Veda: A Novel (10 page)

“Over to the coast? You stayed over at the coast? What did that cost?”

He studied his shoes.

“We’re here livin off Mama, and you spend money on a vacation at the beach. What on earth were you thinkin?” I could hear my voice gittin that high screechy sound, and I knew I better stop or I’d grab him by the throat. “I’ve got a headache,” I said. “You better leave.”

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21

July 24, 1945 (Tue.) [Max. 92°, Min. 51°.] Clear and much cooler this morning, remaining clear and becoming sweltering hot for the beginning of another scorching midsummer heat wave. Second crop of clover hay is now being harvested. Veda has sued me for divorce.

I
JUST CAN’T CONDONE IT.”
Mama said. Raymond’s uselessness was as big a thorn in her side as it was in mine, but she was dead set against divorce. “You made a promise to God, Veda, for richer or poorer, for better or worse.”

“I know Mama, but how much worse? We’re livin here under your roof and Raymond’s never give us a dime. He doesn’t even come to see the kids. I’ve made up my mind. I’m not goin back.”

Raymond didn’t even try to talk me out of it. He quit his good job with the railroad job and went cryin to his mother. Told her he had worked so hard to provide for his dear little family. Prayed not to be drafted for their sake. Sacrificed so much, only to have his wife commit adultery and sue him for a divorce.

I was furious. When in hell would I have committed adultery? When I was takin care of his kids? Cookin his meals? Doin his laundry? Or when I was in the hospital after he pushed me down the stairs?

Of course his mother believed ever word and got him a lawyer, a man from her church in Salem who probably didn’t charge her.

They took me to court and Raymond’s mother did most of the talkin. Some ladies from our church’s Dorcas Society came to speak up for him too. Tried their damnedest, all of em, to git my kids away from me. They said I was a bad mother. Said I hadn’t been in church in months. Even though they knew about the accident, knew I was laid up all that time. They said Raymond was the one who was fit to raise the children. Said how clean and well-mannered the children were when he brought em to church. Who did they think was takin care of em? One woman had the gall to say she seen me take milk from my babies and drink it myself.

It turned into a kind of Adventist circus, with me in front of the judge shakin so bad I almost couldn’t answer his questions. When I was asked about the adultery charge, I started to cry. I told him it wasn’t true. That I couldn’t have … that I was sick and stayin at my mother’s house, and that Raymond hadn’t been to see me or the children durin the whole time. That he hadn’t give me any support at all.

The judge looked disgusted. He give me custody of the kids and ordered Raymond to pay a hundred dollars a month for child support. Raymond said it wasn’t fair. Said Oregon law was biased toward mothers, even undeservin ones like me.

I don’t think Raymond wanted custody anyhow. He couldn’t support em when he had me to take care of ever’thin, so how could he do it alone. They would of ended up stayin with his mother. And the idea of her raisin my kids was downright scary.

August 28, 1945 (Tue.) [Max. 96°, Min. 54°.] Scorching hot and dry as we reach the peak of another brief late summer heat wave. Second sweltering Tuesday in succession and I really suffered with the heat both days at my job. Veda’s divorce has gone through.

I got a lot of letters from Raymond but, most of the time, instead of sendin money, he sent excuses. Work was hard to find, he said, and most places wouldn’t hire him unless he joined a union which his conscience wouldn’t let him do. Loyalty to anythin other than God was against his religious principles. Every month it was the same thing. No child support. He begged me not to turn him in. I wouldn’t have anyway. I just didn’t have the heart.

The things that were said about me spread through the church like a house afire. I’d walk in on Sabbath mornin with the kids all scrubbed and smilin, and them Dorcas Society ladies would purse their lips and tighten their butt cheeks and whisper loud enough so I couldn’t help but hear.

“Tramp … robbin that fine Christian man of his sweet children … last baby is probably not even his…”

But while the women were stickin up their noses, their husbands were sniffin around me like hogs at a slop bucket. Could they help me with anythin? Drive me someplace? Do anythin for me at all? I stopped goin. Mama kept after me, sayin they were havin a field day. Said ever’time I didn’t show up it give em even more to talk about.

“They can all go to hell,” I said. “They’ll say them things anyhow and I’m not goin to go to church and be treated that way.” And I didn’t go back either, not for a long time.

With so little money comin from Raymond, I had to rely on Mama and the little bit I made doin ironin and sellin donuts three or four dozen at a time. I got up early to make the donuts and then my brother Laird delivered em to this little breakfast place downtown. It was a lot of work, and after buyin flour and sugar and Crisco, I wasn’t comin out much ahead. I knew I needed a real job, but I didn’t know where to look. Then I found out the box factory was hirin girls so I went to see if I could git on. They wanted to know if I could stand on my feet all day and lift forty pounds. I told em it couldn’t be any harder than packin babies around. The job was six days a week so I’d have to work Saturdays. I didn’t think God would mind.

The first day was real bad. The boss lady took me through the plant and showed me what I was supposed to do. There was this thing called a conveyor belt. It carried cardboard that was cut and folded flat, and I was to take em from where they got dumped in a chute and stack em on a pallet behind me. It sounded easier than it was. They come down that belt lickety-split and I couldn’t git em out fast enough. Git jammed up and boxes’d go ever whichaway.

There was this big fat girl at the next machine, and ever’time she seen me gittin behind, she come over. Never said a blessed word to me, just jerked things out of my hands and shoved me out of the way. Then once she got me caught up, she’d go back to her own side. I would of thanked her for helpin if she’d been nice about it.

When the dinner bell rang they shut the conveyor down, and the whole bunch of women went over to where some tables was pushed up together. They was all talkin amongst themselves, ignorin me, so I went to a empty table in the corner.

“Unless you give a shit what them bitches think, get your butt over here and sit with me.” I looked around and seen this pretty blond girl at a table toward the back.

“Are you talkin to me?” I asked.

“Don’t let em bother you, honey,” she said. “They won’t have nothin to do with me either. That horsefaced one over there seen her boyfriend lookin at me and it scared the b’jesus out of her. Now you come in here lookin like you do, with that cute figure, they ain’t gonna give you the time of day. You might as well team up with me.”

She said her name was Lila. She had two teenage kids and a ex-husband that beat her up one time too many. I told her I was divorced too, and after that first day, me and her got to be real good friends even though we weren’t nothin alike. I wasn’t used to speakin my mind, and Lila was the opposite. She didn’t hold nothin back. If there was somethin she thought needed sayin, she said it. Didn’t use polite words either.

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22

November 10, 1945 (Sabbath) [Max. 47°, Min. 40°.] High winds all last night, reaching 32 miles per hour, accompanied by a heavy, continuous downpour of rain which lasted all day. I have come to Grants Pass to visit my children and I took them to church. Veda and the children are living in a nice little apartment near her mother. Veda was working, as she has taken a factory job.

R
AYMOND TOOK THE TWO
older kids to church with him. It was rainin when they got out, but he didn’t have sense enough to ask for a ride, so they was soaked by the time they got back. Once Mama got the kids out of their wet clothes and give em some hot cocoa, she let Rosalie take her daddy over to Auntie Bea’s house. Bea was givin her piano lessons and Rosalie wanted to show her daddy what she’d learned.

When I got home from work, Raymond was gone and Rosalie was cryin like her heart was broke. Seems she had started playin “Clementine,” and her daddy got after her. Told her it wasn’t a Christian song and Bea had no business teachin it to her. Not only was she to stop playin it, but she wasn’t to go to Bea’s house ever again. Rosalie didn’t understand what was wrong with a song like “Clementine,” and neither did I. She’d been havin fun learnin to play that song, and she wanted to know why God made fun things if people weren’t supposed to do em.

Of course I let her go back to Bea’s and keep takin lessons. I let the kids do a lot of things Raymond was against. Like singin songs they didn’t learn in Sabbath School. Like actin silly, wearin bathin suits, playin in the sprinkler, and chewin gum. He even got after the girls for twirlin around in their dresses, said it was the same as dancin. He’d tell em that those things made Jesus sad, and “You don’t want to make Jesus sad, do you?” They was just little kids, for godsake. Good kids. I didn’t see a damn thing wrong with em havin fun.

Raymond had plenty to say about me goin to work. Not that he minded me earnin money, ’cause that got him off the hook, but I’d gone and took a job where I had to work on the Sabbath, and that was somethin he never would of done.

And I was wrong about the job not bein harder than takin care of kids. With all that liftin and twistin, I used muscles I didn’t know I had. But sore as I was, I felt sorrier for Mama. She was too old to be runnin after four little kids all day long. And to make things worse, my brother Laird had moved back in. He was drinkin real bad and got kicked out of the place he was rentin.

“I can’t let him sleep under a bridge, can I?” Mama said. “He’ll end up dead if I do.”

Laird swore he was done drinkin for good, but then he’d git his paycheck and be gone for two days. Mama’d git frantic and call my sisters’ husbands. They’d find Laird knee-walkin drunk in one of the taverns downtown, or passed out in an alley, and bring him home.

Six o’clock the next mornin, Mama’d start in on him. “Get up, you lazy bum. You’re not goin to lay around all day.”

“Leave me alone, Ma,” he’d say. “I’m sick.”

“You’re not sick, you’re drunk. You’re drunk and you stink. Get yourself cleaned up and quit actin like a heathen.” She threatened to kick him out, have him committed to a sanitarium, have his paycheck turned over to her so he couldn’t git his hands on it. She threatened all sorts of things, but she never did any of em.

So that’s why I decided to move into the tool shed behind the house. So the kids wouldn’t see their Uncle Laird come home drunk. And they wouldn’t hear him and their grandma fight. There was a woodstove in the shed, so I was able to make it warm, and once I got it cleaned up and put our beds out there, it was fine. It was kind of like playin house. Me and the kids, we’d take our baths in Mama’s tub, and then go out to the shed and pile into bed together.

But it wasn’t a “nice little apartment” like Raymond said. It was a shed. A place to store things. It was full of old Masonite boards and it smelled like turpentine. It was where Laird had always went to paint. He had talent, Laird did. He painted pictures of mountains, lakes, and rivers, with deer and wolves. All so lifelike. He could of made somethin of himself if it weren’t for his drinkin. Instead, he just gave his pictures away. Traded em for booze. People said half the bars in Grants Pass had Laird’s paintins on the walls.

When Laird was sober he was great to have around. The kids loved him. He built em kites. Rough-housed with em. Chased em around the yard with a pair of tin snips, sayin he was goin to cut off their ears. They ran and screamed and hid from him, and when he stopped, they begged him to do it again.

Raymond was always writin me letters. Sayin how much he missed his children. Sayin he wished he could visit more often. But he was broke, he said, and couldn’t afford bus fare. Then he’d mention havin gone to camp meetin up in Washington State or some other place. It made me mad. I knew what that cost, and it was a lot more than bus fare to Grants Pass. I wondered, though, if the kids weren’t better off without him. The longer he was away the less they seemed to miss him. And it wasn’t like they didn’t have any men around. They had Uncle Laird and Uncle Gabe and Uncle Walt, who all went out of their way to spend time with em.

Walt was my sister Zelda’s husband. He was a big, even-tempered, teddy bear of a man. Nothin rattled him. He would take Bubby home with him, keep him overnight. Bubby loved tools and machines and takin things apart, and Uncle Walt would let him putter around in his workshop. But Uncle Gabe preferred the girls. He let them come over anytime they wanted, but he wasn’t as patient with Bubby. Bubby got on his nerves. One time Gabe brought Bubby home, pullin him so hard by one ear, the poor kid was clear up on his tiptoes. “Keep this one away from my shop,” he said. “He takes things apart and I can’t find all the pieces.”

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23

I
WAS EIGHT MONTHS PREGNANT
with Sam when I met Ed Landres. It was after my accident and before I’d made up my mind about leavin Raymond. Ed didn’t have anythin to do with my decision, but he did make an impression.

I’d just got out of the hospital and was stayin at Mama’s house. Mama was takin care of my three kids and I barely left the davenport.

My brother Laird’s drinkin had got him kicked out of his place, so he was stayin there too, and that’s how I met Ed. He’d come by the house to check up on Laird, and Mama tore into him somethin awful. Far as she was concerned, any friend of Laird’s was a no-good drunk, and ever bit as much to blame for Laird’s drinkin as he was.

Ed kept comin around, though, even after that tongue-lashin, and I liked how he didn’t seem to let Mama git under his skin. He’d set and talk with Laird, and the two of em together put on quite a show, cuttin up the way they did. I got a kick out of watchin him and Laird play with my kids, who loved the attention. And just seein how much they loved it drove home to me that it wasn’t just my life that was dismal, it was their lives too.