Authors: Donna Mabry
The morning after Paul threw the wastepaper basket
and hit her in the face Donna gathered up her things
and took them to her grandmother Mayse’s house.
After that, she visited us often, but it was years before
she spent another night in our home, and she never
brought her baby sister with her again.
Afraid to come home, Paul spent several nights
sleeping on the sofa at Betty Sue’s house. She finally
told me, “I’ve got to get Paul out of my home. We
don’t have enough room for him, and I don’t want him.
When Ellis comes home from work all they do is sit
around like two children, watching television and
seeing who can fart the loudest. They think it’s funny.”
George chimed in, “Let him come home, Maude.
He’s not her responsibility.”
I bristled. “Why is he mine? I’m not the one who
let him stay home from school or let him quit every job
he ever got. He’s a grown man. It’s time for him to get
a life and his own place to live.”
George rubbed his chin. “Maybe he could join
the Army. They might make something out of him.”
I reflected that they hadn’t been able to do
much with Bud, but if the Army would take him, at
least he’d be out of my house. “All right, you go down
to Betty Sue’s and talk to him about it. If he joins the
Army, he can stay here until it’s time to leave.”
So Paul came home. When it was time for Gene
to come in from work Paul went to his room and stayed
out of sight.
The next Monday, he and George went down to
the recruiting station. I felt as if a burden were being
lifted from me. They came home with bad news. He
was 4-F.
Ellis told George the Coast Guard might have
easier requirements, and George took Paul to see about
it. He didn’t make the grade there, either. Then he tried
the National Guard. Another rejection.
I felt trapped. It looked as if I was going to be
taking care of Paul for the rest of my life.
I was doing laundry three times a week now,
trying to keep up with the family and the bedding of
my boarders. I was in my seventies, and even with
Betty Sue’s help, it was getting more and more tiring
for me.
I was hanging out the sheets one afternoon, and
Stella came over to chat. She picked up a sheet from
the basket and began pinning it to the line that ran next
to the one I was using.
“Did Paul have any luck getting into the
service?” she asked.
I shook my head. “No, none of them want him.
He can’t pass the tests.”
“He tried all of them?”
“He tried the Army and the National Guard. We
knew he wouldn’t get into the Navy or the Air Force,
so there wasn’t any use in him even going down
there.”
“I wonder if he could get a job in the Merchant
Marine.”
I paused, one arm still holding up the end of the
sheet I’d begun to pin on the line. “I never thought of
that. Do you think they would be easier on him?”
“I’ve heard that they’re always looking for help.
They work with the Navy, but they’re a separate
organization. They carry the supplies and cargo so the
Navy can do its job. My nephew joined up a few years
ago, and he’s not the sharpest tack on the board.”
“I don’t even know where to send him to apply.”
“I’ll ask my sister.”
I talked to Paul and George about it, and Paul
agreed to give it a try. I felt encouraged that this would
be his chance to finally grow up. Away from home, and
away from his father, I hoped he would find some
direction for his life.
The next morning, Stella came over and handed
me a piece of paper with an address on it, “Have him
go here. They can tell him right off if he has the job.”
George went with Paul. They took a bus to the
downtown Detroit address. They were gone all
afternoon, and I prayed they would come home with
good news.
Betty Sue and I cooked and took turns going from
the kitchen to the front door to look for them. It was
almost five o’clock before they got back. When I saw
them coming up the street I went out to the front porch
to meet them. The look on George’s face told me I
wasn’t going to hear anything I liked.
“What did they say?”
Paul stood on the step behind his father. George
tilted his head and held his hands out. “Well, it didn’t
seem like the right job for him.”
“So, they said no?”
George shuffled his feet. “Not exactly.”
I felt my face turn red, and my heart began
racing. I know my blood pressure must have shot up.
“What does that mean? Not exactly?”
“It’s pretty hard work, and he could be gone from
home six months at a time. They go all over the
world.”
I looked past George’s shoulder to Paul. “So you
turned them down?”
Paul jutted out his chin. “Dad said I didn’t have
to go if I didn’t want to.”
I was so angry I thought I would faint. When I
was younger, I would have accepted it without saying
anything and carried on, doing the best I could. I was
older now and had enough disappointment in my life.
I turned back to George with a look that made
him wince. “So, you’re telling me they offered him the
job, and you told him he didn’t have to take it? What’s
going to happen to him when I die? Who’s going to
take care of him?”
“He’ll be fine. Gene wouldn’t let him go
hungry.”
The remark angered me even more. “You’re
keeping him at home like one of those dogs you had
back in Missouri. Why would you saddle Gene with
him? Gene deserves a life of his own. He doesn’t need
to be worrying about taking care of a grown man who’s
too lazy to hold down a job.”
George stepped in front of Paul. “Don’t talk
about him like that right in front of his face. He can’t
help it if he can’t find the right job. It’s not his fault.”
I glared at him. “No, it isn’t his fault, George, it’s
your
fault.”
“My fault?”
“You wouldn’t let me make him go to school. He
could have had a half-way decent education. From the
time he was in first grade, you coddled him and let him
stay home. Now he’s a grown man, and he can hardly
read and write. He quit every job he ever got because
he’s following your example.”
“What example?”
“You sit out on the porch or down in the basement
all day, playing checkers or gossiping with the
neighbors over the fence. He doesn’t see you doing
any work, and he doesn’t see why he should do any
either.”
George hung his head. He didn’t have an answer
to my charges. The two men walked past me and into
the house. I felt light-headed and had to sit down on
the porch swing for a bit. Deep inside, I’d finally given
up on Paul. I accepted that he would never amount to
anything.
I would have liked to rest for a while longer, but
it was time to put dinner on the table. Thirteen
boarders would be coming home soon, and all of them
would be hungry. When my heart stopped pounding, I
got up and went back to my work.
After the meal was served, the dishes washed,
and the kitchen clean, I went to my room and closed
the door. I had a terrible headache, so I put on my
nightgown and lay on the bed. Prayers didn’t come to
me that night. I was too eaten up by my failures. I
counted them back to myself in the dark.
I thought about my marriage to George. I’d been
so happy with James and craved the same connection,
but after all these years and four children, there was no
more of a bond between me and George now than the
day we met. I’d taken a vow to love him, but I didn’t.
I never had. So I failed as a wife.
Secondly, I hoped for years to achieve the state
of grace so many of my fellow church members
seemed to have reached, where I didn’t sin any more.
I asked God to forgive me for the harmful feelings I
had for Evelyn, for Ellis, for Paul, and for George. I
wanted to change for the better, but I resented each one
of them more every day. I asked God to make me a
kinder person.
I believed that God had forgiven me, but I
couldn’t forgive myself, and now I didn’t even go to
church anymore. So I failed as a Christian.
I failed as a mother to Bud, and now Paul. He
was hopeless, and as much as I wanted to blame
George, I had to share the responsibility.
If I’d fought harder to get Paul an education,
George might have given in. I should have put my foot
down, but I hadn’t known how.
At least I had Gene and Betty Sue, both of them
loving, caring people, doing the best they could to
make their way in the world. They were my
justification. They were my testament.
Except for her temper outbursts, Betty Sue was
a wonderful woman, cheerful and happy, and a
wonderful mother. Her children were happy and well
cared for, her home was always clean, and she did her
best to support her husband, sinful as he was. She
genuinely loved him. Too much, I sometimes thought.
Gene was a good man. He worked hard, loved
his daughter with all his heart, treated everyone with
respect, and had always been a man I could be proud
of. I hoped that someday he would give up his dream
of winning Evelyn back and find another partner to
share his life.
Then, there was Donna. She was a strange,
independent child, coming and going as she wanted,
living where she chose, but I loved her and was proud
of her, too.
So I counted my failures and counted my
blessings. It wasn’t a regular prayer, but I finally was
able to sleep so I could face the next day.
George spent more and more time in the back yard,
talking to Stella over the fence. I didn’t pay that much
attention to it. In his late seventies, he didn’t ask me
for relations anymore, and that was a relief to me.
One Tuesday in 1958 I came out of the basement
door carrying a basket of laundry. When I opened the
door, George was in Stella’s yard, his hands cupped
around her face, kissing her on the cheek. Stella was
leaning into him, with an easy familiarity. I froze. They
didn’t see me watching them.
When I saw George do that, a loneliness I can’t
describe came over me.
One morning, two weeks later, there was a knock
at the front door. Through the screen, I saw a man in a
suit. “May I speak to George Foley?” he asked.
I opened the door and waved him in. “Just a
minute, I’ll get him,” I said. I walked through the
kitchen and called down the steps, “George, there’s a
man here to see you.”
He came upstairs with a puzzled look. No one
had come to the house to see him since he retired.
The man asked him, “Are you George William
Foley?”
“Yes, I am,” answered George.
“These are for you,” the man said, handing
George an envelope. Then he nodded to me and said,
“Thank you, Ma’am,” and left.
George stood there holding the envelope, still
wearing the puzzled expression. He tore it open and
unfolded the papers inside. After he read them, he
shuffled them and read them again. I went to the
kitchen and began stirring a big pot of boiling potatoes
and humming a tune.
He walked up behind me. “You can’t do this,
Maude.”
“Yes, I can. I’ve already done it. My mind is
made up.”
“We’ve been married over forty years. What’s
gotten into you?”
I turned around. “I’ll tell you what’s gotten into
me. I saw you in the yard with Stella. In ten seconds
you showed her more affection than you’ve shown me
since the day we were married. There were times my
heart ached, wishing you would just hold my hand or
put your arm around me, but you never did, never.”
His mouth fell open. “How was I supposed to
know you wanted me to do that?”
“Why should I have to ask for it? I never turned
you down in bed. I had your children. I cooked your
meals and cleaned your house. I was a good wife to
you.”
His face turned red. “Did it ever occur to you that
I might need the same thing?”
I was stunned. Tears sprang from my eyes. “No,
George, it didn’t. You always seemed so far away from
me that it didn’t look like you needed me at all.”
“I’m sorry, Maude. Let’s just forget this. I won’t
even speak to Stella again if you don’t want me to. I
never went to bed with her. It was never anything like
that.”
“It’s not whether you did or didn’t go to bed with
her. If you slept with her, it would have been easier for
me to take. It’s that you gave her something you never
gave to me. It was the last straw, George.”
“The last straw? What do you mean by that?”
“It’s one last thing piled up on top of all the other
things.”
“What other things?”
“Way back, it’s the way you let your mother treat
me. Do you remember that she tried to kill me once?
You just let it go. I had to live in your house in fear of
my life.”
“I wouldn’t have let her hurt you.”
“You were in town all day pretending to be a
sheriff. How could you have stopped her?”
“I didn’t think she would really do anything bad
to you.”
“You refused to even talk to her about it. You
were so afraid of her, you would have let her kill me
and worried about it later.”
I took a deep breath and went on. “It’s not only
that. It’s the way you ruined Bud and Paul, letting them
drink and run around like they did. It’s you being too
lazy to do any more work than you had to do to get by,
letting me do man’s work on the house in Kennett,
losing your job there.”
“That was because of the Depression.”
“What about now? You quit work as soon as you
could get your Social Security and you spend all your
money on beer and cigarettes. I work fourteen hours a
day in this house, sometimes more, cooking and
cleaning, but you probably don’t even know that. You
just come upstairs to eat and watch television. When
will I get to retire, when I die?”
He hung his head. “What do you want me to do,
Maude?”
“I want you to pack up your things and Paul’s.
Move out of here and take him with you. I’m not
taking care of you two anymore. You can both go live
with Stella. We’ll see how much she likes you then.”
“That’s ridiculous. I barely know her.”
“It looked to me like you know her well
enough.”
“We’ll see what Gene has to say about this when
he gets home.”
“I’m not going to change my mind, George. It’s
made up. I’m through with you.”
At three-thirty, George came upstairs from the
basement again, the papers in his hand, and waited on
the front porch for Gene to come home from work. I
saw him sitting there but said nothing.
When he saw Gene coming down the sidewalk
George got up and went to meet him. The two of them
stopped while Gene read the papers.
George waited on the porch while Gene came
charging into the kitchen, waving the papers in his
hand. “Mom, what in the world has gotten into you?
You can’t do this.”
“I’ve already done it, and I’m not going back. I
want him and Paul both out of here.”
“What will he do? His pension isn’t enough for
them to live on.”
“He should have thought of that before he went
messing around with Stella.”
“What?” Gene shouted. He took a step
backwards, staggering as if he had been struck.
“Ask him about it,” was all I said.
Gene stormed out of the room to the front porch.
Through the open window, I could hear them talking,
Gene’s voice loud and excited, George’s soft and
ashamed.
After a while Gene came inside and went up to
his room. George walked by me without saying
anything and went back down to the basement.