The GI Bride (5 page)

When at last we turned on to the street
where the Irvines lived, and I saw their house, I gasped in delight: they had left the
Christmas lights up to welcome us home even more of a surprise in that it was now early
March.

‘It’s beautiful,’ I
said.

‘Holy cow,’ added Bob. ‘I
sure didn’t think it would still be Christmas here.’ He looked happy.

‘We thought you’d like some
brightness in your life after all that …’ She glanced across at me. I wondered
what she would have said if I hadn’t been there, probably something about the lack
of central heating and a telephone in my home, the British rain, and our rather low
standard of living.

‘It’s wonderful,’ I
murmured. ‘Thank you.’

I had never seen the outside of a house
decorated with lights before; back at home, we had never had any Christmas lights. In
fact, last Christmas was the first time ever that we’d had a tree. Bob had bought
us a tiny one and we’d sat it on top of the television, decorating it with
homemade paper chains. Here, multicoloured lights outlined the windows, doors and roof.
It was magical.

Mr Irvine pulled up in front of the house, a
bungalow, and parked there temporarily while we unloaded the luggage. I started towards
the back of the car to help with the suitcases but Mrs Irvine elbowed me out of the way.
‘Go wait by the front door. Daddy will let you in while I help Robert with the
bags,’ she said, somewhat dismissively. I did as I was told. My father-in-law
lumbered up the front
steps, fished around in his coat pocket and
produced an enormous ring of keys. After some mumbling, he unlocked the door and let me
in.

‘Just go on in, Ira,’ he said.
Jeez, I thought. He doesn’t even know my name.

Bob and his mother, who were both breathing
heavily from lugging the cases up the steps, soon joined us.

‘Well, here we are at last,’
said Mrs Irvine. ‘I thought today would never come.’ Great tears began to
cascade down her face, but she was smiling.

‘Yeah, you’ll be in your
grandmother’s old room,’ grunted ‘Daddy’.

‘I did tell you Grandma’s gone
to stay with Aunt Freda, didn’t I, Robert?’

‘Yes, you did, Mom. Hope she
wasn’t upset that she had to move out.’

‘No. It was Freda’s turn to have
her for a while anyway, but she’ll be down for a visit with the others soon.
They’ll all want to see you, Robert.’

‘And meet my wife,’ Bob
interjected.

‘Oh, yes, of course,’ stuttered
his mother.

Inside the Irvines’ house, which
reeked of cigar smoke, all the Christmas decorations were still up and an artificial
tree was loaded with baubles and twinkling lights. There were piles of presents beneath
it, and we were told they were all for us, but they would have to wait. I was exhausted
and desperately needed sleep, and so, hoping the outside world would look less dreary
and frightening in the daylight, I asked if I might be excused. At long last, I
collapsed into bed.

The following day, I slept until
mid-afternoon, at which
time Bob woke me. ‘Come on, sleepyhead,
everyone’s waiting to talk to you,’ he said.

‘Everyone?’ I groaned.
‘Who’s everyone?’ I felt as though I was about to be put on display,
and I suppose, in a way, I was.

‘Just Mom and Dad so far, but
I’m sure my sister and her family will be here soon.’ I scrambled to prepare
for the inquisition, my stomach clenched. I was nervous to the point of nausea
again.

Bob showed me to the bathroom. He gently
pushed me inside and followed me, closing the door behind us. He took me in his arms and
held me close, whispering in my ear, ‘Remember, you’re my beautiful girl and
I’m proud of you. Don’t be nervous about meeting the family, I’ll be
holding your hand all the way. Try to remember that they’re probably nervous too.
They’ve never had a daughter-in-law before.’ He chuckled, the way he always
did, and, as always, it made me feel just that little bit better.

I felt safe wrapped in his strong comforting
arms, and at that moment, I almost cried tears of happiness. His caring and closeness
reminded me of the love that had brought me to this strange land of contrasts. His
people were different from my own. I had to get used to that, and I hoped that my
disappointment in them and their world would relax into familiarity, that I would soon
feel at home with them.

‘Thank you for loving me, Bob. I just
hope I’m not a disappointment to you or your family,’ I whispered into his
neck, as I breathed in the familiar warm smell of his body. The scent of his Old Spice
aftershave suddenly reminded me of my mother and I smiled on the inside;
she had liked the smell so much she had started using Bob’s
bottle as perfume and he had surprised her by buying her one of her own. We had all
laughed about that, and about her blush when she realized she had been found out.

‘You’ll never be a
disappointment to me, honey. I just hope you’re not disappointed with us.’
He gave me a reassuring hug. ‘Come out when you’re ready. I’ll be
waiting for you.’ He smiled the smile that had drawn me to him in my other life,
the life I had left behind for him. Now I was ready for anything.

‘Would you like something to eat,
honey?’ asked my mother-in-law, when I came into the kitchen. ‘Waffles,
eggs, bacon?’ I didn’t know what waffles were, and I certainly didn’t
have the stomach for eggs and bacon at that time.

‘No thanks, Mrs Irvine, I’m not
hungry, but could I have a cup of tea, please?’ I was desperate for a cup of tea.
I
needed
a cup of tea.

‘Oh, my dear [it sounded like
‘deeyurr’], I’ve just made you a whole pot of coffee,’ she said.
‘I’ll have to see if I have any tea bags oh, and you can call me
“Mom”, if you like.’ Tea bags, I thought. Ugh.

And so began my introduction to a completely
new world of food and drink. It wasn’t something I had expected to cause problems,
but it did and for a long time too.

My mother-in-law did eventually produce some
ancient tea bags but I would have killed for a ‘real’ cup of tea. She seemed
quite distressed when I put two into my cup instead of the customary one, but it was the
only way to
get any flavour into the tea, and even then it left a lot
to be desired. ‘When I have tea, usually if I’m ill, I use the same tea bag
all day,’ she mumbled.

Later that first day, Bob’s sister,
Roberta, came over with her husband, Mike, who was Ukrainian, and their baby, Clarice.
They sat around us while we opened our presents. Their generosity was overwhelming and I
didn’t know what to say. Between them, they had bought us everything and I do mean
everything we needed to start our home. It felt a little odd to be opening Christmas
presents in March, with the sound of carols playing in the background. I must have
sounded like a broken record, saying, ‘Thank you,’ over and over again.

When Roberta and family left, we piled all
of our presents around the edge of our small bedroom, then crawled onto the bed.

‘Well, honey, what do you
think?’ asked Bob.

‘I’m in a state of shock.
I’ve never seen so much stuff it’s embarrassing. I don’t know what to
say to them it’s just too much, Bob.’

‘You’ll get used to it. In this
family, if one person gets something new, everyone gets the same. Relax and enjoy
it.’ But how could I enjoy it when I knew how little my own family had?

The following weekend, the Irvines threw a
big welcome-home party for us. Relatives and neighbours poured in to meet me and greet
Bob. The house was crowded with people chattering, laughing, asking me questions and
feasting from a table laden with food, most of which was unidentifiable, at least to me.
My senses were already being assaulted by the stink of cigar smoke but add to that the
smells that went with all that ‘foreign’ food, and I
felt queasy. I wasn’t used to the scent of German and Polish sausage, sauerkraut,
pickled herrings and cheese. Little did I know that marrying into a German family, some
of whom were Wisconsin dairy farmers and who had brought the stinky cheeses, meant I
needed to develop a much stronger stomach than the one I had.

Again, family and friends showered us with
gifts and I felt welcomed by their many kindnesses, although I was annoyed and
embarrassed to overhear a conversation Bob’s mother had with another woman.

‘She’s quite pretty,’ said
my mother-in-law, ‘but so frail-looking.’

‘She doesn’t look as if
she’s ever had a decent meal,’ said another.

‘Yes, she’s pathetically
thin,’ my mother-in-law replied, and I wondered how they would feel if they heard
me saying, ‘Ooh, she’s pathetically fat.’

‘She comes from a very poor
family,’ came yet another comment.

‘Stupid cows,’ I mumbled, under
my breath.

‘What was that you said, honey?’
someone asked, but I just shook my head and walked away. Then someone tapped my arm and
pulled me towards a small group of visitors.

‘Say something in English,
honey,’ she said.

For a second, I didn’t know how to
respond. I wasn’t sure what she meant. ‘I’m talking English,’ I
replied. ‘English people speak English.’

‘Isn’t that just the cutest
thing?’ she remarked to the group, who laughed, but I still didn’t know what
the silly cow meant.

‘Has she had much schooling?’ I
heard another old biddy ask my mother-in-law. ‘It doesn’t sound as though
she has.’ I didn’t hear the response, but by then I’d heard enough
from behind their cupped hands and I went outside, wondering if there was anything right
about me or the way I spoke. ‘Just going to get some fresh air,’ I told Bob,
but I was seething and fighting back tears of hurt and anger.

Some of what they were saying was true, but
I certainly didn’t need to be constantly reminded of it. I’d thought
I’d left all that behind.

Linguistic differences often made people
laugh or ask for explanations. I could understand that, and didn’t mind being
teased or corrected, but I didn’t need to hear whispered criticism of myself it
was as if I had the plague.

In my early days in America, simply telling
someone the time often brought laughter and teasing. For example, I would say it was
five and twenty past ten, or five and twenty to ten; Americans would say twenty-five
of
ten, or twenty-five
after
ten. There were many similar examples
of the differences in our supposed same language. Parts of cars had different names: the
British ‘bonnet’ for the American ‘hood’, ‘boot’ for
‘trunk’, ‘petrol’ for ‘gas’ and ‘wings’
for ‘fenders’, to name a few. Most people know and understand those
differences now because of television and other media, but back then, those little
differences were new and even somewhat entertaining. In America, ‘fanny’
referred to someone’s bottom, while in Britain it meant ‘vagina’. I
had to be vigilant while I was learning to speak American-English. I just hoped that in
the company of the Irvines or their friends I wouldn’t make a
complete fool of myself by inadvertently saying something dreadful.

My in-laws, who were first-generation German
immigrants, obviously thought that their new European daughter-in-law would fit their
preconceived notion of
Hausfrau
because among the gifts I received were several
‘housedresses’ in size sixteen! They were unbelievably ugly. In large pastel
plaids and floral designs, they zipped up the front and had two large patch pockets. I
weighed just over six stone and wore size six, so those dresses would have gone around
me twice, if I had ever worn them. I modelled one for Bob, and fortunately, he saw the
funny side of it and we had a good laugh about them.

‘That’s what you get for
marrying into a German family,’ he said. I soon discovered it was just the tip of
the iceberg.

During the next few weeks, things went
reasonably well. The Irvines took me out in the car to see some of the sights and
familiarize me with the area. On the first trip I was introduced to supermarket grocery
shopping. I had never seen such huge stores or such a variety of goods. There was aisle
after aisle of shelves and refrigerated units containing merchandise stacked almost to
the ceiling. I was used to little British shops in which everything was lined up on
shelves behind the counter and the assistant handed you what you wanted. Alternatively
you could give them your shopping list. Then they would gather the items on your list
for you and place them on the counter. American supermarkets also sold meat, vegetables
and fruit; in the UK, those items came from separate shops, such as the greengrocery or
the butcher’s. I wondered what my mother would have thought of such a
‘super’ shop she’d probably have got lost and had a nervous breakdown
trying to find what she wanted. Oh, and the shock of having someone actually pack your
purchases in large brown paper bags, then offer to carry them to the car for you! Mum
always shopped at the customer-owned Co-op shops because you got points for what you
bought. I can still remember her Co-op number because it was important: it paid
dividends.