Children in the Closet Chapter Eleven

 Chapter Eleven

By February of 1963, Mother had grown tired of helping me continue to see Jesse and told me to break it off with him.  I was desperate with the knowledge that I was pregnant. My 14-year-old body had already started to change and I was confused and scared. I didn’t know what was going to happen to me. I managed to get in touch with Jesse by using a pay phone and told him about the pregnancy. To his credit, he remained calm while I was just about hysterical. 

I had no choice but to tell Mother. She found a doctor that would give me a shot to start my period. Jesse took me to the appointment but the shot didn’t work. Then she said she knew a doctor who would perform an abortion for me. While I was filled with fear and had very little control over my life thus far, I was overcome with a powerful conviction that I could not and would not kill my baby. To my utter and profound relief, Jesse agreed with me. This was the first time I had defied my mother, but I was adamant about keeping my baby. Jesse had agreed to marry me, so that was what we would do. Mother cried and carried on a lot but it made no difference to me. I was determined that I would not only have my baby but I would keep it! It was a relief to have finally and at long last made a decision of my own about life. It was the very first time I had felt any power at all and I was both scared and proud at the same time. I only prayed I had made the right choice. I never ever considered abortion though I did consider a home where I could live until the baby was born and then allow it to be adopted if Jesse didn’t want to marry me.

Jesse told his mother and that was that. Now there was no reason for me not to spend the weekends with Jesse, so Mother would drop me off at the bus station downtown and I would ride the Greyhound bus to Dallas on Friday nights. Jesse would drive me back to Fort Worth on Sunday mornings.

       One Friday I was late getting to the station. Mother had dropped me off and was gone by the time I discovered I had missed the bus. There was one leaving later that night so I had no other choice but to sit down and wait. I had started wearing make up at the age of 12 and looked a bit older than my age, or so I thought. I had long hair that I usually wore pulled up and piled on top of my head. I carried a book with me everywhere I went, so I found a spot to sit and read to pass the time. A couple of policemen came over and questioned me about where I was going and what was I doing out so late at night. I didn’t realize at the time that they thought I was a prostitute! Later it dawned on me when I was telling Jesse about it. That was the last time I rode the bus. From then on, Jesse would drive over from Dallas and pick me up and then bring me back on Sunday.

Mother took me to Clark’s, a discount department store, to buy a wedding dress. It was a simple white dress with a pretty silver broach with sparkling rhinestones in it. I still have that pin to this very day. It is sitting on a tiny shelf in my bathroom, nestled among some lace and ribbons.

        Jesse and I were married on April 26, 1963 at a preacher’s office in Weatherford, Texas. We couldn’t get married in Fort Worth because Mother was afraid Clayton would find out about it.  My mother cried all the way through. Jesse told me it was because she was losing her babysitter. But she didn’t, at least not for a few more months. Jesse and I continued to spend weekends together but I was home during the week. I still kept house, took care of my siblings and prepared the meals. I no longer went to school. I had attended less and less every month until it just didn’t seem very important to go anymore. No one from the school ever inquired why I wasn’t there. I guess the truancy system wasn’t working very well back then. Or maybe it was because they didn’t care about the lower income, inner city students.

The weekend after we married, Jesse’s mother and stepfather gave us a wedding shower. She invited the people she worked with and a few other friends. That was kind of her and we received some things with which to set up our household once we got our own apartment. For now, we stored the glasses, dishes, towels and such in the bottom of the closet In Jesse’s bedroom at his mother’s rental house in Dallas.

Jesse graduated high school at the end of May and I moved to Dallas in June. We lived with his mother and sisters. I called his mother Mrs. O’Dell although her first name was Mary. She and Mr. O’Dell had split up that summer for what would be the last time. Kenneth O’Dell was Mary’s third husband. Her first marriage had been to Amos Davis. He was Jesse’s father and had died when Jesse was just a little boy. She married again and had another son, Danny, before that marriage ended. Kenneth was the father of her two daughters and they remained close to their dad for the rest of his life. When I met Jesse, he went by O’Dell as did his younger brother who was at Cal Farley’s Boys Ranch after he had started a fire that burned down a church.

As soon as Jesse’s senior year of high school was out, he immediately got a job selling encyclopedias door to door. He didn’t even attend his high school graduation ceremony, but had his diploma mailed to him. It took Jesse only a couple of weeks to know that he would not make enough money with this job.  His sisters had been playing with a couple of little girls in the neighborhood and they told him their daddy was a stone mason and was looking for a helper. Jesse went to see him and was hired at $1.25 an hour. He learned the trade from the man and went on to become a gifted stone mason himself. However, Jesse was exhausted at the end of every day and would come in, take a shower, eat something and go to bed. He would be gone by six every morning and not get home until dark. He worked every day, including weekends, except for when it rained.

I was lonely and missed my siblings. Jesse’s sisters played outside most of the time so I was alone. Mrs. O’Dell worked as a waitress at the Zuider Zee restaurant just down the street, so I spent the long summer days by myself. 

Jesse’s mother had given us the large back bedroom so that’s where I spent most of my time. The bedroom had a lot of windows and they looked out onto a good-sized backyard with lots of trees. At first, we didn’t have a real bed but slept on a mattress laid right on the floor. I stayed thirsty all the time and every night I would put a glass of water on the floor by the edge of the mattress. One night I took a drink and was stung on my lip by a spider that had crawled into the glass. The next rainy day that he wasn’t working, Jesse and I went to the Unclaimed Freight in Dallas and bought a bed frame to get the mattress up off the floor. There were several of those places all lined up in a row on Industrial Boulevard and they bought train cars full of commodities that had been damaged or unclaimed. They sold canned goods, soaps, furniture, whatever they had, all at cheap prices.    

       We continued our trips on rainy days to buy things for our future apartment. A big pottery bowl for fifty cents one day, a set of knives for $1 the next time. We also bought bath soap which came in a package of a dozen. I unwrapped every bar and piled them in the crockery bowl and put that on the dresser. It looked so pretty and when the breeze blew in the open windows, the fragrance would scent the room.

My stomach was growing bigger every day and one night I went to bed and when I got up the next morning, I couldn’t fit into my one and only dress. It was one of those housedresses that snapped down the front but I couldn’t pull it together no matter how hard I tugged at the sides. I didn’t know what to do so I went back to bed. Jesse had already gone to work and I was scared. I had no clothes to wear so I just stayed in bed until Mrs. O’Dell came home on her break and found me there. I told her I didn’t have anything to wear, not one single thing I could get into. She was working a split shift, so she went to Levine’s Department Store, which was right next door to the Zuider Zee, and bought two maternity skirts and two tops. She brought them home to me before she went back to work and said that Jesse could pay her back, which he did. He also paid her rent for the room she let us have. The house was a duplex with two rooms and a bath on the other side which she rented out to a young man for $10 a week.

I had never gone hungry at home with my siblings. We always had something to eat, be it crackers and peanut butter or oatmeal or a boiled potato, but it was a different story at the O’Dell house. Jesse’s mother bought groceries by the day so there was never anything extra in the cupboard. We didn’t necessarily eat our meals together as a family, but she did go by the grocery store on her way home each night. She also occasionally brought home fish and hushpuppies from the restaurant after her shift. 

    Once Clayton found out I was pregnant and married, I was forbidden from ever coming to the house again so I didn’t see my sisters, mother or brother unless they came to Dallas, which they didn’t do often. Mother did bring Lanita over to stay with me for a few days late in June. Mrs. O’Dell had gone out of town and told us to collect the rent from the tenant and buy groceries with it. Jesse didn’t get paid until Friday and we were out of food. However, the guy moved without paying the rent so we had no money and no food. Later when Lanita told Mother about being hungry, she said, “Why didn’t you tell Linda?” And Lanita explained that I had been hungry, too.

By July the weather was sweltering hot and I was growing more and more uncomfortable. Jesse found an old swamp cooler to set up for me. It was the kind you fill with water and a fan blows across the surface to cool the air. Every morning before he went to work, Jesse would buy a bag of ice and pour into the bottom of the cooler. I stayed in front of the fan as much as possible reading book after book to pass the time.

Jesse looked up obstetricians in the phone book and found one not too far away. He had converted his old home into his medical office. Jesse took me to see him and we found out our baby would be due on October 26th. I weighed 89 pounds before I got pregnant and by now I was up to 110. Our doctor charged $150 for prenatal care and delivery and allowed us to pay it out in $15 installments. He told me to eat as much as I could. I needed to gain weight in order to have a healthy baby. Jesse and I went to the grocery store at the strip mall with the Zuider Zee and Levine’s Department Store. We bought boxes of macaroni and cheese and cans of Chef Boyardee’s spaghetti for my lunches. For Jesse’s lunches, which I made and packed for him, we bought cans of tuna fish and jars of mayonnaise for tuna salad sandwiches. Onions, loaves of bread, tea bags, and some fresh fruit rounded out our purchases. We budgeted $15 a week for groceries and that meant three full bags of food. Neither of us ate breakfast and Jesse’s mother continued to share the seafood she would bring home and we ate that for our suppers.

In September, Jesse and I moved into the previous renter’s room since he was long gone from the other side of the duplex. The kitchen had a sink in it but we didn’t have a refrigerator or a stove. That wasn’t a problem, we used an ice chest for the fridge and Jesse bought a hot plate and put it on a TV tray. Instant kitchen! We used a few of our precious dollars to buy pegboard and hooks at Elliot’s Hardware and Jesse fashioned us a place to hang our single pot and pan plus a few utensils. We stacked a couple of boards on bricks for a pantry. I was used to making do with what I had. It was kind of like playing house, in a way.  In the bedroom, we had a bed and used some cardboard boxes to hold our clothes. Since I was home alone all day, Jesse bought a small TV at a pawn shop for a few dollars. Mrs. O’Dell was jealous of the way he made sure I was taken care of and I didn’t understand that. She confused me. Sometimes she was kind and other times she was hateful. I never knew what to expect. She constantly complained about Jesse thinking the world owes him a living and yet he worked every single day he could and faithfully paid her the rent for our rooms.

Life was just as stressful there as it was in Fort Worth, plus my body was constantly changing with my pregnancy. I was happy to be away from Clayton, but now I was dealing with Jesse’s mother who was every bit as neurotic as Clayton was. While I can’t say I really missed my mother all that much, I did miss my sisters and brother. My life was no easier now than it had been before and my siblings’ lives were worse than ever.