Geronimo

I have always had a great fondness for rabbits. When I was growing up in Belgium, we had a rabbit hutch for many years, and we would let the rabbits hop around in our large lawn. They were so sweet, so gentle. As children we were amazed at how fast they would reproduce, and how large their families quickly became. The rabbits would end up as rabbit stew, but as small children it took us a while to put the facts together. Once we figured it out, the whole thing became less charming. It got worse, of course, once we started naming the rabbits. My youngest sister, Ludwina, became very fond of a black and white rabbit with lob ears, whom she named after the fierce Apache chief, Geronimo. At the time, my sister must have been about 8 or 9. She would feed Geronimo every day after school, and was  promised he would never be hurt. We were still eating rabbit stew, just not the favorite ones that were personal pets. Then like something out of a bad movie, on a night we were eating rabbit stew my father announced we were eating Geronimo. I still remember the cruel gleam in his eyes, there was something really awful about the way he announced this. My sister was so stunned, she just sat there, with this horrified look on her child face. My mother was of course complicit in this, she just had tried to get away with thinking my sister would not have noticed Geronimo was gone. We all sat in horror, and no one said anything, while my father in a most unconvincing and nauseating way tried to make the whole thing seem a fantastically clever joke. Such fathomless cruelty towards his youngest daughter, who was already a very impressionable and sensitive child. It was like an ill conceived episode out of " The Munsters" or "The Addams Family". My father was not sorry, he seemed to enjoy his moment of gratuitous cruelty. It is one of those episodes in our childhood I have never understood, squared away or forgotten. Why Geronimo? Why tell her, why do this to her? We could have done without eaten him. We were not going hungry, it was totally useless, pointless. The look in my father's clear blue eyes at that particular moment, became unforgettable. There was malice in them, the way only those who enjoy hurting others show malice in their eyes. I am glad it was the only instance I recall willful malice in my father. But the experience was enough to allow people in my path, and my sister's path, who enjoyed hurting us emotionally, well into our adult lives. I keep a poster of a very sweet lob  eared rabbit on our bedroom wall. To this day, I feel pain and sadness when I look at it and a deeply frustrated ability and longing to protect vulnerability.