Judas

by Astrid Holleeder

  Once he was standing in the bedroom, the best we could do was to all pretend to be sleeping, hoping he’d leave. The evenings and nights crept by. Every half hour I could hear the Westertoren bell ring as I waited for the shouting to end, for him to go to bed.

  It’s left me with a profound hatred of ringing bells.

  Evenings were bad enough, but Sundays were truly horrible. On Sundays, he was home. All day long.

  Filled with the smell of booze and my father’s unpredictability, those days seemed endless. Only one thing was certain: there would be shouting and hitting. Sometimes it started early in the afternoon, but with a little luck, it could start a bit later.

  Above all, I feared dinnertime, because on Sundays he dished up the food. And the amount he scooped onto your plate had to all be eaten. If you didn’t clean your plate, you were an ungrateful shit and would most likely be spanked. Trembling with fear, I’d watch him fill my plate. It would always be a huge amount, way too much for a little girl, and I often couldn’t eat everything.

  At some point, I’d developed a range of tactics to get rid of the pile of food unseen. Depending on the clothes I was wearing and the type of food, I’d put it in my pockets or stuff it into my cheeks and then I’d ask if I could go to the bathroom. There I would get rid of it or spit it out.

  You were never asked whether you liked something—you just ate what was served. There were two things I truly loathed: spinach, and gravy on my food. One night, we were having spinach, the snotty kind that was impossible to hide anywhere without getting it all over my hands and having liquid run from my pockets. As always, there was gravy, and my father poured so much of it onto my plate that it made the food float around in it. It was hopeless. I could never eat it all. I started to feel full and began to eat slower.

  My father noticed and yelled, “Finish your plate! You wanna get a good spanking?”

  Of course I didn’t, but I didn’t know how I was going to finish that huge plate of food and the greasy gravy.

  “Eat it!” he screamed, and gave me a spoon to eat the gravy as if it were soup. I felt sick and tried to hide my gagging. If he saw that, I’d really be in trouble. But I couldn’t keep it down, my stomach pushed the disgusting spinach and the nasty, greasy gravy back up into my throat. I tried to hold it down, but the food squirted straight back onto my plate.

  He lost it. How dare I spit out my food? I was a fool to think this dramatic scene would get me off the hook: now I would have to eat my own vomit. I stiffened and stared at the disgusting substance on my plate. At his order, I hesitantly scooped up a spoonful.

  “Eat it, ungrateful bitch—you will eat!”

  I closed my eyes and put the spoon in my mouth. The world around me faded, and everything went black. When I looked up, I saw my father beating my mom. She’d pulled the plate from under my nose and was being beaten for it. When she was lying on the floor motionless, my father summoned me, “Look what you’ve done! This is all your fault!”

  It wasn’t just what he did to me that was my fault, so was what he did to others.

  He was never to blame.

  For years I thought my domestic situation was normal and all fathers were like mine. It wasn’t until I was eight years old that I realized that wasn’t true.

  One day, I went to play with Hanna, my best friend all through grade school. She was the shortest girl in class, and I was the tallest. Every day I’d pick her up to walk to school together, to the Theo Thijssenschool on Westerstraat. We usually played outdoors, but this time she’d asked me to come play at her house. Her mom, grandmother, and little sister were there, too.

  We were practicing a dance routine to show off on the playground when the doorbell rang. All four of them chanted, “Daddy’s home!” I grew pale and looked around for a hiding spot, but couldn’t see one. They didn’t understand why I started running around the room and told me to stop being silly. “Sit down,” Hanna said, and pushed me onto the couch. “Dad’s here.”

  That’s right. Dad’s here. That’s the problem.

  Hanna’s grandmother put her arm around me and said, “Isn’t that nice?”

  Nice? Not at all! I heard footsteps coming up the stairs, saw the door swing open, and noticed a man with a happy face standing there. “Hello, my darlings.”

  He kissed his wife and children. They seemed to genuinely enjoy it. What was going on here? To make matters worse, he walked straight up to me.

  “Hello, dear. Are you having a good time playing?”

  I was speechless, and Hanna said, “Yes, Daddy. Look, we can dance!”

  She danced around and spoke to her father with such glee, and he replied so happily. I had never spoken directly with my father. I can’t recall ever having a single conversation with him. All there had ever been were raging monologues.

  It was in that moment that I realized things could be different. I saw with my own eyes that dads could be kind, too. From that day on, I knew my father wasn’t what a father should be, and every night I prayed to God, asking Him if my father could please die.

  My prayers weren’t answered.

  We all wished him dead, hoping for a fatal accident or lethal encounter with the wrong person, but it never happened. We were all prisoners of my father’s madness.

  We treated each other the way my father treated my mother and us. If any one of us aroused his rage, they shouldn’t count on any sympathy; on the contrary, they had inflicted misery on the rest of us, too. “Your fault!” we’d yell, even though we were well aware that my father’s behavior was completely random.

  My dad’s violence seeped through every layer of our family and soaked us all. Since getting angry at my dad was not an option, we fought among ourselves, blaming each other for a hopeless situation. We were tense children, and the continual threat looming in our home left no room for tolerance or mutual understanding. Aggression and violence became a communication strategy.

  That’s just the way it was.

  We didn’t know any better.

  So the violence was passed down generation to generation.

  My dad hit my mom. Following his example, my brother Wim hit my sister, Sonja. My “little brother,” Gerard, hit me. I never started the fights because I knew I’d never win. Not against my dad, not against my brothers. I was the smallest one, and a girl at that. Regardless of my efforts to be like a boy, I always lacked strength.

  As soon as my parents left for their daily after-dinner stroll, Gerard would start with me. It was a daily ritual; we played family every night. He—unconsciously—imitated my father, and I had to tell him he was the boss, the way my father had my mother say he was the boss. If I didn’t, I got hit, just like my mom. But I never told him he was the boss. I couldn’t. I took the blows, but I did get back at him. He may have been stronger, but I was smarter.

  Gerard was a shy kid. He hardly ever spoke. He’d shut down the second you looked at him. I was two years younger but much cheekier, and I always took the lead. I fixed everything for him, thus swapping my physical disadvantage for mental domination. I used his weaknesses. In exchange for information about a girl he had a crush on, I’d demand his pocket money, fifty cents a day. He paid because he was afraid to talk to her. Holding his fifty cents in my hand, I enjoyed the power I had over him.

  I’d rather be perpetrator than victim.

  Walking through my old neighborhood, I turned off our block and continued toward Egelantiersgracht. I thought of Wim, and how it had all come to this. Around the corner was the house we had once moved into temporarily because ours was registered as a monument and had to be renovated, as many of the Jordaan’s houses back then did. This was a spacious mansion along one of the canals of Amsterdam, a light-filled dwelling with large rooms and high ceilings, completely different from our house on Eerste Egelantiersdwarsstraat, which was a workers’ house with tiny, narrow rooms with ceilings only just allowing an adult to stand upright. Three of us shared a room, and I slept by the window overlooking the
canal. Wim was the only one who had a tiny room to himself.

  As a family we didn’t have a social life. My father didn’t have any friends, and my mother wasn’t allowed to. We never had any visitors, there were no parties, every birthday or holiday was hell, and there was nothing to look forward to. There was no laughter in our home, and fun was forbidden. When we were merry, he’d ruin the mood.

  Wim reached high school. He’d grown into a tall, handsome guy with his dark brown hair highlighting his big, beautiful blue eyes. He started going to the gym, built up muscle, turned into a man. His world expanded out beyond our block and he started meeting all sorts of people, which changed the way he saw our father.

  He started rebelling against his rules. The world outside our family was increasingly attractive to him, as he discovered fun and good times actually did exist out there. He claimed the right to a personal life and went his own way. He’d often come home late and knock on my window.

  “Assie, are you asleep?” Wim whispered softly into my ear.

  “No,” I whispered back.

  I’d been awake all night until finally the shouting had stopped and my father had gone upstairs. Even then, I couldn’t get to sleep.

  “Has Dad gone to bed yet?” he whispered.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Did he go crazy again? Was it about me?”

  “Yes, he was yelling that you were late, but Mom turned back the clock so he wouldn’t catch you.”

  “Good.”

  It wasn’t the first time my mother had adjusted the clock, and it wouldn’t be the last. Thanks to her, Wim had been lucky yet again. He hardly ever went to school, but he managed to make money anyway. “See, As,” he said, “this is how I do it,” and pushed a brownish, greasy chunk into my hands. I didn’t know what it was, but Wim made money off it, so it had to be good. I was happy for him. Earning money increased his independence, which enraged my father, and Wim kept getting hit.

  My mom also had a rough time with her son, who, even as he defied his father’s rules, started to resemble him more and more. Now she was being assaulted from two sides. She didn’t know what to do.

  Ever since he’d started secondary school, her son had changed. He was bad-tempered and unfriendly to be around and just as unpredictable and aggressive as his father. She couldn’t correct his behavior; he couldn’t care less what she thought.

  He knew she’d never ask for my father’s support. She’d never turn her son over to that lunatic. To protect him from his father’s beatings, she covered up all his misbehavior.

  Wim knew Mom was caught between them, and he used it to his advantage. He did what he felt like and was always asking for money. It was never enough. If my mother refused, he’d become violent and punch holes in the doors and walls. Like his father, he was pathologically jealous and beat up all his girlfriends. If my mother confronted him about this, he’d get even more aggressive and start hitting even harder. She learned to simply shut her mouth. His fury scared me, and I tried to avoid him the way I did my father.

  Starting in middle school and continuing into high school, Wim would bring his school friend Cor home during the day, when my father wasn’t there. They would eat Hema sausages for lunch. I always liked having Cor around; he liked to joke around, and he was sunny by nature. When Cor was around, the tension lessened and the atmosphere at home actually became pleasant.

  Cor had a completely different outlook on life than Wim. He took everything lightly and always came up with solutions. He was able to enjoy life; Wim imitated him. It made him a happier person. When Wim was by himself, I’d avoid him, but when he was with Cor, he was okay to be around.

  Cor affectionately made fun of our imperfections and nicknamed us all. He called Wim “the Nose” because of his big nose. My father was called “the Bald” because he had practically no hair left on his head. Soon this turned into “the Bald Madman” due to his bizarre behavior. Rather cheekily, he called by mother by her first name: Stientje. Sonja got named “the Boxer,” because she practiced kickboxing and used to fight him off when he tried hitting on her. He called Gerard “the Dent” because of the scar chickenpox had left on his nose. Predictably, I was called “the Professor” because I was a good student.

  My dad hated Cor, who wasn’t impressed with him and laughed at his shouting and scolding. The Bald couldn’t get to Cor, and so the Bald’s power over Wim began to wane. He couldn’t deal with this and kicked Wim out of the house.

  After Wim left, we saw him only when he and Cor had lunch at my mom’s. I thought he’d played it well. He’d escaped my father. I wanted that, too.

  I had almost finished primary school and was going to secondary school. I was a fast learner and I devoured books. At school, I was praised for being “intelligent,” but at home this was a cause for endless teasing. According to my brothers and sister, I was “weird” and always acting “smart.” When I made thoughtful remarks, they’d say, “There she goes again!” and I was dismissed as a bookworm.

  To ease my hurt, my mom explained to me that I wasn’t weird and that I was “intelligent like this because I had been held by a university student immediately after birth.” He had passed his learning skills on to me. I shouldn’t listen to all the teasing, for it couldn’t be helped.

  My brothers and my sister had a different explanation for my behavior. They thought I was a foundling. I wasn’t my parents’ child or my siblings’ sister.

  They said I wasn’t an actual member of the family.

  Astrid in elementary school (1973)

  Maybe I should have felt hurt by this, but it made perfect sense to me. Of course I didn’t belong to this family. There had to be a family out there that was smart and loved reading, one that would accept me. So as a little girl, I waited for my real parents to come get me. In vain. In the meantime, I had to deal with this family. A family in which a girl became a housewife and wasn’t expected to get an education.

  My headmaster, Mr. Jolie, registered me at the athenaeum—a specialty school in the center of Amsterdam—and told my mom it would be a waste to send me to domestic science school.

  The headmaster had assured her it would be easier for me to find work after the athenaeum, and Mom, knowing that turning me into a housewife would be impossible, agreed. She kept this a secret from my father, who didn’t think girls should be educated at all. My mother waited to tell him until after a night when he had been “really bad.”

  “Really bad” was her phrase for nights when she was abused so badly that he couldn’t deny it in the morning: the proof would show on her arms, legs, back, shoulders, and face.

  Not that my father minded beating the hell out of her, but it bothered him if the whole neighborhood could see the evidence. He liked to keep up the image of good father and devoted husband. The mornings after these “really bad” nights, he’d be a bit less prone to violence.

  On one of these mornings, my mom casually mentioned I’d be going to the athenaeum. She knew he probably wouldn’t really take it in, and he didn’t, but at least she could honestly claim later that she had told him in case he tried to make trouble about it.

  I was twelve years old, and before I went to the athenaeum, Headmaster Jolie called me to his office and said I should start practicing my speech. I spoke one hundred percent Jordanese slang, which would not be done at this new school. I would have to learn to speak decently.

  It was the first time anyone had ever pointed my speech habits out to me. But where could I learn any other way? Everyone around me spoke this way, and I never left the neighborhood. My world covered the area from Palmgracht to Westertoren. That’s as far as we got.

  That summer, our neighbor Pepi happened to invite me to come with her to her summer house. It was a huge villa in Noordwijk, in the dunes near the beach, and, ironically enough, right across the street from one of Heineken’s homes. Miss Pepi wasn’t a real Jordanese but an outsider, imported. She’d originally come from Wassenaar and spoke Dutch withou
t an accent. She wasn’t called Auntie or Auntie Pepi, just Pepi.

  Pepi—the name alone was fabulous. Pepi could drive a car, she had a child but no husband, she had a job and enough money. All this made her an oddity in our Jordaan neighborhood. A single mother, working outside the house at that—it was a scandal. But she was everything I wanted to be. She became my main role model.

  I spent a couple of weeks under her wing that summer, and when I called my girlfriend Hanna at the end of my vacation, she almost hung up on me, thinking someone was prank calling her. When I’d convinced her it was really me, she was in shock. “What’s happened? What have they done to you? You talk funny! Get off it! Who do you think you are, the queen? Did your upper lip stiffen?”

  Without being aware of it, I’d taught myself to speak without an accent, and I didn’t stand out at the athenaeum.

  I loved being at this school, where I met people with a rational outlook on life, as opposed to what I was used to at home. Nothing was arbitrary; cause and effect prevailed. You could influence what happened to you, and what happened to you was of your own doing. Being in this environment was a huge relief to me. I didn’t have to feel ashamed for wanting to learn the names of all the human muscles by heart, for enjoying studying the dictionary, for wishing to learn the species of birds, trees, and herbs. Here, it was perfectly normal to hunger after knowledge. Everybody had the same “abnormality.” Having an opinion was appreciated, and people listened to it. You were even allowed to argue with an adult, as long as your argumentation was solid. Everything I got ridiculed for at home was appreciated here.