Peter Buwalda - Bonita Avenue

But instead of just letting them fry up a couple of eggs, my father, covertly pissed off, hisses that the kitchen is closed — shower and beat it, both of you. So that was the last we saw of his one-night stands, from then on Wilbert did that elsewhere, but what we did see more of was skin mags flung about, and boxes of condoms. One day my father storms into Wilbert’s room with a gigantic phone bill — itemized, of course. “06” numbers. That sort of to-do in a house which, pre-Wilbert, you could raze to the ground without finding even one single unillustrated and footnoted sex-education manual, let alone anything remotely titillating. Not even a Panorama . Weren’t you two from the sixties? God, the prudishness! The complete absence of sex in our house. Yeah, they had a Jan Wolkers novel on the bookshelf. But the wrong one.

“Jeez,” my father repeated with a mouthful of steak and Italian bread. “That idiot, the jerk, the scum bag, molested your French teacher. In our bathroom, in my house.” Now he was angry, indignant, I could see it on his face, but that Vivianne and her Maurice, they were livid, especially Maurice. He talked about lifelong traumas and about a lawsuit. And my father didn’t blame them — on the contrary, he agreed with them entirely. “And if they don’t do it, I will.”

“Wait a second, Dad — you want to sue your own son ?”

“Enough’s enough, Joni. That creep is ruining us. All of us. Your mother, me, Janis, you. Your sister can’t sleep. Janis is afraid of everything. And you …”

“ Me? What about me?”

But first he finished chewing. Grinding up that hunk of beef, swallowing it, collecting enough saliva to be able to continue talking, appeared to require more effort than fattening and slaughtering the cow itself. Sweat beaded on his forehead. “You, I worry most about,” he said.

“Dad, what. Why do you worry about me? What does that kid have to do with me?”

He did not answer, but looked at his right hand, the one holding his water glass. Was he just thinking? The sight of this tired, bearded, brooding man made me uneasy; I could tell he was struggling with something he found much more taxing than mathematics.

“Sweetheart,” he said, “you know you never have to be ashamed of anything in front of me. Never.” Something unlike him: he laid his hand on mine.

“How should I say this. Mom and I get the feeling that Wilbert is … uh … very fond of you. Do you get my drift? We get the feeling that he’s … more than just fond of you. And that he probably … how can I put it decently … Mom and I get the feeling that he … that you two …”

“Dad! What do you mean? What are you trying to say?” I yanked my hand back out from under his and shoved my chair back. “Don’t be ridiculous, Dad. You mean … No, of course not! How dare you!” Although I knew I was overdoing it, I got up and slapped my hands on the table.

“Joni!” he whispered. “Sit down . Wait. Sit. Calm. Listen to me. Often, when someone is the victim of this kind of thing, they’re ashamed, maybe they’re so ashamed that—”

“Dad! Shut. Up. Don’t say another word.”

“Just listen to me. And keep your voice down. I hate having to confront you like this, but your mother—”

He got choked up. To regain his composure he used the last bite of bread and meat to sop up some gravy, jabbed it, but it fell off his fork onto his lap. Without cursing, without a laid-back chuckle, he plucked up the wayward morsel and set it on the edge of his plate. “Your mother and I know you two are … together a lot. We know he takes you out with him, and that’s, that was … fine. I can’t tell you how much I … appreciate the attention you’ve given him. You’re my daughter. You’ve done your best to make Wilbert feel … to feel at home.”

To my shock I saw his eyes welling up. Moisture was collecting in a place that was supposed to stay dry. No! Do not start crying.

“Sweetheart, listen.” He appeared to pull himself together. “Of course he likes you, I understand that completely, all the boys like you, so he … so Wilbert cer tainly does. That’s to be expected. But it’s unac cept able. It’s dangerous; he’s dangerous. That boy doesn’t know the difference between liking and …”

“And?”

“Joni.” His voice was suddenly sharp. “Answer me. Has Wilbert ever … molested you? That’s what I want to know. It’s not such an outrageous question. And that’s what the judge is going to want to know. Be honest now.”

No. No way. I was not going to tell him about the few times we came back from town on a Saturday night and plopped down together on the sofa, tipsy, exchanging stories with muted voices, or just making stupid jokes, channel-surfing while the rest of the farmhouse slept. And that it was me who put the moves on him . At fourteen I was perfectly capable of making a boy of seventeen get all hot under the collar, nothing could be easier — seventeen-year-old boys seldom found themselves on a sofa in the middle of the night alone with a girl who felt this comfortable with herself in their sultry presence. Not even Wilbert Sigerius. And so I would quasi-nonchalantly pull up my knees, or just the opposite, spread my legs far too wide while I laughed at what some guy panted in my ear back in the joint where Wilbert had sat at the bar watching me on the dance floor. Or I’d shake my hair loose with a sigh, twang the rubber band into his crotch, and lay down on the sofa with my legs across his lap. When he’d finally put his hands on my bare legs — too hesitantly, if at all — I’d pull myself up on one of those fantastic arms of his and climb, play-insulted, onto his lap, my knees straddling his thighs, I dug my hands into his firm hips, tickled him—“bitch,” he would hiss, and I’d poke my index finger under his discreetly stubbly chin, “look at me — what’d you just say, boy?” while we both felt my terry-cloth crotch push against the fly of his jeans — sorry Dad, that is all I could think of.

But that was about it. No more than that.

“Dad — you know what you can do?” I said, loud enough so that the waiter looked up. “You go ahead and lie to your lawyer. Tell them Wilbert molested you .”

His full, thick lower lip trembled as he nodded and stood up. “Be right back,” he said and shuffled, in a tragic parody of his hobbling gait, to the men’s room at the back of the bistro.

• • •

My legs were covered in goose bumps. Above the enormous windows that looked out onto a schoolyard basketball court were elongated pivot windows. They were open. Soon, after I’d cleared out, Wilbert would close them with the long aluminum pole I saw lying under the radiator. So what was the fuckin’ skank supposed to answer?

To my surprise he started talking himself. He had slouched back into his patchwork chair, his hands clasped behind his neck so I could see his leached-out armpits. With his good eye focused on me, he told me how he’d had ten months’ juvenile detention, which I already knew, of course, and that they’d put him in De Hunnerberg on the outskirts of Nijmegen, this I knew too, and that he was surrounded by retards, and that he hated me. This last piece of information, I had only assumed.

“When they dragged us out of bed at 7 a.m. and kicked us into the shower, then I took either an ice-cold or a scalding-hot one. That was the only way to spend five minutes not thinking of revenge, see. As soon as I turned off the water, I thought: I hate her.”

He stopped and sniffed loudly. I crossed my legs. I didn’t know what to say.