Decades ago, a young woman opened an ordinary blue journal, and in her distinctive loopy handwriting wrote her account of what it was like to grow up in a decidedly uncommon family. She wrote off and on for nearly a year, and when she was done, she titled it “Adventures of a Girl.” Her journal is the genesis for American Girl, a Substack published as a Substack serial. The coming of age story begins with a family’s upheaval and follows the young girl as she uses her adventures to carve a niche of her own. Chapters will be post semi-regularly. To read the story thus far, click Serial List.
A Singular Summer
All summer, people came and went like the tides, an ebb and flow of family and friends. They ranged from old uncles to cousins, to friends, and shirttail relatives. One uncle showed up, banging on the door after dark, asking, “Is this the road to Pismo Beach? ” then laughed at his own tired joke. A teenage relative from Texas stayed with us until whatever trouble he was in back home had blown over. Regardless of their emotional state or legal status, everyone was welcomed as long as they didn’t smoke or drink (my grandmother’s rules). At the least, every arrival promised a day or so of lively conversation and the latest gossip going ‘round.
When my oldest cousin, Perry Neal, was off in the Navy, his wife, Pat, and their infant son arrived in the company of Aunt Lois, the baby’s equally new grandmother. Pat was my idea of a California movie star with her thick blonde hair and deep dimples. Instead, she was an eighteen-year-old girl from small-town Oklahoma, overwhelmed by motherhood and out of sorts in general. I had recently learned to whistle and took every opportunity to practice my newfound musical skill. Pat, however, found my attempts especially annoying. She seemed to sense when I was nearby, and she would head me off before I could work up a pucker, wailing “Linda, no whistling. No-o-o-o,” practically holding her head in her hands. Throughout her long life, she would carry worry like a personal burden alongside the blessing of her devoted husband, Perry Neal, and their three handsome sons.
Questions Not Asked
Mymae arrived in the middle of the summer with her two-year-old son, Tony, who was stocky and fair-haired like his mother. But unlike Mymae, he was a quiet, toddler-sized observer. I imagined that if he had known how to write, he would have been taking notes on what he saw. Tony seemed to belong to no one and to everyone at the same time, except for Aunt Lois, who kept an eye on him. He, in turn, tagged behind her as if it were his job to keep tabs on her.
The sound of Mymae’s boisterous laugh meant she had come to visit and that we were in for some fun. She hummed with a manic energy that was both charming and a little unnerving. She was the youngest in the family, and hands down, the favorite. My grandparents named her Lina Mae, but I was the first to call her “my” Mae. (I was convinced it guaranteed me as her favorite.) My grandmother thought she looked like Lucille Ball, only with blonde hair and the same larger-than-life personality.
Oklahoma Troubles
Behind that infectious laugh, however, lay troubles that began back in Oklahoma and with a boy named “Rip” Washburn. In July of 1945, Rip returned home from the Navy, hailed as a “Pacific Hero” by the local newspaper. The young sailor was awarded the Bronze Star for “unusual courage” during enemy air attacks on his ship in the Pacific Theater. The month after his return, he and my aunt were married by Rev. Owenby, a long-time family friend and pastor of the Hernville Baptist Church in Oklahoma City. Rip was barely 20; Mymae was 15. (The marriage license listed their ages as 21 and 18.) My grandmother later said she had permitted her daughter to marry, rationalizing that “they would have run off anyway.” The young couple’s first child, Lynn Marshall, was born in July 1946, and their daughter, Kathaleen, was born a year later, in July 1947. The marriage didn’t last much more than another year.
Lynn Marshall and Kathaleen were our stair-step cousins, as all four of us were born within 4 years of each other. We were inseparable. At our house, we played make-believe in the screened porch, and at theirs, we chased chickens around the yard until they hid under the house. We investigated the old Model T parked in their saggy wooden garage. We attended each other’s birthday parties and went to our first movie together.
In that rarified time after the war, we were heady with the pursuits of young children living under the security of caring adults. What we didn’t know was that our aunt had divorced and that she was incapable of caring for our cousins, our dear playmates. We didn’t even know when Lynn Marshall and Kathaleen had gone to live with Uncle Bernis. Years earlier, Aunt Lois had played matchmaker between her brother Bernis and her good friend Erma, a widow with an adopted daughter. As she would time and again, Aunt Lois stepped in to keep the family together. In this instance, she had quietly arranged for Bernis and Erma to take in our cousins.
When Mymae remarried, she and her new husband, Paul, stayed in Oklahoma City, where our cousin Tony was born. Family gatherings went on as usual, with barely a change in the seating around the Sunday dinner table. In our family, many topics (divorce, alcoholism, pregnancy) were off limits to the children. Such scandals were either treated as if they never happened or were buried in layers of half-truths. Lynn Marshall and Kathaleen never knew why they were given up. No one explained it to us, and we never asked.
Years later, when Erma died of cancer, Lynn Marshall and Kathaleen were quickly reunited with their mother in Alaska, where Paul was stationed in the army. The move also allowed them to renew their ties with their brothers, Tony and five-year-old Casey. In a tragic turn, Mymae died a year later of a brain aneurysm. She was only 32. After she died, her grieving family left Alaska. While Paul waited for a transfer to Texas, all four kids—ages five to sixteen—squeezed in to live with us. Since that terrible time, and through many, many life changes since, we’ve managed to stay connected with our stair-step cousins. Whenever we were together, we would talk and laugh like the little kids who used to chase chickens around the dusty yard.
UP NEXT: Things Fall Apart
Keep writing Linda…I love reading your childhood memories!
I never knew you named her “My”Mae. I heard of her legendary beauty. Sounds like it was her curse. I recognize those eyes.