Eensy Weensy Spider

• Jane Akhurst, Grade 11
• Short Story
• 2008

Mummy and Daddy are shouting again. I don’t like to hear their loud, angry voices, scratching at my ears with long claws, like a wild cat. So I put my pillow over my head and hum a nursery rhyme. Eensy weensy spider climbed up the waterspout. Mummy’s voice gets louder. Something breaks. It sounds like a cup. I hope it’s not my cup, the blue-tinted one with orange flowers that Nanna gave me last Christmas. Nanna left a bit after that. Mummy said she went on a long holiday, high up in the sky. I don’t know how you can holiday in the sky, but I think there must be a world up there, higher up than even the clouds.

My tummy is starting to rumble, so I go downstairs. When I get downstairs, Mummy isn’t there. I go to the fridge and get out the milk. I’m pouring out the milk into a cup when Daddy comes in. Get your stuff and get in the car. I look at him with buggy eyes. I put my glass of milk back onto the bench and I walk into the lounge room. In the lounge room is Mummy. She’s not sitting on the couch, like she usually does. She’s lying on the floor, like I do when I get tired in the afternoon. There is a red splotch on the carpet under her head which I don’t think was there before. Daddy’s voice. I told you to get your stuff. Go to your room and pack.

When I get back downstairs, Daddy is walking around and around like the tiger in the zoo we went to once. I start to hear something. It sounds like a police car with its siren on. Perhaps someone stole something, like a fancy necklace, and the police are chasing them. Daddy stops walking when he sees me, and then he comes over and gives me a big hug. Is Mummy coming too? I ask him. But I don’t think she is coming. We don’t go to the white car, which is Mummy’s, but the green one, which is Daddy’s.
We drive down the road a little way, and then the police bells, which have been getting louder and louder, suddenly get really loud, and a police car turns into our road. I don’t know why the police car is on our road, because no one lives there except us and Mrs Nibson next door, who is very old and looks like the prunes which Mummy sometimes makes me eat. So I don’t know why the police car is there. And then, as I look back, it turns into our driveway and parks next to the white car. I wait for Daddy to turn the car around and go and give the police directions to wherever they’re going, but he keeps on driving. I start to hum. Eensy weensy spider, climbed up the water spout. Down came the rain and washed poor eensy out.