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Retirement Talk for Boomers, Seniors, and Retirees |
Frog Spit
Jackie Spinks
Chapter Sixteen
In the thirties we had talk. And talk. And more talk. And so there they were, my aunts—dainty, blonde, unemployed, gently feminine to the world, yet like Mama, able to yell like a boot camp sergeant, and they could make do psychological twist from the depression blues to elation to griping in a paragraph.
They’d sit in a circle, at the kitchen table, like Indian yogis or a witch’s coven and in an effort to pay homage to the purdah of their lives, each would try to top the other about who’d have the most gruesome life. And this could develop into a one-ups-man-ship that could go on for hours.
“I’ve had it rough all my life, let me tell you, trying to please that man, going through what I go through.”
“Not any harder than I’ve had it.”
“Nothing, but tragedy. You’ve had a picnic compared to me.”
“Such a trial. These men. Always want it.” (I now know “wanting it” meant sex.)
“You want to know what real suffering is—well let me tell you…”
“We know. We’ve heard. Let me tell you something that will freeze your tongue.”
“Men are tomcats. Can think of only one thing.”
“Animals.”
“Snakes.”
“Men are Daddies.” I squealed from behind the davenport fearing they’d get to Daddy and persecute one of the nicest people I knew. They all stopped talking. Finally Aunt Agnes spoke.
“What are you doing behind there, Baby?”
Playing.”
“Playing what?”
“Dolls.”
“You mean you’ve been listening,” Mama said.
“I can listen while I play,” I said.
“Honey,” Aunt Agnes said, “We’re not talking about your Daddy we’re talking about other Daddies. You know Daddies in general. Other Daddies.” She lifted me onto her lap. “You know—like Daddies you don’t know.”
I knew fear in a voice when I heard it. And I not only heard it, I smelled it. They were worried I’d spill the beans and they knew me well enough to know if they said, “Don’t you dare tell Daddy what we’ve been talking about. Promise?” and my “I promise,” reply would mean I’d immediately snitch, so they had to work Miss Nosy another way.
Sweet-faced, hard-nosed Aunt Signe, who, at one time, had a duel fought to protect he honor, with the combatants deciding to get drunk instead, gathered me from Aunt Agnes onto her lap.
“Are you talking about Uncle Wil?” I said guilelessly, knowing how to go gently into the good night.
‘No, nor Grandpa, or Uncle Walt, or Cousin--or any of the uncles or cousins-- okay?”
“Okay.”
Not yet satisfied she’d gotten through to me, Aunt Signe said, “It’s just blathering. That’s what women do. They blather. Don’t you blather sometimes?”
I thought it over. Did I blather? “No, I don’t blather” I deemed this to be the correct answer.
“Well, when you grow up, you’ll blather. It’s part of being a woman—blathering.”
“Like—go out and get some wood, the fire’s going out, isn’t blather?’
“Yeah, that’s not blather.”
“I
guess, I’ll have to learn how to blather.”
“You sure will.”
“Now run along outside and play,” said Mama. I laboriously climbed down from Aunt Agnes’s lap (they had distributed me around, as they were clueing me in to the ways of women) and I slowly padded out to the porch. But I could still hear from the porch and Mama knew I could hear.
“Little pitchers have big ears,” she said.
“Oh, they can’t understand,” Aunt Agnes said.
“I don’t know. She’s an inquisitive little scalawag,” Signe said.
I come from a family of talkers, not that everyone wasn’t a talker before TV, but we talked endlessly. We thought the more we talked, taking Fireside Chats, as a model, the more likely we’d be to get our point across. And so the sisters talked.
Or maybe they just liked to hear their voices in English and talking gave them practice. Regardless of the reason they never dropped one word when three would do. The most miniscule detail of their interests was put under the microscope and dissected. And that could take hours.
Or they’d ponder philosophical questions, such as “if you broke a mirror would you, henceforth, have seven years bad luck, if you could counteract that with the break being an accidental one? So if it weren’t personal carelessness, and it was the mirror’s fault for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, were you responsible for the broken mirror and the concomitant seven years bad luck? It was important philosophical questions like this that could absorb three hours of debate, reassurances and nonsense.
Ten percent of the talk was about making ends meet, the price of sugar, whether to make over an old Navy pea jacket, or whether they could glue the soles of their dancing slippers back on and wear them for another year and how putting cardboard over the holes of the kid’s shoes was the way to go, even though the cardboard didn’t hold up when it was raining—and it rained all the time up here in the Northwest.
After this ten percent of conversation about “Making ends meet,” was over, the other ninety percent was compounded of forty percent admonitions about right and wrong and the remaining fifty percent was gossip about men and sex.
It all boiled down to the fact that as far as men were concerned my aunts believed that in marriage they were the half that was the rug and men were the half that was the shoe. For any kind of scientific sexual knowledge nobody would go to the aunts—except me.
When my aunts came over to visit Mama, I stationed myself behind the davenport, where I played with my paper dolls and waited for the fireworks. First, they’d bring each other up on the latest gossip.
“Could you believe it, she never used Lysol in her wash, or Purex in her scrub water.” Cleanliness was next door to economizing in our family, and then next door to Godliness.
“Did you hear Janet’s in the family ways?” This was a juicy tidbit and it came out of the blue from Aunt Signe.
“But she’s only been married-- let’s see, it was September…right?”
“Yeah, the kids were starting school and we were debating whether to chip in on a Wedding present with the kid’s school lunch money and make them eat at home which wouldn’t go over that big. Remember?”
“And she’s showing already?”
“Out to here.”
“No!” Mock-- shocked disapproval.
“”Well, she tried to hide it.”
“And she had a white wedding.”
“Uh huh.”
“I would have worn pink.”
“Heck, I would have gone into the next state.”
And after discussing every detail and ramification of this incendiary take-no-prisoners gossip, and speculating on the mother-of-the-bride’s humiliation at yet another daughter’s, probable, pre-mature birth, interjecting an occasional empathetic remark to let each other know they weren’t totally divorced from sisterly commiseration, they moved on to their next favorite subject.
“So, what was your first time like?” They talked of this often, each offering a more apocalyptic version. At the same time these sassy kvetchers, in aprons, never without a coffee mug (naughty Mormons) when they sat, and wanting me to get the message (Mama had clued them in that I was listening from the porch) that sex was something I didn’t want to monkey around with until I married and had to pay off my creditor.
“Oh, it was awful,” my two aunts answered in unison.
“It hurt more than anything. Thank Heavens, I never have to go through that again!”
“I thought he was killing me.”
“Have you ever known anything more painful?”
“Never. I don’t know
how I lived through it.”
“Did you scream?”
“I tried not to. We were staying in a tent near a CCC camp and everybody could hear everything. And I over heard the guys taking bets. ‘How’s it going in there, Buckeroo?’ they’d yell. I wanted to dig a hole, crawl in, and never come out.”
“How awful, you must have closed up completely.”
“Like a Kerr lid on a Mason jar. I was a vacuum. Dry. Empty. A desert. Two jars of Vasoline couldn’t slick that floor for dancing.”
“I was just plain scared.”
“But you saw Old Blue (beloved family horse) give it to the mare down the road and she didn’t seem to mind.”
“Well, I minded for her.”
“So
icky. Did you have to change the sheets
the next morning?”
“Oh yeah. Doesn’t he use
rubbers?”
“No,
he said it’s
like wearing a glove. He doesn’t
feel a
thing.”
”So how do you keep from getting in the family way?”
“’It’ felt like someone shoving in a pitchfork.”
”What women endure and it’s all for men, as if cooking, cleaning and washing weren’t enough “
“But we have our precious babies.” That one was for me. And so they’d go on. “Yes, the kids are a blessing. We were always appreciated in absenteeism. “We should count our blessings.”
“True, we are lucky.”
“I believe that broken mirror bad luck stuff is hooey.”
“You never know. I might be pregnant,” said Agnes.
“Oh, no!!!”
“How’d that happen?” asked Mama.
“You know that new rug for the living room?”
“Yeah.”
“I mean I couldn’t stand that old rag we had. It was so dirty and there was no way to get it clean. I scrubbed it. I beat it. I swept it. Nothing worked. It still looked terrible.”
“Did you try benzene?”
“No, does that work?”
“Like a charm.”
“Now, you tell me.”
“So, you were saying?”
“Oh, yeah, …well, I went out and bought a new rug and he became so steamed up over what I paid for the rug-- after he found out, blah, blah, blahing about how now we couldn’t buy a new car for a couple more years and our current car was about ready for the junkyard, I had to calm him down somehow.”
“That was some calming.”
“Anyhow, you know something better? Also, do you have something I can take to start my sick time (menstruation).”
“That’s murder,” Mama said.
“Well, it’s not like I’m getting an abortion
or anything
like that, I just wondered if you had any suggestions besides castor
oil.”
“How late are you?”
“A week.”
“Oh, you’ve always been irregular, that
doesn’t mean
anything.’
“You’re right. I won’t
worry.” That’s one for the
laugh tracks.
Who knows what happened, that’s something they never talked about. No pregnancy ensured.