A Woman's Place

by Lynn Austin

  Helen reveled in her freedom, roaming the estate’s grounds with Jimmy and Henry, playing hide-and-seek among the bushes and pretending that the gazebo was the deck of a pirate ship. They knocked wooden croquet balls around the yard, whacked birdies back and forth over the badminton net, and pitched countless games of horse-shoes. For Helen, the gentle whirrs of Mr. Bernard’s push mower and the steady snip of his hedge clippers eclipsed the sound of mourning during those warm, endless summer days.

  Jimmy was wild and alive and bursting with energy. When Helen read Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, she recognized the same exhilarating love of adventure in Jimmy. She gladly abandoned her dolls and her books to play with him all summer—and for the summer after that—running through the cool, green grass and chasing fire-flies among the hedges. Following Jimmy’s fearless example, Helen grew bold enough to scale the rear fence and scramble down the ravine to the river.

  In the fall, Jimmy raked leaves with his father while Helen studied indoors with her tutors. In January, he shoveled snow so mourners could attend the wake for four-year-old Blanche, who had died of pneumonia. By spring, Helen could barely concentrate on her schoolwork, aching to join Jimmy outside as the earth budded with new life and tulips and daffodils flowered by the gazebo. At last summer arrived. As soon as Helen’s father excused her tutors for the summer break, Helen left the gloomy confines of her house and escaped to the yard with Jimmy and Henry.

  “Let’s pretend we’re in the circus,” Jimmy said one hot August day. He leaped onto the railing of the gazebo, imitating a tightrope walker as he performed a daring balancing act from post to post.

  “Watch me!” Henry yelled as he climbed onto the railing to mimic him. But Jimmy had walked barefoot, and Henry wore slippery-soled shoes. Helen watched in horror as Henry managed only two tottering steps before falling and striking his head on the gazebo’s unyielding stone bench. Her brother died two days later of a fractured skull.

  Before the year ended, eight-year-old William and baby Teddy had joined Henry and all the others in the graveyard. Out of seven Kimball children, only Helen lived.

  Helen listened to her mother’s cries of grief and longed to bury her face in her mother’s bosom and mourn with her, weeping not only for her dead brothers and sisters but for herself. How could she even begin to explain her terror of being the next one to die? The minister spoke of heaven as a place of eternal rest and peace, but Helen didn’t want to float among the weightless clouds with willowy, transparent angels. She wanted to remain a child of the earth, like Jimmy, whose strong brown body radiated health and life. She feared being placed in a casket, being lowered into a grave, and weighted down with a thick stone marker more than she feared anything else.

  But every time Helen tried to find refuge and consolation in her mother’s arms, her mother pushed her away as if afraid to love her lone surviving child, afraid of losing her, too. Helen’s father sent her to boarding school as if the sight of her reminded him of all the children he’d lost.

  When Helen came home each summer, she saw Jimmy laboring in the yard with his father. He’d grown tall and strong, his limber body barely able to contain the vitality that surged through him. Helen’s life seemed ephemeral in comparison, as if she walked on tiptoes, afraid to run for fear of falling, afraid to breathe for fear of catching a deadly cold, afraid to live for fear of dying. Her mother looked at her without seeing her, convincing Helen that she was already transparent and ghostlike, soon to join her siblings in the graveyard.

  As Helen sat outside one summer day, reading Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim, Jimmy halted as he passed by with his push mower and asked, “Is that a good book?”

  “Yes, would you like to borrow it? I’m nearly finished.”

  “That would be great. Thanks.” He continued his labors, striding up and down the lawn with the mower, but she was aware of him now in a way that made her feel strange and shivery. The urge to talk to him eventually overpowered her concentration, and she laid down the book and went inside to ask Cook for some lemonade. She carried a glass of it outside to Jimmy.

  “Thanks,” he said, wiping his forehead on his arm. “I haven’t seen you around in ages, Helen. Where’ve you been hiding?”

  “I’ve been away at boarding school.”

  “You like it there?”

  “It’s okay. I get homesick sometimes. I suppose you’re on holidays from school, too?”

  Jimmy smiled sadly and said, “Yeah, permanent holidays. I had to quit school last year to go to work.”

  “Here, with your father?”

  “Only on Saturdays. I do yard work and odd jobs for other people the rest of the week.” He lifted his chin to drain his glass, and when he lowered his head again, his dark eyes met hers. Helen had to resist the urge to tenderly brush her fingers across his cheek and feel the dark stubble of new whiskers along his jaw.

  “You once told me you liked school. Do you miss it?” she asked. He considered her question for a moment, and she saw him disguise his sorrow behind a crooked smile and an easy shrug.

  “My family needs the money. Besides, there’s nothing to stop me from studying on my own, is there?”

  “I have dozens of books you can borrow, if you want.”

  “Sure. That would be great.”

  Helen watched for him every Saturday morning after that, ready with a stack of books to lend him, including all of her brother Henry’s old schoolbooks. By the time she left home for college, she had fallen in love with Jimmy Bernard. Helen didn’t know enough about romantic love to recognize it as such. She only knew that he had exerted power over her since the first time she’d seen him from her bedroom window, drawing her to him in some mysterious way. No one looked at her the way Jimmy did—as if she were truly alive and as beautiful and vibrant as he was, not a fading ghost.

  “I don’t like you talking with that boy—the gardener’s son,” Helen’s father said the summer after her first year at Vassar College. She had been following Jimmy along the hedgerow as he trimmed it, discussing President Taft, when her father arrived home from the bank in his new motorcar. He had summoned her inside. “Unless you’ve suddenly developed an interest in horticulture, you have no business hobnobbing with the hired help. You have nothing in common with those people.”

  “That isn’t true. Jimmy is very intelligent and knows a great deal about—”

  “Jimmy?” He made a face to show his displeasure. “I certainly hope that boy isn’t on a first-name basis with my daughter.”

  She didn’t tell him that he had called her Helen ever since they were children. An idea had begun to form in her mind, and she couldn’t help blurting it out. “He is perfectly capable of doing college-level work and pursuing a professional career. All he lacks is the financial means. If there were some way we could loan him money—perhaps the money that would have educated Henry—”

  “Don’t you dare mention my son in the same breath as him!” her father exploded. “It’s that daredevil boy’s fault that I lost Henry.”

  “It was an accident—”

  “Don’t contradict me. Stay away from him, understand? You’re excused.”

  Helen did as she was told, but she raced up the stairs to stand at her bedroom window, watching Jimmy as she had the very first time. She would need to be cautious from now on whenever she talked to him, taking care that her father didn’t see them together. But even as she looked down on the yard, her father emerged from the house and beckoned to Jimmy. He hurried over, hedge shears in hand, and she saw him nodding in understanding as Helen’s father spoke to him. She wondered if her father had changed his mind. Maybe he would see for himself how bright Jimmy was and would offer him a loan for a college education.

  But when her father finished speaking to him, Jimmy strode to the shed to put away the shears. He never came to the Kimball house again.

  ————

  “I’ll drive you home,” Helen told a very subdued Rosa the next morning. “Mr. and Mrs.
Voorhees might be relieved to learn where you spent the night.”

  “Thanks, Helen. I owe you one.”

  “I’d prefer if you didn’t mention it.”

  Helen stopped at the cemetery to visit her parents’ graves after taking Rosa home. The sky was granite gray, and a bitter wind blew straight off Lake Michigan and through Helen’s coat. She walked across the grass to the elaborate grave marker and sat down on one of the curved stone benches. Her family’s name—KIMBALL—was so prominent, so deeply etched in the stone that it seemed to shout in the quiet cemetery.

  This monument and the enormous empty house were all that remained of the once-proud Kimball family. She gazed at her parents’ graves and the six smaller ones surrounding theirs, but she didn’t grieve. Memories of her lost brothers and sisters had faded over the years, until it seemed that all she remembered of them were these tombstones and grassy plots. Her family always seemed to have lain here: her sisters Beatrice, Ophelia, and Blanche. Her brothers William, little Teddy, and the only healthy sibling she’d ever had, Henry J. Kimball III, dead nonetheless at the age of twelve. Beside Henry’s grave was an empty plot reserved for Helen. But who would stand here and mourn when her turn finally came?

  Helen’s earliest memory was of standing in this graveyard, holding her weeping mother’s hand as they’d buried Beatrice. The day before, Bea’s small white casket, like all of the others, had rested in the mansion’s dreary parlor, a room that to this day Helen rarely entered.

  She had stumbled upon a newspaper article not long ago, describing a fatal inherited disorder that had been newly named in the 1930s. The symptoms of cystic fibrosis were familiar to her, the same ones her siblings had suffered. But giving the disease a name hadn’t done much good as far as Helen could see. There was still no cure. Nor did it help to rage at God and question His ways as her mother had done all those years. God did what He pleased in spite of our angry questions. It was why Helen wanted nothing to do with Him.

  On the drive home, Helen’s thoughts shifted from her doomed family to Rosa Voorhees, for some reason. She hoped the foolish girl would heed her advice and reconcile with her in-laws. Family life was so complicated. Virginia Mitchell was another example. Ginny had worked at the shipyard for more than two months, and her hapless husband still had no idea. He seemed to travel on business a lot, but even so, one would think he’d pay a little attention to his wife’s comings and goings. Last night Rosa had compared herself to Helen, but the person Helen had the most in common with was Jean Erickson. Jean was so remarkably single-minded for a young girl. If only there were some way Helen could sponsor Jean’s college education without it appearing to be charity. Jean would hate accepting charity.

  Helen realized what she was doing and nearly slammed on the brakes. She was starting to get involved with the other women’s lives! She could not allow that to happen. She would suffer too much loss when circumstances changed—as they surely would. The war couldn’t go on forever. A teaching position would eventually become available. The other women would disappear from her life.

  The wisest course, she realized as she parked her car in the garage, was to remain separate from everyone, to never give away her heart so she would never risk losing it. To remain aloof, as Virginia Mitchell had become so fond of saying. But that meant living the way Helen did now—alone.

  Even so, better to be aloof and alone than to have your heart ripped in two.

  CHAPTER 12

  * Jean *

  Jean arrived home from work on Monday morning to find a letter from Russell. She could scarcely contain her excitement as she ripped it open. When she read that he had made arrangements to come up to Stockton on the weekend to see her, she swung her startled nephew off his feet and waltzed around the kitchen with him, singing, “Russell’s coming! Russell’s coming! I’m so happy I could dance!”

  “How’s he getting here?” Patty asked. She had seated the baby in his high chair and was spooning applesauce into his mouth.

  “He has a ride as far as South Bend. He’s taking a bus the rest of the way.” Jean swooped her other nephew through the air, grinning at the sound of his laughter. The baby pounded on the tray of his high chair, adding to the noise.

  “Where’s Russell going to stay?” Patty asked.

  “Here. He doesn’t mind sleeping on our couch.”

  “Sorry. No can do.”

  “Are you joking?” Jean set her nephew on the floor again, ignoring him as he clamored for more.

  “No, I’m serious. It isn’t right. It would give Russell the wrong idea.”

  “Oh, come on, Patty.”

  “This is my house and I won’t allow it. It’s for your own good, Jean. Don’t flirt with temptation.”

  “More, Jeannie, more!” her nephew begged.

  “No, my turn,” his brother insisted. “Dance with me, Jeannie!”

  Patty raised her voice so she could be heard above the shouting. “Men have funny ideas, Jean. I can’t have Russell sneaking up to your room in the middle of the night.”

  “Russ wouldn’t do that!”

  Patty’s face wore the superior look that Jean hated. “You don’t know men very well, little sister.”

  “I know Russell!”

  “Sorry, but he can’t stay here. Ma would tell you the same thing. You’d better make other arrangements. Hey! Stop hitting your brother!” When Patty turned to separate the two older boys, the baby grabbed the bowl of applesauce and flung it onto the floor. Now Patty and all three kids were yelling. Jean had had enough. She stormed upstairs to her room, wishing she could scream along with them. Patty had been crabby all week, ever since learning that her husband would be sailing on a convoy from England to North Africa soon to join the fighting. Even so, she didn’t have to take it out on Jean and Russ.

  She thought about Russ—and her sister’s ridiculous decision—all the next day at work, but she couldn’t come up with a solution. She was still distracted when the workday ended, and she headed to the women’s locker room to change out of her coveralls. She didn’t notice the knot of men standing in her path until it was too late.

  “Well, well, look who’s coming,” one of them said with a smirk. “She’s a tall drink of water, isn’t she, boys? A regular Amazon woman!”

  “You’re heading to the wrong locker room, pal,” another one said. He grabbed Jean’s arm and shoved her toward the door to the men’s locker room. “If you want to boss people around like a man, then that’s where you belong.”

  “Get your hands off me! Get out of my way!” Jean wrestled out of his grasp.

  “Ooo, we’re terrified.”

  “What’re you gonna do, beat us up?”

  Jean was too furious to reply, afraid she would cry. She finally managed to push past them, but one of the men called her a terrible name before the locker room door closed behind her.

  She didn’t want to be a man, she wanted to be what she was—a woman. But she got a glimpse of herself in the mirror as she headed to her locker and hated what she saw. Jean had always towered over other women, and now, with her short hair, shapeless coveralls, and angry face, she certainly didn’t look very feminine. The thought of Russ seeing her this way brought tears to her eyes.

  Rosa stood at her locker, changing out of her work clothes. Even when she wore baggy coveralls and had her long hair pinned up and covered by a kerchief, no one would ever mistake Rosa for a man.

  “Long day, huh, Jean?” Then she noticed Jean’s tears. “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing.” Jean wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “You wouldn’t understand. You’re so pretty and feminine. … I wish I could be more like you. The girls in my family are all hardworking farm women, and we don’t have the time or the know-how when it comes to fixing ourselves up.”

  “You mean wearing makeup and things like that?”

  “Exactly. Whenever I put on lipstick, I look like a little girl playing dress-up. And my hair is hopeless,” she said, runn
ing her hands through it. “That’s why I wear it pulled back all the time. I don’t know what else to do with it.”

  “You could knock ’em dead if you wanted to, Jean. You got a pretty face, and I saw your figure that one time. I bet your blond hair would look great in a pageboy.”

  “In a what?”

  “It’s a hairstyle. You comb it straight and smooth and turn the ends under—like Marlene Dietrich wears hers.” Rosa reached up to comb Jean’s hair around her face with her fingers. Jean couldn’t see what she looked like, but Rosa’s smile of approval spoke volumes. “There. That’s better already. I could show you how to set it in pin curls at night so it would turn under.”

  “That would be great! My boyfriend is going to hitch a ride up here on Saturday to see me—”

  “And you want to look nice for him,” Rosa said, nodding. “Hey, I’m in no hurry to get home, are you? Want to go downtown and get some lipstick and stuff?”

  “Okay—but I don’t want to look overdone.”

  “You won’t. I’ll make you into such a bombshell, your boyfriend will get on his knees and propose the minute he sees you.”

  “That’s the last thing I want!” Jean said.

  “Oh yeah, that’s right. You got your heart set on going to college. Beats me why you’d want that.”

  Jean finished changing, and she and Rosa left together, taking the bus downtown. Jean splurged on the cosmetics Rosa picked out for her, along with some bobby pins to set her hair. She even let herself be talked into buying perfume.

  “Men like it when a woman smells nice,” Rosa told her.

  “Really? Where I grew up the smell of manure overpowered everything else.”

  “You wait and see. I’ll bet your fella notices right away. Dirk used to say I smelled good enough to eat.” Rosa’s last few words came out choked. Her bottom lip trembled.