All of Portland felt blue that year. Businesses failed, banks closed their doors to prevent runs, and more weary gray men selling shoelaces or seeking work, any work, rang our doorbell. Mother managed money very, very carefully, but she did buy a bottle of vanilla extract to give us relief from almond flavoring.
Mother and I continued to argue. I needed new school shoes and insisted on brogues like those other girls wore. Nobody wore Buster Brown oxfords or galoshes in high school. Mother stiffened my determination by poking fun at any girl wearing brogues who walked past our house. “Beverly, just come and see how silly that girl looks.”
Finally Mother had to admit that thick soles would wear well and keep my feet dry. I got the
brogues, wing-tipped, with soles half an inch thick and a fringed tongue that buckled over the laces. I clumped through the next three years of high school in them. Dad polished them for me every Sunday evening.
Claudine and I felt very sophisticated in our brogues as we plodded off to our sophomore year. Nervous freshmen looked immature as they huddled in groups, the chalk dust of grammar schools seeming to cling to them. Boys our age had grown, and their corduroy pants, guarded from their mothers' washing machines, were fashionably dirty. Seniors were less forbidding than they had been a year ago. Our teachers reminded us that the word
sophomore
came from the Greek and meant “wise fool.”
Mother was exasperated when I signed up for a course in freehand drawing in addition to English, Latin, mathematics, and biology. I took the course over her objections, but I did not learn to draw, even though the teacher gave me an E, perhaps for properly sharpening a set of pencils for drawing. The teacher was keen on pencil drawing.
Biology showed me with fresh eyes the world of nature around me; and even though we dissected night crawlers with their five pairs of beating hearts, biology was one of my favorite high school subjects. Geometry to me was more interesting
than algebra. Mother could not understand my lackluster attitude toward Caesar, his cohorts, and his legions.
The second semester, I decided to take typewriting, which Mother did not consider frivolous because I was going to be a writer. Before the class was allowed to touch typewriters, we memorized the keyboard letters by pounding away on their arrangement printed on heavy paper. When we finally got to real typewriters, which had blank keys, the room was so noisy I understood why the class was hidden away in a corner of the basement. Speed and accuracy were the goals, but for me all the nervous clattering of typewriters and pressure to hit the right keys faster was so exhausting I just managed to squeak through the semester with a grade of G for Good. I could not face the second semester, so I still have to peek to type numbers. Today, when I am asked the most difficult part of writing, I answer “typing,” which is taken as a joke. It is not. There is nothing funny about typewriting.
Claudine and I studied
The Century Handbook of Writing
, giggling all the way. Examples seemed even funnier. When we came to Rule 68, “Avoid faulty diction,” we studied the examples: “
Nowhere near
. Vulgar for
not nearly.” “This here
. Do not use for
this.” “Suspicion
. A noun. Never to be used as a verb.” Our conversation became
sprinkled with gleeful vulgarisms we had never used before. When I announced my presence by noisily tap-dancing on the Klums' wooden porch and probably annoying all the neighbors on the block, Claudine said she was nowhere near ready for school.
“I suspicioned you weren't.”
Claudine's reply was something like, “This here shoe-lace broke.”
We thought our dialogue hilarious. Mrs. Klum sighed as she looked up from
Science and Health
and said with a smile, “Oh, you silly little girls.”
The best part of English that year was the study of the short story, but when the time came to actually write a story, my mind was a blank. The hardest part was having to hand in an outline of a story first. “Make it funny,” advised Mother as usual.
I sighed, bit my hangnails, crumpled paper, and when the final day came, turned in an outline of a feeble tale of mistaken identity involving cats instead of people. The outline was returned marked F for Fair, a grade I was unused to receiving. Still, I could not think of anything better. In despair, I wrote the silly story. It was returned with an E-, which I did not think it deserved.
My standards were higher than those of the teacher.
To this day, I cannot outline fiction. I find that
an outline limits the flights of imagination which are the joy of writing. I write and then rewrite, bringing order to the second draft.
In my sophomore year, students with G averages were permitted to join clubs. Claudine, who had escaped Latin because her mother did not care which language she studied, joined the Spanish Club, the Dondelenguas. I chose the Masque and Dagger, a dramatic club that put on a silly play in which I was cast in the role of a debutante. I also joined the Migwan, a literary club whose name we were told was a Dakota Indian word meaning “written thought.” I had trouble producing any extracurricular written thought for the meetings, at which we were expected to criticize one another's work. Criticism usually degenerated into an awkward pause until someone ventured, “I think it is very good.” I cannot recall a single thing I wrote for Migwan meetings, even though I was a member for three years and served as secretary and president.
Clubs were not our only fun. Claudine and I went by chartered streetcar to high school football games in the Multnomah Stadium, where we yelled for Grant's team as it slithered around in the rain and mud. We walked to the high school gym to cheer the basketball team. We continued to read, study, and listen to the radio, especially “One Man's Family” on Sunday evenings. Clau
dine, when her parents were out, practiced Gershwin's “Rhapsody in Blue,” which she borrowed from the library, instead of “Marche Slav,” by Tchaikovsky.
Mother's objections to my spending so much time at Claudine's house grew bitter. “All you girls do is get together and criticize your parents,” she complained unfairly. Claudine wasn't critical of her parents. And I was too thoroughly schooled in keeping up a front for the benefit of neighbors to admit any unhappiness at home, even to my closest friend. We had begun to talk about boysâwhat a boy had said to us by our locker, which was the handsomest, who were the biggest twerpsâeven though we did not really expect to get to know them outside of school.
One rainy night during Christmas vacation, Claudine and I went with her mother to help deliver Christmas decorations to the Masonic Lodge. Music from a Demolay dance floated down the staircase. While Mrs. Klum arranged her fir boughs downstairs, Claudine and I slipped upstairs into the hall to watch the college-age dancers, like little girls watching a party.
As we sat whispering, a young man in a tuxedo appeared before me, bowed, and asked, “May I have this dance?”
Me? A girl in a woolen school dress and brogues? Claudine poked me. Hypnotized, I rose
as the music began and stepped into his arms, terrified. I had never been so close to a boy before. I did not know how to dance. My tongue seemed to fill all the space in my mouth not taken up by bands and wires. As we circled past Claudine, I dared not look at her. I longed for the music to stop, to let me out of this young man's arms, to let me take my icy, sweating hands from his, and let me escape. A boy who smelled so nice did not deserve to have his shoes wrecked.
The music did stop, finally. I gave my partner what was meant to be a smile and left him in the middle of the floor. I grabbed Claudine by the hand and fled the hall. She whispered, “What was it like?”
“Terrible,” I said, “but he smelled awfully nice.” I was struck by a revelation. “He
shaves
.” Claudine and I went into fits of giggles.
“Oh, you silly little girls,” remarked Mrs. Klum.
When I returned home, still laughing, I described my evening to my parents. Mother laughed, too, and Dad chuckled. He rarely laughed, but he had a delightful chuckle.
After that, Mother found the money to enroll me in Mr. Kofeldt's ballroom dancing class at the Irvington Club. She took me overtown to buy me some black pumps with heels and, being a practi
cal woman, made me a red dress sure to be noticed in a crowd. No daughter of hers was going to be a wallflower.
I teetered around the living room in high heels, and on Friday evening I put on my new red dress. Mother and I took the bus to the Irvington Club, where she sat on a bench with another mother or two to watch the class.
The boys, a glum bunch, were neatly dressed in dark suits. They all wore white cotton gloves to prevent their sweaty hands from soiling the girls' dresses. The girls, most of them in dark dresses and praying for tall partners, stood on one side of the room while the boys, praying for short girls, advanced in a horde and made their selections.
Mr. Kofeldt explained the waltz square, which was then demonstrated by his assistants, Mr. Muckler and Missâ(what girl can remember the name of a female dancing assistant, no matter how graceful?). The pianist played “Whispering.” Whenever I hear that old tune, I have an almost irresistible urge to rise and go through the waltz square.
If a couple stumbled through the steps or could not keep time to “Whispering,” Mr. Kofeldt was beside them, clicking his castanets and telling them not to watch their feet. I learned that the best way to spare the unhappy, dogged boys mis
ery and Mr. Kofeldt's castanets was to lead
them
from my position. For years afterward, dancing partners embarrassed me by asking, “Who's leading, anyway?”
Because 1932 was leap year, Grant High School was giving a leap year dance in the gym. Girls were expected to invite boys, something I had no thought of doing. Although I was being taught, more or less, to dance, the idea of actually going to a dance was so daunting it was not to be considered. School dances were for other people.
Then one day the boy with the sensitive neck turned around to face me. “Why don't you ask me to go to the dance?” he said.
He must be joking. Why else would he say such a thing to me?
He continued to look expectant. I very much wanted to ask him, but I could think of more reasons for not inviting him. How would I get him there? We had no car. I would stumble all over his toes and take over the leading. He wouldn't have a good time, and I would still have to sit behind him while he was thinking of the terrible time he had had at the leap year dance.
I did not know how to answer, so I simply smiled, shook my head, and pretended to be looking for something in my notebook. He turned around, leaving me bemused. Was he teasing?
Was he trying to be funny? Could he possibly have meant what he said?
As Friday nights at the Irvington Club passed, I began to resent the presence of mothers on the sidelines, smiling and whispering behind their hands. Why couldn't I go alone? Because I could not go out alone at night and travel by bus. On the ride home, Mother enjoyed talking over the eveningâwhich boy danced with which girl, who was disappointed, how girls had learned to run past short boys when partners were chosen by the grand-right-and-left, which girl needed a more becoming dress or something done about her hair.
One evening a young man older than the high school boys appeared in the class. He was blond, nice-looking, slender but muscular. Sometime during the evening I found myself plodding through a waltz with him. Neither of us spoke.
Later, when Mother and I were waiting for the bus, the young man offered us a ride home in his Model A Ford coupe with a rumble seat. Mother accepted for us. I felt strange sitting beside a young man and uncomfortable trying to keep my knees away from the gearshift.
Mother was delighted.
The next Friday at Mr. Kofeldt's ballroom dancing class, the young man I had met the previous weekâwhom I shall call Gerhart, for that was not his nameâheaded straight for me. After the obligatory “May I have this dance?” he clutched me with an arm that felt like iron as he maneuvered me, grimly and silently, through Mr. Kofeldt's steps. Escaping to another partner, no matter how short, was welcome.
When the class was over, Gerhart offered to take Mother and me home again. Mother accepted graciously.
On the way home, Gerhart asked if he could come over Saturday evening to practice dancing. We confessed we did not have a radio, or even a phonograph. For a moment I was terrified that
Mother might offer to play the piano for us. However, Gerhart said he had a radio he could bring. I do not recall which of us, Mother or I, accepted.
The next morning, Mother insisted I had to offer Gerhart something to eat after we practiced dancing. She sent me to the store for a can of chocolate cookies, half a pint of whipping cream, and some maraschino cherries. I whipped the cream, flavored it with vanilla (thank goodness!), spread it on the cookies, stacked them so the cream would soften them, and topped each stack with a cherry.
That evening, Gerhart arrived with his portable radio. The rug was rolled back, my father disappeared into the breakfast nook, and Gerhart led me woodenly through the waltz square and its variations. Mother wandered in and out, playing the part of chaperone and extracting bits of information from him.
Gerhart was twenty-one. He had come from California, where he had completed two years of college. He had a secure civil service job working irregular shifts in a laboratory at exactly the same salary my father earned. Chemistry and physics, two subjects I intended to avoid, were his favorite studies. He lived in a room in a private home, where the daughter of the family had suggested he go to Kofeldt's to learn to dance, and ate his meals in restaurants. Mother over
looked, and I was too naive to recognize, the fact that we had nothing in common.
Mother, feeling I was safe with Gerhart, announced she was going to bed, leaving me to serve a stack of soggy cookies and a cup of hot chocolate waiting in a pan on the stove.
When Gerhart and I sat down at the breakfast nook table, my stomach tightened into a fist. I could think of nothing to say; I could not eat a bite. Because I couldn't eat, he wouldn't. I struggled to think of words to share; Gerhart offered no help. Instead, he laughed at me, which hurt my feelings. Finally, to my relief, he said he guessed he'd better go, and departed, lugging his radio off to his Model A while I returned the soggy cookies to the cooler and, disheartened by the whole experience, went to bed.
Mother, ignoring the touch of cruelty in Gerhart's behavior, found the whole incident hilarious and laughed about it over the telephone with her friends.
I was less amused, but I did brag to Claudine and Lorraineâan older boy, a car, a radio, a good job. They thought I was lucky. Neither of them had ever had a date.
After that, Gerhart pounced each Friday evening at dancing class, brought his radio to our house so we could practice, and finally left it there so we could practice more often. He took
me to movies and for a hamburger afterwardâa luxury for me, even though I was so nervous I could only nibble at the hamburger.
I continued to go out with Gerhart every weekend and relaxed enough to eat a hamburger. Mother protested. “You are seeing too much of Gerhart. You should go out with other boys.”
“What other boys?” I asked. “Nobody else asks me.” Somehow I did not care, not because Gerhart meant so much to me, but because I felt I wasn't ready for boys.
“Well, they should,” said Mother. “I don't know what's wrong with you.” She went on to tell me how popular she had been at my age, as if my lack of popularity were a reflection on her.
I did not refuse Gerhart's invitations. Movies and evenings away from the tensions of home were too tempting. After about three months, Gerhart kissed me at a stoplight.
Being kissed by Gerhart was disappointing. I had expected a kiss to feel more like the time in Yamhill when I stuck my finger in the electric socket, only nice. Still, being kissed was a novelty. I went along with Gerhart's occasional kisses, hoping they would get better. I persuaded myself I was having a good time. Didn't Mother tell her friends what fun I was having? Didn't movies, and stories in
The Ladies' Home Journal
, say girls met boys, kissed, and were happy? Of
course I was happy, I insisted to myself, but I did wish Gerhart would not poke fun at activities I enjoyed. He thought English boring, my interest in the literary club silly.
Gerhart also disliked Oregon. He ridiculed the custom of farm housewives drying their washing on porches. I was familiar with old farmhouses without basements, where the porch was the only place to dry clothes in rainy weather. I told him about a time in Yamhill when, waiting days for sun, Mother did a huge washing on the back porch in the electric Maytag washing machine with a wooden tub, her only laborsaving device. She heated water on the kitchen stove and carried it outside, a bucket at a time. When she finished, she hung sheets, towels, and work clothes in the sun on lines in the barnyard. After the last clothespin was in place, the lines broke, and her morning's work fell to the mud. Gerhart thought the story funny. I remembered Mother's tears of despair.
Gerhart also laughed at Oregonians' custom of ordering slab wood by the cord and having it Stacked on the strip of grass between the street and the sidewalk. A truck with a gasoline saw cut the wood into furnace lengths, which the man of the house, or boys eager to earn a little money, stacked in the basement beside the coal. Californians could heat their houses with gas, but no
one I knew had a gas furnace in Portland. I deeply resented Gerhart's lack of compassion for a life I understood.
Summer came. Mother surprised me by buying me white shoes. I had expected to wear brown oxfords in summer. “White shoes look nice with light dresses,” she said, and I agreed.
Claudine went out to Puddin', and Gerhart came to our house whenever work permitted. We passed the time playing two-handed bridge, but he sulked when he lost. I began to let him win to avoid unpleasantness.
Once, when one of us was shuffling cards, Mother asked, “Gerhart, what does your father do?”
Gerhart's face turned hard. He looked straight ahead and said, “He was a house painter who committed suicide.”
Mother and I were shocked and sorry. Later she said, “Well, that explains a lot about him.” The matter was never mentioned again.
Sometimes Gerhart took me swimming in one of the nearby lakes or rivers. If I returned home with the least touch of sunburn, Mother greeted me angrily with, “You have ruined your complexion.” I began to dread coming home from these outings.
One evening, when Mother and I were washing
and wiping the supper dishes, she said, “You know, you are the type that will fade quickly.”
What on earth did she mean? This was not a remark of a woman who loved a daughter who had barely begun to bloom. I was too hurt to answer, but after mulling over the remark for several days, I said, “Mother, I don't think it was very nice of you to tell me I would fade quickly. Why did you say a thing like that?”
Mother shrugged. “Well, I said it, didn't I?”
“Well, you shouldn't have!” I snapped.
Mother did not tolerate contradiction. “You should show more respect for your parents,” she informed me.
I answered, “Gerhart says one of the reasons he likes me is I am nice to my parents. He says I am not like some girls.”
Mother looked surprised and for once had nothing more to say. I was still puzzled and hurt and have often wondered why, when she was so anxious to protect her own youthful appearance, she would direct such a remark to me. Perhaps she envied me my youth. I do not know.
I began to see Gerhart more and more as a way of getting away from Mother. On warm summer evenings we drove to the airport on Swan Island in the Willamette River, which Charles Lindbergh had inspected and pronounced a poor location for an airport. It was a popular spot for
waiting to see the ten o'clock mail plane arrive from California. We searched the stars for its lights and, when we found them, followed their descent to the runway and watched the small brave plane that had flown all the way from California taxi to the little terminal. Then Gerhart drove me home.
One day, Mother said, smiling, “You know, Daddy doesn't like Gerhart. I think he's jealous.” That my father should be jealous of Gerhart seemed so ridiculous I paid no attention. Mother must be imagining things. However, when Dad bought a radio of our own so Gerhart could take his away, I wondered if he hoped Gerhart would have one less excuse for spending so much time at our house. Perhaps Dad wanted more privacy, I thought.
One day, Gerhart suggested a picnic at the beach. Mother agreed I could go, provided she went along as a chaperone.
“What for?” I asked impatiently. “We don't need to be chaperoned.” Hand-holding, a few kisses, mild embracesâthat was as far as I ever intended to go. That was the way it was in the movies, and I had no knowledge of what might come later.
Mother ignored me. She set about making a huge bowl of potato salad and suit box full of
sandwiches. “People get hungry at the beach,” she said.
We set off for a day, with Mother and myself beside Gerhart, and in the rumble seat a wind-tousled, sunburned couple, friends of Gerhart. We often took his friends on outings; my friends were never included.
When Gerhart parked his car among the salal bushes and we carried blankets and the picnic lunch down to the sand and were racing around on the beach, Mother called me back and gave me the only advice or information on sex she ever gave me. “Never play leapfrog with boys,” she said. “They might look up.”