Untitled Document

What The Spider Did
Liz Arnett

Amy thought the autumn was a strange time. Here were these trees all green and busy with breeze, just like always, when suddenly they started to change color. She'd seen people get very angry, and their faces suddenly changed color. Daddy's face did that sometimes. Maybe the trees were getting angry. And then when it seemed those branches couldn't take it anymore, the leaves began to fall. Those leaves were everywhere! Crunching under your feet. Maybe that was what happened after so much anger -- you just dropped down dead. The leaves were so yellow and red they looked like a fire the day that her mother had packed up the car.

Her brother Tommy met her outside the school, slouching as usual in a black T-shirt, his curly hair covering his face. She ran up to him and yelled, "Tommy!" and he said, "Hey," so quietly she almost couldn't hear him. But his hair wriggled, which meant he was talking.

They walked along, with Amy running ahead of him saying, “Catch me if you can!” but Tommy kept on shuffling forward. He reminded Amy of Winnie the Pooh, moving along so slowly. So she kicked up some leaves and threw them up in the air so that they rained down on her like a little rain of fire. "Stop," Tommy mumbled, but she laughed and did it again, yelling, “Catch the leaves if you can!” Again and again, she twirled around underneath the bright leaves until they went around the corner of their block.

She stopped to look at the houses on her street. First was the Jenkins' house and they had no kids, and then there was the old couple the Murphys who sometimes gave her a candy when she went over to look for their cat, Bugsby, when he got loose. And last was her house, with two different trees, one with a big round shape and lots of shade underneath, and the other one that didn't lose its leaves and had a pointed top, like it was holding its hands together over its head to make the letter A. Tommy caught up with her, and then they both stared at their house. Their mother was there.

She was running in and out of the house, throwing things into the car. Tommy ran down the street, holding Amy‘s hand so that she had to run, too, but she couldn't keep up so she skipped and leaped like the ballerina in the pink book that Daddy read to her last night. Tommy asked their mom, “What are you doing?” but she didn't stop to answer as she ran inside. Daddy wasn't home yet, so they couldn't ask him. Then Mommy came back out with her arms full of clothes and shoved it at them. “Get in the car!” she shouted, and ran inside again. Amy couldn't hold so many clothes at once and some of them dropped on the ground. “Pick it up, Amy!” Tommy yelled. Amy jumped. It wasn't too often she heard Tommy yell. Everyone was yelling today, so she'd better hurry. She tried to pick up all of the clothes, but for every shirt she grabbed a sock would fall, and when she'd grab the sock, a pair of underwear would fall. So she followed her mother's example and began running back and forth to the car, throwing in a bit at a time. One pair of her underwear had blown into the street, so she left that one for last.

Just as she had scooped it up, Daddy's car came around the corner. Amy stopped at the side of the road and waved at him, waiting for him to pull into the driveway so she could ask him what was going on. Tommy yelled again, this time from inside the car, telling her to get in, but she wanted to ask Daddy first.

Her mother came out the door with her purse and keys this time, and screamed, "Amy! Come here! Now!"

And Amy called back, “Why, Mommy?”

“Just do it!”

But now Daddy's car was in the driveway. He jumped out so fast Amy thought he was going to fly. He had his work clothes on, and his suit jacket flapped out like wings as he moved. He ran straight towards her mother.

“Stay away from me, David,” her mother said, circling around the car, her long brown hair blowing back like a cape. Amy decided to get out of the way, and she sat next to Tommy in the backseat. There was so much stuff piled up she had to sit on top of the clothes and put her feet on a box. Tommy was staring down, his face covered with hair, so Amy did the same. She looked down at her shoes and saw the smudge where Jason at school had stepped on her foot. She heard her mother screaming something, pounding on the car, and when she looked up, both her mother and father ran back into the house, like the whole routine of running in and out was starting all over again.

But they didn't come back out. Amy and Tommy sat in the car for a long time, quiet. Amy saw Mrs. Murphy from next door standing with a cane on her front lawn. Mrs. Murphy stared at Amy in the car, and Amy waved, but Mrs. Murphy didn't wave back. She shook her head, turned away, and hobbled back into her house.

Out the windows, dead leaves swirled on the grass under the big round tree. The branches blazed with red and yellow. Amy wanted to climb up in them and look down on her house like a bird.

"I want to get out," Amy said.

Tommy didn't answer.

"I'm going to go play outside."

Tommy reached out and squeezed her arm. "No," he whispered.

"Why not?"

"Just be quiet."

Amy was quiet for as long as she could stand it, and then she said, "But there's nothing to do in here. I'm bored."

Tommy looked up at her, his nose poking through his hair and parting it. She could just barely make out his eyes through the curls. "Look, you can't go outside right now, ok? So stop asking."

Tommy didn't usually talk to Amy like this. He'd never squeezed her arm this hard either. She thought about Jason, when he'd stepped on her foot and said, "You're a retard." She didn't know what a retard was, but Jason said it in a mean voice. And now Tommy was being mean. It wasn't fair. She began squirming and shaking her arm until she got it loose, and she darted out of the car as fast as she could.

She ran to the tree and reached up to a branch. Just as she was about to swing herself up like Tarzan, she stopped. There was a fat, black spider with furry legs stretched out in the middle of its web. She'd just missed it with her fingers and she pulled her arm back. She couldn't remember if spiders could jump, so she didn't get too close. The silver strands of the web wound around and around, like the dart board in Tommy's room. The spider was in the bull's eye. Two blobs of white clung along the edges, like darts that had been thrown. The blobs were as messy as the knotted up balls of yarn that she sometimes found in her mother's knitting bag. She wouldn't touch them, though, to see if they were soft like yarn.

Something grabbed her shoulder and she whirled around. It was Tommy. He didn't look angry. Tommy said, “Let's go, Amy. Let's go inside,” and Amy remembered about Mommy and Daddy and all of the running around.

They walked up to the house and stopped at the front door. Tommy put his hand out behind him to tell Amy to wait. He was listening for something. Then he turned the doorknob so slowly it didn't make a peep. Inside it was almost dark, and they tiptoed in. They stood there inside the door, listening. “Hello?” Tommy called out. No answer. Sometimes Mommy stayed in bed all day with the bruises. Maybe Mommy and Daddy were both asleep with the bruises now, Amy thought. Tommy put his finger to his lips to remind Amy to keep quiet. Then he walked slowly, step by step, to their parents' bedroom. He opened the door and disappeared inside. Amy heard a noise -- was it the cat? It was almost a meow, but then it turned into crying. Was Tommy crying? Amy rushed over to the bedroom door but Tommy yelled “Stay out of here!” It reminded her of Christmas, no one allowed to see the presents.

Just then Bugsby walked through her legs. Amy reached out to pet him but he kept on walking. She followed him to the living room, where he curled up on the couch. Amy sat next to him, petting him, watching bits of his fur blow up into the air. Mommy would have to vacuum the cushions again. The house was so quiet she could hear the clocks in two different rooms, tick-ticking. She stretched out and leaned her head on Bugsby's soft tummy. He didn't mind. She fell asleep there, and when she woke up, Bugsby's paws were on her cheeks.

There was loud knocking on the door. She could see her mother's long hair swinging along her back as she opened the door and spoke to someone in a quiet voice. The person came in -- it was a police officer. Behind him it was almost dark outside. Amy wanted to hear what they said, so she kept laying there like she was asleep. It was the same police officer that had been here before. He talked with an accent that made him say his Rs wrong. Amy's teacher could help him with that, she thought. “He's in the bedroom,” Amy's mother said softly, twisting her hair into a long tail, then letting it loose again. She glanced over her shoulder at Amy, to make sure she wasn't listening. Amy squinted her eyes so they looked closed. The police officer's boots clacked on the tile as he followed her mother towards the bedroom.

When they were gone, Amy sat up and tickled Bugsby until he swatted at her with his paw and ran off into the kitchen. He was meowing for his dinner. She went and found Tommy there, sitting at the wooden table. No plates were set. “What's for dinner, Tommy?” Amy asked, shaking some food into Bugsby's bowl by the door. She liked to push down his food in the bowl to make it level. She sat down next to Tommy, and he looked at her but he didn't answer. She curled her feet under her as she always did at dinner and looked around the kitchen for a pot or a pan that might have the food. She asked again, "Where's dinner?" but instead of answering he dropped his head down on the table. Amy watched Bugsby, bent over his bowl, crunching on his food, his tail flicking.

“Do you know what happened Amy?” Tommy said, his voice muffled.

"What happened?" she asked.

Tommy put both his hands on the table, his head still down, like he was going to push off and do a somersault. "It's Dad."

Amy looked around. "Where?"

Tommy's forehead rolled back and forth against the wood. "No, Amy, just listen." Amy heard Bugsby crunching his food, the clocks tick-ticking, and nothing else. Suddenly Tommy pushed himself up with his hands, looked at Amy, and said, "Daddy's dead."

Amy blinked a few times and thought of her Dad, his hair combed over his bald patch, his suit jacket flapping out like wings. And she thought of dead, of dead leaves blowing away in the wind.

Tommy said, "Mom was trying to defend herself, she's not a murderer." Amy didn't know about this. Tommy seemed to be talking to the table. "She was kneeling over him, touching his face, kissing him. There was blood, a lot of blood," he whispered, and slid down until both of his arms stretched along the table. He pressed his cheek against the wood. Amy knew blood was not good. Blood hurts. Tommy flung his head up again and said, “I shouldn't be saying anything to you, forget it." He stood up and turned to the wall. Amy saw his body wobbling and jolting like doing a silly dance, but Tommy never danced, not even when he listened to music, and there was no music now.

Amy got up and put her arms around him. She could feel his stomach and chest shake from the inside. He bent down and picked her up, his face twisted and wet. “Are you crying, Tommy?” she asked, wrapping her arms around his face.

He nodded and squeezed her. “Amy, you know don't you?” His voice was loud now. “You know how he hurt Mom? You have to know that!”

She rested her head on his shoulder and croaked, “Yeah." She pictured herself running down the tiles in the hallway, running so fast before she could hear anything, before she could hear a smack, or her mother crying out. She'd run all the way to Tommy's room and sit on his floor, out of breath, and listen to him play his guitar, all night long.

Tommy loosened his grip so that Amy fell down a little, and looked at her with eyes about to pop out of his head. His voice was still loud, but deeper like a growl, when he said, “It's not going to happen anymore, you understand? He's dead now.” Now Amy started to cry. Dead was bad. Dead was worse than blood.

Tommy pulled her back up and held her tight again. “Don't cry, Amy. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said anything.” He spoke softly now, rocking her, and Amy buried her face in the soft skin of his neck. "Forget what I said. Tell me about something else," he said, "whatever you want."

Amy stopped crying and thought of the spider. "Do you remember when I got out of the car today?" she asked.

Tommy nodded.

"I saw a spider. A big one. And two white things on the web."

Tommy nodded again. He stared right into Amy's face, his eyes swollen and red.

"What are those white things, Tommy?"

Tommy bent over and opened his arms to let Amy down. She looked up at him, waiting for an answer, but he just turned to the table and sat down.

"What are they, Tommy?" She stood next to him, tapped him. "Tommy?"

"The spider eats them," he said. His hair was back in his face, and he was talking to the table again. "It has to eat them. To survive."

Just then, her mother and the police officer came into the kitchen. Her mom's long hair was tangled like she'd been sleeping. Amy ran to her and grabbed her leg. Her mother patted her head and said something to Tommy. Amy heard the word jail. At school sometimes they played a game called jail, where one person had to be the bad guy and the other people had to lock up the bad guy and guard the jail. Amy liked that game. She liked being the one in jail because she was fast and could sneak out before the guards even noticed. Then the police officer started talking into his walkie talkie and Amy's mom squatted down and kissed her on the forehead.

“I have to go away for a while. I don't think it will be very long. But I promise everything will be okay." Then her mom pulled her close and squeezed her so hard that it hurt. Amy put out her arms to hug her back, and strands of her mother's hair twisted around her hands like a web.

"Mommy," Amy said, her head pressed against her mother's shoulder, "is Daddy dead?" The squeezing stopped. Amy looked up at her mother's face. She saw her eyes growing big, filling up with water. Her mother nodded. Then she closed her eyes and two fast tears slid down her face. Amy hated to see her mother cry. She hated dead. She pulled her hands from her mother and ran. She kept running until she was out the door. It was dark now, but the lights on front lawn showed her the way. She stopped underneath the big round tree, lit up by a bright spotlight shining from underneath. She found the spider, dripping with black in the glare. She saw the white, stringy blobs, glistening in the light, clinging to the edge.

But this time it was different. This time, the spider was sitting on top of one of the blobs, wriggling its legs all over it, kissing it.

Liz Arnett is originally from Miami, but has been living in Ireland for a few years. She has had poetry and fiction published in Crannóg magazine, and was the guest fiction reader for the Over the Edge series in Galway City Library in January 2006. She is a member of the Galway Writer's Workshop and is currently completing a collection of short stories.