Eight Heads Are Better Than One

Mia Part 1: LIFE WATERS

Our entire family was excited to watch the 100-gallon tank get set up, but no one as much as me after my solitary goldfish, Gilda, who lived alone in a simple water bowl, had also died alone.

It was Dad's fault.

I was spending a summer week at my Granny's and he had gone away for the weekend. He promised me he would arrange for the neighbor kid to come in and feed Gilda, and that worried me because I didn't think much of the neighbor kid. But it wasn't the neighbor kid who forgot--it never got that far. It was my Dad who forgot to make the arrangements. Gilda was doomed.

The entire morbid scene was sanitized before I got home. No bowl. No goldfish. And I didn't even get to see, in every child's rite of passage, the tragic scene of my best friend, my fish, my Gilda, floating upside down: the initial suburban education in death that eases a child into the harsh realities of human funerals and coffins and the like.

I got that education a few years later after my big sister, Adrienne, noticed I was beginning to act out. I was only four, but I began to grasp the fact that I was the kid at school without a Mom. A lot of kids didn't have Dads, but that was a divorce thing. Mine was a dead Mom thing. None of the other kids understood, and I couldn't understand, either. Adrienne told me about my first funeral and my first burial--Mom's--which of course I didn't remember. I really couldn't deal with it at the time, being so young. And I still can't deal with it now, which is why I suppose I didn't think about it much: I've still been holding a grudge against my Dad for Gilda; there's only so much room in a 4-year-old for death, and so my pet's trumped my own mother's.

How could Gilda's life--or anyone's--be so unimportant that you didn't even think to feed her as you went about your own stupid little plans! And how does a parent make up for such a senseless, cruel life-lesson to his four-year-old daughter? One without closure? Without being able to say my goodbyes to Gilda? Wondering if she was just thrown in the toilet and flushed. It might have been a nice way to ease me into the realization that Mom had died; but I had to skip that.

That was Dad's fault, too.

When I pictured them lowering Mom into the ground, I sublimated the whole scene into Gilda being buried at sea; sent off with a little prayer and congratulations for a life well lived. This is how I processed things--in small steps, and the first step, which I was denied and had to germinate myself, was the one with my first pet.

How did Dad make up for his dereliction of duty? By exchanging kill for overkill.

I had to wait a while but it was worth it. On my eighth birthday, there sat a really huge aquarium, empty, and with a red ribbon around it and tied at the top with a bow. Professionals swooped in and untied the ribbon, poured in the 100 gallons of salt water, placed over a hundred pounds of live rock, floored it with a sand bed an inch or two deep, added the wet-dry filter, sump, protein skimmer, and a powerhead for the extra circulation needed. Fluorescent lighting crowned the environment.

Still, the wait wasn't over. Another few days were needed for the biological filters--algae in the live rock--to get comfortable enough to establish a suitable saltwater aquarium ambiance.

Then, the aquarium's raison d'être: with everything perfect, satisfying all of the criteria of some mysterious checklist the installers used, "Octavia"--Octopus vulgaris--was introduced to it, after having been plucked up from God-knows-where to her new neighborhood. And to us. My octopus.

We all watched as her chariot, a plastic bag of salt water, was gently inserted into the tank. For another half-hour, the professionals rechecked their lists and calibrators and re-dipped their dipsticks until it seemed the perfect time to remove the bag from around her. She didn't move for another hour, but then began to undulate her arms and her eyes' pupils began to open and close in alternating winks.

She seemed happy and I was delighted.

Octavia Part 1: THE TENANT

Humans usually go through a lot of trouble to study us, but our study of them is limited to their reactions--their scientific reactions--to observations in labs. Scientific reactions like looking at us, then looking down at a notepad, then looking back up; or looking up at us, then writing down things in a notebook or typing them out on a keyboard.

They could always look at us in our lives, but we could never do it in return, instead only witnessing their scientific reactions. But this was different. I am the envy of the rest of my kind, having the rare opportunity to study them in their lives. No notebooks or keyboards. No pencils or spreadsheets on screens. Just life.

Their den was extensively compartmentalized. Where I was occupied a corner between their main congregating place and the area in which they prepared food. Sometimes they ate in another room altogether out of site, sometimes in the food preparation area, and sometimes with me.

There was one adult male and two female juveniles. Noticeably absent was the adult female, which is a mystery, as common knowledge is that the reproductive process is much more complicated and social in human beings, both male and female taking part in it from first approach to mating to birth and then child-rearing. Of course, none of our kind knows anything of child-rearing, because we are soon dead after our main command is obeyed and the small ones emerge from their eggs and populate the seas.

I can store data in my large brain, and if desired, in one or more of my tentacles, where a lot of thinking goes on anyway, especially for sensation and spatial sensitivity. Sometimes my emotional range becomes so extreme I have to divide up the labor by spreading my thoughts out among different arms. My arms are also the way I see colors, since they're loaded with opsins. It's true that my eyes are color-blind, but my arms can catch rainbows!

Mia Part 2: INTRODUCTIONS

"Hello, Octavia. My name is Mia. I am eight years old." Then I laughed, because it looked like Octavia could read my mind. She held out one tentacle and just kept it there, straight up.

Adrienne came into the room. "Octavia," I said, "this is my big sister. Her name is Adrienne and she is 14 years old. I think you'll like her, even though she can be a pain sometimes." Octavia closed and reopened both pupils, then squinted with her outside eye muscles as she raised a second tentacle.

"Why is she raising her tentacles?" Adrienne asked.

"I don't know," I said. "It's crazy."

"Hi, Daddy," Adrienne said to my Dad as he walked in. That's when Octavia raised a third tentacle, again, straight up.

"Oh my goodness!" I shouted. "She's counting us."

"That can't be," Dad said.

"But they're smart," I told him.

"That's a stretch," Adrienne laughed. I was angry, and I just know Octavia was angry, too.

"I know you're smart, Octavia. Don't listen to them."

Octavia Part 2: SMARTS

Smart? She has no idea, I thought. Let's see what they do now. I raised a fourth tentacle, but didn't put it straight up like the other three. Instead, I waved it back and forth. Then I fluttered through some colors.

It was my first scientific inquiry. Where was the dominant adult female? I retracted the fourth tentacle and rolled it up, then extended it again. Then I used my siphon in rapid alternating currents to hop up and down to accentuate the question my fourth tentacle was posing.

That's when the adult male and the youngest female left the area. Now watch this, I thought. I reeled back in two of the three upright tentacles.

She got it. How smart these human beings were. But, I realized, they must be pretty stupid if they need hard bone around their brains to protect them from carelessness.

I really liked the shrimp I was given. They were basically thawed by the time they floated down to me. Normally, I'm a hunter, but this arrangement was quite satisfactory, especially when I was able to snare an occasional live crab thrown in. I learned that if I showed obvious satisfaction by making some kind of signal, they were very tickled and would give me another one--another handful of shrimp; another live crab. How easily human beings were to train.

Mia Part 3: SOCIAL PROMOTION

Adrienne got bored with Octavia very quickly, but I really loved her. I just know she loved me, too, because she would change colors, sometimes really fast, when I came near her. I would sit for hours, and over time I graduated to higher grades in octopus school.

We would talk, Octavia and me. I know that's hard to believe, but it's true. We got to be great communicators, and I know she could read my lips. Her tentacle language was hard at first, but over time I learned quite a vocabulary.

Once, I had a really big fight with my Dad over what I was wearing. "You're not going out of the house like that, young lady!" he shouted. What a cliché. I laughed at him and he got so mad.

"You want me looking like a geek so I won't get pregnant, huh?" I said sarcastically. That's when he slapped my face for the first time. In fact, he had never laid a hand on me or Adrienne, ever. I couldn't believe it, and my astonishment was so uncontrolled that I broke out in tears.

"Mom would never have done that in a million years!" I shouted, saltwater tears streaming into my own aquarium of self-pity. I knew I had cheated, pulling the dead Mom card. He reached out for me but I recoiled.

"Sweetie," he said, but I was in a trance of anti-Dad. "I'm so sorry. But please leave Mom out of things." I don't know how I knew, but he was feeling like he had slapped Mom.

"Whatever!" I said. I turned and looked at Octavia, who saw the whole thing. She changed with ripples of color, but not fast and fun like usual, but very slowly, like she was so sad. I turned back to my Dad. "Mom isn't even here to keep you straight."

"Your Mom couldn't be here. That's not your fault."

"No, it isn't, is it?" I whispered angrily, for emphasis. "It's hers. She got sick and didn't even take her medicine. That's what Adrienne said. Why wouldn't she? No, she hated us so much that she would rather die than stay here."

There are few times in a child's life when she experiences a life event for the whole family. Mine was that day, when little ol' me was able to make a grownup--a grown man, at that--cry. I guess we were even. Before I stormed out of the room, I caught a glimpse of Octavia with that same fourth tentacle standing straight up.

Mia Part 4: THE REST OF THE STORY

One day I went to feed Octavia but I sensed something was wrong. She just let the shrimp sink. Even when I threw in a crab, Octavia let it walk all around the aquarium like it owned the place.

"Are you sick, Octavia?" I asked out loud. She raised that fourth tentacle again, which wasn't what she did when I sensed she was communicating affirmation. That's when I noticed it; I was startled to see something really weird. The crab started heading for a break in the rocks where Octavia spent most of her time. I looked closely and there lots--I mean lots--of round white things. She must have been up all night popping them out into the water. There arose a disagreement between the crab and Octavia, which disturbed the whole pile of them. The entire aquarium became like a snow globe.

"Oh my God!" I shouted to Adrienne. "Adrienne, Dad, come here, quick!" There's seldom this much shouting or excitement in our house, so they came right away. "Look," I said. "Are those eggs?" I already knew the answer.

"Yes," Dad answered solemnly.

"Why aren't you excited? We're gonna have a whole bunch of little octopuses pretty soon." They both looked at me weird. "What? What's wrong? You mean we won't be able to keep 'em?"

"They're semelparous," big brain Adrienne said with her big high school words.

"So what, whatever that means," I replied.

"Sweetie-pie," Dad said, "that means they reproduce just once before they die."

I recoiled more strongly than I did from that slap long ago. "No, not Octavia," I insisted. "I mean, what has babies and then just dies? Who's gonna raise the little octopuses?" I turned to the tank. "Octavia, that's not true. Don't listen to them." Then I looked harder. Octavia had caught the crab, alright, but hadn't eaten it. Just killed it. I realized crabs gotta eat, too, and those eggs must have looked pretty good to the crab. "Good for you, Octavia. Stupid crab." I watched for a moment. "Wait, why aren't you eating?" I asked her. Dad gave Adrienne a look.

"It's started, Adrienne."

"I know, Dad." Then Adrienne looked at me in the most big-sisterly way she could. "I'm so sorry."

"No! This is bullshit!" Normally our household wasn't one in which words like this were ever said out loud, but I was given a pass.

"They only live about two years," Dad said.

"But it hasn't been two years," I argued.

"We don't know how old she was when we got her," Adrienne said softly.

"No mother would do this to her kids. Just have 'em and then leave 'em. Just have 'em and die." I turned to Dad. "Right, Dad?" I asked sternly, and he knew exactly what I meant.

"Mia," Dad said. "Sit with us here," and he patted his hand on the sofa that faced the aquarium.

"This sucks," I complained and sat stiffly on the sofa.

"Yes, it does," he agreed. Adrienne nodded her head. "But a mother is a special kind of person."

"Not one who dies," I grumbled. At this point no one knew--not even me--who we were talking about. It wasn't about Octavia at all.

"Right after your Mom became pregnant with you, the doctor told her about her breast cancer."

"I know this already. Then she didn't take her medicine and she died."

"What you don't know, Mia, is that she couldn't take the medicine. It would hurt you while you were in her belly. So she went through the whole pregnancy hoping she could have you, all perfect, and then be able to take the medicine and catch up. But it was too late. By that time, the cancer had spread too much. We were thrilled that she lived another eighteen months. Although it wasn't easy. I'm glad you don't remember."

"So Mom didn't save her life with medicine just so I could come out normal?" A special kind of person: if it weren't for me, she could be alive right now.

"I can see what you're thinking," Dad said. "For Mom there simply wasn't a choice. That's the way it is."

"Kind of like Octavia here," Adrienne added. "An octopus only gives birth once and then she dies. That's the way it is for them, too."

"At least your Mom got to do it twice," Dad said, but his voice was a little wavering. He was thankful for what he had. Besides Mom, some anyway, it was also Adrienne and me.

Now I knew what that fourth tentacle business was all about. Octavia just wanted to know where Mom was. And now she was waiving it to tell me she was going to be a mother herself.

Octavia Part 3: THE COUNT

I know I'll be dead soon, and I hope this small ocean will spill into a big one and my little ones with it.

There they sat, the adult male, Mia, and the older juvenile female, Adrienne. By now, I'm sure Mia had figured out why I had raised three tentacles that time, but dithered with the fourth. I really was counting them, and one was missing.

I reflected on my scientific inquiries. I would communicate the data to my kind in the usual way, using waves the human beings haven't yet discovered. The way our kind always communicates.

I've a lot of information on this species, now that I've observed them in their own den. And as it turned out, my emotions required me to scatter my feelings among my arms, or I feared my head would explode.

I raised my first arm, which was the thought that we weren't all that different, the human beings and me.

I raised the second one which thought how lovely a family was.

I raised the third one, which was dedicated to Mia.

I raised the fourth, which I had long ago reserved for motherhood.

I raised the fifth, which thought about the important things in life.

I raised the sixth one, which thought about what a great thing I was doing, seeding the oceans with my offspring.

I raised the seventh one, which was imbued with empathy for a little girl who, like my own, would never know her mother.

I thought long and hard before I raised the eighth. What was it thinking? My eighth tentacle was keeping a secret from me. Why? Of course, it was protecting me, but I broke its wall.

It was thinking about love.