| My mother was a veiled woman Hiding her mind, her competence, all her possibilities When did this happen? In college, a Gamma Phi Hey Daddy, I wanna be a Gamma Phi I will until I die Hey Daddy... A degree in Journalism She liked to write what did she write? what did she want to write? Did she want to be Brenda Starr beauty sparkling as she followed leads, discovered stories exposed corruption as it ruled the world? “She never saw the inside of a newsroom” my Dad, my uncle said How can you be so sure? She was a veiled woman she could have been lots of places you couldn’t see her in My mother became a veiled woman hiding her Aphrodite, her Venus self only after her first, disastrous marriage failed My aunt Marian, her sister, tells me June was “busy ... she was popular ...” Marian, four years younger, remembers boys in uniform coming to the house to see her, to pick her up for dates. She graduated Central High in 1943, during the war. In college “well, she was a Gamma Phi ... that was very important back then ...” Was she still busy ... Still popular? calling to herself the passion of a violent man the danger of flirting with him eye to eye as he approaches the thrill of being open to his advances head back shoulders lax a sly smile as he moves in panther to prey. She shudders but she keeps her pose. And then the outcome the punishing aftermath Patriarchy’s curriculum she breathes it in the air studies it in the disapproving glance of her father, who has no words for this, who will not speak to her of this. Takes it in with the sting of her own mother’s wail “how could you?? Oh, June .....” A civil wedding, two witnesses A brief mention in the paper “Mr. and Mrs. ... ” Imagine what she might have written! The first child comes they live in married student housing in war barracks fresh from the front. She takes time off from her studies but she graduates, finally, in 1948. At least they let her graduate The second child comes the following year He’s still in school another year. Between the second and the third child, he graduates. they move away -- an investment opportunity; her father’s sudden death “a stroke of luck” he puns, he makes her take her claim. The third child and the money gone, they come back, this time move in with her widowed mother rent free into the basement apartment of the house her father built, the house that she grew up in, the house that she left, the house her father died in It’s 1952. |
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Christie Logan
Veiled Woman #1
