Dancing with the Octopus

by Debora Harding

  As more time passed, I began to fear the oppressive force sitting in the room was the shadow of myself, a reflection of my own violent nature. This wasn’t a comforting thought.

  In Which I Play with Fire

  Omaha, 1969—Mom claimed that she was of the “School of Tough Love,” like it was a parenting association that charged membership fees. In fact, you would have thought it’s where she picked up some of her child-rearing techniques, like washing my filthy mouth out with soap. I still can’t look at a bar of Irish Spring without wanting to puke.

  Her really bad freak-out episodes, like the day she shoved us in the garage, didn’t happen frequently, but she didn’t need many of them to instill fear in all of us.

  And it didn’t stop any of us from being normal kids who wanted to push boundaries; if anything, it made us more rebellious. I was just dumb when it came to being caught.

  To give you an example, one day a friend and I decided we wanted to play Neanderthals in the field next to my house. I spent some time digging out an area of dirt that would act as a cave, and then we decided to add a fire component. I borrowed a matchbook from Mom’s collection she kept in a glass jar and remember igniting that match was absolute magic. And I also remember the disappointment when the wind snuffed each flame out.

  Somehow word got back to Mom, and in the next memory I’m standing on my bed, looking at this weird cruel smile on her face, pleading with her. She laughed, then beat my legs with a belt so bad I had to cover them up at school the next day. I deserved a punishment. I did. But her anger was like a never-ending rope.

  Gayle and I liked to push the limits in the morning by watching hours of the forbidden “boob tube” while she slept in, Saturday morning’s H.R. Pufnstuf being one of our favorites, and Scooby-Doo another, until we’d hear her fear-raising footsteps when she’d get out of bed and rush to switch it off.

  You might say those morning sessions gave me my first taste of adrenaline from risky behavior.

  In Which My Body Learns a New Trick

  London, 1992—After Thomas and I settled into our flat, we took a quick trip across the English Channel to visit his sister and her husband in Paris. While there, we went to see a movie in the Latin Quarter, near Les Deux Magots, the café where Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre used to smoke Gitanes, drink absinthe, and discuss the meaninglessness of life.

  The film—A Woman Under the Influence—was directed by an American, John Cassavetes, who was known for his highly charged camera effects. The main character, played by Gena Rowlands (in the performance of a lifetime), is a wife, a mother, a woman struggling to do her best; she has to work at it so hard her mental health unravels. I found it absolutely tragic, deeply unsettling.

  After the film we went for a bite to eat. I felt shaky, listened as the others discussed the film’s docudrama style, the effects of the handheld camera, assessed the power of the color tones and sparse set. It was rare for me not to offer an opinion—but the harder I tried to formulate a coherent thought, the more it eluded me. The interest I felt a minute before disappeared. I felt nothing. An emotional lens closed, yet I became acutely aware of any sensory impression—the noise in the restaurant, the animated voices of Thomas and his sister and brother-in-law, the dull neon lights of the café. All these pieces were distinctly layered, as if I could separate one sensation from the other and tape them together at different speeds. Every word spoken rang with volume but no meaning.

  The feeling of being detached felt terrifying, though strangely I felt no change physically with all this sharp sensitivity—no quickened heartbeat, no shortness of breath, no queasiness in my stomach. I stood up, left the table as if sleepwalking, while being held in a strange but comforting space of consciousness, and found the stairs to the street, knees weak, cold of the steel door handle bar on my hands. Blast of traffic. Icy wind. Blurred city lights. I watched the traffic signal turn green. No thought, concern for anything except to cross. The world had gone completely flat, and somewhere inside a hypnotic wave was sweeping across my soul.

  Uh oh.

  The last thing I felt was my foot falling short of the curb. Yells, sound of hissing brakes, screams in a foreign language. Hands under my armpits, my legs scraping against cement, knowing there to be pain, feeling it but with no emotion, no care. Voices surrounded me. Thomas was with me, his sister and her husband behind him. My knee was burning, my shoe had fallen off, my foot was freezing.

  Several minutes later, control of my right arm came back first. I moved my hand, my fingers. I touched Thomas’s arm, and then found my voice. He lifted my head, asked me if I was okay. I opened my eyes. A few curious onlookers stood a few feet away. A bus hissed and moved on.

  Thomas hailed a cab, helped me into the car. My sister and brother-in-law grabbed the taxi behind us. As we pulled out, I leaned my forehead against the back seat window, wet with moist steam. I felt the rumble and bump of the brick streets as we drove across Paris. The evening darkness was a visual delight, illuminated lights—pulsing reds, fluorescent greens, warm yellows, electric blues—my vision razor-sharp. I could see the pastries I had admired throughout the day, so perfect you could taste them through glass:

  mannequins poised as if to move; Thomas’s hand cupped like a whorled shell over mine as we drove without a word.

  An hour later I had my full strength, complete mental clarity, and the spell was gone. Other than a few scrapes here and there, no substantial injuries. It was as if nothing had happened at all. A blank moment, a short blink where life suddenly stopped but the pulse continued.

  In Which We Take a Family Vacation

  Florida, 1974—Our first family road trip was to Disney World, in Orlando, Florida. Besides it being our dream-come-true destination, it was the first time Dad was ever given a paid vacation. We kids had no idea of how he intended logistically to get us to Florida, until he pulled into the driveway in our Chevy station wagon with wood paneling down the side, towing a mini collapsible RV.

  A bunch of the neighbors congregated as he demonstrated how this little trailer was a marvel of engineering. When you unhinged the heavy plastic lid, a canvas tent popped up, with a kitchen and two double beds on each side. And then you just tucked everything back in when it was time to travel. A bunch of us kids jumped in and out, and Dad let us sleep there overnight while it was parked in the driveway.

  Before we left for the 1,400-mile, 22-hour drive, I noticed Mom brought her own style to the sleeping arrangements by folding down the seats in the back of the car and sewing little drapes for all the windows. Zorro and our cat, Linus, along with her three kittens and a litter box, accompanied us as well.

  Once we hit the road, I pulled out the travel bingo cards with the red cellophane tabs and started looking for telegraph poles, trucks, billboard signs, and road markers until we reached the state of Missouri. Then we all started keeping track of how many different state license plates we could spot, and when we grew bored of that, Dad taught us how to count from one to ten in what he said was Cherokee.

  Next came the family sing-along, including rounds of “Row Row Row Your Boat,” “Daisy, Daisy, Give Me Your Answer, Do,” “John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt,” and “The Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly.” Then we started counting cars, farms, anything we could. When the elbowing and kicking started for territorial control in the car, Mom had us drink Dramamine-laced orange juice, and my sisters and I passed out.

  We arrived at about four-thirty P.M. at the Magnolia Springs State Park, not too far from Savannah, Georgia, and were surprised to find nobody at the main gate to greet us. There wasn’t a box or anywhere else to deposit the fee, but neither was there anyone to prohibit us from entering, so onward we went.

  “Look, kids, it’s Camper Heaven.” Dad was wearing a baseball cap with moose antlers on it, so when he bobbed his head around it looked like he had on radar antennae. He was clearly enjoying the moment. I bobbed my head in support.

  Nirvana it was. Over one thousand ac
res of moss-covered cypress trees, a twenty-eight-acre lake, natural clear springs, and history galore. My father slowed down in order to read the interpretive signs.

  “Wow, girls. During the Civil War, the park served as, quote, ‘the world’s largest prison,’ unquote. Bet we have a few ghosts running around here, eh?” And then he turned around with a silly mwahahahaha, which provoked even a guarded laugh from Genie.

  We had our faces plastered against the windows. It was all too good to be true.

  “Hey, where are all the people?” I asked him.

  “Ah, they just don’t know a good thing when they see it.” We drove around the park for a few more minutes, looking for the perfect campsite. There were two RVs parked next to the restroom facilities.

  “Bummer,” Dad said, “we aren’t the only ones.” He finally pulled into a site a good distance from our neighbors and popped up our little half-hexagonal home. We kids jumped out of the car and unloaded pillows and blankets from the back like little Berenstain Bears. Then Mom and Dad pulled out their neon orange-and-green plastic woven chrome folding chairs, a six-pack of Schlitz beer, and a large bag of potato chips. Mom sat down to enjoy her beverage while Dad set up the barbecue grill, and my baby sister Jen toddled around. I asked Dad for a guzzle of his beer, a routine sharing in our family, and then Gayle, Zorro, and I went to play in the meadow with overgrown grass and weeds. Genie was perched on a picnic table several empty campsites away, reading Gone with the Wind for the fifth time.

  Suddenly, our little oasis was interrupted by several gunshots. Zorro scampered under the car. Frightened, I looked over at my father. He just waved while he threw a match on kerosene-doused charcoal briquettes, and the flame combusted into fire.

  “Firecrackers!” he cupped his hand to his mouth and yelled.

  Gayle, Zorro, and I were still shaken, but we overcame our fears and started playing a game of Red Light, Green Light. After dinner, we were all tucked down in our camper beds when a set of headlights cut through the darkness. Zorro barked and Dad went out, in his nice respectful manner, to greet our guest.

  “Good evening, sir.” We heard a state sheriff introduce himself in a southern drawl, and then he asked my father to see his driver’s license.

  “Certainly. If this is about the camping fee . . .”

  “The camping fee?”

  “Yes, we tried to leave a camping fee when we came in . . .”

  “Well, sir, there was no one at the gate because the park is closed. There’s been a fugitive criminal on the loose for several days now, and we believe he’s been hiding in the park.”

  “Oh, that’s not good.”

  “Can you tell me who’s in the trailer tent?”

  “My wife and four girls.”

  “Do you mind if I just flash the light in there, sir?”

  “Go ahead.”

  A meaty face under a cowboy hat peered through the camper door. Zorro leaped up and gave a nervous growl. The sheriff just rubbed her head.

  “Hi,” Gayle said, never the shy one.

  “Howdy,” he responded, tipped his hat, and backed out again. We heard him ask Dad what time we arrived in the park.

  “About four P.M.”

  “Did you hear any gun shots?”

  “We heard firecrackers.”

  “Oh, no. No, those weren’t firecrackers. The criminal we’re looking for attacked a woman tonight.” He looked at my father’s driver’s license. “Mr. Cackler. He raped her, tried to murder her, and is now on the loose, somewhere in this park. You didn’t happen to see anyone, did you?”

  “Do you mind if we step away from the trailer?” Dad asked politely, not changing his tone of voice at all.

  “That won’t be necessary. I see you’re all settled down there. Here’s my business card. If you see anything fishy, you just give me a call. There’s a telephone over there by those bathrooms. You’ll be moving on tomorrow morning, first thing, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, enjoy the rest of your stay, Mr. Cackler. You on your way to Disney World?”

  “Yes.”

  “Lucky kids.”

  We listened as the sheriff climbed into his car and backed out. I wasn’t sure how the business card was going to help us out if that rapist/murderer showed up at our site. Dad opened the door and came in.

  “It’s okay, girls, it’s safe,” he said reassuringly. “The sheriff just stopped by to collect the camping fee.”

  He kissed each of us goodnight I pulled my blankets up and struggled to get comfortable again. Ten minutes passed. The wind began to blow. Long trails of Spanish moss, hanging from the huge oak trees above us, swept against the screen windows of our trailer tent. The moon cast gothic shadows onto the roof and floor of the caravan. Suddenly, my mother lurched up and screamed. My father was out of bed as fast.

  There, on the floor, sat an insect the size of a squirrel. Dad did his best to keep us calm. He switched on the small battery-operated camper light, which launched the armored beetle into the air. I jumped up and started knee-huffing it across the mattress, shrieking. The beast buzzed around the trailer, and Gayle and Jenifer joined the hollering. Dad chased the giant insect around with a pot until he finally smashed it. Bang. Splat. Crunch.

  Swish went the headlights. Flash went the red. The sheriff was back. Dad, sweaty and breathless, almost tripped down the portable pullout step as the door slammed behind him. He assured the officer that everything was okay. “Only a cockroach, sir,” he explained.

  I went back to sleep, assured that the police car had not been far. I admired the way Dad had been there to smash that insect. I kept that little piece of truth in the back of my mind, for a bit of security.

  Genie said the next day in private that she couldn’t believe that my father expected us to believe that crap about the camping fee. We had heard what the sheriff said. We had also heard the gunshots. I understood her point, but Dad was firmly in the camp of positive thinkers, and this would be no time for an exception. His gods were Norman Vincent Peale, Dale Carnegie, and Zig Ziglar. He’d always be dropping a few quotes from that crowd, like “Change your thoughts and you change the world.” Genie said you can deny the facts, but no matter how you dress them up, they’re still facts.

  “Like, if you’re standing in front of a werewolf, you better run?” I suggested.

  “Yes, if a werewolf was in fact real, you dummy,” she said, stomping away.

  In Which I Mimic Anna O

  London, 1993—I was sitting with my fiancé and his family at Passover, listening to the hypnotic lull of Hebrew prayers, in awe of the service, of a strength of connection that could bring so many together—forty-five Londoners, on a weeknight no less. I was moved to be invited to the ceremony. Thomas and I were both so laissez-faire about our issues of faith that it hardly occurred to me I was marrying into a Jewish family.

  Across the street at 20 Maresfield Gardens sat Sigmund Freud’s house, where he spent his last year of life after being forced to leave Austria in 1938. It had been turned into a museum. At the head of our table sat my husband’s grandmother, “Granny,” with her sister and twin brothers—who also escaped from Nazi Germany in 1938. The windows were open. Fresh-cut daffodils stood in vases on the table. The golden light of a spring evening was still with us.

  As I looked around that table at the older generation and thought about their strength and resiliency, the enormity of their tragedy moved me deeply. And the more I cast my look of admiration at these survivors, the farther in distance they grew—or perhaps the room was just overheated. Suddenly, I felt my whole body slouch, and the folding chair collapsed underneath me. Uh oh. My head hit the floor.

  The room went quiet. Fortunately, Thomas’s uncle, a physician seated on my right, gently moved my body into a more comfortable, modest position, telling everyone it was okay, that I’d be fine in a moment. And then I felt my limbs twitch. I tried not to grow more anxious, mortified with the shame of needing assistance, aghast at m
y feeling of helplessness. All I have to do is lift a finger, I coached myself. But I couldn’t. So I surrendered and felt my mind drift into what I can only describe as that state between consciousness and unconsciousness, while I remained hyperalert to everything going on around me. After several moments, I began to feel strength return to my body, as if someone had pushed a reset button. I tried moving a pinky again. The muscle responded. I gathered the courage to open my eyes.

  Thomas’s uncle smiled at me. “There is a little pill this big,” he said with a pinch of his fingers, “that will stop that from happening again,” and he snapped his fingers, like a hypnotist disrupting a trance. “She’s fine,” he announced, assisting me to a standing position. “Let us continue.”

  In Which I’m Thankful for Public Institutions

  Omaha, 1970—My kindergarten teacher was Mrs. Wood. I loved her. She had a cool short haircut that curved stylishly around her ears, and wore dresses cut mid-thigh in the 1970s fashion. Most important, her mood remained stable, predictable. She never raised her voice no matter how crazy and loud things became in class, and she made me feel like the teacher’s pet—though I suspect she had a way of making every kid feel that special.

  One day at nap time, I reached out and pulled the hair on my classmate Diane’s leg. She wore bobby socks with patent leather shoes and suspenders on her skirt. She was such a perfect student in class and didn’t play with any of us on the playground, so I could sense she was especially loved at home. The next day, I rolled my rug out next to Diane’s and pinched her hard on the arm. I saw tears roll down her cheeks, though she was trying to hide that it hurt. The following day Mrs. Wood called me into the hallway and crossed her arms, obviously displeased.

  “Debbie, did you really pinch Diane?”

  I dropped my head, crushed. “I cannot tell a lie.” Mrs. Wood had just read the class a story about George Washington and his refusal to tell a lie, and there was nothing more I enjoyed in the world than making her happy.