The first time I remember finding it, I thought perhaps I was still sleeping. I was about five, or six, or even seven years old, for I had yet to develop the ability to recall events on any countable mental or emotional timetable, and only knew each day from moment to moment.
I pulled at it hoping it would dislodge itself, but it only seemed to lodge further in.
I held a mirror to it, thinking I could see it, but my human eyes could not see that side of my head. I forgot about it soon after breakfast, but felt a slight twinge where it laid when someone spoke, or made a sound too harsh for my little skull.
I left it there, trying to think of it as a little secret I might keep from others, until, that is, I believe I felt it move one night, further into my ear.
Then I knew I might be doomed.
The next morning I woke with my finger already checking to see that it was still there, and it was. I tried to scratch it out, the film of sleep still on me, but that only irritated the canal that leads to the brain.
I rose with concern. I tried knocking it out by using my hand or hitting my head against the wall, but it held steadfast in the ear’s tiny passageway, perhaps inching in slightly further.
Outside my room, I thought ignoring it might make it go away, but in trying to ignore it, I found myself thinking of it more often.
When I did forget about it, its tickling that part of my inner ear brought my attention back to it, even in the presence of others, or especially so.
I grew embarrassed by it, knowing I was the only one who knew it was there. My secret had become self-consuming.
I thought I was to blame for it being there, so I kept myself hidden. I lied prone under beds, folded up in closets, or shrunken in the large shadows that went about running the household, or the outside world.
One day, at about the age of ten, fearing it would fall too far into the irretrievable pit of my inner head, I used a pair of tweezers and, after some rather fleshy pieces of me were removed, I extracted it from the conch that is my ear, and beheld it for the first time. What a horror it was to lay my eyes upon it at last! What a shock it was to see the little cotton-like sac gleaming in my palm as conspiratorially as a stolen pearl.
At first glance I thought it was the tip end of a cotton swab, until I saw it move, and knew that it was an egg—an arachnid’s egg.
I flushed it away almost compulsively, and was glad to be rid of it. I laid in bed that night, my ear now swollen with pain from the extraction process, almost more disturbed at the memory of it, than of the thing itself. Whether I had dreamt of a large hungry spider removing an annoying limbsy morsel from one of its orifices, I
cannot be certain, only that the dream seemed familiar to me, as though it had taken my whole life to have.
The next morning my left ear still throbbed, but what did that matter knowing I had removed curse from my head, and could go about the 4th Grade as normally as all the other ten year olds.
Only, staring into the mirror as I brushed my teeth, I turned to see the right ear was stuffed with the egg as obviously and as heinously as though the spider-mother had angered that I removed her egg, and thus placed a slightly larger one in me as a kind of remonstrance against the slaying of her many unborn children.
Only no mother spider was to be found. So no sooner had I found this new one, I removed it and flushed it away too. Each egg I found I destroyed just as quickly as the last, but the eggs seemed to reappear only in other parts of my room, my hair, my person.
Was it the same egg? I wondered as I inspected every open pocket on my body for the mother who so repeatedly left her young where she pleased.
By the time I was twelve I had invented new ways of ridding the egg after I removed it, and found I held onto the fear that it would hatch too delightfully. Until, that is, one morning I found that it did hatch in the night.
Surprised that I had not crushed it in my sleep, I looked down at it on my pillow, and noticed that there was only one spider-baby despite all the spider-mother’s efforts, and though, sympathetic as I was, I feared the others had already gone loose. But I found none.
This one offspring was blackish, and had two pincers, eight legs and what looked like an hourglass on the back of its abdomen, and I wondered if it looked like its mother, if it was poisonous, and if I smashed it, if I would be cast into Hell for its demise.
Once I decided I would not go to spider-hell, I crushed it with a book or a shoe or whatever was nearest, almost sad to see it go after so many years of playing out that game of seek and destroy with it. But before I could feel too guilty, I found it a few days later in another room in the house that was my body.
As I grew, I came to recognize the glint of the web the spider-baby had left behind, and it seemed to grow at the same pace as I did. Eventually I became accustomed to seeing it, though it always tried to keep itself concealed from me hiding and ducking or scuttling away into some dark corner or crevice, and I only caught brief
glimpses of its hairy little face, spindly legs, its eyes.
I found its webs more often than I found the hour-glassed spinner, and they became a constant in and around my life: my birthday cakes—covered in thin, hardly
visible webs, my gifts—ribboned in webs, my clothes, my windows, my family—all glisting in webs.
My secret followed me to school. It peeped out from behind my homeroom teacher’s ears when she addressed me. It crawled out from the lunch ladies’ hair net, and once, it came in a flash from one eyelid to the other on the face of the school’s Principle who, having been sent to his office after my Science teacher found me in class after hours, tried explaining the dangers of fitting my skinny limbs and body inot the trantula aquarium.
Dangerous?" I asked.
"Yes." he said
“But,” I said.
“Yes, “ he asked.
“—sometimes Mother and Father sleep in the same bed.” I said.
The Principle paused, scratching his ear where the spider had been.
“How is that the same thing?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said.
All my interlocutors seemed to have no knowledge of the spider’s appearance. Or if anyone saw or felt the insect crawling out of his or her shirt collar, or his or her nose, they did not let on. And so I said nothing. Only looked on when I saw it poke its head out of Jimmy So-and-so’s sandwich before he bit into it. Only smiled when I saw the bug’s eyes staring at me from Samantha So-and-so’s tongue while she and her cronies made fun of me, told others I had imaginary friends, then left tarantula legs in my books, in my lunch, over my stale in the Boy’s Restroom. For she was cruelest to me that year, so it gave me pleasure when, visible only in the briefest moments, like when she laughed or said something that required her sharp mouth to open wider, I saw the spider still on her tongue, staring out at me, in collusion.
Eventually, though, my school antics got back to the household, and I was sent to see a shrink.
Shrink sat,cross-legged, drawing pictures while I sat there and denied the existence of any such invention, any such insect, any such secret, but even then, when I looked up from the large mauve seat to see his reaction, I saw the spider crawling out from his jacket pocket.
In my twenties, I sensed the spider’s presence even when I could not see it. In my bed and in my dreams, binding its fine violin strings over every inch of my life.
In my thirties, fearing others would see its cobwebs, I avoided people as much I could. I stayed indoors, and watched the thing surreptitiously play hide and seek
whenever I turned to my left or my right, only to be left ripping its flimsy webs from across my furniture, my dinner; my pets.
I lived simply, eating surprisingly little, and speaking in as quiet a voice as I could lest it heard me and would come out to taunt me. After years of solitude I found it too
spoke in as small a voice as mine, and only I heard it.
Then one day, when I had grown old, I looked into the mirror, and found that my face had changed. It had grown dark, and my skin had grown pilose. I saw from the
reflection behind my head every inch of my life had now been covered in webs, having long given up removing them. Webs over webs so that the objects the webs covered couldn’t be seen any longer.
I turned around as though for the first time, and had I not known it, I would have believed myself to be in the spider’s egg I had found so many years ago. Only the egg was now in the ear of the some larger, greater being, and it was I in that someone’s ear.
I pulled at it hoping it would dislodge itself, but it only seemed to lodge further in.
I held a mirror to it, thinking I could see it, but my human eyes could not see that side of my head. I forgot about it soon after breakfast, but felt a slight twinge where it laid when someone spoke, or made a sound too harsh for my little skull.
I left it there, trying to think of it as a little secret I might keep from others, until, that is, I believe I felt it move one night, further into my ear.
Then I knew I might be doomed.
The next morning I woke with my finger already checking to see that it was still there, and it was. I tried to scratch it out, the film of sleep still on me, but that only irritated the canal that leads to the brain.
I rose with concern. I tried knocking it out by using my hand or hitting my head against the wall, but it held steadfast in the ear’s tiny passageway, perhaps inching in slightly further.
Outside my room, I thought ignoring it might make it go away, but in trying to ignore it, I found myself thinking of it more often.
When I did forget about it, its tickling that part of my inner ear brought my attention back to it, even in the presence of others, or especially so.
I grew embarrassed by it, knowing I was the only one who knew it was there. My secret had become self-consuming.
I thought I was to blame for it being there, so I kept myself hidden. I lied prone under beds, folded up in closets, or shrunken in the large shadows that went about running the household, or the outside world.
One day, at about the age of ten, fearing it would fall too far into the irretrievable pit of my inner head, I used a pair of tweezers and, after some rather fleshy pieces of me were removed, I extracted it from the conch that is my ear, and beheld it for the first time. What a horror it was to lay my eyes upon it at last! What a shock it was to see the little cotton-like sac gleaming in my palm as conspiratorially as a stolen pearl.
At first glance I thought it was the tip end of a cotton swab, until I saw it move, and knew that it was an egg—an arachnid’s egg.
I flushed it away almost compulsively, and was glad to be rid of it. I laid in bed that night, my ear now swollen with pain from the extraction process, almost more disturbed at the memory of it, than of the thing itself. Whether I had dreamt of a large hungry spider removing an annoying limbsy morsel from one of its orifices, I
cannot be certain, only that the dream seemed familiar to me, as though it had taken my whole life to have.
The next morning my left ear still throbbed, but what did that matter knowing I had removed curse from my head, and could go about the 4th Grade as normally as all the other ten year olds.
Only, staring into the mirror as I brushed my teeth, I turned to see the right ear was stuffed with the egg as obviously and as heinously as though the spider-mother had angered that I removed her egg, and thus placed a slightly larger one in me as a kind of remonstrance against the slaying of her many unborn children.
Only no mother spider was to be found. So no sooner had I found this new one, I removed it and flushed it away too. Each egg I found I destroyed just as quickly as the last, but the eggs seemed to reappear only in other parts of my room, my hair, my person.
Was it the same egg? I wondered as I inspected every open pocket on my body for the mother who so repeatedly left her young where she pleased.
By the time I was twelve I had invented new ways of ridding the egg after I removed it, and found I held onto the fear that it would hatch too delightfully. Until, that is, one morning I found that it did hatch in the night.
Surprised that I had not crushed it in my sleep, I looked down at it on my pillow, and noticed that there was only one spider-baby despite all the spider-mother’s efforts, and though, sympathetic as I was, I feared the others had already gone loose. But I found none.
This one offspring was blackish, and had two pincers, eight legs and what looked like an hourglass on the back of its abdomen, and I wondered if it looked like its mother, if it was poisonous, and if I smashed it, if I would be cast into Hell for its demise.
Once I decided I would not go to spider-hell, I crushed it with a book or a shoe or whatever was nearest, almost sad to see it go after so many years of playing out that game of seek and destroy with it. But before I could feel too guilty, I found it a few days later in another room in the house that was my body.
As I grew, I came to recognize the glint of the web the spider-baby had left behind, and it seemed to grow at the same pace as I did. Eventually I became accustomed to seeing it, though it always tried to keep itself concealed from me hiding and ducking or scuttling away into some dark corner or crevice, and I only caught brief
glimpses of its hairy little face, spindly legs, its eyes.
I found its webs more often than I found the hour-glassed spinner, and they became a constant in and around my life: my birthday cakes—covered in thin, hardly
visible webs, my gifts—ribboned in webs, my clothes, my windows, my family—all glisting in webs.
My secret followed me to school. It peeped out from behind my homeroom teacher’s ears when she addressed me. It crawled out from the lunch ladies’ hair net, and once, it came in a flash from one eyelid to the other on the face of the school’s Principle who, having been sent to his office after my Science teacher found me in class after hours, tried explaining the dangers of fitting my skinny limbs and body inot the trantula aquarium.
Dangerous?" I asked.
"Yes." he said
“But,” I said.
“Yes, “ he asked.
“—sometimes Mother and Father sleep in the same bed.” I said.
The Principle paused, scratching his ear where the spider had been.
“How is that the same thing?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said.
All my interlocutors seemed to have no knowledge of the spider’s appearance. Or if anyone saw or felt the insect crawling out of his or her shirt collar, or his or her nose, they did not let on. And so I said nothing. Only looked on when I saw it poke its head out of Jimmy So-and-so’s sandwich before he bit into it. Only smiled when I saw the bug’s eyes staring at me from Samantha So-and-so’s tongue while she and her cronies made fun of me, told others I had imaginary friends, then left tarantula legs in my books, in my lunch, over my stale in the Boy’s Restroom. For she was cruelest to me that year, so it gave me pleasure when, visible only in the briefest moments, like when she laughed or said something that required her sharp mouth to open wider, I saw the spider still on her tongue, staring out at me, in collusion.
Eventually, though, my school antics got back to the household, and I was sent to see a shrink.
Shrink sat,cross-legged, drawing pictures while I sat there and denied the existence of any such invention, any such insect, any such secret, but even then, when I looked up from the large mauve seat to see his reaction, I saw the spider crawling out from his jacket pocket.
In my twenties, I sensed the spider’s presence even when I could not see it. In my bed and in my dreams, binding its fine violin strings over every inch of my life.
In my thirties, fearing others would see its cobwebs, I avoided people as much I could. I stayed indoors, and watched the thing surreptitiously play hide and seek
whenever I turned to my left or my right, only to be left ripping its flimsy webs from across my furniture, my dinner; my pets.
I lived simply, eating surprisingly little, and speaking in as quiet a voice as I could lest it heard me and would come out to taunt me. After years of solitude I found it too
spoke in as small a voice as mine, and only I heard it.
Then one day, when I had grown old, I looked into the mirror, and found that my face had changed. It had grown dark, and my skin had grown pilose. I saw from the
reflection behind my head every inch of my life had now been covered in webs, having long given up removing them. Webs over webs so that the objects the webs covered couldn’t be seen any longer.
I turned around as though for the first time, and had I not known it, I would have believed myself to be in the spider’s egg I had found so many years ago. Only the egg was now in the ear of the some larger, greater being, and it was I in that someone’s ear.
