Blonde

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Yet now, this day, a weekday in mid-September, she’d felt a strange dull ache in the pit of her belly in gym class, in her middy blouse and bloomers playing volleyball—Norma Jeane was one of the bigger girls among the seventh-graders, one of the better athletes, if sometimes hesitant and clumsy out of shyness, fumbling the ball so the others grew impatient with her, you couldn’t rely upon Norma Jeane, and how hard she tried to refute this judgment, with what determination—yet this afternoon in the muggy heat of the gym she’d dropped the volleyball as a hot liquid seeped into the crotch of her panties; she was dazed with a sudden headache and afterward, changing into her slip, blouse, jumper in the locker room, she was determined to ignore it, whatever it was; she was shocked, insulted; this was not happening to her.

  “Norma Jeane, what’s wrong?”

  “What? Nothing is wrong.”

  “You’re looking kind of”—the girl meant to smile, meant to be sympathetic, yet it came out pushy, coercive—“sick.”

  “Nothing is wrong with me, is something wrong with you?”

  She’d left the locker room trembling with indignation. Shame, shame! But in God there is no shame.

  Hurrying home from school, avoiding her friends. Where usually she walked with a small gang of girls, prominent among them Fleece and Debra Mae, today she made certain she was alone, walking in quick tight steps with thighs pressed together, a kind of duckwalk, the crotch of her panties was damp but the hot seeping in her loins seemed to have stopped she’d willed it to stop! refused to give in! her eyes lowered to the sidewalk, not-hearing the whistles and calls of the boys, high school boys and others even older, in their twenties, cruising El Centro Avenue. “Nor-ma Jeane, that your name, honey? Hey, Nor-ma Jeane!” Wishing her jumper hadn’t grown so tight. Vowing she would lose weight. Five pounds! Never would she be fat like certain of the girls in her class, never heavy like Dr. Mittelstadt but flesh is not real, Norma Jeane. Matter is not mind and only mind is God.

  When Dr. Mittelstadt carefully explained this truth to her, she understood. When she read Mrs. Eddy’s book, especially the chapter called “Prayer,” she halfway understood. But when she was alone, her thoughts were confused as a jigsaw puzzle knocked to the floor. There was order there, but—how to find it?

  Now, this afternoon, the thoughts inside her skull, how like a cascade of shattered flying glass. What ordinary unenlightened people called a headache was but an illusion, a weakness; yet by the time Norma Jeane walked nine blocks from Hurst Junior High to the orphanage, her head pounded so terribly she could barely see.

  Craving an aspirin. Just one aspirin.

  The nurse in the infirmary routinely gave out aspirins if you were sick. When girls had their “periods.”

  But Norma Jeane vowed she would not give in.

  It was a test of her faith, a trial. Had not Jesus Christ said, Your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him?

  She recalled with disgust how her mother had broken up aspirins to put into fruit juice when Norma Jeane was just a little girl. And out of her unmarked bootleg bottle a teaspoon or two of “medicinal water”—vodka, it must have been—into Norma Jeane’s glass. When she was a child of three—or younger!—too small to defend herself against such poison. Drugs, drink. The way of Christian Science was to repudiate all unclean habits. One day she would denounce Gladys for such cruel practices against an unknowing child. She wanted to poison me as she poisoned herself. I will never take drugs and I will never ever drink.

  At supper faint with hunger yet sickened when she tried to eat, macaroni and clotted cheese, scorch scrapings from the baking pan, all she could force herself to eat was doughy white bread slowly chewed and slowly swallowed. And clearing the table afterward she nearly dropped a tray laden with dishes and cutlery, saved only by a girl rushing to support it. And in the stifling kitchen scouring pots and the grease griddle under the frowning eye of the cook, of all work duties the most disgusting, bad as scrubbing toilets. For ten cents a week.

  Shame, shame! But ye shall triumph over shame.

  When at last she would be released from the orphanage, placed with a foster family in Van Nuys, in November of that year, 1938, she would have saved $20.60 in her “account.” As a going-away gift, Edith Mittelstadt would double this sum. “Remember us with kindness, Norma Jeane.”

  Sometimes yes, more often no. One day she would compose the story of her own orphan life. Her pride wasn’t to be purchased so cheaply.

  Truly I had no pride! And no shame! Grateful for any kind word or any guy’s stare. My young body so strange to me like a bulb in the earth swelling to burst. For certainly she was well aware of her chubby growing breasts and the widening of her thighs, hips, “ass”—as that part of the anatomy, when female, was called with approval and a kind of jocular affection. What a sweet ass. Look at that sweet ass. Oh, baby baby! Who’s she? Jailbait. Frightened of such changes in her body, for should Gladys know, Gladys would be disdainful; Gladys who was so slender and svelte, Gladys who most admired slender “feminine” film stars like Norma Talmadge, Greta Garbo, the young Joan Crawford and Gloria Swanson, not fleshy-chunky females like Mae West, Mae Murray, Margaret Dumont. Since she hadn’t seen Norma Jeane for so long, surely Gladys would disapprove of her having grown.

  It didn’t occur to Norma Jeane to wonder what Gladys looked like after years of incarceration at the Norwalk hospital.

  Since her letter refusing to sign adoption papers for Norma Jeane, Gladys hadn’t written again. Nor had Norma Jeane written to her, except to send, as usual, Christmas and birthday cards. (And receive nothing in return! But as Christ has taught, it is better to give than to receive.)

  Norma Jeane, normally so docile and unassertive, shocked Edith Mittelstadt with her angry tears. Why was her nasty mother, her sick mother, her nasty sick crazy mother allowed to ruin her life? Why was the law so stupid, keeping her under the thumb of a woman in a mental hospital who would most likely never get out? It was unfair, it was unjust, it was only because Gladys was jealous of Mr. and Mrs. Mount, and hated her. “And after I prayed,” Norma Jeane sobbed. “I did like you told me and prayed and prayed.”

  Here, Dr. Mittelstadt spoke severely to Norma Jeane, as she might have spoken to any orphan in her charge. Reprimanding her for “blind, selfish” emotion; for failing to see, as Science and Health made clear, that prayer cannot change the Science of being, only bring us into better harmony with it.

  Then what good, Norma Jeane silently fumed, was prayer?

  “I know you’re disappointed, Norma Jeane, and very hurt,” Edith Mittelstadt said, sighing. “I’m disappointed myself. The Mounts are such good people—good Christians, if not Scientists—and so very fond of you. But your mother, you see, is still clouded in her mind. She is a distinctly ‘modern’ type—the ‘neurotic’—she is sick because she makes herself sick with negative thoughts. You are free to cast off such thoughts and should give thanks to God every minute of your precious life that you are.”

  She had no need for that shitty God, his blessing or his curse.

  Yet swiping at her eyes, childlike in emotion, nodding as Dr. Mittelstadt spoke persuasively. Yes! It was so.

  The director’s forceful yet warm voice. Searching gaze. Her soul shining in her eyes. You scarcely noticed that her face was so slack and creased and worn; close up, though, you saw liver spots on her flaccid arms, which she made no attempt to hide with sleeves or makeup as another woman might have done out of vanity; wiry hairs bristled at her chin. With movie eyes Norma Jeane saw these startling imperfections. For, in movie logic, aesthetics has the authority of ethics: to be less than beautiful is sad, but to be willfully less than beautiful is immoral. Seeing Dr. Mittelstadt, Gladys would have winced. Gladys would have jeered at her behind her back—and what a broad back it was, in navy blue serge. But Norma Jeane admired Dr. Mittelstadt. She’s strong. She doesn’t care what other people think. Why should she?

  Dr. Mittelstadt was saying, “I was
misled too. The staff at Norwalk misled me. Perhaps it was no one’s fault. But, Norma Jeane, we can place you in an excellent foster home; we don’t need your mother’s permission for that. I will find a Science home for you, dear; I promise.”

  Any home. Any home at all.

  Norma Jeane murmured softly, “Thank you, Dr. Mittelstadt.”

  Wiping her reddened eyes with a tissue the woman offered her. She’d become physically smaller, it seemed; docile again, with her child’s posture and voice. Dr. Mittelstadt said, “By Christmas of this year, Norma Jeane! With God’s help, I promise.”

  Basking again in the knowledge it could hardly be a coincidence that Mary Baker Eddy’s middle name was Baker, and Norma Jeane Baker’s last name was Baker.

  In a reference book at school Norma Jeane looked up MARY BAKER EDDY and learned that the founder of the Christian Science Church was born in 1821 and died in 1910. Not in California, but that wouldn’t matter: people traveled across the continent by train and airplane all the time. Gladys’s first husband “Baker” was a man who’d traveled out of Gladys’s life, and it was possible—probable?—that he was related to Mrs. Eddy, for why would Mrs. Eddy have the middle name “Baker” unless she, too, was a Baker in some respect?

  In God’s universe, as in any jigsaw puzzle, there are no coincidences.

  My grandmother was Mary Baker Eddy.

  My step-grandmother I mean.

  Because my mother married Mrs. Eddy’s son.

  He was not my actual “father” but adopted me.

  Mary Baker Eddy was my stepfather’s mother

  and my mother’s stepmother-in-law

  but she didn’t know Mrs. Eddy.

  Personally I mean.

  I never knew Mrs. Eddy

  who is the founder of the

  Christian Science Church.

  She died in 1910.

  I was born on June 1, 1926.

  This fact I know.

  Shrinking from the older boys’ eyes. So many eyes! And always waiting. The junior high school was adjacent to the senior high and now going to school was nothing like it had been in sixth grade.

  Norma Jeane hid in the midst of other girls. That was the only way. In her blue jumper tight at the bust and hips. Riding up her hips so the hem was crooked. What if her slip showed? You had to wear a slip, and the straps got twisted and soiled. Underarms had to be washed twice a day. And sometimes that wasn’t enough. The joke at school was orphans stink! and a guy pinching his nose shut making a face was assured always of a laugh.

  Even kids from the orphanage laughed. The ones knowing it didn’t apply to them.

  Nasty jokes about girls. Their special smell. The curse. Blood curse. She would not think of it, no one could force her to think of it.

  For weeks she’d postponed asking the matron for a next-larger-size jumper because the woman would make a snide comment as usual. Gonna be a big girl, eh? Runs in the family I bet.

  You went to the nurse in the infirmary for “sanitary napkins.” All the older girls went. But Norma Jeane would not go. No more than she would beg for aspirin. Such measures did not apply to her.

  One thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, now I see.

  These words from the New Testament, the Gospel According to John, Norma Jeane whispered often to herself. As Dr. Mittelstadt in the privacy of her office had first read to her of the healing of the blind man by Jesus which was so simple. Jesus spat on the ground, and made clay of the spittle, and he anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay, and the blind man’s eyes were opened. So simple. If you have faith.

  God is Mind. The Mind alone heals. If you have faith, all will be granted you.

  Yet—she would never tell Dr. Mittelstadt this, or even her girlfriends!—there was a daydream she loved, a daydream that played continuously in her head like a film that never ceases, of tearing off her clothes to be seen. In church, in the dining hall, at school, on El Centro Avenue with its noisy traffic. Look at me, look at me, look at me!

  Her Magic Friend was not fearful. Only Norma Jeane was fearful.

  Her Friend-in-the-Mirror who pirouetted in nakedness, did the hula, wiggled her hips and breasts, smiled smiled smiled, exulted in nakedness before God as a snake exults in its sinuous glittery skin.

  For I would be less lonely then. Even if you all reviled me.

  You could look nowhere except at ME.

  “Hey, look at Mouse. Pret-ty.”

  One of them had found a compact with loose fragrant peach-colored powder inside and a badly soiled powder puff. Another had found a lipstick, bright coral pink. Such precious items were “found” at school or in Wool-worth’s, wherever you were lucky. Cosmetics were forbidden at the Home for girls younger than sixteen, but these girls hid away to dab powder on their scrubbed-shiny faces and apply lipstick to their mouths. There was Norma Jeane staring at her face in the clouded compact mirror. Feeling a stab of guilt, or was it excitement, sharp as pain between the legs. Not that hers was the only pretty face, but it was her face that was pretty.

  The girls teased her. She blushed, hating to be teased. Well, she loved to be teased. But this was something new, something scary of which she was uncertain. She said, surprising her friends, for it wasn’t like Mouse to be so angry, “I hate it. I hate how phony it is. I hate the taste.” Pushing the compact away and rubbing the bright coral color off her mouth.

  Though the waxy-sweet taste would linger, hours through the night.

  Prayed, prayed, prayed, prayed. For the pain behind her eyes and the pain between her legs to cease. For the bleeding (if it was bleeding) to cease. Refused to lie down on her bed because it wasn’t time for bed yet, because that would be giving in. Because the other girls would guess. Because they would claim her as one of their own. Because she was not one of them. Because she had faith, and faith was all she had. Because she must do homework. So much homework! And she was a slow hesitant student. She smiled in fear even when she was alone and there was no teacher to placate.

  Now she was in seventh grade. Taking math. Homework was a nest of knots to be untied. But if you untied one, there was another; if you untied that, there was another. And each of the problems was harder than the problem before. “God damn.” Gladys had torn at a knot that wouldn’t untie, she’d taken a scissors to the string and snip! snip! Like combing snarls out of her little girl’s hair, God damn it’s easier sometimes just to get the scissors and snip!

  Only twenty minutes before lights out at nine! Oh, she was anxious. After she’d finished with kitchen cleanup, nasty greasy pans, she’d hidden in a toilet stall and stuffed toilet paper into her panties without looking. But now the toilet paper was soaked with what she refused to identify as blood. Sticking a finger in she’d never do! Oh, that was disgusting. Fleece, reckless and show-offy, obnoxious Fleece in a stairwell as boys thundered downward, backed into a corner to stick her finger up inside her skirt and into her panties—“Hey, Abbott!” Seeing her period was started. Fleece held up her finger glistening red at the top so that the other girls could see, scandalized and laughing. Norma Jeane had shut her eyes, feeling faint.

  But I am not Fleece.

  I am none of you.

  In secret Norma Jeane often crept into the lavatory in the middle of the night. The other girls in the dorm sleeping. It thrilled her to be awake at such a time. Awake and alone at such a time. As years ago Gladys, too, would prowl the night like a big restless cat unable or unwilling to sleep. Cigarette in hand, and maybe a drink, and often she’d end up on the phone. It was a movie scene comprehended through the cotton batting of a child’s sleep. Hey: h’lo. Thinking of me? Yeah, sure. Yeah? Wanna do something about that? Uh-huh. Where there’s a will there’s a way. But Baby makes three, know what I mean? At such times the dingy foul-smelling lavatory was a place of excitement like a theater before the lights darken, the curtains part, and the movie begins, if Norma Jeane believed herself safely alone. Removing her nightgown, as capes, cloaks, clinging garments a
re removed in movies, and a subtle pulsing movie music beneath as her Magic Friend is revealed, as if hiding inside the drab garment only just waiting to be revealed. This girl-who-was-Norma-Jeane yet not-Norma-Jeane but a stranger. A girl so much more special than Norma Jeane could ever be.

  The surprise of it was, where once she’d been thin-armed and her breasts tiny and flat as a boy’s, now she was “filling out,” as it was called with approval, hard little breasts getting larger by quick degrees, bouncier, and the creamy-pale skin so strangely soft. In her cupped hands she held both her breasts, staring and marveling: how amazing, the nipples and the soft brown flesh about the nipples; the way the nipples turned hard, like goose bumps; and how peculiar it was that boys, too, had nipples; not breasts but nipples (which they would never use, for only a woman could nurse); and Norma Jeane knew (too many times she’d been forced to see!) that boys had penises—“things,” they were called, “cocks,” “pricks”—ropy little sausages between their legs, and this made them boys, and important, as girls could not be important; and hadn’t she been made to see (but this was a cloudy memory, she couldn’t trust it) the fat turgid moistly hot “things” of adult men who were friends of Gladys’s long ago?

  Want to touch it, sweetheart? It won’t bite.

  “Norma Jeane? Hey.”

  It was Debra Mae, poking her in the ribs. Where she was hunched awkwardly forward onto the scarred tabletop panting through her mouth. Possibly she’d passed out, but only for a minute. The pain she didn’t feel and the hot seeping of blood that wasn’t hers. Feebly she pushed the girl’s hand away but Debra Mae said sharply, “Hey, are you crazy? You’re bleeding, don’tcha know it? All on the chair here, Je-sus.”

  Blushing with shame, Norma Jeane struggled to her feet. Her math homework fell to the floor. “Go away. Leave me alone.”

  Debra Mae said, “Look, it’s real. Cramps are real. Your period is real. Blood is real.”

  Norma Jeane stumbled from the study room, her vision blinded, blotched. A trickle of liquid ran down the inside of her leg. She’d been praying and gnawing her lower lip and she was determined not to give in. Not to be touched and not to be pitied. Behind her, she heard voices. Hid in a stairwell. Hid in a closet. Hid in a stall in the lavatory. Climbed out a window when no one was watching. Crawling on hands and knees to the peak of the roof. The night sky opening ridged with cloud, and a pale quarter-moon beyond, and the fresh cool air, and miles away the RKO lights flashing. Mind is the only Truth. God is Mind. God is Love. Divine Love has always met and always will meet every human need. Was someone calling her name? She didn’t hear. She was suffused with certitude and joy. She was strong, and she would be stronger. Knowing she had the power in her to withstand all pain and fear. Knowing she was blessed, Divine Love flooding her heart.