The Blackberry Bush (11 page)

I am still “gardening” an answer to that one. It could take time.

It’s pretty hard to be at home watching my dad, so I just kick it at the skate park in Ommoord when the weather’s good enough. On better days, I channel my frustration into learning new skate tricks. On less good days, I smoke pot and get into fights with the other guys at the skate park.

On those bad days, I hardly recognize myself. So whatever happened to
steezy
(stylin’ and easy) living? The more tension in my life, the more competitive I get and the less joy there is in my skating.

Board (snow, surf, or skate) riding is just
not
about winning. But on the bad days I start to take my skill and stick it to people rather than simply enjoying it. I want to be the best at something my dad despises. Rather than sharing waves here at
La Graviere,
I get all aggro and drop in on people—because I can.

I’m not sure how I arrived at this skill level. My memory is so foggy right now. Did I just spend more time riding boards than everyone else? Or was I born with special balance? The truth is, until I got to
La Graviere,
I’ve always owned every place I’ve ever ridden. I just totally show up wherever I am, and that seems to be the secret to everything. I don’t live in the past—my heart never goes there. Dropping in on a wave here on a big day, you have to have laser-like focus on the present split-second if you want to survive. You can’t afford to evaluate or wonder what people will think.

When I was a kid, I was seen as a prodigy. Now that I’m older, I’m seen as a threat, especially by peers. My vibe has gotten twisted. My biggest task in life is figuring out what to do about that. Do I tone it down to become more popular, or go for it with my skills and make them all hate me?

The better I get, the more people want me to go away. Max, for instance, seems genuinely interested in me as a person, but I can tell my increasing skill level deeply troubles him.

When you start to stick out ahead of people, they try to find ways, together, to pull you back to their level. There are all kinds of rules to follow if you want people to like you, and one of them is avoiding excellence that makes anyone else look bad. The rules seem to be especially complex here in France. Ironically, the better I surf here, the less popular I become. For the first time in life, I feel at risk socially. It’s not a good feeling.

Oma Adri has no rules for me, but she also doesn’t provide any cash, so I have to think twice about each euro I spend. I’ve had to work at the Not-So-Classic Surf Shop, prepping rental boards. Why does everything in Hossegor have an English name? Oma gave me the choice this summer: (1) She’d give me ample spending money (she has plenty of it!), but I’d have to follow her rules, or (2) She and I would treat each other as adults, but I’d have to come up with my own money. I took door number two, obviously.

I greet a large group of people my age on my way toward the water at sunrise; they are preparing for an all-day party around one of the beach fire pits. I know most of the people. They don’t return my greeting with much warmth.

As I wade into the surf at the beach, I can see there are already quite a few surfers in the lineup. You can surf going left or going right on most peaky beachbreak waves, and I almost always go left, since I am left-handed and have a goofy-foot stance. This gives me more wave opportunities, since I can face the wave going left. You don’t want to turn your back (i.e., going backside) on the wave face at
La Graviere
. She can hurt you.

But today, I may try to cheat her. True malice wells up inside me—for perhaps the first time in my life. Not just bad judgment but literally the will to hurt someone. I have to do some damage, and Max will do as a target. Nailing a stranger wouldn’t do the job. I’m out for blood.

After a tough paddle out (I had to duck dive with my board under the waves seven times to get out to the lineup), I’m sitting on my board and realize that because the wave is so heavy today, I didn’t even see the additional half dozen guys out here. There he is. Max is one of them. I always post up to the left of him, because he likes to go right, and crossing paths could be deadly out here.

We nod at each other but say nothing. The less you say in the lineup, the cooler you are.

Oma has known Max and his family for many years. In fact, they have a special relationship that, at times, makes me jealous. Her French is better than mine, so she gets all the humor and irony in Max’s stories. I feel foolish when they are laughing together about something I’m clueless about. I party with Max and his gang, and go to church and read books with Oma. I’d like to keep those worlds separate, but Max and Oma keep forcing them together. Both of them have a hard edge, and they have been known to turn it on me. Yet, even with these two huge personalities knee-deep in my soul, I’m starting to feel lonely here at Hossegor.

This past weekend the three of us had dinner at our home, and they were trading mocking impersonations of me fumbling through French pick-up lines. I started getting hot behind my eyes and began plotting revenge. I can get along with either one of them individually, but when they are together, I feel like a foreigner to the only two people in Hossegor who supposedly care about me.

Today I am going to stick him. Slowly, but deliberately, I make a decision. I cross an invisible line that no one else can see me cross. My body starts to tingle with anticipation.

The waves are so loud that we can’t hear each other, even in shouting. Max points to the outside. My knees go weak. It’s the universal sign for “a big one coming outside.” We paddle like crazy for the horizon. If we don’t make it up the face of the oncoming wave before it breaks, it will simply break us.

As usual, Max and I, always totally aware of each other’s position, pivot precisely to face the beach at the critical second and are set to go right and left off the peak of the wave. We call it “splitting the peak” and have done it countless times. The drop will be down the face of the wave, almost two stories high. Everyone else paddles over the crest in deference to us—the silent pecking order at heavy surf breaks. Exactly at the tipping moment, Max paddles into the wave, going right, as always. It’s so heavy, he’s barely going to make the drop. He expects me to go left, but I decide to betray him.

I brought my gun, a big-wave board that paddles faster than his shortboard. I pivot not left, but right, and out-paddle him, just behind and downhill from him, where he can’t see me, and then slingshot myself past him on my right rail, crouched and grabbing my left rail with my hand to hold my line on the steep face of the wave.

I commit the unthinkable mortal surfing sin. I cut him off on a double-overhead wave. Nietzsche’s phrase “will to power” shoots through my mind, and my heart goes a deep black. I hear Max scream behind me as he pitches off his board and into the wave headfirst. I shoot forward, racing backside on the thundering wave face.

No one else on the coast of France today could pull off what I just did, turning my back on
La Graviere
and living to tell about it. And I did it with authority. I feel a rush of mixed emotions. Elation for catching the wave and flying backside to the right. A visceral pushback against my father. Anger at Max for mocking me with Oma Adri. Horror and guilt at what I have just done. Anger at God for setting up a no-win game in life. Fear at what awaits me from Max’s friends on the beach. Deep regret, knowing that Max may be in serious trouble.

Max will be stuck underwater for at least two waves, trapped in the turbulence and unable to breathe. If his leash breaks, he might drown. I can’t paddle back to the lineup with his friends there. And he has even more friends, people with whom he grew up, on the beach, sitting around a fire, preparing for the vacation parties of the day. I never exactly thought through what I would do in this situation if I succeeded.

As I reach the sand and bend over to undo the ankle Velcro from my leash, the friends of Max, both in the water and on the beach, split into two groups. One searches for him in the turbulence and then helps him and his broken board out of the water, and one group comes after me, cursing me in French.

There is nowhere to run. I don’t even try. Locals around here have been waiting to explode on this outsider for quite some time. I take my deserved beating. Just like at the African church, I black out and hit the ground. But this time, it isn’t prayer that does it to me. It’s pure physical violence I’ve brought upon myself. For an instant, I have the obviously false impression that I’m tied helplessly to an iron gate as I take hit after hit. I go fetal, hoping to live through it.

In the end, it is Max—still shaking from the fear of a near drowning and gasping for air, running toward us out of the water—who stops them from going too far.

Angelo

5 May 1945
Liberation Day
Hillegersberg, Holland

I
t’s a year after Ruud and Nellie’s town hall wedding. The flowers in the gardens everywhere are glorious. No one does flowers like the Dutch.

There is euphoria in the air. The Germans have just quit all claim to Holland. Who would have believed it? But there is also an uneasiness floating around. The multitudes of Dutch citizens who supported the Germans, at whatever level, are all holding their breath and keeping a low profile. Most are wisely staying home.

Nellie is not so wise. She comes around the corner pushing a pram. I want to look inside and see the baby, of course, but now is not the time.

A crowd approaches from the other direction.

Nellie stops a few feet away, absolutely frozen. The blood drains from her face as she sees the angry mob approaching from a block away.

I break all the rules and pull myself into her world. Sometimes it just has to be done.

I jump up to the pram. “I’ll take little Adri for you. You can trust me. I’m a friend,” I say to Nellie.

Briefly shaking off the fear, Nellie kisses the baby girl on the forehead and asks, “How did you know her name?” Then she hands her to me and screams, “Run! Run! RUN!”

I run with the baby. Like the wind. I can’t see the mob anymore as I race away with little Adri, searching for safety.

But I have my sources, and I’ll tell you what happened. What follows is intense.

The crowd is not interested in the baby. They want Nellie.

And at the front and center of the approaching crowd is…her mother.

1945
Hillegersberg, Holland

P
EK EN VEREN
(tar and feathers).

The crowd carries the terrified and struggling Nellie through the graveyard and up toward the Hillegonda church. The gag is so tight on her mouth that she can hardly breathe.

No. Not there. Not where I met Walter. O God, no
, she thinks and prays. The forces of evil always seem to do their ugliest work in the holiest places.

Another group is waiting for them at the iron gate by the door next to the blackberry bush.

At the top of the gate is a hand-painted sign: V
ERRADER
(traitor).

The thick stench of boiling tar fills her nostrils as they slam Nellie’s writhing body onto the iron of the gate, opening a big wound on the back of her head. She almost blacks out from the concussion.

The blood flows freely down her back as they rope her arms to the bars.

No, that can’t be a barber’s shaving razor!
she thinks groggily.
No…oh no…O God, no
.

Two men, with great force, hold her head still as the blade scrapes across her scalp. She stops struggling so the blade will cut into her skin less. Since she is gagged, she can only scream silently with all her might. Thick piles of shiny hair fall in clumps all around her, with some skin attached here and there.

Paintbrushes full of hot tar scald her skin as someone rips her shirt off, and the black, steaming, roofing pitch is lapped onto her. Someone smears a cooler, clumpy handful of it right on her face, grinding it into her perfect features.

Nellie is shaking with fear.
If I can keep one of my nostrils clear, I can survive
, she thinks.
Just keep breathing, Nellie girl. Just keep breathing. Do it for baby Adri. She needs you
.

The big razor is then used to cut open three pillows, and the feathers are dumped on her.

A huge cheer of jubilation goes up. People are laughing.
Laughing!
The mob starts ridiculing her with shouts of “Sieg Heil!” and Hitler salutes.

She closes her eyes so she won’t have to see the mocking, taunting faces of her neighbors…many of whom she has grown up with. It’s too ugly to watch.

A woman’s small hand grabs her jaw, and Nellie is able to open only one eye. The other has tarred itself shut.

Her mother’s face is inches from hers. “Don’t ever come home again!” she screams and spits in Nellie’s face.

That’s the last thing Nellie sees before she passes out to jeering chants of “
MOF-FEN-MEID! MOF-FEN-MEID!
”

…Kraut Girl…