Showering with Spiders
By Wendy BooydeGraaff
I shower with spiders now. One spider. His name is Pete. I thought I’d be showering alone when you left, sobbing into the 1.75 gallon per minute eco showerhead stream you installed. It has only one setting. You convinced me that one setting was more than good. Who needs massage showerheads? I had you. Who needs a handheld option? You’d soap my back. You’d soap any other hard-to-reach regions, as well as the not so hard to reach regions. You said this while facing me, the eco-rain falling upon us, the steam shrouding our feet, your hands full of soapy foam, sliding over me.
Pete showed up that first shower without you. I had waited for days, my hair lank with grease, my armpits growing hair that smelled sour as the old bin of cream in the fridge that I hadn’t yet dumped. You took cream in your coffee. I drank black tea. I had been doing sink baths, rubbing a washcloth behind my neck, under my arms, between my legs—just enough to keep the rank at bay, enough so I could go to work, and not be sniffed out. By day four, the mirror showed my hair slick as one of Robert Palmer’s backup singers, who you loved and sang his song to me. Simply irresistible.
I stepped in the stream, intent on showering quickly and thoroughly. I leaned back, wet my hair, lathered it well, rinsed, turned to wash my face, rubbed my palms gently over my eyes. I thought about your face, your eyebrows dark with water droplets, your wet eyelashes stuck together. I looked up. But you weren’t there.
Pete was, though I hadn’t yet named him. A tan little spider with legs bent in anticipation of darting away. I swiped at him. He ran up the wall, then turned and looked down on me.
He sat there, just out of reach, watching me. Eight eyes. You only had two.
Pete.
The next day, I found myself rushing once I got home, taking off my jacket, my shirt, leaving them strewn across the floor. My pants, my underthings, on the floor, as if you were home waiting for me. But you weren’t.
Pete was.
I showered off the grime of the day. Pete darted to his spot just above and to the right of the showerhead. He liked the steam. Likes the steam. Of course, he’s just a spider. I can’t be sure he’s watching. But there’s something about soaping my own body, scrubbing between my toes, letting the water run down my back, something I never had when I was with you.
Wendy BooydeGraaff’s short fiction, poems, and essays have been included in Stanchion, Slag Glass City, CutLeaf, Ninth Letter online, Welter (Fall 2023) and elsewhere. Her middle grade horror story is anthologized in The Haunted States of America (Godwin Books, 2024). Born and raised in Ontario, Canada, she now lives in Michigan, United States.
Born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Rob relocated to Washington, DC after graduating from Carnegie Mellon University with a BARCH. A short-term space planning gig at the University of Maryland School of Medicine’s Dean’s Office turned into a 27-year career. Upon retiring in 2022 he began pursuing an MFA in sculpture at Towson University. Over the past two years he has been researching different methods to express the magnificence of trees through charcoal drawings, photography, sculpture and papermaking.