Dancing with the Octopus

by Debora Harding

  Charles found nice stationery at the prison commissary—sky blue with white doves on it. In his letter, he told the girl that he had found a new relationship with Jesus and he knew she’d like to hear that.

  And then he added for good measure that she should “avoid the fast lane and not smoke cigarettes because it was bad for her health.”

  In Which I Take off the Shades

  Shepherdstown, 2001—I can’t say our transition to West Virginia was smooth. It took us a couple of months to find a house in town. During that time we rented a cabin in Monongahela National Park in the southern part of the state. We had put money in savings after we sold the house in England and were still technically on vacation, but I started feeling anxiety about how much time I could go without work before it would be difficult to get back into the job market. By the end of summer a property came up in Shepherds-town, a fixer-upper, and we jumped on it.

  One afternoon the children and I were out in the yard planting a vegetable garden. The two of them usually got along incredibly well, but that day they were winding each other up. I threatened to separate them with more impatience than my usual tone. My son’s face dropped and his eyes teared up. Our moods were nearly always aligned, and the clear pain of it for him made me feel so bad I apologized instantly. He was fine; it wasn’t the trauma I imagined it. We moved on to the next activity.

  But I felt like the most horrid parent on earth, and as I reflected on what had just gone wrong, a punch rushed at me out of nowhere as I was hit with the childhood memory of Gayle in the garage that winter day Mom had locked us out. This wasn’t repressed memory. My sisters and I often shared Mom’s “best moments”; in fact, Jenifer and I would joke about which of Mom’s melodramas were the most outrageous, which of her tantrums were the worst.

  But this was different. It wasn’t my own experience that was coming up, it was seeing the hurt on my son’s face that triggered the memory of seeing the pain on my sister’s face—it was my parent self looking at four-year-old Gayle. And the pain that had just swept over me was anguish at the sudden realization that Mom’s physical violence didn’t erupt from uncontrolled outbursts but from the way she seemed to enjoy her calculated sense of control, her need to assert her dominance. And as quick as the rush of thoughts happened, I shut them down.

  Whatever that line of thought was, it wasn’t going to do me or anyone else any good to think about. I was in a much better position to be more compassionate as a parent than she was. And we were safely beyond those years. For me to continue to judge her, to renew a sense of her guilt, wasn’t going to be helpful.

  In fact, Mom and Dad had just made a visit to Shepherdstown, and though trying to emotionally connect with Mom for any of us was like trying to fix a broken cup with an empty glue stick, she was trying hard. And there was no doubt she was taking joy in being a grandmother. She genuinely enjoyed buying the kids things—crayons, Legos, she even needlepointed blankets with their names on them. She would read the occasional book, but for the most part she was comfortable waiting for them to come to her and didn’t take it personally that they didn’t. She kept Dad company as he played with them, as he bathed them, as he read them stories. She was doing what she needed to do to ensure we were all able to exist together.

  I reminded myself how good it felt, after all these years, to have a sense of being a family. It made me wonder about my twenties, which hadn’t been easy with her. But perhaps I had confused Mom’s rejection of me with my rejection of her? And as quickly as that good feeling came, for the several minutes it lasted, I was filled with anger again. Let it go, let it go, let it go, I said to myself, as I cleaned up the garden tools and watched the kids playing with the hose.

  But how does any adult get to the point they are that violently out of control? And then the next memory surfaced. The time Mom beat Gayle and Jen after I drank the Coca-Cola. Gayle told me years later about her experience that day. That Mom had taken an hour to stage that trial. While I had been upstairs, Mom called Gayle into Jenifer’s into room, and when neither admitted to drinking the Coke, she sent them to their separate bedrooms for a half hour before calling them again. And then opened their legs with a belt. Gayle said that the worst of it for her was Mom insisting she not miss her piano lesson immediately after, and having to endure the pain while sitting on the bench. Lucky for me, both Gayle and Jen forgave me, as we understood none of us had a chance of steering anything at home.

  I felt gross, recalling all this, like I was poisoning myself with anger. Of course my mother didn’t delight in hurting us. I couldn’t read her mind. I didn’t know what it was like to be in her inner world. But as quickly as I felt the empathy for her condition as a young mother, my emotions swung back. Why was it that we had never had an honest conversation about these incidents? The nearest I had ever come to raising the issue was with Dad when he came to Oxford on his own, a few months before his breakdown.

  That’s not the total truth. I did try to have a conversation one night with Mom when I had come home for Christmas from college. She asked me to fix her a White Russian cocktail. After her second, I asked her to tell me what it had been like for her as a young mother, carefully framing the question in a feminist context—mentioning the social forces I knew she was up against. I broached a few of the memories sensitively. To my surprise, she appeared interested in exploring this subject.

  I told her the question had been triggered by a conversation with a new friend at college, who suggested that Mom’s child-rearing techniques sounded harsh, and perhaps if she shared with me what she was feeling at the time, then maybe I could stop thinking about it for good.

  She said she never wanted to be a mother. (This was not a new insight—though I always wondered why she had four children.) She said she wondered herself on occasion if she had been too tough on us, whether she was guilty of some kind of broken devotion, then realized maybe she had been, but it was only because she loved us and was scared about how we might develop. This was quickly followed by her saying that she did the best she could, and if you looked at how we had turned out, she had obviously done good enough. She wasn’t perfect. When I tried to continue the discussion, she shut me down by asking for another White Russian.

  The truth was, I felt guilty just for thinking Mom’s behavior was cruel and barbaric. What good was judgment going to do at this stage? Why couldn’t I just let it go? I so wanted this new family togetherness we had all informally fallen into. But revisiting the truth of the past would definitely ruin this unspoken truce. The few times we had gotten close to broaching the truth of the abusive dynamic, Mom was a master at turning the questions around on me—so what if she did? What was I going to do about it now? I was an adult. I wasn’t a kid anymore.

  I’d better get it clear. If what was in her was also in me, then who was I to think the two of us were different in nature? If all conditions of our parenting had been the same, if she had all the advantages I had before becoming a parent, did I really think she would have acted in the same manner? What if being vigilant over my own thinking, my own actions, was not enough?

  Suddenly, the fear that I might be capable of the same kind of violence against my children knocked any confidence I had in my parenting out from under me. If I could not be certain that I was incapable of hurting my children, then I resolved to kill myself rather than wake up one day to discover I had. And I was most serious. I understood what it was to stand next to death, and I was not scared of it. I couldn’t bear the idea of my children being hurt in the same way my mother had hurt us, even worse—hurt by me. This was a rational moral conclusion.

  I’d like to say my ability to steer my own thoughts began to improve, but it didn’t. I had resolved the question of what to do with myself. But the harder I worked to assert my will in forgiving my mother a past she couldn’t fix, the faster my thinking became, which inflamed my anger only further. The window between waking and falling asleep grew even more difficult. I began to hear her voice in a
lucid way, criticizing any emotion I had. I knew this weird macabre mental game was my own creation, and these episodes were followed with shame and anger for not getting these feelings under control.

  Why was I doing this? We weren’t even living together. The more I struggled with my conscience, the larger her present energy grew. I began to imagine her voice ridiculing me throughout the day. The more I floundered in my ability to gain equilibrium, the more I heard her mock me. And just when I thought this inner drama would erupt into reality, cut any tie to the present I had, destroy the enormous gift I had been given of my family, my husband and two children, just when I thought I was actually going to go mad with the pain, I couldn’t bear it anymore, her voice would change to one of saccharine sentimental phoniness. The woman she was now. And I’d feel like the most pathetic human being on earth.

  I sank. The challenge of getting out of bed in the mornings was just the start. The oppressiveness of my critical inner voice made the morning almost intolerable. By afternoon, my mind would tire, the inner voice would recede, and my day would feel more normal. Seeing people, which usually served as a source of energy, now left me feeling painfully inadequate. I’d find myself in an almost catatonic state of self-absorption, making me a bore even to myself.

  My time with my children was my only reprieve. I would make a mental note of our moments throughout the day together, those magically charged interactions, so I could write them down in the evening. But I noticed I was beginning to feel increasingly anxious about writing the memories down, like it was bad luck. I kept thinking about one of them being hurt, had sudden anxiety that something terrible was going to happen to them. That there was nothing I could do to keep them safe. I became anxious about how my thoughts might even affect them. Every moment I spent with them felt so joyous it hurt. They’d smile at me, do something lovely, and my eyes would tear. Oh my god. How could anyone ever hurt a child? And then I would make sure I dialed down the intensity of my survivor gratitude, as I was convinced it was going to suffocate them.

  It was about this time Dad called and asked how things were going. I told him, honestly, I was having a difficult time. That I was down and I was struggling to fight against it. He suggested it might be because I hadn’t gone back to work yet, that as much as I enjoyed being with the kids, it might not be enough. I told him that didn’t feel right. If anything, I was enjoying being with the kids even more now that I wasn’t having to work, and was feeling anxious about leaving them.

  He asked how the work was going on the house. I looked around me. It was a construction site. We hadn’t counted on having to replace the wiring and the plumbing, so the walls on the first floor had been totally gutted. He asked how much of the house we were able to use, and after I told him we had plastic taped to the doors of each room to stop dust from moving around, he suggested that maybe I should borrow their RV for a couple of months. I was thankful for the suggestion. It gave me hope that there might be an immediate plausible cause for why I was so down.

  After speaking with Thomas, I called back and said I’d drive up to Indianapolis with the kids and swap the jeep for the RV. Despite my dread of seeing Mom.

  In Which Charles Meets a Hot Chick

  Lincoln, 1986—No one had ever believed Charles was guilty of the charges brought against him. Not even his parents. And the regular visits by the Reverend and Charles’s mom certainly helped reinforce his reputation for being kind and polite now that he was at the Lincoln Community Release Center. The staff hardly ever hassled him. He came and went from his classes at the university and his job at the student gym almost as if he were a civilian.

  He was proud of what he had accomplished in eight years. He’d entered the Nebraska State Penitentiary as an eighteen-year-old, without a high school degree and with few friends. Now, not only had he gotten his GED certificate, but he had earned a psychology degree from the University of Nebraska at Lincoln—and was debt-free. In addition to that, he had taken advantage of many of the programs offered, especially the cognitive behavioral therapy courses.

  In fact, he felt confident in saying that a number of fine people believed in his moral character. For example, two weeks ago he met a hot college intern working in the prison. Her name was Kim and she had beautiful long red hair, green eyes, and, man, she must be five foot ten. And what a sense of humor. He loved making her laugh. The first night she was assigned to roll count of the inmates, he volunteered to walk her through the facility. In fact, he flat-out told her she shouldn’t be doing that alone as it wasn’t safe. And since then, he’d wait for her to show up at work.

  Last time he saw her, they chatted for a half hour, just shooting the breeze. Kim asked what a nice guy like him was doing in prison. He said the charges against him were cooked up. The girl’s father didn’t like him, said that he had raped her. She was white. The truth was the girl and he were dating. Charles got the reaction he was hoping for. Kim responded like most prison justice warriors—with shock and sympathy.

  The next week, she asked him in the cafeteria if she could use him as a case study for her final essay. She had to pick a model prisoner who had little chance at repeat offending. He was more than happy to help her with that, especially if he could use it in his upcoming parole hearing. He had served eight years out of a ten-year sentence, and he was hoping that they would let him out for good behavior.

  Kim brought the papers around the next day for his signature. She needed permission to look at his prison record. Yeah, he had no problem with that. He happily signed, and they agreed to a meeting schedule. He was looking forward to their private interviews. The first would be the following day. But Kim never showed up.

  A week later, Charles heard that Mike the senior supervisor wanted to see him. There would be a few others present: Charles’s caseworker and counselor. That intern Kim would be there too.

  In Which Dad and I Convene Another Chautauqua

  Indianapolis, 2001—When the kids and I pulled into my parents’ driveway that evening, Dad was taking spins around the yard to show off his John Deere tractor mower. After giving his grandkids a ride, and then letting me do a few circles myself, Dad asked me if I wanted to accompany him on a walk with Indiana Jones, his big blond Labrador.

  I was pleased to get him to myself for a short time. Maybe all those hours on the road had made me bold, but after a few moments I just straight-out asked Dad if we could discuss the time he spent at the hospital for depression. He went down a gear in terms of mood, but said he’d be happy to talk to me about it. Said it hadn’t done a whole lot of good other than get him some much-needed sleep while he adjusted to medication. And then he added that he wished he hadn’t let Mom persuade him into going.

  I tried not to react. Dad continued, said he came off the pills six weeks later. He didn’t like the side effects, and the cost of medication robbed his bank account. His co-payment only covered 20 percent.

  I suggested another way to look at it. That getting help might have financially protected him. While we stopped so Indiana Jones could do his business, Dad added that the six weeks of therapy he went into afterward forced him to think about issues he’d never been comfortable with, like the impact of his adoption, something he wasn’t willing to think about before he lost Katherine and Arlo roughly three years ago.

  He paused, then asked if he might tell me something else.

  “Of course,” I said.

  “I’ve never talked about it, but I broke my neck when I was eleven years old.”

  I raised my eyebrows, signaling for him to go on. I could see that he was collecting the right words.

  “It was clumsiness. I fell backward off a fence. I was in the hospital for a week, in traction so I wouldn’t move my neck. I won’t go into detail”—he paused—“but I thought it may be helpful for you to know. There was a nurse who did things to me no adult should ever do to a child.”

  I stopped. We looked at each other. “I don’t want you to say anything,” he added. It was
an instruction, not a request. “I just wanted you to know.”

  “Okay. But Dad,” I said, my heart catching up with the sadness of what he’d just told me, “I am so sorry.”

  “Thanks,” he said. “But it’s not necessary. It’s over—it was a long time ago.” He wasn’t telling me, but he was. His childhood had been shattered by a sexual crime, and he had kept it to himself for sixty-three years. It’s one of those things that just happen in life, so we aren’t discussing it, he seemed to be saying.

  We walked quietly for a few moments, as the consequence of what he revealed sank in. We had never talked about what happened to me the night of the kidnapping. He never asked. I never offered. And we had been renewing the contract every year since. Quite happily for me, I might add. Not talking about the trauma had its strong benefits.

  Dad stopped to exchange pleasantries with a neighbor, who was walking a cocker spaniel, which gave me more time to think about what I had just heard.

  I couldn’t help but wonder, since I had become a parent, what it must have been like for Dad that night, wondering if I was coming back dead or alive. The fact that he had been sexually assaulted himself might explain his emotional absence at the hospital, that horrible hug.

  Thinking about it made me want to ask him the most inane questions about that night, like did the police give him real cash? Where did he wait—inside the shopping center or in the multilevel open-air parking lot? My thoughts were interrupted when a water sprinkler system went off next to the sidewalk, and I jumped out of startled shock, which clearly entertained Dad and his neighbor as they said their good-byes.

  Dad motioned me toward his backyard. “Let me show you my new flagpole,” he said. It was a full forty feet tall, with spotlights installed underneath. He put his arm around me as we both looked up proudly as the stars and stripes snapped in the wind.