Terra Orndorff

Final Flight of the Snake

If, as Emily Dickinson says, “Hope is the thing with feathers,” then trauma is the thing slithering into souls. With confidence and desire, it exerts itself on those chosen, settling in, creating a long-term burrow. Few things possess strength enough to take it on. Youthful innocence sometimes keeps it at arm’s length, but barely.

Childhood Saturdays contain a magical quality. Blue skies brilliant with streaks of orange and red fill my bedroom window as birds sing from the trees surrounding the house. I wake just as the sun crests the horizon, usually the first one up. Rain plagued the last three days, soaking the ground. Today’s sunrise, however, promises bright skies and explorations. At ten years old, adventures always await. Today, though, a sacred, ritualistic pilgrimage neared.

Squeaky voices, obnoxious music, and fantastical, animated stories float from the television set as I wait for Mom to get ready. Humanistic felines fight evil, saving the planet every week. Talking ponies followed by emotive teddy bears teach kindness and acceptance. Small, blue humanoid creatures living in mushrooms thwart a mad scientist and his cat. Saturdays push the boundaries of children’s imagination.

Through my young eyes, Mom radiates beauty. Long, straight red hair. Hazel eyes. Tall. Slender. I look at my mom, and she shines. Feminine but not overly so. Anyone meeting her relaxes into easy conversation, feeling an immediate lifelong friendship. Kind, nurturing, courageous. If a person peered too hard behind those sparkling eyes, though, her trauma would hiss.

Odd, the way we share memories of similar yet different trauma. Mine circle a dad I fail to remember but his abuse of Mom somehow remains common knowledge. We escape before solid memories form. Dad, Mom’s second husband, adopts and raises me. Mom’s memory holds her own dad, a man who commits suicide just as she begins holding onto her own memories. Her own mother’s new husband emotionally adopts her and six siblings, raises them. She loves Grandpa Buck, her stepdad. The memory of her biological father, however, haunts her. The trauma continually nipping at her.

Today her world includes a salve for those bites: me, my half-brother-by-adoption, and the man who adopted me after their wedding, the man I call Dad, and everyone else calls Floyd. Every Saturday, the highlight of the week, we visit her parents, Grandma Charlotte and Grandpa Buck.

My world of make-believe television ends as Mom hollers to leave. Jumping to my feet, rinsing my cereal bowl, I get to the car before she has her purse.

“In the back,” I hear as my hand grabs the cold front handle of the blue four-door Buick.

“What? Why? I asked, turning around. “Oh! Dad! You’re coming? Cool!” His coming along feels special since Mom and I usually visit without him. This feels like a holiday dinner awaits us. I even smell Grandma’s noodles cooking at the thought.

“Why aren’t you driving?” I ask Dad.

“It’s your mom’s car,” he snarls back. Dad reminds me of the Billy Goat Gruff. The son of a hard-nosed man, all he knows is hard work. The tall, strong, red head speaks sparsely, toils tough, and sees his daughter as perfect. He projects as rough around the edges with his course voice, terse words, and little show of emotion, but I never doubted his love. Something speaks to me of softness. I pull the string around his little finger, his little girl.

The journey to my grandparents culminates from one singular half hour filled with singing country songs along with the radio, warm sunlight flowing through the windows as the smell of honeysuckle wafts through the car while clear blue sky passes outside. Farm after farm blurs through my line of sight. I gaze at the open sky from the back passenger window until we arrive.

It takes no time before I bore of the adults and go play in the yard at Grandma’s, an intriguing land of imagination. Fantasy worlds appear at a hat’s drop. Often, my grandparents’ dog, Mai Ling, appears, playing the villain. This small Shih Tzu boasted teeth of an orca whale and the bark of chihuahua. Yippy and snippy. Yet two years earlier, this tiny terror tormented me, probably as I teased her. She eventually sought revenge against her enemy, strangling me with her chain. I lay on the ground, gasping for breath as her chain pulled tighter around my neck. Panic set in as my heart raced faster and faster. Thinking about it makes my skin crawl with goosebumps. Now I keep my distance. Trauma taught me well. Mai Ling makes a great dragon, though. Or troll. Or ogre. Whatever evil the story requires.

“Terra!” Mom hollers out the backdoor. “It’s time to go.”

Leaving happens too soon, but I am too exhausted to put up a fight. Complaints about how dirty I am from Mom. Orders to behave from Grandma. Hints to misbehave from Grandpa. Giving hugs, I climb into the car, melting back onto the leather seat, hot from the afternoon sun yet cozy. Fastening my seatbelt, I wave goodbye to Grandma and Grandpa. The warm window provides a soothing pillow after an afternoon of adventure. Orange sky scattered with wisps of feathers float through the glass and into my mind as acres of forest and farm began to once again dance through the view.

“Look at that. She is holding that open.” Mom’s voice snaps me out of my daydreams. I lean over, looking between Mom and Dad out the windshield. A yellow hatchback in front of us, a young girl, my age, behind the back seat, holding the hatch open.

“What is she doing, Mom?” I ask. Peering around I notice we are near Aunt C’s house, Dad’s sister. Not far off, anyway. No one else on the road but the hatchback and us.

“I don’t know. Floyd, what do you think? That can’t be safe,” Mom glances at Dad who simply grunts his usual lack of concern.

Sitting back in my seat, I question why a girl would sit in a car like that. I don’t even ride in the back of the truck. Of course, Mom won’t let me, but the point remains. Long, wind blown brown hair whips around her face as I watch. Both arms above her head she resembles Atlas holding the world on his shoulders. I begin to feel pain for her, an ache in my arms, an ache in my heart. Parents. I blame her parents. It seems cruel for her to be sitting like that, so much weight held up by her tiny frame.

Events and time begin merging into one. Slow motion and fast forward combine to form a time warp. I see the girl in the back of the car, holding that hatch open. For a split second we make eye contact. The driver of the hatchback hammers on their brakes to stop for a turtle.

Blink.

Our Buick, unable to stop in time, unable to avoid impact. Sound ceases as my head snaps forward and back against the seat.

Blink.

Mom, seeing the collision coming, veers to the right. To the muddy ditch. Out the passenger window, grass appears instead of sky.

Blink.

Upon impact, that young girl, the girl my own age, falls out of the back of their car onto our hood. Rolled under the front bumper and under our car. Looking through our windshield, I see the open hatch in front of us, but where a girl sat, only empty space remains.

Blink.

We no longer travel the road home. Stillness creeps in.

Blink.

Awareness returns, invading the calm little by little. Dusky oranges and reds from a setting sun cast an eerie glow over the two cars, now sitting in a muddy ditch. Realization strikes. The car, once a short distance in front of us, now sits, mere inches away. The girl still unseen.

Shaking fog from my brain, I look around in confusion, aware of strangers, inhabitants of the nearby houses, surrounding the cars. They peer under ours. Instead of being drug by the car along pavement or hard dirt, the girl sank into the mud, escaping significant injury. Serious bodily injury at any rate. Trauma, however, grabs her. Squeezed as mud enveloped her and took a bite.

“Go with Aunt C. She’s going to take you back to her house. We’ll get you in a little bit.” Dad hands me off to his sister. I grab my aunt’s hand, letting her walk me back to her house. She sits me down on the couch, makes me a cup of hot tea, turns the television on. Mae West appears as She Done Him Wrong registers through the shock.

Days pass. Maybe hours. Perhaps only been minutes? I cannot tell. Somehow, I am home. In my own bed, waking up to blue skies and singing birds. A stiffness in my neck that, although I do not know it at the time, will return to visit throughout my life. The bite of trauma. Never allowing me to truly forget.

I know I saw that girl fall out of her parents’ vehicle, onto ours, and then disappear beneath. Trauma grabbed too tightly too quickly, though, and blocks the image from my memory. I bounce back quickly as my neck pain fades. The squeeze for me barely exists, only reappearing when the neck flares up. The pain Mom feels, though, lasts as an ever-present traumatic bite that no amount of peroxide can heal. Panic fills her for years when getting behind the wheel. Her guilt still flares up with an occasional reminder nip from trauma. Behind closed eyes she stills sees the events in slow motion. Trauma endures. Hope, though, flies in on feathers. An eagle grasping a snake in sharp talons soaring high into the sky before releasing its grip, dropping the perpetrator onto the rocks below. Survivors of trauma take a deep inhale, finally released from the coils, able to move forward.