{"id":272,"date":"2023-12-06T02:47:00","date_gmt":"2023-12-06T02:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/english.illinoisstate.edu\/euphemism\/19-1\/?page_id=272"},"modified":"2023-12-06T03:08:04","modified_gmt":"2023-12-06T03:08:04","slug":"when-the-spider-was-a-child","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/19-1\/fiction\/when-the-spider-was-a-child\/","title":{"rendered":"When the Spider Was a Child"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
\n
Adelia Gregory<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

No one in the expedition bothered to look up at the cave ceilings. Not Brigitta, who watched them all, not the host with his preoccupation with hospitality, not their guide, nor the dutiful older woman whose God had once been the freedom of thought and opinion. Mrs. Chaddock was probably praying at that fictional altar in the private shrine of her mind at that very moment. Maybe that explained why Mrs. Chaddock pulled up the rear, shutting her lids every few paces as she staggered through the dizzying and longest of the narrow, domed Arhat Caves\u2014that, or the heat had gotten to her. Brigitta then exhaled a long gust of airless wind. The rest who tramped through the moist dusk also complained of oppression: the feeling of the roof caving in and suffocating them in a smaller and smaller fist whose perspiration-slick fingers squeezed their chests until no air remained to breathe.<\/p>\n

Even though the sun had only just fallen, the gloaming interiors cloaked the cave in continual darkness. A lantern illuminated something like an engraving, and Brigitta did a double take. Just spider webs glistening in the pearlescent light. She\u2019d first heard of the Arhat inscriptions several years back, in undergrad. During those years, the talk spread of an undiscovered site of Arhat etchings dedicated to the Ajivikas, a sect of ascetics, from Ashoka the Great\u2019s reign sometime between two hundred and sixty-eight to two hundred thirty-two BCE. The chatter alone had piqued the young American woman\u2019s interest. And then came the doctoral program in archeology. Whether genuine curiosity, hubris, or ambition unfathomable to all but herself, the girl couldn\u2019t say. She reached out to touch the marble-like stone walls, imagining it was the womb of India. A cobweb clung to her fingers, but she brushed it away without a second glance.<\/p>\n

So, of course, Brigitta didn\u2019t notice the spider dangling from the ceiling on a delicate silver wire. As the group tromped past\u2014their boots sinking into the grooves between the rocks and thighs bumping into lanterns\u2014the black invertebrate caught on the top of the young woman\u2019s wide-brim hat that she refused to take off. The rigid, water-proofed suede retained its form as the spider dug her legs deep, her scarlet hourglass hidden.\u00a0 Meanwhile, the four kept trudging along, oblivious to concerns outside their little group. Then, their host, Akeem, broke into a singsong voice.<\/p>\n

\u201cSix miles, six miles,\u201d he chanted. \u201cIf Allah permits it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Destiny beckoned, as it always seemed to with those paying attention.<\/p>\n

#<\/p>\n

At around half past one that afternoon, the group had disembarked one train, waiting for another to take them closer to the caves. A derailment had caused a flurry of panic and chaos. Akeem dashed off to find an alternative bus route, speaking a mile a minute. Mrs. Chaddock, too, wandered off to poke at souvenirs. With a few minutes alone, Brigitta finally pulled out the three-day-old letter from her husband that she\u2019d stuffed into the bottom of her purse. The letter went on and on, droning about some tenure politicking in the Oxford archeology department, who got what raise, who got fired, engaged, divorced, and so forth until Brigitta could cry from boredom. Every bit of the letter exasperated her, and she wanted to hurl the thing into the Phalgu, whose shores were within sight.<\/p>\n

As she approached the water\u2019s edge, Brigitta folded her husband\u2019s letter into a paper airplane, which she sent flying high into the air, above men sitting on homemade rafts made of tightly coiled but hollowed-out sticks\u2014tied diagonally with ropes across empty earthen pots that buoyed the boats\u2014before it came crashing down in an anticlimactic half-arc.<\/p>\n

The plane landed on the edge of one of the rafts, where a cross-legged man sat. He eyed her, then glanced at the plane and back at her. For a second, Brigitta paused, unsure of what to do. But then the man repeated the signal and gestured toward the paper airplane with a silent bob of his head. Brigitta suddenly understood: He\u2019d asked her if he should knock the paper into the water. Perhaps, it was for good luck, so she nodded. The man leaned over and blew on the plane, disrupting its fragile balance with the edge of his raft. After teetering, the paper slid beneath the mud-brown silt of the River Phalgu, which accepted the offering without protest. Like the ascetics who\u2019d written their devotions in the Arhat Caves, the man and his fellow worshippers\u2014like the river before them, like Ashoka the Great, like the sky above them pregnant with rain, like the sodden soil beneath them\u2014seemed to want nothing but the presence of all living things.<\/p>\n

As Brigitta gazed at the man, his raft started to float away along with the other Hindu devotees. She speculated, then, that knowledge didn\u2019t have to be spoken to exist. And yet, carrying it all inside without anyone noticing was an incredibly lonely thing to do.<\/p>\n

#<\/p>\n

By two-thirty, Brigitta found Akeem talking with a local man who stood, stooped, under a tent. The shade obscured his face until she got close enough to see the man\u2019s eyes dart away faster than an Indian flying fox could slurp the nectar from a flower.<\/p>\n

\u201cGreetings, Akeem.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGreetings, saheb.\u201d<\/p>\n

Saheb, the name for the economic master, the tourist<\/em>. No matter what her research might be, Brigitta was still but a tourist here. She tried to push the thought away.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell? Any progress?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes,\u201d Akeem said, perking up. \u201cI have met the most wondrous guide yet. Yusuf, here, speaks Arabic. We will get along. B-ismi-ll\u0101h r-ra\u1e25m\u0101n r-ra\u1e25\u012bm! Praise Allah\u2019s wishes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, but does he know the caves? Especially the longest one? It\u2019s six\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, yes!\u201d said Akeem. \u201cSix miles. I know. We\u2019ve been talking about it all day. I shall have to praise Allah a second time if we mention it again.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAkeem, is he an expert, though? Please\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, and he claims we must get to the caves before the sun sets a little after six-thirty. Right, rafeeq? Yes, okay. He says that sunset is when the bats and spiders come out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brigitta glanced between Akeem and his new friend. \u201cBut they don\u2019t come out exactly at sunset, do they? That has to be an old wives\u2019 tale\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

Akeem\u2019s face turned the hideous shade of boiled beets. \u201cOld wives? But Mrs. Chaddock is an old wife. I should think it very rude to refer to old wife stories that way.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just a saying, Akeem. A superstition based on little scientific evidence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Akeem shrugged. \u201cWith the British, everything is an old wife\u2019s tale.\u201d<\/p>\n

#<\/p>\n

Spiders, like people, have their own woes. Earlier that day, the widow spider had been in a poor mood before hitching a ride on Brigitta\u2019s hat. Her species\u2019 survival weighed on the spider as she decided whether to gorge on the body of her beloved back home, whose sacrifice might ensure the family\u2019s continuation. This circumstance might have occurred to the cave explorers had they ever bothered to stop and ask. Or wonder, at the very least.<\/p>\n

But, no, there was no time for considering the widow or the loneliness of a male arachnid as he realizes his profound love for his mate, a love unabated by time, or prosperity, or the fact that she has decided to rip his head off in a tragic, final act of devotion. Something a human\u2014a perpetual foreigner in the lives of spiders, no matter how many lands they\u2019ve touched or seas they\u2019ve crossed\u2014simply can\u2019t fathom. But the widow knew that sacrificing one\u2019s love for the sake of a species might be the most radical act of tenderness yet.<\/p>\n

#<\/p>\n

With a soft voice, the guide, Yusuf, had managed to secure transport through a friend. And the group fell silent during a few bus rides and a lurching forty-minute elephant ride along the craggy, pot-holed rural road from Zanifar, each wrapped in their aloneness. Once at the Arhat Caves, they found that not all loneliness was durable, thankfully. Some forms were as brittle as too-soft fingernails that bend due to insufficient minerals, like the kind of young woman Brigitta had set out not to be. Nevertheless, she would publish her findings, no matter how underfunded her doctoral archeology program or her expiring research budget.<\/p>\n

These thoughts kept her company as the silent procession trekked through foot upon foot of polished stone with nothing but their lanterns to light the way. Brigitta half-expected a colony of bats to erupt from one of the cave\u2019s crevices and swarm the air in a cloud, but none appeared. No snakes slithered out of the corners to spear her ankles. Nothing, not a wasp, not even a fly,<\/em> buzzed about in the dark. Of course, it didn\u2019t occur to her to wonder about spiders. And the footfalls of the group melted into distorted echoes as Brigitta counted her mother-in-law\u2019s wheezing breaths to keep her mind on something besides when they might find the ascetic inscriptions, at last.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy dear guest, old lady saheb\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

Mrs. Chaddock sharpened. \u201cPardon me?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, you\u2019ll have to excuse me,\u201d said Akeem. \u201cIt was a slip of the tongue. Your daughter taught me about old wives\u2019 tales <\/em>today.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brigitta resisted the urge to correct Akeem.<\/p>\n

\u201cOf course she did,\u201d the older woman said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut Mrs. Chaddock, how are you?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m all right,\u201d she said, breathing heavily. \u201cI\u2019m all right.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHow much longer?\u201d asked Akeem as he prodded the guide between his shoulder blades.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot long, saheb. I promise.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAs vile-tongued as my teenage boy.\u201d Akeem flew into a fury. \u201cHow dare you call me a saheb<\/em>, you two-faced snake, and with such sarcasm\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t mean it that way, sir! I meant it as \u2018companion,\u2019 not \u2018master\u2019!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWould the two of you kindly quit it?\u201d Brigitta whirled around. \u201cSuch peace ruined by your bickering, yet again, Akeem!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe really have<\/em> tried to help you find a suitable tour guide,\u201d said Mrs. Chaddock to Akeem in lowered, conspiratorial tones that nonetheless held more compassion than Brigitta had heard from her mother-in-law since arriving in India. \u201cDon\u2019t be cross now,\u201d she said. \u201cIf it\u2019s your son making you so snappish, I assure you, we will help your boy get into a fine school. Maybe even Oxford, where my son, Fraser, works\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t think we should avoid making promises we might not be able to keep?\u201d<\/p>\n

The group fell silent again at this interjection, leaving Brigitta to her thoughts once more. Whenever she closed her eyes, the face of the man on the raft appeared before her again, and she wished she could ask him about his life. Had he seen many paper airplanes before? But when she reopened them, he was gone. Some connections\u2014like the one with the man who\u2019d glided down the river\u2014couldn\u2019t last. Some couldn\u2019t become anything at all beyond a complicit glance or two.<\/p>\n

Even a friend for a few memorable, heartfelt encounters might become an acquaintance to bump into at a party and pass polite conversation. One could have a soul-reaching talk and never see that person again.<\/p>\n

Brigitta used to be the type of person for whom such unfulfilled connections were unspeakably melancholic, the same way she felt when she\u2019d stare at the snow falling outside her Oxford apartment window, watching, mesmerized, as the blizzard-like winds would scatter whatever gleaming crystals had accumulated in the courtyard. Sometimes, she even forgot who was lying in her bed or that anyone was lying there at all. It didn\u2019t matter so much who he was in those moments\u2014that he was older and her professor, soon-to-be her husband. In those flashes, he disappeared, the linens neat again. All that loitered was the snow, and it, too, kept diffusing. It was impossible to fight it.<\/p>\n

#<\/p>\n

When the spider was a child, she often heard her mother share widow proverbs about life. For example, A thief thinks everybody steals. There is no hand to catch time. When an elephant is in trouble, even a frog will kick him.<\/em><\/p>\n

Some remained utterly incomprehensible\u2014maybe because to grow up a spider is to grow up unloved, as her mother and father did before her. Like most other widow spiders, shy by nature, life was a cocoon suspended like a little parachute over a tree, a cave, a rock, or a log, fearing the crushing weight of some giant\u2019s foot all the while. The spider also knew a few other proverbs: The first day a friend, the second day a guest, and the third day, a calamity. She who does not climb will not fall either. The thief not caught is a queen.<\/em><\/p>\n

#<\/p>\n

The further the group got into the caves, the more Brigitta\u2019s calves seized from so much walking. Even with the intermittent water and snack break for humble but satisfying sarnies made with boiled eggs, buttery Baladi cheese (a favorite of Akeem\u2019s), and \u201cal jarjir,\u201d the Arabic word for arugula, nothing seemed to quench the sudden, parched fear that made her throat as dry as sandpaper. What if there were no undiscovered inscriptions? Then what? What would she say to her mother-in-law and her husband, who both funded her travels? That she\u2019d made a mistake in fighting for her chance to pursue this dream, that she should\u2019ve stayed behind and looked after their son rather than leaving him in Oxford this past month?<\/p>\n

The others didn\u2019t seem to be fairing much better. The guide wore a funny expression as if he were bloated. Not far behind trailed Akeem, also with a pained look. Perhaps, he was also a bit gassy from the Baladi. But Mrs. Chaddock looked the worst of them all. Despite doing a surprisingly good job of keeping up with the group, the woman\u2019s countenance appeared sourer than a pickle left too long in its salt brine.<\/p>\n

Undoubtedly, Mrs. Chaddock resented that Fraser had sent her to babysit his wife almost as much as Brigitta resented having her there as a chaperone. As her mother-in-law had said soon after disembarking their ship to India, she would much rather have stayed behind in Oxford, whose perpetual gloom and rain much suited her, a climate where summers and winters were like first cousins and where familiarity reigned even in the foods\u2014Oxford sausages, Oxford Marmalade, Oxford sauce, and the Oxford Bishop, the spiced, mulled port wine she so loved. The older woman wanted to be comfortable and idle. She craved relaxation. In her eyes, she had done all she needed to accomplish a full life: Mrs. Chaddock had worked as a secretary in the Oxford Biology Department, where she\u2019d met her husband; she had raised three beautiful boys, now men, and had found her eldest and favorite an ideal bride from an upscale Westminster family, which Brigitta had spoiled by getting pregnant. Brigitta could just imagine\u2014<\/p>\n

Mrs. Chaddock\u2019s voice startled Brigitta. \u201cI must know how much longer<\/em>, Akeem. All this walking is intolerable. Immensely irritating.\u201d<\/p>\n

Akeem looked at his watch as if it might track their distance. \u201cThe trek is about six miles, Madam\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI know that,\u201d she said. \u201cBut how much longer?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cProbably at least thirty or forty minutes, I\u2019d say.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mrs. Chaddock then turned on Brigitta. \u201cI\u2019m an old woman!\u201d her mother-in-law said in a huff. \u201cI should be resting, enjoying my ripe old age. Instead, I\u2019m out here\u2014practically in the middle of the Earth\u2014just so my daughter-in-law can crawl around in some dirty cave, armed with only her abominable ambition! Good gracious, why aren\u2019t you more like the other girls, who get desk jobs? Why do you insist on your infernal rock-hunting expeditions, your\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

Mrs. Chaddock tripped over a loose stone, landing on her palms with a groan. Akeem immediately rushed over to her, helping her find a gravel-free spot and giving her sips of one of the water jugs he carried for them.<\/p>\n

Again trapped like a cornered little animal, Brigitta seethed too much to stay and squabble. So, she took off, leaving her mother-in-law to Akeem. His hired guide ran to catch up with Brigitta. But just as the cave\u2019s shadows began to swallow the two figures, one seated, one standing, Mrs. Chaddock hurled another insult at Brigitta\u2019s back.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou always were an impulsive girl! That\u2019s why we\u2019re in this situation in the first place!\u201d<\/p>\n

Her mother-in-law\u2019s voice echoed after she was out of sight, long after her lantern became a mere flicker on the dark walls.<\/p>\n

#<\/p>\n

What do I abhor?<\/em> The spider asked itself that question every time she drew closer to puncturing the young woman\u2019s neck. To the arachnid, her traveling host was nothing more than a body, a being on which to make its mark. \u2003\u2003Nothing more than an outsider with an inflated ego, nothing more than a foreigner with an anthropological lust for examining the unknown under a magnifying glass. To the woman, the spider didn\u2019t exist at all. The thought plagued the eight-legged passenger as she slowly crawled across the stiff suede of Brigitta\u2019s hat, feeling the rough ridges of the material, imagining the cow it once was, sampling the lurid taste of desiccation. To hate made the widow feel alive.<\/p>\n

She took a step forward, eyeing the woman\u2019s collar. Although ironed, a thin film had painted the cotton a pale canary-yellow. The lady hadn\u2019t paid much attention to her dress. The contempt curled the fibers around the spider\u2019s mouth as she contemplated a bite. But, of course, no good British professional would show up with an uncleaned collar, so the widow took a bite out of pure spite.<\/p>\n

#<\/p>\n

She took a step forward, eyeing the woman\u2019s collar. Although ironed, a thin film had painted the cotton a pale canary-yellow. The lady hadn\u2019t paid much attention to her dress. The contempt curled the fibers around the spider\u2019s mouth as she contemplated a bite. But, of course, no good British professional would show up with an uncleaned collar, so the widow took a bite out of pure spite.<\/p>\n

#<\/p>\n

Brigitta knew that others thought she was but a sightseer exhuming the interred secrets of old caves. To them, she was no more than a tourist that collected experiences. But the young woman wanted to assure everyone, anyone at all, that she was no tourist, no sightseer, no anthropological exploiter\u2014she was a human ready to learn. Brigitta even had these high-flown ideas that she would understand the true nature of life by being far away from the hub that spawned her. As her neck suddenly tingled like a mosquito bite, she kept telling herself that if only she could see things from an outsider\u2019s perspective, perhaps even a spider\u2019s, then\u2014and only then<\/em>\u2014would she come to some deeper meaning about her purpose here.<\/p>\n

On Earth.<\/p>\n

As a child, she\u2019d often told her parents that she was part and parcel of the universe. I am an atom, Mama. A piece of flesh. A slice of the cosmos.<\/em><\/p>\n

#<\/p>\n

The spider sometimes wondered what the opposite of hate might be. Love? No, that felt mighty too prosaic. Procreation? Wasn\u2019t the continuation of one\u2019s species the opposite of hatred? But no, creatures could be conceived in the confines of dislike. No two beings technically had<\/em> to like one another to come together in Earth\u2019s eternal union of flesh and flesh, atom and atom, being and being. No, that wouldn\u2019t do at all. Hope? What about hope?<\/p>\n

On that thought, the spider stumbled, finding its silk the way a toddler discovers the lip of a bottle, eager, so eager, that milk dribbles down the baby\u2019s chin and coats its sticky neck. But the image of a human\u2019s hunger gave the spider no relief. Hope was, after all, for the privileged few who could wield it like a sword. Instead of hope, the widow had death! destruction! despair!<\/em> Those three Ds often defined an adolescent spider\u2019s life, that existential crawl toward adulthood. Accepting this fate brought the spider some relief, as slight as hope itself.<\/p>\n

#<\/p>\n

Brigitta was unsure how many minutes had passed since they last saw her mother-in-law and Akeem. It could have been hours ago, but that didn\u2019t seem right. But what did? Her neck ached after a long day in the heat; her eyes throbbed; she felt faint. But she and the guide pressed on, and there they were. Then, finally, at the end of the cave\u2014look!<\/em> The walls had a lacquered surface, a gloss a stone achieves by a thousand or more hands.<\/p>\n

A web swept the furthest wall with trembling little crystal drops, but nothing more.<\/p>\n

Not even a single inscription. Not one.<\/p>\n

Even as Brigitta\u2019s head whirled\u2014is that black shape on her arm a bug?\u2014she spotted the filmy outlines of something that felt greater than money, lust, land, and people. No words could describe it, but with a tingling neck, Brigitta thought of vampires and bats and spiders and how only female widows have dangerous venom. What did it mean that only the women can bite, their men relegated to the periphery of courtship, web-weaving, and mating, an act that might be their last?<\/p>\n

\u201cSal\u0101m, sal\u0101m, sayidati,\u201d Yusuf said, clearing his throat timidly. \u201cShould we go back? The day is tired.\u201d<\/p>\n

Akeem\u2019s comment about the sun setting over bats and spiders flitted through Brigitta\u2019s mind, and she wondered what she would say about the cave walls as they headed back.<\/p>\n

She thought of the glistening spiderweb and the Sharia and how it dictated that the Islamic way of life is one in which serving other beings is the way to their creator, or the Hindus, whose Mah\u0101y\u0101na Buddhism taught that life was like a vast net that stretched infinitely in all directions. A single, brilliant, perfect jewel in every eye of the net. Each gem reflected every other, infinite in number, bearing the image of all the others. Infinity to infinity,<\/em> she thought as Yusuf\u2019s lantern led the way through the spidery darkness.<\/p>\n

Whatever affected one affected all.<\/p>\n

THE END<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Adelia Gregory No one in the expedition bothered to look up at the cave ceilings. Not Brigitta, who watched them all, not the host with his preoccupation with hospitality, not their guide, nor the dutiful older woman whose God had once been the freedom of thought and opinion. Mrs. Chaddock was probably praying at that … <\/p>\n

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