Upside Down

[These are the stories that I remember from my growing up years. They are memories subject to the skewing that people do over time. Some of them are not very nice or flattering.]

Chapter Eight - The Years Roll On

One year, it was a Mills College graduate student giving court ordered psychology tests (Thematic Aptitude Test was one) to Nancie to try to figure out why she wet the bed, cried inappropriately, could not sit still in school, and chattered and talked too loudly. Nobody ever got Nancie to say that her mother was abusing her and that her family life was driving her crazy. She kept it all in and she was smart about it. But it squeaked out sideways: Nancie would steal quarters from Harvey's pocket change for ice cream. She could break open any lock. She could find food treats stashed away anywhere in the house.

By the fifth grade (about age 10) she was a woman and the bed wetting stopped. By the sixth grade, part of the problems Nancie had at school were figured out. She was bored out of her mind. She was too bright for the class. In the seventh grade she was tested for IQ just about every other week, sometimes she did well, sometimes she did not. They could not figure out that the fluxuations in the test results were dependent on wheither her mother had beat the crap out of her when she went home for lunch. Any visible bruising was always explained away by school yard accidents, never caused by the 'loving', community-active, PTA chairman, Girl Scout Leader mother.

Joan had few friends and only superficial social acquaintances. When she was bored with the Girl Scout leading, she quit and joined the Children's Home Society and became a 'club woman'. This was a charity for unwed mothers. Eventually, after several years, Joan became the chairman of the Oakland chapter and she was active with the other socialite women in the group with luncheons and evening meetings.

Once or twice a year, Joan would decide to go to San Francisco for a day of shopping. Primarily, she would go to the fine houseware stores and shop for silver or china and then go to Books, Unlimited and order a year's supply of leisure reading and collectable books. Meanwhile, Harvey would take the girls to the Aquarium or the Zoo. The day would be capped with a dinner in a fine resteraunt. The four girls were dressed in hats, coats and white gloves, all dressed alike, with imprecable table manners and very quiet.

Joan had two faces. One for the world, one for her family. Her most vicious torment was not the beatings, however. It was her 'lectures'. She would sit in her chair, feet up on the footstool, stand the proclaimed disobediant child up, always Nancie, because Judy was wise and old enought that she would not stand for it, just walking out, daring Joan to hit her.

Nancie would stand there until she was woozy from Joan's cigarette smoke and from standing for hours with the overhead light glaring in her eyes. Meanwhile, Joan would start in picking at every fault, for hours on end. She liked to hear the sound of her own voice. She noticed a lack of attention and she required occasional coherant responses. The responses had to be simple and not argumentative, or the lecture went off on another 2 hour tangent. It was exquisite torment.

One year, because Joan was interested in it, she made Nancie read a 900 page college history text book during the summer. As she finished each chapter, she had to have an oral examination and 'standing lecture' from Joan. Nancie learned history, but she learned to hate it. Another summer, Joan decided that Nancie did not write legibly. Every day, she had to copy and write out ten pages of text to be reviewed and picked at by Joan, and redone, if necessary.

Verbal child abuse was considered normal witty adult behavior. The incesant picking and verbal poking never let up. Praise was sparse.

Joan invisioned a life-script for her girls. Judy looked like her father, so she was her father's favorite. Joan thought Judy would marry and be a housewife. Expectations were not high since Judy did average to poorly in school. The family jokingly called her, The Heiress. For a time, everything Judy said started with "My rich father...."

Joan had a sort of projected life-script for Nancie, too. She was ugly and deformed with her crossed eyes and buck teeth, therefore no man would want her. She was left handed, tomboyish, sporty and awkward, not the graceful ballet dancers that Jan and Cindy were. Nancie would have to train her brain so that she could work for a living, that was her only hope in Joan's eyes.

Joan, and "the post-sputnik" school system at the time, conspired to form Nancie into a little scientist. Nancie was very good at school, so this was the one area where she generally pleased Joan: her perfect report card on the subject side, but the behavior side always had some comment like "needs to work on neatness", "needs to learn to be quiet","needs to stop being disruptive", and "needs to improve her hand writing".

Joan like to play hostess about three times a year. She would invite the neighborhood couples for an evening of Bridge. This was the one time others living nearby were invited into Joan's house. The middle-class suburban house was spotless, the girls made a brief hello to the guests and then disappeared to bed in exhaustion from the tension and unrelenting work Joan made them do to prepare for the event. Joan never invited her socialite friends from Oakland to her home, she always visited them and rarely took Harvey, the "gas station man" with her.

The rest of the time, to the neighborhood, Joan was only the sound of a ring hitting a window pane. When the neighborhood children played too loudly near her front room throne area, she would tap her wedding ring on the window as a signal to remove themselves immediately from her environment. She scared the shit out of every child in the neighborhood. She never went outside except to enter or exit a car to go someplace else. She did not go to visit with neighbors and she discouraged unannounced visits from them.

The neighborhood adults all talked about Joan as something exotic and strange. She was beautiful, she dressed well, her children were well behaved, but she read all night. She talked 'high-brow', and well educated, giving the illusion of a college graduate, loving to play 'one-ups-manship' with wity repartee to the men, and was civil and condescendingly gracious to the wives. Lady Joan, holding court. But at night, they could see her lights on, and she slept all day when the children were in school. She did society charity work occasionally, it was presumed that she thought was socially "above" all her neighbors.

However, Harvey was well liked. He was affable and much more common, he was "like them". He puttered around outside doing gardening and liked to gossip with the other men of the neighborhood. He was always invited in when the men were home on Saturdays and Sundays.

Thoughtful careful men did not enter other men's houses when they were not home. Harvey was careful. He was a tanned, ex-football hero, who owned his own gas station and could help folks on the block with their cars. He was pretty handy with tools and with woodworking and was often sought to help with patio or construction do-it-yourself projects. People on the block always waved to him as he came home from work in the late afternoons.

Chapter Nine - Lady Joan Goes Out

Unfortunately, at one of Joan's Bridge nights, Harvey inadvertantly admitted that Joan had not graduated from high school, while he had. She was hurt beyond imagining. It destroyed the illusion she had so carefully and consciously built for herself with the neighbors. It tore a rift between Joan and Havery for several years. Her hurt levered her out of her inertia and she finally decided to try to do something about her diploma. She tracked her transcripts various high schools, chased down the errors and finally got her high school diploma paperwork accomplished.

She decided to go to college, but until she got the high school diploma, she had to go to the 'junior' college that had just opened in Oakland.

In 1958, she was a strange thing: an older woman at college amongst the late teenage kids. She played it very dramatically, and got them to call her "Lady Joan", too. Three or four times she made acquaintance with foreign students and invited them home for her 'hostessing' events. Nancie remembers the Bandar brothers from Beirut especially, and their Spanish girl friend, Rita who danced the flaminco for the family. Harvey had served in North Africa and had visited Beirut, so he did not feel out of place in conversations with these Christian Arabs whose family owned oil wells in Quwait and who sent them to school to learn engineering in America.

So, as Nancie was going through high school, her mother was going through college. Everyday, Joan would spend 2 hours preparing to go out to school. Her beauty routines were relentless. She took laxatives and thyroid pills to manage her weight. She had always bought designer clothes from a private seamstress in Palo Alto every year, spoiled by her own mother's sewing for her. She never wore off-the-rack clothes except to lounge around the house in. She had over 20 pairs of shoes dyed to match each special outfit. She rotated her outfits so that she knew who had seen her in what clothes and tried very hard not to repeat her outfits for her 'viewers'. She had always dressed up this way whenever she had the event of 'going out'. She never grocery shopped, but left that for Harvey.

She had made up her mind that her girls were not special, like she was. She allowed them to wear anything they wanted and had to be prompted by her mother and "Maman" to replace their clothes when they became rags. Leona and "Maman" dressed Joan's girls each year for school. They saved and sewed and ensured that each girl had underwear, and at least five outfits to start school with. Harvey was in charge of shoes. Naturally, he played the 'my girls vs. your girls' game here and Nancie often had to pad her worn shoes with cardboard to keep the holes from wearing blisters on the bottom of her feet.

In August, Christmas and Easter, the large 'grandmother' boxes would be shipped to San Leandro and arrive with the season's clothes. Unfortunately, Nancie's birthday was in September, so the 'grandmother' box was considered her birthday gift. She did not get toys for her birthday, like the other girls did, just school clothes. Leona would save all the Avon samples for cosmetics all year and include these in the Christmas boxes.

Whenever "Maman" would come to visit, she would bring elaborate toys and dolls for "her" two girls. Stan did not buy gifts, but merely sent a check for Joan to choose something for his girls. She did not. She used the checks to pay family bills. Finally, Stan got wise to Joan about this and when Nancie was in junior in high school, he decided to send a five and then ten dollar a month check to Nancie. Nancie saved up the checks and bought a mattress and boxspring with them.

Leona's taste in clothes became dated. At 39, she had had a heart attack. She suffered from 'hardening of the artieries'. This caused her to limit her ability to go out, except for the once-a-week grocery shopping. This also caused her to be forgetful and repetative, telling the same family stories over and over again. Nancie learned them all by heart. The last two years of high school, Leona dressed Nancie in cast off clothes of her own, appropriate for a woman in her fifties: Cotton or cordorouy dresses, snaps down from neck to hem, styled for the older figure, sold from a mail-order company called Mod-o-Day. Nancie wore them once, noticed the pitying looks from the teachers and others students and never wore them again.

Nancie became friends with the Hawaiian woman next door who taught her how to knit. Nancie knitted herself some black pullover sweaters and went to school in a black skirt to match. There was no color in her wardrobe (very gothic).

Nancie had grown up playing with the boys on the block. Football, war, any sport with them. She did receive a bicycle at age 10 from Leona and Frank for her birthday. It took her awhile to learn to ride it, but once she did, she was off exploring the surrounding neighborhoods. However, when she started junior high school in the eighth grade, it was not 'cool' to ride a bicycle, so she was back walking again.

Chapter Ten - Judy Moves Out

When Nancie was in eighth grade, Judy was a senior in high school. In her junior year, she started dating Jack McCarty and tried to bring him home to meet her family. Joan was enraged. She did not like Jack and his 'hare-lip' and split palate. He was very poor, had poor genes and had no expectations. She forbid Judy to see him after he took her to the Senior Prom. Judy and Jack took off the next weekend and drove down to Lemoore and visited Stan. He gave them some money and they got married. After high school, Jack joined the Coast Guard and life was hard for Judy. She tried calling Joan several times. But Joan would not speak to her. Joan's support money from Stan was halfed and the family budget was a little tighter. "Maman" and Hal helped all they could.

The "not speaking" pattern had been set. Joan did this with both her girls.

Jack did well in the Coast Guard. They trained him and they surgically corrected his lip and palate and did orthodonture on his teeth. Judy became pregnant and their son Dean was born. He died within three days. Joan relented and went to see Judy in the hospital and helped with the burial costs for Dean.

Afterwards, regular visits resumed between Judy, Jack and Joan's family. However, Judy always had to call first to announce her visits. Jack had been unhappy with the medical care Judy received and decided to quit the Coast Guard. After three years, he did not reinlist, but went to work at the Catapillar plant, manufacturing heavy equipment.

A year later , the machinists went on strike at Jack's plant for over a year. Joan had always been 'pro-union' politically, and she helped Jack with expenses during this time. He paid her back every penny over the next five years. He was proud like that. He was promoted to management and eventually became a manufacturing engineer in the electronics industry. He would always be 'tight' with money and it drove some strain in the relationship between Jack and Judy.

In 1964, they had another child, Tamera Adair, who was also born with a birth defect: holes in her heart chambers. Tammy lived until her final surgery at age four at Children's Hospital in Oakland. The grief was very hard on the relationship between Jack and Judy, but they stuck it out. They had two more children: Christopher (Feb 1968), and Jennifer (Feb 1970) who both lived.

Judy remained a housewife for many years, and then decided to try college. She got her BA degree in early childhood education.

Chapter Eleven - Nancie Moves Out

Nancie did not date in high school. She had two close friends, George and Stephen and they formed the Theater Club. The three of them would go to various elementary schools and give 'assemblies' of humorous plays based on scripts they wrote from Thurber's novel, Carnival.

In her senior year, George invited her to the Black and White Symphony Ball in San Francisco. Joan dressed Nancie up in a white and turquoise prom dress, a boned corset, long white gloves and dyed to match high heeled shoes. Little did Joan know that Nancie got the invitation because George could not invite his 'special' friend, Steve. The ball was held in various hotels in the city and cable cars moved guests from one venue to another. Many celebrities attended and gave small 'off the cuff' performances and demonstration dances with their partners.

The next day, Nancie spent 3 hours telling Steve about what he missed. She was the 'girl' cover for this gay couple and never let either of her friends down, keeping both company and entertained.

The only other time that Nancie went out at night was to babysitting assignments. She was a steady babysitter for the oldest sister of a family up the street and her new young family. One Friday night she worked particularly late. The next morning, Nancie had to get an early bus to Oakland Technical High School for the annual SAT college entrance tests. She was exhausted, the buses were running late and she just made it into the room in time for the first test, the Math portion. She took some time to settle down and get into the rhythm of the test day. She took the English portion and then after lunch took the advanced placement tests in History, Chemistry and German.

When the test results came back several weeks later, Nancie had scored in the 95+ percentiles in all parts except Math. These tests could not be 'done' over. Because of her score on the math portion (78 percentile), Nancie did not qualify for university acceptance. She was religated to admission at the local junior college. She breezed through these first two years with straight A's.

In her second year, at age 18, she met Bill Tenery, another student. They started dating. One afternoon in late May, Bill drove Nancie home from school and came into the house to meet and say hello to Joan. Joan was exceptionally rude. She immediately started picking on Nancie in front of Bill. She wanted to know why Nancie had not come home immediately from school and started the family ironing. Bill started to say something in Nancie's defense and Joan jumped on him. Told him to shut up, mind his own business and not interfer in her telling her children what to do and how to do it. Joan lost control and ordered Bill to leave the house. Nancie said she would leave with him. Joan screamed at them both, and they both left. Joan went into Nancie's room and took all her clothes and through them on the front lawn in her continuing fit of rage.

Later in the day, Judy came over and collected all Nancie's things (about a suitcase of clothes) and a typewriter. Nancie moved in with Bill's family. Several days passed. Joan was upset that Nancie was living in the same house with Bill. Bill's parents met with her and she was very unpleasant with them, threatening legal action with the San Leandro District Attorney for 'harboring a minor'. Bill and Nancie decided to get married. Since Nancie was 18, she did not need parental permission to marry.

Bill and Nancie had a marriage ceremony in the Oakland Neighborhood Church and a weekend in his sister's apartment in San Francisco in June 1963. He was 20 and she was 18.