My Story Read online

  Daydreaming made my work easier. When I was waiting on the table in one of the poverty stricken, unhappy homes where I lived, I would daydream I was a waitress in an elegant hotel, dressed in a white waitress uniform, and everybody who entered the grand dining room where I was serving would stop to look at me and openly admire me.

  I never daydreamed about love, even after I fell in love the first time. This was when I was around eight. I fell in love with a boy named George who was a year older. We used to hide in the grass together until he got frightened and jumped up and ran away.

  What we did in the grass never frightened me. I knew it was wrong, or I wouldn’t have hidden, but I didn’t know what was wrong. At night I lay awake and tried to figure out what sex was and what love was. I wanted to ask a thousand questions, but there was no one to ask. Besides I knew that people only told lies to children—lies about everything from soup to Santa Claus.

  Then one day I found out about sex without asking any questions. I was almost nine, and I lived with a family that rented a room to a man named Kimmel. He was a stern looking man, and everybody respected him and called him Mr. Kimmel.

  I was passing his room when his door opened and he said quietly, “Please come in here, Norma.”

  I thought he wanted me to run an errand.

  “Where do you want me to go, Mr. Kimmel?” I asked.

  “No place,” he said and closed the door behind me. He smiled at me and turned the key in the lock.

  “Now you can’t get out,” he said, as if we were playing a game.

  I stood staring at him. I was frightened, but I didn’t dare yell. I knew if I yelled I would be sent back to the orphanage in disgrace again. Mr. Kimmel knew this, too.

  When he put his arms around me I kicked and fought as hard as I could, but I didn’t make any sound. He was stronger than I was and wouldn’t let me go. He kept whispering to me to be a good girl.

  When he unlocked the door and let me out, I ran to tell my “aunt” what Mr. Kimmel had done.

  “I want to tell you something,” I stammered, “about Mr. Kimmel. He—he—”

  My aunt interrupted.

  “Don’t you dare say anything against Mr. Kimmel,” she said angrily. “Mr. Kimmel’s a fine man. He’s my star boarder!”

  Mr. Kimmel came out of his room and stood in the doorway, smiling.

  “Shame on you!” my “aunt” glared at me, “complaining about people!”

  “This is different,” I began, “this is something I have to tell. Mr. Kimmel—”

  I started stammering again and couldn’t finish. Mr. Kimmel came up to me and handed me a nickel.

  “Go buy yourself some ice cream,” he said.

  I threw the nickel in Mr. Kimmel’s face and ran out.

  I cried in bed that night and wanted to die. I thought, “If there’s nobody ever on my side that I can talk to I’ll start screaming.” But I didn’t scream.

  A week later the family including Mr. Kimmel went to a religious revival meeting in a tent. My “aunt” insisted I come along.

  The tent was jammed. Everybody was listening to the evangelist. He was half singing and half talking about the sinfulness of the world. Suddenly he called on all the sinners in the tent to come up to the altar of God where he stood—and repent.

  I rushed up ahead of everyone else and started telling about my “sin.”

  “On your knees, sister,” he said to me.

  I fell on my knees and began to tell about Mr. Kimmel and how he had molested me in his room. But other “sinners” crowded around me. They also fell on their knees and started wailing about their sins and drowned me out.

  I looked back and saw Mr. Kimmel standing among the nonsinners, praying loudly and devoutly for God to forgive the sins of others.

  3

  it happened

  in math class

  At twelve I looked like a girl of seventeen. My body was developed and shapely. But no one knew this but me. I still wore the blue dress and the blouse the orphanage provided. They made me look like an overgrown lummox.

  I had no money. The other girls rode to school in a bus. I had no nickel to pay for the ride. Rain or shine, I walked the two miles from my “aunt’s” home to the school.

  I hated the walk, I hated the school. I had no friends. The pupils seldom talked to me and never wanted me in their games. Nobody ever walked home with me or invited me to visit their homes. This was partly because I came from the poor part of the district where all the Mexicans and Japanese lived. It was also because I couldn’t smile at anyone.

  Once a shoemaker standing in the doorway of his shop stopped me as I was walking to school.

  “What’s your name?” he asked me.

  “Norma,” I said.

  “What’s your last name?” he asked.

  I wouldn’t give him the name I had—Norma Mortenson—because it wasn’t the name of the man with the slouch hat and the Gable mustache. I didn’t answer.

  “You’re a queer kid,” the shoemaker said. “I watch you pass here every day, and I’ve never seen you smile. You’ll never get anywhere like that.”

  I went on to school, hating the shoemaker.

  In school the pupils often whispered about me and giggled as they stared at me. They called me dumb and made fun of my orphan’s outfit. I didn’t mind being thought dumb. I knew I wasn’t.

  One morning both my white blouses were torn, and I would be late for school if I stopped to fix them. I asked one of my “sisters” in the house if she could loan me something to wear. She was my age but smaller. She loaned me a sweater.

  I arrived at school just as the math class was starting. As I walked to my seat everybody stared at me as if I had suddenly grown two heads, which in a way I had. They were under my tight sweater.

  At recess a half dozen boys crowded around me. They made jokes and kept looking at my sweater as if it were a gold mine. I had known for some time that I had shapely breasts and thought nothing of the fact. The math class, however, was more impressed.

  After school four boys walked home with me, wheeling their bicycles by hand. I was excited but acted as if nothing unusual were happening.

  The next week the shoemaker stopped me again.

  “I see you’ve taken my advice,” he said. “You’ll find you get along much better if you smile at folks.”

  I noticed that he, also, looked at my sweater as he talked. I hadn’t given it back to my “sister” yet.

  The school and the day became different after that. Girls who had brothers began inviting me to their homes, and I met their folks, too. And there were always four or five boys hanging around my house. We played games in the street and stood around talking under the trees till suppertime.

  I wasn’t aware of anything sexual in their new liking for me, and there were no sex thoughts in my mind. I didn’t think of my body as having anything to do with sex. It was more like a friend who had mysteriously appeared in my life, a sort of magic friend. A few weeks later, I stood in front of the mirror one morning and put lipstick on my lips. I darkened my blond eyebrows. I had no money for clothes, and I had no clothes except my orphan rig and the lone sweater. The lipstick and the mascara were like clothes, however. I saw that they improved my looks as much as if I had put on a real gown.

  My arrival in school with painted lips and darkened brows, and still encased in the magic sweater, started everybody buzzing. And the buzzing was not all friendly. All sorts of girls, not only thirteen-year-olds but seniors of seventeen and eighteen set up shop as my enemies. They told each other and whoever would listen that I was a drunkard and spent my nights sleeping with boys on the beach.

  The scandals were lies. I didn’t drink, and I didn’t let any boys take liberties. And I had never been on any beach in my life. But I couldn’t feel angry with the scandal-makers. Girls being jealous of me! Girls frightened of losing their boy friends because I was more attractive! These were no longer daydreams made up to hide lonely hours. They
were truths!

  And by summertime I had a real beau. He was twenty-one, and despite being very sophisticated, he thought I was eighteen instead of thirteen. I was able to fool him by keeping my mouth shut and walking a little fancy. Since taking the math class by storm a few months ago, I had practiced walking languorously.

  My sophisticated beau arrived at my home one Saturday with the news that we were going swimming. I rushed into my “sister’s” room (the one who was a little smaller than me) to borrow her bathing suit. Standing in front of the bureau mirror, I spent an hour putting it on and practicing walking in it.

  My beau’s impatient cries finally brought me out of the bedroom in an old pair of slacks and a sweater. The bathing suit was under them.

  It was a sunny day, and the sand was crowded with bathers and with mothers and their children. Despite being born and raised only a few miles from the ocean I had never seen it close up before. I stood and stared for a long time. It was like something in a dream, full of gold and lavender colors, blue and foaming white. And there was a holiday feeling in the air that surprised me. Everybody seemed to be smiling at the sky.

  “Come on, let’s get in,” my beau commanded.

  “In where?” I asked.

  “In the water,” he laughed, thinking I had made a joke.

  I thought of my tight bathing suit. The idea of hiding myself in the water while wearing it seemed to me ridiculous. But I said nothing. I stood watching the girls and women and felt a little disappointed. I hadn’t expected that half the feminine population of Los Angeles would be parading the sands with almost nothing on. I thought I’d be the only one.

  My beau was getting impatient again; so I removed my slacks and sweater and stood in my skimpy suit. I thought, “I’m almost naked,” and I closed my eyes and stood still.

  My sophisticated boy friend had stopped nagging me. I started walking slowly across the sand. I went almost to the water’s edge and then walked down the beach. The same thing happened that had happened in the math class, but on a larger scale. It was also much noisier. Young men whistled at me. Some jumped up from the sand and trotted up for a better view. Even the women stopped moving as I came nearer.

  I paid no attention to the whistles and whoops. In fact, I didn’t hear them. I was full of a strange feeling, as if I were two people. One of them was Norma Jean from the orphanage who belonged to nobody. The other was someone whose name I didn’t know. But I knew where she belonged. She belonged to the ocean and the sky and the whole world.

  4

  i branch out

  as a siren

  But nothing happened out of the great vision that smote me on the beach. I went back to my blue dress and white blouse and returned to school. But instead of learning anything I grew more and more confused. So did the school. It had no way of coping with a thirteen-year-old siren.

  Why I was a siren, I hadn’t the faintest idea. There were no thoughts of sex in my head. I didn’t want to be kissed, and I didn’t dream of being seduced by a duke or a movie star. The truth was that with all my lipstick and mascara and precocious curves, I was as unsensual as a fossil. But I seemed to affect people quite otherwise.

  The boys took to wooing me as if I were the sole member of my sex in the district. Being boys, most of them were satisfied with a goodnight kiss or a confused hug in a hallway. I was able, in fact, to stand off most of the spooners entirely. Boys from fifteen to eighteen are not very persistent love-makers. I imagine that if it weren’t for older women seducing them they would remain virginal just as long as girls do (if they do).

  Among my suitors, however, were young men who went in for major wrestling, and now and then a bona fide wolf with a complete line of dialogue and a full set of plans. These were the easiest to duck because I didn’t feel sorry for them.

  The truth is I never felt offended by any of them, even the wrestlers who mussed my hair. If anything, I envied them. I would have liked to want something as much as they did. I wanted nothing. They might as well have been wooing a bear in a log.

  My admirers all said the same thing in different ways. It was my fault, their wanting to kiss and hug me. Some said it was the way I looked at them—with eyes full of passion. Others said it was my voice that lured them on. Still others said I gave off vibrations that floored them. I always felt they were talking about somebody else, not me. It was like being told they were attracted to me because of my diamonds and rubies. I not only had no passion in me, I didn’t even know what it meant.

  I used to lie awake at night wondering why the boys came after me. I didn’t want them that way. I wanted to play games in the street, not in the bedroom. Occasionally I let one of them kiss me to see if there was anything interesting in the performance. There wasn’t.

  I decided finally that the boys came after me because I was an orphan and had no parents to protect me or frighten them off. This decision made me cooler than ever to my train of admirers. But neither coolness nor disdain, nor “get out of here,” “don’t bother me,” “I have no interest whatsoever in kissing with my lips open,” none of my frozen attitudes changed the picture. The boys continued to come after me as if I were a vampire with a rose in my teeth.

  The girl pupils were another problem but one I could understand. They disliked me more and more as I grew older. Now instead of being accused of stealing combs, nickels, or necklaces, I was accused of stealing young men.

  Aunt Grace suggested a solution for my troubles.

  “You ought to get married,” she said.

  “I’m too young,” I said. I was still fifteen.

  “I don’t think you are,” Aunt Grace laughed.

  “But there’s nobody wants to marry me,” I said.

  “Yes there is,” she said.

  “Who?” I asked.

  “Jim,” said my aunt.

  Jim was Mr. Dougherty. He lived near me. He was good-looking, polite, and full grown.

  “But Jim is stuck on my ‘sister,’ ” I told her.

  “It was you he took to the football game,” Aunt Grace said, “not her.”

  “It was awful boring,” I said. “He’s like the others, except he’s taller and more polite.”

  “That’s a fine quality in a man,” said Aunt Grace.

  The “aunt” and “uncle” with whom I was living—my ninth set of relatives—helped me make up my mind. They were going to move. This meant I’d have to go back and live in the orphanage till they unloaded me on another family.

  I married Jim Dougherty.

  It was like being retired to a zoo.

  The first effect marriage had on me was to increase my lack of interest in sex. My husband either didn’t mind this or wasn’t aware of it. We were both too young to discuss such an embarrassing topic openly.

  Actually our marriage was a sort of friendship with sexual privileges. I found out later that marriages are often no more than that. And that husbands are chiefly good as lovers when they are betraying their wives.

  Jim’s folks didn’t care much for me, for which I couldn’t blame them. I was a peculiar wife. I disliked grownups. I preferred washing dishes to sitting and talking to them. As soon as they started playing cards or having arguments I would sneak out of the house and join the kids in the street. I liked boys and girls younger than me. I played games with them until my husband came out and started calling me to go to bed.

  My marriage brought me neither happiness nor pain. My husband and I hardly spoke to each other. This wasn’t because we were angry. We had nothing to say. I’ve seen many married couples since that were just like Jim and me. They were usually more enduring kind of marriages, the ones that were pickled in silence.

  The most important thing my marriage did for me was to end forever my status as orphan. I felt grateful to Jim for this. He was the Lochinvar who had rescued me from my blue dress and white blouse.

  My various advisers had been right about marriage putting an end to my popularity as a siren. The boys did not come
after Mrs. Dougherty. The rose seemed to have fallen out of her teeth.

  5

  marriage knell

  Jim joined the Merchant Marine in 1944, and I went to work in a parachute factory. The great war was on. Battles were being fought. Juke boxes were playing. People’s eyes were lit up.

  I wore overalls in the factory. I was surprised that they insisted on this. Putting a girl in overalls is like having her work in tights, particularly if a girl knows how to wear them. As parachute inspector I was back in math class again. The men buzzed around me just as the high school boys had done.

  I have noticed since that men usually leave married women alone, and are inclined to treat all wives with respect. This is no great credit to married women. Men are always ready to respect anything that bores them. The reason most wives, even pretty ones, wear such a dull look is because they’re respected so much.

  Maybe it was my fault that the men in the factory tried to date me and buy me drinks. I didn’t feel like a married woman. I was completely faithful to my overseas husband, but that wasn’t because I loved him or even because I had moral ideas. My fidelity was due to my lack of interest in sex.

  Jim finally came home, and we lived together again. It’s hard to remember what you said, did, or felt when you were bored.

  Jim was a nice husband. He never hurt me or upset me—except on one subject. He wanted a baby.

  The thought of having a baby stood my hair on end. I could see it only as myself, another Norma Jean in an orphanage. Something would happen to me. Jim would wander off. And there would be this little girl in the blue dress and white blouse living in her “aunt’s” home, washing dishes, being last in the bath water on Saturday night.

  I couldn’t explain this to Jim. After he fell asleep beside me at night I would lie awake crying. I didn’t quite know who it was that cried, Mrs. Dougherty or the child she might have. It was neither. It was Norma Jean, still alive, still alone, still wishing she were dead.