The Spider
(A study in metamorphosis)
Anger is short-lived madness – Horace.
There once was a girl name Nola Francine. She was curious, solitary, and never too mean. Her curly hair had flair but her heart was impaired. She had moved once again from somewhere to here.
The only child of only children, an unemployed driver and an artist forbidden. Mum was weathered, finely be-whittled, by winds of resistance that hollered against her. Dad bore a limp and gabbed as he ambled, awkwardly maintaining precarious balance. Rehearsing his malices, hardening his callouses…dreaming of greater, more worthier palaces.
Cuckoo clocks tick-tocked like generals commandeering the furnishings, drowning out percolating skirmishes. Fussings and fighting about how “money’s obscene!” Made school feel like romance to Nola Francine. The only hope of fun she was able to muster, was the mysterious hope of Tuberson Cluster. Learning, camaraderie, and knotted jump ropes. Envisioning her first day, she mended her clothes.
Alas, the heavy, hot gales turned sharply to blusters, she tightened her pigtails and packed up her satchel, her heart rang like bells rung from a chapel, quickening her start.
Kissing her dad whose leg was still sore, she trampled over her creaky front porch. Her adventure began as she skipped down the streets passing clumps of giddy girls, shimmery and crisp, strung about as pearls. Nola looked at herself, in her dull, ratty wares. And tried not to ask: will I make friends out here?
Then up on the grass, a ball sailed through the air and kerblonk, hit her head, swishing it into the goal. The boys were all flummoxed—puffing their pouts and boiling with gall. “That doesn’t count! She’s ruined it all!”
Still Nola marched forth with her bag and her books, averting sharp hooks like a savvy fish would. She knew, she just knew, that things may look scary but the wonders of learning were often more cheery.
Then a teacher diverted her path toward a long-line, barking “up to the gym, get there, it’s time!” Herded and shuttled and shoved halfway-in, the school sang in unison: go, fight win! We’re mighty TUBERSON!
Nola knew not a note nor a beat of the verse. She was filling with heat; she was wobbly of feet. Clutching tight her satchel, she counted the rafters ‘til the music died down and the kids hollered “faster!” The stampede of students was stymied by her, stalled out in confusion she was causing a stir.
At last Nola dislodged and she made it to science, sat in her chair searching for alliance. The teacher erupted, “Students now tell me, what have you learned in your summer so sultry? Let’s start off fast: what’s the name of our science class?” Nola shot up her hand, this was her chance: “Antomology! Mrs. Hong! Is that the one, per chance?!”
“What’s your name eager one?”
“Nola Francine St. Clare Mignon.”
But the teacher couldn’t hear, the darting jabs interfered. From this way and that, a riotous pact.
“You’re hair, oh how spindly.”
“Spidery and frayed.”
“Your bag how it tatters.”
“You name how insane!”
The class rustled in giggles building like a storm, swatting and smacking; they left her forlorn.
The teacher blew her whistle warning the class, but there was only fidgeting, not one student was listening. So Nola Francine St. Clare Mignon became an apparition. Disappearing inside, paralyzed by the attention.
The days-end bell rang at last, now they couldn’t harass. Nola bolted to the exit, avoiding more detection.
She skulked and meandered past the abodes—yellow, pink, and blue. Until her leaning shingled house appeared, absent of any happy hue. She opened the door and ignored her daft parents, and creaked upstairs without interference.
She sobbed and she flailed and locked herself up. Her mother was cross and yelled down the hall. “Come down here at once and help me cook sup! Come down her this minute! Let’s have a visit!”
Nola was stealth when she set out the platter. Unnerving her mother. “Whatever’s the matter?!”
But Nola Francine only gave silence and mope; she refused to to answer, she refused to chew, her stomach was all a’stew.
“You’re moody as the wind and quiet as a spider. To your room if you don’t want to sit beside us! To your room if you don’t want to eat what we provide ye!”
Nola Francine went on her way, stomping upstairs, straight to her secret lair, passed hurriedly by the bath, squeezed into the attic, ready to write her epitaph.
A spider rattled when she crouched next to his web, scampered across a beam and onto her head. “A spider you want, a spider I’ll be, and always sting first, you cannot stop me!” She held the spider tight, hand-over-hand, emptying him into her jar—“now you stay right there!”
The next day at school Nola came prepared. As the insults shot out, she let out a curse spout, her words were like venom, she made them feel worse! But Principal Smear was standing right there. He pulled at her arm and said, “you come right here!”
Nola huffed and she puffed in muddley pouts.
“If only I had the power of the newt, my arm would fall out. I’d slither away and find my own kind—if I could get free, the world would be mine!”
Dragged down the hall surrounded by snickering, her embarrassment grew bigger, her anger was flickering. Contained, it got bigger, the fuming she fumed. It didn’t release, it wasn’t consumed.
.
Her face bloated fire red but no steam came out from her ears or her nose, it found the only space it could find—the joints and knees of her still growing bones.
When Nola saw her shabby-worn parents hobbling up the school sidewalk, she grew madder than a hawk, she vowed not to talk. The pressure built inside her, her joints were filled to measure until like helium balloon she was lifted up and away, fueled displeasure. Like a balloon she was was floating as she imagined their goading, then her parents swung the door open, finding her swollen, up on the ceiling, trapped by crown molding.
The principal swatted with a ruler, then broom, and finally the blazer he got while on sojourn in Rome. But this only swept her outside through the window, she was swelling anew and uttering, “Adieu!” An uproarious wonder greeted her when as students looked up, she was swept by a zephyrous tide, she off and away, she was leaving them all.
Nola delighted in her superior view.“Now, they are the insects with nowhere to hide. They’ll never catch me. They won’t even try.”
The wind how it swirled and roiled and unfurled, taking her miles beyond miles on the wings of their whirl. Into the fading light of the afternoon’s melt, all along the jet-stream’s splayed belt. She pushed over lands, she pushed over fields, she pushed over strands, she pushed over dells. Wherever the winds blew, so Nola did, too. Over the raging ocean, her hair stiffened like a broom from the updrafting, icy, upper-altitude.
Then night came upon her and the view was all gone. So she fed on a stick and the bits of a cumulonimbus cloud, feeling a little less proud. What she wouldn’t do for rubbery greens instead of debris, as she whisked around, so high above the ground, finally so free.
Then the sun came ‘round blaring, when she thawed she could see…bare children, scurrying about, hailing her, “Can I have that blouse you wear? Do you have with you, a pear?” But Nola had nothing of the sort. She had only her ragged rapport… still, they hailed her and pleaded, “Are you the queen from Nor? Or Mary from the moors?” “No,” she murmured, “I am just a little girl! “
Weather, wars, disoriented birds, jumbo jets, and all the rest…she scraped against them all. She flew on…at the mercy of her intentions, whirling past and through dark jungles and onward through the continents. Past winter, spring, and summer, fall…she flew over them all.
She looked down again to see the wandering children still there, scurrying about and hailing her, “Come down!”
At first it was a rush being out of control, then a wonder to see it all, then sad and utter blackness. All those in the world without food, or in war, and the ones slaving in dilapidated factories, and still others worse off: filing like ants and scattering like bees, the multitude of refugees, so she started to cry (have empathy) as her heart began to break, her knobs began to ache, then mildly to deflate…
A great knocking sound and the creak of a heavy gate! Was this it, was she too late? Was this the end, death’s cruel fate?
Then suddenly—Nola wakes! Looking straight at Mr. Spider who’s trying to escape…trapped inside the jar, staring face-to-face.
“Nola?” a shrill voice uttered as Mum touched her sweaty head. “What are you doing up here, you sillyhead? You’ve slept ‘til morning…your father was scared!”
Nola embraced her mother as she hadn’t for many years. Her body felt like nuts and bolts, but her hair was soft in her mother’s hold. She blurted out her confession, off her nighttime adventure:
“I don’t want to be a spider anymore. I just want to be a girl. And make this place a better world.”
Nola let the spider out of the jar, savored her banana-walnut bar. She walked to school, she found her chair, pulled back the strands of her unruly hair. Her head held high, she fastened tight her smile. Ready to share what had happened last night, no matter what came, no matter what they thought.
The Kid with the Candied Feet