The Lady Business

Another post from my off-again, on-again coming of age novel.

by Susan Matthewson

In our city neighborhood, the blocks were divided by single-lane, gravel-top alleys lined on either side with an eccentric assortment of fences in various states of repair. Every summer morning we gathered in the alley to begin our day and it was there that our imaginations spilled over. We searched for treasure in the trash cans stacked along the fences, fought pretend wars behind trash can barricades, and slew monsters hidden in the fiery incinerators behind each house.

It was also in the alley that we learned about the differences that divide people in more ways than physical boundaries ever can and about the hidden parts of family life that can only be seen from the back alley.

It was from the back alley that we spied on Mrs. Gersten, the lady from somewhere in Europe with the strange accent and dark eyes. The Gerstens had moved in the previous November but an early and harsh winter kept us huddled in our homes and their arrival went almost unnoticed until spring when we’d see her working out in her yard and gradually became aware that she received a steady stream of women visitors at various times during the day.  Soon our mothers began to whisper about Mrs. Gersten and certain repeated phrases wafted over the backyard fences and stuck in our minds without our completely understanding their meaning—phrases like “a camp survivor,” “numbers tattooed on her arm,” “a Jew,” “intellectual,” and “very bohemian.”

We began to spy on Mrs. Gersten because of these whispers and because she was so different from our mothers. Our mothers wore their hair in short permed bobs or stylish chin-length waves. Mrs. Gersten’s hair hung in a heavy, dark, wavy mass down to her waist. She tied it back with colorful scarves, the ends floating free like the wings of a butterfly.

Our mothers wore knee-length Bermuda shorts with crisp cotton sleeveless blouses in the summer or tailored wool pants with silk blouses or button-down oxford shirts in the winter. Mrs. Gersten’s wardrobe knew no season. All year-round she wore black tights and a black leotard covered by wrap-around skirts of a gossamer-like fabric in colorful prints or brilliant solid shades of flamingo, buttercup, sapphire, and emerald. She was a brilliant tropical parrot in a neighborhood of sedate little wrens and sparrows.

Our mothers only wore earrings when they dressed up for church or a special evening out. Their earrings were clip-on designs no bigger than a large button usually set with imitation gems. Mrs. Gersten had pierced ears and wore earrings all the time, even while working in the yard or sweeping her porch. Her earrings did not sit sedately on her ears like our mothers’ earrings did. Mrs. Gersten’s earrings dangled down to her shoulders, they danced, they tinkled, they flashed, they fandangoed like gypsy dancers, and they fascinated us.

Mrs. Gersten was also different from our mothers because she worked and most of our mothers did not work except for Mrs. Clark who taught music at the elementary school and Mrs. DeGrazia who was a nurse in a doctor’s office. But Mrs. Gersten worked at home and it was what she did that we spied on from the alley behind the big concrete incinerator.  For Mrs. Gersten taught modern dance to a collection of similarly clad, leotarded women, many with foreign accents like her own.

We did not exactly understand modern dance so at first we snickered at the grown women contorting their bodies in Mrs. Gersten’s empty dining room, but gradually we fell under her spell and loved watching as she led them through their movements with the soft lights of the chandelier glinting off her blue black hair as it swayed back and forth in rhythm with her body. We came to love her deep rich voice with its strangely accented syllables as she caressed her ladies into celebrating the rites of spring amid the faint echoes of flutes and French horns from the record player.

 “Now my lofflies,” she’d say in her heavy accent, “ve must bend to da breeze and blossom vit da sun. Bend now, tendu, degagé, lift, point the toes, round the back, raise the head, and bloom, bloom, bloom.”

Oh, my, how desperately we wanted to bloom, bloom, bloom and to be one of Mrs. Gersten’s “lofflies.” There in the alley, hidden behind the incinerator, we would point our toes, arch our backs, and lift our heads to the sun. We wanted to bloom, bloom, bloom. We wanted black tights and a leotard, we wanted a feathery filmy skirt that wafted around our legs, but even more we wanted pierced ears and a pair of dancing, dangly earrings.

So we let our mothers’ cautionary whispers about Mrs. Gersten waft away and dissolve in the summer sun while we whispered a promise to each other: we’d have pierced ears by the start of school or die trying.   

What Else Don’t I Know?

I had a conversation today with an old friend of my mother’s. I am not sure where Annie is from, but her accent is thick – possibly Germanic. Though she’s been in this country for most of her life, I often have difficulty understanding her, but today, when we were speaking, I understood every word.

My mother passed away on October 6^th, and Annie misses my mother and thinks about her all the time. She left a teary message on my mother’s phone a few weeks ago that I had a hard time understanding. To me, this is utterly perplexing. These women hardly spoke over the last few years, but Annie is so genuinely moved by my mother’s passing that I hate to even imagine what the reciprocal would have been if Annie had died first. The woman I know would not have cared very much. Or at least I don’t think she would have. But maybe I don’t know her like I think I do.

I spoke with another of her friends who is also a cousin by marriage. Bernice misses my mother terribly as well, and I’m glad she can’t see me shaking my head. My mother used to yell at Bernice, at least during the last year or so. Bernice called all the time, and would send my mother lots of cards, especially when she found out that my mom was ill again. The cards were fun, and heartfelt, and nice.

When my mother got the cards she would say nasty things and belittle the gesture. Her frequent calls were not welcome, and Mom sometimes yelled at her on the phone and told her to stop sending the cards.

Bernice called my sister and told her what had transpired, and that there was already a card in the mail that could not be retrieved. My sister called me, and I confiscated it when it arrived so that my mother wouldn’t see it and get angry. Now I wonder if the receiving of the cards was to my mother a harbinger of bad tidings. One more indication that she was sick, that life was no longer good, that life just might be coming to an end.

Mom sent cards, lots of them, to lots of people. She sent many cards to Bernice’s daughter who was going through really hard times physically and emotionally. She was willing to be kind to others, but didn’t want that same kindness returned, at least not from Bernice. She did want that from her daughters and would freak out if we didn’t call daily, or even if we called at ‘the wrong time.’

I made a final call to a friend of my mother’s. As Mom is no longer around, I seem to want to call her friends – this call was to Joyce who lives in New Jersey. She and Mom had been good friends since their young motherhood days. Joyce is also still having a hard time with the fact that my mother is gone.

Both of my sisters are also having a hard time, but I guess that makes more sense, unless my mother’s passing portends to her aged friends their own mortality. When one’s peers start dying, perhaps the inner child begins screaming, “Shit, does this mean I’m next??!?”

It seems that I am the only one who is not completely broken up by my mother’s passing. I must assume I did not know this woman at all.

Paulette, our banker told me that almost every time my father sat at her desk he told her: “Marrying Sherry was the best thing I ever did.”

Who was this woman and why wasn’t I allowed to know her the way all these other people did?

I knew her angry critical self quite well, but today, when I was speaking to Annie I heard a story that actually made me cry.

When Ronald Regan signed the bill closing Agnews State Hospital, many people with various mental and emotional illnesses were released from their incarceration. My mother went down to Agnews to see what was happening. She saw many people, now displaced, setting up housekeeping under the Dumbarton Bridge near the hospital. My mother called Annie, who was a caterer, and said that they needed to make food and bring it to these people. She and Annie made sandwiches and other easy-to-eat foods and took it to the camp. I am curious about this incident. I am curious to know if she did anything more to help, not that feeding them this one time wasn’t enough. I am now in complete and unreserved cognitive dissonance about my mother. I wish I could talk to her about this and ask what other ‘crazy and kind’ things she did. This is not the woman I know.

Annie also talked about their larger group of friends and described these bridge playing mavens as highly opinionated. Apparently, another of their group who never would have gone out of her way because she thought it had nothing to do with her, declared my mother and Annie crazy.

I knew that my mother had done a lot of volunteer work in her life, but this spontaneous desire to help threw me off kilter. This is not the woman I know, but it is definitely part, and a large part, of the person that others seem to remember. Perhaps my memories will need to be reshaped by the stories of others. Perhaps that is much healthier than remembering an angry, bitter, woman with whom I thought I had very little in common.