Angelo And The Spider Webs
Scenes from the play God Help Me I Might Be Calculated Into An Institution by Frances Tompkins
ANGELO: They say if a person breaks a spider web your soul will not be able to feel so good. You feel funny in your face.
FRANCES: Did you ever break a spider web? (No response.) Well did you?
ANGELO: If you break any spider webs you might not be able to feel so good. Even cobwebs. Your soul might not feel so good if you break someone’s spider webs.
FRANCES: I don’t remember breaking any spider webs. I never wanted to hurt the spiders.
ANGELO: I broke spider webs when the spiders were not at home, they were out. Lotta spider webs, any spider webs.
FRANCES: Why did you break them?
ANGELO: I didn’t know it was not okay to break spider webs because God wants them for looks.
FRANCES: Some are pretty and some of them are pretty scary looking.
ANGELO: Some are good and some are evil, some are bad.
FRANCES: Black widows.
ANGELO: My father told me not to break spider webs because I would feel funny. I was in the old boat when I was a kid. It’s right inside the field in back of our house by the alley. I went there lotta times when I was a kid; I still go. But I don’t pick up spiders anymore.
FRANCES: Do you still break spider webs?
ANGELO: No. That’s the spider’s house. (In an old-country Italian voice) “How woulda you like it if somebody broke upa you house?” That’s what my father said to me. He was right. I‘m sorry I was mean to all those spiders. I reported that to my father when he was on the sight, on earth. We were in the lot in back of the house, in the old boat, the Angy Boy. We went there a lotta times, it was fun.
FRANCES: When did this happen?
ANGELO: Happened before my eighteenth birthday. It happened about three months after he died. He told me not to talk about it because people will think I’m crazy.
FRANCES: People already think you’re crazy, so talk.
(To be continued.)