Snailie
Julie Holland
I’m six years old and my brother is four. We have a garden. It’s a small garden, too small for compulsory acquisition, and it’s overgrown because my mum hates the garden, and so does my dad, because my dad hates everything. The garden is dead, except for a single tree, a weeping willow by the back door. TeleTalk says the tree is a Salix babylonica, introduced for ornamental purposes, now considered an invasive environmental weed. The willow tree has survived because washing-up water is not considered a waste product and is uncollected, and mum throws it from the washing-up bowl out of the back door where it seeps into the tree roots. The willow is a shock of green in a landscape of brick, and ochre, and ash. We’re allowed to play in the garden when pollution is within tolerance. During the school holiday me and my brother make a den inside the willow’s leafy fronds. It’s cool and dark in our den, the perfect place to hide.
Me and my brother do not have any pets because my dad hates all animals. Dogs have been banned, but cats are actually encouraged. The Directorate hopes they will end the plague of rats that spill out of the sewers each evening looking to steal our food. But my dad insists cats carry disease, and he says animals smell and scratch furniture and pee in corners. That’s why he goes about our rooms setting traps that me and my brother are not permitted to touch. When we hear a trap being sprung we run and watch the bloodied rat writhing in agony over our regulation white tiling. My brother always cries and my dad calls him a sissy. Rabbits can also be kept, as a source of protein, but my dad hates all small creatures. My mum is not bothered about animals either way, but my dad always wins the argument, and it doesn’t matter how many times we ask for a rabbit, or a kitten, the answer is either ‘ask your dad’ or ‘No!’ which leads to a fight. We’ve learnt not to ask.
Whilst playing inside our den we find a snail. Temperatures have risen so much snails have become incredibly rare, and that’s why we’ve never seen a snail before, although we know what it is from our TeleTalk dictates. Brown-speckled garden snails are Cornu aspersum. Such events, like finding a spider or a bee, must be reported and the animals, if at all possible, must be captured. Being six I know this, and know if we tell our mum or dad the snail will be collected and taken away. Me and my brother make a pact not to say anything so we can keep the snail as a pet. We spend a morning watching it climbing the trunk and branches inside the willow tree. It clings onto the most perilous leaf without falling. It has eyes on stalks and a slimy foot that is gross. When we poke it, it shrinks into its shell. We dare each other to pick it up and gently pass it back and forth between us. I tell my brother off if he is rough with the snail like dad does when he thumps the keyboard. We learn that if we stay still and quiet, and leave it alone, after a while an eye appears and looks at us. If we curl ourselves into small spaces, and don’t make any noise, and breathe quietly, the snail seeps out like a slow oil spill, to start its slow journey upwards. We name our snail, Snailie.
Snailie doesn’t play, or do anything, except, he talks to us. We lift his shell to our ears and he speaks. We tell each other what he says. He says ‘poop’ and ‘wee-wee’ at first and we laugh at him, and he farts, and tells us jokes we already know, but we can’t help falling in love with him. He’s our secret. When mum calls us for end-day nourishment, we know he will slip away into the tree’s canopy and be lost forever, so we sneak into the communal recycling room and steal an empty protein-substitute box and place Snailie inside and close the lid.
The next day we rush into the garden to find Snailie still safe inside the box. We begin the task of snail interior decoration and scour the garden for things snails might like. We find an ancient feather, a fire-blackened rock, a dried-up flower. We arrange the objects hoping Snailie will be happy in his new home. We make him a bed of willow leaves, and make a small pond from a stolen detergent lid which we fill with water smuggled from our personal ration so our dad will not notice. Our mum notices but is too busy being invisible to draw attention to it. Snailie tells us he loves it in his box. More than anything we want Snailie to feel safe, and to be happy. I wish I could take my brother’s hand and slip inside the box to live with Snailie.
Whenever we get the opportunity, we take Snailie out and talk to him. We lift him to our ears and he tells us stories. He tells us about the old world. Snailie says he has lived a long time and remembers the world before EndWar, when children played outside in parks and on beaches, long before coastal-desalination, and subterranean bug farming, and before industrial GM soy plantations confiscated community areas for survival purposes. He tells us about bygone oceans, that he calls the brains of the planet, because they teemed with knowledge lost to us now, and how sea birds could drift freely in the Earth’s clear blue lungs because the air was free from radiation. He tells us about a time when food grew in the organic bowels below our feet, in nutrient-rich soils unbleached by chemical warfare. Snailie even remembers when riverbeds ran with water, like veins and arteries flowing into lakes like beating hearts, pumping and pumping to keep every living being moving and thriving. Snailie tells us about something called a rainbow, and begins to list colors that are unknown to us. Beetroot squishing and staining fingers red, carrots snapping a glowing orange, a yellow crack of corn, popping green grapes, and how you could chew blueberries and stick out a blue tongue. These things were before fallout contaminated the sea into indigo sludge, and before the sky fell inwards to form the violet haze. Snailie explains how the Earth’s magnanimous body cared for and sheltered us. I begin to wonder how Snailie knows these things. I check TeleTalk. Rainbow and Beetroot and Blueberry are not listed. TeleTalk classifies these words as obsolete information.
One day, when we are safe inside our den, Snailie tells my brother about how his dad is mean to him.
Snailie tells my brother, ‘My dad is a poo-face,’ and my brother tells me, ‘Snailie is sad inside his shell.’
Snailie then tells me a secret. He tells me how horrid his dad is for hitting his mum, and making her cry. I tell my brother this and my brother cries, and I tell him not to be a cry-baby, like my dad always says.
Snailie tells my brother he wishes his dad would go away.
Snailie tells me that he hates his dad.
When the holiday ends, we’re collected each day and taken to school to continue the dreaded TeleTalk formal instruction. We have to memorize the classification of our world, and have examinations, that we must pass in order to progress. The acid rains have started again, and we are forbidden to go into the garden. It rains for weeks. We worry about Snailie but mum insists we have to stay indoors at all times, and when we get back from school, we have quiet homework to do, so dad will not be angry. We try to be good. We stay small, and hidden, and silent, so mum will be safe. Weeks turn into months and Snailie is forgotten.
When the forecast improves we’re allowed into the garden. The willow tree is no longer green. Its leaves have shrivelled to all shades of brown. We go inside and the once soft leaves are desiccated. They rustle and spike our hands and cheeks. We find the box and open it and are joyous to find Snailie is still inside. We pick him up but he’s lighter. We peer into the dark interior of his shell. There’s nothing inside but a brown dryness.
My brother looks at me with a frown on his face. ‘Where’s Snailie?’
I know what’s happened to him because I’ve turned seven. I know we locked Snailie in a box and forgot about him and he died of starvation.
‘He is dead,’ I say. ‘And you,’ I point my finger at my brother, ‘were supposed to feed him. You forgot.’
My brother’s big brown eyes fill with tears. I know what I’m doing, but I can’t stop.
I say, ‘Snailie is dead because of you.’
My brother runs into the house, crying, and shouting, ‘Mum,’ and tells her what we have done.
‘Shush,’ she says.
She says she is disappointed in me.
I’m glad my dad is not with us anymore. It’s the first time I’ve thought of him since his dispatch to the frontline. I decide I hate my brother, but when I see him snotty and shaking and remember how my dad used to make me feel, and how I’ve made my brother feel, I know I’ve done a bad thing. I go over to him and fold him into my arms, and kiss away his tears, because I am not like my dad. I tell him it was not his fault, and that whatever happens to us I will always take care of him. His little hands grip onto me and he pushes his face into my shoulder and I smell his smell. My brother smell. And I love him.
Mum says we must bury Snailie in the garden where no one will find him. We creep outside and into the willow tree den. Mum has to crawl on hand and knee and it’s a squeeze to fit us all inside the small space. We sit cross-legged and our mum places Snailie onto the dry earth in front of us and then digs a hole with a spoon. I drop Snailie into the hole and we cover him with dirt and I place the fire-blackened rock over him to mark the spot. Mum says we have laid him to rest. Then we crawl out of the dark and into the light.
Mum says, ‘We must never speak of this. Do you understand? You must forget this,’ and then she hugs us.
We nod.
But I know I will never forget.
Julie Holland
Julie Holland, (she/they) is a writer, performance artist, painter, and poet, living in Western Australia where she acknowledges the traditional custodians of the land, the Whadjuk people. Julie holds a Master’s in Feminism and the Arts and a Master’s in Creative Writing. Julie prefers a multi-disciplinary approach to her practice, exploring how art and words interconnect. Julie was shortlisted for the Ethel Webb Bundell Literary Awards, and her work has been published in literary journals.