Halloween Guilt

I presume that I was like most children in the United States in taking great pleasure in Halloween. Not in the costumes, mind you, rather in the practice of collecting vast quantities of totally unearned sugary treats. It’s not that I believe children need to be earning candy as if it was money, or do chores and be rewarded with it. Rather, I have always felt that Halloween candy somehow dodged all usual parental and societal conventions. For these reasons alone an excess amount of sugar could end up in the hands of those humans who, if we’re honest, don’t need, and should probably not have, any of it.

I was not a fan of the costume situation for a few reasons. I lacked the creative spark or impetus to make anything of my own. Not only that, I could not be bothered to come up with my own ideas about what kinds of things I could be, other than my grumpy self. I even tried a store bought costume once, and got so hazed by my grade school classmates that I swore off of them, even though I secretly longed for their ease of use for many years afterwards.

There was also the fact that my mom–a stay at home mom with two kids, her husband who expected extraordinary French cooking nightly–had no interest in helping me craft anything more complicated than something that didn’t need crafting. For example, the costume of the night soon to be in question was: black sweatpants, a dark colored long sleeved top that may have been of a similar material, a flimsy witch’s hat (which I didn’t wear for more than five minutes once we started our tour of the neighborhood anyway), a bamboo branch from the bamboo tree on one of our house decks, and some black smudge on my face. My shoes were probably white or some other incongruous color. Though how it could be incongruous, since my costume was aimed at ‘witch’ but hit somewhere closer to seriously dirty grade schooler with a pretend weapon', is not entirely clear, as there was not really a coherent costume there in the first place. Let’s just agree that, for most of us, white shoes probably don’t go with an all black outfit.

Fortunately I cared enough about collecting processed sugar that my truly mediocre appearance was unable to cast a deep enough veil of self doubt to have me simply stay home and brood in front of an expensive speaker while my father played Bach and did his best to not bother me too much because, honestly he didn’t really understand unhappiness, and he certainly didn’t understand how to talk to me when I was unhappy. And so it was that we all went off to go trick or treating! Who is all?

My sister Gabrielle. Younger, happier, probably in a real costume she or friend made. Just excited to be outside collecting candy.

Maybe one or two other friends. Clearly, not all that important, as I cannot even recall if there actually was anyone else there. I feel as if there might have been a second mom with two kids in tow. Nonetheless, I am far enough away from the event to have no clear recollection of that detail, and there are also the memory overlays of the long exposure ghosts of previous and later Halloweens casting shadows of many other kids into the memory.

My mom. Armored French chaperone unit. She does not, and I don’t think she ever has, wear armor of any physical kind. Rather, I can recall through all the years of going trick or treating with her, having the distinct feeling of having a mom shaped tank rumbling alongside us as we wandered the darkening Berkeley Hills streets. She managed to set a very distinct mood to the whole operation. Weapons of war, even in peacetime in peaceful places, bring a certain level of aggression with them. Even if they look like French moms, and have their cannons bolted shut, there is a subtle simmering violence projected by a tank calmly rumbling around civilian streets. My mom was not violent, but she was protective, and I am fairly certain that, should she had to have protected us with violence, she would not have hesitated for even a moment. It amuses me now to think that, at some level, it was this chance to be protectively violent that allowed her to be the one to chaperone us around the neighborhood, year after year, without complaint. I do not recall my dad ever undertaking this task.

We had been out for not more than fifteen minutes. By this time we already had some decent loot, and had run into the varying stages of adult excitement at having to greet demanding children repeatedly for several hours. I had stoically weathered at least three confused attempts to identify the so-called costume I had donned for the night. But from my point of view, and I’m fairly certain I could say the point of view of all the children present, the night’s candy collection had only just begun. We had just visited a house on the downhill side of the street, and crossed to the uphill side, eager and curious to see what the house there would deliver into our various collection containers.

The Berkeley Hills are, in most places, not incredibly steep. The street we were on cut along a hillside that was probably inclined at only thirty degrees or so. Not a problem for human legs, but architecturally speaking it meant that the large house we were approaching had a long, zig zagging path of wooden stairs going from street level to an entryway set fairly far back from where we were walking. It was a fair climb through the large trees that shielded this house from the road, and by the time we could see the door we already felt that we were well within the private domain of this particular abode. I remember feeling less and less festive as we proceeded towards this dark house. I could see no lights on and as my mother had mentioned earlier, quietly but out loud, that she could not see any Jack-o’-lanterns adorning any part of this house.

Someone got close enough to ring the doorbell, while the rest of the group stayed back several feet. From where we stood, on a level part of the wooden stairway and walkway that led to the front door, we could only see the dark face of the house directly in front of us, and a darkened room extending to the left of of whatever antechamber was beyond the door, further back on the hill. It was unlit, but had three large windows facing out towards us. A light turned on in that small room, illuminating what seemed to be a kitchen. Several things then happened fairly quickly.

What I assumed was an elderly man with gray hair, though tall and un-stooped, lumbered with speed but obvious difficulty into the kitchen. Something was clearly wrong with him. The way he moved was unusually ungainly. I distinctly remember feeling, more than thinking, that it was a zombie like gait, or that of some monster. While he never turned to face us completely, it was clear that his mouth was agape the whole time we could see him. In the few moments after which he appeared and entered the kitchen he fumbled, again, with difficulty and mouth open, at part of a wall we could not see. Suddenly the air was rent with the sound of a powerful burglar alarm. It was deafening. This was not some digital beeping, toned in a way to be annoying and detectable, but yet not too disturbing to neighbors. This was the 1980’s, and this house had a classic, massive, firehouse like alarm bell that people from blocks away must have been able to hear. Everyone in our group covered their ears and ran back towards the street. The man in the kitchen seemed paralyzed to me. I remember that, in my last glance back at him, he simply stood, awkwardly, facing the wall he had been searching, mouth agape.

Back on the street we simply kept moving away from the oppressive sound of the alarm. Perhaps due to our children’s instincts we tried not to dwell on it and simply headed towards our next source of candy. My mother and the other adult seemed all too happy to not have to shepherd us along, but they exchanged dark glances with each other. Eventually they began discussing the event. The main focus of their discussion was focused around whether or not what the man in the house had done was intentional and malicious or accidental. Both adults were already leaning in the direction of the prior, but they seemed to want to convince each other of their budding view of the situation.

My mom re-stated that there had been no visible pumpkin out front. In future times this single event and this absence of pumpkin became her way of determining whether or not a house was worth visiting for treats. She would refuse to allow us near any house with no pumpkin or other decorations. The other adult accepted this as evidence. Other things they discussed were the odd mannerisms of the man, the speed at which he entered the kitchen, the fact that he seemed to have turned on the alarm, and the subsequent lack of action on his part once it had started. After only a few minutes they were both in agreement: the alarm going off had been an attack of sorts to make us leave.

I could see my mom processing the recent event in this light, and trying to come up with an appropriate course of action. I feel that she comes from a school of thought where one of the best ways to express one’s displeasure with an attack, unfortunately, is to find ways to hurt the attacker in return. While the hurt may not be in kind, it is meant to be just as painful or worse than what she experienced. My mother explained what she was going to do to the other adult and quickly took her leave.

Before cellular phones, let alone smart versions of such a device, one had to place calls from an actual landline. One had to be at their home, or in a phone booth, and press physical buttons. Due to the lack of any kind of display that person then had to wait. Maybe you got an answering machine, maybe not. My mom had gone home to call as many people in the neighborhood as she could. She was going to tell everyone to avoid the alarm house and its strange occupant. It may seem cruel. It may seem protective. I think it was probably both. She had been hurt. Her children, in her view, had been hurt. Indeed, my mother did not want anyone else to get hurt. Except, perhaps, for the man in the alarm house. I didn’t worry about it much, perhaps not at all, for the rest of that particular evening. I was young and there were treats to be collected.

It was either a few days or just more than a week later that we all learned some details about what happened that evening. We learned that my mother's efforts to protect people from the alarm house were quite successful. That house received no more visitors that Halloween. We know this because the wife of the strange man in the kitchen had started calling around, trying to find out what had happened to her husband, and why no one came to their house that Halloween. Her husband was unable to explain it to her, and had been unable to interact with us, because he was mentally ill. I don’t know if this was a lifelong illness, or a result of his age or an accident, but it certainly seemed to fit what I had witnessed. His movements, and the way he stood in an odd state of shock or apathy after the alarm went off, made much more sense in this new context.

It turns out the poor man had not been rushing to turn an alarm on, rather he had been trying to figure out how to turn it off. He had frozen in fear and confusion once it had gone off. Because of my mother’s protective vigilance that one slip had ensured that he had, in a sense, scared off all the kids in the neighborhood, not just our group. I infer that this brought him sadness, and his wife as well, because of how defensive my mom sounded as she relayed this information to the family. She, as well as others in the neighborhood, had gotten a call from the man’s wife, and the wife was clearly distraught about the whole affair. This put her into a particularly foul mood.

When my mother feels attacked, especially if she feels she has done something good and just, she shuts down and gets mildly aggressive. She could not really hear the plea for compassion that was coming from the other woman. The woman’s pleas to the neighborhood were seen as nothing less than an attack. Fortunately my mother acted with some restraint and did not try, once again, to strike back. She merely angrily defended her actions to us, her family, over dinner.

These last pieces of information, both the unhappiness of the family in the alarm house, and my own mother’s angst, precipitated in my mind a deeply melancholic view. We had contributed to the sadness of a man who was already in a damaged state. He had only been trying to make sure that a visit from trick or treaters would be possible. He had failed, and it only served to isolate him further from the world. My mother had been trying to do what she thought was right, and now she was being judged as cruel and judgemental by others in the neighborhood. It is a memory that, though some details have been worn smooth by the passage of time, remains an emotional beacon in my mind.

While Halloween may no longer be an awkward experience for me, it is certain that at some point in the season this memory will be rekindled. This strange fact, that everyone may be trying to be good, and just in their own way, and everyone may still be wounding everyone else, has left a sort of desolation in my heart. There may be many reasons for people to feel that the Fall is a time for gloom, spookiness, and even horror. I know for me that the existential dread of Halloween is clear: dead or alive, we are unstuck from our desires, and our actions, however clear we may be about them, have meanings otherworldly and unknown to us for those who witness or experience them.