by Ultra Violet
My brother says, “He’s over there in back of the eucalyptus tree. She’s naked.”
He passes the binoculars to my sister. After she has found them in this Garden of Eden, she passes the binoculars to me. I shiver. My brother tells us they are making love. I don’t know what that means. I look. I think I see a snake crawling toward them and … Yes, I see it. I see the snake now. Tarzan is fighting like a tiger. Now she’s eating the snake. My brother snatches away the binoculars.
Sometimes Jean defecates inside a bouquet of mimosa, lilies, and fragrant laurel and places it on the highway. Hiding by the side of the road, delighted, mischievous, and terrified, we wait for a motorist to stop and pick up the bouquet. Other times, led by Jean, we lie in the sun-warmed highway like dead mummies. When a car jams on its brakes a few dozen feet from us, we run for our lives.
Jean marries four times. He becomes the scandal of the whole family. Divorce is unheard of in our provincial, Catholic, bourgeois circle. Years later when he visits the family, my mother receives him very hesitantly for tea. He is now a divorced man. Unthinkable.
My father, my handsome father. He never expresses any sign of tenderness toward me or any of his children. He never holds us. Yes, he does—just one time. In 1940, when he is mobilized to fight the Germans, he affectionately kisses all of us goodbye. It may be the last time we ever see each other. When he is gone I daydream that another war will be declared and my father will again be called to arms. Once more he will have to kiss me goodbye and I will savor the sweetness of his kiss. I would give anything for one of his kisses. He is captured by the Germans, held for three years in Oflag 4-D, a prison camp, and released in an exchange of prisoners early in 1944.
My mother is slender, dark-haired, very beautiful. She has an absolutely perfect nose. In summer she wears the most elegant heavy white linen suit—a straight skirt with a pleat, a tailored, padded-shoulder jacket, and a white silk blouse with real mother-of-pearl buttons. Looking at her in the summer of 1944, I notice tiny brown sun spots sprinkled over her face. Puzzled, I ask her about those spots, for they were not there the day before. My mother replies that she is pregnant—the sun gives her brown spots when she is pregnant. I feel a mixture of misery and jealousy. I am not sure if it is jealousy that she is pregnant rather than I, or jealousy of the one to be born, who will take my place as the chosen one, the baby, though by this time I am nine years old.
Now, in the present, I am told by my brother and sisters that I was Mother’s favorite child. If love was poured upon me, I was never aware of it, for my need for affection was bottomless. It was my feeling as a child that from the day my beautiful sister Edwige was born, my parents never looked at me again.
My schooling begins when I am six. I commute every day by bus to a Catholic school a few miles outside Grenoble, run by nuns of the Sacred Heart. I have to wear a uniform. At seven, I begin boarding at the convent, for it has been reported to my mother that I have been making eyes at the bus driver. This is the start of my rebellion against everything: family, religion, authority, eventually society in general.
At the convent I feel abandoned, unloved, and unwanted. World War II is raging across Europe. My father is a prisoner; I’ve lost my father. I feel humiliated at being locked up in a convent a few miles from home. I declare my own war on the whole world. I will not trust anyone anymore. I will attempt to try everything. I must find out for myself what is true and what is false, what is right and what is wrong.
The alarm clock at the convent rings at 6 A.M. It is September 1946; I am eleven. As I get out of bed, I notice bloodstains on my sheet. I wonder where the blood is coming from. I have no wound. Did a bat attack me during the night? We get dressed and head for chapel. After kneeling, we stand to sing a hymn. I feel fluid running down between my legs. What can it be? When we kneel again, I manage, by holding my prayer book at my side, to slide my hand up under my skirt. With one finger inside my panties I feel that I am all wet. My fingers are red with blood. I want to scream. I am going to die.
The service is nearly over. Soon we will all walk by Mother Superior. I must wear my white gloves. They are part of the uniform. Without thinking twice, I lick my fingers clean before I put on my glove. While we walk two by two in orderly fashion on each side of the wide corridor, I escape the procession to run to the nearest bathroom. I look at my panties and they are bloody. I am bleeding from inside. I wish my mother were here. I wish I could call her, but we are not allowed to telephone our parents. Only Mother Superior can get in touch with them. Mother Superior is our mother while we are here, and I’ve transferred my affection to her.
I head for her office. The door is locked. Usually one can knock on the door and walk right in. I wonder why the door is locked. Then I hear a faint sigh. I lean against the door. I hear more sighs and out-of-breath gasping, as if someone is being choked to death. I am about to shake the door, but instead I kneel down and lift the lid of the mail chute.
In the narrow rectangular frame I see the behind of a naked body. I see the wide black sleeves of a nun’s uniform floating as hands move frantically at the front of the naked body. I hear a climax of accelerated gasping, and the motions cease. The naked body rolls to its side. It is a man. I utter a scream and drop the lid of the mail slot. I run off as fast as I can. I make a right-angle turn at the end of the corridor and stop. I wonder if they heard my scream. After a long minute, I hear the door open and footsteps going in the other direction. I lean against the corner of the wall to look, and I see the silhouettes of what appear to be two nuns walking off in their floating black gowns.
I decide to have breakfast. As I enter the dining room, my roommates are leaving. I pick up some pieces of bread and walk off with them to rejoin the orderly procession along the corridor. I stop by the bathroom. In the toilet cubicle, I lower my panties. I gather the soft part of the bread and insert it into my soft part to stop the bleeding.
When I go home the next day for the weekend, my mother finally explains what has happened to me. She seems indifferent, amused. I am resentful. Will I have to put up with this all my life? “My dear, you’ve got it,” my mother says. At that time it was a far greater burden than today. Then towels were used that had to be washed, scrubbed, hung out to dry.
Convent life means getting up at six, washing while wearing a white robe so you do not see your own body, going to mass, sometimes passing out because of not eating since the night before, praying before and after class, walking in silence along the never-ending corridors. Once during the war we are served a cat casserole at lunch. We know it by the shape of the head that one of us fishes out of the crock.
At night I cry silently, longing for love. I cry in my dormitory bed, under my sheet so no one can hear me. Years later I am to have a multitude of lovers, as I try to fill my endless need for love.
I am the first in my class in algebra and geometry. It is easy for me; I barely have to study. But I have no interest in history, literature, spelling, poetry. I will not even open the books, and in those subjects I am last. The nuns are puzzled. I must be bright, and yet I am so inconsistent. One day in a math exam my calculations are 100 percent right. I deserve a 20 out of 20. Mother Superior calls me into her office.
“Admit that you cheated.”
“No, I did not.”
“I don’t believe you. I will give you a zero to teach you a lesson.”
I leave in tears. Not only am I a prisoner in this convent, but there is no justice. I decide on a hunger strike. I will not eat for weeks. I become a skeleton. At Christmas I go home, hoping my mother will take pity on me and keep me with her to nourish me back to health. I am taken to a doctor, given intensive doses of vitamins and minerals, and sent back to the convent.
I make a decision. I will not stay here. I’ll do everything possible to be thrown out. I hide a portable radio under my uniform and play jazz at mass. The nuns search in vain for the source of the music. They close the windows, believing that it is coming from the
street. The whole chapel giggles.
I tell my schoolmates that by eating a certain kind of chocolate you can become pregnant. I skip classes. I escape into the park and sit in an apple tree and refuse to come down when I am discovered. Not only do I smoke cigars, I light each one by burning a hundred-franc note.
One night a couple of years later, I steal a bicycle in the courtyard and make my escape. Having entered the office of the Mother Superior earlier that day, during recreation, I took three keys—the key to the dormitory, to the entrance door, and to the gate—and slipped outside unseen. I ran to the locksmith and begged him to copy the keys quickly. When the bell rang at the end of recreation, I sneaked into the office and returned the original keys.
That night I tiptoe down four flights of stairs. The front-door key sounds very noisy in the calm of the night. I am sure everyone can hear it, but no one stirs. When I grab the bicycle, two black cats run off with a squeaking sound. My heart beats as if it will explode. I stop, wait awhile, look at the dark windows. I walk slowly, pushing the bicycle. The sound of tires on the gravel seems to me loud enough to wake up the whole dorm.
My eyes are fixed on the fourth-floor windows where I expect to see faces looking down. When I close the iron gate, the rusty hinges screech in the night. I don’t care if they see me now, for I can run off. I ride the bike. I am free. It’s pitch dark. Where am I going?
I head to the Café Anglais, the most elegant café in town. I park the bike a block away because it is so tacky to be a kid on a bicycle. Mirrored in a window, I design two sensuous lips with my mother’s lipstick and apply generous amounts of black kohl around my eyes. I open my navy blue blouse and tuck under my white collar to disguise my uniform. I am a nymphet. I am seductive. I am thirteen.
When I enter the café, men stare at me. I sit at the first available table so no one can see my flat shoes. I order whisky. It’s my first whisky ever. I proceed to light my cigar with a hundred-franc note. All eyes are on me. I sip my whisky. It burns. I am too shy to look at anyone. I pretend to be very absorbed in my thoughts and gaze above all the heads, afraid to meet anyone’s eyes. I ask the waiter for a financial paper and pretend to read it. I want to be free, grown up, the way men are. Halfway through the whisky, I feel drunk. I pay my check and leave. I walk, staggering, to a cross street to find my bicycle. I head back to the school.
Halfway to the convent, I am approached by a car. The driver is a man my father’s age. “I saw you at the Cafe Anglais. Will you have a drink with me?” he asks.
I don’t want him to know that I am a schoolgirl. I don’t know what to answer.
“I’ll give you a ride.”
I get down from my bicycle. He puts it in the trunk of his car. I sit up front with him.
“Where are you going?”
I can’t tell him I’m going to the Sacred Heart Convent. I say nothing.
“What’s your name?” he asks. “Mine is Roger Dugois.”
I recognize the name of a member of a club my father belongs to. I make up a name. We are driving. He puts his hand on my knee, and I feel my whole world split gently, like an atom splitting in slow motion. I let him caress my knee. He explores my thigh, and I let him, with fright and delight. I have no underwear on. I like to feel the bicycle saddle between my legs.
He touches my breast, and I am in seventh heaven. He stops the car and embraces me. My first kiss—hot, humid, strange. I feel like vomiting. He spreads my legs and licks me wildly. I stretch my legs like a ballerina in a split.
He loves me, I think. Let him love me. I’ll have his love instead of my mother’s and father’s.
He unbuttons his fly, and I see that huge thumb erected. He places it in my mouth and I choke, not knowing what to do. With his fingers he caresses me, and I come wildly.
“You’re a virgin,” he exclaims. “Oh, that excites me.”
He forces his way into me. I resist. We struggle and fight. I bite him. He’s furious and slaps me. He is strong. He twists my arms to my back. I scream with pain. To make me shut up he places his handkerchief in my mouth and pins me with tearing pain. Now I cry. Satisfied, he opens the car door, throws me out, and takes off. I lie there, sobbing and rejected.
The hallway clock at the convent strikes 3 A.M. as I head for my bed, bruised and broken.
During the months that follow I escape on many other occasions. Bicycles have been reported missing. One night as I climb up the hallway stairs the light is on and Mother Gabrielle is standing in front of me. I am wearing makeup and, of course, I have no business being out that late.
After a conference, the priest, the Mother Superior, and my parents decree that I should be exorcised.
It is in the heat of the summer. The priest opens his prayer book to the exorcism page and proceeds to read. I am held captive by two nuns in long black robes. Elaborate white ruffled coifs encircle their pale, unkissed faces. They anchor me firmly on the ground of the confessional and baptismal area, for fear that the devilish power of Satan may rescue me from their religious rite.
Though I remain defiant, deep down in my almost fourteen-year-old heart I waver with uncertainty at the unknown consequences of the Latin words meted out upon my head. What if it works? What if devils with flaming swords burn me alive as they exit in noisy commotion from all my orifices? What if I metamorphose into a bland, disciplined lamb? Baaaaah. I would no longer be me. As I see it, since I do not approve of the world I am born into and am not able to formulate exactly what I want to change in that world, all I can do—all I know how to do—is throw over the reins and run wild.
My mother and my father are standing as still as two statues, replicas of the Catholic-pagan idols that populate the grandiose chapel. My mother, I know, is praying. I dare not look in their direction. Drops of sweat shine on the nose and forehead of the priest. Am I incurably possessed? Or does he sweat because of the ninety-degree temperature? My eyes lift up to the windows, set twelve feet above the ground. I want freedom.
I will pretend to be tamed so that this ceremony will end to their satisfaction. The holy water sprinkled on me seems to perform its purpose. But I am already planning my next escape, this one forever.
Although I am repeatedly warned, I deliberately assert my freedom and provoke my elders, and during the next year I continue to slip out at night. Once again I am caught. I am examined by a child psychologist. I refuse to answer his questions. No one knows how to handle me. What I want is freedom to do what I want, freedom to wear lipstick. It is not the wearing of the lipstick that is important; what matters is the gesture.
“All right,” says the psychologist, “we’ll teach you to escape at night. We’ll put you in a home to correct your behavior.”
My father is driving, my mother is crying. I, too, am crying at times, not knowing where I am being driven. My plan has failed. I want freedom, and I am on my way to being locked up. I am powerless. They have won. Where are they taking me?
We drive for nearly a day without stopping, in the early spring rain. That’s how anxious they are to get rid of me, I think, how anxious to transfer the responsibility of this irresponsible child into other hands. “Let someone else take this child, it is not ours, it can’t be ours, it doesn’t behave the way we do,” is the message I get. My father explains that I’ll stay in the home for a while. Things are left vague.
We arrive at a tall, somber brownstone building isolated in the countryside. We drive through a gate. My father carries my small suitcase, containing two dresses, two nightgowns, and underwear. I am registered. My mother kisses me, tears flowing; my father shakes my hand; I am abandoned.
I am escorted down a long corridor. I hear a woman screaming. I hear a truck door slam, and from a window I see two women, handcuffed, getting out of the truck. I swallow my saliva. I start to cry. I cry endlessly.
An open door reveals my bed, covered with a brown blanket. The window is barred. Will I ever be free again? Am I here for life? I am given a metal bowl and spoon.
<
br /> “No knife?” I ask.
“No.”
“Why?”
“You could open your veins.”
I visualize myself doing precisely that. I throw myself on the bed and howl. I wish to drown in my own tears.
I remain in that cell day after day after day, not knowing whether it is Sunday or Wednesday, May or June. Outside the barred window, the countryside is oddly unattractive. Trees are unpruned or diseased. The yard has concrete paths, on which the girls walk single file. I eventually am taken to the yard, and I, too, walk the concrete pathway before being reescorted to my cell.
I have deliberately erased from my memory the full recollection of the time I spent in the correction home. I do remember being given a book on sex education, so technical that it seems to me more like a manual for fixing machinery. The sketches of the uterus and the tubes and organs are so crudely mechanical that at first I take the book for science fiction and then for nauseating realism. Though I have had a taste of sexual pleasure, or displeasure, this book shocks me by its sheer functionalism. I am all tender feelings, all trembling emotions. How can these ugly organs relate to my romantic dreams and fantasies of love?
Just before Christmas 1952, my parents come to retrieve me. That night, my brother, my two sisters, my parents, and I attend a midnight mass in the cathedral at the Place Grenette in Grenoble. I kneel with my family, a broken child. Not knowing if it is repentance or despair or the emotion of the Feast of the Nativity or the reunion with my family or the odor of the incense that permeates my soul in this church of our Heavenly Father, I burst into tears. I cannot hold back my sobs. So loud are my cries that the parishioners around us stare at my parents. Embarrassed, my father takes me by the hand and walks me outside.
Am I trying to show my parents how much I hurt? I cannot say, but my sobs are real.
There is only one solution. I am to be sent away. To America.
