3.30 It’s Not Fair!

1964 • 45^th Avenue, San Francisco ~ I wasn’t a problem teenager. I didn’t lie, I didn’t cheat, I didn’t steal. Nor did I sass, drink, or smoke, and I didn’t fool around with boys. Not because I thought fooling around with boys was bad, but because if my Dad ever found out, and he would, he’d banish me.

Jackie

One night Dad thought I had. I’d gone down to Ocean Beach with the neighbor boys and we met Julie and Shirley, a couple of girls our age visiting from Southern California and sophomores at Montebello High. We walked them home over the Great Highway to 35^thand up Noriega, ten blocks past our houses. I was nearly fifteen, and these were neighborhood boys I sat on the curb and talked to, boys I played summer baseball in the street with. That was all.

Phil

It was nearly dusk when I got home, and I was supposed to be in by eight. Phil, his tee shirt tied around his slender waist, his beachcombers slung low on his hips, disappeared up his walkway. Jackie waved good-bye, his blonde-headed body scooting into his front door trying to escape his mother nagging at him from her upper window to get inside and help her. Ray, who didn’t say much, was the gentleman of the group and walked me to my front door. He also liked me. The front door was locked and the lights were off. I didn’t want to ring the bell and wake Dad and Marie, so Ray tried to figure out another way in and just as he rounded back into the entry to say he couldn’t, I heard the deadbolt unlock.

Ray

Flinging open the door, Dad snapped at Ray, “Get away from this house!” He grabbed my arm and yanked me inside, banging the door closed. Daddy hadn’t ever grabbed me like that.

“Get in here,” he hissed in a low voice. “Pack your bag. You’re leaving tomorrow.”

“We were just walking a couple of girls home and it got later than I thought. I’m sorry, Daddy. Please. I didn’t do anything wrong! Please don’t send me away.”

Cathy, age 15, 1964

At first I was confused and thought, “How did I get here, how could this be happening to me? I didn’t do anything wrong! We are sitting on my bed downstairs. Marie was upstairs and it dawned on me they hadn’t gone to bed—my father had locked me out on purpose and was waiting for me. Then something snapped inside me. I got mad. I got mad at him for accusing me of doing something bad, which I hadn’t; mad at him for not trusting me, which he didn’t; and mad at him for threatening me, which he was. However, I didn’t dare get mad at my father, so I burst into tears instead, begging him to change his mind and hoping he’d feel guilty for misjudging me.

Then he said, “If you stay, you have to pay rent.”

“What? You want me to WHAT?” A mounting voice, not mine, emerged from my mouth. “I do more than my fair share around the house, I work full time at the store, I save my money, I pay my own way, I get paid $1.00 an hour, and you want me to pay rent?”

He paused a beat. “This is Marie’s house. She wants you to pay rent.”

Marie 

I was now on an uncontrollable roll. “It’s not fair! SHE’S A LAZY DRUNK AND SHE WANTS ME TO PAY RENT? Forget it. I’ll go home.” It’s not like I hadn’t caught her more than once swigging gin straight out of the vinegar bottle she kept hidden in the back of the small corner pantry, stagger around the kitchen, then collapse on the living room chair.

I couldn’t believe I’d talked back; no one talked back to my father, and I waited for lightning to strike. But I was stunned at what happened next. Dad’s shoulders sagged. His head hung. He was silent. He went someplace else, someplace in the past, to a place I didn’t know anything about. When he returned some seconds later, he looked at me like I was someone else, and backed down. He let me stay and never brought it up again. My next paycheck had a fifty-cent an hour raise, the same pay he gave the girls.

to be continued…

© 2018. Catherine Sevenau.
All rights reserved.