One Door From Heaven

wouldn't be safe, because sooner or later she'd have to come out. To get food. To use the bathroom. They were going to be here a few more days, and if the creature was loose in the house, it could be anywhere, and once she came out of her room to go to the toilet or to get something to eat, then it could slip in her room, too, through the one-inch gap under the poorly hung door, or because Sinsemilla let it into her room and then it could be waiting under Leilani's bed, in her bed. She'll have no sanctuary, no peace. Every place will belong to the snake; no place will belong to Leilani, no smallest place. Usually she had only a corner, a nook, a precious retreat; though Sinsemilla might invade any room without warning, Leilani could at least pretend her nook was a private place. But the snake won't allow even a pretense of privacy. She'll have no respite from torment, no relief from the expectation of attack, not even when Sinsemilla is
        asleep, because the snake is essentially sleepless. This wasn't a way Leilani could live, not a situation she could endure, this was too much, too much, intolerable.
        Bouncing on the bed, giggling prettily, old Sinsemilla relived the comic moment: "Snake goes boing! straight in the air, and Leilani goes yikes! just about straight in the air herself, and then she's makin' for the door like two drunk kangaroos in a three-legged sack race!"
        Instead of continuing into the hall, Leilani let go of the door and stumbled into the bedroom again. Fear kept her from regaining her usual ease of movement, but also anger; she remained unbalanced by a sense of injustice that quaked through her with 1906 San Francisco intensity, rocking her from good leg to bad, rolling through her in nauseating waves.
        "Cute little slippery thingy won't kill you, Leilani. Little thingy just wants what we all want, baby. Little thingy just wants love," Sinsemilla said, drawing out love until it was longer than a twelve-syllable word, and she laughed with strange delight.
        Poisonous or not, the snake had struck at Leilani's face, her face, which was the best thing she had going for her, the best thing she might ever have going for her, because in truth she'd probably never develop great bouncing bosoms, regardless of what she had told Micky. When she was sitting in a restaurant or somewhere, with her clatter-clank leg under a table, with her poster-child hand tucked out of sight in her lap, people looked at her face and often smiled, treated her like any other kid, with no sorrow in their eyes, no pity, because nothing in her face said cripple. The snake had struck at her face, and she didn't give a rat's ass whether it was poisonous or not, because it could have changed her life if it had gotten those fangs in her cheek or her nose. Then people would never think of her as sassy, but would always think, What a sad little crippled girl she is, with her little twisted leg and her little gnarled hand and her snake-gnawed face and her snake-chomped nose.
        So much to lose.
        She must deal with this, and fast; but nothing on the bed would be of help to her in a snake chase, snake fight. The chest of drawers contained but a few articles of clothing, nothing else, because they were living out of suitcases for the short time they were here. In fact, suitcases were open on a bench at the foot of the bed and on a straight-backed chair; neither the luggage nor the furniture suggested a strategy for this battle.
        The snake still coiled near the baseboard, under the window. Luminous eyes. Head weaving as if to the music of a charmer's flute.
        "Hoing! Yikes!" Sinsemilla had compressed the anecdote into two words. She rollicked even to this abridged version, abusing the bed more than might have any gaggle of giddy girls at a pajama party.
        Forgetting to use the brace's mechanical knee joint, swinging her caged leg from the hip, Leilani hitched and clumped toward the closet, which regrettably put the bed between her and the snake. She was convinced that the moment the slippery little reptile was out of her sight, it slithered toward her, coming at her from under the bed.
        "Baby, baby," Sinsemilla said, "look at this, look, look. Baby, look, see, look." She extended her hand, offering something. "Baby, it's okay, see, baby, look."
        Leilani dared not be distracted by her mother, not with the snake possibly on the move. But Sinsemilla