1956 • San Jose ~ Claudia was secretly relieved when Mom said she’d have Bobby shipped out. She didn’t know how to say “no” to him, even though it hurt so bad to have sex. She would marry him when she was older, after she’d finished school, when she’d gotten a job teaching junior high. But Bobby wouldn’t take no for an answer. Claudia had sex with him once, so to him, what difference did it make?
By September Claudia had missed two periods, and the minute she told Mom she thought she was pregnant, Mom and Ray drove the two lovebirds to Nevada. Larry couldn’t talk Claudia out of it, trying to appeal to her baser side by telling her she’d miss out on all the wedding presents. Claudia was completely offended. As if she cared about such things! Dad also did his best to change her mind, even if she was pregnant. He finally caved and washed his hands of the whole matter. It was a done deal before anyone else found out. It wasn’t that Claudia wanted to get married. Being Catholic, she thought she had to get married.
Claudia and Bobby
Dressed in her ninth-grade graduation dress and Bobby in his blue Navy uniform, with Mom and Ray as their witnesses, they wed on September 15, 1956 by a Justice of the Peace in Sparks, a gambling town in Nevada. The newlyweds were too young to go into the casinos, so they hung out in the cafe while Mom and Ray celebrated the night away. It was hell’s wild ride on the way back home. Ray and our mother were remarkably sloshed, and when Ray got pulled over for weaving all over the road, he slurred his way out of the ticket by telling the officer how proud he wash of hish baby girl in the back sheat who jushed got married, and the Nevada State policeman let him go.
When Dad met Bobby, the first thing out of his mouth was, “You drink?”
“No, Sir.”
“Good. Guess that’s something to be said.”
He turned to his daughter. “Well, you made your bed, I guess you get to lie in it.”
My sister repined in that bed she’d made for sixteen-and-a-half more years. At thirty-one-years-old and five children later, she could no longer stand her husband holding her down so she left. She never remarried. “When you’re Catholic,” she said, “you only get to do it once.”
To this day Claudia still blames Betty, says it’s all her fault she married Bobby.
About my dad: the one thing he struggled against was sexuality in any form, and family life wasn’t going well in this department. What with having to face down the rumors of Mother in Sonora (which Betty kept alive when she told me that Mom supposedly had an affair with the new priest in town and that he was my father but she was just being my blabbermouth sister), then with Carleen getting knocked up and having to walk in her high school graduation ceremony pregnant and married, then with Betty’s kidnapping and rape hitting the front page of the local papers for days, and now Claudia married at 14. Dad was not one bit pleased with this last piece of news and there was nothing he could do about it, any of it. My father believed himself to be upright and moral. My mother, being Mother, believed him to be a stick in the mud.
to be continued…
© 2018. Catherine Sevenau.
All rights reserved.
Maggie Bafalon says
The Catholic church was such a powerful force on families in those days. (And many other things to which I personally object) My brother was married to a Catholic and after 3 children, the priest came by every week to learn why there might not be 1 more? I was not Catholic and I was young- but I remember how absurdly ridiculous I found this situation. There was a 4th, and shortly thereafter a divorce followed. This, to me, has ALWAYS been preposterous ! and that thought remains…
Barbara Jacobsen says
What he resisted, persisted!
Susan Dalberg says
And you got to be the last one walking the graduation stage, bearing the great family name??? I did that–was wanting to change my last name in town. Couldn’t leave quick enough!
Catherine Sevenau says
I don’t think it was that big of a transgression in Sonora, at least not for Carleen. As her last name now began with an “A” she was the first to walk to the graduation stage with head held high.