The GI Bride (12 page)

Shortly afterwards, Bob said he had a
surprise for us. I thought he must be trying to make up for our recent trouble.
‘We’re going on vacation,’ he said. ‘Someone at work told me
about a place in Michigan that’s cheap and right on a small lake. They have cabins
for families and you can either cook your own food or arrange to have meals
included.’

‘Where is it?’ I asked.

‘It’s called Paw Paw Lake and
it’s in Coloma, not too far to drive, and it’ll be cooler there. What do you
think?’

‘Sounds great.’ The change of
scenery would do us both good. Perhaps we’d be able to get closer again, rekindle
the flame that used to burn so brightly.

Excited, we made plans for our holiday.
Summer was just about over and Bob told me it would be beautiful in Michigan, with the
leaves on the trees beginning to change colour.

‘Autumn comes to Michigan earlier than
it does in Chicago,’ he told me, ‘and it won’t be as crowded as it is
in summer time. That part of Michigan is famous for its apples, so we’ll have to
bring a couple of bushels home for Mom to make into apple sauce.’

‘I can hardly wait!’

So, off we went on a week’s holiday.
I’d be able to tell my family back home that I’d visited another of
America’s many states.

The resort we’d booked into was a
series of small, very old cabins, furnished to a minimal standard, but it was perfectly
adequate for our needs. On the first day, we drove around the area, checking out where
everything was, especially the grocery since we planned to cook most of our meals. The
second day was glorious: the sun was shining and it was still warm during the daytime.
We borrowed a couple of inflated rubber inner tubes and floated around on the lake for
hours, that being my only option since I couldn’t swim.

Wayne had a grand time, taking turns with
each of us to paddle around in the rubber dinghies. At one point, Bob had apparently
hung around the old wooden dock with him for too long because when I hauled Wayne out of
the water his little legs were covered with black things. I screamed, and soon Bob was
beside me.

‘Oh, my God,’ he said,
‘they’re leeches! Quick! Get the salt!’ I ran into the cabin and got
the shaker. By the time I returned, Bob was pulling leeches off Wayne’s legs, and
when we sprinkled salt on them, they curled up and fell off.

‘We can’t go in the water any
more,’ I told Bob. I was still shaking with fright, and I knew I had nightmares to
look forward to, but Wayne grinned. He didn’t seem fazed by the experience at
all.

‘He wasn’t scared until you
screamed,’ laughed Bob, but I still didn’t think it was funny. We told the
old couple who ran the resort what had happened.

‘Just steer clear of the dock, honey,
and you won’t have to worry about leeches cos that’s the only place
you’ll find ’em.’

The following day, the next disaster hit. I
hadn’t slept well on the night of the leeches. I was still upset about what had
happened but I was also having difficulty breathing. Oh, no, I thought. Don’t tell
me I’m coming down with a cold. By morning my eyes had swollen shut and I could
hardly swallow. My palate was swollen too, almost completely blocking my air
passages.

Bob rushed up to the resort owner’s
house to find out what we should do. They told us to leave Wayne with them and get to
the hospital right away, and that was what we did.

We learned that many people coming from out
of the area had severe allergic reactions at that time of the year, something to do with
ragweed pollen in the vicinity. They also told us that it was a particularly bad year
for it.

The hospital staff shot me full of
antihistamine, which knocked me out for the next two days. We felt it safer to cut short
our holiday and headed home, disappointed that our attempt at togetherness had not
accomplished what we’d hoped it would.

I can’t deny that Bob and I enjoyed
some good times together, but we were drifting apart, and rapidly, to say nothing of the
disdain that I felt coming from his family. I also can’t deny that it must have
been difficult for him, dealing with all my emotional problems. I’m sure that at
times I was hard to live with. He had slapped me now and again, and I don’t
believe that was his nature but I could
feel his frustration building
into anger. We were making each other miserable and something had to change. I decided
to tell his mother what was going on.

‘Can you please talk to him?’ I
begged, through sobs. ‘He’s been hitting me and I’m scared.’

‘Well,’ she spat back at me,
‘I’m sure you deserved it.’

I remembered then that Bob had told me his
father would hit his mother; I also remembered seeing her once with a black eye.
She’d told us she had walked into a door. How could I have been stupid enough to
think she might sympathize? I’d forgotten the old saying about blood being thicker
than water. I determined then to try harder to avoid arguments, to steer clear when Bob
was in a bad mood or had been drinking, to try anything and everything to protect myself
from further abuse. I also promised myself that I would try to be more of the kind of
wife he seemed to want, and that, I supposed, was obedient.

It had occurred to me that, in marrying so
young, I had given away my youth and all the activities that you normally experience in
your late teens and early twenties. For months now I had listened to Cindy, Brenda and
all my other English friends exchanging stories of the fun they’d had going to
dances on Saturday nights, travelling to London to see shows, holidays with friends at
Butlin’s holiday camps. I had done none of those things, except for a couple of
days out with Bob while we were courting. There seemed to be a huge chunk missing from
my life, a chunk that I hadn’t thought important in my haste to get married before
Bob went back to America. Perhaps that was what my parents had warned me about. Perhaps
this was what they were afraid would happen, that I would
suddenly
realize what I had missed. Of course, they had been right: all of the things they had
predicted might happen were happening, but what could I do except try to make things
work? Two things ran through my mind: I must not let my parents down, and they must not
think of me as a failure. I hoped my connections with other GI brides, Cindy Ballmaier
and my sister-in-law Brenda would help me to make up for lost time and my lost youth. I
thought that enjoying a new and different kind of entertainment would enable me to
forget what I had missed, but to do that, I needed the support of my husband and his
patience seemed to be running out.

We did two things with other couples that
made me hope our social life was improving. First, Bob invited Peter and Brenda to
attend his union’s annual dinner and dance, which would be held at the famous
Hilton Hotel in downtown Chicago. Brenda and I went shopping for something special to
wear, both choosing summery white dresses. Everything went well and we were enjoying the
evening until I had to visit the ladies’ room. Brenda came with me. My dress had a
long red scarf-type adornment that draped round the neck and fell in a flowing tail down
the back of the dress. I forgot to hitch it up when I sat on the toilet. When I stood
up, the now soaked tail slapped around my legs. It soon became abundantly clear that the
red dye was not colour-fast. My legs, the skirt of my beautiful white dress and my shoes
were sucking up the red colour, which was about the same shade as my face. At that
moment, Brenda came out of her cubicle. She just stood there, staring at me. ‘Oh,
my God,’ she said. ‘What have you done?’

‘What have I done? Well, it looks like
I’ve ruined our night out. You’ll have to go and tell Bob that I can’t
come back in.’

‘I thought you were bleeding,’
she muttered, as she scurried off.

While she was delivering the bad news, I
tried to wash and dry myself so that at least our miserable ride home wouldn’t
smell like the inside of a toilet. No one said much on the way, but I could see that my
husband wasn’t happy. I tried to lighten the mood: ‘Well, at least we got to
eat our dinner,’ I said, but his response was a couple of disapproving grunts.

The next attempt at a night out consisted of
eight couples going for dinner and the show at a well-known nightspot. Brenda and I were
particularly excited, as neither of us had ever been to such a place. We all sat at a
long table and soon the drinks began to flow. Bob and I each had one, then chose the
cheapest thing on the menu because that was all we could afford. Everyone else was
ordering lobster and steak. None of that mattered until the bill came and someone
decided that we should just split it evenly between the eight couples. I thought Bob was
going to explode. Next thing I knew, everyone was staring at us while he made his
feelings known.

‘There’s no way in hell
I’m going to contribute to your goddamn lobster dinners and your endless rounds of
drinks,’ he shouted. ‘I’ll pay for what we had and that’s
it.’ By then, everyone in the place was staring at us. I wanted to crawl under the
table, but I understood his anger: we really couldn’t afford to pay for such
luxuries. I just wished he could have expressed it quietly. That group of friends
never did invite us to go out with them again, and I can’t
remember what the show was like. Bob and I certainly seemed to have a problem when it
came to having fun with other people.

In an effort to make Bob happy, I applied
for American citizenship. I had been in America for three years, and that was the only
requirement I had to fulfil since I was married to an American. Secretly, I gathered the
information I needed to go through the naturalization process. One of my neighbours, Pat
Yuskus, agreed to help me study for the test. I began in earnest, learning about
American history, the Constitution, and so on. When Pat thought I was ready, I sent in
my application and waited to hear back from the Office of Immigration and
Naturalization.

When I received an appointment for the test
I was a nervous wreck, but off I went, with Pat taking care of Wayne. Although I
didn’t do all that well, I passed. I could hardly believe it when the interviewer
asked me questions about the Magna Carta.

‘I only studied American history and
politics,’ I told the bored-looking official. ‘I didn’t expect you to
ask me about British history.’

‘My dear young lady,’ he said,
‘the Magna Carta is very much a part of American law and history.’ Then,
after a brief silence, he really surprised me: ‘Why don’t you just go ahead
and tell me what you
do
know?’ he said. For a moment, I was struck dumb
this wasn’t how it was supposed to go but I took a deep breath and rattled off all
the facts I could remember until he said, ‘That’s enough. That will do
nicely.’
He began to fill in some paperwork while I gave a great
sigh of relief and breathed normally again.

The final step towards citizenship was the
swearing-in ceremony. Finally, the big day came: in a large courtroom in the US Federal
Building in Chicago, with about a hundred other people, a judge swore me in as an
American citizen.

Now, I must confess that when I had to swear
to take up arms against the country of my birth in the event of war with it, I crossed
my fingers behind my back. I supposed that admission could get me deported, but so be
it: I never could have sworn to that.

I could hardly wait to tell Bob what I had
done. I had been visualizing his surprise, pride and happiness when I showed him my
citizenship papers, but when I made the big announcement and proudly produced them, he
reacted as if I had told him that dinner was ready. That might have been what pushed me
over the edge. I don’t know if I was more hurt or angry, but the wedge between us
had been driven deeper. That his family had thrown a party to celebrate their
daughter’s husband, Mike, receiving his citizenship made it worse, but Mike
seemingly allowed his in-laws to run and rule his life. He hardly ever spoke.

In the event that Bob and I separated, I
knew I would need a job so I started checking the newspapers, looking for something I
might be able to do. I was interviewed at an employment agency for a receptionist
position that offered switchboard training, but required a little typing. I lied,
telling them I could type. I think they liked the idea of having an English voice
answering their telephone so they hired me to start on the following Monday morning.

It was Thursday afternoon and I spent the next
three days teaching myself to type on Bob’s old portable machine. On Monday
morning, off I went, nervously, to start my new job. At that point, having done nothing
but practise typing, I was even typing my thoughts inside my head.

I enjoyed that job and liked the people I
worked with. We were always busy and the time passed quickly. My responsibilities were
gradually increased and I began to feel better about myself, developing more confidence.
I was also optimistic about the future now that I had more skills.