There was a monster who lived under my crib, and I know I was still in a
crib because it was the house in Charlotte where my family lived until I was
two years old and we moved to Columbia. It was fortunate that I had made it
to Charlotte to spend that year and a half before moving to Columbia. I was
born in Greenville where we lived briefly before moving to Charlotte, and
my parents had forgotten me in a bathtub in Greenville while movers and the
chaos of packing and leaving distracted them. It was an hour into the trip
to Charlotte that mom realized that she'd left something behind in the bathtub.
It was then that the monster found me and decided to follow me to my new home.
So, that year and a half in Charlotte I remember quite well, or perhaps I
should say that I remember all that is really worth remembering when you are
so young. Baby food, rattles, little yellow trucks and a magic flute that
lit up along its holes and played delightful sounds were all around, and I
was constantly coming and going from the house where a white picket fence
and a small sidewalk snaked from the front gate to steps near a barking dog
standing guard but who couldn't stop the monster from entering the house.
The house was a small one despite its two storeys, and there was a playroom
in the basement where the carpet's strange hexagonal designs must have fascinated
me for hours and hours since I still am reminded of it when I see a Picasso
and his cubist renderings.
But nothing stands out more in that house than the memory of the monster who
followed me into it and holed up under my bed, a monster who never came out
except after my parents went away, and he would call on his master--the great
Steel Dragon. It was every night that my parents would leave me alone to fend
for myself despite the fact that this monster was under my bed waiting to
begin his magic. A steel dragon is a strong, feral animal living in the darkest,
deepest part of the woods. While rare, it is often that they can be glimpsed
at by children who pay attention out the windows of station wagons while their
mothers drive on errands to the grocery store for milk and eggs. But these
mothers are so busy they don't think much of the steel dragons and will dismiss
them as just another thing to be avoided on the road. These dragons are harmless
when driving in a car because mothers are very good about avoiding them, but
they are easy to miss because they move so quickly, and their faces are rarely
seen. Sometimes they block off passage to hundreds of people with their long
tales, and then mothers are afraid and unhappy because the dragons are stubbornly
asleep and much too large to be moved, so everyone must wait for them to wake
and snake away.
When the steel dragons come to your house at night, however, there is no way
to get away from them, especially when you have not yet learned to walk and
running is something that only the adults can do.
In the beginning after my parents leave, the monster under the bed stays quiet,
but after everyone has gone the monster under my crib begins to breathe. With
each breath taken he slurps away the glistening of the things in the room,
the little yellow airplanes above the crib begin to fade and the white walls
darken. There was the brightest square picture on one of the walls that opened
and brought pleasant smells and coolness. At night it sometimes remained open
and it was then that this monster could call to it and bring his master to
my crib. The monster under the bed could use his breathes to take away everything
that I could see, leaving only the forms of what was left in my room, just
the outlines of those bright and entertaining structures that were so harmless.
I always forgot about the monster under the bed at first, and I would go on
visits to a comfortable place that was absolutely black, but I didn't care
because it felt so good to be in this blackness. But sooner or later the breathing
of the monster under my bed would turn into faint calls, the most remote and
faintest of calls that could ever be heard by a child. These were the beckonings
for the steel dragon, and there was no way to avoid what would come next,
slow but absolute in its approach and there would be no way to avoid it because
once the calling began the night would turn utterly frightening. The ground
would begin to shake and the whole house rattled on its base, the earth moving
underneath so that the little yellow airplanes above me began turning. By
the time I began protesting with my own calls for help the monster under my
bed would have already done his work so that the steel dragon was louder than
me and approaching me with his yelling and calling. No one could hear me over
it. The square picture in the room would suddenly come to flash lights and
the whistles and horns approached head on to the crib so that this time it
would come and smash through the walls of our little house and wrap its tail
around me and crush me! The louder I cried, the louder the dragon cried and
it was a matter of time before the whole world would end.
But then I learned something as each night this steel dragon came closer and
closer, certain to find its mark. The monster under my bed, the one who breathed
away the light and beckoned to the steel dragon: if I was to remain quiet
and act as if I was not there, keep my own breath quiet and not call out in
protest in the night, the steel dragon could not find our house. It was MY
breath and cries that the Steel Dragon heard, and I began to suspect that
there was no monster under my bed at all. I discovered that it had been every
night that the steel dragon came he had found me because of my own cries.
Then I stopped crying and would not help the steel dragon find his way to
my crib.
For the rest of our time in Charlotte, the Steel Dragon visited the house
but never found me. He would snake past the window crying because there was
no little baby boy to be heard and followed, so his tail would move past and
shake the foundation and he would blow horrible breaths of frustration and
wheeze, for he knew he was so close to finding the little baby boy in his
crib. But if I stayed quiet and let him pass he would never find me. Eventually
he left and I could find that comfortable blackness again until the hour came
when my parents came to the room and smiled again, as if there had been nothing
in the night that could have come to me.
There are no such things as monsters, only dragons who pass in the night and
bring fear to those who call to them.
-July, 2005
Richard Aaron Wright