Authors: Donna Mabry
About a year after the divorce, I was sweeping
the walk out in front of the house one day when I
looked up and saw Gene walking home from the bus
stop. He stopped a few doors down to chat with a
neighbor, Henry Wills. Henry knew both the Mayse
and our families.
Gene talked to him and smiled until Henry said
something that caused Gene to step back so fast he
almost tripped. His whole appearance changed. He
said a hurried goodbye and ran the rest of the way
home.
He grabbed my arm. There were tears in his eyes.
“Mom, Evelyn’s gotten married again. Now I’ll never
get her back.”
He pressed his lips together and nodded. “I
guess..” Then he had a horrified look. “Oh, God! What
if they take Donna to live with them? They may not let
us see her anymore.”
I almost started crying myself. I couldn’t think
of any words to comfort him. The thought of not being
able to spend time with the little girl we loved so much
was terrible. If that was what Evelyn wanted, I knew
there might be nothing we could do about it. The
courts always gave children to the mother.
We needn’t have worried. Evelyn didn’t take
Donna with her when she moved out of her mother’s
house into a flat with her new husband. It seemed to
me Donna was the last thing on her mind.
With Evelyn mostly out of our lives, my house was
considerably more peaceful for the last years of the
1940s. Bessie and John bought a house near Jefferson
Avenue and St. Jean. We all missed them, so we rented
a house nearby.
Gene and George worked full time, and Gene
took what overtime came his way. We had enough
money to pay the bills without scrimping.
On weekends, Donna was with us on a regular
basis. She kept clothes at both grandmothers’ homes
and went back and forth between the two houses.
Everyone in my house adored her. I wondered how
much attention she got at Ola’s, what with one boy
only three years older than Donna and the next one five
years older. From what I’d seen of them, Ola had her
hands full.
When she was with us, she climbed in her
daddy’s bed and the two of them would read, propped
up on pillows, until Donna fell asleep. I would often
find them in the morning, sometimes with the light still
on, their books and magazines piled up between them.
Almost every weekend, they were off on some
sort of adventure. Gene took Donna to the Michigan
State Fair every September, and she came home with
stories about a cow made of butter, chickens that
looked like they were wearing feather pants and
French fries that were as long as a ruler. They went to
the movies almost every week, usually at the
neighborhood Cinderella Theatre, but at times they
rode the bus all the way downtown to see something
special. After the movie they would eat at the Kresge
lunch counter in the store’s basement.
It was at the United Artists Theatre on Cadillac
Square where Donna first saw
Gone With The Wind
when she was eight or nine. She was so excited about
it, Gene had to take her back the next weekend to see
it again. She talked about it for weeks.
Sometimes Gene took her to a live stage show.
They went to see Betty Grable and Harry James and
later, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis at the Fox Theatre
on Woodward Avenue. When they went to see Duke
Ellington and Ella Fitzgerald, Gene told me he was
sure she was the youngest person in the audience.
Betty Sue still dated Ellis Marshall, the young man
she’d met at the factory. She’d been seeing him off and
on since the war began. One evening, she came home
all excited. He’d finally asked her to marry him.
“Rush into it?” Betty Sue said. “We’ve been
seeing each other for seven years.”
“He smells of beer sometimes when he comes
over here. Is that what you want for a husband?”
She stuck out her chin. “Daddy smells of beer,
too.”
“That’s what I mean.”
“I’m doing it, Mom. I’m going to marry him. I’m
twenty-eight years old, and no other man has even
shown an interest in me. I don’t want to be an old
maid.”
“Maybe no one else has had a chance. You’re
always with him.”
Betty Sue set her jaw, and a flash of Bessie’s
expression came on her face. “I’m going to do it,
Mom.”
I surrendered. “All right, I guess I can’t stop you.
You know you can’t be married at the church.. Brother
Graham won’t marry a saved member to a lost
person.”
“I don’t care. We’ll get married at City Hall. Ellis
doesn’t want a big wedding anyway.”
Betty Sue ran off next door to tell Bessie and
Maxine. I sat at the kitchen table when George came
in. I nodded my head toward the chair at the other end
of the table. “Sit down, George. Betty Sue was just
here. She and Ellis are getting married.”
He picked up an apple from the fruit bowl on the
table and took a bite of it. “About time. He’s been
seeing her for years now.”
“Don’t you think you ought to have a talk with
him before they do it?”
“Talk about what?”
“You know very well
what
. He’s got a right to
know about her temper.”
George laughed. “He’s six inches taller than her.
I think he can handle himself. Besides, I haven’t seen
her get really mad for a long time.”
“Things have been going her way for a long
time.”
George stood and patted me on the head as if I
were a child. “You worry too much. Maybe she’s not
as much like Mom as you think.” He laughed and left
the room. I didn’t care about Ellis one little bit, but I
didn’t want to see my girl get in trouble if she hurt him.
George, Gene, and I went down to City Hall with
Betty Sue and Ellis and I watched while my little girl
became someone’s wife. I was sure he’d make her
miserable.
They moved Betty Sue’s things out of the house
and to a little basement apartment only a few houses
down from us. The fact that my girl lived one minute’s
walk from me didn’t do much to fill the empty spot in
my house. I knew it was unreasonable, but I wished I
could have kept Betty Sue home a few more years.
Donna helped me stop worrying about Betty Sue, at
least on the weekends. From the time she was three,
she stood on a chair and helped me cook just the way
I’d done with my mother and Betty Sue did with me.
Now, she didn’t need a chair, she was tall enough to
cook standing next to me.
I let the girl experiment, baking cakes and rolling
out piecrust with no advice from me unless she asked.
Donna wasn’t allowed to cook at Ola’s house, but
she was given free rein at mine. Not that there was any
mention of a competition between the two
grandmothers. At our house, she went to bed when she
wanted, got up when she liked, and wore whatever
clothes she picked out. In the summers, when she was
with us for weeks on end, she could take a bath right
in the middle of the week and play in the tub as long
as she wanted. In my house Donna wasn’t a child to be
seen and not heard. We showed her the same respect
as an adult.
The older Donna got, the more she resembled
my Lulu…her blonde hair and blue eyes, the way she
would watch the adults’ behavior. I felt almost as if I
had regained my lost treasure.
I was hanging up clothes in the back yard one
afternoon when Betty Sue came up behind me and
grabbed me in a hug. “Guess what? You’re going to be
a grandmother again.”
I dropped the shirt I held back in the basket and
hugged her back. Betty Sue looked so happy that I was
happy too. It would be nice to have a baby in the house
again.
“When are you due?”
“In November, I think. I had my last period in
March. I haven’t been to the doctor yet, but I know I’m
having a baby. Won’t it be wonderful? I was starting to
worry that maybe something was wrong with me.”
Betty Sue picked up the shirt and some pins and
fastened it to the line.
“I’m sure you’re just fine. Sometimes it takes a
while to get things started. Are you going to get a
bigger place?” I hoped they wouldn’t move too far
away. I liked being within walking distance.
“The second-floor apartment is going to be
empty next month. It’s only ten dollars more a week,
and it has two bedrooms. I told the landlord we would
take it.”
Relieved, I hugged her again. “We’ll start
shopping now. If we get something for the baby every
week, it won’t be a big outlay all at one time. How long
will Willys let you work?”
“I’m not going to tell them until I have to. They
make you leave at the sixth month.”
“Are you sure that’s all right? The work isn’t too
heavy, is it?”
“I’m strong. I don’t think it will be any problem.
Plenty of girls work while they’re carrying a baby.”
I was already making plans. “We should buy the
layette in yellow, green, and white, so it won’t matter
if it’s a girl or a boy. Then, after it comes, you can fill
it in with pink or blue. I wish I could still knit and sew
like I used to. I made you such pretty little dresses. If
I’d thought of it, I would have saved some of them.” I
thought about Lulu but didn’t mention her. “What do
you want, a girl or a boy?”
“I want a girl, but Ellis is sure it’s going to be a
boy.”
I laughed. “All men are like that. If they had their
way, there wouldn’t be any little girls born at all. They
never think about what that would mean down the
road. They all want some other man to have the
daughters for their sons to marry.”
Betty Sue smiled and got all dreamy-eyed.
“Well, I don’t really care that much. A little boy would
be fine with me. We can have a girl the next time.”
The two of us kept on hanging clothes until the
basket was empty, then went in the house and sat at the
kitchen table with pencil and paper, writing a list of
things the baby would need. Before we went to the
grocery store that week, we stopped at Sears and Betty
Sue bought a little white nightgown. I bought her a
dozen Birdseye diapers. Each week when we shopped,
we bought more. Betty Sue would buy something
pretty, and I would buy something useful and let her
have the pleasure of picking out the fancier items.
As we bought things, we crossed them off the
list. When it was almost time for her to stop working,
near the end of August, we were halfway through,
leaving only the more expensive things, like a crib and
high chair.
I regretted now that I hadn’t taught Betty Sue
how to sew when she was a girl, but she’d never had
any interest. I thought I’d have plenty of time to show
her. By the time Betty Sue got pregnant, my eyes were
too weak.
She gained quite a bit of weight, but not nearly
as much as Evelyn had. She felt fine and planned to
keep working until her seventh month, which was the
end of September.
It was still August when a loud pounding on the
door woke the whole family. Gene jumped out of bed,
pulled on his pants, and went downstairs. I stood
waiting at the top of the stairs, my robe clutched
around me. Paul came running out of his room and
stood next to me. George came up from the basement,
wearing his long underwear. Gene opened the door.
It was Ellis. He looked up the stairs at me.
“Mom, Betty Sue’s bleeding and she’s having terrible
pain. I think the baby’s coming.”
I gripped the banister. It was much too early.
“Tell her we’ll be right there. Gene, go wake
Bessie and tell John to get the truck so he can take
Betty Sue to the hospital.”
Ellis ran back to his apartment. Gene went to get
Bessie and John, and George and I dressed. I went to
Gene’s room and grabbed him a shirt and his shoes and
socks. In only a few minutes we were all at Betty Sue’s
place. She lay on the bed rolled up in a ball and holding
her knees. My heart almost stopped beating. I was
scared by the amount of blood on the bed.
“John, you men get her into the truck and take
her to Receiving Hospital. Gene, you and Ellis, go
with them. The rest of us will walk up to Jefferson and
catch a cab. It will be faster than calling for one.”
Ellis and Gene joined hands in a chair-lift under
Betty Sue and carried her out to the truck. They got her
in the seat and then Ellis and Gene ran around to the
back and jumped in. I handed Gene his things so he
could finish dressing on the way, and John started the
truck and headed for Jefferson Avenue.
The rest of us, including Bessie and Maxine,
were left standing on the sidewalk. I was almost in
shock. I didn’t think I could live if I lost my girl.
Bessie took charge. “Maude, you and George go
ahead to the hospital. Paul, you come stay the rest of
the night at my house.”
I nodded. I went back to the house and got my
purse. George and I walked the one city block to
Jefferson. It was only a minute or two before a cab
came along. There was very little traffic, and we were
at the hospital on Saint Antoine Street in ten minutes.
It was the first time in my life I rode in a taxi.
Ellis sat in the waiting room looking like a
scared little boy. I hadn’t realized it before, but he
really did love Betty Sue. I sat next to him and patted
him on the shoulder. He fell against me, sobbing. “I
can’t lose her, Mom. She’s all I have in the world.”
My dislike for him evaporated. I hadn’t even
seen how much he cared for Betty Sue.
The hours passed, and we sat and waited. From
time to time, Gene would get up and question the nurse
at the desk, but she never had news for us. The sun was
beginning to show through the glass in the doors when
a doctor finally came out and asked for Mr. Marshall.
Ellis jumped up and introduced everyone. Gene
and George also stood but I had no strength in my legs.
I sat and looked up at the doctor, my fears probably
written on my face.
The doctor patted Ellis on the shoulder, but
looked directly in my eyes. “She’s going to be just fine.
She lost a lot of blood, and we had to give her some
transfusions, but in a few days she’ll be good as new.”
I closed my eyes and gave silent thanks to God.
Ellis gripped the doctor’s hand. “What about the
baby?”
The doctor shook his head. “I’m sorry, Mr.
Marshall, but we couldn’t save the baby. The placenta
was delivered first, and by the time your wife got here,
there was nothing we could do.”
Ellis groaned, “It’s my fault. We should have
called the ambulance.”
The doctor took hold of both of Ellis’s shoulders.
“It’s not your fault. Who knows how long it would
have taken for the ambulance to get there, and who
knows what they could have done for her? Things like
this happen sometimes, but she’s fine, and she can
have more babies.”
Ellis looked up at the doctor. “Was it a boy or a
girl?”
“It was a boy.”
Ellis groaned and fell into the chair, his head in
his hands.
“Can we see her now?” I asked.
“She’s sleeping, and she really needs her rest.
Why don’t you all go on home, and I’ll have the nurse
call you when she’s up to having visitors.”
I gave him Bessie’s telephone number, and we
all left.
On the trip home, Gene and Ellis rode in the truck
with John, while George and I waited for a bus.
It was after noon before Bessie came to tell me
that the hospital called and said Betty Sue could have
visitors. The men had gone to work, so I went to tell
Ellis, and we walked to Jefferson and caught a bus
downtown.
Ellis went in the room first and after a half hour
of waiting in the hallway, I went in. Betty Sue sat in
bed but looked pale and weak. I wanted to cry, but held
back my tears.
When Betty Sue saw me, her face twisted up, and
she reached out both her arms for me the way she used
to when she was a little girl and had hurt herself. I sat
on the edge of the bed and held and rocked my
daughter as we both grieved for that lost baby.