151. From Somebody’s Daughter – Ashley C. Ford
“These things catch fire without letting each other go. We don’t give up on our people. We don’t stop loving them.”
I leaned over the hole and saw a garden snake. No. Two, three, four… They were in some sort of a knot, though not stuck together. They moved quickly and deliberately over and around one another. They were not fighting, and they did not seem to be trying to get away from us or anything else.
“What are they doing, Grandma?”
My grandmother stared into the hole.
“They’re loving each other, baby.”
She reached into the bag, poured lighter fluid into the hole, then lit a match. The grass in and around the hole burned, and then, so did the snakes. My first instinct was to reach in and throw them as far as I could, to safety, but I hesitated when I remembered their bite; I waited too long to do them any good.
The snakes did not slither away or thrash around as they burned. They held each other tighter. Even as the scales melted from their bodies, their inclination was to squeeze closer to the other snakes wrapped around them. Their green lengths blackened and bubbled… They did not panic, they did not run. I started to cry.
“You’ll have to go back. We’ll both go back home. Your mama misses you.” My grandmother reached over and grabbed my hand, both of us still staring into the hole. “These things catch fire without letting each other go. We don’t give up on our people. We don’t stop loving them.”
She looked into my face, her eyes watering at the bottoms.
“Not even when we’re burning alive.”
– Ashley C. Ford
