My Story (5 page)

But nothing happened out of the great vision that smote me on the beach. I went back to my blue dress and white blouse and returned to school. But instead of learning anything I grew more and more confused. So did the school. It had no way of coping with a thirteen-year-old siren.

Why I was a siren, I hadn't the faintest idea. There were no thoughts of sex in my head. I didn't want to be kissed, and I didn't dream of being seduced by a duke or a movie star. The truth was that with all my lipstick and mascara and precocious curves, I was as unsensual as a fossil. But I seemed to affect people quite otherwise.

The boys took to wooing me as if I were the sole member of my sex in the district. Being boys, most of them were satisfied with a goodnight kiss or a confused hug in a hallway. I was able, in fact, to stand off most of the spooners entirely. Boys from fifteen to eighteen are not very persistent love-makers. I imagine that if it weren't for older women seducing them they would remain virginal just as long as girls do (if they do).

Among my suitors, however, were young men who went in for major wrestling, and now and then a bona fide wolf with a complete line of dialogue and a full set of plans. These were the easiest to duck because I didn't feel sorry for them.

The truth is I never felt offended by any of them, even the wrestlers who mussed my hair. If anything, I envied them. I would have liked to want something as much as they did. I wanted nothing. They might as well have been wooing a bear in a log.

My admirers all said the same thing in different ways. It was my fault, their wanting to kiss and hug me. Some said it was the way I looked at them—with eyes full of passion. Others said it was my voice that lured them on. Still others said I gave off vibrations that floored them. I always felt they were talking about somebody else, not me. It was like being told they were attracted to me because of my diamonds and rubies. I not only had no passion in me, I didn't even know what it meant.

I used to lie awake at night wondering why the boys came after me. I didn't want them that way. I wanted to play games in the street, not in the bedroom. Occasionally I let one of them kiss me to see if there was anything interesting in the performance. There wasn't.

I decided finally that the boys came after me because I was an orphan and had no parents to protect me or frighten them off. This decision made me cooler than ever to my train of admirers. But neither coolness nor disdain, nor “get out of here,” “don't bother me,” “I have no interest whatsoever in kissing with my lips open,” none of my frozen attitudes changed the picture. The boys continued to come after me as if I were a vampire with a rose in my teeth.

The girl pupils were another problem but one I could understand. They disliked me more and more as I grew older. Now instead of being accused of stealing combs, nickels, or necklaces, I was accused of stealing young men.

Aunt Grace suggested a solution for my troubles.

“You ought to get married,” she said.

“I'm too young,” I said. I was still fifteen.

“I don't think you are,” Aunt Grace laughed.

“But there's nobody wants to marry me,” I said.

“Yes there is,” she said.

“Who?” I asked.

“Jim,” said my aunt.

Jim was Mr. Dougherty. He lived near me. He was good-looking, polite, and full grown.

“But Jim is stuck on my ‘sister,' ” I told her.

“It was you he took to the football game,” Aunt Grace said, “not her.”

“It was awful boring,” I said. “He's like the others, except he's taller and more polite.”

“That's a fine quality in a man,” said Aunt Grace.

The “aunt” and “uncle” with whom I was living—my ninth set of relatives—helped me make up my mind. They were going to move. This meant I'd have to go back and live in the orphanage till they unloaded me on another family.

I married Jim Dougherty.

It was like being retired to a zoo.

The first effect marriage had on me was to increase my lack of interest in sex. My husband either didn't mind this or wasn't aware of it. We were both too young to discuss such an embarrassing topic openly.

Actually our marriage was a sort of friendship with sexual privileges. I found out later that marriages are often no more than that. And that husbands are chiefly good as lovers when they are betraying their wives.

Jim's folks didn't care much for me, for which I couldn't blame them. I was a peculiar wife. I disliked grownups. I preferred washing dishes to sitting and talking
to them. As soon as they started playing cards or having arguments I would sneak out of the house and join the kids in the street. I liked boys and girls younger than me. I played games with them until my husband came out and started calling me to go to bed.

My marriage brought me neither happiness nor pain. My husband and I hardly spoke to each other. This wasn't because we were angry. We had nothing to say. I've seen many married couples since that were just like Jim and me. They were usually more enduring kind of marriages, the ones that were pickled in silence.

The most important thing my marriage did for me was to end forever my status as orphan. I felt grateful to Jim for this. He was the Lochinvar who had rescued me from my blue dress and white blouse.

My various advisers had been right about marriage putting an end to my popularity as a siren. The boys did not come after Mrs. Dougherty. The rose seemed to have fallen out of her teeth.

 

 

Jim joined the Merchant Marine in 1944, and I went to work in a parachute factory. The great war was on. Battles were being fought. Juke boxes were playing. People's eyes were lit up.

I wore overalls in the factory. I was surprised that they insisted on this. Putting a girl in overalls is like having her work in tights, particularly if a girl knows how to wear them. As parachute inspector I was back in math class again. The men buzzed around me just as the high school boys had done.

I have noticed since that men usually leave married women alone, and are inclined to treat all wives with respect. This is no great credit to married women. Men are always ready to respect anything that bores them. The reason most wives, even pretty ones, wear such a dull look is because they're respected so much.

Maybe it was my fault that the men in the factory tried to date me and buy me drinks. I didn't feel like a married woman. I was completely faithful to my overseas husband, but that wasn't because I loved him or even because I had moral ideas. My fidelity was due to my lack of interest in sex.

Jim finally came home, and we lived together again. It's hard to remember what you said, did, or felt when you were bored.

Jim was a nice husband. He never hurt me or upset me—except on one subject. He wanted a baby.

The thought of having a baby stood my hair on end. I could see it only as myself, another Norma Jean in an orphanage. Something would happen to me. Jim would wander off. And there would be this little girl in the blue dress and white blouse living in her “aunt's” home, washing dishes, being last in the bath water on Saturday night.

I couldn't explain this to Jim. After he fell asleep beside me at night I would lie awake crying. I didn't quite know who it was that cried, Mrs. Dougherty or the child she might have. It was neither. It was Norma Jean, still alive, still alone, still wishing she were dead.

I feel different about having a child now. It's one of the things I dream of. She won't be any Norma Jean now. And I know how I'll bring her up—without lies. Nobody will tell her lies about anything. And I'll answer all her questions. If I don't know the answers I'll go to an encyclopedia and look them up. I'll tell her whatever she wants to know—about love, about sex, about everything!

But chiefly, no lies! No lies about there being a Santa Claus or about the world being full of noble and honorable people all eager to help each other and do good to each other. I'll tell her there are honor and goodness in the world, the same as there are diamonds and radium.

This is the end of my story of Norma Jean. Jim and I were divorced. And I moved into a room in Hollywood to live by myself. I was nineteen, and I wanted to find out who I was.

When I just wrote “this is the end of Norma Jean,” I blushed as if I had been caught in a lie. Because this sad, bitter child who grew up too fast is hardly ever out of my heart. With success all around me, I can still feel her frightened eyes looking out of mine. She keeps saying, “I never lived, I was never loved,” and often I get confused and think it's I who am saying it.

 

 

I had been a sort of “child bride.” Now I was a sort of “child widow.” Many things seemed to have happened to me. Yet, in a way, nothing had happened, except that I was nineteen instead of nine, and I had to look for my own job.

The sort of instinct that leads a duck to water led me to photographer studios. I got jobs posing for ads and layouts. The chief trouble was that the photographers were also looking for work. Finding a photographer who wanted me as a model was easier than finding one who could pay more than promises.

But I made enough money for room rent and a meal a day although sometimes I fell behind on my eating. It didn't matter, though. When you're young and healthy a little hunger isn't too important.

What mattered more was being lonely. When you're young and healthy loneliness can seem more important than it is.

I looked at the streets with lonely eyes. I had no relatives to visit or chums to go places with.

My Aunt Grace and Aunt Anna were working hard to keep food in their kitchens and the rent paid. When I called on them they felt sorry for me and wanted to help me. I knew how they needed the half dollars in their purses; so I stayed away unless I had money and could take them to a restaurant or the movies.

I had only myself. When I walked home from the restaurant in the evening with the streets lighted up and a crowd on the sidewalks, I used to watch the faces chatting to each other and hurrying someplace. I wondered where they were going and how it felt to have places to go to or people who knew you.

There were always men willing to help a girl be less lonely. They said, “Hi, baby,” when you passed. When you didn't turn to look at them they sneered, “ ‘Stuck up, eh?”

Sometimes they followed you and kept up a one-sided conversation. “You look all right, baby. How about we drop in someplace for a drink and a dance.” After a half block when you didn't answer them, they got indignant and swore at you and dismissed you with a final insult.

I never answered them. Sometimes I felt sorry for them. They seemed as lonely as I was. It wasn't any moral attitude that kept me from accepting their sidewalk invitations. It was not wanting to be used by others. Norma Jean had been used, told to do this, do that, come here, clean the kitchen, and keep her mouth shut no matter what she felt. Everybody had had the drop on Norma Jean. If she didn't obey, back she went to the orphanage.