CREEPY, CRAWLY, WIGGLY THINGS by C.A. Ocket
The spring of 1955 is like a still frame in a movie to me. I was six-years-old. In April of that year, the Salk Polio vaccine proved safe for vaccination shots. As a kid, I concerned myself when I overheard my parent's talking about this "shot." The doctor's office was the last place I wanted to go. Yet, this information paled in my small world in comparison to what was going on with me. This picture is real, and it keeps flashing on-again-off-again, fading in and out like a marquee under a heavy fog. My name is Cathy. What I am about to share with you happened to me.
In the spring of that year, I had this underweight vision of a body lacking in essential dietary foods, a child's body lying on a faded hunter green sofa. As I stared at the body, I realized it belonged to me. I was also at the same time staring at this small fleshy form of life looking toward me in the corner of the living room floor. Every now and again, this reddish brown thing went to the right, then it changed direction and wriggled to the left, and sometimes --it did not move. I continued to watch the morbid creepy thing for over an hour.
"When are you going to get up from the couch and try to go outside and play?" My mother asked me, as she walked into the living room carrying a white linen cloth with her she used for dusting. "It's a warm day outside, and all you want to do is lay on the couch. You can't miss any more school, Cathy."
"You always tell me I'm too smart for my own good. You always tell me, 'Cathy talk like a six-year-old kid.'"
"Don't you sass me, Ms. Cathy," mother said, but I saw her smile before she turned her back toward me.
I shook my head in agreement, as I watched mother straighten her bright yellow shift dress, lean over and dust the antique rosewood table in the corner near the hallway door.
Nevertheless, I continued to stare at the corner. The slimy object had not moved in several minutes, perhaps it died. At least, I hoped it died.
"What in the name of God Almighty?" I heard my mother shout, as she spied the ugly object in the corner of the room, adding, "Why do I keep finding these disgusting worms all over the house? How are they getting into this house? My God, in heaven, Cats, how are these things getting in here? I am calling an exterminator and having him spray this house from top to bottom and from the inside out. I have had enough!"
Well, she had said it, I thought, "Disgusting worms."
My mother left the living room, came back with apiece of old yellow faded newspaper, scooped the dead entity from the floor and carted it off. She turned to look at me, then glanced back at the paper in her right hand, and distastefully said, "This is nasty." She twisted her lips and nose. Her face appeared distorted as she left the room in a huff.
I wrapped both my arms around my shoulders in a jester of a hug, started rocking myself backward and forward, hugging myself hard, then let out a long controlled breath of air, and slowly closed my eyes tight for a moment. As I rocked, I began to sing a little song to me, "I'll give to you this dress of red all stitched around with golden thread if you will marry me, me, me, if you will marry me." It was a song I liked to sing at school with the other kids at recess time.
Finally, I got up from the couch and bit by bit, deliberately walked into the kitchen. From the kitchen window, I saw my mother in the yard using wooden clothespins and hanging white cotton sheets on one of three clotheslines stretched one after the other in the middle of the backyard. The wind currents from the southwest tossed the sheets high in June air. The skies were the colors of my favorite deep-blue cotton dress and white blouse. In the distance, the muddy Ohio River flowed west toward a town in Kentucky. Now and again, a white tugboat pushed one to three barges up the river. Sometimes the barges sank halfway down in the water from the weight. Momma said the barges were loads of corn and soybeans on their way to the grain mill in Owensboro, Kentucky. If I looked closely, I could make out the pigeons and blackbirds making a swoop to one corner of the grain left uncovered by the big brown tarps.
