Norah and the Spider Baby

A true account of my mother, a ghost, and an email I ought not have sent.

It was only when I moved to the United States that I finally learned that not everybody comes from a family of storytellers. I might have learned it in Australia but, somehow, it was something I had to learn overseas.

I met my friend Zoya’s family in the Mid-West. They were a reserved folk, and not only with me but with each other. They were not effusive; they didn’t lapse into unexpected jokes or anecdotes, and couldn’t pull off any sort of foreign accent, or even impersonate a famous actor. These were skills I had somehow presumed essential to life. Even now, if my daughters could not yet manage a few convincing foreign accents then I’d think I was letting them down, somehow — you know, as their father.

Because let’s be serious for a moment; if I’m going to be putting all this time and effort and expense into raising children, then the very least they could do is keep me entertained into my twilight years. I have changed too many diapers and served too many hot meals to be relaxed about this; if those two little girls don’t turn out to be incredibly fun to be around then I, frankly, plan to become terribly difficult, one day, out of spite. It’s only fair.

Anyway, the first few dozen Americans I met after my arrival were a bit too aloof and reserved for my liking. Zoya was open-hearted; I worried perhaps she was some sort of outlier. It was only when I moved to Boston that I began to meet others who could tell a good story. And, inexplicably, those folk often had Irish surnames. I also learned to be patient; I learned to wait for people’s chilly outer demeanor to thaw.

But there I was, aged twenty-four — and ready to argue, fuss, and fight with just about everybody, and I want to tell you all about it, too, but before I get to it, I feel this sudden, pressing need to venture off on a wild tangent, so bear with me for a moment.

My mother has a friend called Norah who lives in Western Australia and who, once upon a time (in my mother’s estimation), gave birth to the ugliest child the world has ever known.

I never saw the child. Also, I’m not fully convinced I have even met this Norah, and part of me suspects that my mother will one day confess — on her deathbed, probably — that she invented her, merely for the sake of amusing herself, and for the pleasure of dying with laughter.

But look — once a fortnight, I will call my mother, or she’ll call me, and we’ll tell each other stories. And frequently, we’ve heard these stories before. Repetition is within the rules, you see; in fact, it should almost be considered mandatory. Nobody ought to care if they’ve heard a story before, just as long as it’s a good one. It’s a little like stopping to listen to your favorite song, even if you know how it goes.

I’ve heard most of my mother’s stories a hundred times, but she hasn’t heard most of mine. For example, she doesn’t know about the haunted apartment I lived in with Zoya in Pennsylvania, which is a pity, really, because ghost stories might be a favorite genre between us. I actually thought to tell her that story the other day, but she was busy telling me about Norah; you know, the one whose baby was apparently so ugly she didn’t want to show her to anybody.

Of course, at the time my mother told Norah she was just being silly, and besides, all babies are beautiful, aren’t they? She pushed right past Norah and went in to see her baby, and:

“Kris, that was the ugliest baby I ever saw in my life. God help me, she looked like a spider.”

This, of course, is why, whenever my mother mentions Norah, she typically starts by saying: ‘You know my friend Norah, the one who had the spider baby? Well, what’s happened is ...’

Now, as I mentioned, my mother and I seem to enjoy a good ghost story from time to time, and we also happen to know a few. For instance, when my brother was a baby, he woke up crying in the night and my mother climbed out of bed to soothe him. And as she stepped near his crib, an eerie light came drifting out of the darkness of the corridor and illuminated the entire room.

My mother turned to watch the light with astonishment. Then she observed the back of her nightdress being grasped and pulled up into thin air, as if by an unseen hand. She could feel herself being pulled backwards, away from my brother who, meanwhile, went quiet and stopped crying.

My father, fully awake and sitting up in bed, witnessed the incident.

“And you know the strangest part?” my mother always asks.

“No,” I reply dutifully.

“Your father’s hair was standing on end, just like a broom!”

I heard that tale at least once a month, growing up, and every time I click my tongue with astonishment. She actually retold the story a few days ago to me — and this time, I unexpectedly remembered a tale I’d never shared.

“Zoya and I lived in a haunted apartment in Pennsylvania, you know.”

“What were you doing in Pennsylvania?”

I might never even have told my mother about those six months I stayed in Pennsylvania. Back in the day, I would disappear, sometimes, for years and forget all about calling anybody. Of course, if I did call my mother, I might have forgotten to mention I was overseas. Or then again, perhaps we talked about ghosts or, you know, Norah and the spider baby.

I might have worked for an entire year at Harvard University before I thought to mention it to my mother. Years of my life are still unaccounted for, among my relatives here in Australia; this is simply the way I am. And to be fair, when my siblings learned that their wastrel, vagabond brother had — through some miracle or other — managed to get hired by Harvard University, they were so overjoyed for me that they could barely bring themselves to talk to me for several years.

So, actually forgetting to tell my mother about Zoya’s haunted apartment in Pennsylvania would be a natural thing for me to do. But as you might recall, I have recently written a newsletter about an encounter with two separately weird spirit-like entities in Germany. Then, of course, there was that owl story. So, I suppose supernatural themes have been much on my mind, of late.

“But unfortunately,” I said to my mother, “I can’t tell you about the haunted apartment without telling you all about Zoya’s mother, first.”

What happened was this: when Zoya and I were still in Germany, she wrote an email to her mother to let her know she had an Australian guy (me, of course) staying in her apartment. Her mother wrote back with two questions, the first being: ‘Is he black?’

“Turns out, Zoya’s mother was a huge fan of Rush Limbaugh.”

“Who’s that?” wondered my mother.

“Well, he was like this professional sociopath on talk-back radio, over in the States. There’s an industry over there that exists solely to make Americans hate each other, and in that industry, Rush Limbaugh was considered a major pioneer.”

“I can’t stand talk-back radio,” said my mother.

“This could explain how we’ve remained friends,” I told her. “So, anyway, this email from Zoya’s mother was the inciting incident. If you forget that Zoya’s mother asked that specific question, then nothing I did next will make much sense to you. Because that question vis-a-vis my complexion was not received well by yours truly. To put it mildly, it got my goat.”

“Hmm,” mused my mother.

“Of course, to be fair to myself, I was a different person in those days. Today, I might proceed with a bit more subtlety and deliberation...”

My mother said nothing. Somehow, I began to hope she might interrupt me with some mad anecdote about Norah and her spider baby.

“Needless to say,” I trudged on, wearily, “I couldn’t quite resist ... but you have to remember, I was twenty-four at the time, and —”

“What did you do, Kris?”

“Did I mention, her mother asked about the color of my skin?”

“Listen, mate,” she said, losing all patience, “you gotta let some things go.”

“I have!” said I. “I’m talking about back then, when I was almost the human embodiment of all mischief in the world.”

But my mother was off on her own tangent, now. “But you gotta let things go, is what I’m saying. You know my friend Norah, the one with the spider baby?”

“Blast the spider baby, Mum. I’m trying to say a thing!”

“Alright, alright, settle down.”

“So obviously, I had some follow-up questions for Zoya. Evidently, her mother had also asked whether or not I’d had my shots, which somewhat sealed the deal, as far as I was concerned.”

“Whad-dyer mean, had yer shots?”

“She was asking Zoya whether or not I had AIDS.”

“The bloody hide of ‘er!”

“That’s what I’m saying! So, you’ll understand how —”

“You know, she rang here,” my mother interrupted, “back when Zoya was staying with us that one time. I picked up the phone and her mum said: ‘I wanna talk to Zoya!’ Not, ‘Hello’ or ‘How are you?’ or ‘Thank you for letting our daughter stay as your guest’. Bloody rude, if you ask me.”

“Right, and my point is —”

“Mind you, not all the yanks are rude. Norah’s cousin went over there and —”

“Yes, I know! Can I just — bear with me, Mum, I’m working to a point.”

“Well, you’re taking yer time, aren’t ya?”

I breathe in and then I breathe out. A Zen master might spend a lifetime failing to impart the lessons my mother had inflicted upon me through the natural course of my life.

“So, I asked Zoya for her mother’s email address.”

And Zoya, who had not yet fully appreciated just how difficult I can be, at times, gave me her mother’s email address. And if that was a mistake, she should not be blamed — I can be powerfully persuasive when mischief needs doing.

I wrote an email to Zoya’s mother. It was not a nice email. Reflecting on it now, I would describe it as a ‘shot over the bow’. And somehow, I didn’t even mention the color of my skin.

“We’re Black Irish, you know,” my mother interrupted.

“I do know that, actually.”

“Used to mean that we might have a bit of Aboriginal in our family tree. In the olden days, people pretended that your dark hair and olive skin are a consequence of Spanish sailors being shipwrecked off the coast of Ireland.

“But really, it meant you might have an Aboriginal ancestor or two. Of course, yer father was probably more indigenous than our lot. His people came from Tasmania, and he also had that look about him, you know?”

I knew all this. My mother is terribly proud of our possible indigenous heritage. None of us have had a DNA test, though, because none of us trust biotech corporations sufficiently to give them our genetic data.

“So, let me tell you what I wrote to Zoya’s mother.”

“Alright.”

“Remember how she asked if I’d had my shots?”

“Good lord, Kris, what did you do?”

Well, first I explained that I did not have rabies. I added that we don’t even have rabies in Australia, so she needn’t worry on that account, and then I asked if, perhaps, Zoya had been tested for rabies because, after all, so many Americans are clearly rabid something-or-others. My email went on to explain that my own mother, back in Australia, was particularly concerned that Zoya might bite me in the meantime.

“Kris,” my mother said, admonishingly, “you don’t say things like that!”

“But I think you’ll find that I sometimes do say things like that.”

And furthermore, so do you. But I didn’t say it; I do have a certain instinct for self-preservation.

“I raised you better than that,” my mother chided. “Nah, you don’t say things like that! Not to those sort of people. You just ignore ‘em. That’s what I do, I just ignore ‘em.”

Reader, I could say much here, and I’ll admit it would be terribly fun to do so, but — as I’ve mentioned elsewhere — my mother is fiendishly good at baking biscuits (or cookies, as you might call them) and so in the interests of brevity, and the possibility of future biscuits, I will be less than direct. Though I will point out that my mother does not, and never has, ‘just ignored ‘em’. Some days, I wonder how she even recognizes herself when she passes by a mirror.

“This happened more than two decades ago, Mum.”

“Well, you shouldn’t have said that!”

“I mean — from a certain point of view, I probably shouldn’t have said most of the things I’ve said in this life.”

“Yes, that’s what I find myself thinking as well, sometimes.”

She sounded amused. And I might have said something interesting in reply, but sometimes I think it better to let the old duck have her little victories; and again, this is for the sake of future biscuits.

“It was June, in Germany,” I continued. “And in July, I was supposed to board an aircraft and fly to the Mid-West of the United States, and then stay with Zoya’s parents. Meanwhile, I had just formally declared war on them!

“I can still see Zoya’s eyes when she realized what I had done. China doll eyes, staring at me in abject horror.”

“I well imagine,” said my mother. “You should’ve thought it through, first.”

“Yes,” I uttered, coldly. “Out of interest, have you ever been in the same room as a white supremacist, Mum?”

“Not really,” she conceded, “but your father did have that friend, Bill, who wore those Birkenstock sandals. I didn’t say anything about them to him, really. I just kept my trap shut around him.”

“Sure,” I agreed. “You hardly mentioned those sandals to him at all.”

“Obviously, if Bill wore them over to the house, I might have said, ‘Oh, you’re wearing those Birkenstock sandals, are you Bill?’, and then I’d give him a bit of a look, wouldn’t I, just so he knew, for next time.”

“Yes, Mum. You’re a beacon of restraint. If only I’d had you with me, over there in the Mid-West. You could have taught me how to be delicate around a white supremacist. We could have attended a Klan rally, together, and you’d have shown me how to be tactful and reticent and restrained — you know, while you were beating them all half to death with a stick.”

My mother paused to consider my words.

“Yes,” she agreed. “And the other thing, of course, is that you can go ahead and shut your gob, now, before I have to come over there and smack it for you.”

But someone else was calling her, apparently.

“It’s Norah. You remember Norah, don’t you? The one with the —”

“Yes, yes. Send along my best regards to her and her spider baby.”

After I hung up, I realized I’d been hearing about Norah’s spider baby for practically my entire life, and that poor creature is probably in her late forties, by now. And to think — I didn’t even get up to the part where Zoya and I were actually living in a haunted apartment in Pennsylvania.

So, I guess I’ll tell you all about that in my next newsletter. I’ll send it as soon as possible
Actually, I’ve published the next part of the story here — The First of Many Missteps in America. As you will see, I sometimes seem to misbehave, but I trust you will forgive me. Until then,

and with chaste affection,

Kris St.Gabriel

Source (me): https://wrongcards.com/ecard/sorry-you-are-unwell/