The Blackberry Bush (10 page)

She took me home to meet her grandfather, who kissed Kati on the forehead when she came home. He seemed genuinely interested in me. Some of the older men in my family don’t think girls are worth talking to about important things. My brother gets all the attention in our family. Some of my male cousins get rough with me.

My parents argue about whether they should arrange a marriage for me. That’s exciting and scary at the same time. Saahir will be able to marry anyone he wants—by that time he will be in charge of the whole extended family.

Kati’s mom came home later on my first day at their house and gave me that look people give Muslims. It’s hard to describe. But it makes me feel like a bug.

We’ve started hanging out together. Kati’s and my favorite place to eat is the Blu Jam Café on Melrose, where we split the warm mushroom salad with gorgonzola cheese and spicy pesto. Having parent trouble gives us so much in common. I am also interested in what she and her grandfather do at church. Kati loves to talk about the music there and the kids she teaches.

Kati walked me to my home after that first mural-painting day—we live kinda on the same block—and we talked for hours. We both realized we have it harder than most girls, and we understand being from somewhere else with stories no one here knows about. What I love most is hearing her tell about the Walter and Nellie love story.

In our driveway, she said she had only made-up friends (not sure what that means) and would like to be friends with me. She seemed nervous asking.

Not sure why, but that made me so happy. Kati “gets” me. In any case, we both love to paint.

I
NTERESTING HOW TWO PEOPLE
can see their own—and each other’s—worlds as so different and so infinitely more intriguing and significant, isn’t it?

1944
Rotterdam City Hall
Holland

“H
OW CAN YOU BE SO GOOD TO ME
?” Nellie asks Ruud as they sit on the steps of the massive city hall. She’s in a spring dress and wearing her signature sunglasses and heavy makeup to hide the bruise from her mother. He’s in his best gray prewar suit, a little big on him now. Everyone has lost so much weight during the War.

They have just gotten married in a small civil ceremony. No reason to call attention to their questionable situation.

Nellie and Ruud have known each other all their lives. Before the War, this kind of glorious too-warm-for-spring day would have been perfect for ice cream, which they’ve shared together many times as children. It’s been so long, they can hardly even
remember
what ice cream tastes like.

Just yesterday Nellie had shown up, homeless, at Ruud’s door. Tomorrow they will leave on bikes for Ruud’s family’s country villa, which produces enough fruit and vegetables to keep them alive and to give the baby a fighting chance at development. They hope their threadbare bike tires hold up. There are no replacements to be found. Anywhere.

Enjoying their last day in the city before leaving, Ruud looks into the cloudless blue sky and says, without looking at her, “Nellie, I don’t care what it took to bring you back to me. This is the best day of my life and an answer to prayer. I don’t hold it against you for having left me. I know you aren’t in love with me, but I’ll love you forever, even if you never see me as ‘the one.’ For me, you’ve always been the one.

“I’m going to give your baby a home and take care of both of you. In time, this war will be over, the Germans will be gone, and people will forget. Our family will protect you. You are one of us now.”

And then he gathers her closely in his arms.

Angelo

R
uud had no idea that day just how powerless he really was, nor how powerless he would be in the future. A betrayal far greater than he could ever control was on its way....

But, for now, fast-forward sixty-two years, to the Atlantic Coast of France, for a different kind of betrayal, and an encounter that would send Josh on a trajectory he couldn’t plan.

Summer 2006
Hossegor
Atlantic Coast of France

Josh

T
ODAY
I
AM FLIRTING WITH BETRAYAL
. Not sure I want to tell you about it, but I will. Have you ever thought about the fact that you can’t betray a stranger?

I’m looking out at first light in the morning, well before sunrise, from our family’s summer-home deck, toward
La Graviere,
one of the heaviest ocean waves in Europe. It’s a beachbreak, and I scan every contour of its familiar menacing curl with Oma Adri’s binoculars. The swell comes out of deep, deep water and really carries massive freight.

The eight-sided, top-floor cupola room of the house is behind the deck where I am standing. In the center of that room is one of Great-Grandmother Nellie’s pianos. She always said that musical octaves and such rooms matched perfectly. I feel like Nellie, though long dead, is watching me from her piano as I’m scanning the waves. I check twice to ensure that the piano bench is indeed empty.

Turning back around to scan the beach, I see overhead to deadly double-overhead waves; that’ll keep the tourists away. Water about 71 Fahrenheit/22 Celsius. I could trunk it if the sun were out, but I’ll go with my spring wet suit, since it’s still early and cool.

Today should be good,
I think to myself as I take another sip of dark roast coffee and a bite of my croissant. Look at those glassy wave faces! I wonder if Max will show up in the wave lineup today. Is there such a thing as having pre-regret? Are we best friends or bitter rivals? Maybe both. Maybe neither.

Max.

How do guys get to be friends? It sort of…well, happens. At a certain point, you just realize you are doing a lot together. He lives a couple blocks over in this exclusive enclave, and, having met at family events years ago, we’ve started ruling the local wave together. But as much time as we spend hanging out, I still feel off balance around him. Somehow I lose my usual crystal-clear focus.

This is my fourth full summer here at the family place, which my great-grandparents Ruud and Nellie built after the War, although I’ve been popping in now and then since I was very young. The living room is still full of pictures of them with their local French friends from the neighborhood. Adri still hangs out with all of them when she’s here. Her mother, Nellie, dominates each yellowing photograph with her regal presence.

Our residential beach neighborhood north of central (the “Ville”) Hossegor is almost American-suburban-resort-looking; this is hardly Old Europe. Ruud isn’t up to making the trip anymore, so he stays home in Ommoord, and Oma Adri is in charge here until fall. My parents come in and out. I get to stay. I feel totally at home in the neighborhood but am uneasy with the people. Or perhaps, more accurately, they are uneasy with me. Ironically, since I reject my father’s attempts to get me into competitive old-school sports, I end up putting a darkish competitive edge on my surfing, which I occasionally hone to razor-sharpness. Somehow
mooi spelen
and
steezy
have turned into an ambient anger that turns people off.

I hurry quietly down the outdoor iron spiral staircase and check out my quiver of surfboards. I’m going with the big-wave “gun” this morning, so I slip into my short-sleeved wet suit and try to flatten my pillow-crazed hair with my hands. A little sticky wax to bump up the surfboard deck, and off I go, barefoot, down the short street, out of the neighborhood, to the crosswalk on the two-lane coast highway.

When I get there, some cars with empty surf-racks are already parked in the sand. I jog up the path to the break. The crash of the wave sounds like a compound cannon shot about every ten seconds. The tide is pushing in, I notice, which will jack it up even higher over the next hour.

It’s going to be epic.

Is there enough light to see if Max is in the lineup?

I’m slightly hungover from last night. Hit the Bermuda Triangle of Dick’s Sand Bar, Club 15, and Rock Food. Hoping to get sponsored soon so I don’t run out of money. Maybe if I win a surf contest?

I’m not just hungover but worn out from all the dreaming last night. Ever since my 9-11 dream, I’ve been crafting a whole inner world through what Oma Adri calls “lucid dreaming.” Much like surfing, it’s all about being in the moment when you’re dreaming and steering it in a certain direction.

Oma told me that, in dreams, always imagine you are wearing a digital watch and look in mirrors a lot. Mirror images in dreams are never clear. And digital watches don’t keep linear time. That way you can tell when you are dreaming.

Lucid dreaming is “dreaming, but knowing that you are dreaming.” The pale, skinny girl continues to show up in my dreams. She’s always on a beach-cruiser bike and now sometimes wears her hair in a braid. If she’s not real, why does she age as I do? Oma showed me in the Bible that dreams often contain messages from God.

I could use a message from God right now. I’m finding it impossible to navigate all the expectations from my father, my friends, myself, and even God. It’s all one ball of wax. And it’s suffocating.

Life seems to be a no-win game, even if you play it especially well. We’re forced to bargain for deals that contradict other deals we’ve already made. And resigning from the game ends up being only one more move—and a bad one—in the same game you just tried to leave. So I’m searching for answers.

When we’re in Hossegor, Oma and I go to the Eglise Nouvelle Vie—a little storefront church with mostly African French-speaking members. Many of the immigrants at Nouvelle Vie work in the tourist industry.

Needless to say, they must have been surprised to see an aristocratic Dutch woman show up for the first time, years ago. Doubtless, she has more money than any of them, and it wouldn’t surprise me if she ensures the pastor’s salary and makes sure the rent is paid. They’ve nicknamed her
Le Feu
—The Fire.

She often goes for long walks by herself after church. My guess is that she wants to talk out loud to God and doesn’t want anyone to hear it. She once asked me why I thought that the Bible is full of genealogies, and she and I both knew, during that discussion, that there was a torch of faith that someday would be passed from her to me. There are family curses—but there are also family blessings and carriers of the flame.

Once the Senegalese church members prayed over me at the end of the service, and I blacked out and fell back onto the floor. I spent what felt like days in a vision—walking along the top of an endless broken stone wall back in Zarzamora. The blackberry bushes had grown to ridiculous heights on both sides and began scraping and gouging my bare arms as I tried to walk on. At a certain point, I was absolutely trapped by the vines, panicked, and then woke up on the carpet of the church. Asking how long I was out, they replied, “About three minutes.”

My three worlds—reality, dreams, and my ideal vision/inspiration—flow in and out of each other all the time. Whenever I have a foundational dream or vision, I stamp my calendar in red ink with the Asian ThornHeart stamp I had Mr. Park make for me back in Zarzamora. There are more and more marks every month.

Mom and Dad, or should I say Dad, is struggling since moving back to Europe from Zarzamora. Dutch kids would rather play soccer or basketball at a playground
without
adult supervision than be in some youth league, so there is very little opportunity for him to coach. Great-Grandfather Ruud has given him every social advantage, but, although born and raised in Germany, Dad’s like a fish out of water over here in the Old World.

I’m embarrassed for him; he’s in and out of the generous Dutch welfare system. He’s started smoking again (rolls his own cigarettes) and spends hours and hours watching sports on TV. He’s getting really opinionated. He puts impossible athletic achievement demands on me, which is ironic, because he doesn’t do much of anything himself. It’s very clear he wants me to be a more successful version of himself. I don’t want to be any version of him. You don’t want to count the empty beer cans around his chair.

In a nutshell, he wants me to do team sports as he did, and to score higher. I sometimes worry that my whole lifestyle is a reaction against this expectation rather than something flowing out of my true self. I’m losing my integrity, but so slowly that you can’t see it happen.

I always hide my surfboards when he visits us in Hossegor, ever since he took a hammer to one of them in the middle of the night a couple years ago, after drinking for hours. If it wasn’t for tiny Oma Adri, with her formidable authority, ordering him back to bed, he would have destroyed my whole quiver of boards.

Mom is spending more and more time at the little warehouse church back near our four-generation penthouse home in Ommoord, Holland, and helps lead singing. I walk there with her most Sundays, down Braambes Street, especially if it’s raining and I can’t skate. Christian music has always been a path to God for me. I often amp up listening to D.O.C. before I skate.

Oma Adri says honoring your parents isn’t as easy as it appears, but she’s confident I’ll find a way to do it. Is it being super compliant? Then we would end up aligning with their brokenness as well as their gifting. She asks great questions. She once asked: “Do you think Jesus was sinless because he was a compliance athlete?”