Octopus (from The Munich Tales)

OCTOPUS
By Michael Kroetch

She put the plate of soup down in front of her mother and then took one of the spoons and put it in between her mother´s fingers. She spoke slowly and clearly. She said “Eat, Mama. It´s good. Soup. Eat.” She looked into her mother´s eyes. They were grayer than she remembered. Like marbles. Or something you might find on the outside of an octopus, one that had washed up on the beach. She felt sometimes as if that were how it was since her mother had moved in, like the old woman had washed up onto the beach that was her apartment. She was never sure how much her mother understood anymore. She bathed her every morning, but somehow her mother´s body still sometimes had that smell of an octopus baking on the sand—that unmistakable smell of oldness. Frailty. She took the gnarled hand with the spoon and dipped the spoon into the colorful slough of vegetables and noodles. She could feel the limb give in to her will, letting it be guided by her own. She knew there had been a time long ago when their roles had been reversed. She didn’t think her mother could remember those times, but then somehow sometimes out of the blue her mother´s eyes would clear and she would be back in those old days and be talking to her as if she her sister and not her daughter. It was in one of those moments of seeming clarity that she´d first learned how much her mother had not wanted her, but had been afraid to get rid of her. She hadn´t known how to feel about that, especially since it was not too long afterward that her mother had had a temper tantrum about something or other and hurled a plate of Spaghetti-o´s at the wall, breaking one of her favorite plates that an old boyfriend had brought back from Greece. She had picked up the broken pieces of the plate and little o´s and stared at her mother who was waving her arms around and laughing like a chimpanzee from one of those nature shows the old woman so loved to watch every day. She had felt such a heaviness inside her at seeing her mother become a chimpanzee. Somehow it was worse than when she was the beached octopus. She could feel pity for the beached octopus. She didn´t know what to feel about the chimp, especially since she now knew the chimp had never wanted her in the first place and that her whole childhood had been a mistake. But today was an octopus day and so she could feel more detatched about everything and just do her best to get the soup into the old body which she had spent an hour earlier tenderly bathing and drying and powdering with talcum to keep away the rashes which lately were becoming an increasing problem. She wondered if her mother had felt equal ambiguity about her as a child while doing all the things needed to keep a baby happy and quiet. She had never had time for children herself. Maybe this was why? Maybe she had been saving her mothering for her own mother? She took the octopus in her arms and let the spoon of soup clatter to the floor. She hugged and hugged the octopus until deep within it she heard a faint burp. “Oh baby,” she said, “don´t worry. Here, let me help you,” and she patted the old woman´s back softly again and again.