In Those Dazzling Days of Elvis

by Josephine Rascoe Keenan

  “Julie, come quick!” Marty burst into the dorm. “Miss Oldenburg is doing a presentation in the dining hall, and everyone is required to attend.”

  I set Mama’s card on my bedside table and stuffed Elvis’s letter in the drawer beneath it.

  “Hurry up! She’ll pitch a fit if we aren’t there when she starts,” Marty said between heavy breaths as we hurried from the dorm. “I saw you put that letter in your drawer. Is it from Elvis?”

  “Yes. I’ll show it to you later.”

  —||—

  Silence pervaded the dining hall. The girls had adjusted their chairs to see the screen Miss Oldenburg had set up at the head of the room.

  “Tempus fugits, Julie and Marty. Make haste and take a seat,” Oldenburg said. “You’re holding up the works.”

  The projectionist flipped the light switch, and the room was left with only sunlight leaking through the shades. The clicking of film threading through the projector sounded, and the screen lit up with a picture of a little boy running toward a jungle gym on a school playground. A male narrator pointed out that the child was dressed in the latest style of kids’ clothing. We watched other children playing in the background who were similarly dressed—all but one. Off to the side stood a little girl, watching with a wistful face. A close-up showed a rip in her dress and dirt on her cheek. She was alarmingly frail.

  A man and woman, obviously husband and wife, waved to the well-dressed boy. Leaping off the jungle gym, he ran into their wide-open arms.

  The scene shifted to a woman in a factory, working with shoes as they passed on a conveyor belt. Her hands moved so quickly they became a blur. Her hair was stringy, and her dress hung askew on her bony frame.

  The scene faded to a shot of the husband and wife walking up to their front door, each holding a hand of the well-dressed boy between them. All three laughed with joy. The man tossed the child and caught him. The child crowed with delight. From that scene, a picture flashed on of the factory mother trudging home to a tenement building at the end of the day. As she opened her door, the skinny little girl could be seen placing knives and forks on a table cluttered with junk. She brought two bowls and a box of cereal to the table and filled the milk pitcher with water.

  The film took twenty-five minutes to contrast the luxurious life of the well-dressed boy and his parents with the tattered child and her mom. When the dining hall lights came up again, several girls were wiping tears.

  Miss Oldenburg stood before us.

  “The man and woman you saw with the little boy were two heart-broken people who had received the fatal verdict that they could never have children. Then, a miracle happened. A girl, just like one of you, chose to do the right thing and give up her illegitimate baby for adoption. The factory worker represents you, if you follow the selfish path and refuse to do what is best for you and your child.”

  Murmurings and whispers followed Miss Oldenburg’s next words. “Would you deliberately choose to hurt the child you are carrying?

  “Most of you aren’t equipped financially to raise a child,” she went on, “and none of you are equipped morally. If you were, you would be married now with your condition acceptable to God, your families, and the world. But you are seen as lacking in character and moral values. And it isn’t necessarily your parents’ fault. I’ve met at least one parent of each of you. They are as different as night and day from you.”

  Miss Oldenburg took a step toward us.

  “Your parents are devastated by your careless actions. You have brought shame down upon their heads and upon your own. And when your baby is born, if you try to keep it, you will bring shame down on its head—shame and suffering. For ask yourself: what can you give a child? Your baby will be branded a bastard to all the world, and you will be branded a slut for the rest of your lives.”

  Miss Oldenburg moved among us, touching various girls on the shoulder as she passed.

  “If you think some nice man will come along and marry a fallen woman, you are sadly mistaken. You don’t even see the natural fathers of your babies asking to marry you and take care of the child, do you? What makes you think an adoptive father would do so? If you keep your child, you must prepare to rid yourselves of the idea that a decent man will marry you later. Your lives will be ruined.”

  I gave an involuntary jump as she planted her hand on my shoulder. Looking up at her, I searched for something that would reveal what kind of person this woman was. A pair of brown, marble-like eyes looked back at me, eyes that held no compassion, no understanding. What they did hold was something I could not identify. I vowed to myself to make every effort to learn exactly what she was about—pressuring us like this to give our babies away—so that, God help me, I could make the right decision about the small human inside of me, whom I was growing to love more deeply every day.

  Miss Oldenburg’s aspect changed abruptly. She fairly danced to the front of the room again. Her face took on a brightness I had never before seen in her. When she spoke again, her words were so filled with enthusiasm and joy she sounded as though she had seen the Rapture.

  “If, however, you sign the papers to give your baby up,” she smiled upon us, “you can move on from this tragic occurrence, forget about it, and continue with your life as if it never happened. Think about it, those of you who are reluctant to sign. You are the ones this presentation is aimed toward.”

  She wiped her nose with her handkerchief.

  “Would those of you who have already signed please come forward and stand before the recalcitrants so they may see examples of true bravery and goodness and join me in applauding your willingness to do the right thing.”

  More than half the girls straggled up and stood near her at the front of the room. Their puckered brows and anxious faces belied her promise of happiness and relief that was supposed to follow the signing of the papers. One raised her hand.

  “Yes, Lucy?” Miss Oldenburg said.

  “I don’t think I’m all that brave and good. I don’t want to give my baby up. I just don’t have any other choice.”

  Miss Oldenburg beamed. “That’s entirely correct, Lucy. You don’t have another choice.” She turned to face us. “And the rest of you don’t either. I will be calling you one by one into my office during the following week and giving each of you the opportunity to prove your love for your baby. Prove it by signing the agreement to give it a good life, one that you can never provide.”

  Many girls silently wept as we filed out of the dining hall. Marty and I shed no tears. Nor did Kay, the pillow pilferer, who wore a resolute face as she stepped along with us back to the dorm to get ready for our work details.

  “All Miss Oldenburg and the owners of this home want is money,” Kay said. “Those adoptive parents are willing to pay big bucks to get a child. No one at this place gives a hoot about us or our babies. They don’t care how we feel. To them, we don’t deserve to have feelings.”

  “Who else is there, besides Miss Oldenburg?” I asked.

  “The doctors, the nurses, and the social worker who stops by every once in a while to help Oldenburg put the screws to us about signing.”

  “Come on, Kay,” Marty said. “Let’s hurry it up so Julie can show us her letter from Elvis Presley before we have to go to the salt mines.”

  Kay’s eyes grew large. “Elvis Presley? Is he your baby’s fa—?”

  I cut her off. “No! He’s only my friend.”

  They plopped down on my bed while I got out Elvis’s letter. I read it to them, then they each wanted to hold it.

  “Just think,” Marty said when it was her turn. “Elvis the Pelvis wrote this letter. His fingers touched it.”

  “It really bothers him to be called that,” I said.

  “Nooo!” they chorused.

  “But he said the worst thing was when they accused him of destroying us kids’ morals.” I gave a sad laugh. “It would take more than a beautiful voice like his to destroy anyone’s morals. I’ve been trying to sort this out in
my head, and I’m almost there. I think moral standards are so slanted in favor of the boys that girls don’t have a chance to be normal human beings like God created us to be.”

  “I like that,” Marty said.

  Kay handed the letter back to me. “So do I. God created me to have sex and get pregnant.”

  The two of them laughed.

  “Well, He did, didn’t He?” I said. “And the boys. That’s all they think about. Why doesn’t anyone call them sluts?”

  They stopped laughing.

  “I mean, isn’t that one reason we’re here on this earth, to ‘be fruitful and multiply’?” I said.

  Kay moaned. “Oh God, now she’s dragging the Bible into it.”

  “Will you sign, Marty?” I asked.

  She chewed on a hangnail and shook her head.

  “I don’t want to.”

  “Kay?” I said.

  “I don’t want to either, but what choice do we have?”

  I struggled to find the right words. “I mean, I live in this body, this skin. I know what I am, and I’m not a slut. I feel the same way I felt back when people saw me as a good girl—except for the shame. I don’t know if I can ever get past the shame.”

  “We won’t, if we don’t sign the papers,” Kay said.

  Marty nodded.

  “But will we even then?” I asked. “What about the secret shame, never mind the pain we’ll bear for what I am afraid will be the rest of our lives because we abandoned our babies?”

  Chapter 25

  THAT SAME MOON

  Driven by the thought of that secret shame, I grabbed a wedding band after dinner and went to the little park down the street in the other direction from the newsstand and movie house. A vacant bench beneath a pine tree reminded me of El Dorado’s neighborhoods, whose stately homes stood beneath tall pines with needles fanning against skies that, in my mind, were always blue, even when it rained.

  Tonight, looking through the needles of this pine, I watched the moon travel the summer night up to its eight o’clock perch in the sky. That same moon was shining on my friends back home—on Farrel and on Mama—and somewhere it was shining on Elvis.

  Homesickness wrenched my insides. Closing my eyes, I pretended I was there, wandering the streets of home. From the high school, beneath its soaring white columns, to War Memorial Stadium, where I saw Elvis, and where, for fame and glory, our Wildcats waged football wars. From where the band stepped off, playing a Sousa march and leading floats in parades to the square, to where its anchor, the white courthouse with its flags flying, surrounded by Woolworths and other hometown stores, watched over the throngs gathered to pay homage to the Homecoming Football Queen. Maybe I would be back in time for it.

  My thoughts shifted to our house with its green shutters and wraparound porch, and inside, Mama sitting in her favorite chair. The crepe myrtle trees bloomed this time of the year back home. I longed to wake up innocent and in my own bed again on a summer morning with the sight of the watermelon-red blossoms filling my eyes. I longed to be soothed by the whirring sounds of fans suspended from our twelve-foot ceilings, making bearable the suffocating summer heat.

  Before that night at the concert—the night when I met Elvis and first saw Carmen, the night that robbed me of my unrecognized state of bliss—I thought I was miserable with no boyfriend and only three Dilberts to run around with. In those days before Farrel, I lived in total oblivion of my happy existence. I had Mama, and my father was nothing more than an occasional annoyance. But the old adage, “Be careful what you want, you might get it,” proved true. I got what I had so deeply craved—acceptance in the in-crowd, the boy I loved, and the tenuous beginnings of a relationship with my father—and with it all came the true meaning of misery.

  What had happened during the weekend Carmen stayed with our father and pretended to be me? She would have told me on the phone if he had seen through the ruse. It was clear: he couldn’t tell us apart. Although that was what we’d hoped for, with it came the bitter realization that he cared so little that neither of us was identifiable in his mind. We did not look exactly alike. There were small differences, if he had taken the time to notice.

  When I had finally gotten up the courage to risk his temper and drunkenness and had gone to see him, he’d left me on Christmas Eve to go to a saloon. Although he’d expressed concern about whether I had seen through Farrel before it was “too late,” I felt I was only a trophy to him, instead of his child to whom he would devote his life. He had always made me feel that my value to him was no more than the winner’s cup of gold plastic he’d won in a fishing contest. He might care more about me if he could put me on the mantle next to it.

  Sitting there in that Texas park, I searched every clue I’d ever been given in the effort to decipher what had destroyed our family. Of course I knew Mama’s side of the story. He had cheated on her with Carmen’s mother, while Mama was pregnant with me, no less. What I didn’t know was why. On Christmas Eve, he had hinted there was more to it than that, but he wouldn’t tell me what.

  The sound of a kid yelling “wheee” as he zipped down the slide jarred me from my reverie. I eased up and headed back along the path leading out to the street. I hadn’t gone far when a woman’s voice spoke from a bench nearby.

  “When are you due?”

  I looked over at her. She was young, but older than I, and wore a sleeveless yellow blouse and matching skirt.

  “September,” I said.

  Her eyes held eager friendliness.

  “Seems like forever, doesn’t it?” She patted the empty side of the bench. “Sit and talk awhile?”

  It was still early. Why not?

  “Mine begs to play on the slide every night before bed,” she said. “Thank goodness the park is well lit and just across the street from our apartment. Do you want a boy or a girl?”

  “Either will be fine,” I said, forcing myself to sound casual. “But I believe it’s a boy. I feel it! I already have a name picked out. Nicholas.”

  “That’s a good name. I wanted a boy. And that’s what I got.” She nodded toward the kid on the slide. “Michael. He’ll wear himself out, then he’ll be willing to go to bed. I remembered to bring the bread wrapper this time.”

  “I used to slide on bread wrappers from the Colonial Bakery,” I said without thinking. “They were the best for going fast. More wax, I guess.”

  “What part of town is that bakery in?” she asked with questioning eyebrows.

  I fanned myself with my hand. “Oh, it’s not around here. I don’t live here.”

  She nodded, her inquisitive expression demanding an explanation. The need kicked in to enlarge the secret self I was creating.

  “My husband is on business out here for a while. We’re from Little Rock.”

  “We’re here temporarily too,” she said. “Are you in the apartment house across the street?”

  This was getting beyond my control.

  “Uh, no. We’re with my husband’s aunt, a few blocks away.”

  Her brow relaxed. “I almost took you for one of the girls from the home.”

  “Girls from your home?” I asked, deliberately changing the into your to feign ignorance.

  “Oh, no! Girls from Happiness House.”

  I called up a clueless face.

  “The home for unwed mothers,” she said, her voice low, as if she feared someone might accomplish the impossible and hear her over the traffic and other city noises.

  “Oh, is that around here?” I asked.

  “Just down the street. I’m surprised you don’t know about it. I wish it wasn’t in this neighborhood. They say the girls are all sluts. I guess they’d have to be to get themselves in that situation.” She waved at the boy with the bread wrapper. “He’s having so much fun. Better hope you’re right and it’s a boy. If it’s a girl, you’ll have to play with her until you have your second. Boys are much more independent. He’d slide by himself all night if I let him.”

  I made a poi
nt of angling my wrist so she could see me check my watch.

  “I’ve got to go. Farrel will wonder where I am. He had to work late tonight, but he’ll be coming home about now. It was nice talking with you.”

  “I wish you didn’t have to leave so soon,” she said. “Maybe we’ll meet again sometime. Do you walk here often?”

  “I will from now on,” I said, forcing brightness into my smile and making a mental note to never return. “Good night.”

  She gave me a small wave. “Good night.”

  I moved away from her as fast as I could and still maintain a casual air. If it hadn’t been for the baby, I would have thrown myself on the ground and howled to the orange moon now floating above the park. But I didn’t want to be arrested, so I pushed down my wretched sadness and kept walking back to Happiness House to further plan my future—no, my present—life of duplicity. My baby, Nicholas, kicked hard, reminding me I had no other choice.

  Chapter 26

  TELL ME WHY

  The next morning, I received a summons to the examining room to see a different doctor from the young one who had examined me previously. Grey hairs around his temples suggested that this one was about forty-five, maybe even fifty.

  “Let’s see how you are doing,” he said. “Don’t be shy, Julie, is it? Your name is Julie?”

  I lay back and tried to relax as he conducted his exam, but his manner was rough and careless. At one point, a cry escaped me.

  “I’m not hurting you,” he snapped. “You got yourself into this situation. If you’d kept your legs together, we wouldn’t be doing this.”

  The lump in my throat broke. I could not hold back a sob.

  “Tears won’t do you any good now. What are you, fifteen? Sixteen?”

  “Seventeen,” I managed.

  “Old enough to know better. There now, all finished. You can get dressed. Miss Oldenburg will see you in her office in ten minutes.”

  “How is he?” I ventured.

  “Who?”

  “Nicholas. My baby. Is he doing all right?”