I am five years old – again – and at my grandmother’s funeral. Nana was her name. The church is full. Everyone liked her; wherever she went, people smiled. They trusted her and they laughed with her.
I sit with my parents. The three of us have a pew to ourselves at the front of the church because we were her closest family. I’ve never seen Mum cry before; she makes gentle sounds, and she bites her lip and squeezes the white handkerchief in her fist and her knuckles become the colour of candles. Dad looks around at the other people; he nods and winks at those he knows. He comes here every Sunday, so some of these people are his friends.
Everyone is dressed in black, but I have a blue shirt on. I don’t have any black clothes. Mum says I look better in colours. Black is not a colour, I guess.
The priest tells us it’s time for the first hymn; it was Nana’s favourite. I try to sing along but I don’t know the words. This is unlike the music I know. My parents won’t share the hymn book with me. They hold it over my head. I hum as loud as I can. If everyone stopped singing now – all at once – they’d hear me. Someone would ask where the beehive was. Nana would have liked that joke, and this makes me smile.
We are sat in the front row of the church. Nana’s box – her coffin – is almost within reach. I have already touched it. The hardwood sounds like a front door when it is tapped. I knocked on it a few times as people came into the church. No one knocked back. No one was meant to. Nana is dead, which means she is gone and shouldn’t knock back.
I haven’t seen her since she died. When she lived, she was the most fun person I knew. She would dress in bright colours and she made loud noises everywhere she went. But in her last few weeks at the hospital, she changed. She wore only grey gowns and she spoke only in whispers.
Now, Dad says she’s in heaven. Mum just says she’s gone. All I know is that the woman who gave me candy and made me giggle by making animal noises has left us. When I think about that my stomach starts doing somersaults. I think it means I miss her.
The hymn has finished, and the priest is speaking. He talks about God and Jesus and love and how Nana is with them; it’s all very confusing. He tells us that things are true because the bible says so. He tells us that Nana lives on in the kingdom of the lord, but I don’t know where that is. And I’m not sure why she had to go there. I’d rather she’d stayed here with us, but I’m told she had to go. Her life had no more days left. You only get so many. After that, you’re gone, and you don’t knock back.
As the priest speaks, I hear creaking. Mum looks to Dad – they can hear it as well. Suddenly, the table underneath the coffin collapses and the wooden box falls, and the lid comes off. There are screams around the church and the priest rushes over, but it’s too late – I’ve already seen Nana. Mum collapses onto the bench; her hands cover her face. Dad stands there with his mouth wide open. He looks to Mum then to the coffin and then back at Mum.
Nana is wearing the purple dress she wore for Mum’s birthday party. But she doesn’t look real. She doesn’t look like a person any more – she’s a thing – like a brush or a spoon. Her mouth is open, and I can see something moving inside.
The first I see of the creature is its black legs as it tries to pull itself out of her mouth. Then I see its big fat body coming out, and I can’t stop staring. I watch as it creeps across Nana’s face – each of its eight hairy feet stepping all over her. It climbs out of the box and down to the ground. I can hear Mum sobbing, and Dad is yelling something at the man who drove the big car that carried the box. The spider stops for a moment and looks around at all the people watching it. I wonder if it knows the trouble it has caused. I feel sick.
It scuttles into a crack in the floorboards and is gone from sight. But it stays with me. I can feel it at the back of my neck near my throat. It pulls on the skin until it’s twisted and tight. It will not let go. It doesn’t want to let go – it wants to stay there with me.
And that’s it – that’s the feeling I was after. I now close my eyes.
I am back on the stage. My eyes open to see row after row of faces gazing at me. Many mouths are open, and jaws hang low. I look to my right and see the spray tan-faced man in the lurid blue suit again. He smiles, and I see bright white teeth that dazzle under the stage lights.
“Well?” He says.
“Well, what?” I ask.
“Do you now remember why you’re afraid of spiders?”
