Authors: Mona Simpson
The women from the Silver Slipper were actually older than they’d looked from a distance. They dressed young. I’d thought they were all in their twenties, a little older than I was. Now, up close when they went to the doctor, I could see. They were tired women, coming to middle age. They must have been in their late
thirties, one or two were past forty. They had such lined faces. A few looked like Indians and I think those few were the only ones who didn’t dye their hair. When they climbed upstairs coming to Dr. Shea’s, you could see their dark roots. And they must have done it themselves because no one had ever seen them in Harper Method or Billings’, that was the other beauty shop in town then. You could see their veins through their nylon stockings. They always walked looking down, with their hands in their jacket pockets. As if they were ashamed, you know.
The girls at Harper Method told me Dr. Shea gave them birth control. He deloused and deflead them and gave them special shampoo and soap for scabies.
When a woman was sick, Dr. Shea drove out to the Silver Slipper and made a house call. People said when one died, they buried her right there out in back of the tavern, in Guns Field. They didn’t even own that land. The girls whispered to me what the rumor was: that he gave those women abortions. Of course that was illegal then. No one seemed to have heard any more details, though, and I know for a fact that there was at least one child there at the time, a boy. He ended up at the orphanage.
Jimmy knew that boy later, one summer they worked together on a farm. He said that boy and some of the others used to do things with the sheep. Isn’t that terrible? He said they put the ewe’s hind legs in the front of their boots, so she was stuck. They wore such high boots then, up to the knees. And the sheep would sort of buck to get away. Ogh. Jimmy never did that, but I suppose the farm boys used to talk about it, I don’t know. See, that’s what we thought about sex then: it was either real, real bad and a secret, shameful, or there was none and that was all right. I don’t think my mother and father ever really did much of anything. No.
Then, the war broke out when I was twenty-three. It was around Thanksgiving, I remember, I read something about the Wacs and Waves. Become a Wac, you know, they were recruiting. And I filled out an application and sent away to get their booklet. I didn’t tell anyone, I just did it. And then one day this letter comes and says that I’m to be in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on December 18, no ifs, ands or buts. Then I had to go, I couldn’t just change my
mind anymore. Well, my mother got that letter and she was furious. She called me at the Harper Method—something she never did, my mother had such respect for any work or school, you know, whatever we were supposed to be doing. Because she never worked herself. She said to me on the phone, “Now
what
did you do?”
But the service was a very good thing for me. It was the first time I really had fun. That’s when I finally got to know boys. At boot camp, you had one locker—one locker—and in there you had to keep all your clothes, your two uniforms, your cosmetics, your hairbrush, everything. That was it. And there was one big bathroom with a long mirror—so in the morning we’d all be in there lined up, putting on our cosmetics and fixing our hair. You learned some tricks that way, from the other girls.
The girls came from all over and most of them were nice. I stayed six weeks in boot camp in Cedar Rapids, and then we went to Evanston, Illinois. And there, it was a regular base. There were men everywhere, all around us. There were two of us for every ten of them, so we had a ball. And there in Chicago, we got passes to go to plays and movies and musicals, whatever was going on, you know. So even though I didn’t go to college, I still did get to see something. It wasn’t as if I stayed home in Bay City and just deteriorated.
I was in communications. We operated teletypes; we all knew Morse code. I can still do my name on the clicker. The boys there in Evanston were in training to be pilots. They had these little yellow planes and the ensigns had to fly them to Jacksonville, Mississippi, and then back up to the carrier in Lake Michigan. There were a lot of deaths in those little yellow planes. And then we had to send the telegrams to the parents. And that was the hardest, I think, for the family, you know. If you lost a boy overseas, that was hard. But to lose him when he was still here in training, before he got a chance to fight, well, then, you couldn’t even think he died for something. But when they made it, and most of them did, then they’d come back with their wings and their white uniforms all bright and nice.
I had some of the more interesting work there was for women
in the army. But communications was actually my second choice. My first choice was to be up in a watchtower, you did the radar for the planes. And I think that would have been interesting, too. But they were all filled up for that. And there was lots of work that wasn’t so good. Some of the girls had to fix engines and that was dirty work. After that you could never get your hands really clean again. That grease stained the cuticle, around the nail. Like the people who work out at the armory say, they can never get that smell off their skin.
By then I wasn’t so shy anymore. Then I was dating plenty. There was one warrant officer I dated, he was an Italian and he came from Chicago. Then he was stationed in the South Pacific. He wrote me to wait until he was finished and came home, but then already I was dating someone else. Quite a few of them proposed. I could have gotten married several times. I don’t remember anymore why I didn’t. I guess it just didn’t appeal to me.
They sent our unit over to France. Some went to Hawaii, lots went to the west coast, San Diego, San Francisco, Monterey, and we got to go to Europe. First we went to England, then through the Channel and we ended up stationed in Normandy. Well, over there I met a fellow I did like.
And nobody knows it, but I got married over there. It was a real marriage, in the Catholic Church. He wasn’t a Catholic, but he converted for me. He took his first communion the morning we were married. I never did tell Jimmy. He wouldn’t like it if he knew. But I’ll tell you something—he wasn’t even the first. There were two in Illinois before him; an ensign and the warrant officer.
Before I went into the Wacs, I had to have a medical examination. I just went upstairs from the Harper Method to Dr. Shea. And he examined me and he said, “My God, you’re still a virgin.”
I said, “Well, crumps, what else would I be? What did you think I was?” So even then, it couldn’t have been so unusual. But it was a big risk you took every time, because they didn’t have birth control pills or anything. I never got pregnant, I guess I was lucky. I’ve often wondered what would have happened if I’d been pregnant when I came home from Europe. Then I would have had
to tell everyone I was married. I don’t know, who knows what’s for the best.
He was a French Jew, he was born in Paris. But he spoke beautiful, beautiful English. Morgenstern was his name. His father had been one of the moviemakers over there, but when I met him, he didn’t know anymore where his mother and father were. He was living with a family who had a farm there in Normandy. They sheltered him. You could tell he shouldn’t have been on a farm. He had such slender, slender hands. He was real delicate, you know. But he’d learned to milk goats and make cheese. He joked about it. He’d been there already a year and a half.
After we were married, we went to Paris. I had my discharge and we were both going to go to America. The Americans had France then and we were supposed to take a boat that went to Texas. We had our tickets and all.
There in Paris, he left me in a candy store. I suppose he thought that’s where a young wife would like to go. He was going to meet a contact from the Resistance. The man was to give him a handgun. He would go over into Germany and attend a parade from a street corner, where he could almost touch the Führer and then he was supposed to shoot him and run.
He was there that day at the parade, with the gun in his pocket. He told me later, there was a blond girl standing in front of him, with hair that had tints of green underneath the yellow. He didn’t know her, but for some reason, he lifted his hand and touched the little girl’s hair. Hitler rode by on the car four feet in front of him. He could have reached and kicked the metal of the fender. But instead, he stroked the hair of an unknown child, touching the gun in his pocket.
Hitler rode away, the parade went by, and before he came to fetch me, he slid the gun down the dirty toilet of a public rest room. That afternoon, we left for America, Texas.
All the boat ride, he was sick. Did I say before how weak he was? He wasn’t in good health for a long time then already. He couldn’t sleep at night and I stayed up with him. He had his coat and my coat and still he couldn’t get warm. Later on, he complained
about the boat ride. One day, he climbed down to the storeroom. He took me to see: there were rats in the barrels of oatmeal. After that, I never once made my children eat things they didn’t want to eat. I had fights galore with Jimmy over that, but for once I stuck to my point.
We landed in Texas in the morning and there was this huge, huge horizon. I had never seen it like that before either. Black men moved with ropes there working the docks; that was something he hadn’t seen. And a few minutes later, I was opening my purse for American money to buy chewing gum, my husband’s first discovery in the New World.
We took a train from Texas that went all the way up to Wisconsin. Oh, was that something. It was all army. People standing up, women with little children and babies, trying to feed them and change their diapers. And my husband was still real sick. I had to ask people to give up their seat for him. And they did. Quite a few offered. Well, he died right there on that train. Yes, he died. It was the scariest thing that had ever happened to me in my life.
Later, the army did an autopsy and said it was a heart attack, but at that time I didn’t know what to think. Here I had this young husband, he was twenty-seven then. He just passed out in his seat. It was mostly all women on that train and they all helped. I just cried and cried. I didn’t know what to do. I was twenty-six years old and here I was just married and my husband was unconscious on the train. I couldn’t think. All I could imagine was if he would only just wake up. I was so unrealistic. And then the terrible thing was nobody could do anything until the train’s next stop. I still don’t know how long that was because the woman in the chair next to him got up and gave me her seat and would you believe, at a time like that, I fell asleep? Yes, I did. I slept.
The next stop was some little place in Oklahoma called Gant. Three of the women, one with children, woke me up and led me out. They kept patting my hand and telling me it would be all right. “Poor dear,” I heard them whispering. They got me into a hotel and I didn’t even see him. They’d carried him out first and somebody had taken him to the army coroner’s office.
They had him cremated. They thought that was the best thing.
I’ve thought many times since, I wish I’d had the presence of mind to see that he was buried. Then there would be some place where I could know he was.
It was nice of those women, they stayed overnight two days with me in that hotel. The morning we left, we took his ashes, they came in such a box like this, and we threw them out in the fields by the tracks. They kept asking me if there was anywhere special I wanted them and I said, no, no, I didn’t care and I really didn’t. I just wanted to get it over with and get back on the train. You see, I didn’t connect them with him. The place in Oklahoma, the box, it was all funny. I felt like I was just going along with it. I knew those stones weren’t really him.
Then it was a long ride north on the train and I had a lot of time to think. And I thought and I thought, should I tell my mother and dad that I’d been married. I didn’t see what would be the good in it. I’d planned to just bring him home and introduce him, this is my husband. We’re married. I knew they wouldn’t be so happy about it, but I thought they would like him when they got used to him. Now, there wouldn’t be any point.
And I thought I might forget about him faster if I didn’t tell anybody. That’s what they said in those days. When a girl was jilted, the mother would say, now, stop talking about him and pretty soon, you’ll stop thinking about him too. Now I don’t think that’s true. I don’t think that’s true at all. But then I did. I remember straightening my hat and gathering all my things neat together when the train pulled into the South Bay Station. I’d be going home alone, there were people for me, family. I thought the army was another world I’d been in—and in this one it wouldn’t be so hard not to mention it. Not just him, the whole war. I didn’t really feel like talking about any of it.
Now I wish I’d talked about it then when I could, then right away, when it was natural. So many years later, if you don’t forget, if you haven’t forgotten like I haven’t, you’re too ashamed to bring it up. And then it’s always your secret. I imagine the war is a lot of people’s secret; you know, what happened to them then.
Paul was his name and he was a beautiful boy. He looked real, real young, much younger than I did. It’s so long ago now; nobody
could be as good as I remember Paul. And you know, it’s not a good thing to have a secret like that. Something you care about so much. A person you idealize who’s dead. Because it takes away from your regular life. You compare and it doesn’t do you any good, because no matter what you want or think, he’s dead. You’re better off forgetting him and trying to be happy with what you’ve got.
And here I think of him the way he looked then; well, if he still looked like that, who knows, the way I am now, he wouldn’t even want me. But I kept thinking of Paul for such a long time, then I couldn’t even stop it when I wanted. Every time I’d have a minute alone, my mind would sort of drift and I would picture things with him. I always imagined that it had been a mistake, that it wasn’t his bones and ashes we threw away at Gant and that he stayed in a little hospital there—a small stone building run by nuns. I had the whole thing in my head, oh I was so silly, his room with the plain walls, a cot with a navy blue blanket, just a simple wooden cross above the bed. There were dandelions growing in the grass outside his room. That’s what he saw when he looked out the window during that long time he was getting well. And every day, the nurses brought him food and stood there while he ate it. They didn’t talk much. They folded their hands on the front of their habits and they looked out the window, too. Sometimes, in that field, there were cows.