2.03 Small Talk

1954 • Sonora to San Francisco ~ Dad found a flat on Belvedere Street in the Haight and settled in San Francisco. He made one last trip back to the town that had been his life for the past decade. On a visit to the Davises, where Claudia was finishing out the eighth grade, he asked for some privacy to speak to his daughter alone. He knocked on Claudia’s door (she had her own bedroom). There were no chairs in the small room, so he sat down on the corner of her double bed to talk to her. Dressed in his brown suit, fingering the brim of his creased felt hat perched on his knee, he asked Claudia which parent she wanted to live with.

“I want to live with both of you,” she said. “I want you and Mom to be together.”

“No, you have to make a decision. Do you want to go live with your mother, or do you want to come live with me?”

Claudia 1953

Claudia knew that Mom loved her; she’d always been sure of that, but she wasn’t convinced Dad did. He was uncomfortable around his daughter. He was uncomfortable with any female older than age eight or nine. Other than holding their hands on the way to church, he no longer hugged or kissed his daughters when they passed that age. When Claudia told him she would go live with Mom, he broke down. Claudia had never seen Dad cry. Sitting at the end of the bed, she never felt worse in her whole life.

To make him feel better she said, “Daddy, girls need to be with their mothers.”

“Don’t feel bad,” Dad told her. “It’s okay.” He rose, unable to look at her, and our upright father slumped out, sad and upset, with no good-bye.

Claudia sat still at the side of the bed, overhearing the final small talk between him and Mrs. Davis. Then she closed her door and cried.

She loved it there at first. JoAnn was her best friend, until the night JoAnn’s mother found Claudia dawdling and daydreaming on the floor with her feet up on the bed.

“Shouldn’t you be doing your homework?”
“I already finished it,” said Claudia.
“Well, why don’t you help JoAnn with hers?”
“Okay.”

Claudia didn’t realize how smart she was until she saw that her friend had only finished three history questions and was stuck. JoAnn flew into a snit, “I don’t need your help!”

Their relationship was strained for the remainder of Claudia’s stay.

Claudia and Cathy, March 1954, San Jose

March 1954 • San Jose ~ Claudia arrived at Mom’s a few months after me. Besides, she couldn’t stay in Sonora with the Davises forever.

to be continued…

© 2018. Catherine Sevenau.
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