Beautiful as a 1950s movie star with dark brown hair pulled back into a smooth chignon at the nape of her neck and Revlon lipstick in the shade “Love That Red” applied with skill to shapely Loretta Young lips, she embraced the notion of the perfect 1950s housewife, though she didn’t like the 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 her whole truth.
In the beginning, she and her husband went to nightclubs on Friday evenings. She preferred Manhattans. She loved dreamy dancing, graceful steps to Big Band music, in the platonic arms of a friend’s less clumsy husband. At every spin on the dance floor, she sought the eyes of her still seated husband. With a sweet smile, she conveyed her growing disappointment.
She adopted “modern” in everyday life – wallpaper with an arabesque of stylized birds, graced the bathroom walls above a pink sink, a low and lean sofa kept spotless with plastic slip-covers, the “blonde” wood dining set with Danish Modern low-back chairs she polished to a soft finish. Dish designs were a single abstract “atomic age” image placed coyly off-center. Flatware embossed with an understated, simple curve was secured in use-appropriate compartments in the designated silverware drawer. Starched, pressed, and folded napkins waited in silver-plated napkin rings. A place for everything.
Tiled with alternating pink and charcoal grey stripes, she buffed the kitchen floor to a waxy shine. Grey low-nap carpet was wall-to-wall. Smooth ecru drapes fell from ceiling to floor, creating a sound-absorbing space through which she glided. A kidney-shaped coffee table held a gold lighter and a hand-blown glass ashtray, though no one in the family smoked. It was 1950s gracious to make them available for guests who may arrive but seldom did. She was ready and waiting.
Laundry was done every week. Towels were neatly folded, socks paired and put away in their proper places. Her husband’s shirts were starched, the collars and French cuffs given extra attention with a stronger solution. At midnight, she would iron a fresh white shirt. He would look crisp and sharp if and when he left for work each morning.
She wore gathered full skirts nipped in at the waist, beaded scoop-neck sweaters, high heels and seamless stockings that came folded in tissue paper in slim flat boxes. Shoes and purses matched. The hem of her dress never extended past the hem of her coat. All hems fell just below the knee. In her closet hung a red formal with a velvet bodice trimmed with teardrop pearls. On the closet floor were her clear plastic rhinestone adorned high-heels. Glass slippers she never wore. The Prince never materialized, though she kissed her husband dutifully.
She arose at 6:00 a.m. With a smile, she served toast with jam and coffee. Dinner was served at 6:00 p.m. sharp. She bussed the dishes, washed and dried them all by hand while he enjoyed a dish of ice cream, watching his favourite TV show: Gunsmoke. She read only cookbooks, as she should.
She could work, but only to “supplement” the breadwinner’s income and only as a secretary or retail salesclerk, preferably in a male-owned business with a boss she must be kept happy. Any other occupation she would scorn as above the “station” of a good wife.
Her main job was to make her husband feel “like a man,” never to usurp or threaten his authority. He led. She handed over all of her future. She would remain the impeccable homemaker through it all.
It was a conflict-free home. Her marriage never held a cross word. She insisted her children were always happy. Our smiling faces attested to an unbroken state of joy. Over time, I fell mute; my sister became despondent; my brothers, quietly cruel. We rarely spoke. We were invisible, silent witnesses. Anything that rippled the smooth surface or disrupted the flow of gracious ease was swept away and ceased to exist. “If you never mention it, it’s as though it never happened.” When concealed rage reached critical mass, it was vented in snide remarks followed by jabs and scary, loud, guffaws expelled from the depths of hell.
At times, anxiety threatened fragile placidity. Stasis must be restored quickly. She would lasso a hapless visitor, even the Fuller Brush man if she were desperate, and subject them to the “Cook’s Tour.”
They drifted from room to room as she sought affirmation for the completeness and righteousness of her everyday life. Nothing was out of order, without meaning or merit. Perfection on display in each room that were extensions of her imagination and only on loan to the illusion of children.
The flawless decor, the tidiness, and the cleanliness were ready for inspection and nods of approval from the confused, trapped visitors.
Her “Girls’ Room” was lavender, ruffled, Lennon-sister saccharine sweet with a picture of a mild, blue-eyed, Protestant northern European Jesus passively gazing skyward. On the nightstand was a pious white leather-bound Bible with gilt pages, embossed with my appropriately Biblical name, Mary. No one in the house ever read it. The room had no other books. Her husband had proclaimed, “Books rot the mind.” A girl could not have a rotten mind.
A transparent plastic vanity held a round mirror, rose-printed matching comb and brush set, downy pastel powder puffs and Heaven Scent cologne in a pale blue glass atomizer. There was a tin dollhouse with printed rugs and stylish miniature plastic furniture in each room – two bedrooms, a living room, a bathroom, a dining room and a kitchen. A tiny pink infant lay awkwardly in a blue plastic playpen. There was a front door from which the doll housewife waved goodbye each morning to her husband before returning to her lovely, spotless prison with child accoutrements.
A dressing chair sat in one corner of the Girl’s Room where a dainty girl could perch while assuring her stockings were straight before hooking them to the garter clasps on her girdle constructed with enough compression to ensure a smooth line under the slim skirt and prevent all jiggling. The miniature rosary stashed in my underwear drawer, draped over panties, oozing virginity by osmosis, held a secret defiance to her husband’s open anti-Catholicism. “Nuns never get none.” She laughed along, her eyes flashing with anger.
There was no escape from the room except through one door, giving a feeling of confinement in a Wonderland of the insignificant, elevated as though sublime. No one saw the evil witch hidden under my bed, lying in wait for a slight misstep before severing a hand or plucking out an eye. The entire room defined appropriate parameters for girls whose only purpose was to become submissive, cheerful wives; never to aspire to anything beyond the vapid and shallow. In that world, a girl would wait, virtuous and speechless, seated on the edge of her meticulously made bed, hands folded in her lap, ankles crossed, for a man to select her with a slight nod. She could exchange her virginity for a portion of his paycheck, assuring her only path to survival beyond the bedroom. His paycheck “did not have to be big, just steady,” mom advised while tapping out a rhythm on the dresser. Like her, a girl should obediently “make do” with even a paltry amount. Any challenge uttered or unspoken, to this truth would require immediate attention; quashed brutally and permanently in a flailing assault until the proper levels of defeat and despair were achieved. “Don’t get above your station!”
There were two doors to her “Boys’ Room.” One to enter, the other an exit to pass through into the man’s world beyond the prison walls. Decorated in understated neutral colours; plaid bedspreads smoothed every morning by me and my sister. An unmade beds would cause a rent in mom’s world as deep as an earthquake.
Collegiate pennants adorned the walls, though higher education was scorned as only a distraction from more serious demands of living. Nevertheless, in her mind, the pennants belonged in a magical, distant, all-powerful world of successful males who wore raccoon coats while waving pennants overhead, yelling “rah rah” in unison with other men cheering on other men, all appearing to have a great time in a world of accomplishment and success that eluded her husband leading to her righteous and perpetual unhappiness.
There was a picture of the same Protestant Jesus, only He is pointing the way to safety for a young boy lost on a stormy sea. Should faith fail, there was the fallback option: a lucky horseshoe, hung above the door open end skyward to receive fortune from another mysterious world.
Shelves held model cars, Hot Rod mags, a toy steam engine, individual transistor radios to receive information from an outside world, forbidden girls, a reel-to-reel tape recorder, a TV, an unplayed trombone ready and waiting should a boy seek artistic expression available only to his gender.
The room was a place for boys to become worldly men entitled to possess things, accomplish things, to dream of a future, to direct lives and have the first and last word on everything, validating the unbreakable rules defining gender roles mom submitted as though mandated by Divine decree.
Any female impediments to the boys’ world were soundly reprimanded. Our brothers’ abuses were ignored or accepted as rightful expressions of male entitlement to “make her mind.”
At the end of the Cook’s Tour, mom relaxed and smiled, peace restored, her choices validated by the puzzled and grateful to escape at last.
In her 1950 starched, dust-free, flawless life cracks appeared through which she led me on occasional excursions into the truly bizarre, not permanently in the outer darkness, but merely a visit to the realm of the temporarily lost with performances of absurd, ludicrous black comedies she concocted, plots rooted in superstition and Old World rural Catholicism fueled by suppressed rage; exaggerated ludicrous stories somehow authentic in pathos, terror and wrath.
They starred her. I played supporting roles. Her truth, written into every plot, was absolute without error or edit. Any failure in my participation would result in immediate rejection. Family life would proceed without me as though I never existed.
The stories were of sadness and hopelessness so profound, a victimization so complete, explained only by generational oppression through the feminine line manifest during her era as foils to 1950s glorified femininity. They were passionate stories from her exquisitely creative mind, denied any appropriate opportunity to mature and flourish into a broader, more meaningful greatness.
They were manifestations of a mind overwrought by the patriarchy demanding cheerful submission to husbands whose permission was required to make decisions basic to the direction of her future, her daily activities, her religious practice, her employment, her finances, her appearance. Her body he was entitled to use at will. Failed pregnancies and lost babies were her fault.
Her only hope for survival was making do with what he brought to the marriage and resented having to share. She faked a fairytale life. She kept her place, though, in the end, it drove her to madness.
The plays must be performed, or she would disappear entirely. Scapegoated, weeping and wounded, I was a proxy through which she found relief. I bore the cruelties and injustices of her life. In a less oppressive time, there would have been no need for the tragic theatre of the absurd, with a devastated small actor setting aside my own life, serving only to play the parts, to experience and resolve the pain and mourn the denied dreams and aspirations, as has been the function of all players from the beginning of all plays.
About the Author
Martha Ellen is a retired social worker living on the Oregon coast. She has an MFA from Portland State University. Her poems and prose are published in various journals and online forums. She writes to process the events of her life. She has a collection of over 3000 dolls, though she seldoms mentions this.
