Afraid of the dark is nothing. I was once terrorized by a small plastic spider.

Between the Evergreens
Something Was Lurking.*

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OK, so I was six or seven years old. I used to spend a lot of time with my grandmother, my mother's mother. I'd spend weekends at her house, and if my father wasn't around, my mother would come, too.

Grandma and I were close. I was smart, I loved to read and recite poetry, I loved to write. Grandma was a great poetry-reciter, a reader. She clipped poems out of magazines and pasted them into a scrap book. She worked at a company that printed business forms, and she used to bring me home paper and pens and pencils. I loved the pencils that were red on one end and blue on the other. There was a desk I kept them in, and besides writing, I'd also cut up paper and make things. Airplanes, and ships, and I don't know what all (to quote the old Andy Griffith routine).

I also had a small box of things I played with. Most of them weren't actually toys, they were glass knick-knacks. The one I remember most vividly at the moment is a dachshund. There were also a bunch of pieces from an old Cooties game. I didn't know anything about the game, I just liked to put the Cooties together in different ways. Years later my mother bought me a Cooties game, sort of as a joke. We played it a few times, but they'd changed the Cooties and it wasn't much fun. I don't think I have any of the Cooties anymore.

I can also remember sitting just at the bottom of the attic stairs, cutting out clothes for paper dolls. I'd had paper dolls practically my whole life; I had them when my parents went to New York, when I was a very tiny little girl and stayed with my aunt and uncle. I can remember sitting in their living room, watching The Flintstones ("Yabba-dabba-doo!!"), cutting out paper dolls and making up stories in my head. It always took a long time to cut out the clothes, and I didn't enjoy it much, but I was such a perfectionist that I had to have all the clothes cut out before I'd start to play. So I'd make up stories about the dolls, going shopping, picking out the clothes, where they were going to wear them . . . .

But that's not what I was going to write about. What I was going to write about was one particular weekend at my grandmother's. Saturday evening, Grandma and I went out to dinner. I can see the place very clearly in my mind, can see the sidewalk and everything, but I can't seem to put it into words. It's like a dream, where when you can see all the details but when you start to tell someone, it doesn't sound right. Anyway, we had dinner, and that was a pretty big deal. I don't remember ever going out to dinner with just Grandma, before or since. After dinner, we walked past a pet shop, and in the window I saw one of those little plastic Ferris wheels that you put in parakeet cages. You fill the cars with birdseed and as the parakeet takes the seeds out, the wheel goes around. I thought was about the coolest thing I'd ever seen. I really, really wanted one, but I probably didn't say anything. I've never forgotten it, though. I wonder if they still make them . . . .

Grandma gave me a dime (a dime!) to put in one of those gumball machines that give little toys in clear, oversized capsules. I don't know if they still use this size anymore; the ones now are much bigger, about the size of a plum. These were about the circumference of a plastic bottle cap, and maybe an inch long. I loved those things, in the abstract. They seemed to hold things that, if I had them, would make me so happy. Like Crackerjack prizes, only I didn't like Crackerjack and wouldn't buy it just for the prizes. Prizes. Something wonderful hidden within. I had a terrible craving for them. Maybe I still do.

Anyway. I put my dime in the machine, turned the handle, and got my prize-containing capsule. We left whatever store we were in, and I opened the capsule. There was a tiny clear plastic box inside the capsule, and inside the box was a black plastic spider, all squeezed in.

It scared the hell out of me. I couldn't have been more upset if it was a real spider. I remember just looking at the little box, with something awful in it. I felt like Pandora, only I knew there was something evil in the box and I couldn't do anything to stop myself from opening it. My Grandma had given me the dime, it was a present, I had to open it. (Don't think I don't know how ridiculous this sounds, but I was a very serious child, it was so important to me to live up to the expectations of the adults. I was committed to being a Good Girl.

I stuck the box in my pocket, and pretended it wasn't there. When we got back to Grandma's, I took the spider-containing box out to the kitchen. I left it sitting on the side of the kitchen sink, left the kitchen, turned out the light. I went back to the living room, and we watched Lawrence Welk. I colored, played with my glass stuff, but I was sick and scared inside. There was an evil spider lurking in the kitchen. When I got thirsty, I snuck to the kitchen, afraid the spider would somehow escape, get me. I dreamed about it all night, nightmares, it was waiting for me, it was waiting for me.

My mother came the next day, and things were better. I think I put the spider box someplace I wouldn't have to see it. I know I didn't throw it away; it had cost a dime, and my Grandma had given me that dime. How could I just throw it away? So I hid it, and eventually it lost its power over me, I stopped thinking about it.

I was a seriously fucked-up child, and I never told anyone.


*Aldous Huxley