That night at dinner, I gave my parents a reconnaissance report. “She says the colonel—”
“He’s a lieutenant colonel,” my dad cut in. In our neighborhood everyone knew everyone’s rank. I wasn’t sure my dad had even laid eyes on him yet, but that didn’t matter.
“Well, she calls him the colonel.”
“Well, he’s not. But what does she say about him?”
“She says he lives on base and they’re just staying here until they get bigger base housing. He’s their stepfather. Except the baby, he’s her father.”
“Mm-hm,” my father said. “He’s got a sweet car, but how does he get all those kids in there?”
“It’s ridiculous,” my mother said crisply. I couldn’t imagine her giving up her new pearly white Mustang and waiting around for my dad to drive her places, although she did drive his Plymouth station wagon to the grocery store. “Now hush up and eat your pork chop.”
A couple of days later, Brenda came over to invite me to dinner at her house the next night. “The colonel will be here,” she said, kind of like he was the Beatles or something. She told me to come over at six sharp.
At about five, I heard the T-bird’s engine. The colonel climbed out as all three girls swarmed him on the carport, then they carried a bunch of grocery bags into the kitchen. It was the first glimpse I’d had of him. He was tall and rangy, with a tight brush cut that could have been blond or gray, and a khaki uniform so well starched it could have stood up on its own.
I reported at six. Brenda introduced me with a stream of chatter, which he interrupted. “Good to meet you,” he said. He smiled, a handsome smile, but his eyes made me feel like I was on inspection.
I could smell steak grilling deliciously in a cast-iron pan, but it turned out to be the colonel’s dinner. Mrs. Howard served her daughters and me beanie weenies on paper plates.
Susie was perched in a high chair, while the colonel, Brenda, and I occupied the three chairs at the table. Nancy sat cross-legged on the floor by the TV, and Mrs. Howard, her hands empty, started to sit in the recliner.
“Aren’t you going to have dinner, Mama?” the colonel said sharply. “Brenda can sit on the floor.”
Mrs. Howard jumped up halfway through her sit. “Oh, no, sir. I’m not hungry.”
He chewed vigorously for a moment, then smiled. “Well then, Mama, you can sing for us.”
“Oh, no,” she murmured.
“Sing for us,” he said. It sounded like an order.
She clasped her hands behind her back and closed her eyes.
She had a thrillingly beautiful voice, so lovely it seemed unlikely coming from someone so washed out.
It’s a sad song anyway, though she sang it sadder than anyone. The colonel was happily sawing off big bites of his steak, but I couldn’t swallow, felt like I might never swallow again. Just as I began to fear I’d burst into tears, the baby did.
Mrs. Howard didn’t finish the song. She scooped up Susie and carried her off to wash the tears and bean juice off her.
“May we be excused?” Brenda asked the colonel a few minutes later.
“Yes,” he said, “for cleanup duty.”
As we stepped into the kitchen, I started to flick my paper plate at the trash can. Brenda snatched my wrist. “We don’t waste,” she said sternly. “You can use them more than once.” I watched as she carefully scrubbed the paper plates and Nancy gingerly dried them, and the colonel worked his way through the rest of that big steak.
When I left a little while later he smiled at me, warmly this time, and put his hand on my shoulder. “Thank you for coming. I hope we see you again.”
I reported the paper-plate business to my parents, of course. They just rolled their eyes in unison. “We can’t even get this one to wash a real plate,” my dad said.
The Thunderbird was gone by morning, and I didn’t see it for a few days. One afternoon Brenda and Nancy and I walked to the nearby playground, but the sweltering Florida heat soon sent us back.
At the Howards’ house, Brenda said, “Mama, can we take a nap in your bed? You have a fan.” Almost no one had AC then, so a fan was heaven. We stretched out under its cool stream of air. I fell instantly asleep but sometime later was pulled partway from dreams by the sound of the Thunderbird’s engine.
I had started to sink back into sleep when I felt a hand. I lay on my side, my back to the door of the room, and the hand slipped between my legs from behind.
The hand slid inside my shorts and underwear like it knew where it was going. It curved where I curved. A fingertip moved as if searching for something, a side-to-side tremor like a snake scenting prey.
I rolled and jerked up against the headboard to a sitting position. No one else was in the bed. The colonel kneeled next to it, looking at me calmly, his left hand resting where my hip had been.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I thought you were Brenda.” He smiled, rose, and walked out.
I felt frozen. I don’t know how long it took me to stand up and walk out of the room, but when I did there was no one in the house.
I didn’t see the Howard girls for a few days. I could tell they were home, but they didn’t come looking for me, and I didn’t feel like knocking on their door, even though I had just about convinced myself I’d dreamed the whole episode.
The rattlesnake canning plant that gave the neighborhood its name was long gone, but the snakes were still around. They had adapted to suburban life, staying mostly invisible but occasionally slithering through a yard or being discovered under a pile of boxes on someone’s carport.
My mother had a reputation as the neighborhood snake killer, having learned her technique from her father, who grew up on a farm in Slovakia where he sometimes dispatched adders. Armed with a shovel, my mother had coolly chopped the heads off more rattlers — and copperheads and water moccasins — than I could count.
One long summer afternoon, my mother had been home from work just long enough to change into her pedal pushers and Keds when we heard screaming from next door. Julieta came barreling into our carport shrieking, “Snake! Snake!” and Mom was out the kitchen door and into the utility room off the carport to grab her shovel.
Next door, Mrs. Mendoza was standing at the backyard gate. “Luis has a gun but he’s not home yet. Please help her!”
Luisa was in the corner of the backyard, in a little slot between the fence and the shed. Blocking her path was a pygmy rattler, a coiled ball of fury, its tail vibrating with that unmistakable warning. I couldn’t breathe.
“Stand real still, honey,” my mother said to Luisa in her kindest voice. “Don’t move.”
The snake was focused on Luisa, but when my mother took a step forward and stomped one foot, it swung its head around. She struck, the shovel blade flashing through its extended neck. The coils convulsed, the jaws snapped, the tail fell silent.
She swept the beheaded snake aside with the shovel, then grabbed Luisa, who was still standing frozen as a little statue. “Did it bite you, baby?”
Luisa shook her head and began to cry as her mother swooped in, kissing her all over and inspecting her for bites at the same time.