This is What Scares Me - Chris Callaghan

Past the field behind our small house in Compton, California is the Sacramento River. One day I plan to build a raft and float down it to the sea like Tom Sawyer. But that will be when I am older, eight or nine.

Today I am five and my sister and I plan an adventure. My sister is three years older than me and cruel; her mouth makes a smile when she beats me. Her fat legs straddle my skinny rib cage imprisoning my arms by my sides and she punches my flat chest and my bucktooth mouth.

She says she has the right to beat me because she is the Chief Explorer and I am only her slave, useful for carrying our equipment, but not necessary. I know better than to argue with her when her eyes are tinged orange with madness and her calm words are meant to dissect my heart.

The gravel beneath my back pushes through my dirty white T shirt. I can feel its marks on the bumps of my spine long before she lets me up.

“Now we will attack the castle,” she commands me. She points to the old water tower near the river. She force marches us to its base and I can see the rusted red and white danger signs on its side. One sign hangs loosely by a nail and whacks itself against the flat gray boards that make up the room beneath the tower.

We squat beside the room while she plans her attack, drawing her maps in the dirt with a stick and consulting with her officers. Slaves are not allowed to speak during this planning, but I am bored and make my own quiet game of throwing pebbles at a nearby stick. I count coup each time it hit it, I am winning.

My sister snatches me up by the front of my T shirt, “Now! You go first.” She orders me with a push. We sneak around the scary room under the round water tank until we come to the door set into the gray planks. She yanks open the door and shoves me into the darkness, where I stand frozen in fear as she slams the door shut behind me and leans hard against it. I can hear her cackling through my hysterical screams.

I whirl around and race to the door, spider webs cling to my eyes, nose, cheeks. I bang my fists against the door begging, “Please, please, please…” and she laughs harder. There are soft things with legs falling on my head, my arms, crawling on me. Through a sunlit crack in the wall I see hundreds of black spider bodies, the red hourglass looks painted on their bellies. I am locked inside that room for eons.

When she finally lets me out, my sister drapes her arm over my shoulder as we walk back to our house. Her arm around me makes it appear to the world as though we are friends, sisters. But we are not.

Fifty-seven years later I am still having nightmares about that day. But it isn’t my sister that torments my dreams; it’s the black widow spiders.