March 24, 2008

• Lodi and Beyond

  The basement apartment “Ford” had found for us was dank and dark.  The winter weather in Lodi was gray and damp.  I didn’t have even a radio in the apartment for entertainment, so I spent a lot of time talking to Marie, reading to her and playing with her.  She loved her dolls, and I would show her how to change their clothes and wrap them in blankets.

  She had alphabet blocks and ABC books, so I started teaching her the alphabet and to spell simple words.   She was about 14 months old, and could speak full sentences that only I could understand.  She didn’t walk yet, and would crawl all over the place and cruise along the furniture, dragging a doll after her wherever she went.

  With nothing much to do, I kept the apartment spotless.  My upstairs neighbor was friendly but much older than I.  I’d go up for coffee and conversation, but wouldn’t stay long because we didn’t have much to say to each other.  Mostly, Marie was the center of attention and main topic of conversation.

  During the third week of January, Ford lost his job.  I don’t remember what kind of job he had, and I don’t suppose that matters.  He lost lots of jobs, probably because of his generally surly attitude and his unwillingness to exert himself or cooperate.

  As he had done on previous occasions upon losing a job, he got drunk before he came home.  He was glassy-eyed when he came down the stairs.  He just went to the couch, sat down, and pulled Marie’s toybox, a simple cardboard box I used to keep her things contained, over in front of himself.

  He held up one of the toys, called Marie’s name, and said, “Look here.”  Then he tore the toy apart.  He went through all the toys, one by one, breaking plastic animals or cars, tearing the clothes, heads and arms off dolls, ripping pages out of books.  At first, Marie sat with a stunned expression on her face.  She already knew that crying in front of her father would get her hurt.

  He wanted her to cry, so he started poking her with broken pieces of her toys.  When she whimpered, he poked harder.  Then he picked her up and shook her, yelling that he was going to give her something to cry about. 

  At first, while he was destroying the toys, I had tried to comfort and quiet her.  As his violence escalated, I started trying to get him to put her down and pick on me, instead.  He did.  He had destroyed every one of her toys, bruised us both, and given me a split lip, black eyes, and bloody nose, before he quit, went off to bed, and passed out.

  I took Marie up to the neighbor’s apartment and called the police.  Two cops showed up.  After they talked to me, they went downstairs and talked to Ford.  After a while, one stayed down there with him while the other came back up and talked to me some more.

  He said that they would have to take Ford to jail if I signed a complaint, because what he had done was a crime.  But, he said, I needed to be aware that he might be out again within a couple of hours if he made bail, or in a day or two, otherwise, and he’d be angry at me for having him arrested and would probably hurt us again.  He asked me if I had anywhere to go.

  I phoned one of my uncles in Sacramento.  Uncle Frank was my mother’s stepbrother, the eldest of the family, and had been a soldier in World War I.  I didn’t know him very well, but I knew the other Sacramento uncle, Scotty, well enough to know I didn’t want to call him.  Uncle Scotty had been the one who invited my ex-uncle Jack to the Thanksgiving dinner, although he didn’t go to it himself.  Scotty smoked eye-watering, choking cigars and had a wicked, twisted sense of humor and a condescending, superior attitude.  Frank and his wife Katherine were friendly, at least.

  I explained to my Aunt Katherine what had happened, and told her what the cop had told me.  She asked me if I was sure I wanted to leave.  When I said I was sure, she said they could be there in an hour or so.  The cop went back down to talk to Ford some more.  The two cops handcuffed Ford and took him to their car while I went downstairs and packed our clothes and stuff.  One of the cops told me that they had advised Ford to join the Army so that he would be able to support his wife and child without our having to live with him.  They asked me if I would be willing to let things go, not sign a complaint, if he agreed to join the Army.  I agreed.

  Frank and Katherine came and took Marie and me home with them.  A few days later, I got a call from Ford, telling me that he had joined the Army and was to go to For Ord for basic training.  He was sorry for what he had done, of course, as usual.  He said he had signed Marie and me up for an allotment, and we would be getting $91.30 a month.  I was used to having about $40.00 a month for groceries in prosperous times, so that sounded like a lot of money to me.  His enlistment date, one of those pieces of data I had to memorize because I would need it during most of my interactions with the Army, was 21 January, 1961.

  My household goods stayed in the boxes I’d packed them in and went into an old shed behind Frank and Katherine’s house.  We were given the crowded and cluttered spare bedroom.  The whole house was cluttered and crowded, and had the smell of old people and old books — kinda musty and moldy.  Stacked everywhere:  along one side of the hallway, under tables, in odd corners of various rooms, were boxes of old magazines and books.   One corner of the dinette table in the breakfast nook held a stack of Sex to Sexty magazines of risque cartoons and dirty jokes.  Frank and Katherine would read them aloud to each other over coffee.

  Every flat surface held knicknacks.  The house was not babyproofed, but there was always someone keeping an eye on the baby to keep her out of trouble.  Frank and Katherine loved having Marie around, even though it was obvious that our being there disrupted their routines and inconvenienced them.  They were sweet, and I felt welcome, but I needed to get out on my own.

  I started looking for some sort of live-in job where I wouldn’t need child care for Marie.  I read the classifieds and called about every ad that seemed even marginally appropriate.  None of the first dozen or so ads I answered even went beyond the first phone call.  They heard my age and that I had a baby, and were not interested.  Katherine suggested that I lie about my age.  She said I looked about twelve years old, but with the baby and my brains I should be able to pass for eighteen, anyway.

  I tried a few more times before I got an interview, and then I got that first job for which I interviewed.
  

  • 9:23 pm
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