Girls of Tender Age: A Memoir Read online

  She says, Traitors.

  The traitors’ choice loses and Ella Grasso is elected to the Connecticut state legislature. Twenty years later, Auntie Margaret gets to go to the governor’s ball. The governor is Ella Grasso, the first woman in the country ever to be elected governor.

  My mother buys Auntie Margaret her ball gown; she has the money to buy the gown because she starts working again as soon as possible after the rule is changed that didn’t allow married women to have a job.

  The day of the ball, my mother wants to pay for Auntie Margaret’s hair appointment but Auntie Margaret insists she will go to the Charter Oak School of Hairdressing, where she will only have to fork over fifty cents to get her hair set. When the director of the school hears where my aunt is going that night, she does Auntie Margaret’s hair herself, giving her a cute poodle cut, a twenty-year-old style that looks really nice. Auntie Margaret is too proud to ask my mother for anything else beyond the gown so instead of a purse she carries a plastic bobby pin case to the ball. No one notices because Governor Ella Grasso, who is built like a linebacker, is wearing an inaugural gown described by the society editor of the Hartford Courant as a floor-length Princeton sweatshirt—it’s orange and black. After Governor Grasso’s reelection, she wears a cotton shirtwaist from the Sears catalog to her second inaugural ball, purportedly saying, If anyone doesn’t like it, they can go fuck themselves.

  My mother, who learns of the plastic bobby pin case, sees to it that Auntie Margaret carries a gold mesh purse on a chain to ball number two.

  My cousin Marietta is also the one to pass along to me the legend of our grandmother’s deathbed scene. Marietta and I are drinking sidecars at the time—our mothers’ choice of cocktails—chasing them with Budweisers while we eat fried clams at Dock n’ Dine in Old Saybrook on Long Island Sound, where we spend summers.

  She says, So our grandmother went to confession after giving birth to her ninth child—your mother—and told the priest the doctor said it would kill her if she had another baby because childbirth damaged her insides so bad. She asked him to allow her to practice birth control. The priest went ballistic and he said to her, Birth control is a filthy, disgusting practice and a mortal sin besides.

  Marietta imitates the priest really well, raising her finger in the air: Cleasse, you will be doomed to eternal damnation if you commit such a grievous sin!

  Marietta says, He told her that birth control is what God was talking about when he gave us the last of the Seven Deadly Sins: Lust!

  I raise my sidecar and I say to Marietta, To lust.

  We toast. Then I say, Let’s toast the other six.

  She says, What are the other six?

  I think. Gluttony!

  Marietta says, Sloth!

  We order another round of sidecars but we can’t come up with the other four. Being drunk, I roll the three deadly sins we do remember into one; I say to her, Marietta, you lazy bitch, let’s order some cherrystones and meanwhile have you checked out the unit on the bartender?

  She checks it out before we order the cherrystones even though we’re stuffed after the fried clams. Then she goes on with her story:

  The priest said to our grandmother that she and Pippi would have to live as brother and sister. Or she could go back to the doctor to see if he would perform a hysterectomy, which would solve the problem. (The feminist movement fought the concept of unnecessary hysterectomies. But the practice of unnecessary hysterectomies came about from doctors who performed them out of compassion for their Catholic patients forced to have one baby after another.)

  Then Marietta says to me that Pippi, naturally, wouldn’t go along with the idea of living as brother and sister because he had conjugal rights. Marietta, who studied law, says, Conjugal rights? Now there’s a contract no one ever signs.

  Marietta also says, Trying to get Pippi to agree to living as his wife’s brother was probably like trying to get Uncle Oscar to take a breather from hiding under the head table at all our weddings, barking.

  My Uncle Oscar, the oldest of Pippi and Cleasse’s four sons, can mimic with grand precision many breeds of dog. When my own wedding rolls along, Uncle Oscar will not only hide under tables but also under my train imitating the barking of an entire line of dogs from St. Bernards to Chihuahuas, and also, he will offer a toast: Stepping up to the microphone, raising his glass of Asti Spumanti, he says: To the pealing of the organ and the coming of the bride!

  Half the guests laugh uproariously. The other half, my new husband’s family, drop their jaws. Uncle Oscar’s wedding present is a picture frame made of raw pine glued together with very little precision. He is pleased to tell us it was handmade by a friend of his who is serving time at the state prison for kiting checks. One of the first things my husband and I will do in our new apartment is throw away the gift from Uncle Oscar.

  Marietta continues: After our grandmother’s priest suggested she might look into a hysterectomy, she instead went on to have three more babies after your mother—Uncle Eddie, Uncle Norbert, and then, finally, my mother. And when our grandmother lay dying of hemorrhage brought on by her childbirth injuries plus an emergency hysterectomy, which only made matters worse, the family called the priest. Our grandmother told everyone she wouldn’t see him. But he came anyway because his job was to give comfort to the dying and to administer Extreme Unction whether they wanted it or not.

  Marietta leans closer, her sidecar waving about, and finishes her story: Now get this—the priest marches in, stands by her bed, and before he can administer anything she says to him, I have been visited by a holy vision. The whole family who are milling around stop in their tracks and stare at her. The priest asks her when she saw it. Mickey, can you imagine? Before the priest asks her what the vision was, he asks her when she saw it. When! As your mother would say, what has that got to do with the price of rice? Are all men idiots or what?

  Yeah, they are. What did our grandmother say?

  She said, At dawn today. So the priest asks her, What exactly did you see, my child?

  Marietta’s voice is now sotto: I saw the Virgin Mary, dressed all in blue and holding a beautiful white rose.

  Marietta slides a cherrystone into her mouth.

  Then what?

  Then the priest goes down on his knees and takes her hand and he asks her if the Virgin spoke to her. Our grandmother said, Nooooo . . . So he says, Did she do anything? Noooo . . . goes our grandmother. Then the priest says, Well then, what happened? So our grandmother thinks for a little bit and then she says, The Holy Virgin Mary sat on the edge of my bed.

  I say, You’re shitting me, Marietta.

  I’m serious. So the priest says to her, And then?

  Now Marietta leans in close: Our grandmother gathered up the last of whatever strength she had left and shouted into his face at the top of her lungs, I farted and blew her out the goddamned window!

  MY MOTHER ADMITS to me that Marietta’s story is true because she was there when it happened. I am shocked. Who was my grandmother to commit such blasphemy? We are God-fearing Catholics, who believe in the one, true, holy, and apostolic Church, which is a damn good thing because I am brainwashed as a child into believing that everyone who isn’t a Catholic is second-rate and won’t get into heaven, even Protestants though the Pope recognizes their rite of baptism in eliminating Original Sin. Still the Protestants’ chances are very slim since they eat meat on Fridays. I know by the time I am seven that Jews have absolutely no chance at all of getting into heaven because they don’t get baptized. When I am eighteen, I go to college and learn that Jews don’t believe in Jesus. I am appalled. This information has been successfully kept from me so that I won’t think there is a choice when it comes to believing whether or not Jesus is God.

  The Deslauriers plus two brothers-in-law (Mother front row left), 1923

  Buddhists and Muslims are a thing of myth so no one discusses their chances of getting into heaven.

  I believe utterly that if I eat a cheeseburger
on Friday and then get run over by a tractor-trailer an hour later, I will go straight to hell, where I will burn like those trick candles that don’t go out when you blow on them. Also, worms will be feasting on my flesh as the devil is laughing his ass off.

  So who was this woman from Canada, our grandmother, Cleasse Bessette Deslauriers, who defies the priest so unimaginably? I say to Marietta, Can you believe she really said such a thing?

  Marietta says, I wouldn’t if it weren’t true.

  Marietta

  MY BELOVED COUSIN Marietta, my little buddy, the closest thing to a sister I’ve got, my maid of honor, dies of breast cancer in her early forties. My Auntie Margaret comforts me. She says, She won’t be alone, Mickey.

  It turns out that my Auntie Verna is buried in a double plot. In Auntie Verna’s day, when you got married, the first thing you did was buy your burial plot. After Auntie Verna died of breast cancer, her husband remarried and he is now buried in a plot with his second wife. So Marietta will be buried in the unused plot next to Auntie Verna.

  The irony of it.

  four

  AT THREE, Robert Nelson Malm and his new family moved to Palo Alto when his father acquired a position at Stanford University. California state law required that a child had to live with foster parents for four years before they could be legally adopted. Bob and his sister were formally adopted by the Malms in 1927.

  When Bob was ten years old, his father began to experience periods of paralysis, the early symptoms of polio. When he was twelve, his parents and sister moved to Los Angeles for two reasons: The first was that his father believed the best medicine available would be found there; the second—the reason Bob didn’t go with them—was because of Bob’s sexual molestation charge. He had been sent to a juvenile home for three months. The Malms were pariahs.

  In Los Angeles, at age fifteen, Bob attempted to rape a ten-year-old girl. Since it was a second offense, he was sent to reform school for a year.

  Bob was returned to his family when he was sixteen. His parents decided it was best for him to go to work instead of school since the school was so full of little girls to tempt him.

  five

  Francesco and Giulia Tirone and six children (Dad far right), 1921

  MY OTHER GRANDPARENTS are Italian. My Italian grandfather left the north of Italy for America as a young man because he was a vocal anti-Fascista. His male family members serve in the Apennini and sing “Viva Italia” when they are drunk. My grandfather’s nickname is Visconti, pronounced Viscu in the Piedmontese dialect, because as a teenager he worked for the bishop of Turin, who was also a viscount. My grandfather, who we grandchildren call Gramps, wore the bishop’s fine clothes to dances when the bishop was out of town and that is how he acquired his nickname.

  My grandfather and the few other North Italians in Hartford form a social club. They buy an eighth of an acre of swamp, fill it in, and build a brick meetinghouse. (They are all bricklayers, a skill they agreed to learn in order to get into the United States.) They call the meetinghouse the Luna Club in honor of their favorite song which goes: C’e la luna mezz-o mare, mama mia me maritari . . . ” They form their club because they want to differentiate themselves from most Italian immigrants living in Hartford who are Sicilianos, considered to be Africans, not Italians, by my grandfather. When my grandfather and his friends sing Viva Italia they aren’t singing about Sicilians, they are singing about the Piedmontese.

  Every year the club holds a Christmas party for members’ children and grandchildren. My godfather, Uncle Jimmy, plays Santa. I know there is no such thing as Santa at my first Luna Club Christmas party since I am not stupid enough to think Santa would look like Uncle Jimmy and wear a beard made of cotton batting. My mother makes me dance in front of all the other children wearing my costume from my dancing school’s recital held the previous June, which means the costume, by December, is too small.

  My Italian grandmother—who died long before I was born just like my French grandmother—produced six children, half the number of Cleasse. When my Italian grandmother died, my father was thirteen and his two little sisters were five and seven. It was decided that the girls should be sent back to Torino to be raised by my grandmother’s sister. But my father, who had just suffered the realization that he would never see his mother again, was not about to see his sisters lost to him. So he insisted he would manage their care and he did. He found a babysitter for Auntie Alice, the younger one, and he took my Auntie Palma—who was born on Palm Sunday—to school with him every day and saw that she got to her classroom, where he picked her up in the afternoon and walked her to the babysitter to retrieve their little sister. Then he walked both girls home, and they cooked the family’s dinner.

  My Auntie Palma still says to me on many occasions, Every morning your father would braid our hair.

  Dad (in middle) with brothers and sisters

  Every morning my father would make me a piece of toast.

  My dead Italian grandmother’s name was Giulia. There are no j’s in the Italian alphabet. She died in the hospital of hemorrhage, same cause of death as my other grandmother.

  When I ask my father about his mother, he says, They took her away and she never came back.

  Gramps remarries before I am born. He marries Ann, whom I think is my actual grandmother until I’m a teenager. She has a son, Jimmy, who will be my godfather. Tyler allows Uncle Jimmy to babysit for him. Every Easter, Uncle Jimmy brings me a chocolate bunny. As an adult, when I return home from my Peace Corps service, Uncle Jimmy brings me a welcome-home gift. A chocolate bunny though it isn’t Easter.

  Dad (center rear), Gramps, brothers, stepbrother, and their wives, Mother on far left

  six

  WHEN BOB MALM was returned to his family at sixteen, it was agreed that he should take part in a training program with the Texaco Oil Company and learn how to lubricate automobile engines. He completed the program successfully and was then hired by a local Texaco station near his home. He gave his mother his paychecks and she gave him a small allowance. Pearl Harbor was attacked and within days, Bob’s father died. He quit his job and enlisted in the Navy on November 3, 1942.

  The Navy sent him to their massive base in San Diego where he was in boot camp with Henry Fonda, who turned all the men into avid movie fans. (After service, Bob made sure to see every Henry Fonda movie within a week of its debut at theaters.)

  At the conclusion of boot camp, Bob was sent to Occupational Landing Force School at Balboa Park outside San Diego. Those seamen who successfully completed the school became known as commandos. Following that, he was also trained at fleet signal school so that he would have signalman skills. This last was considered one of the most dangerous duties for an enlisted seaman. A signalman was a sitting duck, patrolling the deck of a ship, searching the sky for enemy “signals,” i.e., aircraft fire. There was never time for a signalman who spotted aircraft fire to find cover. In May 1943, Bob reported for duty at Treasure Island, San Francisco.

  He was originally assigned to a landing craft and then to a destroyer, the Charles F. Osborne, patrolling Espéritu Santo Island in the New Hebrides. He served on board for three years in the South Pacific. The Osborne engaged with Japanese forces in the Central Solomons, New Guinea, New Britain, New Ireland, the Marshall Islands, the Bonin Islands, the Marianas, the Philippines, and Okinawa.

  Bob received the Asiatic-Pacific Theater of War ribbon with ten battle stars. All the men on board the Osborne were honored with the Presidential Citation. From the Philippine government, Bob was awarded the Philippine Liberation Medal with a battle star.

  The only known glitch in his service was when Bob was absent over leave for two hours in Pearl Harbor and was brought back to the ship in a shaking stupor by MPs. The captain fined Bob sixty dollars, but three months later, after no further trouble, the captain canceled the offense from Bob’s military record.

  It was during this time that Bob pursued his interest in forced sexual contact with preado
lescent girls; he could only have sex successfully with preadolescent girls and only after terrorizing and hurting them, leaving some of them unconscious, or possibly, dead. A man could get away with this in Okinawa.

  seven

  Tyler, age 9, at Chalker Beach

  WHEN I AM SEVEN YEARS OLD, my mother starts her job at the Connecticut General Life Insurance Company; she holds a grudge against Aetna and doesn’t apply there. She refers to her new employer as C.G. Today the company is called CIGNA. Her job is with the newly introduced housewife shift, three-thirty to ten. This time frame allows housewives to work when their older children come home from school to babysit for their toddler and infant brothers and sisters until the dads get home from work around five and take over. (Day care is an unheard-of concept.) When all the housewives’ children come of school age, the mothers are able to segue into nine-to-five jobs all trained and ready to go. Still, no one I know has a mother who takes advantage of the housewife shift besides mine.

  From the time I am seven until I go to college, I see my mother once a day for ten seconds (except for weekends) as I run in the door after school while she runs out to catch the city bus.

  I am responsible for my brother from five after three until five-fifteen when my father comes home. After-school activities have to be eliminated.

  Why? asks the teacher in front of the whole class when I say I won’t be at choir practice.