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The signs were there, yet I did not heed them.
In 1990, I had another life. I was married to a different man, had a regular job at a regular company with regular benefits, and I lived in a suburb with cookie-cutter houses, where most of the residents had the same education, income, and race. I actually went to Tupperware parties. Two Tupperware parties. {—-shiver—-}
Within four years, that life collapsed.
The end of that life began with Kitchen Spider Calamity of 1990.
My former husband and I married in 1989. We lived in Northern Virginia, but after I applied for a transfer to Richmond, we moved back in 1990. I liked the city. He liked the county. I liked older homes with character. He liked new homes with clean floorboards and carpeting. I acquiesced. He let me. So, in July 1990, we moved into our brand-new, four bedroom home built in a new subdivision carved out of Hanover farmland. Nice house. Deadly dull, but nice.
A month after we moved in, my then-husband (let’s call him “Ralph”) left for a week-long seminar in Miami, Florida. I was alone in the house for the first time. I still didn’t know the neighbors very well, so I was lonely indeed. I filled my days with work and my evenings with television, then dropped off to sleep happily snuggled in bed next to our two cats.
There was nothing remarkable about that Thursday night in August the week my husband was gone. The air-conditioning was blasting, my television show was over, and I got up from my solitary night on the sofa to take my snacks back to the kitchen. I turned on the light.
For the briefest of moments the moon held still in the sky. All air sucked out of the room like an airplane with an open window. I froze in my tracks, and so did he. Our eyes locked into each other, the brightness of the light forcing its way into my pinpoint pupils.
A giant wolf spider the size of my fist lay in the middle of my white linoleum floor.
Cookies tumbled from my hands and my glass clattered on the floor. Before the scream could leave my throat, the spider shot beneath the far cabinets.
BENEATH THE CABINETS!!
Cabinets have no doors that open to the beneath or behind. Flashlights cannot see into the beneath or the behind. Cabinets are anchored to the wall, immovable without a sledge hammer. Baseball bats are useless if you cannot access beneath or behind.
I jerked around, not wanting my eyes to leave the spot where I saw the spider retreat. What would I do? Alone – panicked – unable to breathe – what would I do?
I did what most arachnophobics do in these situations: Sought higher ground, assumed the fetal position, and fell into a crying jag. I climbed on top of the kitchen island, alternating between choking tears and hyperventilation. Alone, I sent forth prayers for deliverance.
An hour of uncontrollable terror later, the phone rang. I knew it would be Ralph. We were newlyweds still, so he called every night he was away to ensure I was okay. Our love was so strong, I knew he must have felt something was wrong and called just when I needed him most. Call it a “spidey” sense.
I braced myself, stepped off of the island, and stealthily made it across the kitchen to the phone.
“Hey! You’re still up?” said Ralph, sounding like my salvation.
“Weheeneahmaan…. Spiiiie-eedeeerr…. HUUUUUUGGGEEE….. Beeeneeathhhh caaabbbiitnnetttsssss….weneiannioswewsssw,” I blubbered into the phone. “SCCAARREEDDD…. Dooooonnn’ttt knnnnooowww whhhatt ttooo doooo….”
I unabashedly unleashed a horrible flood of fear onto my husband, seeking consolation. He was my rock, my anchor, my sanity. I needed a compass in the storm. I longed for a kind word to calm my racing heart and soothe the hot tears running down my cheeks.
Instead, my husband of eighteen months said: “What do you want me to do about it? I’m in Miami.”
For all husbands, wives, and domestic partners out there, when your significant other comes to you from a fathomless pit of hell, riding a tidal wave of flaming fear, hoping you will be their island of refuge, here’s a bit of advice: “What do you want me to do about it?” is not an appropriate response.
Empathy is appropriate. Kindness is appropriate. Compassion is appropriate. Those of us with phobias are not looking for you to fix the fear. While we are gripped in our fear, we cannot reason beyond fight or flight. We are looking for comfort and reassurance that everything will indeed be all right. Ralph did not provide this.
Something broke inside me during that phone call. I didn’t go back to the kitchen island. I went upstairs to bed, more alone than before the phone rang.
I had a terrible night. Not knowing where the spider was, I brought the cats in with me and plugged every hole in the room. I shoved towels beneath my door in case the spider crawled up the steps in search of a tasty snack. I closed every vent in the room in case the spider slipped into the duct-work and crept to my room to eat the cats. August in Virginia meant that no matter how warm it was in my room, it was warmer outside. So, the windows stayed closed. And besides, who’s to say that the spider wouldn’t crawl onto the roof, repel down the side of my house, enter my room through my window, and crawl into bed with me “Dr. No” style. I took no chances.
It was hot. The cats discontentedly mewed all night. I awoke every half hour to scan the room for giant arachnids. The next day I was a wreck.
Fortunately, I had a hair appointment. If you find empathy nowhere else in this world, you will find it at a hair salon. You aren’t just paying for a great hairstyle or a new you – you are paying for shampoo therapy. It’s worth every penny.
My hairstylist, Theresa, listened to my story without judgement. She comforted me when I started shaking in her chair. She understood arachnophobia because she had battled “flying” spiders in Japan. Then, she gave me great advice: use a broom. Brooms maintain a safe distance from the spider, and they can kill them with one whack.
With her support, I left that salon with renewed courage and a plan to rid myself of that spider all on my own. Plus, my hair looked fabulous.
Once I arrived home, I purposefully recreated the scene. I turned off the lights in the kitchen. I turned on the television as a distraction. And I waited in the living room, steadying the broom in my hand.
After a half hour, I whispered a prayer and gently crept to the kitchen entrance to peer in, the living room light casting long shadows on the vinyl floor.
There – in the very same spot where he sat the previous night – stood the very same saucer-sized spider, poised to fight. Something primal bubbled deep within my chest – a burning to rid myself of this fear forever – a fierce desire to master it, own it, destroy it! I had only to release it! I funneled all the shame, rage, and pain I’d felt since childhood into the rod of that broom and I let loose like a screaming banshee on the nightmare in the middle of my kitchen.
I closed my eyes, the broom came down, and WHAP! It was easy. I had done it! Slowly, I raise my eyelids, expecting to find a spider pancake with eight disjointed legs and fangs scattered across the floor.
Instead, to my horror, the spider skittered, circling the floor, moving in a panic left and right, up and down like a wounded rat trying to figure out where to go for relief. Mortified, I shrieked at decibels to raise the dead! My bravery evaporated and my heart strangled in my chest. The broom! The broom should have worked!
I closed my eyes, screamed, and whacked it again! The spider skittered all the more! So I screamed, whacked, repeated.
“AHHHH!” WHOMP!
“AHHHH!” WHOMP!
“AHHHH!” WHOMP!
“AHHHH!” WHOMP!
“AHHHH!” WHOMP!
Fear places the fearful beyond time and space. Whether I screamed and whacked for an hour – or five minutes – I don’t know. What I remember next is the doorbell ringing. I saw the spider curled in a ball on the floor. Numb and in shock, I walked to the door, opened it to find the only neighbor I had met standing on my stoop. She stared at me with my broom in hand, my face and hair soaked with tears, shaking from head to toe.
Without hesitation, she stepped in and asked what was wrong. I garbled, “SPPPPIIIIIDEEERR,” and pointed in its general direction. She moved into the kitchen, found it on the floor and hollered at me to stay put. The demon was coming unfurled, readying itself for another round with the broom. In one deft move, my new hero grabbed the paper towels, scooped the spider into her hand, and crunched it loud enough so I could hear it in the hallway. The next sound was a flush. My ordeal was over.
My neighbor became concerned after seeing me the night before through my kitchen windows, crying on the island. The moment she heard the scream, she didn’t stop to think, she just came to help. I fell onto her shoulder, awash in grateful tears.
For Ralph and I, though, things were not quite the same. I had opened the most profound recesses of my psyche to him that night, revealing myself at my most vulnerable point, showing the soft underbelly of my soul. And he held it not in tender mercy. He held it in contempt. Even if only for the briefest moment, even though it retreated to its hiding place, condescension had shown its ugly face.
We cannot respect those whom we hold in contempt, and we cannot love those whom we do not respect. This incident was the first crack in the foundation of our relationship, one that I had heretofore believed was founded in trust. My belief was mistaken, my trust misplaced. Four years later the foundation crumbled and our marriage along with it.
A few weeks after the Kitchen Spider Calamity, it so happened that I saw the shadow of what I knew to be a black widow spider cast by my headlights as I pulled into our garage late one night. (Yes, I’m that good.) I didn’t freak out. I didn’t cry. I didn’t scream. I was not about to be that vulnerable around someone I didn’t trust ever again.
So, I casually mentioned the black widow to Ralph. He laughed at me. He said I was paranoid. He said there was no way I could tell a black widow by its shadow.
So I have to say I was fairly satisfied when two days later, he screamed like a little girl and bolted into the house after he found the black widow under a cinder block in the garage.
I’d like to think that black widow had once known a husband like Ralph.
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