baptise your new home.’
That pad didn’t look too clean and wasn’t very big, but I didn’t care about trifles;
it would keep my spine from being ground into the bane boards. As Briney was
fetching it in and placing it on the floor, I was getting out of the last of my
clothes.
He called out, ‘Hey! Leave your stockings on.’
‘Yes, sir. Right away, Mister. Aintchu gonna buy a drink first, dearie?’ Drunk with
excitement, I took a deep breath and got down on my back. ‘What’s your name,
Mister?’ I said huskily. ‘Mine’s Myrtle; I’m fertile.’
‘I’ll bet you are.’ Briney finished getting out of his clothes, hung his coat on a
hook behind the bathroom door and started to mount me. I reached for him. He stopped
me, paused to kiss me. ‘Madam, I love you.’
‘I love you, sir.’
‘I’m pleased to hear it. Brace yourself.’ Then he said, ‘Unh! Ease off a notch.’
I relaxed a little. ‘Better?’
‘Just dandy. You’re wonderful, lady mine.’
‘So are you, Briney. Now? Please!’
I started to peak almost at once, then the skyrockets took off and I was screaming
and just barely conscious when I felt him let go, and I fainted.
I’m not a fainter. But I did that time.
Two Sundays later I missed my period. The following February (1907) I had George
Edward.
Our next ten years were idyllic.
Our life may have looked dull and humdrum to other people since all we did was live
quietly in a house in a quiet neighbourhood and raise children… and cats and
guinea pigs and rabbits and snakes and goldfish and (once) silkworms on top of my
piano – a project of Brian, Junior, when he was in fourth grade. That required
mulberry leaves, silkworms being fussy eaters. Brian, Junior, made a deal with a
neighbour who had a mulberry tree. Quite early he displayed his father’s talent for
always finding a way to work out a deal to accomplish his ends, no matter how
unlikely they seemed at first.
A deal for mulberry leaves was big excitement the way we lived those years.
We had kindergarten Crayola pictures with stars on them posted in my kitchen, and
tricycles on the back porch, and roller skates beside them, and fingers that had to
be kissed well and bandaged, and special projects to do at home and take to school,
and lots of shoes to be shined to get our tribe ready for Sunday School on time, and
noisy arguments over who gets the buttonhook next – until I got shoe buttonhooks for
each child and put names on them.
Ali the while Maureen’s belly waxed and waned like the round belly of the Moon:
George in 1907, Marie in 1909, Woodrow in 1912, Richard in 1914, and Ethel in
1916… which by no means ended it but brings us up to the War that changed the
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World.
But endless things happened before then, some of which I should mention. We moved
from the church we had attended while we were tenants of ‘Scrooge’ soon after we
moved to our new neighbourhood. In part we were upgrading in churches just as we
were upgrading in houses and neighbourhoods. In the United States at that time
Protestant denominations were closely linked to economic and social status, although
it was never polite to say so. At the top of the pyramid was high-church
Episcopalian; at the bottom were several pentecostal fundamentalist sects whose
members piled up treasures in Heaven because they were finding it impossible to pile
up treasures on Earth.
We had been attending a middle-level church selected largely because it was close
by. We would have moved eventually to a more prosperous boulevard church now that we
had moved to a more prosperous neighbourhood… but we moved when we did because
Maureen got herself quasi raped.
My own silly fault. In any century rape is the favourite sport of large numbers of
men when they can get away with it, and any female under ninety and over six is at
risk anywhere and at all times… unless she knows how to avoid it and takes no