by Sara Barron
My dad defended his position.
“Sara,” he said, “listen to me. Please. Your brother’s having a hard time. He’s going through puberty. He’s puffed up on steroid medication. Your mother tells me that the teachers tell her that he gets teased all the time, and I’m sorry—Sara, I genuinely am—but if he comes home and wants to look at girls, well, I just don’t have the strength to tell him no.”
“ ‘Girls,’ Dad? Did you just call them ‘girls’?”
“Sweetheart, I’m sorry. I should have called them womyn. With a y. You are absolutely right.”
I threw my hands up in exasperation.
“Oh, like that’s gonna help! Your antisocial sexist son handles his hatred of womyn—WITH A Y!—by staring at objectified womyn? And you let him? I mean, my God. MY GOD! Way to go and raise a rapist! I hate you all! I’m so ashamed!”
It seemed that my parents had gone from Maintaining a Neutral Position to Maintaining Sam’s Position. This upped the ante of my attack on Sam. I went from verbal sparring to property destruction. I snuck into his bedroom one afternoon and, with indelible marker in hand, defiled Carmen Electra. I bestowed unto her a bowler hat made of penises, and handfuls of wiry pubic hair.
The ante? It was upped.
In response, Sam destroyed my prized possession, a framed, autographed photo of Tyne Daly. He swiped it during my Student Coalition for Awareness meeting, and used my mother’s garlic press to break the frame. On the actual photo he wrote, “I AM A BITCH. I AM A DUDE.”
Ante upped again.
I showered his pillowcase in the oily detritus found in an empty sardine tin. He bit my sizable calf muscle to the point of bleeding. He punched my face. I punched his face. He snuck into my bedroom, dismantled a cardboard box, and drew a bull’s-eye upon it. Sam then took a shit on the bull’s eye.
Ante upped again.
I cried when I saw the shit on the bull’s-eye. Sam cried too, in an effort to drown me out, and our combined volume hit such a high level that a neighbor finally called the cops. The cops’ arrival felt dramatic enough to make Sam and me shut up. As it turned out, though, one of the guys was a friend of my mother’s from high school, so she, my mom, was able to smooth it all out.
“Howard? Mehlman? Lynn Barron! Or, well, I should say Lynn Handelman! Highland Park High School class of 1965!”
My mother apologized on behalf of her children. She was pitch-perfectly contrite, and Officer Mehlman was charmed and sympathetic. In truth, the whole thing hadn’t been that big of a deal. Nonetheless, my parents were exhausted and embarrassed, and to punish my brother and me, they insisted we sit beside Sam’s bowel movement for the remainder of the day.
Which we did. We had to wait eight hours to be allowed to clean it up.
THE ARRIVAL OF Officer Mehlman served as a climax in my adolescent war with my brother and led my parents to the unsurprising conclusion that they had to get rid of one of us. Only temporarily, of course. Only for the summer. Seeing as how Sam was the younger and more likable of their two children, I knew I’d be the one to go.
I took the situation in my stride. In fact, I was really excited about it.
All previous summers I’d been forced to attend local park district camps, hellish bogs at which underwashed counselors initiated moronic activities. They’d hand out Popsicle sticks and be like, “Make your mommy a jewelry box!” They’d demand I sing songs that asked not nearly enough of me: “Hey Sara / Someone’s calling my name / Hey Sara / I think I hear it again …” Such consistent insults to my vocal talents. I figured even minimum-wage employment would be a step up, and the previous summer I had accepted a position assistant-teaching geriatric water-aerobics. The students were all hard of hearing, so for an hour every weekday, I’d stand on the side of a pool opposite the teacher repeating her instructions. She’d say something like “Okay, ladies!!! Ballet legs!!! Starting on your left. One!!! Two!!!!” and I’d stand across the pool and shout, “She said, ‘Ballet legs on your left. One. Two.’ ”
I pretty much just acted as a human microphone.
I was not a child who loved summer. But that could change with parents desperate to be rid of me.
I suggested overnight camp as an option, for I imagined that, unlike park district camp, the whole thing would be a sort of fairy wonderland of floral garlands and canopy beds. My mother laughed the whole thing off, though, once she learned eight weeks of overnight camp would cost in the neighborhood of five thousand dollars.
“It’s too ridiculous for me even to be angry!” she said. “It’s beyond making me angry! It’s just making me laugh! Ha! Ha, ha, ha, ha, HA!”
There was another, cheaper option: a Jewish overnight camp run by a modern conservative sect. Their pamphlet promised, “Your Chalutzim camper will return and tell you, ’Ema! Aba! I want to go on Ta’am Yisrael! I loved my Chalutzim Hebrew immersion!’ She’ll return a young woman who’s cultivated her own interest in Jewish themes and culture!”
“Sounds disgusting,” said my mother. “I mean: The phrase ‘Chalutzim camper’? I want a shower just saying it. You?”
I did think my mother had a point. And I did want her to shower after saying the word “Chalutzim.” At the same time, though, I didn’t know what else to do. I couldn’t think of any other options.
IT WAS APRIL of the same year the first time I heard the phrase “exchange program.”
I’d been in my fourth-period French class when my teacher, Madame Cohen, explained the situation: We Highland Park High School students of the French language had been presented with the chance to travel to Cluses, France, a mountainous town near the country’s Swiss border. If we chose to participate, we would be assigned a Clusien host famille whom we would stay with for three weeks in July. At the end of those three weeks, we’d return home with our exchange students in tow. They would then enjoy the Midwestern United States for an additional three weeks.
Madame Cohen laid out these circumstances, and asked who among us thought we might be interested.
I pictured my brother’s feces and my demolished photo of Tyne Daly.
I raised my hand.
“Moi,” I said. “I am interested. Très.”
I WENT HOME that afternoon and shared the idea with my parents.
They were initially intrigued but also concerned about cost and spot availability.
“It sounds okay … in theory,” said my mother, “but do not get your hopes up. I can’t imagine France will work out cheaper than Wisconsin. Furthermore, do you have to apply? Is it in any way selective?”
I did have to apply. But it was not in any way selective. And that was because so few of my classmates wanted to go. Most of them had already locked down their plans for overnight camp. This fact was a large part of the appeal. I loved the idea that I would wind up in what I thought of as a fashionable minority, that my summer activity would make me unique. I’d return to school the following fall, and as my peers rambled on about another campfire circle, I would recount my Alpine meanders. I would speak on the subject, and my peers would be intrigued. In fact, they would be so intrigued that it would start to overwhelm me.
“Calm down!” I would tell them. “I know you all have questions, but you will have to wait your turn.”
As for the cost of the program, my parents agreed to keep an open mind and later that week joined me at the informational meeting. Midway through, Madame Cohen addressed the cost issue head-on. The program, she said, would be “… cheap as you’re gonna get for France.” And she really wasn’t kidding. She wrote a number on the chalkboard. It was very, very low.
France, impossibly, was a cheaper option than Wisconsin.
France, impossibly, my parents could afford.
I watched them absorb the good news. They hugged each other and hugged me. They stuffed a deposit check into Madame Cohen’s clipboard.
“Please don’t lose that,” said my mother. “Sara’s got to go.”
Madame Cohen assured my mother that
she would not lose the deposit check, and true to her word she did not: one week later, my spot on the trip was confirmed.
To celebrate, my parents treated me to the immediate purchase of compression stockings for long-distance air travel, as well as a vest with inner pockets to make me less susceptible to pickpocketing. The week after that, I was assigned to my Clusien hosts, La Famille Raffal. They were four, la Madame et le Monsieur, et their children, Guy et Lucille. Lucille, the younger, was the one with whom I’d be eventually exchanged, and Guy was her eighteen-year-old brother.
I thought it was the ideal host familial setup. Lucille and I, having been denied the bond of sisterhood thus far, would take to each other like le beurre on brioche. We’d spend our days lounging in nearby meadows, weaving floral accessories.
“Pour toi,” she’d say, handing me the belt she’d made of daisies. “But … oh la la! Eet eez too grande! Too beeg! Because toi, you are … how you say?”
“Too skinny.”
“Oui! Too skinny for zee day-zee belt I make!”
No matter, we’d just use it as a jump rope, laughing all the while. “Ha!” we’d laugh. “Ha, ha!”
Evenings I’d reserve for Guy so that he and I might nuzzle in front of la famille’s grandfather clock. In a pre-departure lesson on Cluses city history, Madame Cohen had explained that Cluses was famous for its clock production. I interpreted this to mean that the Raffal famille would own a grandfather clock, and that its forceful, repetitive bong would signal to Guy that it was time to caress my hair. He’d do so staying all the while thoughtfully aware of the floral tiara I had on. Then he’d whisper my name desirously.
“Delphine …”
I’d decided that alongside my compression stockings and vest with inner pockets, I’d need a French name for French travel, and decided, finally, on Delphine. I was going for exoticism, some clear indicator that while my peers had spent their summers at their Wisconsin overnight camps, I had mingled with the Europeans. En France, les hommes would be magnetized by the winning combination of my French name and American vivaciousness. Back home, I’d present the situation as one forced upon me.
“Je m’appelle … Forgive me. My English just keeps slipping. I’m Delphine now. It’s what my host family called me. It just sort of stuck.”
I LEFT FOR France in early July with fifteen of my fellow classmates. I was thrilled by exactly none of them. Do excuse me while I generalize, but my feeling is that early teens enthused about international travel are real assholes in the making, kids with grating personalities. I include myself in this, of course. Our group was divided into three distinct subgroups: socially incompetent brainiacs, self-satisfied horizon expanders, and rebellious types with behavioral problems whose parents, like mine, needed a break from their kids.
As I was neither cool enough for the rebel sect nor bright enough for the brainiacs, I settled comfortably in with the self-delighted horizon expanders. Specifically, a second-generation Indian named Sidd. Once at the airport, he and I had shared a laugh at the expense of Madame Cohen after she’d asked a black gentleman if he could help us with our luggage. The gentleman stared at Madame Cohen, leaving room for an uncomfortable pause.
“I don’t work here,” he said finally. “Find someone who does.”
Madame Cohen turned back toward us.
“Honest mistake,” she said.
“For a racist,” Sidd whispered, and we laughed and struck up a conversation on religion—“It’s for the weak”—as well as our impressively high maturity levels—“I’m just, like, different from the other kids my age. I want to see the world!”
Sidd and I never discussed Sidd’s sexual orientation. But I figured he was gay. Effeminate male feminists will tend to force that assumption.
MY CLASSMATES AND I boarded the airplane and clumped across four rows at the back. Midway through the flight, Danny Carter, a member of the rebel sect, caused a ruckus by forcing his needle-thin legs through the elastic bands of his sleeping mask so as to give the visual impression that he was wearing a sanitary pad.
“I’m in a bad mood!” he screeched, running knock-kneed down the aisles. “Boo-hoo-hoo! I’m bleeding! I’m crying! I’m bleeding! I’m crying!”
I might’ve done one of those fist-in-the-air, power-to-the-people hand gestures and been all like, “Feminism forever, motherfucker. Sexism for never,” except for the fact that one of the rules driving my personal feminist style was to avoid peddling my views to boys I thought were cute. And Danny was cute. Empirically cute. I therefore kept my opinions to myself, and this didn’t matter much anyway, seeing as how the extent of Madame Cohen’s disciplinary action was to tell the other students to ignore him.
So you see, my blind eye turned to the mockery of the menstruating wasn’t spineless so much as it was respectful.
WE ARRIVED AT Charles de Gaulle Airport and hopped a train to Cluses. I exited alongside my classmates onto the train platform where a cluster of people stood waiting to greet us. They were the host mothers, mostly, women who fulfilled American stereotypes of effortless French attractiveness: They all had well-groomed hair and well-shaped eyebrows. The cowl necks of their respective sweaters were all positioned so as not to mimic one’s emergence from an impossibly enormous foreskin, which is how I, personally, always look when I wear one.
Among these women stood a lone man. He was possessed of a decidedly less French-ish fashion aesthetic. It’s one I refer to these days as “the Pedophile.” “Look over there,” one might say. “He’s sporting the Pedophile.”
In pursuit of said look, one combines any number of the following statement pieces:
• Large-framed glasses
• Tucked-in shirt
• Wispy mustache
• High-waisted pants
I spotted this man in the crowd and I knew. I knew the way a mother knows her babe from smell alone: This man was mine. Mine. He was my fate, he was my father: He was Monsieur Raffal.
Sidd saw me see Monsieur Raffal.
“Yikes. Sorry,” he said, and then was swept lovingly away by a woman who looked exactly like Madeline Kahn.
IT SEEMED SO unfair to Delphine. Why, as her classmates had their hair affectionately tousled, their opinions solicited on sweet versus savory pastry, why was Delphine asked only, “Sara? Barron?” then led wordlessly on to a lair of unspeakable depression known as an apartment? My actual parents’ house was nothing noteworthy in the size department, but still: There were windows. There were, to be fair, windows chez Raffal, but these were few and far between and the consequent lack of natural light had been compensated for with beige walls and a singular unframed poster of a tiger.
Delphine’s pedophiliac-looking papa explained to Delphine that her French siblings were not at home and that Delphine would therefore be eating dinner alone with her papa and maman.
I see, said Delphine. So what are we going to eat?
We are going to eat a rabbit, said her papa. Maman has cooked for us a rabbit.
Delphine, though, did not want to eat a rabbit. She was afraid to eat a rabbit. But she was also more afraid to tell her papa, “No. I will not eat a rabbit.” So Delphine ate a rabbit. She chewed a rabbit. She tried not to cry.
Then she thought: This rabbit tastes like chicken.
And then she thought: Okay. So I will tell myself it’s chicken. It’s chicken, it’s chicken, it’s chicken.
Delphine repeated her mantra. She did so without interruption since her papa and maman said nothing to each other through the dinner. They did not speak to each other, and they did not speak to Delphine. They just stared at their plates of rabbit/chicken. Delphine could hear them chew their rabbit/chicken.
Delphine finished her own plate of rabbit/chicken. When she did, her papa stood up. He opened a cabinet door and took out a coloring book. Delphine’s papa gave it to Delphine, who, to remind you, was fifteen years old at the time.
“Here,” said her papa. “Eet ees a toy for you.”
&n
bsp; Then he walked her to her bedroom. He told Delphine to sleep.
But Delphine didn’t sleep. She couldn’t sleep. All she could do was collapse in hysterics on the carpeted floor for an uncountable number of hours. When eventually she hoisted herself up and brushed her hand against her cheek, she discovered it speckled in filth: hairs, unidentifiable pellets, profuse amounts of dust to which she’d lost her immunity thanks to the immaculate home her real parents kept so as to soothe the asthma of her nemesis.
Delphine endured. And then thought, God, I’m fucked. Par-don. I mean, Mon dieu. Je suis foutue.
THE FOLLOWING DAY started with a bit of famille-bonding as a precursor to an all-exchange-group tour of the Evian factory. I emerged from my bedroom with bloodshot eyes and strolled into the kitchen. I feared I’d be confronted with a rabbit omelet care of Madame Raffal, but the only sign of life was the young woman seated at the kitchen table.
“Sara?” she asked.
“Yes. Oui,” I said. “Lucille?”
“Yes. Oui,” she said.
She, Lucille, was eating a sandwich of mayonnaise and rabbit. “Sand-weesh?” she asked. “You want?”
“No, merci,” I said. Lucille shrugged like, Suit yourself. We sat for a moment.
“And your brother, Guy?” I asked. “He is home now too?”
“Non,” said Lucille. “He go to zee house.”
“Zee house?” I repeated. “What house?”
Lucille furrowed her brow. She thought how to say it in English. Seconds went by. Five. Ten. Twenty. Finally, she said, “Zee house for zee pee-pull …”
She trailed off. I tried to help.
“A house for the people?” I asked. “What kind of people?”
“Zee house for zee pee-pull … comme ça,” Lucille said, and then she wound her index finger near her head in the universal sign for nut job.
I thought for a moment. Seconds went by. Five. Ten. Twenty. Finally, I said, “A mental hospital? For Guy?”