Wise Owl Moynihan remembered the ordeal her name caused her from a very early age. There was just no way to explain to folks in the small town where she lived how a five year old girl came to be named Wise Owl.
“Are you a Native American?” Mrs. Trumble, the gray haired, bespectacled kindergarten teacher asked her the first day of school.
“No, ma’am, we’re Irish,” Wise Owl replied, sticking her tongue out at her snickering classmates.
Mrs. Trumble was writing out name tags for all the children so they would remember each others’ names. She wrote “Wiseowl” , as if the name was one word.
The little girl, who could already read, stared at the name tag. “That’s not right. It’s two words. “
“ It doesn’t matter. I don’t think anyone will forget your name anyhow,” Mrs. Trumble said, plastering the sticky tag onto Wise Owl’s pretty new pink sweater.
“It’s my father’s fault,” Wise Owl said, looking down at the tag. “My mother wanted to name me Leisel. Like in the Sound of Music. But my dad, he can’t hear well and he thought she said Wise Owl.”
“I see.”
“They tried to get it changed afterwards. But they couldn’t. “
“How unfortunate,” Mrs. Trumble said, sticking a name tag on another little girl that read, simply, Joan.
“But it’s not as unfortunate as what happened to my brother,” Wise Owl said.
Mrs. Trumble waited expectantly. Then she softly asked “What’s his name, dear?”
“Fruit Loops. It was supposed to be Phillip. “
“Oh my. Your father’s hearing must be very bad.”
“It is,” said Wise Owl, nodding. “And he drinks too much too.”
And so it went. At every important juncture in her young life, Wise Owl found herself telling and retelling the story of how she came to be named the way she was. Every time she went to a new school, every year she had a new teacher, every time her name was read off of a camp roster or at a spelling contest – people would snicker. She would patiently explain about her father’s bad hearing and drinking.
Her name wasn’t really the worst outcome of his particular problems. Her father, who had a perfectly fine name, Tom Moynihan, had a bad temper to boot. Her mother told the two children that they had to make “adjustments” to his moods because their father became frustrated when he couldn’t hear properly.
When eight year old Wise Owl asked her mother how her father lost his hearing, Rose Moynihan simply replied “The tire blew on his car while he was changing it one night. Late. Lucky he wasn’t killed or you wouldn’t even be here.”
Wise Owl knew what that meant. Her father was “out drinking and some nonsense occurred”. That’s what her grandmother would say anyhow. But Wise Owl didn’t say it to her mother. It wasn’t any use. Her mother always excused whatever her father did.
So the little girl had to be satisfied with that truth although it wasn’t true. She was used to that by then, as she was with living with the consequences of her father’s actions.
By the time Wise Owl was in high school, her father spent most of his time on the couch in the living room, surrounded by bottles of scotch. He wore only his red plaid robe and a pair of gray scuffs. He was dressed that way when she left for school in the morning at 8 am and still looked that way when she came home around 8pm after finishing her part time job at the supermarket.
She would automatically turn the TV off. Then she would go into the kitchen and heat up her leftover dinner , munching silently on the food as she pored over her homework. Unlike her brother, Fruit Loops, she was ambitious and serious. These tendencies, she hoped, would help her overcome some of the drawbacks in her life.
Her brother, however, couldn’t pull that off. When kids made fun of his name, calling him “Loopy” or “Fruit face”, he cried at first. Then he learned to fight. By the time he was in eighth grade, he was arrested for beating a classmate around the head with a pineapple and sent to a juvenile facility for six months. The local newspaper ran a headline saying “Boy assaulted with piece of fruit” which allowed them to identify her brother even though they weren’t allowed to use minor’s names.
Her brother’s juvenile record grew after he came home. With every achievement his sister received, he seemed to add a notch onto his rap sheet. Assault and battery charges, all in retaliation for the teasing about his name – and then there was the arson charge a year ago when he turned 15.
Fruit Loops had set fire to the next door neighbor’s basement after their son Carl decorated his locker with assorted fruit one day. Her brother opened his locker and apples, oranges, bananas and pears spilled out to the guffaws of everyone walking through the hallway of the high school. Fruit Loops, who by that time had spent a number of months incarcerated with inmates who were rather proficient and clever at exacting revenge, decided it would be appropriate to gather a different type of vegetation and set it afire in the basement while Carl’s family slept.
Unfortunately, the blaze grew and spiraled out of control before anyone woke up. Not wanting to murder them all, Fruit Loops called 911. He was caught redhanded. Several members of the unfortunate family suffered burns and injuries as they tried to escape which persuaded the judge to send Fruit Loops away for as long as he could. This time he was shipped off for an indeterminate amount of time to a youth facility for rehabilitation.
This turned Wise owl into an only child for all effects and purposes. It was likely that by the time Fruit Loops came home she would be away at college. Her parents didn’t even act as if they had a son. They quietly sold their home on the block and moved into a two bedroom apartment on the other side of town, using the proceeds to pay for Fruit Loops’ legal fees. They even sold his clothes to help pay the costs. It was as if Fruit Loops had never been part of their family.
Rose Moynihan took a job at Shop Rite and Wise Owl joined her after school and on weekends, cashiering and bagging groceries. Her dad, after years of unsuccessfully trying to earn a living as a handyman, retired. He planted himself in front of the TV the day they moved into the apartment and had stayed there ever since. It was up to everyone else to find the money to pay the bills.
Sometimes it seemed to Wise Owl that her father was doing what her brother might have – drinking and watching TV like a 15 year old out of control. Perhaps that was his way of coping with his son’s absence. She wasn’t sure because her father didn’t ever talk to her or acknowledge her existence. He didn’t’ seem to know that either she or her mother were even alive. The people on the TV set were more real to him. It was their names he muttered from time to time.
“Paula, Randy how can you say that?” he’d yell during American Idol, tossing a pillow at the TV. He’d gesture toward the kitchen, where she and her mother sat drinking tea. “You can’t sing worth a rat’s ear!” he would yell at contestants.
“His hearing problem seems to have cleared up,” Wise Owl would mutter to her mother, who was staring at the newspaper.
“Let him be.”
Or her dad would weep as he watched Extreme Home Makeover. Families who had been through less tragedy then them would get brand new homes and Jacuzzis and trips to places Wise Owl never even dared to dream about. Her dad would cry about their stories and point at the TV in his drunken stupor, sniffling. “That’s wunnerful,” he’d say. “You deserve it. God damn, at least someone is getting a break.”
After working all day, Wise Owl would stare down at her Shop Rite shirt with her name emblazoned on the front and want to spit . Customers pointed at her name, asking her if it was from an advertising campaign for Wise Lay’s potato chips .That was how her day went. Thanks, Dad.
She no longer was the little girl who told the story of how she came to get that name, charming everyone. Now she would just say to people “That’s my name. Haha. Get over it.” She vowed to get a name change as soon as she could afford one, but with all the money spent on Fruit Loop’s legal fees, there never was extra money. It would have been cheaper for her parents to do a name change for her brother when he was five than to watch him turn into a career criminal.
Her father was the main thing she and her mother fought about during her adolescence. Rose defended him every time Wise Owl rolled her eyes toward the couch. She quipped that it was her dad’s ‘throne’.
“He can’t help it if he has bad hearing ,” her mother said one day, slamming down a cucumber she was slicing. “Haven’t I taught you to have compassion for people with disabilities?”
“Yes, Mom,” Wise Owl replied. “But Dad doesn’t have a hearing problem. That whole story is a lie. He’s a drunk.” She waited and let this settle in. Then she added “He screws everything up that you ask him to do and you don’t ask much. Look at our names – he couldn’t even give the hospital our right names and he doesn’t care that it’s ruined our lives.”
“He cares.”
“Look at him, Mom. All he cares about is getting his bottles on time and being left alone. All he cares about is himself. And you’re the one who doesn’t have compassion. Fruit Loops is in jail, Mom, for years because you and Dad won’t deal with reality. And you don’t even care.”
And Rose crossed the room and did something she never had done before. She hit her daughter across the face. Wise Owl’s hand flew up to her cheek as she burst into tears.
“Never, ever talk to me like that about your father again. How could you possibly understand what he’s been through?” Rose said, returning to the kitchen counter. She breathed deeply, then added “And never mention your brother’s name again.” She chopped at the cucumber, hacking at it until it was ruined and inedible.
Wise Owl sat there, holding her face, watching as Rose tossed the destroyed cucumber into the already overflowing garbage can.
The phone rang. It was 5:00 p.m., the time when Fruit Loops was able to call home collect. Wise Owl watched as Rose ignored the phone. She peeked into the living room, where her father lay sprawled on the couch, oblivious .
Letting go of her face, Wise Owl walked across the kitchen and picked up the phone. When the operator came on, she accepted the charges. She watched her mother’s back tense up but ignored it.
Instead, Wise Owl asked her brother how he was doing.
THE END
Copyright 2007 Ruth Harrigan
