Back to Issue Sixteen

"Part of His Cluster" by Danila Botha

Part of His Cluster

I packed them very carefully, in two rows, tight enough so they wouldn’t move, but with enough space that they could hopefully still breathe. According to my research and the experts, snails could thrive with extremely minimal ventilation. I put them in a jewelry box with intricate lace designs doubling as air holes. I put them on top of a thick thread so when someone looked closely, as the customs agents inevitably would, they would look like the overpriced seashell necklaces that tourists bought. Handmade, I’d tell them. I even wore two shell necklaces and some coral nail polish better suited for a grandmother who lived in Miami for good measure.

I had thought extensively about all the possible explanations I could give if one of the snails decided to move.

I could pretend to be some kind of gourmand, a chef or foodstagrammer so obsessed with escargot I had to bring them with me. I had a mix of parsley butter and garlic salt in labelled glass containers, just in case.

I could claim that they were treasured pets, that I couldn’t travel without them. Emotional support snails, I could stammer and hold out my prescription for anxiety medication before they put me in a straight jacket.

I had a contingency plan, but when the inevitable happened, when two TSA agents appeared, one friendly woman with a determined walk and a reserved smile, and one robotic voiced man who looked flummoxed and then furious, I took a small mallet out of my suitcase and felt each shell crunch and smash in front of them. They stared, riveted, as I carefully extracted the snails’ glands as I’d practiced a number of times at home, crushed their bodies, and rubbed the amethyst pigment all over the tallit’s four tassels that I’d carefully chosen and sewn on for my brother’s wedding.

Since the dye is natural, I tried to tell them it wears out quickly, and since his wedding is in three days, the closer to it, the better for retaining its effect. I knew better than to try to explain to them what techelet was or how it was mentioned in my brother’s Bar Mitzvah Torah portion, which he only recently discovered. I wanted everything to be deliberate and meaningful.

They stared at me, a woman in a long skirt, hair completely covered in a glittery rainbow headscarf, trying to collect themselves, but since I wasn’t taking any foreign fauna with me, they couldn’t really stop me. If they’d tried, I would have told them that I was an artist, that this was not the kind of Judaica I normally made, but my brother was special. I wanted to make him something integral to the experience. I wanted to tell him how beautiful he looked now, how much taller and more confident in his skin he’d become since becoming a man. I spent so long embroidering his new name, Gideon, with bright blue flourishes in the corner. If I thought about it, I could still see him with teary blue eyes and tangled hair. I wanted to tell him now that I loved him more than ever, that I wanted to be part of his cluster, like the snails, celebrating with him and his partner, even if my own husband and kids insisted on staying home. I wanted him to know that I was carrying love from all of us, that it reverberated from my thin, permeable skin through my marrow to parts of myself I hadn’t known existed.