A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries (13 page)

My relationship with Francis did not change on the outside—although now we were in different classes. We played hopscotch together during recreation, sat together on the bus during outings, shirked during gym, and continued to invent opera stories and to go to the opera on special occasions.

But the scales had tipped. What had begun in Miss O’Shaunessy’s class had become a pattern: I could set any ground rules I pleased in the relationship, and after a bitter argument, Francis would capitulate. Francis had come to depend on me more than I did on him, as had once been the case between Sally and me. And Francis had begun to resent me in the same way that I had resented Sally.

My flirtatious nature began to come out of its dormant stage with the budding of my breasts (which everyone, including my father, told me were large for my age). I wanted a bra because all the American girls wore them, even when they didn’t need one. My mother and father gave this some thought and then suggested I wait a while. My father said my breasts would probably get very big, like my mother’s, and that the reason my mother’s were in such good shape was because she’d refused to wear a bra as a young girl.

“And that’s the truth, so help me God,” my mother said, nodding and crossing her heart. “And
I
had the nuns to contend with.”

Not wearing a bra allowed the muscles to develop, my father said.

“But do what you want,” my mother added. “If you want boobies down to your knees, that’s your affair.”

If they had said, no, absolutely no bra, I would have most probably run to the first lingerie store. But I decided that I did not want breasts that fell to my knees, so I listened to them.

Boys whom I’d known since kindergarten (many whose zizis I’d seen a while back) began to show a renewed interest in me. During recreation they chased me around the park, to Francis’s great dismay. It was easy, however, to flirt in certain classes because Francis was only in class with me for English with Miss O’Shaunessy, music with Mr. Flowers, and history/geography with Mrs. Dubois.

My classmates began inviting me to the
boums
, the Saturday evening parties where the lights were turned down low and the kids danced and kissed to the latest 45s from England. Francis was not invited and I did not discuss the matter with him. I did not know if he was aware of the
boums’
existence, and I did not want to find out.

At one
boum
, a boy accidentally touched my breast while we were slow dancing, and I said nothing. At the next
boum
, two different boys did the same thing and I reconsidered getting a bra.

“Francis,” I asked him the next day as we were roller skating on the newly built bridge that was closed to traffic and connected the Île Saint-Louis to the Île-de-la-Cité, “do you think my boobs are really all that much bigger than most of the other girls’?”

“How the hell should I know?” said Francis, shrugging.

“Do you think I should wear a bra? The other girls, the American ones, they tell me in the locker room that I definitely need a bra.”

“My mother says American girls would wear chastity belts if someone told them it was the proper thing to do,” Francis said. “Do what you want. But definitely I would tell those girls to mind their own beeswax.”

I got my period for the first time on October 30, 1972, in music class. I had been feeling a dull ache in my lower stomach and back for several hours, and then, in the middle of singing “Let it Be,” accompanied by Mr. Flowers on his portable electric piano, a warm wetness flooded my underwear. It was apparent to the more sophisticated students, who were all preoccupied with sex, that Mr. Flowers was as gay as Mardi Gras. He wore shirts with puffy sleeves and curled his hair and talked with a lisp. So I sat paralyzed in my seat, wishing this were Miss O’Shaunessy’s class, or Mrs. Dubois’s. To make things worse, Sally Sutherland was out sick with the flu. I was sitting next to Francis, which was fine in music class because he loved music class and got along famously with Mr. Flowers. After a moment I moved to the side in my chair and saw the beginnings of a brownish-red puddle on the shiny wooden seat, let out a tiny cry and whispered to Francis:

“Shit, Francis, I just got my period. What am I supposed to do!”

We’d talked about this eventuality. Francis had interesting insights on the question, which he’d gotten from his mother. For example, his mother told him I probably didn’t have to worry for a few more years. However, my mother had been eleven when she got hers, and believed these things ran in the family.

“What should I do? What am I going to do!”

“You get up and go to the infirmary,” Francis whispered. “And you say, ‘I am indisposed.’ That’s what my mother told me you’re supposed to do, anyway. I’ll go with you and wait outside.” Mr. Flowers came to the conclusion of “Let it Be” and Francis daintily raised his hand.

“Mr. Flowers,” he said in a dead serious tone, “we must be excused.”

Francis made the whole thing seem so normal that I’ll remain grateful to him for the rest of my life. On the way to the infirmary he told me he’d taken his dog to “be fixed” because she too had gotten her period and that all these things were just regular occurrences and that I shouldn’t be embarrassed.

That night at home, my father gave me one hundred francs in celebration, and a lecture on birth control. I stared at him in silence and nodded when I sensed he expected me to. I could not figure out at all what he was trying to get at. My mother also sat there, silently watching and listening.

My father then said the absolutely strangest thing I ever heard out of him:

“In my hometown we were already having sex with girls when we were ten. They were girls from the poor side of town. So I’m just saying, I’m not going to turn my back on this fact; boys are going to be interested in you and they’re perfectly capable of going all the way already.”

When I did not react, my mother said, “Your father isn’t urging you to have sex, he’s just warning you that you can get pregnant now.”

Francis’s voice started to change a few months later, and the tiny white hairs on his chin and under his nose began to turn black. This was not happening to my brother yet, and I did not know how to react. It had seemed so easy for Francis to deal with my period—why couldn’t I deal with his? Saturday sleepovers became strange and awkward, and I had a difficult time falling asleep when Francis lay on the cot at the foot of my bed. After a while I stopped inviting him, and he did not mention the change.

A tow-haired boy fresh from America called Kevin Westgate arrived at the school halfway through the year. He did not speak a word of French and was put in a special class called Adaptation, which was supposed to be equal academically to the other classes but had a bad reputation and for some reason was kept segregated. Probably the French administration worried about the new American students’ influence on the overprotected Europeanized students. At the time, people said that things in America were absolutely out of control; they said drugs were rampant as well as free sex and revolutionary attitudes.

Sally and I did not know how old this Kevin was but figured he was probably our age, or maybe just a little older, because he was in the Adaptation group that corresponded to 5
ème
, our grade, which would have been seventh back in America.

Sally and I would follow Kevin Westgate around the halls and then, when he’d turn around and gaze at us with a blank expression, we’d freeze. Once he’d disappear into the crowd of heads, we’d scream in unison like girls at a rock ‘n’ roll concert, and run in the opposite direction. We heard from other Adaptation students that Kevin was as shy and stupid as he was good-looking and hip. We were told that he smoked pot.

One Sunday afternoon shortly after Kevin’s arrival, Mrs. Fortescue took Francis and me to the opera to see
Madame Butterfly.
As the three of us were sitting all dressed up in the otherwise empty subway car, the most horrible coincidence in the world occurred. Kevin Westgate, accompanied by an older girl and younger boy who had the same tow-hair and little upturned nose and green eyes as he, got on the train and sat down across from us. Kevin’s face lit up and he smiled, raising his hand in a wave. I automatically, without thinking, turned my face away and stared out the window. There, my own horrified face glared back at me, as well as Francis’s, who was grinning evilly. In fact, both Fortescues were smiling at me with know-it-all expressions.

What a perfect opportunity to talk to Kevin this could have been, I realized with dismay. Francis’s reflection in the window was not only girlish but completely uncool; he was wearing a bowtie, his pants were too short, and his hair, which was also too short, stuck straight up in a curl at the back of his head. A real mama’s boy, I thought. I saw myself the way I imagined Kevin perceived me and my heart sank to my shoes.

“Don’t you know that boy, Channe?” Francis said loudly. “Why don’t you say hello?”

He was right, of course; I was not dealing with the situation properly. But by now my voice and sensibilities had completely abandoned me.

During
Madame Butterfly
all I could think about was the horrendous, accidental encounter in the subway. It was the first time I truly realized how odd Francis seemed to others, and that our relationship had come to fit into a space and time that I wanted separate from my daily social life. He embarrassed me the same way Candida embarrassed me. They were a constant reminder that I
was
overprotected, childish, and naïve, when all I wanted was to be sophisticated and adult.

I realized with a terrible, crushing feeling that the reason I did not want Francis to sleep over anymore was that he still pretended we were sexless children; he was holding me back from growing up. I was seized by a terrible, choking rage. All I wanted was to escape.

We had ham sandwiches at a café after the opera, and I was so morose I couldn’t speak at all. Francis tapped me gently on the arm and said, “Oh, come now. It’s all right. He’s so stupid he’ll forget by tomorrow that he saw you with me.”

Mrs. Fortescue laughed in her shrill, impish way.

What’s wrong with this woman, I thought; can’t she see that her son is weird?

On the last day of school before summer vacation, Francis announced to me that he was planning to leave École Internationale Bilingue to attend a lycée in the fall. He told me this as we were climbing the back stairway to my apartment. The stairwell was old, musty, and dark. The automatic timer on the lights went out before we’d reached the doorstoop.

“What?” I said, spinning around in the darkness and pressing the light switch again. Francis appeared a few feet before me, leaning his hip against the wooden banister with his arms crossed over his chest.

“I’m tired of it,” he said in a defeated tone. He’d developed quite a downy black moustache by then, but hadn’t shaved yet.

I was frightened at the thought of being without him in the fall, but in the next moment I felt immensely relieved. He must have seen this on my face.

“I want to tell you something,” he said, and took a step toward me. “Now, don’t get upset and throw a fit. I know you and I know you’re going to throw a fit anyway.” He paused, giving me time to imagine every horrible thing in the world. His fingers were lightly tapping his biceps, like fingers practicing piano keys.