Chapter 3: Tribulations Part 2: Vedette

We owe one half of ourselves to those who gave us life, namely our mother and father. It is something that cannot be avoided. This genetic engraining is partly responsible for who we become as human beings. It signifies their signature on our soul. Therefore, as can well be expected, I feel I should dedicate this next chapter to that half of myself. Recognizing that I knew of my father, but never knew him, I cannot therefore determine what characteristics we share. So, I must devote this entire chapter to my mother and the influence she had over me, however positive or negative, and devote later chapters to my father; the mysterious Allen Joseph Tolliver.

My mother Vedette Audrey Marcoux, a talented baker's daughter, was born in the capital of France in 1903. Everything about her existence, before unavoidable events resulted in her migration to America, was quite predictable and bourgeois. For fifteen years her mother and father were happily married, lived quite comfortably; one might even say that Vedette's future was destined to end with a happily ever after...that is, before the before mentioned events transpired. On the surface, the Marcoux family was happy and well respected, but as anyone will confess, looks can be deceiving and a dark secret lay beneath the surface of the Marcoux family facade.

Vedette was the envy of their neighborhood, a girl of impeccable and unchallenged beauty; an unfortunate curse that led to the most painful and unforgettable experience of her life. At the age of thirteen, my mother Vedette was sexually assaulted by a close family relative...her Great Uncle. I won't presume to understand the torment she endured because of it. She expressed it perfectly in one of her earlier journals.

****"Le pointage de son appartement mal ventilé a frappé le minuit le moment il a été fait avec moi. C'était comme si je suis tombé au sommeil que le soir épouvantable et doit encore remuer moi-même à la conscience - forcé par les mains du démon à revivre ce cauchemar chaque fois qu'une horloge frappe douze."****

****"The clock in his stuffy apartment struck midnight the moment he was done with me. It was as if I fell to sleep that dreadful evening, and have yet to stir myself to consciousness - forced by the devil's hands to relive this nightmare each time a clock strikes twelve."****

It was no secret her Great Uncle subdued his lust for Vedette in his heart. It was evident in his ravenous glare, every time he looked at her. All he lacked was the opportunity. That opportunity arrived late one Friday evening. My mother's memoirs provide vivid details regarding that day, including the confrontation with her father.

The baker, an addicted gambler, forced into sole guardianship that night as Vedette's mother was visiting a sick Aunt, handed Vedette into his Uncle's care while he endeavored to play cards at a questionable establishment not two blocks from his Uncle's apartment. The decision to leave the naive and innocent young Vedette in such a compromising situation was the result of two conditions: there was no one else to watch her on such short notice, and the baker planned on being away no more than one hour and assumed nothing could possibly happen in that time. He was wrong.

It took less than half that time for his Uncle to perform such foulness. His hands were all over Vedette the moment her father's footsteps faded down the hall. And how could the baker stomach his own reflection the following morning? He lost more than his money that day.

Her father knew the moment he returned to find a tearful and trembling Vedette sitting alone on the sofa; his Uncle sitting at his desk, rummaging through some papers as if nothing had happened. The baker's face flushed crimson as he walked over to the desk and delivered a stinging impression across his Uncle's face. He then grasped Vedette forcefully by the arm and hauled her to the door. But before they left, he turned to his Uncle and muttered under his breath, "this is not over."

His Uncle tried to fake a casual smirk, but his expression revealed his undermining panic. "Mind what you do, if you're thinking about going to the police.," he told the baker nervously. "You're the one who left her here, while you were off gambling your hard earned money away." He tried to look at Vedette, but her shameful eyes were bound for the floor. "And I don't think our sweet child would wish that anyone ever know what has happened here. Isn't that right, Mon Cherie?"

Vedette burst into sobs, and the baker contemplated at that very moment of ending his Uncle's life. But the Uncle stood up very casually and held out an envelope to the baker, containing five hundred francs. "There is more where this came from," he sneered. "I hope we can all agree to keep this between us."

Vedette's father snatched the envelope and quickly tucked it into his breast pocket. Upon leaving, he turned to his Uncle and stared him straight in the eyes, in hope to purvey an understanding that this blood money had just spared this criminal his life.

What transpired next on the staircase outside the apartment would solidify Vedette's relationship with her father for the remainder of their lives. My mother broke free of his grip and stood motionless at the top of the staircase for what she claimed to be "countless moments", perhaps gathering the courage to attempt the desperate action that ensued. In one quick motion she leaned foward to topple down three flights of stairs and there end her life, but the baker with the speed of a distressed man lunged forward in time, grasped the hem of her dress tightly in his fist and yanked her away from the stairs.

"Cherie, no my Vedette, Mon Cherie, don't!" he pleaded with his daughter, but she did not respond; collapsed on the floor in an awkward pose, covering her face with both hands to mask her disgrace. "Please forgive a wretched and pitiful man, Vedette, if not your father. I know it's all my fault. Please, tell me what I should do and I'll do it."

Suddenly, as if turning off a faucet, Vedette's tears stopped and she gazed up into the baker's eyes with unbearable hatred. "Take it back!" she returned in anger. "But you can't take it back, so I can't forgive you!"

My mother, the thirteen year old baker's daughter, proudly stood to her feet at that moment, realizing her life had reached a new beginning, a life of shame, and she must choose a path to take...end her life, or keep going and use her pain as a means to become stronger. She sighed deeply, smoothed the hem of her dress, gathered her composure and walked very softly over to her father.

She returned the favor her father delivered her Great Uncle, leaving a long red mark across his cheek and a small scratch that bled for several minutes. "I don't love you any more, father," Vedette informed him coldly. "You are as much to blame as that Rasputin, and you will share my shame." Then reaching into his breat pocket, my mother retrieved the envelope with the five hundred francs and slipped it up her right sleeve. "I believe this belongs to me, and I will expect more, though every penny you both will ever earn will never be enough to repay me."

And she walked away and left the baker at the base of the stairs, choosing to ignore the tears he shed out of remorse and hopelessness. He realized he had lost his daughter forever. Even if she were to live under his roof the remainder of his life, she would never return to him; and so he followed after her quietly, maintaining twenty paces between them in a walk of shame.

Neither Vedette nor her father mentioned the assault to her mother Caroline, nor did they mention that Vedette was ever alone with her Great Uncle. Caroline understood at once that something was wrong with her daughter, but she failed to discover the reasons why. As for the scratch her father had suffered, he insidiously lied that he had stumbled over a stone and fallen down.

The blackmail continued, with my mother as the instigator. She even went to her Great Uncle's apartment on numerous occasions to extort money from him personally. Each instance was like clockwork. She knocked on his door and he answered. She stood with one hand extended for the envelope, the other behind her back grasping a blade in case he should attempt to repeat his offense; all the while with the devious of smiles that would have made the devil shudder. The events were nearly identical at the door of her father's study, though she carried no weapon.

For two years, it continued in this manner, until her Great Uncle tired of paying for his crime. Time had long passed to suffer prosecution, and Vedette had already managed to extort and tuck away more than twelve thousand francs. So during Vedette's last visit to his apartment, he handed her an envelope in the same manner, but once she returned to the street and tore open the envelope to reveal how much he had given her, she only discovered a very brief note.

"I've given all I intend to give you, Mon Cherie. Do try to get beyond this. Hatred is such an ugly face for you to wear. Don't bother to return again, for I have nothing more to say or give. Salutations, Monsieur D."

Vedette was infuriated and threatened to tell her mother everything if the baker did not extract every last penny of his Uncle's money, but it was of no use. The Uncle rejected their demands. In fact, he laughed in the baker's face and offered to confess to Caroline himself.

Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how one looks at the situation, there was no need to inform Vedette's mother, because she had overheard everything Vedette had told her father about the matter from the next room. Moments after the baker departed to plead with his Uncle, she approached Vedette and demanded the truth. Of course, my mother gladly confessed, feeling no shame in the disgrace she suffered on account of her Great Uncle. Her heart was filled with hatred and malicious spite. There was no more room for tears. And when her father returned he found both Vedette and her mother missing, having taken more than fifteen thousand francs of his and his Uncle's money...leaving the baker the house with all its furnishings, his business and a very brief letter.

"You have brought this upon yourself, for selling your own daughter to the devil. You have disgraced your entire family, and we hope we never set eyes on you again. I am taking Vedette somewhere where she can never be harmed by you and that nasty man again. Your former wife, Caroline."

This was how my mother came to be an American. My grandmother Caroline relocated with Vedette to her cousin's fruit orchards in California where Vedette met my father Allen four years later. My mother's rebellious spirit continued in America. She confessed she'd been intimate with my father a few weeks after they met; the only man she'd been with since the assault.

Needless to say, grandmother Caroline did not approve of my father, but she tolerated him...at first. But the more time they spent together, the more Caroline disliked him, and eventually she forbade Vedette from ever seeing him again. Of course this only made her want to be with Allen more, and Vedette began sneaking out at night. My mother managed to deceive Caroline for nearly nine months, but eventually the entire situation errupted into the final argument Vedette would ever have with her mother. She eloped with Allen that same night, halfway across the country to Willow Park to live with his father. They were married three days later. Another three days later, I was conceived. Although I learned many years later that my father produced seven siblings - of which I had no previous knowledge of - with three other women, my mother never gave birth to another child. Her marriage to Allen was short lived, lasting only six months. Allen left her, pregnant with her Little Jack, and destroyed all chance of returning to her mother with what little dignity she had left.

His father Gilbert allowed Vedette to stay as long as she needed, and even offered to help take care of both of us until she was able to get back on her feet. This situation, of course, contained it's own series of maladjusted occurences, all centered around grandfather Gilbert's drinking and his infatuation with my mother.

All this gives evidence as to why my mother was the way she was, at least partly, and why she strived so dearly to protect me, her Little Jack. As was stated at the beginning of this chapter - I must devote the entire chapter to my mother and the influence she had over me, however positive or negative - I have created the foundation for her actions, and the reason why she would go to greath lengths to lock me in the basement from an early age.

She lived a difficult life. What she was forced to endure prevented her from expressing her love freely, and may have contributed to her dysfunctional affection for my father; even though she didn't truly love him. But what could she have possibly understood about love, given the circumstances of her past. I believe I have found among her memoirs, one of her confessions that explains it all entirely.

**** Le 3 mars 1926
"Mon pauvre Petit Jack, mon enfant, c'est ma faute pour porter pour l'absence de son père. J'ai compris bien trop bien quelle sorte de l'homme il était. Je ne l'ai pas aimé, pour moi, je ne l'ai pas aimé. Le nôtre était un rapport d'avantage. Mais il m'a donné mon Petit Jack et pour cela je l'aime de toute son âme.

Avant que mon Jack est entré de ma vie, j'avais oublié qu'il a ressemblé pour être heureux, vraiment heureux. Je n'oublierai jamais mon passé. Il me hante tous les jours, mais l'amour pour mon garçon chassera toujours les nuages et apportera le soleil dans ma vie vaine. Et j'ai décidé, je décrète, que rien, complètement rien ne touche jamais Jack pour le provoquer la douleur et la souffrance. Je ferai que je dois pour l'empêcher de savoir le monde que j'ai su, même s'il me déteste pour cela. Je dois le protéger, mon coffre-fort d'enfant, dans les bras de sa mère pour toujours. "****

****3 March 1926
"My poor Little Jack, my child, it is my fault to bear for his father's absence. I understood all too well what kind of man he was. I did not love him, for me, I did not love him. Ours was a relationship of convenience. But he has given me my Little Jack, and for that I love him dearly.

Before my Jack came into my life, I had forgotten what it was like to be happy, truly happy. I will never forget my past. It haunts me daily, but the love for my boy will always chase the clouds away and bring sunshine into my worthless life. And I have decided, I decree, that nothing, utterly nothing will ever touch Jack to cause him pain and suffering. I will do what I must to keep him from knowing the world that I have known, even if he hates me for it. I must keep him safe, my child safe, within his mother's arms forever."****