A knock on our classroom door caused everyone to look away from our elementary school desks. Hollywood actor Vic Morrow poked his head into our classroom and barked: “Private Close! You’re needed at the front!”
Obediently, I sprang from my desk and marched forward while my teacher and schoolmates watched with open mouths. At eight years old, I was off to join King Company’s Second Platoon—a fictional World War II squad whose exploits were chronicled each week in the popular 1960s television series Combat!
This was my daydream. I was obsessed with the black-and-white drama, and I often dreamed about how fantastic it would be to have Vic Morrow or Rick Jason suddenly arrive at the Parkway School in Greenwich to tell me that I was needed—on the front!
My brother, Sandy, and I were given an air-powered pistol that looked somewhat like a Browning automatic. It shot BBs, pellets, and little darts that had green and red hairs. I loved that gun. During the summer of 1963, my sisters, brother, and mother could find me patrolling the grounds of Grandmother Moore’s estate, armed with the air pistol, a kitchen timer that served as my radio, and rawhide dog chews that served as my rations, along with banana-flavored Turkish Taffy. My dog, Rocket, had an army-green colored leash, and he was my constant, beloved companion. Even then, my favorite way to play was to be alone with my dog. Hunting imaginary Nazis kept me entertained.
Rocky was a Shetland sheepdog, and he would bark and run beside me across the terrain, occasionally stopping to wag his tail and wait when I fell to my knees, barely escaping machine-gun fire only I could hear. At night, we even snuck out my bedroom window to patrol and spy on the few neighbors near my grandmother’s house. Most of Grandmother Moore’s estate had been sold off after Grandpa died, but I was a welcome guest on the land that used to be ours.
I wanted an army uniform more than anything that summer, and I asked Mom to take me to the toy store on Greenwich Avenue, where I’d seen uniforms in the window. After days of pestering, she finally agreed, but I made her promise that she wouldn’t tell the sales clerk that the uniform was for me. We would say it was for a boy who happened to be my size.
I immediately picked one that was just what the men on Combat! wore, and I was excited when we made our way to the register. That’s when Mom betrayed me.
“It’s for my daughter,” she announced.
I was so embarrassed I wanted to melt into the floor, but I had my uniform.
When I wasn’t patrolling the grounds on Nazi hunts, I was in my bedroom, writing or drawing. I completed my first book—a story about a family and its pets—before my ninth birthday. I illustrated it, too, and thought myself very clever, as each character’s face was shaped differently.
Mom had a wing added to Grandmother Moore’s house for us, and I had my own room with strawberry-patterned wallpaper and an off-white carpet. My bedroom furniture was painted a happy light green to go with the leaves in the wallpaper, and the whole room was Rocket’s and my domain. After living in a hotel and borrowed MRA houses, I was glad to have my own sanctuary. At some point after moving in, I stopped rubbing the “worry spot” between my thumb and forefinger that I had irritated in Caux—no doubt because this was the first time had I felt an actual sense of family, even though my father wasn’t with us.
The two and a half years that I spent with Grandmother Moore, Mom, and my siblings are golden in my memory. To me, they represent my only childhood. It was a time when I got to ride my hand-me-down pony, Nubbins, and actually spend time with my sisters and Sandy, who had become strangers to me in Switzerland. The summer when I turned ten was special, too, because my Mom was home with us. This was a great treat. Mom, Rocky, and I would pile into her blue station wagon and drive to Nielsen’s ice cream store at the top of Greenwich Avenue. I always chose raspberry sherbet and allowed Rocky to lick one side of the cone while I licked the other. Mom didn’t mind. Then we’d head down to Indian Harbor and watch the water and boats.
Round Hill Road intersected Mooreland Road, and that was where I waited for the school bus in the fall, winter, and spring. Each morning, Rocky would trot along with me and stay until the bus carted me off. He would be waiting when I returned. Together we would have made a wonderful Norman Rockwell painting.
Although my parents had irritated the MRA hierarchy, my sisters were still deeply caught in it. Tina gave testimonials at MRA conferences. Glenn sang and performed in MRA’s Sing-Out ’65. Mercifully, Sandy and I were spared. Because my dad was not much a part of our lives, Sandy’s father figure became Alec Duncan, a Scotsman who worked for my grandparents for more than thirty years on their estate. We kids called him Ikey, and he became such a substitute father figure to Sandy that my brother began referring to Ikey as his real dad.
Suza, or Suzanna Mannagotter, was my rock during those years at Round Hill. She ruled her domain: the kitchen, her little dining room, and an apartment upstairs. Suza was an elderly German woman who kept her red hair until the day she died at age one hundred. She wore cotton dresses and little white socks and always had the same kind of shoes: leather, with laces. When Suza spoke to me she would grab my wrist and wouldn’t let go until she finished saying what she wanted to say. She did the same with everyone. She always had a snack ready for me when I got home from school which was a glass of very cold whole milk and a piece of pound cake or cookies. She taught me about taking care of animals. She always said, “Acht, Miss Yessie,” in her German accent, “you must feed your animals before you eat. They cannot get it for themselves.” She made friends with my canary and two little turtles. And of course, she loved Rocky. She knew I wasn’t allowed to watch Combat! but turned a blind eye to me sneaking up to her apartment to watch the forbidden show. Whenever I could, I would arrange a situation that would get me sent out of the big dining room to the kitchen. I remember once, when I had a spoonful of apple sauce and was threatening to flip it; my mom told me that if I did I would be sent to the kitchen. I did. I much preferred eating in Suza’s dining room and she liked the company.
I was terribly shy; I frequently felt awkward and much preferred the company of Rocket and my imaginary pals to others my age. I was younger than most of my friends by a year because the schooling at the MRA school in Switzerland had been so rigorous that I was allowed to skip third grade upon our return. I do remember talking to my siblings about our futures. Tina said she was going to be an artist, Glenn an actress, Sandy a truck driver, and I would be an author. I remember Glennie’s belly laughs when I told her that if I cut myself, monkey hair would pop out. I wonder if I was already feeling uncomfortable in my skin.
Sadly, our time together proved brief. When the school year started, Tina and Glenn left for Rosemary Hall, the boarding school that our mother and her mother had attended. Sandy was sent to the Harvey School in Katonah, New York. I was left behind, and that sense of family that I had discovered was soon replaced with a new feeling. For the first time, I began to sense that I was a “problem child.” I was the reason why my mom couldn’t be with my father in Africa.
By 1965, it had become clear that my father had no intention of leaving the Congo—which, after the Belgians left, had changed its name from the Belgian Congo to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. President Mobutu had issued him a certificate he proudly displayed above his desk. It declared that William Close was the president’s personal medical adviser and authorized him to wear the uniform of the Congolese army as a lieutenant colonel.
I knew Mom missed Dad and wanted to be with him, so I asked her one day why we all didn’t move to Africa together. I would forever regret that question, as it quickly led to the end of a period in my life that I still dream about.
We didn’t all move to the Congo. Only Tina and I went with Mom. Sandy remained in boarding school, and Glennie stayed in the States to continue working with MRA’s Up with People, a new show being performed by MRA’s youth.
I was inconsolable when it was time to say good-bye to Rocky. I had been given a beautiful Arabian gelding the summer before by our neighbor, and when I went to say good-bye to him he pressed his forehead into my chest. I breathed in his scent and felt his velvet muzzle and cried some more. And Nubbins, who was as naughty as a Shetland pony could be—I would miss him, too.
After the interminable flight to the Congo, we moved into the Hotel Memling in the nation’s capital, Kinshasa—formerly Leopoldville. The hotel had been built in 1937 and named after a fifteenth-century painter, Hans Memling. From our windows we could see the Congo River drifting by, and at night the darkness was pierced by a large beam of light coming across the river from Brazzaville. It was the capital of the Communist-controlled Republic of the Congo, and the two different sides shined spotlights at each other across the river at night.
Moving from Grandmother Moore’s spacious house, with its sweeping lawns, to one of Africa’s biggest, most congested cities came as a complete culture shock for me. Outside our hotel, traffic snarled, impatient drivers honked, and hundreds of bicycles darted between the cars. The smell of garbage and sweat permeated the air, and I learned very quickly what it felt like to be a minority; it scared me at first.
The first night we were at the Hotel Memling we chose an outdoor café for dinner, and I heard something that sounded like it was coming from under the table. It was a man with no legs who traveled on a low wooden cart with wheels, pushing himself with his calloused hands. I screamed. Mom gave him a few coins.
Safely inside the hotel, there was absolutely nothing to do. Tina and I played endless games of double solitaire, and then I would retreat to my room and cry. I missed my animals. My heart was broken.
We finally moved into a house in the paracommando camp where President Mobutu lived. He wanted his “docteur” close by. There were still a lot of violent uprisings happening across the country, although we were isolated from them. Dad turned the house’s master bedroom into a clinic where he set up a lab to test blood and feces. Sometimes I would get to help him. Working in his lab gave me a chance to be near my dad. Patients would bring stool specimens wrapped in leaves and secured with thin vine. I would put on the nose clips that I used for swimming and open the package. Dad showed me how to make a slide and what to look for through a microscope. There was always a long line of people waiting outside the clinic, and everyone was always staring at me. I hated that!
My parents enrolled me in the Catholic Sacré Coeur school, where I was the only white student. They wanted me to learn French fluently and thought that by throwing me into a French-speaking environment I would learn quickly. I told my parents that if they didn’t take me out of that school I would run away. Just as I thought things couldn’t get any worse, of course they did. My beloved Rocket was struck by a car and killed while walking on the same road where he used to follow me to the school bus. Granny Close wrote that blood had been coming from his mouth. I never forgave her for putting that image in my mind.
I was so distraught that my parents enrolled me in TASOK, the American School of Kinshasa, where most of the students were missionary kids, but I was still unhappy. I just didn’t fit in.
Although Tina and I now lived with our parents, my father remained as aloof as he always had been, a fact he later candidly admitted in his autobiography.
My work at the hospital and with the president… allowed little time with the family. I was more comfortable dealing with professional responsibilities than with the needs at home. Did I feel guilty about my family? Sometimes, but the weight and imperatives of my other responsibilities were effective guilt suppressors… Anyway, with little understanding of children or their problems, I felt useless as a father.
I hate to admit it, but I was afraid of him. He would yell at me for minor infractions, so I stayed out of his way and learned not to ask him anything. I’d use Mom to pitch questions; she knew his moods and the set of his jaw better than I did. Many days he was gone, traveling in a small plane that he piloted to villages to inspect clinics and treat patients. Those days were easier than when he was home.
Not long after we arrived in Africa, I developed what my father diagnosed as a chronic sinus condition. I had constant headaches, and my sinuses were a mess. Africa became a bit more tolerable after my brother, Sandy, arrived. At age thirteen, I met my first boyfriend at school, and we kissed. We kept it a secret. His father worked for the CIA, although everyone thought he was a shipping company executive. Because of my father’s close proximity to Mobutu, everyone suspected Dad of being a CIA operative, too. He always denied that, but I guess he would, so I’ll never know. A neighbor gave me a pet monkey with a blue face. I also acquired a chameleon, an owl, and a dog, Trooper.
Still, I wanted to go home. I remember one dreadful afternoon when I rode with my mom to the post office near the center of town. I wasn’t feeling well, so I stayed behind in the van when she went inside. Besides, I hated being stared at because we were white.
It was hot under the noon sun, so I slipped into the front seat. Our van’s windows were open, but there was no breeze to dry my whitish blond wisps of hair, which were glued to my forehead, held tightly there by stale sweat.
“Mam’selle! Mam’selle!” a young voice called.
A teenage boy, his teeth sparkling brightly in a wide grin, appeared outside the driver’s-side window.
“Oui?” I replied softly.
“Papier, mam’selle?” he asked, hoisting up a stack of newspapers for me to see.
“Non, merci,” I replied.
I noticed that his shirt, a rag, really, was unbuttoned and draped over his scrawny shoulders. His black skin was covered with dust, giving him a gray, cadaverous appearance. I glanced at his thin chest and looked downward at his bulging navel and the V of his exposed abdomen. His khaki shorts were ripped and fastened below his hips with a piece of twine. His shoeless feet were white with calluses and scars.
“Mam’selle, papier?” he repeated.
Before I could reply, he dropped below the window, out of sight, but resurfaced, the newspapers no longer in his hands.
“Mam’selle,” he said, smiling as he brazenly opened our van’s door.
“Non!” I shrieked, reaching too late for the handle.
He stepped into the opening and grabbed my right hand. “Papier, mam’selle?” he asked.
“Non! Je n’ai pas d’argent!” I declared. I tried to pull my hand out of his.
He dug his long, dirty fingernails, like fishhooks, into my skin, preventing me from pulling away.
“S’il vous plait,” I yelled. “Leave me alone!”
He freed my hand, which I immediately clenched into a fist because my palm stung. I thought I was rid of him, but he reached up and grabbed my left breast with his right hand.
“No!” I shouted, stunned. I tried to knock away his hand, but he knocked mine away instead and squeezed my breast hard again while lowering his left hand to my skirt. He tried to work it under the material, but I clenched my thighs together as tightly as I could and prevented him.
With a frantic shove, I pushed his hand off my breast and scooted backward on the van’s seat, kicking at him, causing him to back away. Lunging forward, I grabbed the van’s door, slamming it shut, and then darted into the backseat, taking refuge on the floor.
I opened my palm. Four crescents from his fingernails appeared, each bleeding.
The teenager circled the van, calling out, “Mam’selle!” Pressing his face against the glass, he peered into the backseat, staring at me. “Mam’selle, vien.”
I looked away.
As quickly as the teen had appeared, he vanished.
“Jess?” my mom called as she opened the driver’s-side door.
“Look what a boy did to my hand,” I said, offering up my palm.
She took my hand into hers and inspected the cuts. “How awful! What happened?”
I began to cry. “I couldn’t lock the doors. I don’t know how to lock the doors in this lousy van!”
I jerked my hand from her and closed it again.
“I’m sorry,” Mom said. “I didn’t know.”
I curled up on the backseat and pressed my hot and tear-stained cheek against its vinyl. Closing my eyes, I listened to my mom start the van and back it out of the parking space. I thought about Grandmother Moore’s yellow house in Greenwich, with its green lawns and stone walls that ran down into the field behind it. There were lilacs in the yard and freshly mowed grass.
With all my heart I wanted to go home.