Walking the Wall

After watching yet another scary (or not all that scary, but scary
enough to be fun) movie with my sisters the other night, I thought
about how much some people enjoy the whole act of getting scared half
to death. I remember this even as a girl when visiting at my
Grandmother’s house. There was a woman that lived around the corner
from my grandma’s that was–and there was no “possibly was” or “maybe”
in the minds of our group of cousins, she was–a witch. We knew this in all the many ways that kids know
things: a) she had a cat, probably it was black, though it could have
been white, it didn’t matter, it was black in our tellings; b) she
lived alone (who would want to live with a witch, we reasoned); c) she
was always standing behind the curtains and peeking out of the window.
Now, C was the clincher, what would any good, self-respecting citizen
of a small fishing town be doing peeking out between the curtains
instead of opening the curtains and looking out like any normal person?
It couldn’t possibly be that there was continually a small group of
children hiding behind trees trying to look in your window, or shoving
each other off the sidewalk to make one step on the grass and thus risk
being cursed, or trying to be brave and actually run up to the house to
see if any untoward witch-like behavior could be seen from outside–no,
it was definitely and indication she was a witch. The poor woman, I
always mean to ask my grandma now, who was the lady that lived around
the corner from her house, did she have a story other than being the
local witch the kids needed to invent in order to have an excuse to
scare each other silly, but when I’m back there visiting, I never seem
to remember–I’m sure it is some ancient curse made to muddle my brain
and keep me from learning the truth.

The other way the cousins (and let me preface this by noting that my
mother came from a family of 9 children, each of whom had a number of
children themselves, my mother having the largest number of children
[7] of all her siblings…the point being that there was a rather large
group of cousins that grew up together) like to terrify each other was
with my grandmother’s basement. This basement had no concept of the
finished/rec room/family room basements of modern times, no, this
basement leaned decidedly towards the creepy, scary movie, Arachnaphobia
kind of basement! One of my uncles had even gone through a trapping
phase and at one time there were skins in various stages of being dried
and stretched or whatever one does with skins (I don’t even want to
think about it too closely). Being dared to go into the basement was
high on my list of being terrified–being asked by Grandma to go down
to get a big can of tomatoes or such was even worse. When the cousins
dared each other, we knew what crime we were committing, we knew that
each of us was asking the other to risk their lives in the name of all
things frightening–and we shared the commonality of all being afraid
of the basement. But when Grandma stood at the counter in her apron
fixing a meal, then realized she needed one can or another of some
vegetable or another and asked–she asked it of you in such a way that
didn’t recognize the supreme act of courage she was asking you to
perform. “Go down in the basement, Kelly, and get me a can of tomatoes
please,” she would ask so nonchalantly as if all sorts of animal
ghosts, giant child eating spiders, and all manner of goblins that
would stand under the open stairs to grab your ankles as you went down
the steps didn’t exist! That was the most terrifying prospect of all,
and when one survived such a journey of heroic proportions to be given
merely a smile, a pat on the head, and a thank you–the terrifying
ignominy was complete.