Bastille Day

It was on Bastille Day, 1985, that we found out when it was we would be leaving. I imagined my father as the evil tyrant and we the benighted prisoners – who was going to storm the walls for us? We announced it at my best friend’s birthday party. It was a sunny hot day and we hovered around her patio table next to her pool. I could see that my sister, Meg, was enjoying the drama. Tears fell in big globs down her cheeks and plopped on the clear plastic table. I sighed.

“It’s only a year,” I tried.

The rest looked at me in shocked horror. Only a year. Only. A month was a life sentence in teenage time, a year… unimaginable.

“Where are you going again?” Tara asked.

“West Germany. Bayreuth.” I answered for the fifth time. Tara wasn’t the brightest bulb in the box.

“Bayruit? Isn’t there fighting there?”

I tried to be calm. Stupidity is its own punishment, I told myself. “No. Not Bayruit. That’s in the Middle East. This is Bayreuth. It’s just a little town in Germany that our father is dragging us to for no known reason except that he likes to fuck with our lives.” I put my head down on the plastic table and sighed deeply.

Meg got up at that point and said, “Jude, we better get going. Daddy said to be home by five to help pack.”

I glared at her. “I am not going. I’m sleeping here tonight. We’re not leaving until fucking Labor Day. Why do I have to pack his goddamned books now? Let him pack them himself.”

Meg shifted uncomfortably. “Please, Judy. Please come. You know he’ll freak out if you don’t come.”

“You know, Meg, I could give a rat’s ass if he freaks out because I won’t be there. And you shouldn’t go either.” I sat back in my chair now to stare at her, to dare her to go.

“You know, you shouldn’t pick these fights with him. It’s all your fault that he’s like that you know. If you’d just do what he asks…”

“Then I’d be his slave. Like you. And you do it so fucking well, I wouldn’t want to steal the limelight. Look, Meg, just don’t go. Don’t be an idiot.”

“You’re the idiot!” she screamed. “You!” She picked up her bag and turned to go. “Are you coming or what?” she asked from the gate.

“Haven’t I already made it clear that I’m not coming?” I sneered.

“Crystal,” she shouted and opened the gate. Her boyfriend Joe gave me a nasty look and ran after her.

I sat very still in my chair, wondering if I should have gone. She had no backbone. She let him walk all over her. We had been looking forward to this party for weeks and now because he was dragging us to Germany for his sabbatical, we had to leave our party early. What sort of parent does this? I thought. If Mama were alive…

I didn’t hear Joe come back in the yard. He pushed me in the back, almost knocking me out of my chair. “You fucking bitch!” he screamed at me, near hysterical. I got up and turned around. During the fight between Meg and me everyone sort of half listened but also just kept doing what they were doing, watching MTV on the TV that was hooked up by the pool and talking about the party that was going to happen Sunday night. It wasn’t an unusual sight to see me refuse to leave and Meg have a fit about it. But now they all stared since these were different characters. Joe was a pretty easy going guy who didn’t have much use for me, his girlfriend’s little sister. I was only 14, peanuts to his 17. He usually wavered between ignoring me to a sort of playful banter which made it clear he didn’t think much of me.

“What is your problem?” I yelled back. I am quite a yeller when I have to be.

“You just let her go alone! You know what he’ll do!”

I reddened. My friends had some idea of what my father was like, but only Joe had really ever seen it. He was there when my father wrenched my arm right out of the socket and sat in the emergency room consoling my sister who was much more hysterical than I was. She didn’t get her shoulder popped back in its socket by a second year medical student. He also once got chased down the street by my father who was threatening to hit him with a hammer. Luckily, Joe was driving and my father is a fat old guy. But it was enough for Joe to get the idea of who my father was. “She didn’t have to go.” I said it quietly now. I didn’t want this discussion in front of everyone. But he wasn’t going to let it rest.

“Yes, she did. And now she’ll get it and you won’t. You fucking bitch.” He pushed me again, not hard but hard enough for me to start to get very angry.

“So what, I am supposed to go home to get beaten up because my sister doesn’t have the brains not to go home? And what, now you’re going to beat me up for him? Try, you piece of shit.” I braced myself but several people came forward to lead Joe away. Sandra came and put her arms around me and led me into the house. It was her birthday and I was ruining her party and she was nothing but kindness to me. I started to cry when we got into her family room.

“I’m sorry,” I sobbed.

“About what?” she asked, truly surprised.

“I’m ruining your party. I’m sorry.”

“You are not so ruining my party, you silly willy!” She began rubbing my back and head at the same time. She bent over me, her blonde hair brushing my face and gave me several kisses on the forehead and eyes. I relaxed into a comfortable crying fit. I sobbed weakly and pitifully, secure that Sandra would keep everyone out until I was done. She was the other person who knew about my father -- although she had never seen him hit me, she had nursed bruises. She and her mother had often lied to him about where I was, even when he was threatening to come in and search the house. Her mom, all of five feet and no inches with her thick French accent, would say, Oh, Meester Hall, you can, of course, search if you would like but she is not heeer, I ahm telling you! Why don’t you wait at home – she always comes, no? And I would lie in Sandra’s big mahogany double bed with the white canopy overhead and dream that they would adopt me and I would never have to go home again.

But I did go home that night because I felt so guilty. It was eleven when I left the safety of Sandra’s house. I rode through the park attached to the elementary school that I didn’t attend, past the house with the yellow sprinkler that they never put away and it seemed like they never turned on, past the house with the pretty fence that always made me think that someday I want a pretty fence just like that when I have my own house and can make things the way I want, past the Robinson’s house with their fifteen children or some other insane number, past the house of the secretary to the elementary school principal and I can never remember that woman’s name but I used to like going there on Halloween because she gave out good candy and down the hill past the Cohen’s, past the Schwartz’s, past the Kennedy’s and home and oh shit the light is on in the dining room… should I turn back? Should I go in? Go in, you wimp, I told myself and pushed my bike behind the bushes in the front, not bringing it into the back yard and I could hear my father saying in my ear, that’s a half assed job, Jude, a half assed job…. And I always thought but never said, how do you have a half assed job – you got the whole ass if you want it or not, it’s attached – but that would really have been asking for it and I had some self preservation after all…

And in I walked to my father and Meg sitting at the table, both drinking tea from BGGs (big green glasses we called them, BGGs for short, we always thought we were being so clever with things like that and then they became real words to us, not clever at all anymore). I stood there for a moment, not sure if I should run or curse or what when my father smiled and said, “Oh, Judashala, we were hoping you’d come. Want to play pinochle?” And so I sat cautiously, for although he did not often lay traps for me he sometimes did -- but it wasn’t one this time. This time we just played pinochle until five in the morning, by which time I had gone set twice but won anyway.