¡El Spider El Morte!: A So Very True Nonfiction Tale
“I will not kill the spider. I will not kill the spider,” she said this inside herself, inside her home on Yorktown Street in Sarasota Florida. She made this choice a few times each day, each day she was in her bathroom and looking in the mirror where the spider liked to be.
This was a tiny little bathroom with a tiny little walk-in shower with a big-ol’ drain that went nowhere or to the where-ever-where that exists in places she hoped she’d never to have to touch with her bare hands. That kind of drain.
She could trust the toilet though. She’d never have to do anything with her bare hands there. A home was good, safe and solid if she could trust the toilet.
It was a tiny spider, this spider. It danced allegro figure-eights out of the corner of her eye, above her head, along the top edge of the mirror. All it did, all day long was loop its tiny loops up and down the bathroom mirror. It wasn’t bothering her at all.
The sink was quite tiny. Plain old white. When she brushed her teeth, a water path would collect at the base of the faucet and travel down the barely- there countertop, filled from inch to inch with girly bathroom things.
And there, of course, was the spider. A teeny tiny spider. And all it did, all day long was run loops and loops at the upper most spot on the mirror, only about an inch or so below the upper edge. If she gazed into the mirror, only at herself, she would never even know it was there.
All it did was loopdeloops all day. That’s all it ever did. But she grew bored with its loopdeloops. She grew agitated. She grew tired of sharing her girly space with a crawly thing. She decided to smash it. But, then, she was like, “Uh-oh. What about life and god and mercy and energy. What exactly am I putting out there in the world if I kill this little brown spider? It’s not doing anything to me. All it does is loopdeloop above my head that I wouldn’t even see if I just kept the focus on myself. It’s just a tiny thing. To somebody, something else, somewhere out there, I’m a tiny thing too.”
So the spider lived. The spider lived another few days while she contemplated the meaning of herself, life, god, love and power. She’d bring the focus back to herself if she found her eyes wandering over to the mirror’s edge to see the spider loopdelooping all the while depending on her mercy.
“I can’t believe I killt the spider. I just killt the spider. I thought I said I wouldn’t kill the spider. Aw, man, I just killt the spider.”
That’s what she said today. Today, just now. She killed the fucking spider. She took her index finger and just squashed it. She killed the tiny little spider that went loopdeloop on the upper most one- inch spot of her mirror, in its teeny tiny space, in her teeny tiny bathroom. But all along she knew she would. She’s done this before.
It was 2006. She lived in Alexandria Virginia and she slayed. She told her lover “it’s over” with a predictive simplicity that only hindsight saw coming. It felt so natural to declare a thing dead if it depended so thoroughly on her mercy. After the slaughter, she stewed in her gentle strength, having had the cojones to save herself. She stewed in the knowing that everything was all hers now. The shower. The bed. The floor. The fridge. Where she put it, it stayed. Nothing to hide or put away.
So there she was a few days into her this-is-all-mine thing and she was in the shower and washing her hair and she saw this spider. The first spider, a different teeny tiny spider but a little spider nonetheless and a brown one at that. A fucking spider, there, in the shower. But no worries, after the slaughter of her mate she was a gentle soul, attuned to life and willing to love. She spared tiny things. She invited the spider to stay for however long it needed. After all, it was her shower now. She didn’t have to explain what was going on between her and the spider. Her mercy was full, random and complete.
So everyday in the shower with the spider, she recommitted herself to letting the spider stay there and reaffirmed her faith — in herself — that she was the best damn human there was. After all who shares their shower with a spider?
But she tested the spider. Small tests to her but probably traumatic and cruel to the creature. She was, after all, a girl and why was she sharing her shower with a spider? Sometimes she would splash a little water on its web to see if it would just go away. The spider never left. Once she almost killt it by dousing its path with water. It got lucky that day by crawling into a nearby crevice. And, still, the spider stayed right there, building its growing web in the moist shower. Its spider-body was growing, too, though it never had food in its web. What did this spider know about mercy?
“Aw, it’s preparing a nest! It’s pregnant!” Another girly-girl. Another thing of god, made female — but it’s producing — in this, the first walk-in shower with a ground-level drain, in this, the first teeny tiny bathroom with a toilet that, let’s face it, never let her down.
And here she was with the spider. The first spider. The mothering spider. The spiderette who gave birth to a horde in the shower. The spider with the kids now. The spider with responsibilities. Did mercy have a responsibility in this? “Will they all live in the shower? Is it me and the spiders now?”
She doesn’t know how she killt them. (El spider es los mortos) Maybe she got some chemical spray expressly for spiders and pulled back the curtain, her left hand covering her nose and mouth, aimed the spray and looked away as the mother spider and the baby spiders withered in a flash, maybe never to realize she was the one who broke their unspoken rule. Or maybe the mother was away and came back to fumes and her children’s bodies withered, their cycles complete, wishing the fumes would take her too.
Or maybe she did it by hand. (El spideritos y lo morta) Maybe she took her left shoe and just beat the shit out of them in random complete order, looking at every insistence and checking it off her list. This is my life! This is my shoe!
Or maybe she did it, the way she thought of doing it every morning. (El spider el morte) Just took the shower head that she always made sure pointed away from the little family and pointed it, instead, right-straight at them. Down the drain.
If she tasted the son of God, and is the rib of Adam, the sin of Eve, shouldn’t she kill the damn spider? Like, fuck it, it’s a spider. Doesn’t life exact its toll on each and every one of us? Isn’t she a part of life? Ain’t she a woman? What ever happened to mercy? El spiderifico es los las muertotantinos!
The self depicted in little boxes, in little bathrooms, doing little things to little spiders practices mercy; as do all the little selves fitting in little boxes and frames, bending and twisting and trying to make sense out of what we do and don’t do, of what is done to us. We stuff our mercy where it fits, where it’s convenient, where it pleases. We wonder what’s it all about as we cover this earff with our sloughed off cells which are larger than the atoms they are made of which are larger than the things they are made of which are larger than the things those things are made of and ¡the spiders are dead! The spiders are dead. And she killt them. That’s the point.
The Reading of El Spider El Morte
