The first snake lived in the wall behind the woodstove. The second snake lived among the pile of dish towels under the kitchen counter. The third snake lived in the drawer with the rolling pin and the measuring cups. The fourth snake lived on the bookcase, fourth shelf up. When I left for work at the hardware and salvage store each morning, a snake filled my right rubber boot with its coils. I used the broom to overturn it, watched it slink into a knothole in the floorboard.
The house was livable for the animals that moved in, and it was livable for us. Snakes, mice, spiders, wasps, even once a raccoon. Year by year, we got used to it, or, in the case of the raccoon, we killed it and ate it. In the summers the house molded. We washed the floor and the walls with vinegar every week. In the winters, the wind found all the gaps, all the places where the insulation had sunk. It blew in above and below the front door. But we kept the fire hot. We played Survival Dice. The house sank into the clay, but it wasn’t completely swallowed. It leaned, but it didn’t capsize. Our garden grew each year, so did our ability to bring in wild food, and so did Perley.
When Perley was one, he sat in my lap and reached out to grasp the fifth black rat snake, the one that took up residence along the back of the sofa. “Nake!” he said. When he was two, he said, “Snake!” and went down on hands and knees to hiss in delight at the black snake that lived behind the front door. When Perley was four, he jogged up and down on the sofa next to Karen and said proudly, “I am Friend of Snake!” as the black snakes slowly overtook our house.
“We were up to ten snakes last time I checked,” I said. “I think it’s time to do something.” I’d said this before. Karen was whittling, which didn’t seem quite safe to me, blade so close to bouncing boy, but I’d said this before, too. Helen leaned over the kitchen counter, writing furiously in the three-ring binder, a to-do list that she’d been keeping for the past year. We could see that it grew each day, that she carried it with her everywhere. It was obvious that she wanted us to ask her what was in it. But we had our own to-do lists, and at the top of both of our lists was the same item. To do: Don’t look at Helen Conley’s to-do list. Sometimes, accomplishing that task could take the whole day.
“Nothing to do except get used to them. It’s their house, too,” Karen said. “Where people make their biggest mistake is in thinking they can control everything.” The wood shavings flew. Perley bounced next to her, kicking off his socks, then pulling them back on and doing it again.
* * *
While I worked, Karen stayed home with Perley. The first time Perley had thrown a ball right-handed, Karen had brought the ball back to him and closed his left hand around it. It was the same thing when he learned to eat with a spoon, or to dig with the shovel she’d carved for him. When she caught my look, she said, “In the future we’re preparing for, ambidextrous people will be needed.”
She saw to it that Perley only ate from the garden, from the forest, or from my breasts. I pumped three times a day to keep my supply up, so Perley would have milk even when I wasn’t there. No bread. No grain. No sugar. She gave him bones to chew on, made sure that Helen saved all the organ meat from the animals she found, spooned groundhog liver into his mouth. “I don’t want him to lose his taste for bitter,” she said. “We have to fight the endless monotony of salt and sweet.”
When Perley learned to walk, Karen frowned at me when I carried him. “Never do for a child what he can do for himself,” she said. She whittled tools that were just Perley’s size, a rake and a shovel, a pitchfork, a pick, a mallet. He wanted her to play with him but she said, “You’re better than that, Perley. You can work with me.” In the spring, we harvested nettles side by side. I tried to keep Perley from the patch, but Karen said, “Let him try it