Meaning a Life Read online

  I made friends with the girl who lived across the street, the daughter of the train dispatcher, a gentle and sweet-natured man who played his piano after work and sang to himself as he played. Dorothy and her mother, on the other hand, were nervous, irritable, and unpredictable. But I needed a hiking companion, and Dorothy loved to hike, as did her boyfriend. She was never ready when I called for her in the mornings to walk to school, and I waited for her while her mother toasted a slice of bread over the coals in the wood stove. Dorothy came downstairs sleepy-eyed, took her toast, and we walked the mile to school. I wore what nearly every freshman girl wore to school, a short skirt, a heavy sweater, and boots with socks turned down over their tops just below my knees; it was almost a uniform. On rainy days I wore unbuckled galoshes and a “slicker” raincoat. On our way to school we stopped in to wait for a friend whose older sister was dressing, and I watched, fascinated, as she taped her nipples flat before putting on a tight, flat brassiere. She then slipped over her head a straight unshaped dress that almost touched at her hips and fell not quite to her knees. This was the way the older girls dressed, and the term used to describe them was Flappers.

  For only one year the Thomases lived across the street from us; Mrs. Thomas made friends with me, and I joined the Campfire Girls group that she organized. Since Mr. Thomas came to town only on weekends from the lumber camp he managed, she was lonely and planned to adopt babies if her husband could be persuaded. She invited the druggist’s daughter and the banker’s daughter to join the Campfire Girls group, and as a result the group was divided from the start. Perhaps their families formed a society in the town of which I knew nothing—in any case, the group did not last long, but Mrs. Thomas and I remained friends. She asked me to spend the summer with her at the lumber camp when the snow left the mountains and my school year was finished. The house at the lumber camp was a cabin built “board and batten” style on the edge of the clearing for the mill. The back of the house was against the forest, which I loved, but I also felt strange and isolated to be away from the town. I had no library to take refuge in, no place to drop in and talk as I did in several households in Grants Pass. Mr. Thomas was a boyish shy man who called me “Swede”; I did not understand why he called me that—perhaps it was because of my light-colored hair. Clearly he meant to be affectionate, but he did not talk much to me or to his wife. He was a busy man who spent most of his time at the lumber-mill office. The Thomases had decided to adopt babies, so the mission was accomplished with me for their trial child. I started to menstruate while I was with them; I was so startled and disturbed that I had to go home immediately. My mother was not at home, but a sister-in-law explained in an off-hand way that comforted me and created a bond for me with her.

  My brothers had all married in the same year, choosing girls not a great deal older than I was. Wendell married Helen, a girl from Montana whom he had met in the bank in Seattle where they were both working. She came to Grants Pass to marry him; Mama made wedding clothes for her and Papa had a little house built for them up the street from our house. We all helped to prepare the little house for them, but Helen was not happy. She went away after three months, and Wendell came home.

  Noel met Emma, a young school teacher, at a country dance very soon after he came to Grants Pass, and they married almost at once. I came bursting into my bedroom one day and found them making love—my brother’s penis was large, and I felt a virgin’s shock at beholding an erection.

  There was little to do in this town. I was accepted and sang for a while with a singing club. When a group in the town put on a production of The Mikado, I sang in the chorus. My ancient history teacher had studied with Breasted, the archaeologist at the University of Chicago who had returned from the dig of Tutankhamen’s tomb; she was filled with enthusiasm over the new “finds” in Egypt. Since she loved what she was teaching I loved it too, and I found it the only subject taught with enthusiasm in my three years of high school.

  I was thirteen years old, and my friends my age were joining churches. I said to myself, “I will read the Bible, and I will decide if I believe in God. If I believe in God I will decide if I should join a church, and I will then decide what church I will join.” Pressure from the churches was strong on the young people in the town, and the ones who had already joined had a special aura for a little while. I read my Bible every night when I was by myself, pondering to find if I did believe in a supernatural God and in heaven as an otherworldly place. I could not make myself believe in the way the church people apparently expected belief, but I did believe in the Bible, which I loved; it seemed to me probable that it had been written in real times by real people. My brothers were outspoken unbelievers, but my parents never proselytized. Papa’s belief was clearly an acceptance of the Old Testament God; when he read the Song of Songs or a Psalm it seemed to me to be love poetry. I loved Papa’s quiet voice and his deep calm acceptance of the world as a sufficient place for us to be.

  I soon knew all the country around Grants Pass from hiking with Dorothy and her boyfriend Russel. We hiked down a trail which followed the Rogue River all the way to Ilahe, an Indian trading post. The Rogue rushed along beside us, between high banks and with a swift current. Toward the end of each day Russel stopped to fish for trout for our supper, while Dorothy and I hiked on to choose a camping spot, where we cut fir-tips for our bed and built the fire. When Russel came with the trout we broiled them over the coals. Next day we boarded the mail-boat, a small launch which met us at Ilahe, and in a few hours we were at Gold Beach on the ocean. Noel met us to drive us home, and we camped out one more night with Noel where the highway turned to go inland to Grants Pass; we bought large Dungeness crabs and had a feast around our campfire.

  In our second year of high school Russel, Dorothy and I built a canoe; we all shared the expense, and Russel did most of the work. The canoe had a frame of thin strips of wood over which he stretched canvas and painted it several times. It was a good canoe, and we used it for a whole season, shooting the small rapids near Grants Pass and exploring the river below the town.

  Noel’s wife Emma was a fiery, pretty, very bright young woman with no outlook except getting ahead in a material way. Like other hill-people, she was fiercely jealous and easily offended. It took very little to excite Emma, she felt she had to be independent, and she never really believed that Noel loved her. I think he did love her, and he was hurt in his male pride when she could turn in petty anger against him and “get even” by sex with other men. I went once with Noel and Emma to look at a house for sale. The house was littered with old papers and in disrepair, but they bought it and soon filled it with new chairs and embroidered pillows. Still, there was no attempt at beauty—I doubt if such an idea entered Emma’s head—but she was pleased with her home. The work she did and the money she earned gave Emma the strength to feel she was equal to the townspeople; she continued to teach at one country school or another after she was married. She also continued her teacher training, taking courses and examinations to increase her qualifications. I was with her at one of these examinations, and I took it too. Although I had not finished high school, I passed the exam easily, and I taught her school for her one day. That same day I drove her Model T for the first time—the kids in the school helped me through the day, and my only mishap was stepping on the wrong pedal while turning the Model T and backing it into a ditch.

  Paul and Wendell had a successful dance band, and they put great energy into organizing dances outside the town on Saturday nights. During a pause in the dancing, a hearty supper was served, prepared by the women of our family and of the other band members’ families, after which the dancing resumed. Parents brought their children, who went to sleep on top of piles of coats or in corners. When the dance was over, at three or four in the morning, the dancers straggled to find children, coats and partners to make the long drive home. There was violence at these dances, where all the emotions of the week at work or at home found exp
ression in fighting, drinking, or sex. It was a lively and rough evening. My brothers got the contract to play for dances every night at the County Fair, at a time in which they were responsible for me because my father was ill and our parents were away, and they took me with them early to the fairground. But they did not need me, and I wandered through the Fair by myself. I liked the stables with the race-horses and the families who lived with their horses in the stable; they were gathered around a little fire singing to a guitar, “He was the people’s favorite, the little boy in green,” a ballad of a boy jockey who was killed in a racing accident. I drifted through the arcades and exhibits, then back to the dance. Early in the evening, before the men were drunk, fighting, or asleep, I danced with whoever asked me. Every other dance was a square dance with a caller; at first I did not know how to dance, but I soon learned. In one square dance I was whirled about and one of my slippers flew clear across the dance floor and into a corner. I liked square dancing best, as dancing with a partner who smelled of boot-leg liquor was no great delight.

  Noel had the shoe department of my father’s big general store, and I could have what I chose of stockings and shoes. In Grants Pass the working girls, especially waitresses, bought new shoes and stockings every Saturday—I suppose some status was attached to new shoes every week. Noel stocked the store with the most extreme dancing slippers, high heels, colored and lace stockings. I didn’t like high heels but I wore colored stockings and took one pair of each color. Mama protested when she noticed me taking so many stockings, but my loyal brother Noel only smiled a little and handed them to me.

  My parents were away that year because Papa was to have exploratory surgery in order to diagnose some alarming symptoms. Papa and Mama were staying at a friend’s house, where Papa was convalescing after the surgery, when he sent for me, and I went on the bus by myself. I sat with him, and he held my hand while he told me, “I may not get well, Mary dear,” but I did not really understand what he was saying to me.

  With only a year to live, Papa was preoccupied with the store; he planned for it to provide for us all. He was in a race with his death, and in the fall of my fifteenth year he was less and less able to go from the house. Finally he could no longer move about, and the last few days he was in a coma. One night I was called down to find my family gathered around his bed. I was uncomfortable, because I could not find my father in the wasted form gasping for breath. He was alone with his death, and his death left each of us alone too. He was buried from a church he had never entered in life. I had a hard time realizing that he was dead; I could not make the connections between his death, the funeral, and the father I had known.

  Before my father died I felt myself a part of a family of six; with his death very suddenly I was alone. We were not a united family after he died, and I struggled with this new way of being. We also stepped down in class; I faced these changes without time to adjust to them. I knew I had to get away from my mother and earn my own living at once. I was willing, even eager, to do this—the only obstacle was my age. I felt a desperate loneliness for my father; I couldn’t bear his absence and was pressed to realize his spirit in myself. All my young life, it now seemed, I had been vigilantly avoiding the trap that was Grants Pass, and I now looked for a way into the world. I considered losing myself in wilderness, but no answers came from running away into nothing; I lay beside a spring in the forest with only a bird or squirrel to see me lying there, or I climbed to a hilltop in order to look out at mountains. I pondered a way into the world, into a peopled world. Almost immediately after my father’s death I took a lover from this outside world, an adult man who was not a Grants Pass man.

  Mama did not entirely accept my brothers’ wives; probably she felt robbed of her sons as she had been robbed of her husband by death. I found that she and I could not live under the same roof. My mother did not want me, and I wondered if she had ever loved me. I remember her pride and my embarrassment when she mentioned my appearance when I was present, as though I were an attribute of hers. She may have been proud of me, but she was uncomfortable with an adolescent girl and could not bear to have me near her. Perhaps our love for each other failed at the same time. Her needs were great for male attention, but I was old enough to be receiving male attention also, and I had to move away from the house that had been my home. Her guilt increased as mine began, to continue until she died—guilt that I did not love her with that love which means life itself when one is very young.

  Noel was concerned for me and asked me to live with him, his wife Emma, and their little son. But still no one discussed with me what I would do when I finished high school; we were still shut in ourselves with the shock of Papa’s death. My adult brothers seemed bewildered boys still, who made no further moves to progress past the point they had reached in high school. They were not rooted in themselves as my father had been, and I think they have not been happy men.

  My brother Noel persuaded my mother to give me the use of the family car after Papa died, since she did not drive. She complained a little because the gasoline I used cost her money, because I would not spend my savings for any purpose except to get away from Grants Pass. I loved driving; it was liberation and solitude. I was part of the generation that took the automobile for its own—a high school kid could put together a jalopy from old car parts, and could then pick up walking students to drive them to school on the way through town. Each of us in my family had a car; our driveway was always full, and I knew before I entered the house who was visiting.

  Lack of trust among girls, lack of a tradition of trust, and secrecy about sex were total in my high school. I took no one into my confidence except Noel’s wife Emma, and I went to her only if I needed something I couldn’t get for myself or if I didn’t yet understand something about sex. I puzzled out my relationships, forming attitudes and an ethic for myself. Noel talked to me in the idle hours when we were together in the shoe department, where I worked after school and on weekends. He had the most influence with me, and I can trace some of my attitudes directly to those he had worked out for himself. I remember his philosophy of self-love most distinctly, and I made it my own: that one must love oneself the most in order to love others and in order to survive.

  In eighth grade one of the teachers put a row of books, “for the girls when they have finished their work,” on her desk (no books for boys!). These books were of the birds-and-bees variety of sex information, and what I remember from them was probably not printed there at all. I used this reading in forming my early attitudes; the books seemed to say that boys, if sexually aroused and not satisfied, would suffer indescribably, so I determined never to “pet.” How could I deal with a half-dead boy if I aroused him without satisfying him? “Petting” was the form that girls used in the 1920s to contain their sexual behavior. In the back seat of an automobile, the girl’s struggle was to prevent penetration by the boy’s penis, while the boy’s manly obligation was to use any method short of rape to accomplish just that. No “nice” girl ever went the “whole way,” but boys boasted of their prowess whether they had been successful or not. Many methods of arriving at orgasm were invented or experimented with, but I did not hear them frankly discussed among the girls I knew. I saw the struggles going on outside the dance place on Saturday night, at favorite parking places where lovers climbed into the back seat to struggle. This was the form of courtship in Grants Pass: the boy pleading “Aw, come on,” and the flushed and struggling girl finding no safe, satisfying or honorable outcome to the courtship. It was the only form, and it was dangerous and ruinous for the girl. There was no birth control; pregnancy meant marriage, probably to the first boy a girl had ever gone out with, or it meant abortion. Abortions were available in all categories, from low-cost up to legal abortions with doctors conferring and performing the abortion “for the sake of the woman’s health.” This latter was for rich married women only. Still, I decided in favor of sex for myself, but only sex which was not a trap. I felt
appreciated by very few, really only by Noel. I suppose he discussed me with Emma and that she took care of me and advised me with his full consent. Noel assumed, I think, that any healthy young person would enjoy sex, but he did worry that I might marry badly and ruin the rest of my life. I was influenced by the attitudes I found in the town, but I rejected the “morality” of Grants Pass. Of the different standards I set for myself the most important was my determination to get away from Grants Pass, which held for me the greatest danger I could conceive: to be trapped in a meaningless life with birth and death in a biological repetition, without serious thought or a search for life with more meaning. Moreover, I had lived in the trust and confidence and love of two men, my father and my brother Noel; I was not open to love that was less than theirs.

  Sex in Grants Pass was permissive; the veneer of strict puritanism was not more than a surface ethic which the church people tried to enforce in a lumber town full of lumberjacks and country people. Dance places and amusement halls were full to overflowing one night of the week. Prohibition incited lawlessness and added an air of secrecy and license, an air of drunkenness, to sex. Sexual activity went on all around me, among all ages of the population. Across from our house on Saturday afternoons we watched the wife polish the new car for the weekend, and when she finished the husband got in the car to drive it away for his own spree. She seemed unconscious of his purpose, and no one told her.

  I enjoyed Emma’s little son Pete, a two-year-old who had never had his hair cut and spoke little, but when he did I was charmed by him. As I was driving him in the car one day and we were crossing the railroad tracks he talked of “tin-trees.” “Show me a tin-tree,” I said to him. He pointed to the signal posts with their changing signal-arms. “Tin-trees,” he said.