Scorpion Sting- by "Roo"

Since sand was used for diluting the cement that all the buildings were made from , the mountains of sand were a cliche during the summer. It seemed like there was one dumped on each corner once every week or so. The day that I was stung by a scorpion, or a 'shayan' in Kazakh, is just as vivid in my mind now as it was then. I remember my big brother, Andrew, coming up to me and asking if I wanted to go outside and play in the sand pile, or 'khom'. I ran across the vomitous kitchen linoleum that always looked like a giant had used it for the disgusting task of blowing his nose. I grabbed my cheap-o red and white 'Chinese-made 'tapchkee' (summertime sandals), the kind that always broke in a month, and slipped them on my feet. We told our Kazakh housekeeper where we were going, and asked her to make sure the door locked behind us. Since petty thievery was such a troublesome issue, locked doors were the norm in every household.

We stepped out into our dingy, dank stairwell and started to run down the murderously crooked steps. The smells got more intense as we went down...down closer to the basement door and sewage piping for the entire apartment building, neither of which were sealed at all. Rats, cats and other various forms of scummy life lived and died down there. Getting a whiff of decaying flesh was never appetizing whatsoever. We hurried out of the stairwell as fast as we could, and stepped outside. Summer was in full swing and it was a sizzling one hundred and ten degrees that hit us like a belly flop from off the high dive when we stepped outside- definitely not a perfect eighty degrees like back home. I remember how it felt as the thirsty air drank whatever liquid was in our lungs and bodies, leaving us bony raisins in a desert. The two of us marched around the apartment structure, ignoring the shockingly vile remarks the local kids shouted at us as we scurried past. Rounding the corner, hurrying as children do, we were eager to start playing. We had this beautiful master plan to consturct an impressive (at least it was impressive in our little heads) labyrinth of tunnels through the sand. They would be just big enough to push a matchbox car through.

We never tired of digging around like moles in the massive mounds of sand. The two of us jumped into the sand dumped there the previous day, turning deaf ears to the annoying protests of the builders who would have to shovel it back into a pile when we were done. They despised it when kids like us came and played in their sand, spreading it out until it looked like dessert on a toddler's face. After about fifteen minutes of digging around and getting grubby, my tunnel was just about done. I reached towards the little tunnel entrance to dig out the last bit of sand that separated mine from Andrew's, but before my dusty hand reached the other side, I felt something sort of "stick it". "Oh brother", I thought, "Another nasty thorn in the sand." I reached down to pick it out and throw it somewhere out of my sight, but a thorny vine wasn't what I saw. What I did see made the blood drain out of my face; I saw the underside and tail of a scorpion exposed in the sand where my hand had brushed the sand.

It was already hurting, throbbing and turning red. I jumped up and told Andew. He told me to run and tell Dad as fast as I could, so I turned and ran back to the apartment. I was in such a hurry , I forgot my shoes. Trying to run and not hurt a scorpion sting at the same time is harder than trying to get a camel (which we have plenty of roaming wild on the steppes) through the eye of a needle. Step-ow-step-ow-step-ow all the way to the apartment. The reaction I got from my parents was essentially the same as a bomb squad's would have been to an emergency call. My dad ran for the medical bucket where the snake venom suction device was kept. By now, looking at the side of my thumb was like looking at a bad pimple through a microscope. It was so nasty and ugly it was enthralling. My dad put the cracked yellow venom sucker on the side of my thumb and got it sucking. This sucking on the sting made it turn from red to putrid purple. After about fifteen eternal minutes, Dad took the yellow sucker off and put ice on it. I can still remember sort of falling asleep; I must have been tired out by all the hovering around me Mom and Dad did. When you know it takes an ambulance up to two hours to get anywhere after receiving a call, the local medical care isn't much of an option when you're in the mood to live. It was truly a miracle of Grace that I surived that day!