The Point of Vanishing - Maryka Biaggio (large ebook reader TXT) 📗

crumpled curves, with beads of blood glistening around its flattened skin. A whir of dragonfly wings filled the air.

“Damnable creatures,” said her father. “Never can tell what kind they are.”

The snake’s amber-and-grey-circled body flopped in aimless coils. Barbara couldn’t take her eyes off it.

Her father leaned over. “I thought it might be a copperhead, but I see it’s just a milk snake.”

Barbara crouched to get a closer look. It didn’t move at all. “You killed it.”

“It’s not the kind of snake we want in the garden. Scaring you or your mother. Or Grandma Ding.”

Barbara craned her head around and looked up at him. “It wouldn’t hurt us.”

“I thought it might be poisonous.”

“It was just trying to get away.”

“Some snakes bite when threatened. Like rattlesnakes and copperheads.”

“But I’d never threaten a poor little snake, so it wouldn’t hurt me.”

“Don’t be silly. Some snakes are poisonous.”

“You shouldn’t have killed it, Daddy.” Barbara straightened up. “That was a mean thing to do.”

“I didn’t want to take any chances. You go ahead and pick some flowers for your mother. I’ll get rid of it.”

“But I want to bury it.”

“No, I’ll take care of it.”

Barbara’s tummy felt wobbly. She wanted to do something nice for the poor snake.

Her father nudged her shoulder. “Go on now.”

She ran into the house, up the stairs, and into her parents’ bedroom. From the window, she looked down on the path where the snake lay. She could see the snake but not her father. She scanned the garden. There he was, marching down the path, a big stick in his hand. He wriggled the stick under the snake’s floppy body. Balancing the creature on the stick, he carried it to the beginning of the path and flung it over the bushes toward the roadside culvert. The snake whirled through the air, its colored circles flashing in the sun.

Later that afternoon, while her parents and Grandma Ding read in the sitting room, Barbara snuck down the back stairs, hugging the wall to keep the steps’ springy middles from creaking. She found the trowel on the back porch counter, slipped it in her dress pocket, and carried her two stuffed-animal friends to the woods beyond their yard. She sat them down on some ivy, cleared a circle of the vines, and dug a foot-round hole.

“You stay here,” she told Mr. Rabbit and Mrs. Squirrel. “I’ll go find Mr. Snake.”

To keep out of view of the sitting-room window, she hunched over and wove through the woods. She lifted the snake, one hand close to its head and the other behind its squashed part and carried it to her cemetery site. Kneeling, she coiled it into a neat circle, just as she imagined it might like to rest.

She sat before the grave and bowed her head. “I’m sorry, Mr. Snake. I know you wouldn’t have harmed me or Mommy or Grandma Ding. Daddy was mean to hurt you. You’re very beautiful, and now you can live with all the other innocent creatures that people killed and not ever get hurt again.”

With her trowel, she scraped earth atop the snake. She rearranged the vines over the grave and sat down facing Mr. Rabbit and Mrs. Squirrel. “I know you’re sad about Mr. Snake, so I’m going to tell you about a wonderful place where all nature’s creatures are happy and safe. Children play there all day, and there are no grown-ups to argue about silly things. Don’t worry. When I go to Farksolia, I’ll take you with me.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

BARBARA AT SIXTEEN

From Pasadena to Parts Northeast, June–August 1930

In June, she and her mother set off for the East Coast on the S.S. Marsodak. Knowing it was probably her last sea voyage for a long time, Barbara tried to savor the journey. The lulling clip of the ship, even this doddering steamer, certainly satisfied more than the jostling lurch of any bus or train. But she hated what it signified—losing the chance for a reunion with Ethan any time soon.

She already missed him. Just as they’d left Pasadena, Ethan had set sail for the remotest of outposts, Point Barrow. They’d not be able to write for four months—there was no system for mail exchanges. Going from two or three letters a week to none was like stalling on a windless sea. How would she fill her sails?

And her mother’s unending rants against her father sent her hunting for other conversation. She preferred not to even think about the miscreant. She’d will him out of her life. At least he and Margaret were staying in California, so she needn’t worry about crossing paths with him on the East Coast, wherever she and her mother might land.

As for where they’d settle, her mother kept quibbling and equivocating, which was maddening. Barbara stayed out of her way as much as possible. That wasn’t hard during the day since her mother shut herself away in their puny interior cabin and wrote like a maniac. But come evening, Barbara couldn’t avoid her mother.

Two nights before they were to put in at Baltimore Harbor, her mother launched another diatribe. “Whenever I think about your father and that impudent girl, I get worked up all over again.”

“I’m tired, Mother.” Barbara flicked off the cabin’s overhead light and crawled into her cot.

Her mother’s words pierced the darkness. “I’m so angry at him. Look at the straits he’s left us in.”

“Can’t you just forget about him?”

“How can I when he’s backed me into a corner? Not a cent to speak of from him. He won’t even sign the house over to me.”

“So? We can still live in it.”

“No, we can’t. We need the rental income. Besides, there’s no work for me in New Haven.”

“I could work. I’m sixteen now.” If she were on her own, she could earn money for herself and Ethan. She hated to think of merely exchanging this ship, with its dingy rooms, for a cramped apartment. She’d had her fill of being confined in close quarters with her mother.

“Not