On Beauty & the Wasteland - v.1/issue 3 - Secret

  

On Beauty & the Wasteland

V.1 / issue 3

Secret

Hush, now. I have a secret to tell. 

I can scale spiderwebs up and down up again between the surface of the earth and the deep dark well. 

I can scale spiderwebs down and up and down again between the surface of the earth and the pale pink prison cell. 

I do not always remember that I can scale spiderwebs.

Even when I have forgotten, I climb. I climb the jungle gym on the playground at school. I climb on the swingset frame in the backyard. I climb trees to the very top where the branches are bendy, riding the wild winds when they are high. I climb the rafters in the 4-car garage. I climb the walls, resting in the high corners of doorframes. 

My mother calls me ‘monkey,’ ‘simian’ laughing at me, my arms so long and my hands and feet so big. I forget about silent spindly spiders and their delicately woven webs and begin to think of myself as monkey girl — dumb, ugly, graceless; the butt of their joke. Lucky they are stuffing bananas down my throat. “Make the monkey sounds,” dad says. And not quite aware of my humiliation, I do. “Oo-oo-ee-ah-ah.”

When I can remember the spiders, I am fascinated by their webs. They offer me freedom even as they entrap. The spider-women ask me for stories. I’m happy to have someone listen to me. I tell them stories; sing them songs; share with them my treasures. Even as they listen, I notice they are hard to see, these spider-women. These aunties. As they listen, as they thank me, I start to feel more curious about who they are. 

“Who are you?” I whisper shyly. They are often silent. Sometimes they reply by saying who they are not. “I am not my web,” they say. “I am not my silk. I am not my mate or my egg sack or my children.” “I am not my venom or my meals.” “But who are you?” I ask again. So much space. 

“Who am I?,” they ask me. I try to look at them. To focus on them. It’s as if a glass prism is stuck in my eye where they would be, like a teardrop breaking the light. They appear fragile. Easily crushed. They are so hard to see. Almost invisible. They hide in plain sight. Sometimes I have to look for them even when I remember them. They are delicate, sensitive, perceptive artists. Careful, nimble, light as air, able to float on a breeze. They are solitary. When I ask them about their husbands, they laugh. “People are afraid of you,” I tell them. “People hate you.” Silence.

At night I dream of climbing the rafters all the way back to Aunt Mary. I dream this dream so many times. A dark starry sky above. A wide deep river below. Monsters contained within a brick-walled labyrinth behind. The flames of the old steel mills in the direction I am going, between us. I am suspended in air balancing on rafters or bars or a web, floating. Gingerly I make my way across the expanse. I slip and fall, waking before I reach water. I never reach Aunt Mary — not once.