Born Under an Assumed Name Read online

  My father had studied Dutch at the Foreign Service Institute for six months before he came, and he was a natural linguist, so he spoke Dutch well already. The deep trouser pockets of his dark suits now, contained rubber-banded stacks of flash cards jotted with Dutch words instead of sketchy Chinese characters—as well as a little book in which, as he said, he “kept track of himself.” When I was older, I learned that this was, literally, true. In the book, he kept notes of meeting places, names of agents, codes for the names he was using for particular contacts. It would have been handy to have owned a similar little identity notebook of my own in the trying weeks ahead.

  My father took us down to the embassy auditorium where the ambassador was to address all the new embassy “dependents.” Ambassador Tyler, a mustachioed man in a pinstriped suit, spoke to us from the podium.

  “You should be very proud of your fathers,” he told us. “They are representatives of the freest, most advanced country in the world. Their mission is to spread the great American way of life across the globe. . . .

  “Now, the fact that your fathers are diplomats,” he continued, “means you, too, have a job just as your father and I do. Your job, as a representative of the United States, is to behave like a little ambassador of your country. . . .” I sat up straighter when the ambassador said this. This was a rule I could latch on to.

  As we left, my father picked up on what the ambassador had said. “Our duty in Holland is to learn the Dutch ways. As you know, whenever you’re in another country it is your job to respect the customs of the people there and conform to them as much as you can.” My father had shown me the State Department’s Post Report on Holland, which explained Dutch customs, and I’d noticed that my mother had begun shaking people’s hands, even in little shops, and taking flowers whenever we visited anyone. She taught me that, when you visited people in foreign countries, it was important to accept the food or little gifts they offered. It was crucial to ignore your own wishes, because to say no could offend people and we were guests in this country. My mother could play the embassy lady to a tee. She was an ardent patriot, a student of protocol, the ideal partner. And she loved the glory and the game.

  Soon after the ambassador’s talk, my father wanted to show us around downtown Den Haag, as the Dutch refer to The Hague. The falling rain was turning to sleet, and the cold was sharp. Pulling our hoods over our heads, we followed my father toward the centrum.

  As we walked along, trams screeched by on their tracks in the middle of the street and bikes spurted by us on the bike path. Dutch people rode bikes more than they rode in cars—just like in Taiwan, except here there were no pedicabs, water buffaloes, or chickens wandering among them, just more people on bikes: A father with a striped toque pulled down to his brows pumped heavily along with three children wearing wool hats on board, one on the rear, one on the cross spoke, and one on his lap, all of them squinting into the rain. A beautiful young couple—he the blondest of blond and she the blackest of black haired—rode along: he peddled and she perched on the rear fender with her hands around his waist, her cheek nestled against his back, happy as if it were a sunny day. A heavy lady about my mother’s age, with a long thick scarf wadded around her neck, glided along, planted on the crossbar of her huffing husband’s bike, like the figurehead of a ship. A man with a navy blue woolen cap charged by, a fishing pole sticking out of his rear basket.

  My father stopped us to point out the odd-looking cars, all smaller and rounder than the cars in America. “That’s an Opel,” he said. “And that’s a Citroen. That’s a Peugeot, and that’s a DAF. DAFs are made in Holland.” As each car passed by, it sprayed water and whooshed like a small wave in the sea.

  For an instant, a policeman raced by in a snazzy white Porsche sports car, weaving in and out among the other cars. A small, square white rescue truck blaring eeh-aah, eeh-aah! followed. Behind the ambulance came a mounted policeman on an immense chestnut horse. Then the traffic slowed and, best of all, a group of velvet-helmeted girls on ponies trotted through a main intersection.

  After a brisk circle through the shopping district—past large department stores like Vroom en Dreesman and C & A, and tiny boutiques in narrow alleys—my father led us across the main street toward an open space. He said, “This is the best part. The Hofvijver.”

  Suddenly I saw what my father was hastening us toward. Beyond a small square I saw a shining, dark, open pond across which sat the brick facade of what looked like a fairy castle.

  “That’s the Binnenhof,” my father said, pointing to the building, as we stopped by the pond, “the seat of the Dutch government.”

  I was gazing across the water at a picture from a storybook. The four- or five-story brick complex, the outer walls of which descended straight down into the pond, was studded with towers like witches’ hats, chimneys, square towers, and turrets, and rows of narrow, darkened windows. I could imagine long, twisting corridors linking all the inner rooms that were sure to have wood-paneled walls, rich carpets on the floors, and immense hunting scenes and black-and-burgundy portraits of great men on the walls. I could picture myself in a long, velvet gown, seated on a prim velvet chair. . . . But then I came to my senses: the Binnenhof was a hundred times smaller than the Capitol in Washington. I remembered what Ambassador Tyler said about the United States of America being the most advanced country in the world and felt a stab of tight and cozy smugness.

  By Monday morning the smugness had evaporated. When I awakened, my room was dark, shadowy, and strange. My hands shook as I put on the new skirt my mother and I had picked out for my first day at school. My skirt was blue. My shirt was white. My sneakers were my old ones from Bethesda. The ones Charlotte and I had written “friends 4ever” on the bottoms of just before I got on the plane.

  At breakfast I could hardly swallow my round of Dutch rusk toast even though it was topped with butter and chocoladehagel, chocolate sprinkles, my new favorite breakfast. My father smoothed his hand along my crown before he left for the tram. “Don’t worry. You look very pretty,” he said. At least I have my long hair, I thought. The kids in Bethesda always liked my braids.

  Just before we left the house, I went up to my room and made sure the light was on—as if my mind was pretending that I’d actually be here all day, at home. At 7:30, while it was still dark, my mother drove us downtown to register at the American School of The Hague, located in the old heart of the city.

  Now I was standing on the edge of the playground that surrounded my new school, a white Victorian mansion that looked like a rich merchant’s villa or an embassy residence. It was set forward in a large, iron-fenced lot. It had a handkerchief front lawn, a playground to its left side, and a large blacktop and playing fields filling the huge back lot. Instantly I was, again, the sparrow in the cage. As at Radnor, I was in a place where I had no history and had to prove myself worthy. I no longer felt like an indomitable, superior American. I felt like throwing up.

  I watched a knot of girls my age at the edge of the blacktop. Not one of the girls had long hair, and they were all wearing skirts, blouses, and sneakers that matched. The clothes I wore were all wrong. Please Mom, come back, come and take me home.

  There was one particular girl—she looked American-pretty like Annette Funi-cello, only fair—who stood with her hip jutting out and tossed her head while making emphatic gestures with her hands. The girls leaned in toward her, cozy-tight like birds around a feeder, as if to peck up her every opinion. She kept pointing at one girl across the playground, saying something at which the other girls laughed. An uneasy feeling stirred deep in my stomach. To belong in this school seemed as if it would involve human sacrifice.

  I felt my throat clutching up. I took a deep breath, trying to be a marine, but I felt more like a girl with a face wiggling to hold back tears. The bell rang.

  In the fourth-grade classroom, on the second floor in what once must have been a bedroom, I began putting away my pencils and pens in my lift-top wood desk. I was lo
oking under the lid when suddenly I heard a bustling. The teacher was standing at the head of the room and I was the only student sitting down. I felt my face turn red and hurried to rise. When the teacher said “Good morning, class,” the students replied, “Good Morning, Ma’am,” in unison as I stood there, sweating. I vowed to myself not to let down my guard for even a second, so I didn’t make another mistake.

  My head swirled trying to make heads and tails of this strange American School of The Hague. Though it purported to be American it was really a blend, in style and curriculum, of European, English, Irish, and southern American. In addition to rising when grown-ups came into a room, everyone called the teachers “Sir” and “Ma’am,” instead of saying “Mr. Potts” or “Mrs. Webster.” We had to write everything in notebooks, cahiers, and all our work had to be written neatly, in fountain pen, as they did in France. Because many of the teachers were British, we had to write colour for color, theatre for theater, and centre for center, and cross our sevens and z’s, which they call zeds. “Doubl’ up! Doubl’ up!” our science teacher said, swallowing a syllable, when he wanted us to hurry. Before long, these teachers would spawn in me a sense of British-accented English as my sonic home.

  Recess was also odd at this strange school. The kids played a game called English rounders—it was like baseball, except the ball was hit with a little flat bat. And the playground included a tether ball and a maypole, which I had never seen before. I watched as the kids dashed madly around the maypole holding onto the ropes. Every couple of minutes, they flew up into the air, laughing—but I knew I would never feel like I was flying, or even feel like laughing at this school where I knew no one in the world.

  When I arrived home from school, my mother had a snack of milk and Cheerios from the embassy welcome kit waiting, but my lip quivered and my throat stuck closed the minute she asked me how my day had gone.

  Finally I said, “This is an American school, but the kids are really different from the kids at Radnor.” It was true. The students at the school were a mixture of overseas oil company—Esso, Shell, and Aramco—military, and embassy families like mine. Also among the students were an Iranian princess and a sprinkling of half-Dutch and half-Belgian children, as well as the children of other Europeans who had American husbands or wives, or who wanted their children to speak English. The students had lived in Saudi Arabia, Japan, and Africa, and many other places. They were a mongrel, culturally mixed breed. I didn’t yet realize that I actually was one of them. Or how “American” they were.

  “Don’t worry, Sara,” she said, “You’ll have friends soon. Just do your school-work and the friends will come.” She patted my hand like she knew it was true, but I knew she was wrong.

  After dinner, my father took me on his lap. “Don’t worry, Sweetie, those kids will love you once they get to know you. It takes a little time. If you look straight at your fears, walk up to them and take them on, things usually come out right,” but I cried for a long time anyway, feeling the wool lapel of his suit jacket grow wet against my cheek.

  Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, I tried to have courage, concentrate on my schoolwork, and be a marine, but mostly I stood off to the edge of the chummy girls in their matching skirts and Keds, pretending to be interested in my fingers and swallowing tears.

  Kicking Dutch puddles on Anemoneweg after school on Friday of this first week of school, it seemed as though Japan, Taiwan, and Bethesda—all my places— had been washed away and I couldn’t see myself in the dark pools. I felt like a cloud, a ghost. I wondered, Am I real? Do other people ever feel this way—invisible to themselves?

  What I needed now in Holland, more than anything, was for someone to stand outside me and tell me what they saw—to make me feel like I existed, like I was still myself. I ached for a twin. Trudging along, I said my name out loud. “SA-RA, SARA, SA-RA.” It sounded odd, uttered into the air, but I could feel its hardness in my mouth. I really am real, I told myself.

  In the dimming afternoon, I shook a basket of sugar cubes set on the empty windowsill. Each cube had a different wrapper from a different restaurant or cafeteria: from the Hot Shoppes on East-West Highway, from a motel in Indiana near Aunt Norma’s, from the SS America. I am a girl who collects sugar cubes, I thought.

  Just before the dimness turned to night, I unwrapped one of the cubes, and sucked it to nothingness. The sweetness made me feel strong and real. But, like the sugar, I was transitory in this new place, quickly melting away.

  In the bright of Monday morning, I was faced with an immediate, practical task: to figure out what kind of Sara would work best for this place, which kind of girl would fit in and find friends.

  On the blacktop, in the face of the girls with their “we belong” coziness, I downed a sugar cube. I took out of my pocket the nicey-nice girl I used to be sometimes in Bethesda. As with Charlotte, I became a girl for the taking. I was a girl made of putty. I adopted the other girls’ opinions. I asked them what they thought was the prettiest color, who they thought was the best teacher, what they thought was the most delicious candy, and then I said I thought so too. My father suggested that I follow Dutch people’s lead in order to respect their culture and so as not to offend, so I did that here at school too.

  When you’re new, one of two things happens: you’re either befriended by another marginal girl, or an in-crowd girl decides to adopt you as her sidekick. It usually takes months to find true-blue friends. I found Charlotte thanks to a stroke of luck in Bethesda. Most of the time at the beginning, it’s either kind or imperious, white or black. Fate decides which you get. At the American School of The Hague, I had one, and then the other.

  First, the marginal girl came along. From the moment I stepped into Lucy’s row house on one of the dignified old brick blocks of the city—her father was one of my father’s embassy colleagues—she took me right to the heart in her prepubescent flat chest as a friend. A skinny sprite with flyaway blond hair, she was a girl thirsty for water, as thirsty as I.

  We smoked chocolate cigarettes on her front stoop. We played World War Two among the scraggly trees in the park, with Lucy and me on one side and Jen, Lucy’s younger sister, and Andy on the other, our bodies pumping with American swagger and war lust. We snuck up on each other’s forts and stole each other’s canteens and candy K-rations. We shot each other with bent sticks. We taught ourselves to blow through grass to make it croak, and to make perfect emergency-signal owl hoots.

  At school, Lucy and I inched up the knotted ropes suspended from the swing set. From the rope-tops, together we looked down over the world. Perched up in the air with a friend, I felt a surge of confidence.

  But then came Candy, the larger-than-life girl who dazzled me and filled me with longing: longing to be as perfect an American girl as she was, and to belong effortlessly as she did at The American School of The Hague. I wanted to be her; it was simple as that.

  Candy Ann Carlton, with her hank of dirty-blond hair hanging over one eye, and her ski jump nose—cute, smart (my mother would add, “alecky”), fearless, confident, saucy—was so American her head should have been on a quarter. She was like Shirley Temple, Annie Oakley, and Hayley Mills all combined into one blond, confident movie star.

  One day at recess, we girls were watching two boys who were tossing a ball around. Jeff charged after the ball hurled by Mike, then caught it, skidding to a stop at Candy’s feet. She put her hands on her hips and said, “And what do you think you’re doing, Mister Jones?” He bopped her on the rear with his ball and she spun and stuck out her tongue at him, laughing with her eyes twinkling as he raced again across the field.

  Candy, the queen of our fourteen-member fourth grade, knew how to play people like fish on hooks. I noticed right away that when Candy asked a girl over, the girl changed her other plans and went. When Candy decided to change her best friend, the old best friend was helpless, and had no choice but to join the rest of the girls in the pile of Candy’s discarded old shoes. As for the b
oys, they all wanted to go steady with her, and Candy could have her pick.

  Before I’d come to The American School of The Hague, I hadn’t even known the word “popular,” but now, suddenly, in this tiny school on a small cobbled street of The Hague, it was as though that word was written in purple block letters in the sky over the white school and was the only word in the whole English dictionary that mattered. I’d figured out the score at The American School of The Hague: popularity was everything and Candy was the only route to that goal. To me, this friendship was a job, and I had to accommodate to whatever the friendship required. So, over the next months, through abject subjugation and toil, I became Candy’s vassal, and she my queen, my “best friend.” If Lucy was my good twin, Candy was my bad.

  Another midmorning recess during my first month, I sat on the wall at one side of the front lawn, behind the wrought iron fence, with Candy, Stacy, Kathy, and other girls in fourth grade.

  “Do you like Cindy’s page boy?” Kathy asked.

  “Yeah, she looks so cute,” I said.

  But Candy gave her shoulder-grazing curls a little shake and said, “Page boys are out. Flips are in.” Her voice had the authority of the president of the United States, or of Louis the XV. “Off with her head.”