Page 35 of Snake-Eater
Selena’s shoulders sagged.
She did not understand gods, but she understood shyness.
She walked around the edge of the garden bed. There were no footprints on the hard ground, not hers, not a person who might be a god’s.
Of the dozen squash seedlings, five stood up tall and had an extra set of leaves.
“The ones he was paying attention to are bigger,” she said, trudging up the path to the porch. She picked up her drink. The ice had melted into cold water with a faint flavor of alcohol at the bottom.
“No surprise there. Plants like him right back.”
Grandma Billy leaned back in the rocking chair. Selena had the feeling that the old woman was waiting to see what she would do next.
Maybe it was because the voice in her head sounded so much like Walter. He would never have believed in gods. He’d have claimed that the drink was laced with something or that she’d been brainwashed or that she’d had another nervous breakdown.
Maybe “because my ex wouldn’t” wasn’t a good enough reason to believe in something, but Selena thought she’d rather be in a cult with Grandma Billy and Father Aguirre than home with Walter any day.
Also it would have made her mother completely batshit.
“Huh,” she said. “So that was a spirit.”
“Just a little one,” said Grandma Billy. She swirled the last of her drink. “The little ones are better. The bigger ones start to get ideas.”
“Ideas?”
Grandma Billy shrugged. “You know. Anyway, probably time for me to be getting back h—”
A cry went up from the shadowy desert, anguished and mournful, a soul so tormented with loneliness that it had no choice but to cry out. Grandma Billy came out of her chair as if it were an ejector seat. Selena didn’t, but only because she’d heard it before. Copper jumped up, a growl forming in her throat.
“What thehellis that?” Grandma said.
“Er, you said it was a fox?”
“If that’s a fox, I’m a virgin.”
“But you said that horrible screams are—”
The cry went up again, despair given voice, then tapered off so slowly that Selena wasn’t sure what was real and what was memory. “—usually foxes,” she finished, her voice very small against the stillness.
“Yeah, well, foxes sound like a baby in a blender, not like somebody’s so miserable they’re gonna puke.” She scanned the horizon, even though it was too dark to make out anything more than the shapes of trees. “No idea,” she muttered after a moment. “Maybe some kind of owl.”
“Owls sound like that?”
“Owls sound like all kinds of things.” She sniffed. “I don’t trust ’em.”
I will be sure not to lend one money,Selena thought. Then,No, if I say that out loud, it’ll probably turn out that she has lent an owl money somehow and everyone here does it and they’ll say, “Yes, of course, First Bank of Owls,” and I’ll go away wondering which one of us is losing our mind.
Later on, after Grandma Billy had left, Selena went to the back of the garden and poured cornmeal into her palm.
She didn’t know how much she was supposed to use, or where to put it. Did you make a pile? Scatter the bits around?
“Well, I wouldn’t want to have to pick up bits of it out of the dirt,” she said aloud. “So I guess ...”
She crouched down and placed the cornmeal on one of the stones edging the raised bed. It didn’t look like much. A handful of yellow grains, nothing special. But Grandma Billy had said that’s what spirits liked, and if you accepted that there were spirits at all, there was no reason they wouldn’t like cornmeal.
When you were rude, you apologized and tried to make it right. That was the most basic script, the one down at the bottom of the others. It didn’t matter about magic or gods or anything else.
She straightened up. “Um,” she said. “I ... uh ... want to apologize. I didn’t mean to startle you. It’s very nice that you’re interested in my plants. I hope this is okay. I know I’m not from here, and I’m probably doing this wrong.”
