Jane is a writer from Boston. She lives in London.

Email: janenoeldabate@gmail.com.

Octopus

I am back at the octopus restaurant, and like always, seated across from my mother. I am
upset, blaming her for bringing me into a world that neither of us could understand. The baby
I could not have is with us, sitting quietly in a high chair. My eyes roll like pinwheels. Mother
tells me not to cause a scene. The baby is so poised and still, more a mediator than anything.
Anne Sexton wrote that girls are born twice. This one has not been born at all. My
grandmother joins us at the table, made flesh like our Lady of Fatima. She is pale and
haughty, swaddled in her raccoon fur. My mother reels. Her eyes roll like pinwheels.
Grandmother shrieks, feigning offense. The words apparition and indiscreet are grenades
flung back and forth. The baby cries and I do too. No charm in my repertoire is far-reaching
enough- consider the discrepancies- the ravine between pre-birth and post-death… Lucky
timing, now arrives the main course.

We all go silent as the steel cloche is lifted. Tentacles, oily and steaming. With a silver fork I
stab the thick orange and purple boiled flesh. Slice with the knife in my other hand. I cut up
scrappy little octopus bits and raise my fork to the baby girl who is pleased to eat. Across the
table my mother is cutting up pieces for her mother, who refuses. She is watching her figure.
She has been dead for a decade but hopes to be discovered here tonight. One dream passed
through eight palms, lost in aspiration like a sea of broken telephones. There are no odds to
be beaten, just octopus to be eaten. We can never give up the table. We cut and cut and cut.

Attention

My last psychoanalyst was a measured lady who looked like Mala Sinha. Her house was big
and chic and full of lavender. The subject of our preliminary conversation was the vague
problem of “body image”. We agreed to meet weekly. In our sessions she seemed altogether
disengaged, drawing little trees on her notepad rather than paying attention. My questions
would be met with silence. I resented her and began to stand up and jump around in our
sessions. I would put on a show, act out my devastation, hold her audience to the freedom of
which my body is capable. She was impassive to my performances, offering only occasional
and mild clinical insight, which frustrated me further.

All you do is make a spectacle of yourself, she said one day before returning to her drawings.
I decided then that a sharp escalation in tactics was necessary. Who holds onto discretionary
latitude for sins of self-humiliation? Certainly neither of us. I climbed up onto her wooden
coffee table and towered over the room. She looked up. Slowly but with all my moxie, I
pulled down my stockings to reveal two ancient rubber fig trees. The limbs were gnarled and
lumpy and took up half the room. I stood tall, anchored by my roots. Finally I had provoked a
reaction. She gulped and faltered. Then through tight lips she whispered, cover up and pray.
Her eyes looked sick. She said not to come back. I pulled up my stockings and stole an
umbrella on the way out.

Research

The girls and I formed a research group. Our method of choice is eavesdropping. Florence
hosted our most recent meeting in her sunken studio apartment on Newington Green. Down
there beneath ground level, midday and midnight provide identical darkness. Florence often
says, such terrible privacy. At her request we each brought a bottle of wine and a lamp. I
brought along a bottle of chablis and a tiffany lamp blotted with turquoise glass dragonflies.
One by one as we entered, we placed our lamps in the middle of the open floor and plugged
them into the wall outlets, forming a central honeycomb of light. Chords bloomed outward in
every direction. We sat around the sundry lamps, our chins lit up like campfire kids. I felt
very conscious of the many wires dividing us. As we drank wine, Florence spoke at length
about the gratitude she felt toward this team, and then encouraged us to share monthly
findings. I went first. The week before, from inside a bistro bathroom stall I had heard a
mother say, I didn’t realize you were getting all dressed up. Her daughter replied, Well, feast
your eyes. We discussed this exchange and found the implications harrowing.