2004-04-28 - 12:55 p.m.
Writing course, week one:
Even at the tender age of seven I knew that the pillow was a particularly horrifying example of my grandmother's handiwork. Its slick polyester fabric was printed with flowers in lurid shades of green, violet, and mustard, and it was trimmed with a profusion of scratchy lace in three unpleasant shades of purple. I didn't like it. I was embarrassed by having it displayed on my bed. But it was essential to have it there, ready to hand for the moment when my mother switched off my bedroom light and the nightly face-off with the monsters began.
I wasn't a child that thought that terrible monsters lurked under the bed, waiting for darkness to come out and show themselves. I was a child who *knew* that terrible monsters lurked under the bed, waiting for darkness to come out and show themselves. And I knew with equal conviction that they knew that I knew they were there, and that they knew that I knew that they knew. The only thing that kept me safe was the unspoken agreement we had arrived at that, as long as I didn't actually lay eyes on them, neither one of us would have to act on this knowledge. What taking action would mean I didn't really know, but I suspected that the monsters had the advantage.
So the moment the lights went out I would grab the pillow and put it over my face, loosely enough that I could still breathe but tight enough to block out accidental glimpses, and there I would lie, the pillow getting uncomfortably damp with my hot confined breath, until sleep finally won out over worry. I don't know why I thought that pillow in particular had some sort of special protective power, but no other would do. Maybe it was its glaring ugliness that made me think it could keep the monsters at bay, the same way that turning on the light drove them back beneath the bed.
By morning the pillow had usually fallen away, but in the morning the bed-time monsters didn't really bother me. In the daylight there were other, completely different monsters to worry about. Terry, the lunchroom supervisor at school, had told us that if you pointed at a werewolf in human form and said, "You are the werewolf!", the werewolf curse would be lifted from them and transferrred to you. He was disturbingly ignorant about the details of this curse, and hadn't been able to answer any of the important questions – did you have to be close to the werewolf or did it work through walls and over long distances? What if you didn't say the words out loud but just thought them? How could you tell if someone was really a werewolf in human form? Would you know immediately if you had become a werewolf yourself? So I tried whenever possible to keep my fingers curled tightly into my palms and my hands tucked into my sleeves, just in case I accidentally pointed at a werewolf and coincidentally thought the words at the same time.
"Is there something wrong with your hands?" my parents asked me, watching me trying to eat with my hands balled inside my sleeves, but I couldn't tell them what was really going on. I knew they'd say I was being silly – I knew that I was being silly. But it frightened me - the thought that you could so easily become a monster yourself.
