THE SNAKE

Loria Harris

In the beginning, She took off Her clothes. She laid down into the cold and quiet of empty space, into the vacuum that burned Her skin and stole Her heat. She laid round, encircled Herself, and became the globe. From Her crevices, hair flowed into trees, grasses, into the bushes, the thistles and thorns. And from Her tears rivers streamed, oceans sprouted from inside of Her, broke the surface, and overtook most of Her body. Her breath evaporated into mist, and an atmosphere accumulated all around Her, protecting Her, warming Her. She stared off, out of the shroud, wondering if She would wish to one day dally in the frozen emptiness again. Her gaze was so fixated that Her eyes seared the dark space and caught it aflame, a bursting bubble of explosion to remain fixed in Her view all the days. This felt right.

On this rounded soil, She imagined more life. She longed, even with all She had done, to see something else. An ache bellowed in Her pelvis, an ache so ferocious a bleeding erupted. It begged, pleaded. She grabbed the blood from between Her knees, cupping handfuls and bringing them to Her lips. She blew, the breath of life. She spoke, Her first words. Speaking had felt forbidden, but She couldn’t have said why. No one lived to forbid it. Why shouldn’t She speak? She yelled, She roared, She growled, She whispered: “Live.” Wild cats, horses, reptiles, and every animal life came forth. She lusted after mysteries and populated the waters and the realms so minuscule as to be invisible to the naked eye with more forms than could ever be counted — creating most life to live in eternal earthen mystery. She smirked. This was good.

Creating humanity was Her final act before closing Her eyes for a millennium-long nap.

Eve was the first. Swimming out of the blood of Her hands, she stood tall and wiggled her dripping fingers, tingling with nerves and muscles and newness. Eve was full in figure, lavish in breast and hip, cavernous in stomach, equipped with all that she would need — padded against cold and bruises. Dark hair flowed down her rich mud-colored skin. Her footsteps on the soft grassy earth reverberated and broke the land, broke it into many continents, forced it into collisions and mountains, until it adjusted to her presence. Then it welcomed her, sprouted into beautiful gardens, flowers, fruit-bearing trees; creatures that sting and bite populated this sanctuary. They were her protection, and they were their own protection. It felt right. This was good.

It turned out that Eve was a chamber, echoing with the longings of her maker. She awoke one morning in a pool of blood, brought forth from her own scratching onto her own arms. The marks spelled out, but not in words, her name and also her hunger. She dug into the ground, deep, a hole so long she could slither into it and reach the core of this globe on which she lived. Her face and skin became caked and lumpy in the gravel and wet mud. She was seeking her creator; she was digging for prayer. How does one ask for something she cannot give herself? 

The ground crumbled and embraced her; it caved in all around her body. Her limbs became roots, and she grew. She grew out, stretching her arms as if to encompass the entire planet. She grew up, her body expanding and rising out of the ground, into the light. She reached, rooted in the body of the earth, and flung her fingers all around her, finding she had many arms now. They twinkled, her digits. The chiaroscuro of light sparkled through the leaves that her fingers had become. She wondered in the air, near clouds, near sunshine, the air thinner and more right. Her throat rattled, gasping in freedom from the suffocation underground. She felt a stirring from her torso, her trunk. The brightest fruit, yellow and scarlet, popped forth from her tendrils en masse. Twenty, thirty — no — one hundred at least: soft, plump orbs appeared within seconds. It filled the air around her with a bright, tempting scent. Then the stirring returned, larger, shaking her branches. She grew nauseous, swaying as if there were a wind. As she lurched back and forth, she felt herself separating, as if her skin was peeling off of her, as if she were two persons splitting down the middle. A lunge, a burp, as if the tree were regurgitating, and the wooden plant expelled her back onto the land. 

She looked herself over. Her hands, her feet. She was whole, she was one — a singular person, two arms and two legs once again. The tree she had created towered over her, and the sunlight burned at her eyes as she tried to glance up at its top. It was more expansive and demanding of attention than any tree in the garden. She could still smell the ripeness of its fruit from down here, below the branches. It was beautiful. 

She slept nights under its canopy and whiled away many of her afternoons in its shade. The tree was mysterious. She tasted fruit from every plant in this home, but not this one. It was something of her own creation, something she did not understand. Had the creator gifted her also with the ability to create? Fashioned her in something of Her own image? It did not matter. She circled her arms around the tree. She would humbly embrace what she had made with only her longing. Yet, she longed still. This left her suspicious. Was it safe to keep longing, to keep seeing what creations would come forth? Did she trust herself? 

She laid down to sleep one evening, the grass tickling the insides of her nostrils and filling them with its scent. She dreamed the freshest of dreams, of her own body again creating life, of that life growing off of her like the harmless fruit on a branch, like that fruit which she could never dare to eat. Loneliness shook through her, and she seized awake in the morning. Again, she knew, she would go to the dirt. She dug once more, but this time she didn’t go deep. This time she took what was shallow that she could easily obtain; she didn’t desire surprise; mystery surrounded her enough. She spat into the mound of earth in her cupped hands, and she molded the lump into a sort of clay. She shaped it into what she longed for — something like her, just as her creator before had done. But this new thing she decided to give fewer crevices. She felt around herself for inspiration — what could go where her deepest, most throbbing crevice existed in its place? On her side she felt ribs, and she fashioned something long and straight to replace all that was empty, something erect to replace all that was concave in her. She couldn’t say exactly why she did this for this new creature; she could have molded something for herself, something to make her own body different. She felt that to be possible, but she sensed a beauty in her seeming incompleteness; it came with capacity. Perhaps she was proud and longed to remain unique, to keep that capacity hers alone, but perhaps she knew there were other ways to experience joy, and she wanted to give those ways to her new companion, whatever they might be. She wanted to create someone who wouldn’t fear his own capacity.

Adam became the man she made. He was taller, as was the tree she had created first. He was flat, and she would learn she could fit up against him.

“Please show me everything,” he asked her, slipping out of her hands in muddy slime, freshly formed.

“Everything?” She tilted her head, studying him.

“Please. Everything.”

She walked him away from her tree, through the garden where she lived, lifting the skirts of willow branches to step with him into the dark respites. They drank water from the streams, flavored like dirt and citrus. They pressed the openings of the flowers, fondling the stigmas and ovaries, inhaling the dusty perfumes, discovering the world. She showed him all the delicious fruit — whether berries in blood reds or pink meaty fleshes under spiked shells—all except the fruit of her tree. He ate it all. Adam had a particular effect on the animals around them. While Eve had only thought to observe the way a horse chews the grass, bucks at her fellow equines, shakes her head free of the gnats drinking from her tear ducts, Adam knew this was a beast he could sit atop. He fascinated her, but she soon saw she fascinated him even more.

“Why do you have a different shape than mine?” he asked her, the two lying in the shade, as he stroked her dark hair that lay on her breast. Her hand rested on his sternum, which was rougher than hers, freckled with short wiry hairs.

“My creator made me this way.”

“And me?”

“I made you the way you are.”

“How would you do that? I’ve never created anything alive.”

“I don’t know. It came from an ache, from a longing, from love.”

“Maybe it was the creator that created me, using your hands.”

She nodded. That seemed possible.

He eyed her, up and down her length. Leaning his head back as if a realization had occurred to him, he moved his hand. He dragged it along her sizable stomach, he brought it to the place between her thighs, where her own hair grew wiry and thick. His hand felt warm, and she tensed in surprise at the sensation.

“Why are you different here?”

“Oh,” she began, but it was all she could say. 

He moved his fingers around, searching. She continued in silent gasps, but she saw his form changing, hardening to the rib-like structure she had first imagined for him. Her own hands reached for that, and she pulled herself closer to him. With no distance, the hands seemed only to be in the way, and the two humans found each other.

After this, Eve stared at Adam, admiring him for the way his body molded to hers, for the joy she felt with his touch. She would smile at him as they walked through the long grasses together, gathering seeds and fruit to eat. He would smile back in kind, a warm and perfectly crooked glimpse of tender teeth. That first night and on many of the ensuing ones, she was still pained with incompleteness, though — a tugging at her pelvis, a thirst inside her bowels, while Adam slept beside her, all of his body at rest. She looked at the evening sky, the brightness fading and the bruised purples seeping into it in striated layers. The snuffed pain continued, and she pulled his sleeping hand back to herself, back to her crevice, until she could rest, as well.

The next day, Eve showed Adam the only remaining discovery for him in the garden, her tree.

“I grew into this tree when I was at my most sad and alone,” she said. 

He pondered her, walking around the trunk of the tree. “Did it hurt?” he asked, tugging at a leaf.

She winced at the tug. “Yes.”

He reached for one of the fruits next, a game of tag between him and her pride.

“I will never eat this fruit,” she told him.

“Oh? Why not?” He twirled it, the bobble still dangling on its branch.

“Please stop.” She reached her hand over to his and stilled the twiddle.

“Why?” He stopped toying, but he held his hand there.

“Would you eat your own flesh? I was this tree. I don’t want to know what tearing into it will do. Please leave it. This feels right.”

He removed his hand from the peach, and he took her hand instead. She led him away, but he turned his head and looked behind as they walked.

Eve’s stomach began to grow firmer and more rounded as the time passed. Adam marveled at her, cupping her firmed middle with his palms. At times, he would feel something inside of her stir and push against him.

“What magic is this?” He laughed, cheeks red, eyes alive. 

“I think I am creating something new again; I can feel it, the same ache.”

“Love?”

Eve nodded.

“Did I do this too? Was this from my love for you?”

“It could be,” Eve said. She felt her face grow warm. 

“What a wonder you are,” he said, stroking her stomach. “What a wonder I am too.”

As she grew greater in belly, Eve became tired and sore. This was not the same discomfort she had felt when she was pulled from the tree; that had been momentary, and she had been restored. This felt extended. It did not feel to her as if she would be the same after this discomfort had worked itself out. Her lower back was sharp against her hips, and it pained her to raise and lower her own body. It pained her to walk — more of a waddle, as of the ducks, less of a gallant prance, as of the stallions. She hungered all the time now.

Letting her lie in the shade, Adam brought her whatever he thought she might need. He brought her the fruit from every tree except the one she asked him never to violate; he brought her water from the streams; he brought her beans and carrots and every meaty root he could unearth. She hungered and thirsted still. 

“I’m going to bring you the fruit from your tree,” Adam said one day.

“No, please. Never,” said Eve.

“It’s the plumpest and juiciest in the garden, Eve. It was made from your own body, so you say. Maybe it will help you.”

“We can never eat that, Adam. It isn’t right.” She felt a sensation of teeth piercing her own flesh at the imagining of someone eating her fruit.

He sighed and sat in silence. “Have you eaten any of the animals?” Adam asked finally.

“The animals? Why would I do that?” she asked, pale in face.

“I don’t know. Something inside me can smell a feast when certain ones are near. Have you noticed the blood the deer spills when it cuts its hocks on thorns? Has it stirred your stomach too?” 

“No, I haven’t felt that,” she said. Her eyes rolled back into their sockets as her head lolled against the bark. 

“You look like you could faint,” he said. “I’m going to bring you an animal to eat.”

Eve wanted to protest. This didn’t feel quite right, but she was too weak. They killed plants for food, but an animal would feel pain. Perhaps Adam would find one who had already died. She closed her eyes and nodded. The taste was scrumptious, she learned, when Adam returned and offered her something fresh and warm. Over the days, her color returned to her face. She continued to bloat as a bubble, and her pains continued as well, but her energy improved with the new addition to her diet. She was able to walk freely again.

Adam and Eve began to notice the animals in the same couplings the two of them had learned to embrace. They noticed the females — the ones more like Eve than Adam between their legs — growing in their middles, as she had. Soon they witnessed offspring. New deer sprang forth and replaced those that they had eaten. The new ones were smaller, colored differently, and replaced the growth of the mothers’ sides. They stood by their mothers and suckled at yet another new growth on those female bodies, the teats. Eve would scoop her own enlarged breasts into her hands and see the pulsing, swollen nipples. She thought she understood.

One day, Eve’s pains culminated. A force pounded through her sides; her muscles tensed and released with increasing frequency. She screamed a deep bellow, and Adam ran to her. Pain and blood and the scent of feces and tar, scratches deep through the soft dark ground, uncovered roots, fistfuls of grass and mud, tears of skin in a too-delicate area, breath like a stag speeding away from its own lungs too quickly to be caught, fire in every part of Eve’s body and especially her loins, and an umbilical cry piercing the cloud of breath around the two bodies: now there were three. Then a shape like a snake followed the third out from Eve, attached to his stomach as if latched onto him with fangs.

“Tear it off!” Eve said.

Adam grabbed a rock and pounded the snake-like form off of his son then pulled it away from his mate. He cradled the baby and handed it to Eve, who gentled it against her breast and cried. Milk a bright whitish yellow formed in droplets on her nipples, and the scent around them faded into something softer and sourer. 

Adam walked like a king in the garden after that. He found leaves on twigs and twisted them into an ornament for his head, laurels encircling his skull. Eve thought it looked handsome and admired his new strut, even as she rested and nursed a new life yet again, in a new way.

Nursing was not as she had thought she understood. It brought pain and blood again, even after all of the pain and blood that had occurred up to this point. She cried often, and the baby cried more. 

“He’s still hungry,” Adam had to say.

“I give him everything,” Eve said.

“I will bring him more to eat,” he said. And he did. Adam brought fruit mashed into sweet pulpy lumps, and the baby ate it. Sometimes his stomach would reject it, but as he grew older and older, he began to tolerate it more, and it always helped bring Eve reprieve. Eve marveled at Adam.

“Why do you stay by my side?” she asked.

“I don’t. I hunt, and I collect fruit, and I walk.”

“But you always return.”

“You need me. I love you. Why would I leave?”

“I might have left, if I could have,” she admitted.

“I am not you. You do more than I ever could.” He held her head against his chest and kissed her hair. She did do more than he ever could, she agreed in her mind. He had never birthed a tree, or a man from the dirt, or a child. His steps had never shocked the earth into mountains. But he roamed and ran and strutted and did more than she ever could now, now that she was hobbled by her capacity to grow life. She wanted to heal. She had found herself at the mercy of her own creation after all, even though she tried to dig less deeply when she made him. She still did not understand creation, its bumps and wetness and its power. It was only a secondhand gift from the creator to her, as Adam had helped her to realize, and as she now reminded herself. And she closed her eyes and attempted to rest while the child with her slept.

“Eve,” Adam said, waking her from her sleep. “The baby has moved. Get up!”

Eve stirred, glancing all around her. “You don’t see him anywhere?”

“I haven’t looked yet,” Adam said.

She rose, still sore even months after birthing their son, but grateful to be growing stronger again.

He wasn’t far, the child they had named Cain. He was wiggling and dragging his own body around, pulling himself with new strength in his limbs from one spot to another, covering ground with an almost serpentine motion. He had moved himself to the other side of the tree; that was all.

“Oh! He’s learning to move! Look how he crawls!” Eve said.

“He’s getting bigger and stronger! He will be like me one day.” Adam puffed his chest larger, and the crown of leaves on his head seemed to glisten in the light. Eve smiled to herself.

“He will,” she said, holding Adam's arm. But the ache resurged in her heart.

Adam stepped back and turned to face her. “Be sure to keep an eye on him. You are still slow, but you are faster than him. You have to keep him safe.”

“I will.” Eve nodded. It was new, the assumption of command, coming from Adam. But it made sense to her. They were new, a new couple in a new world yet again. This life with this child was a new creation, separate from the life they had before, when they were the only two humans. Adam was the stronger one now, and he needed to be free to bring them food and care. Eve needed to keep watch of the baby.

Eve and Adam walked the garden together the next day, Cain squirming along on the ground beside them at times and squirming in Eve’s arms at other times. Eve’s legs felt like tree trunks again, sturdy and capable. She enjoyed moving by herself and relished the moments Cain was in the grass. They approached her tree, the beautiful tree. She had not birthed Cain under its leaves; a different tree had been their home. She hadn't seen the golden glow of its fruit and the dapples of the light through its incomparably numerous leaves in many days. 

“Our tree,” Adam said. This was new, Eve thought, his ownership of it, too. It was like another part of their family. She felt a warmth in her chest knowing he saw it as his, as he saw her.

“Our tree.” Eve smiled in return, squeezing his hand.

Adam pulled her to his body, grabbing at her elbows with a grip that left white indents on her skin. His fingernails dug into her pulpy flesh. She felt him harden between his legs, and she felt her own counterpart blossom with blood flow. Cain wandered off behind the behemoth trunk of Eve’s plant.

“But Adam,” she began, but he put his finger on her lips, silencing her. She couldn’t say why she wasn’t comfortable. Perhaps the child was too close, or perhaps her own body wasn’t ready. He pointed in the direction the child had crawled. Eve nodded, as had become her habit. She would keep quiet; that might make it right. They wrapped each other in their limbs and partook with Eve’s back pushed against the rough, wooden skin of her tree, quickly. Quietly.

After they had collected Cain again, the three sat in the sun, letting Cain nurse on his mother. 

“Are you hungry?” Adam asked Eve.

“I am so hungry I’m hollow,” she answered.

“Let me get you some fruit,” he said. Eve saw the flickers of gold dangling in the sky within her view, the fruit she had forbidden. 

“Just not—”

“I know,” Adam said. And he walked away, past their tree.

Eve was still in pain, as it seemed she always had been. The boy’s first teeth had come into his mouth, and her nipples, which had become stronger, were pierced again with each feeding. The child was developing a taste for blood, no doubt. But her pain was also between her legs. Adam had helped himself to her too quickly. This was the way, now that a child was nearby; the act felt too intimate to share with an infantile gaze. It was like the tree was to her—private, special. Except that this was hers and Adam’s; it had never been hers alone. It felt like mostly Adam’s now, though, even as the tree had become partly his. She wondered at that. She sighed as the pain settled into sharp discomfort. It was not an aching. She let her gaze wander, at the soft hair of the child in her arms, at the air littered with flower petals and twinkling pollen. She smelled Cain’s swirl of hair, and it reminded her of the scent of her own milk. Cain became full and slept in her arms. Eve waited and laid back, her eyes on the shock of white clouds above her.

Adam returned. His feet came into her view right beside her face as she looked up from the ground.

“Adam! You brought food?”

“I have. Sit up.” 

She obeyed.

“Here, eat.” He placed a slice of something stringy and ripe inside her mouth, pushing it past her teeth onto her tongue. It was like nothing she had had before, like the bursting flavor of the mango and the crunch of the apple and the overpowering sweetness of the grape all combined.

“What is that? Mmm, I have to know!” She looked at him. He was munching away at something in his own mouth. 

“I can’t tell you. It’s a surprise,” he said.

“Is there more?”

“Yes.” He produced more chunks and slices, each covered with a velvety skin that melted into her tongue and inner cheeks. She chewed. She was so hungry. Her stomach finally felt satisfied, not in the way other food had satisfied it before. How had she let herself become so starved? 

“Adam, I have to know what this is.”

“Isn’t it delicious?” he said. “You need to trust me. You’ve made rules, but your rules aren’t for a very good reason.”

Eve swallowed. Her stomach twisted. “Adam, you haven’t. This isn’t — is this from my tree? My special tree?”

“It’s okay. Trust me, Eve. See? It’s delicious.”

“Adam! I told you never to eat that!” She rocked the child in her arms back and forth, frantically, though he was still asleep, to keep her tears from waking him. They rolled down her cheeks, hot lava erupting, flowing onto his back.

“And what happened? Nothing. Everything I’ve ever told you to do is good.”

“And I’ve done everything you’ve told me. You couldn’t give me one thing? One rule to never break?”

“Never is a long time, Eve. You can’t keep things from me. They are mine, too.”

“Why now? Why did you do it?”

“I did it for our son. I wanted him to have the knowledge of every fruit in the garden one day. I needed to make the way for him. And for you, who didn’t trust. You were so hungry.”

A snake slid past them in the grass, weaving its way around the flowing green hairs. Its scales swirled past Eve’s eyes, a beautiful pattern of gold and blue diamonds decorating its skin. But she noticed them flaking off its body; as it wormed its way through the grass, it left a part of itself behind, a skin. A hollowed, empty replica of itself.

Eve looked down at her body. She saw the grassy hair between her legs, the lumpy, reddened breasts hanging from her chest. The stomach, the hunger that made her so weak, the feet that no longer shook the planet. Naked with all of her once powerful authority stripped from her. The arms holding a child, whom she couldn’t blame but had still hurt her. She looked up at Adam, his tall face looming above in a gentle, apologetic expression.

“Please understand. I love our child, and I needed to make the world right for him,” he said.

She nodded but turned her head, handing him the child, and she plodded toward the foliage surrounding the swamp. Adam looked at their son, still sleeping.

Eve rummaged around among the large, shiny leaves, each such a deep green and so smooth and thick. It smelled spongy here by this water, a thick humidity to the air and a moist mildew to the earth. Adam is right, she thought. Nothing bad became of us eating the fruit. She picked the big, heart-shaped leaves from their white stalks among the marshy muck, and she held them against her body. They could cover her breasts. He is right, she continued thinking. If he hadn’t been brave enough to defy me, I would still be hungry. She turned the leaves in the light. They could cover her pelvis, her hips, and her middle too, if she could only string them together. Why would he ever fear to defy me anyway? she realized, aching in her useless hips. Where is the woman I was? She found reedy, thick stalks waiting for her beside her legs, tickling the small hairs of her calves. She pulled them up out of the ground and with her fingernails pierced the flaps of green and began to stitch together the coverings. This was a new kind of creation, made in a way she understood. A new knowledge informed what came forth from her now. Where is the woman who erupted into a tree from sadness? Where is the woman who dug into the earth and created a man? Once the creation was complete, she knew she would take Adam’s hand again. He was good, as much as she knew good in other humans. He cared for her and their child, and another might be growing already. She would take his hand. They would walk, and walk, and they would walk. And they would leave this garden and find a new home, she decided. She held out the piecemeal garment, flicked it in the wind, and stepped into it with one foot then another. 

This was the end, and it was the beginning. 

In the end, she put on her clothes.

As they walked away, Eve turned and saw the garden behind her, the tree looming in the golden backlight of the setting sun. As if it were aflame, she thought, and she turned her eyes back to the path ahead of them. Just as she did, the leaves, drying in the wind, sparked from the light of her gaze and exploded soundlessly into fire.