After we all settled in, Daddy took the twins fishing, and Mommy and I went into the garden, where I read and Mommy set up her easel. Although we didn't converse much, we sensed and drew from each other's presence. Both reading and working on artistic projects required concentration and solitude. Mommy soon became lost in her project and I in my reading. Before either of us realized it, the afternoon had turned to dusk and we had to go in to prepare for dinner.
Daddy and the twins returned with their catch. The twins were so excited about the turtles and the other wildlife that they jabbered continuously through dinner. No one else had a chance to get in a word, but their excitement was infectious. All of us felt rejuvenated--Mommy especially. I took charge of getting the twins to bed and left Mommy and Daddy alone to enjoy the warm, star-blazing bayou evening. The twins reluctantly surrendered to sleep only when Daddy promised they could go horseback riding in the morning.
I enjoyed riding too, so the next morning Mommy went back to her painting while Daddy and I and the twins rode for nearly two hours. After lunch Daddy went up to his room to take a nap, and Mommy and I returned to the garden where she continued to paint and I continued to catch up on my college reading.
Toward the later part of the afternoon, a wave of dark clouds crept in from the east. The breeze kicked up, and Mommy decided to go inside. The wind played havoc with our hair, my pages, and Mommy's easel and canvas. We both laughed at our struggle to keep control of our possessions. As we packed up Mommy's brushes and paints, canvas, and easel, she suddenly paused, a half smile of confusion on her face. "What's that?" she asked.
I shook my head. "What's what, Mommy?"
"Didn't you hear it? It sounded like someone screaming." She turned slowly. Daddy had just stepped out of the house and was moving toward us when I heard the screams, too.
"Pierre," I whispered. I saw him flailing about as he struggled to run through the tall grass. He fell once, and Mommy cried out. Daddy started to run toward him.
"Pearl," Mommy moaned.
"It's probably nothing, Mommy," I said and started toward Pierre. But where was Jean? I wondered and felt my heart turn to cold stone when I heard Pierre cry out Jean's name and point to the wooded swamp area behind him. "Snakebite!"
His words were carried to us on the wind and reached Mommy who had followed behind me. She brought her hands to her cheeks and screamed at the fast-approaching storm clouds.
"Nina!"
I stepped back to embrace her just as her legs gave out.
The thunder seemed to come from both our hearts.
6
The Curse Strikes
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The water moccasin is a large poisonous olivebrown viper. Folks in the South often call it a cottonmouth. It coils itself on the lower limbs of willow trees and when it lies in the water, it can look like a broken branch floating.
Jean had waded into a pond to catch a turtle sleeping between the lily pads. Pierre had warned him not to, but Jean was fascinated. I knew that when Jean fixed his mind on something, he was sometimes like someone hypnotized. He would turn off everything around him and concentrate on what he wanted to do or see or touch. Pierre had remained on the shore screaming at him, but Jean had ignored him.
When he got too close to the snake, it struck. "I thought it was a branch, Daddy," Pierre moaned. It would be something he would chant in his own mind, for a long time: "I thought it was just a branch."
Jean was floating face down when Daddy lunged into the water to get to him. He scooped him up, lifting him over his head. I had just arrived at the clearing and saw him rushing from the water as if it were boiling around him. There is nothing more frightening to me than the sound and the sight of a grown man screaming. Daddies aren't supposed to cry. There was no sight more heartrending and terrifying to me at the same time as the sight of my father, petrified at the prospect of losing his son, my brother. Daddy looked as if he had lost all sense of direction; he had lost his wits.
Daddy flooded Jean's face with kisses I knew he prayed would be magical; but the stitches that had drawn Jean's eyelids shut appeared unbreakable, and his beautiful little face, a face always animated, those blue eyes sweeping a room or a place to find something interesting, was already growing as pale as a faded water lily.
Daddy turned to me with eyes I shall never put to sleep in my memory, frantic eyes.
I hurried to his side.
"He's not breathing!" he said.
I had him put Jean on a patch of soft moss. "Make him better, Pearl. Make him better," Pierre pleaded.
Jean had been bitten on the left wrist. It had swollen into a large lump, so I knew an adult viper had bitten him and he had taken a big dose of venom. The shock of the bite and its effect on his nervous system must have put him into a panic. He obviously fell into the water, but instead of heading for shore, he had floundered into deeper water. His wrist was surely burning; his heart pounding.
From a first aid course given by the fire department last year, I knew that when a person panics at the surface of water, his thrashing
movements are incapable of keeping his body afloat. If they sink and begin to swallow water, initially, an automatic contraction of the muscle in the windpipe prevents water from entering the lungs and instead it enters the esophagus and stomach. However, the laryngeal reflex impairs breathing, which can quickly lead to the loss of consciousness even without the injection of lethal viper venom. This was surely what had happened to Jean.
Jean's lips had turned blue-gray. I couldn't hear his heartbeat or feet a pulse in his wrist, so I began CPR, never having dreamed when I learned it last year, that I would be practicing it for real on my own little brother. I kept reciting the instructions in my mind, shutting out Daddy's moans and Pierre's cajoling to make Jean better. Instead, I heard my instructor saying the rate of compression should be eighty per minute with two breaths given after every fifteen compressions. After what seemed like hours, but was really only two minutes, I looked up at Daddy.