Wes Boyd’s Spearfish Lake Tales Contemporary Mainstream Books and Serials Online

“Mr. and Mrs. Tyler,” Sonja said as soon as Scott had introduced her to them, “I really appreciate your going to this trouble. I presume that Scott told you what it’s all about.”

“Please call me Barbara,” Scott’s mother said. “When you say ‘Mrs. Tyler,’ I start looking around for Chuck’s mother. Scott explained a little about your problem, and I understand it leaves you in an awkward position.”

“It does,” Sonja explained. “My mother is actually pretty nice and leads an interesting life, but she’s being a real nutcase about this. Dad and Gina, she’s my stepmother, and I like her. We just don’t want to tell her where to get off. We agreed a long time ago that the best thing we can do is to just not let Mom have a chance to talk to me, at least until I turn twenty-one, when I can settle a couple of legal issues. That won’t be until next spring.”

“It’s fine with us,” Scott’s father said. “I’d just like to say welcome to our home. I’d also like to say that Scott was pulling our leg a little. You’re even prettier than he said.”

“He must not have been very kind, then,” she grinned. “I had to leave my babysitting job without cleaning up or changing clothes and I know I’m a mess.”

“The natural beauty shines through,” Scott’s father grinned.

“Mr. Tyler – or should I call you ‘Chuck?’ – I can see where Scott gets his smooth tongue,” she laughed. “I think we’re going to get along just fine.”

“I think we are too, Sonja,” Chuck grinned. “Scott says that you have an interesting background.”

“It’s unusual,” she admitted. “I’m often mistaken for being black, but I’m not. Up at State, I have to keep telling the Black Student Union to buzz off. They can’t believe that I’m not a ‘sister.’”

“You’re not really that dark,” Barbara nodded. “Can I ask, if you’re not black, what are you?”

“That’s not an easy question to answer,” Sonja smiled. “I sometimes think of myself as ‘the wave of the future.’ I read a study a while back about how this country is getting browner, through immigration and intermarriage. I’m just your typical American in a hundred years or so. If you have to have a simple explanation, I’m a mix of Iraqi, Mexican, Japanese, and I’m not sure what else, but most likely not white, and possibly black at that. Just to make life interesting, I’m technically a Sephardic Jew, and I’m also technically an Israeli draft dodger. If I have to give a simple answer, I say Israeli, although it’s a lie. In everything that matters, I’m just an American suburban kid, nothing special.”

“I just say a one-woman melting pot,” Scott shook his head with a grin. “It’s simpler to answer that way than it is to go through everything.”

“Israeli and Jewish?” Barbara frowned. “I hadn’t even thought about that. We’re having ham, is that going to be a problem?”

“Well, I’m Jewish, and I’m not,” Sonja smiled. “As a Jew, I’m non-observant. Actually, I’m a Methodist, so it’s not a problem.”

“Sounds complicated,” Chuck smiled, “How did all that come about?”

Sonja smiled. “You sure you want to hear about this?”

“Yeah, sure,” Barbara nodded. “It sounds pretty exotic to me. But let’s do it over the dinner table. We can head out to the kitchen, and I can serve up dinner while we listen.”

“It’s not real simple,” Sonja shrugged as they were sitting around the table in the kitchen a couple minutes later, while Barbara served things from the stove. “Let’s cover the simple part of it first. My dad’s parents, actually stepparents, didn’t have any kids of their own. Grandpa was working in some civilian job in Japan right after the war, and they decided to adopt a couple kids out of a Japanese orphanage and take them home, so Dad is Japanese plus American GI of some color or another – no idea what and there are no records. His mother was most likely a prostitute, so she probably didn’t know, either. He’s larger and darker than the average Japanese, but everybody thinks his features are more western than black, although that’s a possibility, along with dark Hispanic. Dad likes to think American Indian, although again, there’s no way to know. Anyway, he was only about a year old when he came to this country, so has no Japanese cultural heritage per se, although he’s tried to study it some. Culturally, he’s suburban white American, just like me.”

“That’s the simple part?” Barbara smiled.

“Right, and now it gets complicated,” Sonja laughed. “I’ve never known my mother’s parents well, because we don’t have a language in common, among other things. I’ve only seen them a few times. Her mother is an Iraqi Jew, born in Baghdad, and came on the Iraqi aliyah to Israel a year or two after the War of Independence, she was maybe seventeen or eighteen. Most immigrants to Israel went through classes to teach them modern Hebrew, and she met my grandfather in one of them. He was Mexican, a Catholic, of course, and came to Israel as a water well driller. One thing led to another, she got pregnant, her parents got real upset and they had to get married, and he had to convert. Anyway, my mother came up through the Israeli school system, which at the time was rather socialist and idealistic. She got a good deal financially from the government to go to college, and at the University of Nebraska, of all places, where she met my dad. I think they hit it off mostly because they were about the same skin color in a place that was pretty white. From what I understand, they moved in with each other within hours of meeting, and didn’t get married until I was just about to be born. Now, my mother’s mother was an Iraqi Jew. In Israel, that’s called Sephardic, meaning they’re of eastern background, rather than western or Ashkenazi background. Jewishness is passed down matrilineally, but since my mother and her mother were Jewish, I’m Jewish, at least to Jews. In practice, my mother is non-observant and I’m Methodist when I go to church. That came from my father, and actually, his father, who became a minister after he came back from Japan.”

“That’s a pretty interesting mixture of nationalities,” Chuck smiled. “So how does the draft-dodger part come in?”

“You sure you want to hear this?” she asked. “It’s not simple.”

“Come on,” Chuck grinned. “How many women draft dodgers are there? This sounds like a story!”

“It gets crazy,” Sonja grinned, “and Jewish crazy at that. You have to understand that my mother was not cut out to be a mother but was cut out to be a nut.”

Over the next few minutes, she explained that in Israel both men and women have to serve in the army, the Israel Defense Forces, men for three years, women for two. Her mother had finished up her two years before she left for college, and was still in a reserve unit. When Sonja was two years old, the Yom Kippur War broke out; she flew back to Israel, leaving Sonja with her father. After the war ended she was asked to go to officer candidate school in the IDF. Being a patriotic Israeli more than being a mother, she took them up on it, and her mothering was reduced to flying in for a couple weeks every year or two. Finally her father met a woman who was willing to stay home with him. Sonja’s mother could understand his viewpoint, so she went along with him. They got a divorce and he got sole custody, although they stayed friends.

“The summer I was fourteen I wasn’t getting along real well with my stepmother and was a little curious about Major Mom,” Sonja continued. “So she and Dad worked out a deal for me to visit her while I was on summer vacation. It worked out OK, it was a big adventure for a kid at fourteen, even though Mom spent two months trying to jam the glory of Israel down my throat, and wanting me to stay. I missed my home and my friends and was pretty much a stranger, and mostly on an IDF base. I didn’t speak any Hebrew when I got there and still not much when I left.”

Sonja’s mother took her Israeli patriotism seriously and wanted her daughter to share in at least some of it. Sonja was the daughter of an Israeli citizen and was considered Jewish under Israeli law, which meant she could hold a dual citizenship. Without Sonja’s knowledge of what was going on until after the fact, her mother registered her and got her an Israeli passport to go with her American one. “As an American I can’t hold a dual citizenship, at least if someone wanted to make an issue of it,” she explained. “An Israeli can hold a dual citizenship, so in Israel’s and Mom’s eyes I’m an Israeli. But I used my American passport when I visited her again two years later.”

Sonja wasn’t clear about the implications – or even that some of that had been done – until she got to Michigan State her freshman year, when she received a draft notice from the IDF. “Israel is OK but not that OK, and being an American is a lot more important to me than being an Israeli, so I wrote back and told them, ‘No way, I’m an American, buzz off!’ Mom has been guilt tripping me about it ever since, telling me I’m a piss poor Israeli. At least we agree on that part. She’s a Lieutenant Colonel now, and she takes it pretty seriously.”

“That happened right when I was getting to know Sonja,” Scott explained. “It was a little weird there for a while.”

“It’s a little weird now,” Sonja shook her head. “As an American, I can repudiate my Israeli citizenship at age eighteen, and I did it right after I got that draft notice. But as an Israeli, it doesn’t count until I’m twenty-one, so I’ve got another nine months before I’m no longer eligible for the Israeli draft. There’s no way I’m going to Israel again where the IDF can get their hands on me until after my next birthday. My mother can be, uh, pretty overbearing and pretty convincing, so like I said, Dad and Gina and I figured the best thing I could do is just avoid her until then.”

“Is that what she’s doing now?” Chuck asked. “She showed up to try and talk you into going back to Israel to serve in the army?”

“That’s what Gina said, and it was no surprise, since we knew it was coming,” Sonja sighed. “We figured that she’d give direct action a try sooner or later.”

“So how long is this going to last?” Barbara asked. “How long are you going to have to hide out from her?”

“I wish I knew,” Sonja sighed. “She may get the message in a couple of days, or it might take a couple weeks or a month, depending on much leave she’s taken. Dad is going to try to talk some sense into her. He told me that when I called him at work. I’d like to believe he can, but he’s never managed much in the past. If he could have done it, she’d never have gone back to Israel when I was little.”

“She does sound a little hard-headed,” Barbara grinned. “How are you going to find out?”

“I’ll call Dad or Gina at work,” she replied. “They don’t know where I am. Actually, I suspect they can guess I’m here, but as long as they don’t know for sure they don’t have anything to let Mom weasel out of them.”

“What I don’t understand,” Scott said after supper as they were sitting in lounge chairs in the cool shade of the back yard, “Is why you just don’t stand up to her, tell her not just no but hell no, and let it go at that.”

“That’s what I ought to do,” Sonja sighed. “When she gets going she’s hard to say no to. I mean, she gets really worked up, and Dad or I will do just about anything to get her settled down. Scott, the heck of it is that she is my mother. I’m not very happy with her right now, and I’m sure she isn’t very happy with me. But I don’t want to destroy things between us forever and given time this can blow over if we don’t have a confrontation over this. At least, that’s what Dad and Gina and I think. I’m not sure just hiding out from her is the best way to go about it, but we haven’t been able to think of anything better.”

“Not knowing her, I’m sure I can’t think of anything that would help,” he shook his head, glancing over at the dark, exotic looking beauty in the other lounge chair. “If you think this is the best way to go about this, then I guess that’s what you’re going to have to do.”

“I wish I could come up with something better,” she sighed again. “Scott, we really weren’t expecting to get surprised like this. There is a good side to it, though.”

“How do you figure that?”

“Well, at this point she doesn’t know for sure that I’m deliberately ducking her,” she smiled. “I mean, if she knew it for sure, then things would be different. The way it is now, we’re just not making contact. She can’t find me and doesn’t know that I know she’s looking for me.”

“You can get away with that for a couple days, maybe a little longer,” Scott pointed out, “but she’s going to get the message if it goes on for very much longer than that.”

“Yeah, that’s probably true,” she nodded, “but I guess I’m going to have to wait and see what happens. I can’t let this drag out till we have to go back to school. She’ll know where to find me then. But maybe if it goes on she’ll get the message. I don’t know and I wish I did.”

“At least you’re going to be welcome to hide out with us for a while,” Scott pointed out. “Bradford is a nice enough town, even though it is sort of dull, but at least it’s a place to go.”

“Yes, Scott, and I really appreciate it. Your folks have been very nice to invite a stranger like me to stay with them. Your offer to take me in if I needed it was the act of a true friend, and in spite of everything I really couldn’t think of anyone else I could ask to do something like this for me.”

“That’s what friends are for. Besides, at least I get to see you a little more this way. It’s been hard, only seeing you for an afternoon every few weeks all summer. I’ve missed you a lot.”

“I’ve missed you too. In fact, I’ve missed you a lot this year. I’ve been counting the days till I can head back to school and we can be together a little more. I’m really sorry that it has to be this way, but like you said, at least we get to see each other.”

“Yeah, it’s been hot and lonely without you, too. At least the good thing about this is that we get to hang around together a little without being on campus, with all those hassles.”

“That is a bright side,” she smiled with a warm expression lighting up her exotic looking face. “Scott, over the course of the summer I’ve come to realize how much I like being around you, and I’ve come to realize that I really want to know you better than just being a guy I hang out with around campus some.”

“I think I’ve come to realize that, too,” he nodded. “Sonja, you’re something else, you know that?”

“I’m just me,” she shook her head. “I know I look a little out of the ordinary, but I don’t think I’m anything special.”

“You’re very special,” he grinned as his mind worked furiously. There was something he wanted to say, but wasn’t sure this was the time to say it or how to say it. Oh, hell, he thought. Blunder ahead and hope for the best. “Sonja, this afternoon on my way home from work, I stopped off to pick up a quart of beer, and when I did there was this girl in the store I know from high school. We went out a few times in the past, not since high school, and she hit on me so hard it wasn’t funny. Now, she’s a nice girl, she’s fun, and it would have been tempting except for the fact that I would have felt guilty if I’d gone out with her instead of keeping my mind on you. Now, I know you and I don’t have any commitments like that or anything, we’re supposed to be just friends, but there’s a big part of me that wants to go beyond being just friends. I didn’t want to louse that up, so I, well, I brushed her off. Now, I’m real glad I did.”

“Yeah,” she said slowly. “I’ve been out once since we left school. It was a friend-of-the-family thing, and still I felt like I was cheating on you a little for doing it. I mean, on one level it’s silly, but on another level it told me that I’m figuring out that I’d really rather be with you instead. We sure have been taking it easy with each other, haven’t we?”

“We have,” he nodded, “and I’m not sure why, other than the fact that I don’t think either one of us wants to set up anything that’s too permanent until we get out of school.”

“I’m sure that’s part of it for me. But we’re halfway through college now, and maybe I’m in the mood to pick up the pace a little. I don’t think it’s just that my mother showing up has got me looking for a different form of security or anything like that. I’ve been thinking about this all summer. I’d sort of planned on bringing this up to you when we got back to school next fall, but maybe now is as good a time as any.”

“It works for me,” he agreed. “I think we’ve been holding back from each other a little, but I know I’ve wanted to be closer to you since not long after we met.”

“Well, yeah, me too. There have been times that I’ve felt like we ought to be having a big, passionate love affair, but I’ve been holding back from that some, too. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s because I felt a little shy around you for quite a while. I mean, here you are, this big, handsome guy who ought to be fighting off women every time he turns around. I mean, what interest would you have in someone like me, who, let’s face it, might be a little too different for you?”

“Never crossed my mind,” he smiled. “I guess I’ve been a little shy myself. I mean, what interest would a beautiful, gorgeous, exotic woman like you have in a small-town guy like me? I agree, we could have been more passionate with each other. Maybe we should have been. On the other hand, maybe a slow, steady start means that we’re building something for the long haul. At least I realize now that I’ve been hoping it is.”

They sat out talking in the back yard for a long time. At one point, Scott mentioned that quart of cold beer in the refrigerator; she agreed that it would taste good, so he went and got it, along with a couple glasses. They took their time finishing it, just enjoying it, enjoying being with each other. Eventually it grew dark and the mosquitoes began to drive them in, so they sat on the screened porch for a while longer until it really was time to be heading to bed. Scott took her up to Abby’s room, glad that his sister was gone for the summer, and loaned Sonja one of his T-shirts to sleep in. There in Abby’s room, they shared a kiss. It wasn’t the first time they’d kissed, or even the hundred and first, but this time it seemed like it had a lot more promise than just a casual buss between a couple of friends.

“Good night, Sonja,” he said finally. “I know it’s not the reason you’d like to be here, but I’m glad you’re here. See you in the morning.”

“I’ll be waiting,” she smiled.

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