NB: There is a literal snake present in this piece that I also use as a metaphor BUT please know that it is not a metaphor for childhood SA— I know that can be hugely triggering for some readers and wanted to offer assurance.
There’s a cobra in Daddy’s closet.
In the cool dark of the back bedroom at Granny and Grandpa's, Jeremy and I were, presumably, watching TV late on a Saturday afternoon. But it was tuned to HBO, and playing the same movie we’d seen half a dozen times.
I popped the bi-fold doors of the closet open, reaching my arm into the back of it, pushing past the collared shirts my dad used to wear to church on Sundays, feeling around.
Mom had been reading us The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe at night before bed, on the floral chintz sofa in our two-bedroom apartment. While most of CS Lewis’ allegory was lost on 7-year-old me, the idea of reaching through something into another world fascinated me; could I step through the back of this closet and find my way into my bedroom in our blue house in Houston?
But instead of finding Narnia, the White Witch, or an anthropomorphic lion, my fingertips grazed the scaly skin of a cobra.
I pulled the cobra out from the depths of the closet, set it down on the beige carpet. Looked at it. It was taxidermic, coiled, and ready to strike. Glossy black eyes, fangs bared, tongue caught mid-flick. Goosebumps spread over my skin. I shivered, the same as I did when I came across a photo of a snake in my Ranger Rick magazines. I knew it didn’t make sense, but I felt like they could leap out of the page and slither their way into my bedroom. I always flipped the page as quickly as I could.
The cobra didn’t make sense to me. Granny favored crystal bowls of potpourri, engraved sterling silver frames with newborn photos of the grandchildren, and arrangements of silk flowers. Where had it come from, and why had it been brought into the house, only to end up in the back of the closet? Had Granny ever thought about putting the cobra on display, like the rows of shot glasses that lined the softly lit glass shelves in the living room?
Why would anyone keep this half-dead, half-alive thing shoved in the back of a closet, and how did it get here?
This post is part of my ongoing micro memoir project, In a Strange Land. You can read about it here and catch up on previous entries here.