Blonde

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Elsie felt the rush in the pit of her belly. “How can I send her away?” she said aloud. “We’ll never get another one like her.”

  When all the laundry was hanging on the lines by about 10:30 A.M., Elsie sent Norma Jeane off to Van Nuys High with an excuse for her tardiness to take to the principal.

  Please excuse my daughter Norma Jeane, she was required by her mother to drive with me to a Doctors appointment I did not feel strong enough to drive both ways by myself.

  It was a new, original excuse, one Elsie had never used before. She didn’t want to overuse Norma Jeane’s health problems; somebody at the high school might get nosy if Norma Jeane stayed out too frequently with what Elsie described as migran headache or bad cramps. (The headache and cramps were legitimate much of the time. Poor Norma Jeane really suffered from her period such as Elsie hadn’t ever suffered at that age—or any age. Should take her to a doctor probably. If she’d go. Lying upstairs on her bed or downstairs on the wicker sofa to be closer to Elsie, gasping and moaning and sometimes crying softly, poor kid, a hot-water bottle on her belly (which it seemed Christian Science allowed) but, unknown to Norma Jeane, Elsie ground up aspirin in orange juice for her, as much aspirin as she could get away with, poor sweet dumb kid talked into believing medicine was “unnatural” and Jesus would “heal” you if you had enough faith. Sure, like Jesus would cure your cancer, or grow you a new leg if the old one was blown off, or restore perfect vision to an eye with retina damage like Warren’s. Like Jesus would make amends for the maimed children in Life, victims of Hitler’s Luftwaffe!)

  So Norma Jeane went off to school while the laundry dried on the line. Not much breeze but a hot dry sun. It never ceased to amaze Elsie that as soon as Norma Jeane was finished with household chores one of her boyfriends would show up at the curb in his car, tap the horn, and off trotted Norma Jeane all smiles and bouncy curls. How did this guy in the rattletrap jalopy (looking older than high school age, Elsie thought, peering through the front blinds) even know that Norma Jeane had stayed home from school that morning? Did the girl send psychic signals? Was it some kind of sexual radar? Or (Elsie didn’t want to think) was it an actual scent like a dog, a bitch in heat, and every damn male dog in the neighborhood shows up panting and scratching the dirt?

  The way men stumble unconscious. Can’t blame them, can you?

  Sometimes more than one of them showed up in his car to drive Norma Jeane to school. Laughing like a little girl, she’d flick a penny to see which car, which guy, to take.

  A mystery of Norma Jeane’s diary was not a single male name was listed. Hardly any names at all except for hers and Warren’s, and what did that mean?

  Poems, prayers. Stuff you couldn’t make sense of. That wasn’t normal for a fifteen-year-old, was it?

  They would have their talk now. It wasn’t to be avoided.

  Always Elsie Pirig would remember this talk. God damn, it left her resentful of Warren; it’s a man’s world and what the hell can a woman who’s a realist do about that?

  Shyly Norma Jeane said, in a way that allowed Elsie to know she’d been thinking about this since early that morning, “You were just joking about me getting married, Aunt Elsie—weren’t you?” and Elsie said, picking a bit of tobacco off her tongue, “I wouldn’t joke about such a thing.” Norma Jeane said, worried, “I’d be afraid to marry anyone, Aunt Elsie. You’d have to love a boy really well for that.” Elsie said lightly, “There must be one of them you could love, isn’t there? I’ve been hearing some things about you, sweetie.” Quickly Norma Jeane said, “You mean Mr. Haring?” and when Elsie looked at her blankly she said, “Oh, you mean Mr. Widdoes?” and still Elsie looked at her blankly and she said, a flush rising into her face, “I’m not seeing them anymore! I didn’t know they were married, Aunt Elsie, I swear.” Elsie smoked her cigarette and had to smile at this revelation. If she just kept her mouth shut long enough, Norma Jeane would fill her in on every detail. Staring at her with that sweet little-girl look, her darkish-blue eyes filled with moisture and her voice tremulous like she was trying not to stammer. “Aunt Elsie”—it had a nice sound to it, in Norma Jeane’s voice. Elsie asked all the foster kids to call her “Aunt Elsie” and most of them did but it had taken Norma Jeane almost a year; she’d tried and stumbled over the word repeatedly. No wonder the girl hadn’t been chosen to be in a play at the high school, Elsie thought. She was so honest—couldn’t act worth a damn! But since Christmas, when Elsie gave her several nice presents including a plastic hand mirror with a woman’s profile in silhouette on the back, at last Norma Jeane was calling her “Aunt Elsie” as if, in fact, they were family.

  Which made this hurt all the more.

  Which made her all the more pissed at Warren.

  Elsie said, carefully, “It’s going to happen to you sooner or later, Norma Jeane. So better sooner. With this terrible war started, and young men joining up to fight, you’d better grab a husband while there are guys available and still in one piece.” Norma Jeane protested. “You’re serious, Aunt Elsie? This isn’t a joke?” and Elsie said, annoyed, “Do I look like I’m joking, miss? Does Hitler? Tojo?” and Norma Jeane said, shaking her head as if trying to clear it, “I just don’t understand, Aunt Elsie, why should I get married? I’m only fifteen, I’ve got two years of high school to go. I want to be a—” and Elsie interrupted, incensed, “High school! I got married in my junior year and my mother never finished eighth grade. You don’t need any diplomas to get married.” Norma Jeane said, pleading, “But I’m too y-young, Aunt Elsie,” and Elsie said, “That’s exactly the problem. You’re fifteen, you’ve got boyfriends and man friends and there’s going to be trouble before we know it and Warren was saying to me just the other morning, the Pirigs have a reputation to uphold here in Van Nuys. We’ve been taking in foster kids from L.A. County for twenty years, and there’ve been girls now and then who’ve gotten into trouble under our roof, not always bad girls but good girls, too, girls running around with boyfriends, and it reflects badly on us. Warren says what’s this I hear about Norma Jeane running around with married men and I said it’s the first I heard of such a thing and he says, ‘Elsie, we better take emergency measures fast.’” Norma Jeane said uncertainly, “Mr. P-pirig said that? About me? Oh! I thought Mr. Pirig liked me!” and Elsie said, “It’s not a matter of liking or not liking. It’s a matter of what the county calls emergency measures.” Norma Jeane said, “What measures? What emergency? I’m not in trouble, Aunt Elsie! I—” and Elsie interrupted again, wanting to get this out quick, like spitting something foul out of her mouth, “The point is you’re fifteen and could pass for eighteen in a man’s eyes but you’re a ward of the county until you’re actually eighteen and unless you get married, the way state law is, you could get sent back to the orphanage at any time.”

  This came out in such a flood of words, Norma Jeane appeared dazed like someone hard of hearing. Elsie herself was feeling faint, that sickish sensation that rises up from the soles of your feet when there’s a tremor in the earth. It had to be done. God help me!

  Norma Jeane said, frightened, “But w-why should I go back to the orphanage? I mean—why should I be sent back? I was sent here.” Elsie said, avoiding the girl’s eyes, “That was eighteen months ago and things have changed. You know things have changed. You were like a child when you came here and now you’re—well, a girl. And acting sometimes like a full-grown woman. There’s consequences to all our behavior, especially that kind of behavior—with men, I mean.” “But I haven’t done anything wrong,” Norma Jeane said, her voice rising in desperation. “I promise you, Aunt Elsie! I haven’t! They’re nice to me, Aunt Elsie, most of them, really! They say they just like to be with me and take me out and—that’s all! Really. But I can tell them ‘no’ from now on; I can tell them that you and Mr. Pirig won’t let me go out anymore. I’ll tell them!” Elsie said, faltering, unprepared for this, “But—we need the room. The attic room. My sister and her kids are coming from Sacramento t
o live with us—” Norma Jeane said quickly, “I don’t need an actual room, Aunt Elsie. I can sleep on the sofa downstairs or in the laundry room or—anywhere. I can sleep in one of Mr. Pirig’s cars he has for sale. Some of them are nice, there’re cushions in the backseats—” and Elsie said, shaking her head gravely, “Norma Jeane, the county would never allow that. You know they send inspectors,” and Norma Jeane said, touching Elsie’s arm, “You’re not going to send me back to the Home, are you? Aunt Elsie? I thought you liked me! I thought we were like a family! Oh, Aunt Elsie, please—I love it here in this house! I love you!” She paused, panting. Her stricken face was damp with tears and a look of animal terror shone in her dilated eyes. “Don’t send me away, please! I promise I’ll be good! I’ll work harder! I won’t go out on dates! I’ll quit school and stay home and help you out, and I could help Mr. Pirig, too, with his business! I would want to die, Aunt Elsie, if you sent me back to the Home. I can’t go back to the Home. I’ll kill myself if I’m sent back to the Home. Aunt Elsie, please!”

  By now Norma Jeane was in Elsie’s arms. Trembling, and breathless, and very warm, and sobbing. Elsie hugged her close, feeling the girl’s quivering shoulder blades, the tension in her spine. Norma Jeane had grown taller than Elsie by an inch or so and she was stooping to make herself smaller, like a child. Elsie was thinking she’d never felt so bad in her adult life. Oh, shit, she just felt so fucking bad! If she could have she’d have kicked Warren out on his ass and kept Norma Jeane—but of course she couldn’t. It’s a man’s world and to survive a woman must betray her own kind.

  Elsie held the sobbing girl, biting her lip to keep from breaking down herself. “Norma Jeane, stop. Crying never helps. If it did, we’d all be better off by now.”

  2

  I won’t get married, I’m too young!

  I want to be a WAC nurse. I want to go overseas.

  I want to help suffering people.

  Those little English children wounded and maimed and some of them buried in rubble. And their parents dead. And nobody to love them.

  I want to be a vessel of Divine Love. I want God to shine through me. I want to help heal the wounded, I want to show them the way of faith.

  I can run away. I can enlist in Los Angeles. God will answer my prayer.

  She’d been transfixed with horror, her mouth open and slack and her breath quick as a panting dog’s and a terrible roaring and pounding in her ears, staring at the photographs in the copy of Life left on the kitchen table: a child with swollen eyes and an arm missing, a baby so swathed in bloody bandages only his mouth and part of his nose were visible, a little girl of about two with bruised eyes and a dazed, emaciated face. What was the little girl clutching, a doll? A bloodstained doll?

  There came Warren Pirig to take the magazine from her. Snatched it out of her numbed fingers. His voice was low and angry-sounding yet at the same time forgiving, as often it was when they were alone together. “You don’t want to look at that,” he said. “You don’t know what you’re looking at.”

  He never called her “Norma Jeane.”

  3

  They were Hawkeye, Cadwaller, Dwayne, Ryan, Jake, Fiske, O’Hara, Skokie, Clarence, Simon, Lyle, Rob, Dale, Jimmy, Carlos, Esdras, Fulmer, Marvin, Gruner, Price, Salvatore, Santos, Porter, Haring, Widdoes. They were soldiers, a sailor, a marine, a rancher, a house painter, a bail bondsman, a trucker, the son of a Redondo Beach amusement park owner, the son of a Van Nuys banker, an aircraft factory worker, Van Nuys high school student athletes, an instructor at Burbank Bible College, an officer for the Los Angeles County Department of Corrections, a repairer of motorcycles, a crop duster, a butcher’s assistant, a postal employee, a Van Nuys bookie’s son and right-hand man, a Van Nuys High teacher, a Culver City Police Department detective. They took her to Topanga Beach, to Will Rogers Beach, Las Tunas, Santa Monica, and Venice Beach. They took her to movies. They took her to dances. (Norma Jeane was shy dancing “close” but a terrific jitterbugger, dancing with her eyes shut tight as if hypnotized, a gemlike glisten on her skin. And she could hula like a native Hawaiian!) They took her to church services and to the racetrack at Casa Grande. They took her roller-skating. They took her rowing and canoeing and were surprised that, a girl, she insisted upon helping to row, and so capably. They took her bowling. They took her to Bingo games and billiard parlors. They took her to baseball games. They took her on Sunday drives into the San Gabriel Mountains. They took her on drives along the coastal highway as far north sometimes as Santa Barbara and as far south as Oceanside. They took her on romantic drives by moonlight, the Pacific Ocean luminous to one side and dark wooded hills on the other and the wind rippling her hair and sparks from the driver’s cigarettes flying back into the night, but in later years she would confuse these drives with scenes from movies she’d seen or believed she must have seen. They didn’t touch me where I didn’t want to be touched. They didn’t make me drink. They were respectful of me. My white shoes were freshly polished every week and my hair smelled of shampoo and my clothes of fresh ironing. If they kissed me it was closed-mouthed. I knew to keep my lips pursed tightly together. And my eyes closed when we kissed. Rarely would I move. My breathing was quickened but never panting. My hands were still in my lap though I might raise my forearm to push him away, gently. The youngest was sixteen, a football player at Van Nuys High. The oldest was thirty-four, the Culver City detective she’d discovered belatedly was married.

  Detective Frank Widdoes! A Culver City cop investigating a murder in Van Nuys in late-summer 1941. A man’s bullet-ridden body had been found dumped in a desolate area near train tracks on the outskirts of Van Nuys and the victim was identified as a witness in a Culver City murder case and so Widdoes drove up to question area residents and as he was surveying the crime scene along a dirt lane there came a girl on a bicycle, a dark-blond girl pedaling slowly and dreamily and oblivious of the plainclothes detective staring at her, believing her at first glance to be about twelve years old, then seeing more clearly she was older, possibly as old as seventeen, with a bust like a woman, in a snug-fitting mustard-yellow jersey top, and she wore short shorts in a white cord material that outlined her little heart-shaped ass like that Betty Grable bathing-suit pinup, and when he stopped her to ask her if she’d seen anyone or anything “suspicious” in the area he saw that she had the most remarkable blue eyes, beautiful liquidy dreamy eyes, eyes that seemed not to see him but somehow inside him, as if he already knew her, and though she didn’t know him she understood that he already knew her and had the right to question her, to detain her and sit with her in his unmarked police car for as long as he wished, as long as the “investigation” required, and she had a face he wasn’t likely to forget, heart-shaped, too, with a widow’s peak, her nose just a little long and her teeth just a little crooked, which added to her looks, he thought, gave her that look of placid normalcy, for after all she was only a kid even if she was also a woman, a kid wearing a woman’s body like a little girl trying on an adult woman’s clothes and seeming to know this and exult in it (the tight jersey top and the way she sat with perfect pinup posture, breathing deeply to expand her rib cage, and her tawny-tanned legs perfect, too, in those short shorts riding up nearly to her crotch) and yet not-knowing simultaneously. If he’d ordered her to remove her clothes she would have done so smiling and eager to please and she’d have been more innocent still, and more beautiful, and if he did such a thing—which of course he would not—except if he did, and the punishment was being turned to stone or torn apart by wolves, it might almost have been worth it.

  So he’d seen the girl a few times. He’d drive up to Van Nuys and meet her near the high school. He hadn’t touched her! Not in that way. Hardly at all, in fact. Knowing she was jailbait, and knowing the kind of professional trouble he could get into, not to mention deeper marital trouble since he’d cheated on his wife already and had gotten caught, that’s to say he’d angrily confessed to his wife and had so gotten “caught.” And he’d moved
out, and was living alone now and liking it. And this girl Norma Jeane was a welfare kid, he’d discovered. A ward of L.A. County placed with a foster family on Reseda Street, Van Nuys, a street of shabby bungalows and grassless yards and her foster father owned a half acre of used cars, trucks, motorcycles, and other junk for sale, a stink of burning rubber perpetually in the air and a bluish haze over the neighborhood and Widdoes could imagine the interior of the house but decided not to investigate because, better not, it could backfire on him and in any case what could he do, adopt the kid himself? He had his own kids, costing him. He felt sorry for her, gave her money, one- and five-dollar bills so she could “buy something nice” for herself. It was all innocent, really. She was the kind of girl who obeys, or who wants to obey, so if you’re responsible you take care what you tell her to do. When they put their trust in you, it’s a temptation worse than when they’re distrustful. And her age. And her body. It wasn’t just his badge (she admired the badge, “loved” the badge, and wanted always to look at it, and at his pistol; she’d asked could she touch the pistol and Widdoes laughed and said sure, why not, as long as it remained in his holster and the safety was on), but his air of authority, eleven years as a cop and you get that air of authority, questioning people, bossing people around, that expectation that, if they resist, they’ll regret it and they know it as by instinct we sense in the physical being of another a dominance that, pushed to a limit, and that limit not negotiable, we can be hurt. Yet it was all innocent, really. Things are never the way they look to outside eyes. As a detective, Widdoes knew this. Norma Jeane was only three years older than his daughter. But those three years were crucial. She was much smarter than you’d think at first glance. In fact, a few times she’d surprised him. The eyes and the baby voice were misleading. The girl could talk earnestly about things (the war, the “meaning of life”) like any adult of Widdoes’s acquaintance. She had a sense of humor. She laughed at herself—she wanted to be “a singer with Tommy Dorsey.” She wanted to be a WAC officer. She wanted to join the Air Force Women’s Flying Training Detachment she’d been reading about in the paper. She wanted to be a doctor. She told him she was “the only living grandchild” of a woman who’d founded the Christian Science church, and her mother, who’d died in an airplane crash over the Atlantic in 1934, had been a Hollywood film actress with The Studio, an understudy for Joan Crawford and Gloria Swanson, and her father whom she hadn’t seen in years was a Hollywood producer, now a naval commander in the South Pacific, and none of these statements did Widdoes believe yet he listened to the girl as if he believed, or as if he was trying to believe, and she seemed grateful for such kindness. She let him kiss her if he didn’t try to force her lips open with his tongue, and he didn’t. She let him kiss her mouth, her neck, and her shoulders—but only if her shoulders were bare. She became anxious if he shifted her clothing or tried to unbutton or unzip anything. Such childish fussiness was touching to him, he recognized it as a trait similar to those in his own daughter. Some things are allowed and some things not-allowed. But Norma Jeane let him stroke her silky downy arms and even her legs to mid-thigh; she let him stroke her long, curly hair and even brush it. (Norma Jeane provided the hairbrush! Telling him that brushing her hair was something her mother did when she was a little girl and she missed her mother so.)