God's Land

1968
In God’s country, my world ended at the bus stop on Kitchawan Road. In the bright yellow school bus, winding up the road, children chanting cruel mantras, would turn me daily into the Kitchawan Creep. I remember little of our destination: the civilized world where lived the wealthy ones.

For me Pound Ridge was a house surrounded by forest of which I knew every trail: to the left the pond, alive with frogs, snap turtles, squirrels and birds; farther up the road, the larger lake where beavers built their twig shelters.
Even though a city girl, I had no nostalgia for the ground floor room which I shared with my sisters, the barred windows and the triple deck bed. I did not regret the silent bus rides to school, through a maze of checkerboard streets, house key hanging from my neck.

I thoroughly enjoyed the solitude God’s land had to offer, the peaceful walks through the woods, the many treasures I would bring back to my white walled room on the first floor, its high windows giving light but no view. Between books on the shelves, I would line up my treasured findings: a rabbit skull, a stone and a shed snake’s skin.

Brown wood shingled windows, framed in white, the house rested on a gentle slope of green lawn bordering the trees; maple, birch and pine. It was a summer house, nestled in a patch of protected forest, a place for holidays, very quiet out of season. There was a chimney in the living room and bow windows at the far end, looking out to the garden and the edge of the woods. It was a spacious place, with a large kitchen, bedrooms for everyone and a vast basement. The walls were cardboard thin, not built to last, not like houses I had known across the ocean in a far away land. Those were sturdy stone built homes with chimneys for warmth not for aesthetics. For I was not only the Kitchawan Creep, she who lived on the borderland of Pound Ridge, I was a true foreigner, the Frog Eater and the French Fry, not to mention the Shrimp, so small I was compared to the standard All American size.
Maybe it was my foreignness, which appealed to Bambi, the only friend I remember from those days. Her room was all pink and satin, with Barbie dolls and Barbie clothes. How impressed I was by the frills and by the swimming pool in her garden, the one time I stayed over at her place. Thinking of Bambi’s room an impression lingers in my mind years later: the bad taste was depressing. America is such a beautiful land, but what man makes clashes too often with the beauty of nature.

My true friend however was Kuroko, that’s Black Baby in Japanese. Mother, Maman, did I beg you for a dog? I must have. Going through the local ads we picked one that said: “cross breed Collie pups looking for a home”. Of course, Lassie was one of my favorites; I was an American kid after all.
“Please Mommy can I have one? Please!!!»

Reluctantly, my mother dialed the number noted on the ad. One pup was left and off we drove in Bill’s Beetle - or was it our Corvette? – to get me a Collie pup. The pup didn’t look like a Collie at all. The pure bred Collie had obviously been seduced by a black Labrador and of the litter born from this unbecoming union, only one bore the father’s mark. The pup was coal black with razor short fur, a pointed nose, sole heritage of her Collie ness. I immediately changed my mind about Collies and drove back home in the back seat with a tiny dark ball of fur huddled on my knees.

“Why don’t you call her Kuroko?» suggested Bill. And Kuroko she was named.

Bill lived with us for a while, how long I just can’t say. He was a Chinese and Japanese teacher and a Reverend’s son, but he was neither Chinese nor Japanese. It was he who taught me how to use chopsticks, and how to say “Konichiwa, Okeinkideska”. He wanted to be our father, my little twin sisters’, and mine.
My mother was very young and I found her really beautiful. She was as dark haired as I was blond and I particularly admired her well formed nails, her shapely legs and her full breast.

One day I asked her: “Will my nails become like yours’?”
“Of course they will” she replied.

When my daughter asked me the same question, not so long ago, it made me smile.

We settled down in Pound Ridge in autumn. Bright yellow, red and orange leaves set the woods afire with color, in a frenzy unknown here on the other side of the Atlantic. There, the Indian summer was a moment of pure beauty and warmth, blue skies and warm golden sunlight. The lake held back the summer heat and swimming was sheer delight. There was a small rowboat on the dock so that we could visit the lakeside or float lazily in the middle of the lake, surrounded by water and forest, soaking in the last warmth the autumn sun had to give. High above, V shape flocks of geese began their migration to the south.

Then came the joys of winter, the crunching sound of snow under my feet, the silent beauty of nature in white. Ice took over the pond and, protected from the wind by its girdle of trees, the pond’s surface froze smoothly, transforming it into my own personal skating ring. Alone, I would glide on my skates, music playing in my head I, the graceful dancer on ice. Winter was also rolling snow into snowmen, building a snow house, sleigh riding, snow ball fights and sucking icicles, simple things that must seem so exotic to those who live where snow does not fall. I loved winter, and even where I am now, where winter has gray wet tones, it is a season I still enjoy. The blinding white landscapes and the bright blue skies remain in my heart forever. Madeleine, an au pair student from Canada who took care of us three little girls for a year, told us of winters when snow piled up so high that it would reach the roof of her house. People would remain locked in for days buried under the snow, waiting for the snow plows to free them. Such extremes never occurred in Pound Ridge where wilderness was tame. Those winter days were the times when you could spot animal tracks left in the snow, beaver twig and mud constructions rising out of the lake’s iced surface, thick sculpted icicles hanging from rocks, branches and roofs. Those were the days when after the biting cold, the house invited you in to its warmth and hours were spent reading wonderful tales. Books have always been good friends of mine.

But what I remember best is nature, animals and the songs. Four songs remain from my Pound Ridge days: Chain of Fools and Natural Woman (Aretha Franklin), le Déserteur (Mouloudjhi) and Sur la Place (Jacques Brel). I loved to sing and sang rather well. One bright sunny day, we all danced and sang wildly to Aretha’s songs. Our mother was almost like our big sister.

My sisters are twins. They were really identical until their teen age and their twin bond was so strong that we the un-twins perceived them too often as one self-sufficient being. For me they were just kids and we interacted little due to the age difference and to the unique relationship which existed between them. I tended to act as if I were an only child. Much later when we became young adults, sisterhood feelings emerged between us, and the twins untwined: forgive me sisters for remembering so little of you.

Spring comes and the snow melts away. The pond is full of croaking frogs. I learn how to ride a bicycle, trying to find my balance while rolling down the driveway. It is a is black, old and rusty thing, much too big for me and I can’t reach the pedals with my feet, so I ride standing up. I am scared, but I’m stubborn and go on trying. Or is it someone yelling at me insisting that I try over and over again? Maybe it is Bill. I must have fallen and scraped my knee, bits of gravel dig under my skin, it hurts. Later, I would ride up to the bus stop and leave my bicycle to rest on the low stone wall for the day, until it is finally stolen.

One day I went down to the pond and caught some frogs. I built them a frog pen in the garden. For a few days I was engrossed with them and would observe them and see how they lived, but my interest wore down and I forgot about them. Later I discovered their dried up skins lying in the enclosure, which I had built. I hadn’t realized they needed water to survive and felt very sad, knowing that I was responsible for their death.

The rusty carcass of a jeep abandoned nearby in the woods was one of my favorite playgrounds. On its worn down seat, I drove across imaginary jungles on fabulous adventures inspired by television. Kuroko, who never left my side, sniffed at the jeep with sudden interest and growing urgency. Intrigued by her unusual behavior, I interrupted my fantasy to see what was disturbing her. Hidden inside the jeep under the back seat, I discovered the tiny hairless bodies of newborn rabbits.

“Kuroko, leave them alone, don’t you touch them” I warned my friend.

Carefully, I picked up the little beings and ran uphill back to the house shouting with excitement. When suddenly the memory of the dried up frogs popped back into my mind - never again did I want to feel that shame of being responsible for any creature’s death. Slowly I went back to the jeep, and put back the newborn rabbits where I had found them. I don’t know if they survived, I dreaded that Kuroko would return to feast on them, but there was no way I could stop her from following her instincts and I stayed away from the jeep for a while.

I used to watch television a lot. In a large empty room opposite to mine, I spent many hours sitting cross-legged on the faded pinkish carpet, munching huge quantities of Wise potato chips, staring at the early morning cartoons. One day I almost got electrocuted and for a few seconds I could not tear my hand off the television. Finally, Bill moved the device to the basement. He hated the noise and couldn’t sleep on Sunday mornings. The basement was another fascinating place, where I would mix soap and shampoo and other secret ingredients into magic potions, and watch the cartoons sitting on a stiff chair with a blanket wrapped around my shoulders.
When we left America, we came to a land where television was a rare and luxurious thing. I am lucky to have escaped its tyranny for a few years.

A memory which I have been avoiding from the beginning keeps nagging at me and for some unexplained reason I know that it will put an end to the Pound Ridge chapter. Yet there are many other things to tell and to remember: selling chocolates to raise money for the school trip to Washington, the day I sprained my ankle, the time when I screamed at Bill that he had no right to order me around as he was not my father, a guitar given to me as a Christmas present, a nasty joke, Man on the moon, The Prisoner of Alcatraz, an abandoned house at the far side of the lake, a bright green swimming suit with a huge plastic daisy stuck on my chest… yet my mind keeps wandering back to the day when a man invited my mother and us her children to dinner.

He is a neighbor, he has no name, he has no face, he has two children of his own and he comes to pick us up in a Cadillac. We drive to a diner, walk in and then the man says that we must leave. The waiter is black. I realize that this is why we are leaving and I feel terribly ashamed.

I do not remember either moving in or moving out of the house in Pound Ridge. One day we were there and it seemed forever and then one day we were there no longer. It remains a moment of great beauty and happiness, except for the shame brought by the man with the Cadillac.