Women and Men

By Martha Ellen Johnson

 

Oma

She had found a bit of woven, checkered cloth and fashioned it into a diaper for her newborn son. She scrounged some lengths of cloth and thread from wherever she could and embroidered a cap for him. She stitched a cotton gown with flowers. With tenderness she dressed him before she swaddled him in a worn woolen blanket to keep away the chill of the cool morning air. She held him close, kissed his cheek one last time and carefully laid him down on Brabant Street, in Ghent, in the early morning of May 26, 1815.

Cecile and Rosalie were returning to the common house near the port after a long night’s work, as they did every morning, holding hands as European women do when they are friends and as kindred spirits do when seeking the comfort of others who often endured a night of brutality some men were inclined to heap upon those they thought unworthy of any tenderness or care, only to be used and discarded. Cecile lifted the swaddled baby from the street and held him close, her maternal feelings intact, inaccessible to any cruelty that visited her in her harsh life.  

They all knew this scene. It was not new. Each knew the role they were compelled to perform in a world that did not value the likes of them as though they were incapable of giving love and unworthy of receiving it.

They took the baby to the police station. He was reared by other loving women in the convent orphanage. 

     I call her Oma.


Gramma

When he was a grown man my cousin, Corky, awoke to an illuminated Cross hovering over him. He told me God had sent it to him to comfort his broken heart. No human would ever love him. When he was an infant, my grandmother barged into his father’s filthy, basement apartment on the North side of Chicago. Gramma lifted up my cousin from his maggot infested crib and took him home.

     Marie.

 

Auntie

“Wie ist dein Namen!”

In a small voice, the trembling eight year old girl standing next to my strong, stoic Auntie, whispered, “Berthe.”

Auntie-Sister was the Mother Superior of the orphanage in Ghent. Four nights before the Jewish girl stood outside the Convent doors delivered by the Belgian underground during the Occupation when the Gestapo was rounding up the Belgian Jews for extermination.

Mother Superior met each child in secret. To minimize potential for exposure that could compromise the mission, and the safety of the children, only she and a few priests knew of the plan to hide the children within the orphanage.

“Wat is je naam, liefje?”  Mother Superior asked.

“Berthe”

“Good. Keep your name. It sounds Flemish.” The plan was in play.

Eventually the Gestapo caught on that Christian institutions were hiding Jewish children. They arrived at the Convent door and barged in seeking the Jüdische Kinder hidden among the Christian orphans. “Wie ist dein Namen!”  Those with Hebrew names would be lost, most forever. This time Berthe was passed over.

I have two photos of my auntie from before the war. One she is standing next to the children all lined up by height in descending order. She is protective. They would not be alone nor hungry nor cold again. He would be pleased at how she had delivered His message of love to the least of His.

One day in May of 1940 her peaceful life was transformed. Evil was coming for her babies. Auntie fought the war in the moment as she could. Though she could not save all, she saved many. She vanished in 1942.

    Elise.

 

Mommy

Beautiful as a 1950s movie star with dark brown hair pulled back into a smooth chignon at the nape of her neck and “Love That Red” Revlon lipstick applied with skill to shapely Loretta Young lips, she embraced the notion of the perfect 1950s housewife, though she didn’t like that term. She preferred the more gracious “homemaker.” She wore heels when she dusted and when she vacuumed and mopped the floors, too. She personified the dream. It was the perfection she demanded of herself. It was her whole truth

Her main job was to elevate her husband, to make him feel “like a man” and never usurp his authority. He led the way. With a smile she handed over all of her days. He was her only hope. She would fake a gracious life free from all conflict. It was a fairytale that never existed.

He was entitled to her service and submission to his whims delivered in haste without question or resistance, wearing her down, with no escape, terrified for her survival. She was denied the opportunity to affect her future causing her to swallow rage and sadness over the profound injustice of which she could never utter a single word. Her needs did not matter. She covered her despondency with a forced smile and a fixation on the trivial. Stripped of power, she knew her place though in the end it drove her to madness.

I have a family photo. It is a picture of the perfect family together, more like in close proximity, isolated from each other. My dad owns the scene set in our perfect living room. My mother sits awkwardly front and center. She smiles broadly for the camera, wearing the beaded black sweater, the red velvet skirt, holding her tiny newborn, my baby sister, the one with the dead twin no one ever mentioned. Behind her rage-darkened eyes is an ocean of tears she could not shed.

     Alice

Me

“Get out!”  I was eighteen and “no good.” Dad put two suitcases on my bed. I filled each with what I had. I left in shame and defeat. Mommy couldn’t save me. She had lost that power long ago. I ran to Henry.

In our old Chicago apartment rented for  $60 per month, the cheapest, in a faux Tea Ceremony I would serve him Lipton tea sweetened with honey in handle-less cups from a tea set sold to tourists in Chinatown. Henry loved subservience and pretending he was royalty. “You’re from the lower middle-class. I’m from the upper middle-class.” He would strut around the cheap rundown apartment with the lumpy hide-a-bed from the Goodwill, crooked Venetian blinds, a second-hand rug salvaged from an old movie theater foyer, a bookcase constructed from boards and concrete blocks, a pole lamp too short to reach the ceiling, impressing a lost eighteen-year-old girl with nowhere else to go. With his arms held stiffly at his sides, hands flexed, fingers outstretched, wearing only white cotton briefs and a T-shirt frayed at the neck, he declared, “I’m a Prince.”

We were poor. I worried about feeding Nick and Rosie. I stood in line to get an Abundant Foods allotment. I was grateful. I made corn pone fried in lard. One day I took a big risk. If Henry found out, there would be hell to pay. Long ago he let me know his poetry was off-limits. I was too common to grasp the depth. He prohibited me from entering his writing room. I was to remain perfectly quiet when the muse was upon him lest I break the spell and he lose the creative thread sending him into a rage. He was a genius. If I could submit his poems to a publisher, Henry would be discovered. His poetry books would hit “number one on the charts” and we would never have to worry about survival again.  I snuck into his room. There was nothing except a letter to his ex-wife asking to have child support payments reduced. The poems were somewhere. I was too stupid to find them.

My mom told me, when you’re alone, no rescuer in sight, play dead, bide time, roll with the punches. Divert. Distract. Nod in agreement. Put men at ease. Smile. Serve. “Yes, dear.”  Become a phantom. Survive.

Tomcats toy with the birds they’ve morally wounded. I saw it happen in our yard one summer afternoon. I scared him away, lifted the injured bird, now too weak to resist, laid her in a cardboard box lined with a soft towel and placed the box on a small table in the bathroom under the sunny south window. I slid a heating pad beneath. From her safe enclosure she could see the sky. The view may fill her with visions of a flight to safety that should have been. I left her in peace. When I returned, she had inched her broken body toward the warmth before her final flight.

Decades passed. Unaware I had constructed a safe harbor within the confines of the greater cage where Henry toyed with me. My wounds healed. I regained strength. Secure in his power, certain terror assured my captivity, he looked away. A window opened. Blue skies appeared before me. And I flew away.

I had sold handmade dolls on the sly. I squirreled away enough money to send Nick to Europe with the Youth Philharmonic and to buy Rosie braces and piano lessons.

     Martha

Rosie

Fragile from the beginning. Each morning she awoke singing. Shy. I knew to never overwhelm her. Any direct talk would cause her to collapse into tears. If I simply sang in a lilt, “Mama loves Rosie”, without looking at her, we could love each other in baby talk.

Age 3.  “I don’t want you to be throwed away, Mama.” We held each other with infinite tenderness.

Age 4. “Everybody doesn’t love me.” She was playing with little friends in the yard when she realized this for the first time. She ran to me to share her dismay. It broke my heart. “I do and I always will.”

Age 8. She cared for Lily Lilac. She would stand next to the bunny hutch and sing to her.

Age 10. She arrived home from school sobbing, shaking uncontrollably. On the road home there was a dead dog. Hit by a car. School boys, hiding their fear, kicked the corpse until the head flew off. “Mama! Mama! They kicked him!” The brutality tore her apart. We held each other and sobbed. How do I tell her about the fear beneath aggression?

Age 13. Thirteen-year-old boys can be cruel. One day a dozen red roses showed up at her school from a “Secret Admirer.” She arrived home carrying the flowers. She wondered who had sent them. “Mama, I thought it might be you.”

Age 16. When housesitting with a friend, an intruder pulled a gun. Waving it about. “You! Get in the bedroom!” Rosie refused to separate from her friend knowing he would hurt her in secret. “No,”she whispered. Her voice shaking. He left. My brave Rosie stared down evil. Nightmares haunt her even now. She grinds her teeth. Who might hurt her next?

Age 22. She went forth with the desire to make the world better. With tenderness she cared for mentally handicapped adults. She drew portraits of each “special person.” Talented and sensitive, my Rosie.

Age 26. Keith was most persistent. A red rose arrived every day with a sad attempt at a drawing he thought would impress her. He is a Scot. I stitched his clan kilt for their wedding. A ruthless D and D gamer. No one saw Dungeon Master nor the pumpkin shell. She told me things in secret. His rages scared her. “No fuse at all, Mama.” Yelling. Slamming doors. “Get out!” he screamed at his mother, his family, her family, friends. He wanted all the power and control. Road rages. Fights. From the beginning our bond threatened him. He sewed doubts about my love. Inadequate. Malignant. Unaware, I did not “interfere.” I failed my Rosie.

Age 37. She stopped singing. Her mind in pieces. Though I reach out, there is no path to her. We cannot find each other. Keith smiles.

I found recent a photo of my Rosie. I had a vision of her peering from within the pumpkin shell. In her eyes, grief, rage and despair. I hear her. “Help me, Mama. Help me.” Doors were locked. The keys discarded.

In the twilight sleep before waking when dreams are most vivid, I am shampooing my hair in the sink. I wrap a towel around my head and stand. There is Rosie. “Mama, I couldn’t leave you.”

     Rosie

Martha Ellen Johnson lives alone in an old Victorian house on a hill on the Oregon coast. Retired social worker. History of social justice activism. Old Hippie. MFA. Poems and prose published in various journals and online forums including RAIN, North Coast Squid, oddball press, WELL READ, Words Have Wings and others. She writes to process her wild life. 

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