Dancing with the Octopus

by Debora Harding

  “I just don’t know what would get into you, to make you do that!” Mrs. Wood said, pleading for it not to be true. “You need to go see Mrs. Bow.” A chill went through my body. Mrs. Bow was the school principal.

  “Yes. But don’t worry.” Mrs. Wood averted her eyes before looking at me again. “She might seem scary, but she’s a very nice person. I’ll take you to her office.” She put her arm around my shoulder and made small talk as we walked through the halls with their shiny floors. When we reached the principal’s office, Mrs. Wood steered me to the secretary’s desk, her hands on my shoulders. The secretary buzzed the intercom and announced my presence.

  I didn’t have to sit for long before the principal opened the door and gestured for me to enter. Mrs. Bow pointed to the couch and took a chair opposite, crossing her ankles under her seat. I might add that her dark-brown beehive hairdo and her blue eye shadow and heavy eyeliner enhanced her already imposing presence. She looked like an Egyptian queen.

  “Debbie,” she said. “I don’t want you worried, but it is important we have a talk.” I was surprised at the friendliness of her voice. It gave me the courage to look up. “I understand you pinched Diane?”

  I nodded.

  “And pulled the hair on her legs?” She paused. “Did she do something to you? Something to upset you?”

  I thought about it. Diane had done nothing to me. So why did I hurt her? It was as if Mrs. Bow and I were two scientists trying to figure out human nature. “No, she didn’t do anything to me.”

  “I see,” she said. Then she leaned in a little and looked me in the eye. “Can I ask you a very important question?”

  “Yes.”

  “How do you think Diane felt when you pinched her arm and pulled the hair on her leg?”

  I wasn’t sure what to say. After a few awkward seconds I guessed. “Sad?”

  “Well, I don’t think sad is the only thing she might have felt. Let’s think a little more about how Diane might feel. Let’s do a little exercise by imagining we are Diane. We’re lying on our rug resting, and suddenly someone pinches us. We ignore it. But the next day, the same girl pinches us so hard we cry. How do you think we feel at that point?”

  “Angry, so angry we would want to pinch her back?”

  “Yes, but you see, Diane doesn’t like to pinch people because she knows it hurts.” The calm of Mrs. Bow’s voice made me feel safe. “Now,” she said. “I want to show you something very special.” She leaned over to a table next to the couch and picked up a hand mirror and held it out to me. I took its long handle, and found it weighed heavy in my hand. “Now, what do you see?” she asked, encouraging me to look at myself. “Do you see the person who did these hurtful things to Diane?”

  My eyes fixed themselves in an unfocused stare. No way was I looking.

  “Don’t be scared,” she said. “I know you have a good heart. So that child in the mirror? Is she a good child?”

  I nodded, but I felt like a slug being covered in salt.

  She leaned over and patted my knee. I wiped the tears streaming down my cheeks.

  “You’ll only see the good Debbie when you look in that mirror because only the good Debbie exists, isn’t that right?” She smiled. “I am so confident that you have stood up to that monster, that I do not feel it is necessary to call your mother.” Need I share what a relief that was?

  Meanwhile, as I was getting my lessons in empathy at age five, Mr. K was having his first big scare at age eight. He was hanging out with some friends on a bridge that crossed the interstate in east Omaha when one of the boys challenged him to throw a large rock onto a windshield below.

  Without thinking, he did it. He didn’t see the driver, and it didn’t seem to do any damage or slow the traffic down, but he couldn’t help but ask himself: When had he become the kid who would throw a rock at a passing car? He could have killed someone. It scared him. At the same time, he tasted some kind of charge that was delicious.

  In Which I Ponder Dad’s Benign Pets

  Omaha, 1971—Dad would find activities to get my sisters and me out of the house on the weekends so that Mom had space. He was particularly good at finding municipal parks with fabulous adventure playground sets—the kind with monkey bars and slides and chain-link bridges. They’d look like forts, or castles, or even a rocket ship. Occasionally we’d hit Peony Park and catch the amusement rides, or we’d go to the Henry Doorly Zoo. It was on a visit to the animals that Jenifer stood up in the baby carriage and fell over the push bar, smacking her two front teeth out. We ended up at the emergency room. I’d never seen Dad look so sick to his stomach.

  On one of those weekends, we experienced a poetic moment that I would return to again and again, sensing in it a deeper meaning.

  We were on our way home from one of our municipal park runs. Dad turned into the Old Mill Plaza, a new strip mall not far from our house, and pulled up in front of its decorative feature. He got out of the car to inspect a huge wooden wheel that churned water at the center of a fake pond. When he came back, he appeared to be talking to someone sitting on top of the car.

  Gayle rolled the window down and asked him who he was chatting to.

  He pointed, like wasn’t it obvious? “The octopus we picked up in Florida, the one who’s hitched a ride with us.”

  “Oh, him.” Gayle started giggling.

  “Now come on down here, you old octopus. If you stay on top of that car any longer, you’re going to get all dried out. Here’s a nice garden for you to live in.” Dad hesitated like he was listening for a moment. “Yes, I understand you don’t want to go, but we can come back and visit you here every day.”

  He cupped his hand around his ear and leaned toward the car. By then, Gayle, Jenifer, and I were all laughing so hard our stomachs hurt. “Yes, I know you are going to miss the family, but this garden is a much better place to live.” Then he turned to us.

  “Look, girls. He’s hobbling there right now on all eight legs. And he’s waving. Ah, he’s so sad,” and then my father looked sad, too. That made me sad, and I waved at the octopus.

  Every time we drove by the Old Mill after that, Dad would roll down his window, honk the horn, and wave. Sometimes he’d pull into the parking lot and start driving around in a circle. We’d ask him what he was doing, and he would say, “Why, we’re dancing with the octopus.”

  Of course, now I know there to be a heavy influence of the Beatles’ hit song “Octopus’s Garden” in Dad’s strange parable. But back then, that feeling—warm below the storm, in our little hideaway beneath the waves— was due entirely to Dad’s creative genius for comedy and faith in life.

  I’m now going to put the octopus in a glass box on a shelf above my desk because remembering that sad abandoned octopus sucks.

  In Which I Consider Macro Memories

  Omaha, 1971—People who live outside the Midwest like to make jokes about us. They’ll say things like, “Do you guys have indoor plumbing in Nebraska? I heard you use cornhusks as toilet paper.” And I’ll laugh along with them because this self-effacing humor is a trait among my people.

  I am now walking down 107th Street with the help of Google Earth to our house in Lee Valley. I’m in front of it. It’s just as I remember. A raised ranch with a double garage, on a sloping hill. The shutters are still black, but where the wooden clapboard once was a dark olive green, it is now a dull beige. And it still has a gable roof, which could mean it’s never been hit by a tornado, of which there is always a chance in the Midwest.

  An American flag hangs to the right of the front door, where it always hung while we lived there. I even see the black cherry tree that Dad planted almost fifty years earlier. Okay, I have no idea if it’s the same tree, but I’m a romantic, and I know there was a tree in that exact same spot, so I think it’s safe to assume.

  It’s lovely to think that back then, that tree had yet to be imprinted with the memories of all the people who have come and gone since: all the children who leaned against it p
laying hide and seek, counting back from one hundred, a crazy amount of time to find a hiding place because you could run two blocks by then. All the people who have walked their dogs past that spot would have seen that tree, too, and maybe they’d be thinking they could guess the seasons of the year by the amount of leaves on its branches, and the color of those leaves, too—or maybe that’s just a thought you have when looking at trees from Google Earth.

  I don’t have specific memories of our play performances, which we’d abridge from the Disney soundtrack albums we’d listen to on our record players (our favorite was Peter Pan), or of playacting Little House on the Prairie, or statue maker, or Red Light, Green Light. My memories aren’t separated into neat units that way—rather, they merge into a collage of general feeling that blended years of experience and morphed into a landscape picture in my mind.

  But I do remember this one episode at age seven. Mom, who was in a notably good mood, asked me if I wanted to join her at the Crawleys’ across the street to see their chickens. When we arrived, there were about ten adults gathered around a wooden crate inside the two-car garage. I gave consideration to the possibility of a cockfight because I had once heard of this phenomenon. But then I noticed the meat cleaver.

  I watched as Mr. Crawley reached into the crate and pulled out a particularly loud squawker. Mr. Lewis, another neighbor, was standing right next to him and held a stopwatch. Mr. Crawley brought the meat cleaver down on the neck, and the chicken’s head fell into a basket. Mr. Lewis dropped the stopwatch and grabbed the body. But the bird jumped out of his hands before he could get it to the floor.

  That chicken started running around the garage with its head cut off, bumping into the walls and then a structural pole. I looked over at its head, in the basket, while its body was running around the garage with blood spurting out of its neck cavity. Bump, run, bump, wham, spurt, spurt, spurt went the chicken.

  Mom leaned over and whispered that even though the chicken no longer had a head, it still had a heart, and that’s why the blood was pumping through its arteries with that fountain effect.

  Maybe she was trying to tell me, if you had a head on your shoulders, make sure you use it; or, even if you’re bleeding everywhere and you can’t see, as long as you’re moving, you’re still alive.

  Anytime I feel like giving up, all I have to do is picture that chicken and remind myself it ain’t that bad.

  Here’s another memory that involves the Crawleys. I went outside one morning to ride my fine gold-painted Schwinn three-speed bicycle and noticed a trail of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer cans organized like footsteps leading across the street. The beginning of the march started at our open garage door, then made its way across the driveway, over the road, and up the sidewalk to the front door of the Crawleys’ house.

  I remember it for this reason—because it was funny. And I knew it was my father’s humor. I couldn’t imagine the time it must have taken him to line up those beer cans, and how big the smile on his face would have been as he chuckled his nasally hee-hee-hee when he was imagining the reaction of the neighbors when they discovered his high-art installation in the morning.

  When I came running back into the house, the screen door banging behind me, I remember telling my mother, and she said, “Your father was drunk last night,” like it was a character defect that he should be checked into jail for, and all I could think was I wish she was like that when she was drunk.

  I’d never seen Dad drunk. But I knew it happened because he’d told me the story of how trying to sneak a six-pack of beer into a girls’ dormitory got him kicked out of college.

  In Which My Father Learns to Fear God

  New York, 1959—My father, James Travis Cackler, went to college to become a minister. His god was not one he feared, though this would change as life went on. He enrolled in a private university on the East Coast and worked hard for three years before making the mistake that would define our lives.

  A group of college girls enticed him into their residence hall for a party—okay, so maybe he wanted to go—though boys were not allowed. He climbed through a dormitory window and was the life of the party until he drank so much he blacked out. When he woke up the next morning, he found himself face flat in vomit.

  Because he was raised a midwesterner with good manners, he knew it wouldn’t be nice to leave the mess for someone else, but he couldn’t find paper towels. The only thing he could find was an industrial vacuum cleaner, so this is what he used.

  What he didn’t realize was that a girl was watching him as he did this, who fancied herself a spy. He didn’t find out until he discovered a note in his student mailbox from the university president asking him to come to tea.

  It’s safe to assume he was scared, but he didn’t tell me this.

  The president told him that he was banned from the school forever because he went into the girls’ dormitory. My father was now cast into the wilderness of a society for which he was not prepared. He didn’t say he would never become a minister because of this, but instead told me the following: “Never blame other people for things you do not make come true.”

  Because he felt terrible about the authorities kicking him out of college, and how it was going to crush his parents when they found out, he made an executive decision to join the army. My father considered joining the army just as honorable as finishing his college education and becoming a minister.

  But his parents, Katherine and Arlo, were devastated when he told them the news. They didn’t think the army was a good solution to being kicked out of college and didn’t understand why he didn’t speak to them first. They viewed higher education as a morally good force in society for one simple reason—it encouraged the discipline of human thought.

  Well, Dad didn’t stay away very long.

  Six months after he enrolled in the army, he was assigned to a major. When the Major’s seventeen-year-old daughter arrived fresh from California, my father was attracted to her long brunette hair and brown eyes, her marvelously shaped legs, and the dark lure of her nervous energy. She was attracted to his fast fingers on the keyboard.

  I’m not sure of this exactly, but the romance must have developed quickly, as it often does when you want things that you are not meant to have. It was against regulations for my parents to be dating (as my father was the Major’s clerk, and my mother the Major’s daughter), though it became apparent that this is exactly what they were doing before my mother discovered she was pregnant.

  My father asked the Major for an honorable discharge from the army in order to marry my mother. According to everyone, my grandfather was proud and happy to have him as a son-in-law.

  When I asked my father why he married my mother, he said he didn’t want a child of his given up for adoption; he wanted his baby to stay with her natural parents. To appreciate this, it helps to know another important piece of information about my father.

  My grandmother Katherine had a good friend who worked at the Salvation Army in the 1940s. This friend watched as my grandmother lost two of her children, aged two and eight, both sons, to polio. So one day she arrived at Katherine’s home in Des Moines, Iowa, with a present and rang the doorbell. Katherine said she opened the door, and there was this beautiful six-week-old baby smiling at her, with huge merry eyes and bouncy health. “Surprise,” her friend said. “Look what I have for you.”

  Katherine said she was not even looking for a baby, but my father just arrived and it felt right. Her friend brought his papers, diapers, clothes, and a basket for him to sleep in.

  So that’s why he didn’t want anyone playing ding-dong ditch with his baby.

  Mom’s view of the marital situation was clear. She didn’t feel saved at all at the young age of seventeen. According to her, my father had ruined her life by getting her pregnant and talking her into marriage.

  Dad didn’t seem to think she meant it because he’d just laugh lightheartedly whenever she said this. I wasn’t so sure.

  In Which Mr. K I
ntroduces Himself

  Omaha, 1978—One minute, five minutes, ten minutes passed. The position on the floor wasn’t growing any more comfortable. Left turn, right turn, right turn, left turn. Mr. K was a considerate driver and used his indicator to signal his direction. The windshield wipers sounded as if they were struggling to clear the sleet.

  I felt my mind sink into a meditative state, my unconscious guiding me to a place of safety it already knew. I was still on my stomach with my neck twisted to one side. After more time passed, maybe another five minutes, I sensed another shift of energy in the van, and it occurred to me I might risk asking to move into a more comfortable position. I gathered the courage to speak.

  “May I turn my head?” I asked politely.

  “Yeah.”

  As I did so, I observed Mr. K’s choice of wardrobe. His blue jeans had fashionable brown beading down the legs, and he was wearing tan suede workman boots. His legs were of medium build. Proximity to the pedals suggested while he was not short, he was not particularly tall. Perhaps five foot eight.

  I evaluated my options. Could I grab his legs? Given the condition of the icy roads, that might not achieve anything but a traffic accident. Could I go for the passenger door? Hard to get up from the floor between the seats that fast. Instead, I comforted myself with positive thinking and trusted that my time would come. I remembered the cross on my necklace. I boldly asked if I could move my arm.

  “Yeah.”

  I clasped the cross in my hand, thankful for its reassurance, and found myself descending into a state that felt like sleep. Several moments later I was brought back to the moment by his voice. I lifted my head slightly so I could hear. The change in tone was encouraging. He was apologizing.

  “I didn’t mean to scare you. I just had to shut you up, you understand?”