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By Root 1743 0

nothing that might shock someone, for her purpose was always to console or reassure. These phrases that she used were very bland. But now Monsieur had not yet been a quarter of an hour in the house. And it really was as if something was desperate to get in. I could hear the shutters rattle in the wind. My mother’s transformation was so violent and abrupt I was astonished. I dropped the vial in my hand and watched it shatter on the hearth, between the enormous bags of charcoal that my father sometimes brought. She did not stop to scold me. Her eyes were turned back in her head. When she spoke, it was in a type of language different from the patois I had always heard from her, a woman who could not write her name. In a moment she had the accent of the Creoles sent to Paris for their education. “Oh, Monsieur, I felt I could say anything, show you my secret self. Perhaps it even gave me pleasure to think of you as a more natural man, less civilized than others I had met, because of your heritage. But civilization has its uses, of which self-restraint is the most prominent—too late I see that now. When I stumbled back and collapsed on the settee, at that moment you mistook my hesitation for surrender! I can never forgive you for misjudging me. And even if it took me less than a minute to recover my strength, so that I was able to strike you in that area, the source of all your urges, still it was enough. A second would have been enough! It is in our impulses that we betray each other and ourselves. Our actions are pale shadows, chasing afterward. Besides, did you think it was impossible for me to have found out that you had come that evening from Mme. Baziat’s house? Did you think I would not smell her perfume on your breath, while you were kissing me?”

“I had had a . . . glass of wine,” faltered Monsieur. His cravat had come undone. My mother stood over him with her hand on his forehead, pushing him back into his chair.

Even when she beat me, I had never seen her in a rage like this, a mixture of ice and flame. “Do you think I am interested in your excuses? You betrayed me.”

“But I never—”

“Fool, do you think I am still speaking of that night? You were to visit me the next afternoon, at two o’clock. I specifically told you. Did you forget? One month before, when you gave my father and me a tour of your laboratory, you spoke of the death of Socrates, and the poison you were using for your experiments—I stole it. I wanted to provide my own experiment, perhaps with a kitten or a mouse. But then at one o’clock, because of my despair, I thought I’d use a larger animal. How would I know you would not come? Can you be so stupid as to think I wished to die? No, I wished to punish you as you deserved. I imagined you’d have all the time to make the antidote. I’d read the book. Socrates—the fellow talked for hours. But how could you think that I was serious when I said I never wished to see your face again?”

There was thunder over the river, and rain upon the roof of our little house. Monsieur was quiet. I think he must have guessed what was to happen. He had a fever, after all, and his skin was yellow, streaked with sweat. He could not look my mother in the face. Instead, he glanced at me. But in place of helping him, perhaps I gave him the last shock to his system, for at that moment I felt something beside my ear. When I looked up, I saw my mother’s serpent, which she used sometimes in her ceremonies. It lived in a wicker basket underneath the altar, but was forever getting out, a harmless creature from the swamp. So it was reaching toward me from one of the shelves, a long, green creature that was like this tube that runs to the cylinder of compressed oxygen, right by my nose, like this.

I brushed it away. Because I have the gift, I was afraid. But at the same time I was thinking how terrible this woman was, so cruel and such a liar. Innocent as I was, even I could see that if you reject this man one day, and kick him in the place she mentioned, perhaps you can’t expect for him to visit you the next day as if nothing had happened.