Spiders, delinquents + hate: Life is as big as it is small – Memory to Light, Day 18

Spiders

It’s not that I’m deathly afraid of spiders. I don’t love them. We are not friends. But I am friendly. I give them wide berth. I evacuate them in a flying tupperware out the door, and pick up the empty tupperware in the morning.

This altercation was different. I stood on a chair aiming a spray bottle of kitchen cleaner, the strongest stuff I could find under the sink. I held my breath, fought back chills upon chills over my body, and unleashed streams of the stuff on the black widow perched under the shelf. My plates were going to go there. But here was this hefty black spider with a red hour glass on her belly. That’s like the radiation symbol equivalent for arachnids. This one, pretty as she was, couldn’t live. If she stayed in the house, she could come find us in our sleep and kill us. If I threw her outside in a tupperware, her escape could come back to haunt us, or the dog who spent most of his time in the back yard.

It lasted too long. I sprayed her and she ran into a crack in the corner. I flooded the corner with spray and she came out briefly to struggle with the spray till she crept into the crack again.

It was awful. I get chills writing about it now. I talked to her between spastic outbursts, apologizing. I told her to make it easy on me. That one of us had to die here and it wasn’t going to be me, and I was sorry it was set up this way. As I talked to her, and pleaded for her quick death, the effort got longer and longer, kitchen cleaner dripping down my arm, my jaw tight from clenching. The truth was, she wouldn’t come find me in my sleep. If I got near enough to her territory, she would defend it, like any of us would defend ourselves and what is meaningful to us. But she had the power to harm me. And this scared me sufficiently to end her life.

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Delinquents

I never went to jail. I never got caught in cars with boys. I gave my family a good scare when I started bringing home girls. But beyond adventures in sexual identity, I was well behaved, to a dysfunction, it seemed. I did things right: I got approval. I crossed a thin line: Bad daughter/sibling/community member/child of God. Approval was so much more appealing to me than being a bad girl. Thus, my outward appearing halo.

At 22, I went to live with my mom for the summer. We hadn’t spent that kind of time together since I was a toddler. Story is she left then. By the time I was, oh, I don’t know, a teenager, I could count on my hands the times that I had seen her.

At 22, I was adult enough to write my own story with my mother, not the family story. She was funny and pretty and charming. She was loving and welcomed me to her part of the U.S. I planned for six months. We faxed letters back and forth, and I asked her all the questions I would ask a prospective roommate…what are your preferences, when do you go to sleep, do you like having guests over? I wanted it to be easy. There was a lot of time and a lot of legacy to run under the bridge.

Fast forward. It’s our first weekend together. And I discover: I am more child than I am adult. I am in a strange land with no spending money. The house is empty of food. And my mom apparently thinks nothing of flaking on the free time we’d been planning all week to instead go to the movies some guy that walked in the door 15 minutes ago.

She’s at the movies–one that I’d been talking about for days because I saw it before I arrived. I’m pacing in the apartment. I’m thinking, “Twenty years apart has come to this?” I’m thinking, “What the hell?” I’m thinking, “zzrhhckfrngtobbppt.” My mind is fireworks, my body is fireworks, because somewhere in my girl brain, as adult as I had entered this experiment, I am abandoned, I am not worthy, I am a puffed up pride-bomb bursting with: Do I really not matter?

I didn’t know what to do with my anger and confusion. I looked at the sliding glass door, open to the balcony. Plumeria scent drifted in on soft air. It was sunset. It was summer. It was too beautiful to be so far from home and so alone. I looked at the furniture in the room, an elliptical machine, a TV, a love seat, couch pillows, dresser drawers. I growled I stomped my feet. I considered with all seriousness throwing every piece I could get my hands on, off the balcony. I imagined clothes flying, wood splitting as it hit the ground three floors below, the glorious sound of glass exploding as the TV followed. In my imagination I felt set free of this rage as I watched the elliptical machine fly over the balcony wall.

I had never imagined destruction like that before. I had never felt the associated release, the get-back-at-you, look-at-me, I-really-really-need-you acting out that goes with neglect. For the first time I understood how teenagers could get into so much trouble. Could steal cars and wreck things and do heavy drugs to their serious detriment.

I left the room quickly. I locked the door behind me. I sought refuge in the apartment building’s laundry room, tiny and loud with washers and dryers, and empty of people, and screamed.

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Hate

I come home from a weekend away and find my car has been vandalized. The headlamps and mirrors are both busted, the windshield is shattered, the wipers are bent and mangled, the antenna broken. My stylized rainbow bumper sticker is slashed and hanging half off, the small, square “Equality” sticker is equally slashed, and scrawled in big black letters in felt pen, are the words, “Never cunt dyke.” There’s a smiley face drawn on the door.

The cop that comes to take the report refuses to record it as a hate crime.

I’m sitting on the bus. It is three weeks later. The car has been set on fire. Destroyed by flames outside my house, underneath some low hanging trees and in a neighborhood of tinderbox, Victorian-era houses. The fire house is around the corner. The inspector is investigating my friends and exes, embarrassing them where they work.

When the inspector questions me, he pulls out the community newspaper. On the cover is pictured my vandalized car and inside, my angry quote that it wasn’t recorded as a hate crime, despite the obvious indicators. He holds it up, sneers, and tempers an angry voice while saying, “I see you don’t think much of the force that is trying to help you here.”

I’m on the bus. A loop of the four weeks prior plays in my head. I look at the people around me, following the law, minding convention, dressing appropriately, being protected by their civil rights and recognitions. I want nothing than more to chop off my hair, dye it bright pink, pierce something on my face. I want to break the Law that I am not protected by. I want to do unspeakable things to convention, till it’s raw. Toss the rules that betray you when you’re not part of the game.

 

(You can read all of the Memory to Light stories in order on the side bar -->)

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Thanks for reading Day 18 of “Memory to Light: 31 Days of Stories, August 11 – September 11, 2011.” It is an exercise in writing about loss, for the purpose of letting grief wake, live, and pass through the system. Grief is transformation. Story is transformation. Our world could use a some wakeful transformation right now. Take a peek at the introductory post for the full story of what we’re up to.

Join me

Consider this project an online story circle. Read a story that moves you. Write your own on your blog. Link it to the comments below, so we can read your piece. If you don’t have a blog, write your story in the comments.

Let your memories live. Let small corners of your grief breathe. Let your loss be swept into the collective experience of people sharing, witnessing, and letting be.

Tagged as: 9/11, Grief, healing, Loss, Memory, Memory to Light, Story, Transformation, Writing