Garter Snake

As the nurse was helping me into the wheelchair, I remembered something the pastor of my childhood church back in Georgia liked to say:

“You know, folks, Genesis 3 says God multiplied women’s suffering in childbirth after Lucifer tricked Eve with the forbidden fruit. So blame it on your great-grandma Eve the next time you feel those contractions. If it wasn’t for her, your baby would just fall right out.”

A week ago, I’d tried to tell my husband how fearful I was getting. I waited to bring it up until after we’d made love, thinking he’d be calmer. Todd’s not a calm man. In the beginning, it was exhilarating, hearing his passionate declarations of love. Things changed.

“Todd?” I said tentatively. He was lying on his back next to me. He grunted.

“I’m scared of having this baby,” I said. “Like, I know women have been having babies for centuries and stuff, but that doesn’t make it any easier when in a month it’s your body that’s gotta do it.” I looked over at him.

He sat up and eased off his condom. “Hell, I don’t know what you’re worried about, I’m stretching you out pretty good.” He snorted, got to his feet, and went to the bathroom.

Todd lived nearly an hour away from me when we first started going together. There was one time I came home and there was a garter snake sunning himself on the steps to my basement apartment. I’ve always hated snakes. I called Todd crying and he drove all the way over, pinned the snake by the neck with a stick, and deposited it in the woods nearby. I was in awe watching how easily he manipulated the stick, how the snake moved where he wanted it to.

I was still lying in bed when Todd came back from the bathroom. He pulled on a faded flannel shirt and said, “Dinner ready?”

I did a stupid thing then. I should have known better, but I was feeling stung. I said, “I’m in bed and you’ve been in the bathroom, genius. What’s it look like?”

Todd jerked around like he’d been swung at.

I had followed behind him all the way out to the woods that day, begging him to kill the snake. “Chop off its head,” I yelled. I really hate snakes. “What if it comes back?”

Todd grinned. “Boo-bear, that snake’s twice as scared of you as you are of it. Plus, what if it’s got a mommy and daddy snake out there waiting for him to come home?”

When the snake was safely put away, I snuggled up against him. “Tell me more about that snake’s family,” I said.

Todd was the best storyteller I knew. He had a voice like hot fudge on vanilla bean ice cream, just gliding along. He could make up a whole life for a dumb snake just like that.

“I’m sorry!” I screamed. I was in the fetal position. The window was open and Todd was hurling my underwear out into the back yard. One pair caught on an azalea bush and hung.

“I’m dirt,” I said.

The last pair of underwear smacked against my head. Todd was standing over me.

“You’re worse than dirt,” he said slowly. Every word dipped in disdain. “You’re fucking dust. How a baby can even grow in you is beyond me.”

That was a week ago.

The lady nurse was pushing my wheelchair down the hall.

She said, “Don’t worry, I’ll be holding your hand the whole time.”

She said, “You’re a brave woman.”

She wheeled me into the room and helped me up onto the table.

“Garter snake,” I said.

She was getting the IV ready. “Sure,” she said absently.

“You’ll just feel a little pinch,” she said.

“He moved the snake,” I said. Somehow it felt important to say this. “It was on the steps but he put it back in the woods.”

She attached a bag of fluids to the IV stand. “Look how easy that was,” she said.

I couldn’t speak fast enough. “My pastor was wrong,” I said. “Eve’s real suffering wasn’t the multiplied pains of childbirth.”

The hospital bed became a podium. “Imagine being Eve and realizing your husband, who’s literally the only man on earth, wasn’t there for you when you needed him. Dust of the earth. What could you do? Where could you go? Might as well pray your birthing pains kill you right then and there.”

I thought of snake families in the woods. I thought of my underwear hanging on an azalea bush.

The nurse moved my legs to the stirrups. “Let me know if it’s not comfortable,” she said.

“I’m more than comfortable,” I said. I said this with my legs strapped apart in stirrups. Can you imagine? “I’m luxuriating, baby. I could be here all day.”

I understood why snakes shed their skin.

I wasn’t scared of having a baby anymore.