The Happy Housewife (Samantha Sherman Book 1) (9 page)

“I had grown up hearing about the evils of Communism which my parents had escaped. Since they were immigrants from Ukraine, they were more attuned to what happened there under Communist rule. Even after they left they kept up with family and friends, if somewhat haphazardly. Through those contacts and some newspapers they became aware of the severe food shortages there in the late 20s and early 30s. My parents went so far as to collect food to send overseas. It wasn’t allowed into the country, however, and they were devastated by their inability to help family and friends. After 1933, they never again had contact from anyone they knew in Ukraine. My parents blamed Joseph Stalin and the rest of the Soviet leadership and their attempts to collectivize the Ukrainian peasant farmers as the catalyst for the famine. They could not accept someone who didn’t see that.”

“Now, before you think John was heartless or that he wanted people to starve to death, he wasn’t and he didn’t. You see, while there were reports of the famine in the papers, there were also plenty of papers that reported that the famine was not happening or that stories about it were exaggerated. Well-known reporters like Walter Duranty of the
New York Times
and the playwright George Bernard Shaw visited the Soviet Union and said there wasn’t a famine. It later became apparent that this reporting was false, of course. However, even when it became clear that there had been starvation, people like John didn’t believe that Stalin knew completely what was happening and certainly didn’t believe that it was intentional.”

“Either way though, a million or so Ukrainians died as a result of the famine. That John knew this and was still a Communist was something my parents couldn’t stomach. It wasn’t just what my father said about Communism, that it was evil and sapped a man’s desire to work, it was the results of that belief system, the inhumanity of the starvation of one’s own people in the name of progress. They couldn’t tolerate John.”

“I was quiet that night but I still loved John. I knew if they gave him a chance to explain they would see that he wasn’t a Stalinist and that, while mistakes were made under Stalin, that didn’t indict an entire belief system. Communism was still a noble goal.”

“As you can imagine, even after waiting a week for things to cool down, my final confrontation with my parents did not go well. I remained committed to John and, in my stubbornness, became even more committed to his cause. I was actually mad at my parents for making me choose between them and my husband-to-be.”

“John and I eloped and left Chicago the second he finished college, for California, Los Angeles specifically, where John said our ideas would be more accepted. LA was beautiful. The weather was amazing and we were finally with people like us. John was working on his PhD in Philosophy at UCLA and I quickly became pregnant with our daughter. It was such a hopeful time. We were convinced that Communism was on the march in those days, that oppressed peoples would rise up around the world and a more compassionate society and world would result.”

“John finished his PhD and got a job teaching up at Berkeley. As we settled there with our young daughter, the Vietnam War started heating up and the counterculture bloomed. As you know, San Francisco in the 60s was the height of that counterculture. Things were going well for us. John had a great job, our daughter Abby was thriving and I had a sense of purpose for my life. I had my family and I worked for the causes we believed in on the side. We read
Ramparts
and the
Daily Worker
. Our activism eventually led us to rallies and protest marches. I’m also embarrassed to say that we started experimenting with drugs which we told ourselves was to help us think up new ways to fight the system.”

“As you know, the peace movement started to splinter in the late 60s. There were those of use who wanted to get rid of capitalism and those who just wanted to end the war. By this time, through our connections in the Berkeley area, we were familiar with activists like Bernadine Dohrn, Mark Rudd, Gerry Long, and Bill Ayers. We were a little different from them; they were younger than us and came from wealthier families. We were also married which was something they didn’t believe in, at the time. The most important thing we had in common, though, was that we were all Marxists and wanted to change the system of government in the United States. We were more on their side as the conflict developed within the movement between those who thought change could occur through the ballot box and those of us who felt a more revolutionary stand was required. We just didn’t see change occurring without a push.”

“This all came to a head in, let’s see, summer of 1969, I believe, during the Students for a Democratic Society National Convention in Chicago. SDS, which was a socialist college organization that was against the war, was taken over by us, the revolutionaries, now known as Weathermen, and eventually, the Weather Underground because Weathermen was seen as sexist. We called for an end to Third World oppression, racial oppression, and capitalism.”

“It may sound crazy today but back then change, Communist change, was spreading around the world. In addition to what had happened with the Bolshevik Revolution and Stalin’s consolidation of Communist power, since World War II, Communism had been on the march. In the years following the war, the Soviets gained control of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, eastern Germany, and Yugoslavia. China fell to Communists. North Korea became Communist and attacked South Korea. Ho Chi Minh was fighting for Communism in Vietnam. Cuba went Communist and Communist governments took hold in South Yemen and Congo. Additionally, the Soviets had nuclear weapons and won the first part of the space race with the United States. With all that happening, it seemed that the tide of history was swinging our way. We just needed to give capitalism a push and it would topple. It became clear that if a revolutionary stance was going to fully be taken we would have to go underground. Otherwise we had too much exposure to the police and FBI. We would be too easy to infiltrate. The idea was to bring the revolution home, to bring the war to the US. We fully expected that the underclass in the United States would rise up with us.”

“After the convention, most of the Weather Underground started moving around the country planning and carrying out attacks, but we had a family. As a result, John felt that it was important to keep his position at Berkeley. Instead of traveling around, he supervised a bomb factory, which really was just a run down apartment outside of Berkeley. We would also house movement people if they needed it. In 1970, a week after the famous Greenwich Village townhouse explosion in New York which killed three members of the Weather Underground who were making bombs, there was a similar explosion at our bomb factory. John was inside with our daughter when it happened.”

Mrs. Thomas finally paused here. Her matter-of-fact presentation shocked Sam and she wasn’t prepared for this stop. She said nothing and Mrs. Thomas continued while avoiding eye contact with Sam, “Obviously it was the worst day of my life. I was inconsolable. Fortunately, having never reconciled with my parents, I at least had close friends in Berkley who looked after me. One of those friends was Dan, by the way.”

“I went through all the stages of grief. The anger was the worst part. Because I didn’t want to admit my own culpability, I stayed with anger for the longest time. I didn’t even cry for a month after their deaths. I was also still a committed revolutionary, which made it impossible to look at how our beliefs had led to this tragedy. Anyway, this continued on for months. I wanted revenge. I blamed the government and President Nixon particularly for everything that had occurred. I decided to blow up the White House and for the first six months after the death of my family I worked on a plan to do just that. My plan really wasn’t realistic. I didn’t have the right information to set up a plausible strategy. But even though I knew deep down that I most likely could never get anyone to go along with it, the plan itself gave me a sense that justice would be done.”

“After the police were finished with their investigation and the blame for what happened was left with John alone, I had a funeral for my family in a Catholic church. My decision was quite ironic since we hadn’t been to church since Abby’s baptism, something I had to argue with John to even do. Somehow it only felt right to me that religion should be a part of their passing. I told myself at first that I was just giving into Marx’s ‘opiate of the masses’ but after a while I realized that I wanted religion to be real because thinking of my family in heaven made me feel better.”

“So my life continued on under an odd duality. While I continued my plans to bomb the White House, I also went back to attending church regularly. To make my long story a little shorter, over time church won out over my hatred of the ‘system.’ If the worst day of my life was the day my family died, the second worst day was the one where I accepted responsibility for John’s and Abby’s deaths. I was destroyed and really just wanted to die. I asked God for forgiveness and went to confession for the first time in years. One of the things the priest told me that day was that I needed to change my life, renounce violence and work to make amends for all that I had done. I accepted his ideas and made some big changes in my life.”

“Most of my friends in the movement fell away from me as time went on. Some were arrested, some fled the country, and the ones left over didn’t know what to do with me. At first they thought I just needed time to recover. One of them even tried to tell me the problem was my monogamy! That it wasn’t right to get so attached to one person. They really began to move away from me as it became clear that my religiousness was not just a phase of grief. Dan was one of the few friends who stood by me. He stayed in the movement for a while longer but eventually had enough. He always kept in touch with me though.”

“The biggest step I took was contacting my parents. Unfortunately, my father had passed away but my mother and I reconciled and I was able to go back to Chicago for her last couple of years. She was amazingly forgiving, although we rarely talked about the years I was gone. I was able to look after her while I finished my degree and became a teacher. Once she died, with no family ties, I decided to continue to make amends by traveling to the places we had bombed, or tried to, and work to make those communities better. I’ve been all over the country. My time here in the DC suburbs is to make up for the Pentagon and Capital bombings, as well as my aborted attempts to hit the White House.”

“So, anyway, that’s the story, that’s the truth. If you don’t want me staying here I understand.” At this point she finally looked at Sam. Sam was startled by the fierce look on her face combined with the tears in her eyes.

Sam needed a minute to get a handle on everything she had heard. Her instinct was to reach out to this older woman who was really all alone. Although she wasn’t quite as old as Sam had thought. She was more Sam’s parents’ age than her grandparents’. Sam decided to ask a couple of questions to buy time for her to process Helen’s story. “Wow. That’s a lot to think about. Who were those other two people who showed up at your house the day Dan died? Was that really a Bible study?”

Mrs. Thomas regarded her quizzically, obviously expecting a different reaction and then in a patient voice responded, “The two other people, Marjorie and Clint, are also connected to my past. They are together and live in the DC area. No, it was not a Bible study. We are all very careful about who we tell what. I was caught off guard by Dan’s arrival and made something up. I’m not very good at lying,” she paused, “anymore.”

Sam felt more put together and something clicked in her. “So what is your real name? Are the names of your friends real?”

Mrs. Thomas nodded and smiled faintly as though slightly impressed that Sam had thought of this, “My first name Helen is real. My parents wanted a good American name. My last name is Vladislav. The others are the same way, their first names are real.”

“So what name did you give the police for Dan?”

“I didn’t tell them his name. The police got it from his wallet and I didn’t correct them. I didn’t know what to do. Dan’s a nice man. He’s really turned his life around. He’s in school administration in Chicago and is making such a difference …” Helen trailed off and it seemed obvious to Sam that Helen wasn’t just talking about Dan.

“Don’t you think you need to tell the police all this? What if it wasn’t just a burglary?” Helen’s head snapped up as Sam finished.

“What do you mean? Of course it was a burglary. The police said it was. There’s no reason to think that it wasn’t.”

Sam almost felt sorry for Helen; she was really in denial. “You know most likely it doesn’t have anything to do with your past. But there wasn’t much taken and I think most people who are murdered are murdered by people they know. Was there anyone who knew about your past? There must be people out there or relatives of people who … whose lives you guys touched,” Sam finished clumsily, trying not to put things too nicely but again feeling compassion for how Helen had damaged her own life. It would be terrible living with a mistake that big. Sam mentally compared it to THAT night and for the first time felt a bit better. After all, her mistakes on that particular Coast Guard mission weren’t intentional and she hadn’t put anyone in her family in danger through her choices. She shook her head.
Focus Sam, this isn’t about you
, she reminded herself.

Helen sunk back into the couch, and pushed herself even further back. She almost looked as if she was trying to be enveloped by the cushions. “Oh Lord, I don’t know what to do. Sam, what have I done, what should I do?”

“Helen, I’m not sure what to do. Maybe the police don’t need to know. Although, could you guys still be in any legal trouble?”

“I’m not. I just don’t know about the others. Believe it or not, we avoid talking about the past when we get together, except to tell each other if we’ve heard about someone we all know. Like when Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn became professors, when everyone knows who they are and what they did. They also got married which was something they were supposed to be against.” Helen definitely had a note of bitterness in her voice. Sam supposed that came from getting a hard time about being married from the Weathermen?