Seeds of Plenty by Jennifer Juo Read Free Book Online Page B

embrace she so craved. She watched him eat, shoveling the food into his mouth as if he had been starving the past few months. She realized he missed their food just as much as she.
    “You’re a good cook,” Winston said, his mouth full of her homemade tofu. He smiled at her, it was a crooked smile, a half-smile, his eyes still did not meet hers, but she held onto this little sign of love. She was starved for any kind of affection and wanted to be close to him.
    That night, she offered herself to Winston in bed. But the roles were reversed. He was like an ancient Chinese bride, face hidden behind an opaque red veil, a distant stranger in her arms. Long after he was sound asleep, she lay awake in the dark, listening to the West African highlife music and drumming coming from the town.
     
     

Chapter 7
    The spirits, particularly the snake spirits, began to assault Sylvia’s house. From the dense bamboo bush in the garden, the snakes found their way into the house, slithering through the open pipes that let out condensation from the air conditioner. The first snake to enter the house—a poisonous green mamba—came into Lila’s room. She was seven months old, sitting up, playing with her toys on the floor, but not crawling yet. Sylvia stepped out of the room for just a second, assuming since Lila wasn’t mobile yet, she couldn’t get into any trouble. But the spirits knew her daughter was alone, helpless, and dangerously trapped. The snake came out from under the air conditioner and slithered toward Lila. She stared at it, mesmerized by the moving, bright green scales glittering in the sunlight. As it moved closer, she reached her arms out for it.
    ***
     
    Sylvia heard her baby scream. She and Patience rushed into the room, only to see a flash of green, a snake slithering away. Sylvia grabbed Lila off the floor. Had the snake bitten her? She frantically searched the baby’s arms and legs. The bite marks of a green mamba were small and difficult to see, but she was almost sure there were faint red marks on Lila’s right arm.
    “Sometimes de snake bite, but it no spread poison,” Patience said, looking at Lila’s arm. “We have go to doctor now now. Dey can fix it.” It was a Saturday just after five o’clock and the compound clinic was closed for the weekend. They kept the antivenom for snake bites there. But how much time did they have before the venom spread all over her body and took her?
    Sylvia let out a bizarre, animal-like wail, even she didn’t realize she could make such a sound. She ran down the hall, her eerie wail carrying beyond the walls of their house. But her neighbors didn’t recognize it as human, and no one came to help. Winston was away as usual. Where was he when she needed him? She ran into the kitchen pantry, still holding her crying baby in one arm. She knocked down the tins of Chinese food, looking for Ayo’s card.
    ***
     
    Ayo arrived in ten minutes. He kept vials of poly antivenom in the fridge at his apartment, a combination of antivenom concocted for the multitude of snakes in West Africa. The green mamba was a common poisonous snake in the region, not as a fatal as the black mamba, Sylvia had read, but still, death could happen any time between thirty minutes to four hours. Thirty minutes. This random fact terrorized her.
    Ayo quickly placed Lila on the couch and examined her arm.
    “There’s some swelling and bruising round the bite marks, which means the snake injected some venom. But I don’t know how much yet,” Ayo said as he wrapped Lila’s arm in a crepe bandage and splint from his doctor’s bag.
    Then he took out four vials of antivenom and emptied the contents into a syringe.
    “I’m going to give her the first dose now. Then, we need to get her to my clinic. Help me hold her down.”
    Sylvia held her squirming and crying baby down on the couch even though it went against her natural instinct as a mother. All she wanted to do was pick Lila up and comfort her, but