Outside our house, by the front door, was a mail slot that led to a metal chute about a foot long that ended with a little door in the living room. Although mail was delivered twice a day, Mother opened the little door half a dozen times, feeling inside the chute in case a letter got stuck. “I’m going to have to get after that mailman,” she always said when the mailbox was empty.
One day, Mother pulled out a letter from Great-aunt Elizabeth’s daughter Verna, who was the librarian at Chaffey High School and Junior College in Ontario, in Southern California. First Mother admired, as she always did, Verna’s beautiful upright “librarian’s hand,” the handwriting taught for writing catalog cards before typewriters were commonly used in libraries. Then Mother opened and read the letter. She appeared to reread it before she tucked it back in the envelope and tossed it aside with a little laugh. “Well, if that isn’t just like Verna,” she said. “She always was impractical.”
“How come?” I wanted to know.
“She wants you to come down and spend the next winter going to junior college and living with her family.” Verna, I knew, was married to the high school physical education teacher and had a son and daughter younger than I. They also owned an orange grove. The letter said California junior colleges did not charge tuition.
This invitation seemed as impractical as an invitation to Never-never Land. I did not take it seriously. That evening, when I had finished supper, Mother read the letter to my father over their tea. “Verna always did have her head in the clouds,” I heard her say. “She thinks all Beverly would have to do is get on a boat in Portland and get off in San Pedro, where they would meet her.” I did not hear my father reply.
The incident did not seem worth mentioning to Gerhart when he turned up that evening. Prodded by Mother, who would not let me forget how much she missed him, going out with him finally Seemed easier than remaining imprisoned in the breakfast nook. At least I would get to go to the movies. We made little effort at conversation but sat through many double features at neighborhood theaters, all recorded in my diary: Havana Widows and Son of a Sailor; I Am Suzanne and Hell and High Water; Broadway to Hollywood and Before Dawn; She-Wolf of Wall Street and Love Birds.
One evening Gerhart asked me to go for a ride with him because he had to deliver a message for Jehovah’s Witnesses. “No thanks,” I said. I wanted nothing to do with his church activities.
Mother said, “Now, Beverly, you go along and keep Gerhart company.”
So I went, rather than argue. We drove to a house in a suburb of Portland, where Gerhart told me to wait in the car while he went to the door. When he rang the doorbell, a porch light was turned on, a woman opened the door, called the dog, and shouted at Gerhart, “Get the hell out of here! Get off my property and stop trying to break up my home!”
Gerhart ran, jumped into the car, and we sped off. He was so embarrassed he took me to see Design for Living and Orient Express.
Mother found this episode so funny she wanted me to go to church with Gerhart to find out what it was like. I refused, and recorded in my diary: “My mother is so annoyed with me because I resent her trying to make me go to church with Gerhart that she is loath to speak to me.” Eventually, of course, I was worn down and went to a meeting, which was held in someone’s backyard by a group of people who seemed so defeated by the Depression that their only hope was the destruction of the world. It was a sad afternoon.
Monday I was glad to return to school, even though, in spite of the interested concern of my teachers, Grant was now a less happy place for me. Teachers had begun to remind us that our college professors would not spoon-feed us like our high school teachers. Girls going to the University of Oregon or Oregon State were looking forward to pre-rushing, rushing, sorority life, a life that seemed to be an extension of Grant’s snobbishness—and for catching husbands. Claudine’s parents decided she should go to the State Teachers’ College in Monmouth where, after two years’ study, she would be qualified to teach in the elementary schools of Oregon. Nothing was said about further musical education. Bright boys, those whose parents could afford it, were going to Stanford. Others with good grades were going to Reed College. Some were going to small religious colleges.
I seemed to be the only person at Grant with no plans and no place to go, although I knew this was not true. We were not the only family having a hard time. The Miles family was struggling, too. Lorraine, who had taken typing and shorthand, had graduated from Grant and was learning office work at the Red Cross. Her sisters were finding whatever odd jobs they could.
Mother said over and over, “It does seem as if Oregon does nothing to help its young people.” In those days before community colleges, she was right. She felt especially sad for Lorraine, who had won a scholarship to Reed College but was unable to accept because she did not have forty dollars for the late registration fee. Mother said Lorraine was such a bright girl, she wished she had the forty dollars to give her. Lorraine would not have dreamed of asking her family for money, any more than I would have asked my family. Times were too hard.
Then a second letter dropped through our mail slot, a letter for me from Reed College telling me I was eligible for admission and enclosing a scholarship application. (Was Mother behind this letter? I have often wondered.) Under duress, I filled out the application, probably badly, for if there was one place I did not want to go, it was Reed College, no matter how fine its reputation. The thought of living at home, being carsick on the bus twice a day, and studying in the breakfast nook with Gerhart lurking in the living room was intolerable. I heard nothing more from Reed College.
Mother said, “Your father and I cannot leave you money, but we will somehow manage to leave you able to take care of yourself.” How? How were they going to do this? What more sacrifices would they have to make, I wondered, and would Mother sacrifice out of love or duty?
Gerhart announced that he was using his vacation to drive to California for a Jehovah’s Witnesses conference and taking with him, according to my diary, “a Frenchman and two Greek bootblacks.” Good, I thought. I hope California swallows him up.
Even with Gerhart gone, I continued to spend my evenings—those I did not spend at Claudine’s house—in the breakfast nook, writing letters to pen pals, recording my days in a diary of no literary value, which I hoped I kept hidden from Mother, and studying. My teeth ached constantly from the tightening of wires.
From the living room I caught the sound of my parents talking quietly, earnestly, in voices they used when talking about me but when they did not want me to hear. Naturally, I laid down my pen to listen. I felt like a burden, a problem, a nuisance.
“But, Lloyd—” I heard my mother protest one evening.
Dad’s answer was so soft I could not hear.
Then Mother said, as if in despair, “All right. If you insist.”
What was Dad insisting? He rarely insisted. After a long silence, Mother called, “Beverly, come here a minute.”
Reluctantly I entered the living room and stood facing my parents. Mother said, “Daddy says you are going to California next winter, staying with Verna, and going to junior college.”
This was so different from what I expected, I felt as if lightning had shot through me. I looked to my father for confirmation.
He removed his pipe from his mouth. “I mean it,” he said.
“Do you want to go?” Mother asked, obviously hoping I would not.
Finding it hard to believe Mother would let me have a choice, but with Dad in the room to support me, I answered, “Yes. Yes, of course I want to go.”
“Well then, I guess that settles it.” Mother’s voice was so heavy with sorrow I immediately felt guilty. “I better write to Verna,” she said, and added the words she spoke so often: “If only Oregon would do something to help its young people.”
Back in the breakfast nook, I stared at the cupboards in confusion and disbelief.
After that, there was less antagonism between Mother and me. She was caught up in this new phase of my life. “Yes, Beverly has been invited to spend the winter in California and go to college.” “Yes, I know it’s a long way for her to go, but all she has to do is take a boat right here in Portland, and my cousins will meet her in San Pedro.” She enjoyed her project, getting me ready for college, even though she was ambivalent about my leaving. “We’ll take it one year at a time,” she said.
Life moved quickly after that, although in March, when Long Beach was struck by an earthquake, Mother felt I should give up going to California and stay safe in Portland, where the earth did not shake, nor the buildings fall down. Dad and I overruled her. Earthquakes, preferable to the Battle of Armageddon, no longer frightened me. Letters flew back and forth between Portland and Ontario. Clothes were not important at Chaffey—cotton dresses would do. My duties would be keeping my room clean and baking two cakes a week for the family. “Verna always did have a sweet tooth,” Mother said.
Dr. Meaney, after I had worn bands for five years, concluded that I had too many teeth for the size of my mouth. One tooth was pulled and my wires tightened once more, but somehow my teeth did not ache as much as they had for the past five and a half years. I had hope.
My grades improved. The dramatics class Mother had objected to so strenuously was fun. For my dramatic monologue, I chose “Patterns,” by Amy Lowell, a long poem that Miss Churchill, my former Latin teacher doubling in dramatics, said would be difficult to present. I was eager for a challenge.
This poem felt compatible because I, too, had been “held rigid to a pattern,” and quite long enough. Today, as I reread the poem, I marvel at my courage in giving it in front of a high school class—all that tossing off of clothes, running “pink and silver” along the paths while my lover “stumbled after.” And those lines about waistcoat buttons bruising “as he clasped me, aching, melting, unafraid—”
“Wow!” said Claudine when I rehearsed “Patterns” for her. “You’re sure brave.”
For her class she had chosen “Little Boy Blue,” by Eugene Field, because it was easy: “The little toy dog is covered with dust, / But sturdy and staunch he stands,” and so on. Nobody would laugh at Claudine. Probably no one would listen.
When time came to give my monologue, my courage sagged, but I somehow stepped out of myself as I walked onto the stage, faced the class, and began: “I walk down the garden paths…” No one laughed; they listened, and I finished with tears in my eyes and a break in my voice. I had enough pent-up anguish to carry me through any number of renditions of “Patterns.” Miss Churchill praised my performance. Claudine reported she also told her other class what a fine piece of work I had done. That small triumph gave me confidence. With one year of college ahead of me, I studied harder. My improved grades excused me from taking final examinations, which made me feel lighthearted with freedom.
Then the longshoremen struck. No ships were sailing to California.
“That takes care of that,” said Mother. “Trains are too expensive.”
Dad smoked his pipe awhile before he said, “She can go by Greyhound bus.”
Mother was horrified. “Go all that distance by bus? She would have to change buses in San Francisco and in Los Angeles, and they are big cities.”
Dad was calm. “If she doesn’t have any sense now, she never will have,” he said. “She can manage a bus trip.”
Mother was dubious. She produced Greyhound schedules to prove her point. Twenty-four hours to San Francisco, another full day to Los Angeles, a short ride to Ontario.
“I’ll go if I have to walk,” I said with such determination Mother was taken aback. Inwardly I was uneasy. I had seen big cities, full of gangsters, chorus girls, and nightclubs, in the movies, but I had never been much more than a hundred miles from home. To me, Portland was a big city.
Mother wrote to former neighbors who had emigrated to California. A Hancock Street friend would be happy to meet me in San Francisco and also invited me to stay a couple of nights so I could see the city. Another agreed to meet me in Los Angeles, put me up overnight, and see that I caught the right bus to Ontario. It was settled.
Claudine and I, both wearing dark dresses with white collars, went off to have our class pictures taken. Mother advised us, “Always wear white next to your face when you have your picture taken. White reflects light on the face.” I wore Mother’s best dress, the only dress in the house with a white collar.
The class ordered and sent out our graduation announcements. Presents arrived: several one-dollar bills from neighbors, stationery (“So you’ll be sure to write”), panties, stockings—all much-appreciated, loving, Depression gifts. At dinner one evening, Dad handed me an envelope, which I opened while my parents watched, smiling. Five ten-dollar bills, a gift from Grandpa Atlee, enough to pay my bus fare to Ontario and buy my textbooks. I had never before seen fifty dollars at one time. It seemed like a fortune and one less sacrifice for my parents.
Graduation evening. My dress was a long, bias-cut white georgette from Meier & Frank’s basement. Girls carried arm bouquets of sweet peas; boys wore dark suits. We marched into the auditorium to “Pomp and Circumstance,” played by the school orchestra. On the stage, I squeezed my bias-cut flounces into a chair between two sweating boys whose last names began with B and who were eating peanuts to show their indifference to the whole ceremony. At Grant High School, we were alphabetized to the very end.
Speeches. Awards. A walk, careful in high heels, across the stage to receive my diploma from Mr. Bittner; and in a few minutes, we were all free—free from our excellent, caring teachers who had been so concerned about their class of Depression students. I have remembered them with admiration and affection all my life—except for coaches who taught history and the gym teacher who thought I should be able to climb a rope. After the ceremony, many of us went off to drink root beer at someone’s home. Gerhart avoided the whole affair.
My teeth grew straighter. Claudine invited me to Puddin’ almost every weekend. It was a summer of picnics, drifting woodsmoke, laughter, splashes from the river, dancing to the piano, an accordion, or a “two-piece” orchestra. When the Canadian Legion held its picnic at the campground, the sound of bagpipes skirled through the trees while the dancers, in kilts, danced quadrilles.
When Claudine and I glimpsed stars through the leaves and fir branches, we recited
Sit, Jessica: look, how the floor of heaven Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold.
We had been required to recite this speech from The Merchant of Venice for dramatics. For me, the brightest gold in heaven was the lights of the mail plane from California coming in to land in Portland.
Mother said, “I don’t think you should be spending so much time at Pudding River.”
“Why not?” I asked. “Claudine and her mother invite me.”
“You know why, don’t you?” said Mother.
“No, why?”
“Because you keep Claudine out of Mrs. Klum’s way,” was Mother’s strange answer. This was ridiculous, and I knew it. Claudine and her mother had a relaxed, happy relationship. I continued to accept their invitations without Mother’s approval. I was braver now that escape was near.
In between weekends, Mother taught me to bake a number of cakes: potato caramel cake, quick chocolate cake, Arabian spice cake, Lady Baltimore cake, prize devil’s food cake, walnut loaf cake. “Always sift flour before measuring it,” Mother said. “Otherwise, your cake will be heavy. Always add eggs at the last possible minute.” We ate a lot of cake that summer. Mother referred to it as “Beverly’s college preparatory course.”
Then an outbreak of infantile paralysis spread throughout California. Mother worried. Perhaps it was not safe for me to go, after all. Dad and I ignored her worries.
Dad bought me a steamer trunk and meticulously painted my initials on the lid. I went by bus—or stage, as Grandpa called a bus—to Banks to say good-bye to my grandparents, whose store was such a social center it managed to stay in business in spite of a new chain store in Forest Grove. The customers, one after another, said to me, “You wouldn’t catch me going down there to California with all those earthquakes and infantile paralysis.”
Bands and wires were removed from my teeth, which were almost, but not quite, straight. Dr. Meaney said I must return to his office the next summer. (I did not. I hope I thanked him.) After six years of increasingly tight wires, my mouth suddenly felt large and roomy. My teeth no longer ached, and I smiled toothily whenever someone took a snapshot.
Gerhart resigned his job to become a Pilgrim for Jehovah’s Witnesses. Prompted, I am sure, by Mother, he took me to see Leslie Howard and Bette Davis in Of Human Bondage, a movie I wanted very much to see and enjoyed immensely; he did not. Fu Manchu was more to his taste. As a farewell present, he gave me the box camera that had snapped pictures at the beach, on the river, and by mountain streams—pictures that often caught me in some awkward position, for this was Gerhart’s sense of humor. I let him kiss me good-bye. He turned and left. I never wanted to see him again, ever. The long emotional strain had finally ended, and relief flowed through my veins.
Gerhart, three years of whose young manhood were three years of my youth—have I been fair in what I have written about him? As I look back, I can see that he was a young man who had had considerable grief and very little love in his life. He was happy to have a job, a car, and a girl. Although we spent so much time together, we understood almost nothing about each other. The difference in our ages was too great, our interests too diverse. I know that toward the end I made him very unhappy. For this I am sorry.
I should have defied Mother’s manipulation of my life, but at that time and place, parents did not tolerate rebellion from children. Gerhart, free from parents and older than I, should have let me go. We both would have been spared grief, and he would soon have found another girl, for he was a good-looking young man with a good job. And Mother—well, Mother would have found some other way to direct my life, which, in the narrow middle-class world of Portland during the Depression, had somehow become her life. She had no other interests.
My father. What did he think of this odd triangle? Even though he made an effort at conversation, his relationship with Gerhart was courteous, almost formal. Mother was right when she told me Dad did not like him, but any discussion about Gerhart took place when I was out of the house. Dad quietly observed Mother’s relentless control over me, and my growing desperation. When escape was unexpectedly offered, he saw it as an opportunity, not only for a year of college, but as a way of ending my relationship with Gerhart. As I look back, I can see that my father, even though I did not ask, always understood what I wanted—roller skates, a hard sponge-rubber ball, a hemp jump rope, a bicycle, and now, freedom. I was leaving.
Because I was going so far, all the way to Southern California, friends, relatives, and neighbors came to say good-bye, to ask if I wasn’t afraid of going down to California where they had all those earthquakes. Wasn’t I afraid of catching infantile paralysis? Displaying my toothy new smile, I said I was not afraid. This was considered either brave or foolhardy, depending on who was doing the considering.
Mother served ice cream and slices of my college preparatory course to every visitor. Everyone was hopeful about the future. Some of President Roosevelt’s programs just might help, you never could tell. If Social Security actually passed, it would be a big help in old age, that was sure. Mother felt that the end of Prohibition would not do this country one bit of good, “and I can tell you that.”
Depression anecdotes were exchanged. Dad boasted that he had made one razor blade last an entire year by sharpening it on the inside of a straight-sided glass. Other men said they would try it, too. Friends laughed with Mother about her lavish use of almond extract. Mrs. Klum told of her struggles and failures in learning to knit up runs in silk stockings with a crochet hook. Mrs. Miles confided that oil discovered under her mother’s house in Oklahoma City had been extracted and entitled the heirs to a small royalty; along with the homestead, it was helping to carry her family through hard times. Oil! We were impressed, and the mystery of how Mrs. Miles managed with five daughters was solved. With hope, we could laugh, even though the end of the Depression was not in sight. We were all in it together.
Departure day. My trunk was packed and sent to the Greyhound depot. My father gave me a five-dollar bill to roll in my stocking in case I lost my purse, something I would never allow to happen. My purse held, at last, a tube of lipstick. We reached the Greyhound station by bus and streetcar, talked nervously about nothing at all until my bus was called. My father kissed me good-bye; my mother did not. I boarded and found a seat on the station side where I looked down on my parents standing together, seeming so sad and lonely. We waved without smiling. We could not smile, any of us.
As the bus pulled out of the station, I looked back, filled with sorrow, as if I were standing aside studying the three of us: my gentle, intelligent father who had surrendered his heritage to support us by long days confined in the basement of a bank; my often heroic mother with her lively mind and no outlet for her energies other than her only daughter; myself, happy, excited, frightened, and at the same time filled with guilt because I was leaving my parents behind. Somehow, I felt, I should have made Mother happy. I ached to love and be loved by her.
The bus turned the corner; I faced front toward California. The bus rumbled along through the Willamette Valley, on, on into the night, carrying me toward my future.