The Snakes That Live In Our Hands

When did my hands become my mother's?

I took the time to really notice them, finishing typing the last words of a text to my daughter's babysitter to let her know I would be a little late due to a train delay. Smooth and yet slightly leathered from years of harsh Chicago winters and humid summers. Knuckles crosshatched and indented. Small wrinkles appear here and there, wrapping around my pudgy fingers. Discolored because I developed my mother's Raynaud's at 25. So, while the back of my palm up to my knuckles is a pale pink with a few freckles, my fingers are ghost pale and seem to glow in the iridescent lights on the train. Did my mom's hands still look like this?

I couldn't remember.

When was the last time I actually noticed her hands?

When I was 12, my mom was coaching my little brother's soccer team and was handing me orange slices to help hand out to the players at the impending halftime. I noticed her hands–they looked so tired.

Slightly darker and more olive-toned than mine, she was a mixture of Potawatomi, Blackfoot, Scottish, and Hispanic Romani. While her ethnicity was mixed, we never really talked about where we came from.  We adapted the "we’re American, and that's that" mindset.

I knew my grandma started that mentality about our heritage, or at least strongly emphasized it a lot. She was overly proud to be an American. Her home was covered in American flags, elephant statues, and memorabilia from elections past. A letter from George W. Bush is framed on her wall. Though there are also parts of a wagon, like decorative wheels, a black entryway, and wood panels with swirls of color holding up pictures or accessorizing the walls. Our roots are still there, yet blanketed with Americana.

There is a bar made of wooden barrels, with various colorful, uniquely shaped glasses that look beautiful when the sun hits them just right. Dream catchers with real feathers, beaded jewelry make her place look as if the Smithsonian and a Fourth of July parade collided and were wrestling for a spot in the house.

Mom’s hands had finger bone outlines peeking through and showing her age. They carried too much, helped with too many things, and didn't get enough rest. Between her slightly protruding bone outlines, I could see the snakes beginning to squirm.

I didn't realize then that the lines were the snakes, just thought it was discolored veins, but as my grandmother grew older and we visited her, I saw clearly that there were midsized snakes coiling around her finger bones and wrists. Perhaps it was only one extra-long snake, or maybe it was ten. They freaked me out. I didn't like looking at them. Purplish green with orange stripes. Sometimes the snakes’ heads would almost break out of the surface. These are the times my mom made us leave quickly with no explanation.

I shuddered thinking about them. Did my mom's hands now look like hers?

I quickly went on Facebook and typed her name.

I saw her current photo, smiling a rather fake smile, from a paint night or something with friends. I don't think she's had a genuine smile since Dad died unexpectedly seven years ago. Wrinkles now appear at the corners of her eyes looking like grooves where she would either hold back her tears or where she would cry in private. I don't know, she never wanted to talk about my dad with me. Grieving was a solitary practice in my household. My brother didn't want to grieve either with me. He spends most of his time playing video games; I wanted to grieve together, but I was the only one.

I sigh and see her hands are a bit too obscured to see clearly, so I read her picture’s files. I scroll past many pictures of my daughter, and I smile, as seeing my daughter always makes me smile. I finally found a picture from a cooking class she took back in May. There, coiling around and slithering, I can see her snakes fused to her bones, looking as if they are about to eat the pierogi dumpling she is trying to fold. The snake’s gluttonous appetite hungers for the bounty of filling leaking from the folds; as my mother and I often did, put too much stuffing into the circular dough.

Her snakes looked different, though. More blue with black lines and white dots.

When did her hands get like her mother's?

I looked at my hands, watching intently, seeing if an unseen snake would appear. I imagined what it would feel like. Would it be a constantly moving thin and squishy line weaving every which way around my hands? Would I feel smooth ebbs and flows, my skin stretching around its every movement? Would I feel nothing?  The train carts rattled.

What if they were already there?

Freshly hatched from their microscopic eggs embedded in my veins. Too small to see or feel yet. What color would mine be? Did I want them so I wouldn't be different from my family? Or did I hope to God I didn't have them so I wouldn't know what they felt like or did.

"Ticket, please."

The conductor snaps me out of my disturbing train of thought, and I switch to the Metra app on my phone. I click the ticket and show him. Then he gives a knowing nod and goes about his business, looking like he needs another coffee and a good nap, tired over people’s bullshit, and now just hoping to get home to go back to his family. How I would like to get back home and be back in my own body.

I slump a bit against the seat to get comfortable. I have another hour to go until I get to Elburn.

When my grandma's snakes first attacked me, I was six and a bubbly, wide-eyed girl full of optimism and happiness. I was visiting my grandma for a few days with my mom to take care of my grandma, who had just had another heart surgery. My cousins and I were playing Duck Hunter on my grandma's TV. My wheelchair-bound stroke victim grandpa smiled and made noises that sounded like squeaky laughs trying his best to help us get all the ducks.

My aunt was there laughing and having fun too, wanting in on the next game. It was a happy memory...until it wasn’t.

My mom and grandma walked in and immediately I heard yelling, "I'm gonna get myself some gin and a cigarette!”

It wasn't a joke, which I knew that from the tone of her voice. Scratchy and pissed off. This was the grandma everyone had to stay quiet around. My grandpa, slowly yet as fast as his arms allowed, pushed the off button on the remote and pointed to the Atari system. I was in shock. What took away our joy? I could hear Mom and Grandma arguing.

"Mom, first of all, you just had heart surgery. You shouldn't be smoking or drinking ever again," my mom said while angrily washing the dishes left in the sink.

" Oh, shut up. What do you know?" Grandma hissed back, biting Mom.

"I've been a nurse for 15 years now, but okay don't listen to me. But at least while Rhonda and I are here, you are not smoking or drinking," my mom said as she threw a glass into the sink making a splash.

"Hah. Nurse. More like Prison Warden."

"Fine, be mad at me for caring about you! I just want you to take care of yourself and not die!"

"I didn't want you here or Rhonda! I wanted Matt. Matt should have come."

"Oh, ya alcoholic can't keep a job to save his life. Matt should have come to help you recover from surgery. We could've asked the hospital for a discounted package. The surgery to funeral special for stubborn mothers who don't care about their families."

"You are such a bitch. I swear to God who raised you?"

"You did, Mom. You."

The air was thick with tension, like a fog was rising from their mouths as they spat poison back and forth. Did they both have snakes then? I couldn’t remember. My aunt looked at me and slowly gestured for me to get upstairs. For my own safety. Did my aunt have snakes too? Did my grandpa?

I nodded and slowly walked towards the stairs. I wasn't paying attention and bumped into my grandma.

She gave a huge guttural sound of agonizing pain, and I felt a heavy chill through my spine, making it rigid with fear.

"I'm sorry, Grandma. I'm so sorry."

"Get out of my way! Can't smoke, can't drink, now I gotta deal with her useless self?!"

Useless. I felt a deep, heavy thud in my heart, and my cheeks flushed...I was a her. No longer my name. No longer Granddaughter. Her. And I had to be dealt with. I was a burden.

Useless. I looked down and saw the snake biting into my hand. Fangs sharp, white, dripping with a venom that spanned generations, going back to ancient times. It felt ancient and permanent as it flowed into my system. The snake's eyes looked into my soul. Two black, vertical ovals floating in sage green pools. I saw myself in its pupils. It seemed to tell me, This shall now be your burden, too.

My aunt and mom both told me to go upstairs.

I was frozen and hurt mesmerized by the snake's stare. My chest felt sharp and sunken at the same time. I just wanted to undo whatever I had done.

The moment passed, and my grandma sat next to my grandpa, who was giving my grandma a look of piercing anger.

"Oh, what did I do now, Ted? Shut up, I'm gonna put on my show." She pressed the button, and I started walking up the plush, maroon carpet-covered stairs. The TV turned on, and my grandma kept getting more and more frustrated.

She screamed my name, "RACHEL!!!!!! Come over here!! What did you do?!!" Tears pool and start to drip down my cheeks. I start shaking.

"I'm sorry, Grandma, I don't know. I was just playing video games."

"Okay, no more games at Grandma's. This isn't a fun zone. God, you come here messing with all my stuff. You're just so worthless. Useless. Do you ever do anything right? Get out of my face before I have to come over there and beat you."

The venom reached my heart at that moment. I felt it make my heart skip a beat. Making my skin hot, my legs feel like jelly, and feet feel twenty pounds heavier.

I tried to run but couldn't. My aunt helped me move and go up the stairs. My eyes were wide and stayed open the whole time. I forgot how to breathe. I tried to breathe in, but all I got were tiny gasps. I heard my mom defending me as my aunt led me to the guest room, where we were all sleeping.

"You CANNOT do that to my child, Mom. You did it enough with Rhonda and me growing up, and it ends here!"

My aunt sat me down and rubbed my back herself, crying.

"It's gonna be okay, honey. Your mom and I went through this a lot. Your grandma can be a very very mean person when she wants to be. Dad used to keep her in check if he was sober. Hell, we would steal his bottles and empty them, fill them with water so he'd be sober more often. Now he's sober most of the time but can barely talk or walk. And you know she's just loving it. Sorry, I shouldn't be talking to you like this, you're what 4?”

"Six," I say in-between sobs and gasps for air.

My aunt found a brown paper bag that had her antidepression meds she had picked up earlier, tore the information booklet off of it, and handed it to me, hoping it would stabilize my breathing.

It didn't. I tried to calm down, but the tears wouldn't stop flowing, and her words and the snake's venom swirled around my mind, repeating that I was worthless and useless. It would insert unsaid things like no one likes you, your grandma hates you, and everyone hates you.

I heard mumbled screams and yelling. My aunt hugged me tighter. I heard stomps coming up the stairs and was terrified. My memory goes fuzzy after that.

I stare out the window again, back in the present.

I am thankful my mom’s snakes were not as venomous as my grandma’s, but they still had their own brand of toxin. Growing up, her snakes were anxious and wanted everything to be perfect. Wanted me to be perfect. They bit me when I was too chubby, when my grades were not perfect. They bit me every time I lay down on the couch, every time they saw me relax. They were superior to me and always let me know it. They were right, I was wrong. I needed to be thinner, prettier, make better life choices, be smarter, more giving, more selfless; I needed to make the rain stop pouring and make the sunshine stay out 365 days a year.

I wonder if her snakes were just trying to build up my defenses. If I were perfect, maybe I wouldn’t have snakes grow in my hands. But nothing anyone did stopped the snakes. And yet, perhaps no one had ever actually done anything to stop them.

I went looking for the origin of them and found they started with my great-great-grandma, who bore them while forced to live in a reservation in Kansas. They came to help her survive leaving her ancestral homeland. They helped her survive miles of harsh winter plains, prodded along by American soldiers. More and more of her people were dying every day from the cold and the starvation.

This forced “relocation” was called the Potawatomi Trail of Death. Very few are aware of this because so very few survived compared to the Trail of Tears. Both horrific, both gave birth to various venomous and poisonous beings that were passed down generation after generation.

The first snakes made my great-great-grandmother be silent, except when pictures of the holocaust surfaced decades later, and my grandma remembered she told her that was what the Americans did to her. The first snakes birthed the second, the second snakes birthed the third; the third birthed my mother; the fourth are mine...if they are to be born.

Thinking of my daughter, I pray every day they will not be born. I make sure to go to therapy and take medications when needed. Medicine and psychology have advanced so much over the generational snakes' lifespans. So far, my daughter is five, and they have yet to emerge. I will ensure they stay that way. I pray that if they come, they bite me instead. Over and over. I would rather they kill me than lay a single fang on her or any other child I have. My children will not know of the anxiety, self-hatred, body dysmorphic disorder, depression, panic attacks, anxious-attachment, CPTSD, disordered eating, or more I went through and am going through still as the venom still circulates within my systems. No one should feel the way I have felt.

“The next stop will be Elburn.”

The robotic male voice booms from the train's speakers. I rub my hands, checking for bumps, lumps, and movement. There is none. I put all my things back together and go to stand by the train door. They eventually open, and I step off. The full moon is bright in the clear sky. I walk to my car waiting for me in the now almost completely abandoned parking lot. I hear a rattle as I pass. I look, a rattlesnake sits shaking its tail, arching its back, getting ready to strike. I must have almost stepped on it.

I walk slowly away making sure I make no sudden movements. “I am sorry I almost stepped on you, I didn’t mean to.” It hears me. Our eyes lock. The black oval pupils in the sage green waters. It sees me, I see it. The snake seems to nod and slithers away, finding another place to hide for the night. I go sit in my car and put my seatbelt on.

Perhaps I escaped the snakes. Perhaps they were still in me lying dormant and waiting to emerge. Only time will tell. But for now, there are no snakes on my hands and no bites on my daughter. And that is reason enough to be happy.