‘Of course we can go. We’re going to see everything, if you want to, and yes, they are real American Indians,’ he assured me.
We pulled into the driveway of a large old house. The sign in front said ‘The White House’. It was a guesthouse and there were vacancies.
‘Good,’ said Bob. ‘I was hoping we could stay here. This is where my parents and my sister spent their honeymoons. It’s cheap but comfortable.’
Oh dear, I thought. Something else that everyone in the family has to do the same. Honeymoons. I didn’t really mind, though, because it was nice, and cost only three dollars a night.
I don’t remember much about the other attractions we saw but the Indian Pow-Wow was amazing. That evening, we boarded a boat that took us down the Wisconsin River. It ran between high craggy cliffs, and on the way, a guide pointed out various unusual rock formations. There was the high, chimney-shaped Stand Rock, separated from the cliff behind it by just a couple of yards or so. We learned that you could pay to see a dog jump from one to the other. It sounded dangerous, and one woman asked the guide if there was a safety net in case the dog didn’t make it. I don’t recall the guide’s answer, except that he ended up laughing and saying, ‘Well, they can always get another dog,’ which I thought was disgusting.
The boat tied up at a wooden landing, and we all filed off. It was now dusk and a guide led us down a dimly lit pathway between rocks and scrubby trees. Soon we entered a clearing and a new scene opened before us. We were in, I believe, a naturally formed, vaguely circular arena. In the centre, on a slightly raised area, the tepees were arranged in a semi-circle, with a blazing bonfire in the middle. Rows of benches for the audience circled the space. We crowded onto the seats and soon the show began. I’d always been a dreamer and was immediately drawn into this exhibition of America’s true history, its living history; it was not only colourful, but also beautiful and moving. Tears pricked my eyes as I listened to Indian folklore and learned what their dances and songs meant. I felt privileged to have come halfway around the world to witness this re-enactment of an old way of life. At that time, I was unaware of the other part of their history in which they had been slaughtered in their hundreds of thousands for the white man’s greed, but that is another story.
The next day, as we wandered around town, I recognized one of the Indians from the previous night’s show; he had been the narrator. He was now in ordinary clothes but accompanied by an older man in full Indian garb. We watched the first man get into what looked like a brand new Cadillac.
‘Do you think it’s his?’ I asked Bob.
‘I can’t think why not,’ he replied.
‘Where do you think he keeps it? I didn’t see anywhere to park cars at their camp last night.’
Bob laughed. ‘You don’t seriously think they live in those tents, do you? They all live in suburban houses now. They make tons of money entertaining people like us.’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘I thought it was real.’
The older man in his regalia, with an enormous feathered headdress, now stood alone close to where we had parked our car.
‘Do you think he’d let me have my picture taken with him?’ I asked Bob.
‘Well, there’s no harm in asking,’ he replied, and I surprised myself by going up to the man and asking his permission. The man nodded but said nothing. I stood as close to him as I dared and smiled, while Bob focused and took the picture. As I stepped away and started to thank him, he stuck out his hand for payment. My jaw dropped but Bob took a dollar bill out of his pocket and handed it to the Indian ‘chief’. ‘It was worth the dollar just to see your face,’ he said to me.
‘I’m such a gullible idiot,’ I said, and we laughed as my flushed red face began to fade back to normal.
Initially disappointed that I had not visited a real Indian encampment, I was still happy to have seen the show. At last I had seen a little of the America of the Technicolor movies, and I loved it.
After our few days alone, it was time to return to our own reality. I wasn’t looking forward to going back, but now, with renewed strength, I was ready to try again.
Once we were home, Bob and I began looking for an affordable apartment and what a nightmare that turned out to be. The only inexpensive places we found were in the run-down and slum areas of the city. I certainly didn’t fancy living like that. We finally settled on a two-room, third-floor walk-up apartment on Division Street on Chicago’s west side. It wasn’t the best neighbourhood in the world, but it wasn’t the worst either. The apartment was like something out of a B movie. It had a bed-sitting room complete with a pull-down Murphy bed concealed behind mirrored double doors, a small kitchen and a bathroom. When I wrote home, I told my parents that, besides the kitchen and bathroom, the apartment had a living room, dining room and library but unfortunately they were all in one room. They found that very funny, especially the Murphy bed, which they’d never heard of. I had to send them pictures of it both behind the door and pulled down, ready for business. That crazy bed turned out to be a source of great fun for my usually sensible husband: he was always folding me up in it to wake me in the mornings.
‘You bugger!’ I’d shout at him, and he’d laugh his head off. I tried to do the same to him, but he was too heavy for me to lift, worse luck. ‘If I ever get you up in that bloody bed,’ I told him, ‘I’m going to close the doors on you and leave you there until you beg for mercy.’
The apartment was on a busy main road, above shops that included a Jewish restaurant and a Polish delicatessen; the smells that drifted up from below made me feel more nauseous than ever. Next to those shops was the Adelphi Cinema, which added an even more B-movie atmosphere, with its marquee lights flashing on and off outside our window all night. I’d lie in bed, trying to get to sleep, but even though we pulled the window shades down, those flashing lights still crept in around the edges. Yes, I thought, I’m living in an American film now, but it was not the Technicolor one of my dreams. The good news was that this area felt far more European than the sprawling strip malls in the suburbs, or what I now thought of as ‘the wasteland’. I often wondered what all those other GI brides thought of America and if they were as disappointed in it as I was; I suppose it depended on where you went. Many years later, my old friend June Gradley (now Armstrong), who went to live in Vermont, said she loved it there because it was so green and mountainous; it sounded a lot different from Chicago.
Before we’d moved into the apartment, we’d had to scrub down all the walls from top to bottom: they were filthy with black soot. On the advice of Bob’s mother, we cleaned the torn and faded wallpaper with damp bread.
‘Hooray! At last I’ve found something worthwhile to do with your horrible American sliced bread,’ I told Bob.
‘We’ll probably be able to get some fresh baked in this neighbourhood. They’re bound to sell it at the bakery or the Jewish deli but maybe only pumpernickel or rye bread,’ he replied.
‘What the heck are they?’ I asked.
‘Oh, God, something else you probably won’t like.’ He laughed. ‘You might have to bake your own.’
That was a joke: I didn’t know how to fry an egg. Poor Bob, it would be his turn to eat things he couldn’t recognize once I started cooking.
We continued to scrub and scrape for days, but our sad little apartment hardly looked any different when we’d finished. The windows had been caked with dirt and we’d had to use razor blades to scrape off the encrusted grime.
‘Jeez, I thought I was moving up in the world but, so far, this is definitely a move down,’ I commented, to my poor husband. I immediately regretted what I’d said because he lost his usual smile.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
‘Don’t be. I was only joking,’ I told him, but I wasn’t.
At the time, we couldn’t afford to buy paint so, other than a coat of cheap whitewash in the closet where we were to hang our clothes, we were stuck with the ancient wallpaper and scuffed, peeling paint.
‘Too bad we can’t take off this wallpaper,’ I told Bob. ‘It might be worth something on the antiques market.’
We unpacked our bounty of wedding gifts and set up housekeeping. It was exciting to have my own home for the first time ever, even though it was a bit seedy. We no longer had to worry about upsetting anyone and could even invite people to visit.
I’ll never forget the first time the Irvines came for a meal.
‘I’ve asked the folks to supper next Sunday,’ Bob announced.
‘Oh, God, what am I going to feed them?’ I asked.
‘Don’t worry about it. I’m sure they’ll enjoy whatever you prepare. Just relax, and it’ll be fine.’
Hmm, I thought. Easy for him to say. At least they were coming for supper and not dinner: that meant I wouldn’t have to cook a big meal.
After much agonizing, I remembered the big fancy salads my posh aunt used to serve and thought I could manage something like that. I covered a large platter with fancy foil doilies, arranged lettuce leaves artistically around the edge, then layered all the other salad vegetables in decreasing circles, ending up with a vase of celery sticks in the middle, surrounded by radish rosettes. It looked beautiful. To go with the salad, there was a plate of sliced ham and cheese, and bread and butter. The family said how pretty it looked and then we dug in. After they’d finished with the salad, they all just sat there. I thought they were waiting for dessert and went to get the pie I had bought.
‘What’s the main course?’ enquired Bob, who had not had any input before and hadn’t seen what I was preparing.
‘What do you mean?’ I said.
‘You know, silly, the meat and potatoes.’
I stood there, stunned, looking from face to face.
‘Haven’t you cooked anything, honey?’ he asked.
‘No, of course I haven’t. You can’t have cooked meat and veg as well as salad. You have ham and cheese and bread with it.’
‘Don’t worry, Robert,’ said his mother. ‘We’ll just eat when we get home.’
What?
I disappeared into the bathroom, where I stayed until my embarrassment and nerves had settled down. When I came back, the family was on their way out of the door.
‘I’m sorry,’ I called after them, hoping they didn’t think I was a complete moron. How was I to know that Americans didn’t consider salad a proper Sunday-evening meal? It took me for ever to recover from that soul-destroying incident. All I could think was how my family would have laughed at what had happened; it was just another example of the Irvines’ lack of humour.
While we lived in that apartment, I had to take our washing to the laundromat down the street. I’d carry the heavy bag of wet clothes home, then hang them out on a line to dry. Attached to the railings on our open back porch, it ran across to the porch of another building. I’d have to lean over the railing, peg an article to the line, then carefully move it along by means of a pulley so that I could add the next item. The first time I saw lines of washing fluttering outside between old, soot-grimed buildings, I was reminded of the tenement blocks of flats I’d seen in the London slums. I’d always been glad that I’d never had to live like that in Britain. Now I wondered how I’d ended up living in just such conditions in bountiful America.
I used to swear when I dropped a clothes peg down all three floors of the building to the ground: I wasn’t about to go down all those stairs just to retrieve a peg. It was a different matter if I dropped an article of wet washing, though. I’d watch it sail down into the grimy courtyard, then reluctantly go down to rescue and rewash it. I almost cried if I dropped a sheet.
No, this was not the America I’d had in mind. It was no better than my home in England in fact, it was decidedly worse. I was determined to get a job so that we could afford a better place to live.
6: American Firsts Apartments, Job and Pregnancy
While we were still living with the Irvines, and before we found our own place, I had begun checking the newspapers in search of a job. I knew it would be difficult to find something suitable as I had only worked in shops, and I couldn’t do that in America because I didn’t understand the money well enough. I also needed a situation that would be no more than an easy bus ride away. Finally, I called an advertiser who was looking for someone to help care for her three children and made an appointment for an interview.
I took the short bus ride to their house. Mrs Joan Morris, the mother, and I hit it off right away. The Morrises were Jewish and, to me, appeared well off. I remember how impressed I was by their living-room sofa and armchairs: they were in white brocade trimmed with a heavy silk-bullion fringe. They were also sealed in clear plastic. I was fascinated. Were they new and still wrapped, or was the plastic intended to keep them clean? I do remember that they were uncomfortable to sit on and made rude noises when you sat down or stood up.
Mrs Morris was loud, animated and glamorous. She talked so fast my ears had a hard time keeping up with her mouth. We chatted over coffee for quite some time and then she told me I could have the job if I wanted it. I accepted and told her I could start the following week, just a few days away; I couldn’t begin immediately because we were moving into the apartment that weekend and she assured me that would be fine. However, that evening, at the Irvines, I took a telephone call from her, which scared me to death: I thought she’d changed her mind. Instead she told me that her husband might have a more suitable job for me and would like to talk to me as soon as possible. I was intrigued.
Mr Morris owned a business that sent salesmen out with hand-pushed or bicycle-propelled carts to sell ice cream in the parks and streets of Chicago. He needed help in the office and was willing to train me. I would earn more money and work more regular hours than I would if I worked for his wife. I couldn’t believe my luck when he hired me on the spot. ‘Glad to have you aboard, kid,’ he said, and from that day forward, he always called me ‘kid’ or referred to me as ‘the kid’, like John Wayne or Humphrey Bogart. The icing on the cake was that Happy Harry’s Ice Cream Company was based around the corner from our new apartment so I’d be able to walk to work. Who says there’s no such thing as miracles?
One of my jobs, at the end of each day, was to check the salesmen in, tally up the unsold products against sales and collect the money they had taken. Sometimes someone would not show up with his day’s takings and I soon learned that men with drinking problems often took these jobs. They would abandon the ice-cream cart, make off with the money and find the nearest bar. On those occasions, Happy Harry became Unhappy Harry. It would take hours to find the abandoned vehicle and its now ruined contents, to say nothing of the lost income.
I kept records of the amount of money taken on each vending route, especially the parks. It seemed that Happy Harry’s had the sole concession to sell ice cream in Chicago’s city parks, which apparently was a very big deal. There were much larger ice-cream companies, such as Good Humor, which might have expected to be granted the park concessions, but in those days, it was definitely whom you knew that determined how contracts were handed out. Apparently, Harry was a good friend of the parks commissioner and money changed hands regularly between them. I had to work out the percentage of income from all park sales, of which ten per cent went directly to the parks commissioner. In fact I kept two sets of books: we did not report the correct gross
amount to him, thereby cheating the cheat out of some of his kickback.
Later, after I’d left that job, Mr Morris phoned me. He instructed me that if anyone ever contacted me to ask how I had kept his records, I should tell them that I had never altered any of the figures, that we did not keep two sets of books, and that we always reported honestly and accurately. Who knows what might have happened had my employer or I been found out? Fortunately, no one ever approached me for information. I learned that, in those days, most things were run that way in Chicago’s political ‘Machine’. In later years I was to learn how different Chicago politics were. On Election Day, or on the days leading up to it, people would come to your door and offer money, bottles of whiskey or boxes of chocolates to swing your vote their way. They would drive you to the polls too. The Machine was powerful.
While I worked for the Morrises, who now insisted that I call them by their first names, Harry would often say, ‘How about some lunch, kid?’ Sometimes I went with him. Occasionally the parks commissioner joined us and I listened to their conversations. I’m sure they thought I was too naive to understand their business relationship, but I had my suspicions. I knew the commissioner was receiving kickbacks from the ice-cream business, but when he and Harry whispered behind their hands, I wondered if more shady deals might be going on. I once overheard something about a shipment of condoms that had come into the commissioner’s possession the pair discussed how much they could make selling them by the gross. Weird.
Harry and Joan treated me with great kindness, and Joan and I became friends, which was a good thing because I had realized I was pregnant and had no idea what to do about it. Joan, who was expecting her fourth child I can’t remember ever seeing her when she wasn’t pregnant insisted on taking me to her obstetrician.
My first visit to him was traumatic. I had never had a pelvic examination before and found it embarrassing and uncomfortable. I couldn’t believe that I had to lie on an examination table, skirt up, panties off, so that this stranger could insert his rubber-gloved fingers inside me. I couldn’t stop shaking: with my feet in stirrups and legs apart, my knees flapped up and down, like a bird’s broken wings. I couldn’t control them.
The GI Bride Page 5
