In “taking us in," my grandparents were following a precedent: In about 1920
they had given a temporary home to their eldest child, Marie and her two-year-old
daughter Ruth Lee when Marie’s husband, John Hoffman, died. I often heard
Grandma say: The door is always open to our children. This is their home. And this
was not a new idea to Theodore and Mary Wallace: When they were first married in
1894, they lived for a few years with Grandma’s parents, the Geatzes.
Mother had not discussed the reason for our move, but I assumed that it had
to do with my father. Trouble had started back at 216, possibly as early as 1925, the
year my parents and I transferred from the third floor quarters. Not long after our
move to Fayette Street, I overheard my mother and one of her sisters whispering and
I discerned “divorce." My heart sank, but I was too timid to mention it to Mother. A
few months later, the divorce was confirmed by a newspaper notice which the
proprietor of the corner store brought to my attention, with gross insensitivity, in the
presence of two of my playmates.
Mother never did mention the divorce. Never. I believe she feared that
because her marriage had failed, she had failed me and simply could not face up to
talking to me about the matter. Or, her silence might have been an act of loving
kindness toward me: a frank explanation of the divorce might have meant revealing
facts about my father that I would not have understood or if I did understand, would
have turned me against him. Whatever the reason, the divorce did not seem to make
any difference. Mother was not about to remarry, because to do so would violate her
Catholic beliefs. She just went on working to support me and taking care of me when
she was not working.
Actually, Mother tended to do too much for me. I believe she suffered from
a sort of guilt complex, a compulsion to insure against my being a burden on anyone
else in the household. As I grew older, I felt babied and I resented it. My resentment
sometimes came out as angry outbursts against Mother which brought her to tears;
then I felt bad and cried, too, and we would hug and make up.
Mother was so sensitive about our dependency on her parents that she tended
to make me share that sensitivity. If I said or did anything that offended Grandma,
Pop or one of the girls, Mother would later, in private, say something like: You mustn’t
say things like that. Remember, Honey, this is not our home, we only live here. But
I knew Grandma did not feel that way and I don’t believe Pop did either.
When I was twelve or thirteen, I began to wish that my mother was not the
pretty young thing that she was but, rather, a typical (I thought) Mom like Mickey
Rooney’s in the movies and like most other kids had. I gradually outgrew that
attitude, especially in high school when some of my girl classmates who got to know
Mother in her workplace commented on my “attractive, friendly mom." Of course,
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