As physical embodiments of filth and germs, they show that for all of our fortifications against dirt and disease, those efforts are ultimately futile. Roaches invade our homes and make those intimate spaces their own. Finding a small dead cockroach tangled in my wet hair after a trip to the beach, and thereafter suffering recurring nightmares of picking roaches out of my hair. Watching my first cat, Salty, as he traps a roach, dismembers it with his claws and mouth, and then eats the succulent, writhing remains. It is a psychological gateway into a lengthy laundry list of traumatic experiences: digging through a box of supplies in my outdoor playhouse when a roach zips out and scuttles up my leg, its spiky appendages pricking at my skin. Real or imaginary, this incident triggered an intense dislike of cockroaches that would only intensify as years passed and encounters with those creatures multiplied. Or perhaps it was just business-as-usual in our Southern US home, where – no matter what chemical barriers were erected – cockroaches inevitably found their way inside. Perhaps I dreamed it, or my early memory is flawed. I recently asked my mother about this event, and she had no idea what I was talking about. She shrieks, flailing and stomping, suddenly naked and vulnerable and afraid. As she wraps the towel around her body, however, it quickly makes itself known. As she pulls a towel from the rack, I notice a dark stain marring that clean, fluffy pink material. The bathroom door stands open in front of me, and my mother is emerging from the shower.
I’m about four years old, and I’m sitting in the green-carpeted hallway of our family’s first home in Biloxi, Mississippi. What’s your earliest memory? For me, the answer is not pleasant.
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