GOD INTENDED

I’d just started sun salutations when I spotted it under the wax myrtle. A slumped rubbery thing, flat tire. Except it was three slumped rubbery things painted like a giraffe, all stacked up, glistening—a giant snake is what it was. Ever stuck a fork in the toaster? I kicked over my tea and bolted up the stairs and into the kitchen. Must’ve been some weird wiring thing, because I don’t actually fear snakes. In fact, I revere them. Snakes eat stuff you don’t want, and they leave you alone, except when you step on one. A model of forbearance, I say, considering the “original sin” they were saddled with. The logic is insane: If you’re going pin sex on the snake, then shouldn’t we be thanking them?

Google: Burmese python. People’d warned me about alligators. And mosquitoes. Also, chiggers, sugar ants, marsh rats; cottonmouths and copperheads, even crocodiles. But who said anything about Burmese pythons? This strange, beautiful creature had to be some kind of omen, but what? Mom’s blue China cup was broken. I needed to talk to Cherie. The trouble was, we weren’t really speaking.

When I moved to south Florida four months ago, it was for Cherie. We’ve been twin flames for over twenty years—I refer only to this lifetime—and I could sense her going gray. Her spirit, I mean, not her hair. Cherie dyes her hair.

It was November. I was living in Puyallup, Washington, in Mom’s house. (Mom transitioned seven years ago.) Stalled, I guess you could say. You hate to think your life is getting away from you, but there I was, seven years, and try as I might to remain in Light, the Pacific Northwest in winter is powerfully Dark, the constant rain corrosive, like when you sprinkle salt on a slug, which I would never do—except I did as a child, so I can feel it. I’d been getting Honey, you need to move from my—what, Guide? I call him The Voice. (By the way, “Honey” is not an endearment, Honey is my name.) I’d tried sleeping in Mom’s room, and then the guest bedroom, but when Cherie mentioned her vacant cottage I woke up. “Honey, you need to move” meant move-move. To Florida. Cherie needed me.     

In the beginning we were so happy, roaming the Sunshine State the way we’d once roamed the Golden State, when she was my art teacher and I was her art student (and model; people say I look like Lisa Kudrow). Big Cypress, the Okaloacoochee slough, and everywhere alligators, like sly smiling taxidermy. But Mister Carter Vance the Third, Cherie’s newish husband, was not-so-happy. Cherie’s paintings go for five thousand bucks, and supposedly I was keeping her out of the studio. We did intend to get in there, get me back into my art, but, I don’t know, no time. It didn’t help that I had to stay in their guest room while Carter had my cottage painted, which he acted like didn’t need painting. But you can’t just live in someone else’s skin. Besides, And it was that shade of mint green that sucks all the oxygen from the room.

Oh, by the way, I did not relocate from Puyallup Washington to Immokalee Florida to hook up with their Mattress Magnate. Good God.

So I finally got into my place, but, you know, a coat of Benjamin Moore’s Narcissus Dawn can only do so much. My brothers, I have five brothers, all older, all downers—kidding!—acted like if a person planned properly there wouldn’t be cranky a/c, nasty toilet, rusty screens, no-see-ums, mosquitoes, and palmetto bugs, which I think are just giant flying cockroaches? My plan, my plan—how should I know? Maybe the money from Mom’s house will run out, maybe I won’t be able to live on Social Security. It seems doable to me. What I call trusting in the universe, my brothers call relying on the kindness of strangers. I tell them I don’t think of them as strangers. 

Of course I knew there’d be bugs, but not like that. What can you do? No poison.I stayed upbeat—negativity attracts misfortune—until Cherie suddenly asked in a forced-breezy manner if I could “help” her “find” her fabulous three-tiered labradorite necklace, a wedding present from Carter. She didn’t say it, but I sensed he thought I took it. Second sight. All my life I’ve seen things, the man in the closet, stuff like that. I kept it to myself until I met Reverend Schreiber, the Teacher who helped me out of the dark times after the baby. Reverend Schreiber, what a hoot, See? See that spirit there, flying above that man? See there—see?

Oh? I would say, wiping off bits of spittle.

Turns out I had the Gift, so I began doing energy work, and sure enough, I started getting visitations. You lay hands on a person’s head to feel the qi, a prickly warmth like an underground stream—you can actually feel the plates of the skull shift. Then, you go transparent, that’s the only way to describe it, and there It would be, shimmering at the end of the massage table.

The first time, it shocked me right out of contact. People don’t realize what a big responsibility it is. Of course, most people—well I don’t talk about this with most people. But I’ve been visited by Spirit Mother, Eagle, the Big Three, and many Animal Spirits. The Visitor who came for Cherie was Raven. A very good Visitor.

     

I waited two days and then told Cherie I was sorry, but channels were as dry as a menopausal woman. Of course I’m not menopausal yet, so maybe it wasn’t that funny. I also mentioned that losing labradorite was a sign of spiritual drift. Cherie did not appear to appreciate this insight. Nor did she seem to believe me. They both thought I took the necklace? You hate to think you’ve made a mistake, moving all this way. I blame Carter. Cherie tells me he’s deeper than he looks but I don’t see it. If Carter suffers, it’s because he’s not getting invites to Mar-A-Lago.

The acupuncturist diagnosed Adrenal Fatigue, the chiropractor prescribed Rest, and the Voice cried Honey Honey Honey, take care of yourself. I’d had to take a break.

But now I had to call her. 

Cherie sounded happy! I asked would she please not tell anyone (Carter) and she said, Of course I won’t tell, so I described my amazing snake, expecting her to be excited for me, expecting her to speculate on its significance, thinking she might want to come take a look, was it something I should worry about or what.

No.

Cherie acted appalled. Told me it was a Burmese python—which I’d already figured out—an invasive species in south Florida, worse than kudzu, she said, in a tone that implied that I, too, might achieve kudzu status if I didn’t get with the program. All she cared about was making sure I called Animal Control so they could  take care of it. “Take care” means kill. I thanked her and told her I could get the number myself. Cherie whines about how Carter always has to be right, but she’s getting just like him. There will be no Animal Control. I do not believe in killing creatures that are simply doing what God put them on earth to do. (Okay, mosquitoes. No one’s a saint.) Is it the python’s fault that they’ve made the best of a bad situation? 

I think I have a special kinship with animals. With a name like Honey Bee, how could you not? Your name is your destiny. Mom actually named me Mabel after Grammy, but she always called me Honey Bee. Everyone called me Honey Bee. At a Vision Quest, in 1994, I think it was, I reclaimed myself as Mea. Mea means mine. Mabel means lovable, but I’ve never felt like a Mabel.

     

The next morning I tiptoed outside. When I reached the corner of the shed/garage/future art studio, I bent down and peeked. The painted coil had not moved. So pretty, its aura a pear green. A good omen, then? 

Hello? I whispered. Vishnu? 

My heart bright, I stood up and took it all in: saw-grass prairie, palmettos; pop-up knobs, dwarf bald cypress; canals, ponds, sloughs, and solution holes falling into different dimensions. 

Day three was when it started to get to me. My snake, rather than being the bridge I’d hoped for, had deepened the rift. I had to wonder if I saw Vishnu because I needed protection. Pythons aren’t poisonous but they do grab hold with their fangs and then wrap you up and squeeze. There are stories of pet pythons squeezing their owners to death, though nothing about these feral ones. Makes you wonder about those owners.

Late that afternoon, Cherie finally called. Hearing her voice lifted me the way Abba does—Honey Honey! Only she was going on about Animal-Control-Animal-Control. Had they come? Did they have any trouble? I told her the snake was gone. What do you say to someone you love whose views are completely at odds? Cherie wouldn’t let it go: these snakes can swim, they climb trees; lay 2000 eggs, live twenty-five years, blah blah blah. Kudzu. 

Not their fault. Not that I said that. Am I in danger? is what I said. Which I shouldn’t have; I’d just told her it was gone. Crap. One of the five largest snakes in the world! I just wish they would take them back to Burma. Burmese pythons are actually getting scarce in Burma.

Day four, and still the snake had not moved. Pythons hunt at night so I thought it might be digesting, but then I read it does this thing called brumating, going dormant to develop their reproductive organs. Ha, ha, I bet humans wish their offspring would go dormant to develop their reproductive organs instead of turning into teenagers and going insane.

Day five, Cherie again. Was I aware that pythons eat rabbits, raccoons, opossums, bobcats, even white-tailed deer—and road kill, I offered—and people’s pets, she countered. (Cherie has two overweight pugs.) They’re devastating spoonbills, storks, herons—which I feel terrible about, I do—and they’re even threatening the endangered Key Largo wood rat.

Oh no, not the Key Largo wood rat! (I didn’t say that.) Well, my python was not threatening a thing, except maybe me. And I had already told her, like five times, that it was gone, for craps’ sake. Would it be okay if Carter came over to inspect the property, make sure there weren’t any more?Not a chance. What I said was, Thank you, Cherie, but this isn’t a good time. Then I said UPS was at the door and I hung up.

The next morning when the telephone rang I didn’t pick up. Instead, I got to work on my unpacked boxes. As I was sorting, the Voice piped up: Honey, paint the snake. A snake still life, that’s funny. He meant get back to my art. On my way out to the shed/garage/future art studio for an easel, I heard this electrifying hiss. I sprinted back up the stairs. Stopped, looked, listened: under the deck, hiss. The minute I pictured Godzilla, a scaly snout like a flattened football poked through the stairs, a black forked tongue going  flick-flick, flick-flick, flick-flick. Holy crap, this thing was huge and it was sniffing me. I dashed inside and hit the dead bolt.

First Carter, then the snake, and now this thing under my deck. And I couldn’t get help with the thing because whoever came to get whatever it was would kill my snake. Sometimes life is so hard.Google thinks it’s a Nile monitor, a carnivorous lizard. And unlike the reclusive Burmese python, the Nile monitor is vicious and ill-tempered, with razor-sharp teeth and claws. They will climb walls, they will eat anything that fits in their mouth, and they will attack. Another “released exotic.” What is wrong with people?

I set the timer. Every sixty minutes, I cleared and waited. Nothing. All day. Nothing. When the phone rang again, I ignored it. I devoured Butternut squash salad, buffalo mozzarella, rainforest crisps—they have a Whole Foods in Naples—and a bottle of pinot noir from Oregon. I know, compensatory overconsumption. Then I made a drawing of the lizard, which I called The Beast. Then I called my brother Alex. Alexander is the oldest, the Golden Boy, who with my brother Ian still operates the family dairy. I try not to harbor ill will. Oh, they “bought me out,” but nothing like what it’s worth now.

     Alex’s wife, Holly, said he wasn’t home. She did not ask how I was doing. So I called Ian, who is more sympathetic, but less, I don’t know, decisive. His wife, Kaye, said in her fake-sweet way, Oh, Honey, we’re actually eating dinner. I forgot it was three hours earlier in Puyallup. When I told her it was an emergency, she got Ian to the phone. The minute I said Nile monitor, he said call Animal Control.

Shut the front door, I will not call Animal Control. I will never call Animal Control. 

Finally, I called Sarah, my oldest, dearest friend, the person who took me in all those years ago after I crept home from San Francisco nineteen and pregnant because Carl didn’t want the baby. Or me. Mom wanted that baby, I think. Well, I know she did. But I was in no shape. That baby would be—is—thirty-five years old now. I send him loving energy every single day.       

Sarah said, Honey, of course you can’t call Animal Control, which made me cry. But she also agreed it wasn’t safe to go outside with a carnivorous lizard under the deck. 

I was a hostage. I hate feeling trapped. I always have. I barely sleep.

In the morning, just as I’m getting out of the shower, there’s a brisk, businesslike rap-rap-rap on the front door. I crouch down. Rap-rap-rap, like a woodpecker. I tiptoe into the living room and peek. Two trim men in green uniforms are planted on my front porch. 

No way.

They look at each other, look around, step down and start toward the back. Even though I’m in my bathrobe I fling open the door and sing out “Hello!” with my best movie-star smile. I toss my towel-dried hair. “Come in!”     

They bumble in. They stare, slack-jawed. It’s the celadon parachute hanging from the ceiling, diffusing light like it’s alive. That and the gold Ganeshas.       

“Can I offer you gentlemen tea? Water?” You’d think they were my dearest brothers. Not my brothers, but, you know. 

The older one, a dark-haired, hazel-eyed specimen who looks like a beefy Edward Norton squares up. They are here to search for nuisance species. I beam, “Oh I know. I actually saw a Burmese python.” I arch my back a little.

“Is that right? Can you show us where, ma’am?”      

Ma’am? “Well, of course, Mr….?”

“Ed Crofut. And this is Jeremy Glenn.”

“Happy to meet you, Mr. Ed. And Jeremy.” Jeremy blushes. “My name is Honey.” Naturally, they snicker. “Honey Bee, if you can believe that.” And we all three chortle, ha-ha-ha.

From the front porch, I point toward the front border. “It was gone the next morning. I think it went that way.” I point down the street. I prefer not to lie, but greater good.

 So they’re out there, bent over, creeping along, when Jeremy goes Guuuugh! and shoots up, God damn it! grabbing his left eye. Yucca. He tilts in my direction, “Sorry.” 

“Oh, no, I’m sorry,” I call, and I glide into the house for ice.

Well, what with the practically bloody eye and my firm promise to telephone the minute I see anything, even a semblance of a snake, they climb into their green-and-white pickup. Ed writes on his clipboard, starts the engine, and they ease forward. Ed peers down the driveway, but Jeremy is rocking. Ed puts it into gear goes.

I can’t believe she did that.     

I need to calm down. I have a problem to solve. I try to meditate, but that good-looking Boudreaux, from my New Orleans adventure, keeps showing up, the big, black-haired Cajun in safari hat and hip-pistol who’d steered the swamp boat straddling a beat-up red cooler who flirted non-stop as he tossed raw chicken to the alligators. Crappity-crappity-crap—Boudreaux? I need help. 

I move on to yoga, and finally I hear, Honey, open your heart. Oh, radiance; my limbs feel weightless. But it’s a lot to ask. She sicced the feds on me. 

Or, wait, is open your heart for the snake? The lizard?

Who the hell even knows. I give up, eat yogurt. I take inventory to see how long I’ve got. Guess what? Two 8-packs of organic chicken thighs in my freezer—of course, Boudreaux! My apologies! Chicken thighs to lure The Beast out! I dump them in the dishpan and run hot water. Twenty bucks. Oh well, I shouldn’t really eat chicken; I have the wrong blood type. I peer out the window. Yard, hedge, flowers, shed, sky. I check Facebook. Wendy’s fat grandchildren. I drain the dishpan. Wan, flaccid, pink—how could anyone actually eat this? 

I open the back door. Nothing. Push through the screen. Nothing. I suppress an urge to whistle, Hey, Beastie! and tiptoe out. Something stirs—and then it’s coming up the stairs, a dragon with Aboriginal dots and a black-and-gray tail is crawling toward me on prehistoric legs, waving that flat head,  flick-flick, flick-flick. Of course it is. If I can smell the nasty raw chicken, it can smell the nasty raw chicken, but Sweet Mother of Lola, my legs won’t work.

I snatch a handful and heave. Two thighs land on the grass just beyond the steps. As the thing swings its head around I scuttle backward, yank open the heavy screen, bang my ankle, slam the screen, slam the door, slam the dishpan on the counter and bend over, slightly nauseated. I rub my shrieking anklebone. Through the window I can make out the lizard’s lethal claws, like two-inch cut nails, but one foot is flattened and scabby, and it’s limping, which suffuses me with a second wave of pain. Oh god. Sometimes being an empath is too much. The lizard strikes, chomps, and swallows. It chomps again and does a rapid up-and-down. 

Pain shoots up my leg. I need to find the ace bandage, the ice bag, castor oil, arnica, Traumeel—but God damn it. How can it be so hard to start a new life in the beautiful Sunshine State? I mean, what is the point? Cherie, my brothers—what do people expect? Sometimes I wonder if it’s something I’m doing, like I’m the problem. Like they’re all just sick of me. My body goes limp; the air stiffens. I can’t breathe. 

I snatch up the dishpan, yank open the door, hobble to deck’s edge, glare at the giant lizard four feet away, and hurl a chicken thigh right at its head. I miss. It slinks two feet, chomps, and lifts its nose like a dog begging for more. Fine, Buster, here you go, another and another and another, as hard as I can throw, until the dishpan is empty and I have pallid pink chicken thighs all the way out to the shed/garage/future art studio. Apparently, being pissed off has improved my arm.     

     

Something’s happening with time. It’s relaxing, congealing, like I could stand here watching the giant lizard chomp its way across the grass forever. Which will cement it to me forever, and I don’t care.

And then things get fast, jerky like a runaway film, and I get very small, and—oh, no, the lizard’s got an appendage! It’s the snake, clamped on the lizards’s nose and streaming over its back, around the legs and chest! My hands fly up and the dishpan drops—and then everything gets slow again, the slowest possible turtle’s pace, a snails’ pace, funereal, and suddenly I wonder if what I’m seeing is real. This has happened before—but no, look, the giant lizard is thrashing, fast now, twisting and whipping its body, and the snake is thinning, relentlessly straining, and the lizard shakes its head and lacerates the dirt and the snake is elongating, more and more snake while the big lizard hammers, flops over, and up, and over, staggering, rolling and clawing, trying to peel off the long, beautiful, butterscotch-and-brown muscle that is squeezing, contracting, constricting. I can’t scream. Everything’s so quiet and I’m so small.

Finally it stops. My shoulders hurt. I lower my arms. This is my fault. 

Nothing, anywhere, is moving. Then, beyond the hedge, palmettos clack, and that seems to wake the snake, because all of a sudden it thrusts up its head and the lizard’s entire skull disappears between its jaws. I get the unwelcome image of a woman having a baby. I don’t blame the python but this I will not watch. On Wild Kingdom this part always came just as I was digging into my pot pie. 

Poor Nile monitor.   

I limp into the kitchen. I wash my hands, soaping and rinsing and soaping again, my tears circling the drain with the oleaginous water. I try Beauty: A magnificent, twenty-foot python has just rescued me from a carnivorous lizard. But why did the lizard have to die? And did I have to break Mom’s favorite blue cup—which shouldn’t matter, I know it shouldn’t, it’s just a cup, but no matter how hard I try, I see Ugly. 

At least the snake was doing what it was put on earth to do. You can’t say the same for humans. I may be wifty, but I’m not wrong. They shouldn’t kill them. 

The phone starts ringing, and—breathe breathe breathe. 

Who can say? Maybe she was simply doing what she was put on Earth to do, like all the rest of us. I wish I could talk to her, but of course, I wasn’t harboring a snake and she didn’t call Animal Control. Maybe after a while, maybe we’ll laugh and pretend it never happened. We’ve done that before. And I can tell her about the Beast, and the rescue. But first I must honor the poor, dead Beast. And my sweet snake! The Voice says Bake a cake.There he goes again. He thinks he’s funny.

Or is the cake for Cherie? Ha ha, I could put the necklace in it—surprise! Except I don’t really bake, and anyway, what if that’s been my problem all along, always being about people when I’m meant be about animals? 

How about a rescue operation? I could call it Released Exotics—or no, that sounds like a strip club. But something to take them home. Cherie could help me; they know lots of rich people. 

No one bakes a cake for a snake.