A FAMILY VACATION by Anne Whitehouse (best novels in english txt) 📕

just distinguish her features; she looked tan and elfin, with her light, short hair.
I left Shelley and Rachel with the ball and rushed down to meet her. "Margie," I called from several yards away, "where were you this morning?" Before my own eyes, I saw her not look at me, but turn away and begin walking off in the opposite direction. I stood dumbfounded. What had I done? "Margie," I called again. She did not stop. I started to follow her, and then I heard what she said to her brother and sister just as I saw she was hurrying them away. "Mommy says we're not supposed to speak to Jews."
I heard her say this, and I stopped in my tracks. I trudged back to my sisters. I did not tell them what Margie had said, why she would no longer play with us. I knew about prejudice and anti-Semitism, but never before had they been applied to me. In my silence, I experienced my fantasy of friendship in ruins. I felt a terrible loss. During the rest of the vacation, I did not try to make another friend. Margie did not reappear in our day camp group, and I learned she had switched into another, I assumed to avoid me.


On Wednesday night we all went to the circus tent to see the F.S.U. students perform. It was a festive atmosphere, with peanuts, popcorn and cotton candy, clowns on unicycles, trained monkeys, and tumblers, and one rather lugubrious elephant. There were no tigers or lions, but there was a trapeze act, first played over a net, and then the net was taken away. I could feel the audience quicken with tension and excitement. A woman in a sequinned costume stood on a platform high in the eaves of the tent. She held the bar of the trapeze, jumped up, and swung out in a great arc. Across from her, a man swung out to meet her, hanging by his knees. She let go. He caught her. A tremor went through me. They swung freely. Their connected bodies whipped through the air. They went higher. A second man standing on the platform helped the woman to dismount. The audience broke into applause. I clapped, too, my chest still tight with fear.
The performance was repeated the following night, with a slightly different program. Again, we were in attendance. But this time there was a mishap. During the first act, while there was still a net below the trapeze, the woman fell, plunging into its meshes, where she bounced and then was held. She crawled to the edge of the net and let herself down, and again she mounted the ladder to the platform, while the spectators applauded in encouragement. The net remained beneath her for the entire performance.
After the trapeze act there was a call for volunteers from the audience to participate in a clown race. "You go, Morris, " my mother teased, who would have never thought of volunteering herself.
"No," my father refused. "I don't want to."
"Yes, Daddy, go," we all urged him. "We want to see you."
He hesitated. We continued to press him.
"Oh, all right." Embarrassed by our clamor, he got to his feet and made his way down the bleachers into the ring where the volunteers were gathering. They were led to the edge of the ring and lined up side by side. The M.C. announced the rules of the race: at the signal the contenders were to run through the ring down to where there were boxes filled with clown costumes. These they were to slip on over their own clothes, then run back to the starting line, touching it; then change direction back to the boxes, take off the costumes and deposit them there; and then race back to the starting line. There was a prize for the winner, and a booby prize.
I thought the race sounded silly, but I still craned my neck to see how my father would take it. "On your mark, get set, go." They were off. They were all men, the fathers of families. Some of them were making a show of it, but I could see my father was in earnest; he wanted to win . He was rushing as fast as he could, yet he was clumsy, putting on the floppy pants, and shirt, and floppy hat. He stumbled in the costume and almost fell, but he caught himself and then speeded up, gaining on two men ahead of him. He touched the line and headed back for the boxes. We were all cheering, I and my sisters and mother. His back was angled to us as he bent to take off the clown pants, and so we got as good a view as anyone of the two white rounds of his buttocks like twin moons shining at us as he tugged at the pants. He had pulled off more than he meant to.
I saw his naked ass frozen in everyone's view; I heard the voice of ridicule, loud and triumphant, next to me. It was my mother, risen to her feet, pointing her finger, and shouting, "Look at Daddy's tushy! Look at Daddy's tushy!" The audience was laughing; Shelley and Rachel were laughing. In that whole space, it seemed only I and my father were silent.
He had realized his mistake and pulled up his pants, while the laughter continued around him. Still he stood there foolishly, while the race was already won. Then, as if not knowing what else to do, he tore at the clown costume, yanking it off--only it, this time--and then, though the outcome was no longer in doubt, in fits and starts, he went all the way to the finish line, which was the race's starting point--loping and sprinting and loping, in an uncertain run.
He was the last to cross the finish, but he couldn't yet leave. It was the moment for the awards ceremony. The M.C. was having a great time. "The first prize goes to Lightfoot Lee over here," he said, giving a little silver loving cup to the winner, a lean, young-looking man with lank, dark hair. "What's your name, sir?" The M.C. moved the microphone to the winner's face.
"Charles Nellums."
"Charles Nellums." The M.C. repeated the name into the mike. "Congratulations. And now, ladies and gentlemen, the second prize that I know you've all been waiting for. The booby prize goes to the greatest booby of them all, the Unmasked Marvel over here. What's your name?" the M.C. asked my father, and I noticed he did not say "sir."
My father's face was as red as the cheeks of his ass had been white. "Morris Fisher," he said into the mike.
"Morris Fisher," the M.C. boomed after him. He handed my father what looked like an ugly plastic doll. "A hand, ladies and gentlemen, if you please, for our winner, Charles Nellums, and our prize booby, Morris Fisher;" and the clapping and laughter swelled again.
After my mother's shouting at the moment of my father's exposure, she had sat back down, but her merriment continued. I saw it on her face, hard and malicious, that met him when he mounted the bleachers back to us. He looked like he often did- sheepish, hesitant, and embarrassed--only more so. I saw them face each other, and their attitudes fixed them in my eyes.
"You looked so ridiculous," she said, narrowing her eyes and baring her teeth. "It was a scream." Then she looked away, disowning him.
"I saw Daddy's tushy," said Rachel. She was echoing my mother, as if this was expected of her.
My mother laughed. "The booby prize," she said. "You're a booby." She looked pleased; it was as clear as day. She would lord it over him, adding insult to insult.
"What's the prize?" Shelley said suddenly. "Let's see it;" and silently he handed it over. I looked at it in her lap: a squat, plastic figure with a long shock of hair and ugly, leering face. There was a sign around its neck that said "Booby."
"Why, it's a troll doll," said Shelley. "Can I have it, Daddy?"
"You want it?" This was a new note for my father--what was despised might be desired. He was still standing in the aisle, though below us the circus had resumed. "Sit down, Morris," my mother said, but she did not move to make room for him. Instead he passed in front of us, my mother, Rachel, Shelley, and then me, and sat down beside me. My parents were ranged at two ends, with their children between them.
"Can I have it, Daddy?" Shelley repeated.
"I guess so."
"That’s not fair. I want it," said Rachel, quick to lay her claim after Shelley. "That's not fair of you to give it to her."
My father sighed heavily. "We'll talk about it when we get home." He turned to me. "I guess I looked pretty funny out there." He laid his hand on my leg and stroked my knee.
I squirmed away. "Don't," I said, "don't touch me."
My mother leaned across us and spoke to my father in a fierce whisper. "How often must I tell you, Morris, not to manhandle these girls? They don't like it."
I stared straight ahead but saw nothing of the circus. I was rigid with shame and anger. All through me, I felt the humiliation--my father's humiliation. It mortified me to see my father stupid and exposed and to see my mother's pleasure in it. I saw her again pointing and screaming like a child, and I was horrified, remembering, too, how Shelley and Rachel had chimed in after her. They were five and six and might not know any better, but I was ten, and I did.
It seemed to me my father would rather lie to himself, and pretend the humiliation did not exist; and so I did not want any part of it, not his shame, nor his caresses. Did I understand then that he came to us for what she didn't give him, and that she helped us to refuse him? The following morning he would say at breakfast, "Well, I won a prize," as if he had somehow succeeded in convincing himself that it was something he should be proud of. He was speaking to me, but I remained unmoved and stony-faced. "Shelley and Rachel like it," he said, justifying himself.
I went outside to the deck. It was early morning, but the heat was already shimmering in the grass; the early coolness of the air was growing thick, dull, and moist. It was the last day of day camp, and I was glad. Then we'd have one more day, Saturday, and on Sunday we'd be driving home. I wiggled my loose tooth with the top of my tongue. It was looser, but