7. Jude
CHAPTER 7
Jude
January days aren’t long like summer days—after all, the girls go to kindergarten and Jude gets at least a bit of time to herself—but they can feel restless in a different way.
January is full of all kinds of reminders for Jude: her mother’s birthday is right there in the middle of the month, and January was the first full month she’d spent living under her father’s roof. Every year over Christmas, Jude begins to dread the new year, to remember the way it had felt to ring in 1942 in a place where it felt like the sun never stopped shining. She remembers trying to get used to living with her stepmother and her half siblings, and the distinct feeling of showing up at a new school and not only being the new girl, but being a girl who could barely speak. It took her weeks before she could comfortably utter a word without fearing that if she opened her mouth, Japanese words might come spilling forth.
She’s fixing dinner now, waiting to go and pick up the girls at Frankie’s dance studio on the main street of Stardust Beach before racing back to pull everything out of the warm oven and place it on the table just as Vance arrives home, but the silence of the house beckons for her to stop what she’s doing and think. Remember. Wonder at the twists and turns, the hills and valleys of life.
Almost on autopilot, Jude fills a glass with cubes of ice, pours in a splash of vodka, fills it up to three-quarters with orange juice, and then tops it off with a bit more vodka for good measure. She sits at the kitchen table and crosses her legs, gazing out at the way the sun is dipping lower in the sky. The swimming pool is placid and the patio furniture is tucked away, just as Vance prefers it to be when no one is out there.
For years, Jude had given herself a hard time over this need for an afternoon drink, but she’s gradually come to think of it as the counterpart to her morning coffee: one will wake you up and get you going, and the other will slow things down and help you ease through the rest of your day.
But had she always felt this way? She sips her Screwdriver now thoughtfully, listening to the kitchen radio as the Beatles come on singing “I Feel Fine.” She taps her foot along to the music, letting the toe of her shoe hit the linoleum as she hums to the tune.
It was all so long ago, those first drinks—those first forays into nothingness. Jude had been young ( so young !) when she’d met Alice, and at the time, it had felt impossible to think that things had been any other way. Alice was a hurricane, a firestorm, a force of nature. All green eyes, red hair, and guts. Nothing but sass and certainty. And for a time, Alice had been Jude’s mentor.
It had started one day during her junior year of high school, and it had ended with Jude being brought home by the cops. Oh, had her father been mad! And Bea…wow, she’d never seen her stepmother show so much emotion in her presence, and it had been so extreme that Jude remembers now how the urge to laugh had been almost impossible to ignore. But she’d been drunk that night, and so the laughter had bubbled forth against her will, enraging her stepmother even more.
But Alice…Jude thinks about her as she drains her first drink and then goes to pour another. The way Principal McCarthy had marched Alice into Jude's Algebra class that afternoon, pointing to the empty seat next to Jude’s and ordering Alice to “Sit. Be quiet. Listen. Learn.”
Jude can see the whole scene play out in her mind as she sits in her chair again, swirling the fresh drink around with a light flick of her wrist. She takes another long drink, crunching an ice cube between her teeth.
“What are we doing in here?” Alice had asked, leaning towards Jude. The top buttons of her white blouse were opened, and as she leaned, Jude saw several inches of creamy cleavage; no other girl in their school would have dared to wear the top of their blouse open this way. “Should I just give up now, or can you tutor me?” Alice winked at Jude, a grin spreading across her pretty face.
Jude wanted to respond, and she was intrigued by the thought of tutoring the wildest girl in their school. She let her eyes graze over the untamed main of red hair that tumbled over Alice's shoulders. Everyone knew that Alice Kamp was the girl who never said no. If a boy asked her out, there was no end of the line; the horizon of possibility stretched on endlessly, which obviously meant that Alice was never short on dates or invitations.
By the time the bell rang, Jude had decided that she’d offer to tutor Alice. Even though most of the girls hated her, it was clear that they also revered her. Alice was spoken of in a way that indicated a plain fear of her power and her knowledge of the world. And that was it, really—wasn’t it? Alice knew things that the other girls didn’t. She had a way of moving through the world that oozed confidence and world-weariness and amusement all at once, while the rest of them were just awkward, inexperienced teenage girls.
Alice was standing there, packing her books into her bag as Jude put away her pencil and her notes. “I can tutor you,” Jude offered. “Can you come to the library after school today?”
Alice turned towards her, surprise all over her face. “Today?” She lifted an eyebrow. “Don’t you know better than to ask a girl for a date without some notice?”
Jude felt her face go red. She wasn’t sure what to say.
“Sorry,” Jude muttered, shoving her things into her bag and trying to get out of the classroom.
“I’m kidding,” Alice said, glancing at the clock high up on the wall. “I can meet you right after school. But I’ve got a date at five o’clock, so I can only stay for a while.”
Suddenly it felt like the sky was opening up and the sun was breaking through the clouds. “Okay,” Jude said, smiling. “I’ll meet you at the table under the window. Bring your math book.”
Their friendship had spun quickly and inexplicably into a closeness that Jude hadn’t anticipated. For as busy as Alice was with boys and after-school detention, the one thing she’d been missing was female friendship. From that first day in the library, she’d taken Jude under her wing and taught her everything she knew…about everything. At first, Jude’s eyes had opened wide as she described the kinds of things she did with boys in the backseat of their cars, and then she’d had to intentionally close her mouth as Alice explained the various ways a young girl could earn detention from the principal. (For the record, those ways included: smoking cigarettes out the window of the girls’ bathroom; hiding out in a bathroom stall in the boys’ room with the captain of the basketball team; skipping classes and making out with the vice principal’s son underneath the bleachers in the sports field; writing her own phone number on the wall outside the boys’ locker room and indicating in permanent ink that anyone calling this number would be ensured a good time; and swearing in Home Economics class before refusing to bake a cake because Alice had no intention of ever becoming “a big, fat housewife.”)
They’d been friends for about a month when Alice introduced Jude to what she called her “magic elixir,” a concoction that Jude quickly realized was some sort of horrible combination of all the alcohols that Alice could sneak from her father’s liquor cabinet. She carried a small, silver flask in her purse, offering Jude sips of it whenever they met in the girls’ bathroom between classes.
Jude can still remember her first drink of the stuff: she’d been washing her hands at the sink, using that horrible pink powder that came out of the soap dispenser and barely made a lather when you rubbed it under water, when Alice stepped out of the stall, still zipping up her skirt.
“Hey, Judy,” she’d said, using the name that Jude—then known far and wide exclusively as Judith—only ever allowed Alice to call her, “you should try this before you go to English class.”
With her skirt zipped and her shirt tucked back into place, Alice produced the flask from her purse and passed it to Jude. Jude unscrewed the lid cautiously, taking a whiff of it. It burned her nostrils and she winced, passing it back.
“No thank you,” she said, shaking her dark head.
“Trust me.” Alice tipped her own head back and took a long pull from the flask before wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “Here. Your turn.”
Jude was dubious. The stuff smelled awful, and she didn’t even know what was in it. Her dad occasionally met other military guys for drinks and came home with alcohol on his breath, but Bea forbade any alcohol in the house, so Jude didn’t really have much experience with it. She put the metal flask to her lips and took the tiniest, most hesitant sip she could manage.
She gagged. “God, what is this?”
Alice laughed wickedly, pushing the flask back to her. “Have a bit more. It’s whiskey.”
“It tastes like fire. Like burned oil and wood.” She took another drink to see if she’d been mistaken the first time, but she quickly discovered that she hadn’t. “I hate it.”
Alice laughed again. “Well, my dad didn’t have any more of the other kind. He got a bottle for Christmas that tasted like vanilla and spices and it was amazing, but this is just some cheap stuff.”
“I don’t know why people like this.” Jude turned back to the mirror, looking at her reflection as Alice took another swig and then passed her the flask again.
“Take one more drink—a real one,” Alice implored. “And then let me know after English class how you feel, okay? I can guarantee if you have a good bit of it sloshing around in your belly, you’ll get through old Norwood’s Shakespeare discussion and have a much better time in her class. That’s a promise.”
Jude considered this for a moment because Alice hadn’t really led her astray in any other way. She’d taught her all about what teenage boys looked like naked (Jude tried not to flash back on what a prepubescent Chester had looked like without his pants on--the memories still made her shudder), how to sneak through a bedroom window without breaking the screen on the window so that your parents would never find out, and how to lie to your teachers about menstrual cramps so that you could sneak off campus for a quick cigarette or a milkshake. So why would Alice lie to her now? She accepted the flask and took another drink, a real mouthful this time.
And true to Alice’s word, a warm, fuzzy feeling had overtaken Jude during English class. As the rest of her classmates discussed A Midsummer Night’s Dream and took notes while Mrs. Norwood walked around the room, pointing at the things she’d written on the chalkboard with a long pointer stick, Jude floated in a happy haze. She’d looked out the windows at the way the birds landed in the branches of the trees, and she’d doodled her own name intertwined with James Dean’s. The whole hour passed in this easy, light way, and when Jude walked through the hall afterwards with her books in her arms, she saw everything in a new light. The floors were shinier, the sounds of teenagers talking sounded more melodic to her ears, and the boys even looked a bit cuter. She smiled at people whose gazes she normally avoided, and when she found Alice, she could tell by the look on her friend’s face that she was amused by something Jude was doing.
“What?” Jude had asked, confused. She tossed her head and met Alice’s eye. “Why are you laughing?”
“You’re tipsy,” Alice had responded. “How do you feel?”
Jude motioned for the flask. “Let me have a little more.”
“More?” Alice lifted an eyebrow as she looked around the parking lot where they were standing. “Okay, you wild child. Here you go.”
And so it had begun.
The phone rings now in the late afternoon, and Jude startles. Alice and her flask and her flaming hair slip from Jude's mind as she flips her wrist over to glance at her watch. She jumps to her feet and rushes to the phone.
“Hello?”
“Jude? It’s Frankie.”
A rush of mortification fills Jude with horror. “The girls.”
“They’re waiting for you,” Frankie says, “but I’m all done here for the day. Would you like me to drop them home? Everyone else has already been picked up.”
“Frankie,” Jude says, looking at the glass on the table that’s less than half-full. She’s working her way to the bottom of drink number two, and she can feel the looseness in her limbs. The world around her is fluid. “I am so, so sorry. You have no idea. I was making dinner, and time just got away from me. I would never?—“
“Jude, it’s fine,” Frankie assures her, sounding a little miffed. “I’ll just drop them by on my way home. No harm, no foul. We’ll see you in about fifteen minutes.”
Jude hangs up and looks at the watch on her wrist again. She’s not driving, and the girls will come home and play for a bit as she finishes dinner, so she decides to top off her drink. Just one more time. If she hasn’t hit the bottom of the glass yet, then even if she refills it, it’s still only her second drink, right?
She reaches for the vodka and turns it around, looking at the label as she does. As always, it reminds her of Alice and the bottles they’d pilfered from Mr. Kamp’s liquor cabinet. This brand had become their safe choice, and so, even as an adult, Jude gravitates towards it, with the familiar colors and font on the label. She tops off her glass and then adds just a splash of orange juice, mixing it quickly with a long spoon intended for iced tea. She’d gotten the spoons as a wedding gift, though she rarely—if ever—used them for anything except stirring up a cocktail.
Jude sinks back into her seat at the table with a sigh, thinking again of Alice and the way she’d been amused the first few times Jude had gotten drunk and thrown up. There had been the time they’d climbed up Mount Lee in Griffith Park, north of the Mulholland Highway in Hollywood, and drank as the giant spotlights came on behind each letter. Jude had eventually lain in the dirty patches of grass, staring up at the night sky as she laughed and laughed, and after the laughter made her stomach hurt, she rolled onto her side and vomited. This had been a story that was oft repeated between the two girls, and when Jude eventually learned to control her drinking and find her limit, she would roll her eyes at the memory, chastising her former self for not being able to hold her liquor.
In fact, it had been the last night of her friendship with Alice that had really made her feel like an uninformed novice. They’d taken Alice’s car, as usual, and her father’s alcohol, as usual, and driven to some place where they could drink and talk. They were listening to the radio in the car beneath a streetlight, passing a bottle back and forth as they wondered what the future would bring (Jude wanted to go to college to get away from her stepmother; Alice wanted to go to Vegas and become a showgirl who wore red lipstick to the grocery store and took a different lover every week).
“You’d wear stage makeup to buy groceries ?” Jude asked, watching Alice twist the rearview mirror towards herself and fluff her hair as she looked at her own reflection.
“Just a little bit.” Alice pushed the mirror back into place and turned to Jude. “Gotta highlight and emphasize what the good Lord gave me.” For extra emphasis, she cupped her breasts and pushed them together comically, showing Jude her cleavage.
The girls laughed and then fell quiet.
“I feel like college is going to be the first time in my life when I can really be myself,” Jude admitted, looking through the windshield at the pool of light that the streetlight cast on the pavement.
“How so?”
Jude lifted her shoulders. The good thing about Alice was that she liked to have fun, and she never required you to tell her too much. If Jude felt like not talking, they just drank and laughed instead. But this question felt real, and she could sense Alice watching her and listening intently.
“I came here right after Pearl Harbor,” Jude said solemnly. “I left Japan on a ship and my mother sent me here to live with my father and his wife after the U.S. declared war on Japan. She thought I’d be safer.”
“Wait.” Alice said the word like it was a complete sentence and then they sat there in silence for an elongated moment that stretched out between them. “You’re Japanese? Or…” She was obviously trying to put the pieces together in her mind, and Jude didn’t want to leave her hanging.
“My mother is, so I guess I am. Yes. But she raised me to speak both languages, and she never let me forget that my dad was an American, so when I came here, all I had to do was try to blend in. For the first few months I barely talked to anyone. I was afraid I’d accidentally say something in Japanese, or that I’d have an accent. My stepmother got my hair done in a way that made me fit in better, and I dressed like everyone in my classes, and…eventually it kind of stuck. I felt American. I still do.”
Alice stared at her like she’d just revealed that she had a secret love child with Bing Crosby and had sent the child to live with nuns in a Swiss convent. “Where is your mom?” Alice probed, her voice both accusatory and disbelieving. “Is she still in Japan?”
Jude regretted ever telling Alice the truth about her life, and she would have given anything in that moment to take it all back. “I think so,” she said softly, her words barely audible. “I guess she is. I haven’t heard from her in years.”
Alice shook her head a few times. “Unreal,” she said, her eyes never leaving Jude’s. “You’re a Jap .”
The word felt like a slap to Jude’s face. She physically recoiled. “I?—“
“No, there are no ‘buts,’ Jude—you’re a Jap. Your people bombed Pearl Harbor, and my uncles both died. That’s all there is to it.”
Jude’s eyes stung with tears. She’d never revealed her truth to anyone, and she suddenly understood why her mother had been so fearful for her, and even, to some extent, why her father and Bea had insisted she try so hard to fit in. She finally got it.
“It’s not like that,” Jude whispered to Alice. She was holding a half-drunk bottle of brandy between her knees as they sat there on the bench seat of Alice’s car. “My dad is American.”
“But you’re not,” Alice spat back, reaching over and grabbing the bottle of liquor from Jude’s lap and holding it to her chest like it was a valuable possession. “Get out of my car. Go. I can’t believe I ever put my mouth on the same bottle as you.” She looked at the bottle in her hands that had, just moments before, felt so important to grab. She thrust it back at Jude, bumping it roughly against her arm. “Here, take it.”
Jude collapsed inside--her heart folded in on itself. She fumbled for the door handle and nearly fell out onto the sidewalk, leaving the bottle of brandy behind.
Alice reached across the bench seat of the car, sweeping Jude’s purse with her hand so that it flew across the seat and out the door, landing on the pavement and scattering its contents everywhere. A tube of soft pink lipstick rolled into the gutter, and Jude's house keys landed near her foot. Before slamming the door and peeling away from the curb, Alice lifted the bottle of brandy and threw it as hard as she could towards Jude. It hit the sidewalk and shattered on impact, its shards and contents splattering against Jude’s bare legs.
The red taillights were gone in an instant, and Jude was left kneeling on the sidewalk, trying to gather her belongings in the weak pool of light from above. She looked around at the darkened houses on the street; they’d parked in a quiet neighborhood in an area known for its orange groves and dusty backroads. The only thing to do would be to knock on the door to someone’s house and beg to borrow the phone so that she could call her father. When Jude finally gathered the courage to knock on a door, the woman inside immediately smelled the alcohol on Jude’s skin and saw her tear-stained cheeks and the blood on her legs from the shards of glass on the sidewalk and panicked. She called the police, who took Jude home and dropped her right at her doorstep, where her father stood wrapped in a bathrobe under the porch light, looking disappointed and grim.
From that day forward, until she met Vance, Jude never again told anyone her truth.