San Francisco Stories: Julie, do you love me?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9FYD1dlw4E

When our family moved from the Western Addition to the more sedate Richmond District, I made my first best-friend-for-the-summer after I stole her little brother’s Hot Wheel car as we played on the front steps.  Julie, a lithe blonde haired/blue eyed girl who was so unlike anyone from my old African American neighborhood or my Japanese American Catholic School, asked me why I stole her brother’s car.  With no valid excuse to offer, I surrendered the car over to Julie.  We continued to play together until the evening, then began again the next morning.

Julie’s family was unlike any I had seen.  Her parents were ultra-modern, like characters from an Antonioni film.  They owned a sparkly green Mercury Cougar with black seats and  a decent hi-fi system from which Petula Clark’s “Downtown” would play during the morning hours.  The mother had one of those Carol Brady hairstyles, wore turtle necks, slacks and a long, heavy jeweled pendant that would swing from her neck.  Sometimes, she wore a crocheted sweater over her turtleneck.  Julie’s father wore pressed suits, snappy black shoes and owned stacks of Playboy m

agazines that were on display in the front room.

Together, Julie and her family never seemed very happy.  The mother was very sullen, and she was quick to lash out at the children, who would simply hang their head whenever the screaming commenced.  The father was quiet, quick to offer smiles, but would grow tense whenever near his wife.  Their family always included me on dinner outings, where we children would sink into the back seat of the Cougar, and we would lean backwards and look at the sky from the rear window.   Dinners  were always in Sausalito, and I’d watch the top of the Golden Gate Bridge roll past as

the 8-track played Paul Mauriat’s “L’amour est bleu” .

My mother liked neither Julie nor her brother, but she tolerated them so long as I played outdoors and kept out of her way during the day.  There were times when Julie and her brother would come over for a Japanese dinner, and my mother would chastise my sister and I whenever we felt the need to verbally state our revulsion at Julie’s habit of dousing Japanese rice with butter.   My mother even let Julie use one of my kimonos to dance with us at Obon.

As Julie and I spent a long and fruitful summer together, we plotted to put on a musical for the PG&E workers who were placing the power lines beneath the street.  I was to sing Petula Clark’s “Bang Bang”, while Julie was going to sing and dance to a Creedence Clearwater Revival song.  On the day of our great show, my mother refused to let me out of the house.  Instead, Julie performed her solo routine which earned her a spot on the lap of the tall, dark and bearded worker that I had chosen as my pretend little girl boyfriend.  Julie’s smug look zeroed onto my devastated face, and perhaps I taught myself a valuable first lesson about blonde girls and PG&E workers.

Still, our friendship never suffered.  Crushes on adult men were dismissed without much thought, especially when Julie and I were too busy creating endless lists of projects to keep us busy.  We discussed our television shows and shared in our mutual love of Bobby Sherman.  When her mother would leave the home for short periods of time, Julie would sneak me into the house to peruse through her

father’s stacks of Playboy magazines.  She would point out body parts, letting her fingers trace along the contours of bare breasts.  I never quite understood the whole idea behind naked women in a forbidden magazine, especially since my own Japanese mother never thought twice about being naked in front of both my sister and I.

As the long summer afternoons drifted in late August, Julie and I discussed our apprehension over the upcoming school year.    We continued to play together, including her little brother in on our adventures, although I could not help but notice that both of them had become increasingly agitated and scared.  We could hear her parents scream at each other, and there were moments when Julie would have to stop playing to hug her little brother.

One day, during another bout of migraines that left her mother a hostage to her bed, Julie, her brother and I held hands as we went to Arguello Market, the mid-sized grocery store across the street from our flat.  Julie pushed the cart around, filling it with a variety of sandwich spreads, breads and a selection of meats from the deli counter.  She also stopped in front of the magazine section and reached for the latest edition of Playboy, placed it in the cart and rolled to the cashier.  She made her purchase without incident, and Julie placed the change, a roll of dollar bills, on top of the groceries.  As I took her little brother’s hand, a couple of teenagers grabbed the roll of money from Julie’s grocery bag and sped off around the street corner, leaving the three of us in shock.  Julie burst into tears, inconsolable despite the best efforts of the grocery cashier, a few adult bystanders and my own

mother.  When she finally walked inside her house, there was only a few moments of peace before her mother began yelling.  Julie stopped crying, hiding a pinched face of bravery behind the long strands of golden blonde hair that would fall in front of her face.  She took her punishment like a child who had long since learned to compartmentalize feelings that would inflame her mother’s anger.  I felt a new admiration for Julie and her ability to hide her feelings, as my own reaction to my mother’s punishments was to hide in the very back of the bedroom closet.

Not long after this incident, Julie, her brother and mother moved away to another part of the state.  We had a tearful exchange of addresses and managed to hug each other before the moving van pulled away, leaving her father behind to transform

the family home into a true bachelor pad of orgy.

Her father removed all the curtains at the front window and door, then placed a zodiac wheel with the names of several women listed under each sign.  For a week or so, my friend Diane and I would look at the Zodiac wheel, and we came up with a million reasons why such a thing would exist.  I got my answer one day when, hearing some warbling,  I stood on tiptoes and watched as Julie’s naked father moved his hands over the strings of his acoustic guitar.  He sat in a circle surrounded by equally naked women who watched him play, some of them swaying as if in a trance.

During the next few weeks, these stunningly attractive women would come in shifts to Julie’s father’s flat, but not before staring at the astrological wheel for some relevant information.  Even my immature little 7-year-old mind thought the whole thing absurd, but I could not tear myself away from watching these daily orgies.  Their bodies would drape over couches and across rugs, and Julie’s father would jump from one woman to another with all the clinical eroticism of a shoe salesman.

Julie’s father abandoned his suits for the bohemian beanie, striped pants and a shirt open to his belly.  He was a small, wiry man with a thick mustache, and I began to see the similarities between him and Sonny Bono.  He was always quite charming to my mother, but her own kindness dissipated after she discovered why I had been standing on tiptoe, peering into the neighbor’s window.  In fact, there was never a heavy admonishment, any screaming or a lecture.  She just told me to stop watching, pulled me into the house and told me to find something to do.

That something to do moved away not long after, only to be replaced by two German neighbors with a giant doberman pinscher that liked to push me down the backyard stairs.

Once the school year began, I opted not to speak to anyone except when necessary.  School meant that I was back to being that half Japanese girl, half good at everything and, according to some mean Japanese women, half a barbarian.  Julie accepted me for who I was because her parents, for all their flaws, decided to let their carefree daughter embrace differences and an assortment of cultures.  She, in turn, swallowed up the knowledge and gave me a love for seeing the world as a whole.  We were neither yellow nor white, pasta nor rice.   There were more important things to do in life, such as singing Petula Clark songs for PG&E workers.

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