Blonde

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Yet Norma Jeane could remember her father leaning over her crib. It was a white wicker crib with pink ribbons. Gladys had pointed it out to her in a store window: “See that? You had one just like it when you were a baby. Remember?” Norma Jeane had shaken her head silently; no, she hadn’t remembered. But later it came to her in a kind of dream, daydreaming at school, risking being scolded as often she was (in this new school in Hollywood, where nobody liked her), that she did remember the crib, but mostly she remembered her father leaning over her and smiling, and Gladys beside him leaning on his arm. Her father’s face was full and strong-boned and handsome and inclined to gentle irony, a face like Clark Gable’s, and his thick dark hair lifted from his forehead in a widow’s peak, like Clark Gable’s. He had a thin, elegant mustache, and his voice was a deep, rich baritone, and he’d promised her I love you, Norma Jeane, and one day I will return to Los Angeles to claim you. Kissing her then lightly on the forehead. And Gladys, her smiling loving mother, looking on.

  So vivid in her memory!

  So much more “real” than what surrounded her.

  Norma Jeane blurted out, “W-was he here? Father? All this time? Why didn’t he come to see us? Why aren’t we with him now?”

  Gladys didn’t seem to hear. Gladys was losing her incandescent energy. She was perspiring inside the kimono and gave off a powerful odor. And there was something wrong with the car’s headlights: the beams had weakened, or the outer glass was coated with grime. The windshield, too, was covered in a fine ashy film. Hot winds buffeted the car, snaky spirals of dust flew past. North of the city, massed clouds were turbulent with a flamey light. Everywhere was a sharp acrid smell of burning: burning hair, burning sugar, burning rot, decayed vegetation, garbage. She was close to screaming. She could not bear it!

  It was then that Norma Jeane repeated her questions in a louder voice, an anxious childish voice of the timbre she should have known her distraught mother could not bear. Asking where her father was? Had he been living so close to them all along? But why—

  “You! Shut up!” Quick as a rattlesnake Gladys’s hand leapt from the steering wheel, a sharp backhand blow to Norma Jeane’s feverish face. Norma Jeane whimpered and hunched in a corner of the seat, drawing her knees up to her chest.

  At the foot of Laurel Canyon Drive there was a detour, and when Gladys followed this detour for several blocks she came to a second detour, and when at last, indignant, sobbing to herself, she came to a larger street, she didn’t recognize it, didn’t know whether this was Sunset Boulevard and, if so, where on the Boulevard; which way should she turn to get to Highland Avenue? It was 2 A.M. of an unknown night. A desperate night. A crying sniveling child beside her. She was thirty-four years old. No man would ever again look at her with longing. She’d given her youth to The Studio, and now what a cruel reward! Driving out into the intersection, rivulets of sweat on her face, looking from left to right to left—“Oh, God, which way is home?”

  2

  Once upon a time. At the sandy edge of the great Pacific Ocean.

  There was a village, a place of mystery. Where the light was golden upon the sea surface. Where the sky was inky-black at night winking with stars. Where the wind was warm and gentle as a caress.

  Where a little girl came to a Walled Garden! The wall was made of rock and was twenty feet high and covered in beautiful flaming-red bougainvillea. From inside the Walled Garden came the sound of birds singing, and music, and a fountain! And voices of unknown persons, and laughter.

  Never can you climb over this wall, you’re not strong enough; girls aren’t strong enough; girls aren’t big enough; your body is fragile and breakable, like a doll; your body is a doll; your body is for others to admire and to pet; your body is to be used by others, not used by you; your body is a luscious fruit for others to bite into and to savor; your body is for others, not for you.

  The little girl began to cry! The little girl’s heart was broken.

  Then came her fairy godmother to tell her: There’s a secret way into the Walled Garden!

  There’s a hidden door in the wall, but you must wait like a good little girl for this door to be opened. You must wait patiently, and you must wait quietly. You must not knock on the door like a naughty boy. You must not shout or cry. You must win over the doorkeeper—an old, ugly, green-skinned gnome. You must make the doorkeeper take notice of you. You must make the doorkeeper admire you. You must make the doorkeeper desire you. And then he will love you and will do your bidding. Smile! Smile, and be happy! Smile, and take off your clothes! For your Magic Friend in the mirror will help you. For your Magic Friend in the mirror is very special. The old, ugly, green-skinned gnome will fall in love with you, and the hidden door in the Walled Garden will swing open for you, only for you, and you will step inside laughing with happiness; inside the Walled Garden will be gorgeous blossoming roses, and hummingbirds and tanagers, and music and a splashing fountain, and your eyes will widen with wonders, for the old, ugly, green-skinned gnome was really a prince under an evil enchantment, and he will kneel before you and ask for your hand in marriage, and you will live with him happily forever in his Garden kingdom; never will you be a lonely, unhappy little girl again.

  So long as you remain with your Prince in the Walled Garden.

  3

  “Norma Je-ane? Come home now.”

  The summer before, there was Grandma Della calling Norma Jeane often, too often, from the front step of her apartment building. Cupping her hands to her mouth and practically bellowing. The old woman seemed to be worrying more and more about her little granddaughter as if she knew a truth rushing at them no one else knew.

  But I hid away. I was a bad girl. The last time Grandma called me.

  It was like any other day. Almost. Norma Jeane was playing with two little girlfriends on the beach; and there came, out of the sky like a swooping bird, that voice—“Norma Jeane! NORMA JE-ANE!” The two little girls looked at Norma Jeane and giggled, feeling sorry for her maybe. Norma Jeane thrust out her lower lip, and continued digging in the sand. I won’t! Can’t make me.

  In the neighborhood, Della Monroe, a Tugboat Annie character, was known by all. A familiar sight in the Christian Church Reborn, where (onlookers swore!) her bifocal glasses steamed when she sang. And afterward how shamelessly Della would push Norma Jeane forward, ahead of others, so that the youngish blond minister could admire Norma Jeane in her Shirley Temple curls and prissy Sunday dress, as invariably he did. Smiling, “God has blessed you, Della Monroe! You must be real grateful to him.”

  Della laughed and sighed. She wasn’t one to accept even a heartfelt compliment without giving it a sly twist. “I am. If not Norma Jeane’s momma.”

  Grandma Della didn’t believe in spoiling children. She did believe in putting them to work at a young age, as she’d worked, herself, all her life. Now her husband had died and his pension was “measly”—“small potatoes”—Della continued to work. “No rest for the wicked!” She did specialty ironing for an Ocean Avenue laundry and specialty sewing for a local seamstress and, when she couldn’t avoid it, she watched babies in her apartment: she coped. She’d been born on the frontier and was no silly fainting lily like some of these ridiculous females in the movies and like her own neurotic daughter. Oh, Della Monroe hated “America’s Sweetheart” Mary Pickford! She’d long supported the nineteenth amendment giving women the right to vote and had voted in every election since fall 1920. She was shrewd, sharp-tongued, and quick-tempered; though hating movies on principle because they were phony as a plugged nickel, she admired James Cagney in The Public Enemy, which she’d seen three times—that tough little bantam quick to strike out against his enemies but accepting of his fate, to be wrapped in bandages like a mummy and dumped on a doorstep, once he knew his number was up. The same way she admired killer-boy “Little Caesar,” Edward G. Robinson, talking crooked out of his girl mouth. These were men enough to accept death when their number was up.

  When your number’
s up, it’s up. Grandma Della seemed to think this was a cheerful fact.

  Sometimes after Norma Jeane had been working with Della all morning, cleaning the apartment, washing and drying dishes, Della took her on a special outing to feed wild birds. Norma Jeane’s happiest time! She and Grandma scattered bits of bread on the sandy soil of a vacant lot and stood watching from a short distance as the birds flew in, cautious yet hungry, a flurry of wings, quick darting little beaks. Pigeons, mourning doves, orioles, noisy scrub jays. Clusters of black-capped sparrows. And in the bushes, hovering amid trumpet vine, hummingbirds no bigger than bumblebees. Della identified the tiny bird as one that had the ability to fly backward and sideways, unlike any other bird, a “tricky little devil” that was almost tame but wouldn’t eat bread crumbs or seeds. Norma Jeane was fascinated by these iridescent crimson-and green-feathered birds that glittered like metal in the sun, beating their wings so rapidly you saw only a blur; sticking long needle-thin beaks into tubular flowers to suck out nourishment, hovering in the air. Then darting away so swiftly! “Oh, Grandma, where do they go?”

  Grandma Della shrugged. The mood of being grandma and humoring a lonely child had passed. “Who knows? Where birds go.”

  It would be commented on, after her death, that Della Monroe had aged since her husband’s passing. Though when he’d been alive, she’d complained of him to anyone who would listen: his drinking, “bad lungs,” “bad habits.” Heavy as Della was, her face flushed with high blood pressure, she hadn’t taken sensible care of her health.

  Like a windblown sail swinging around the neighborhood looking for her granddaughter. No sooner letting Norma Jeane out to play than she wanted her back indoors. Saying she was saving the little girl from the mother—“That one, that broke her own mother’s heart.”

  That August afternoon, blinding sun and heat and no one was out except a few children behind the apartment building. Grandma Della had a sudden premonition something was going to happen, something bad, so she ventured out into the heat calling, “Norma Jeane! Norma Je-ane!” in that way of hers like the butcher’s cleaver striking, one-two-three, one-two-three, calling from the front walk, and calling from the alley beside the building, and calling from the vacant lot, and Norma Jeane and her girlfriends ran away giggling to hide and I didn’t answer, she couldn’t make me! Though Norma Jeane loved her grandmother, who was the only living person who truly loved her, the only living person who loved her without wishing to hurt her, only just to protect her. Except neighborhood boys said of Della Monroe, That fat old elephant! and Norma Jeane, hearing, was ashamed.

  So Norma Jeane hid. Then, after a while, not hearing Della calling her, she decided she’d better go home after all; came up from the beach looking like a wild girl, blood pounding in her ears, and an old woman Grandma’s age scolded You! Your grandma’s been calling you, miss! Norma Jeane hurried inside the building and ran up the stairs to the third floor, as so many times she’d done, yet knowing this time would be different, for how quiet everything was, that stillness in movies before a surprise, and so often a surprise that made you scream, that you couldn’t prepare for. Oh, look!—Grandma’s apartment door was open. Which was wrong. Norma Jeane knew it was wrong. And inside, Norma Jeane knew what she would find.

  For Grandma had fallen before, when I was home. Losing her balance, suddenly dizzy. I’d find her on the kitchen floor dazed and moaning and breathing hard not knowing what had happened and I’d help her up, she’d sit in a chair, and I’d bring her her pills and a cloth with ice chips wrapped inside to press against her face that was so hot and it was scary but after a while she’d laugh, and I knew it was all right.

  Except this time when it wasn’t. When her grandmother was lying on the bathroom floor, a sweating bulk of a body wedged between the tub and the toilet, both scrubbed clean that morning, the smell of cleanser a rebuke to human weakness, there was Grandma Della on her side like a beached fish, face huge and mottled-red, eyes partly open and unfocused and her breath wheezing. “Grandma! Grandma!” It was a movie scene and yet it was real.

  Grandma Della reached blindly for Norma Jeane’s hand as if wanting to be pulled up. She was making a choked guttural sound, at first unintelligible. Not angry and not scolding. Oh, this was wrong! Norma Jeane knew. She knelt beside her grandmother, smelling that odor of sickly doomed flesh, of sweat and intestinal gas and bowels, recognizing it immediately, the odor of death, and she was crying, “Grandma, don’t die!” even as the stricken woman gripped Norma Jeane’s hand in a spasm that nearly cracked her fingers, managing to say, each word labored and percussive as a nail driven with tremendous force, “God bless you child I love you.”

  4

  It was my fault! My fault Grandma died.

  Don’t be ridiculous. It was nobody’s fault.

  I wouldn’t come when she called me! I was bad.

  Look, it was God’s fault. Now go back to sleep.

  Mother, can she hear us? Can Grandma hear us?

  Christ, I hope not!

  It’s my fault what happened to Grandma. Oh, Mommy—

  I am not Mommy, you disgusting little idiot! Her number came up, is all.

  Using her pointy elbows to fend off the child. Not wanting to slap her because not wanting to use her chapped, reddened hands.

  (Gladys’s hands! She had a terror the cancer had seeped into her bones, from the chemicals.)

  And don’t touch me, damn you. You know I can’t bear it.

  An uneasy time for those born under the sign of Gemini. The tragic twins.

  When the call came for Gladys Mortensen in the negative-cutting lab she’d had to be led haltingly to the phone, she was so frightened. Her supervisor, Mr. X—who’d once been in love with her; yes, he’d pleaded with her to marry him, he’d have left his family for her when she’d been his assistant in ’29 before she’d been demoted by illness not her fault—handed her the receiver in silence. The rubbery cord was twisted as a snake. The thing was alive but Gladys stoically refused to acknowledge it. Her eyes were watering from the virulent chemicals with which she’d been working (on a work detail that should have gone to another, lower-ranked employee of the lab, but Gladys refused to give Mr. X the satisfaction of complaining) and there was a faint roaring in her ears as of movie voices murmuring Now! now! now! now!—and this, too, she ignored. She’d become adept, since the age of twenty-six, when the last of her girl babies was born, at ignoring, filtering out, the numerous intrusive voices in her head that she knew were not-real; but sometimes she was tired, and a voice protruded, like a radio station suddenly beamed in loud. She would have said, had she been asked, that this “emergency call” was about her daughter Norma Jeane. (The other two daughters, living in Kentucky with their father, had disappeared from her life. The father had simply taken them. He’d said she was a “sick woman,” and maybe that was so.) Something has happened to. Your child. So sorry. It was an accident. Instead, the news was of Gladys’s mother! Della! Della Monroe! Something has happened to. Your mother. So sorry. Can you come as quickly as possible?

  Gladys let the receiver fall to the end of its snaky twisty cord. Mr. X had to catch her, to prevent her fainting.

  My God, she’d forgotten about Della. Her own mother, Della Monroe. She’d allowed Della to become vulnerable to harm, having pushed her out of her thoughts. Della Monroe, born under the sign of Taurus. (Gladys’s father had died the previous winter. Gladys had been sick at the time with one of her violent migraines and hadn’t been able to attend the funeral, or even get to Venice Beach to see her mother. Somehow, she’d managed to forget Monroe, her father, reasoning that Della would mourn for them both. And if Della was disgusted with her, that would help Della not-think about being a widow. “My poor father died in the Argonne. Gassed in the Argonne,” Gladys had been telling friends for years. “I never knew the man really.”) Gladys hadn’t been able to love Della in recent years, loving was exhausting and required too much strength, but she’d assumed that Della, being D
ella, would outlive her. Della would outlive the orphan daughter Norma Jeane who was her charge. Gladys hadn’t loved Della because she was frightened of the old woman’s judgment. An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. No mother can abandon her babies without being required to pay. Or, if she’d loved Della, it was a squabbling sort of love inadequate to protect her mother from harm.

  For that is what love is. A protection from harm.

  If there is harm, there was inadequate love.

  The child Norma Jeane, whom it was difficult not to blame, who’d found her grandmother dying on the floor, hadn’t been harmed at all.