The strange thing about the opprobrium heaped upon my aunt by my grandmother and mother is that there was a schizoid element to it. On the one hand, they would say in a civilized tone, "It isn't Jean's fault, she didn't choose to be this way, it's a dirty trick played on her by God." (They used "God" as a metaphor for "life," being atheists.) On the other hand, they would telephone any woman friend of hers whom they suspected might be or become "intimate" with Jean and say terrible things on the phone to them (I remember the word "queer" being used, and "I won't have it," by my grandmother), so Jean would never see them again. Jean's friends were all like her, bookish, intellectual women, quiet types. Respectable ladies who wouldn't be subjected to humiliation more than once. Both my mother and grandmother did this. Jean had her own, entirely separate apartment upstairs in the large house my grandparents lived in (and had raised their children in) and was not, even as a middle aged woman, allowed to invite friends to her place for dinner for fear lovemaking might eventuate.
Whenever I think of loneliness, I think of Jean.
She was permitted to have a dog, and she loved her dogs. |
