it both in real life and through the lens in awe of its grace, display of confidence, and the way it jumped from floor to hamper to nightstand. It didn’t weave it’s way up like I expected. It just kind of jumped. My dad stayed on the phone with animal control and I just watched it, hypnotized. My dad appeared at the door with the cordless phone, his tiptoe stance that  I have mimicked. I sent the video to Jacob and asked him to come over. I never ever ever ever invite anyone to my parent’s house.
“Ava, lock the snake in here. They’ll come get it.”
“They said they wouldn’t get it if it wasn’t contained.”

“I have them here,” he waved the phone at me and put it back to his ear, “here, put a towel down, lock it in the bedroom. Here, here. I am getting too excited, I need to sit down.”
My dad went to grab the towel and I was hesitant to leave it, thinking it smarter to watch something that can maneuver quickly around a room and jump on furniture, but I also had no actual idea what to do. I turned my back to take the towel from my dad and shut the door, looking at it one more time. I began to pace immediately, excited, feeling like the presence of the snake had added value to my father and I’s time here. We had mostly silence between us, two burned letters, years of grief. I had watched my father cry in the car when my brother was in the hospital. I had watched him sob.
“That’s my son,” he said.
I forget what that feels like and now, pacing in the kitchen, certain that I had felt the snake the night before when I was walking through the house naming ghosts in the corner. Like a buzz. Like an electric current that wraithed around me, I bet that snake had slithered right by me on my way to get a snack, and there it was, coming down the hallway now. I had not placed the towel correctly under the door. It strode past my dad’s door and headed into the kitchen and I had to allow it. I had to follow it. I felt helpless. I noticed all the cracks and dirt in the linoleum along the way. I should offer to mop. No, focus. I have no focus. Jacob responded.
“What’s the address?”
I’m trying to focus and lure the snake into something, some container. Failing my last task, failing to keep my parent’s kitchen floor clean, failing to keep this house up to code, failing to keep the door shut, failing my brother.I call him watching it glide and I sort of corner it so it slides over a foot stool tucked between the oven and the fridge where we also keep the cans of soda and Pellegrino when my mother has it. I try to shoo it quickly to the fridge side near the front door, unsure what to do if it gets behind the oven. That’s a lot of unexplored territory back there.  My hamster Rosie used to get into the walls when I was a kid. I had this basket I put her in that she would fall out of through the slats in the bottom and make a beeline for the dryer. There was a hole behind there and she ran every time towards that hole. I don’t remember how we got her out each time but she died relatively quickly. From the fright. My mom says I loved her to death.
“Hey.”

“Hey.”
“It’s under the fridge but Animal Control said they won’t come out until it’s contained and I need someone to help me contain it.”

“How did it get out of the bedroom?”
“Under the door. I need help. My dad is scared of it so I am alone doing it. He keeps complaining of his heart and breathing.”

“It will take me twenty five minutes.”
“Ok, I am just keeping it under the fridge until then. Bring something, like a box or I don’t know, you’re better with snakes.”
“It’s just a garter snake.”

“Yeah, well I am not grabbing it. Can it eat the guinea pigs?” 

“No, just crickets and cockroaches. It didn’t look big enough to eat a mouse.”

I had no focus. I was going to watch this snake for twenty five minutes. My dad once locked the snake in the den with the guinea pigs.
“Here,” my dad came around the hallway with a fly swatter.’I’m gonna get the cooler.”
“Ok, Dad, I need help getting it though.”

“I can’t, I can’t, I can’t,” he mumbled.
“Ok, come here and just walk in. The door is unlocked.’
“Ok.”
“Bring a box!”
He came back with the cooler and opened the lid next to me. There was brown stuff in the bottom. I recognized that cooler. We had taken it to the beach, Busch Gardens, every outing that required a packed lunch.
“Where is it?”

I pointed with the fly swatter.
“Under the fridge.”

“Ok, keep an eye on it.”
“I called my friend Jake. He’s coming.”

“Good, Animal Control said they would come.”
“They won’t come unless it’s contained.”
“They came last time, they said they would come again…”
“I called them too, they said they would not come until we trapped it.”

“Ok, great, I have to sit down, my breathing,” and my dad continued to walk back into
the bedroom.

I have no focus. I turned the cooler on its side and pushed it with my foot closer to the fridge. Holding the fly swatter out towards the left side, I see it peering.
“Hey.”
It sticks its tongue out at me.
“I’m gonna offer you favor.”

It begins to slide backwards and I circle around to the front of the fridge, trapping it with my body heat, vibration. As long as it knows where I am, it won’t dart out. I am in front of the fridge that has my cell phone number written it, a grocery list that just says “cheese,” and a reminder that my mom has stuck on there: a drawing of a child, like a pencil drawing but something she has printed from the computer
I am not dirt. God made me and God don’t make no dirt.
The entire length of the fridge is coated with black stuff. I hear shuffling and pop to the right quickly, brandishing the fly swatter. It’s head and beginning of body is out, poking and once it sees me, it slowly retreats backwards, pausing before hiding all the way behind the fridge. I see the tongue again. I still have my phone in my hand and look down at the time. A minute has passed since I hung up with Jake.
“Twenty four minutes.”
I hear something dull, the movement of a piece of cardboard or whatever has gotten stuck behind the fridge and then nothing. I stand reading that note. Looking up at the top of the fridge where the pens are, where the carton of Merits used to be and listen to my dad’s oxygen machine, that gentle heave and fall of robotic work. 

im posting all the first drafts to a story that took me a long time to plot. im finalizing a poetry book but need a break from looking at it. i have to complete this. it is my work.

“behold, Love’s true, and triumphs, and God’s actual.’

–gwendolyn brooks

“You need the untranslatable ice to watch.
You need to loiter a little among the vague.”

–gwendolyn brooks

I walked closer to the bureau and peered behind it watching it move along the chords slowly, coming to a stop right before the end of the other side.
“Where’s the snake?” I heard my dad kind of screech.
“Behind the bureau.”
My dad shuffled in his sweat shorts and polo, the same outfit he’d worn for days, as he always had, oxygen tubes in his nose.
“Keep an eye on it, I’m gonna call animal control. We had a snake in the house a few weeks ago.”

My dad was already leaving the room to grab the phone before I even gave a response.
“You want me to just watch the snake???”

“I’m just gonna grab the phone, Ava.”
I already had my cell phone in my hand and had looked up the number. I dialed waiting, watching the snake, sort of of hovering over it as it lay still. I tried to bypass the pre-recored menu as I always do ny smashing “0” or screaming “operator” and that is how I got Linda so quickly.
“Linda, there is a snake in my mother’s bedroom. I have it trapped behind the dresser. Can someone come get it?”

“Oh we don’t come get snakes unless it’s trapped in a container.”
“Well, I have it contained.”

“No… it needs to be in a box or underneath something where it can’t get out. We’ve gone out to people’s houses and chased snakes for hours, all around their house. We can’t go out unles sthe snake is contained. You can call an exterminator.”
“My parents are elderly, my father is on oxygen, they can’t afford to pay for an exterminator or to live with a snake in the house.”
I could sense the anxiety in my voice and the pressure of the animal behind the dresser, ready to move at any moment. I could feel it. I wanted to scream at her. If I was alone, I may have. I didn’t want to frighten the snake. I didn’t want to kill it either. I wanted it relocated.
“I’m sorry to hear that but we can’t come out to find snakes anymore. We’ve gone out too many times for them.”
I once saw a snake gutted but moving on the side of the road. We called animal control to euthanize it. I waited an hour maybe over an hour before giving up. It laid still in front of me that entire hour. My partner, his son and I were there, comforting the snake in presence as people walked by. We were at the beach going back to our car. A car had clearly run the snake over and people continuously told us to “let the evil serpent die” and that they “hoped it would die” as i tried to calmly educate them on how fucking ridiculous and selfish they were. I tried to watch my language and temper and teach the value of kindness to animals to Nate from a young age. It was hard to make children vegan but we gave him vegan chicken nuggets, hot dogs, french fries, fun things that my partner would make and take him to every local protest I organized for PETA. I tried.
“Ma’am?”
“Yes,”

“If you can contain it, we can come out and pick him up.”
“Ok sure. I’ll call you back.”

As we walked away, after that hour passed, I looked back, checking on it. It was slithering into the grass into the woods.
“Sometimes snakes play dead,” Smith said to me. “That’s what she said on the phone right.”
I stood stunned. It’s stomach had been cut open and it had laid there still so long as I stayed next to it, for over an hour.
“But it’s stomach was cut open.”
“Maybe he was playing,” Nate said, excited to go home and eat.
I waited a few more seconds.

“Remember that time on the way to the shore, we stopped and helped that hurt butterfly in the road?”
“Yeah!” I turned away from the snake, trying not to ruminate on whether I had helped or hurt it more. “Good eye. It was in the street with a hurt wing. I can’t believe we saw it from the car.”
The snake began moving towards my mother’s nightstand.
“Dad!”
“I’m calling Animal Control. I have them on the line.”
“I already called. They can’t help us. They said we have to contain it. Dad, it’s moving!”
I held my phone up, wanting to record it’s size as it wrapped around the painting of the mother and young boy I had given to my mother years ago. It was framed on her nightstand. All the paintings I had bought her were displayed in her room.
“Ok, well get it, don’t let it get away!”
“Dad, it’s on the nightstand, what do you want me to do? Do you want me to just grab it?”
And I watched it both in real life and through the lens in awe of its grace, display of confidence, and the way it jumped from floor to hamper to nightstand. It didn’t weave it’s way up like I expected. It just kind of jumped.

I showed up that Saturday as we had agreed upon. I never break promises. This makes me “dorky” my brother says but if we made plans, I believe somewhere that we still have them. I waited until 12:00 before heading to Leana’s house.
“You’re already dirty,” she said through her screen door.

“You want to come out and play?”
She turned around to look over her shoulder.
“Sure, hold on.”
She closed the big white door in my face and I rocked back and forth eyeing her dad’s boat. I didn’t hear the door reopen but I did hear a squeaky voice through the screen.

“Hi Aaaavvaaa.”

“Hiiiii Jaaaaackkkkk,”I slowly turned around.
“Aaaaaavvaaaaa.”
“Jaaaaaaack.”
“Aaaaaavvvvvvaaaa.”
“Jack!” and i flicked the screen with my fingers.
“Ow!”
“Jack move!”
Leana swung the screen open and I could see her little brother in only his underwear.
“What do you want to do?”
“Want to go in the ditch?”

She shrugged and we headed towards the abandoned house down the street where we cut through sometimes if we thought her parents might be watching.

“I’m going to Ava’s!” she screamed and slammed the door shut.

“You’re filthy, Ava!”
My mom opened the door for me that day, big smile on her face, excited to see me and then the scolding.
“Wait, stop,” she put her hands out to stop me. “Take your shoes off, take your socks off, bath immediately.”
“Mom,” I whined.
“Do not whine, Ava. If you’re going to keep playing in mud, you’re going to start taking baths immediately after playing.”
I threw my head back in protest but began sliding my shoe off with my other foot. I never untied my shoes, I just ripped them off. My mom headed down the hallway to start the bath. My dad walked by me.
“Mom, making you take a bath huh?”
“Yeah,” I grumbled, pulling my sock off.
My dad snorted and said, “Let me look at you.”
I looked up at him. My face was covered in dirt, arms, hands, shirt and pants too. After we buried the worm, I thought it would strengthen the spell if we rolled on top of the grave and chanted Worm! Worm! Worm! Worm! Live forever! over and over.
“Now you have the power of the worm,” I whispered to her, both of us on our stomachs on the patch, my head laying flat on the dirt.
“Wow, what were you doing? You really got in there?”

My dad was examining me and I began to kick the other shoe offf. I shrugged as girls do. My brother never got this dirty if at all.
“Just playing.”
My dad laughed on his way to the laundry room to get a snack. It was Sunday. I remember he had slept in today. Tomorrow was work. He wouldn’t drink too much.
“Ava!”
“I’m coming,” I pulled my other sock off and left it in a pile by the door.

The rest of the evidence buried somewhere in some hole near someone’s backyard. The only evidence of our friendship: swallowed, tombed, washed off, never to be seen again. Never to be believed.