Chapter 7     6 Months House Arrest 

  for Dancing with a Puerto Rican   6-3-21

 

 

                    Both Mom & her sister, Aunt Dagmar, had a thing against ‘sex.’ Dagmar, who we called ‘Ara’ was a faithful housewife as far as we know, from the time she married Uncle Henry until forever,  even after his death.

 

          Mom was different. She got tired of Dad & began to have love affairs with other men way back when, not sure when, but was told that in Germany she kept a diary of her activities & she & Dad had fights over his sneaking into it.

 

          She was so active that during the time she lived with Dad, she had 4 abortions – only one his. {Later there were at least 3 more abortions…I read an interesting statistic – that the average number of abortions of an Eastern European woman, – those under Communist rule – was 7 – I went ‘bingo.’ My Lithuanian cousin spent several months with me in the USA & spoke what it was like under the Communists. The leaders were all men. They decided on what provisions would be available to the public, including birth control & hygiene, to that end the provided no KOTEX – sanitary napkins – or TAMPAX – for women to collect blood from their periods. And so, women had to use cloths or rags for that purpose, throw them away incessantly or wash them & use them again. Cousin also told me they only had brassieres that were shaped like bags, they had no bras that enhanced a woman’s curvature. And now, I came to this conclusion, being MEN & therefore, narrow minded for their own concerns & wishes, at the exclusion of what is best for both women & men, they OFFERED NO CONDOMS on the market. Let women get pregnant, what did they care, in fact, let their sperm live, whatever happens to the kids, let the woman bear the burden. And so, WOMEN ENDED UP USING ABORTION, PROVIDED ‘FREE’ BY THE GOVERNMENT, AS THEIR MEANS OF BIRTH CONTROL, thereby creating the 7 per woman statistic. And that was the system Mom started out with & kept up that pattern. I channeled Mom on this in Book 3.}

 

          Although Ara was sexually inactive while Mom was active, they had the same attitude toward sex. Sex was a no-no for OTHER PEOPLE. Any female perceived as, or known to be sexually active, was a BAD PERSON {except for Mom, there is no log in her eye, but she sees the toothpick in that of others.} To that effect, I shall explain how I went under Mom’s HOUSE ARREST for six months for dancing with a Puerto Rican.

 

          After our homestead efforts went bust, Mom got a job at a factory called ‘Brockway Glass.’ There she met a local woman, fat & unattractive, who had a farm with her husband. Not sure if the husband was still there, but this woman said something that OUTRAGED Mom. She told me about it. She had had SEX with one or more Puerto Rican field hands that worked on her farm, to wit, she said,

 

          “Some of those Puerto Ricans are DAMN good looking men!”

 

          When Mom repeated those words to me, with a shudder, her eyebrows arched – like how OUTRAGEOUS this was. This woman thought Puerto Ricans were handsome, had sex with them, & HAD A SON by one of them.

 

          I met two of this woman’s children, a female my age, & the half Puerto Rican son. I was extra friendly with her, acquainted but not close to him, {one time he needed to write an essay on Kennedy vs Nixon, he couldn’t do it – so I wrote it for him. My speech was so good, a male teacher read it & gave me his precious 8X10 image of John Kennedy SIGNED. I wish I still had it.}

 

          So there was a dance where I took part, & the Puerto Rican son was there. A twist contest came up – I had never done it {being 14 there’s a lot of things I hadn’t done} – they showed me it, I WON the contest with the boy. Another dance contest came up & we also won that – that happened to me all the time. We had dances every week at a local Catholic Church {kind of a safe place for kids to hang out, supervised by nuns}, every contest they held was won by me, no matter who my partner was.

 

          After the dance my Mom calls me to the kitchen table for a talk. She says, is it true that I danced with this half Puerto Rican boy? Because his mom bragged to Mom that we had won contests. And on top of that, was I so friendly with her daughter that we shared clothes, switching clothes so each of us had a bigger wardrobe? I said yes to both items.

 

          A dark spirit crossed her face & she ominously pronounced,

 

         “Because of this, you will not leave the house for six months. You cannot go with us when we shop, no visits with friends, no activities, no trips outside the house. You are grounded.”

 

          This was not an easy punishment to take. My way out of isolation / loneliness was to do this walk in the woods every day. There was some kind of a round road through the woods, which covered about a mile, that I trekked. Nature / exercise was the escape. Occasionally when I had a buck or two I veered out of the woods to a tiny family restaurant {seated like 8 people} for a burger & fries, walking past their huge German Shepherd posted by the woods – scared as he barked furiously, on a metal runner about 25’ long – I knew if he broke off that runner he’d attack me. {Today I would have saved part of my burger for him each trip so he’d know I was his friend, but then I didn’t think of that. How pitiful that that dog was all alone, 200’ from the house, by the woods, no other dog to keep it company.}

 

          The thing is, my Mom was working, & I could have disobeyed. But honor was a big thing with me, as I explained before. I felt that if a parent made a rule {within reason} I was obligated, under God, to obey. But I begged for one exception – the school choir. Our music director said we HAD to be there & I begged release, & she consented. And as usual, I was the only female who did not have the UNIFORM black skirt, I conjured up a brown one & stood in the back row {I explained in Part 3 how I was the only Girl Scout who didn’t have a uniform.}

 

          Another escape was my neighbor Helen, lived a couple minutes away. I went there often to chat. She was single, with her old mom who never felt well. The only notable thing I recall her telling me, that I didn’t understand at the time, was that men have ‘Roman hands & Russian fingers.’ Years later I got it:   ‘Roaming hands, rush in fingers.’

 

          Of course, dancing with the Puerto Rican boy was not sex – but to Mom, who was HYSTERICALLY PREJUDICED it was close. She hated, despised the woman who had sex with Puerto Ricans, & I shall channel. Mom, why did you hate that woman so much that you imposed that punishment on me?

 

MOM:   Because I was jealous.I wanted to do as she did, but I couldn’t or didn’t get the chance, so I hated her & acted outraged.

 

ME:   Why did you not, then, become good friends, & ask her to introduce you to some of those guys?

 

MOM: That would have been unthinkable. I carried the pose of an aristocrat {in my own mind} who would not lower myself to that level. If I had done that, also, she & other people would have known, & that would hurt my reputation, my front, as a respectable woman. I did my deeds in the dark.

 

ME:   But why then, punish me so harshly just for dancing with a boy & being friends with the girl? Isn’t that extreme?

 

MOM:   As extreme as was my hate. People on crime shows you’ve watched kill others for the kind of hate I had.

 

ME:   Explain your hate of minority people, you & Ara being against any kind of people not exactly like us. What is the origin of such great prejudice? And consider, when we first got here, you were a maid for a Jewish family. You worked every day for two weeks before getting one day off. Ara was also a servant to Mrs. Grant in Waccabuc. So where is your high horse? Minority people you hated were in the same boat, sometimes suffering poverty – you might have had compassion.

 

MOM:   In our minds, we were ladies from an elite family, the inteligensia – which was true – we were in an upper class in Lithuania. This made us superior, in our minds, to others who were lower down the social ladder.

 

When we arrived as refugees, of course, we lost our status, our place in society, & our wealth. But we were still great ladies, better than our neighbors & minority folks. This way of looking at ourselves made us feel important, superior; it was a feeling of comfort, reassured our egos.

When you hobnobbed with the kids I felt inferior, you were lowering our status & insulting our position.

 

          ME:   Eventually you gained some kind of prominence with the Reader’s Digest plant in Pleasantville, NY. You wre in charge of the guest house & all the cafeteria / restaurant of the facility which fed all the employees. Did you feel you had a reached a high status there in Pleasantville & it justified your self image? Did you maintain your prejudices then, until death, or did you straighten out?

 

          MOM:   I maintained my hate of minorities. Remember when you brought that Puerto Rican girl to my apt in Pleasantville? She was only 7 years old, but I told you, don’t bring any of those type people here again. And as far as my status, yes, I had risen above all the humble conditions of the past & thought myself a great success.

 

 From top to bottom:  Parents get married, they dancing first year in America, Dad as a young professor, Mom age 26

        

ME:   Did you ever regret abusing me? And 

did you realize that you had left your spirit behind in family members? I would be afflicted by that spirit in these people long after your death, even at the age of 75 when you have been dead 42 years – these people do the amazing trick of justifying the abuse while pretending it never happened.

 

          MOM:   Hahaha. I was an effective abuser. Did I ever regret it? On my deathbed I made repentance, due to your prayers, & I was saved. Somehow I knew this abuse was the ‘chiseling down’ of you which would turn you into a saint, so it was God’s will. Don’t blame me, I did as God wanted.

 

          ME:   Very funny. There’s an argument to be made for the torturers & traitors of Jesus, that it was God’s will, but they still had to pay the price for their sins. You were in Purgatory a long time – 24 years – & your place in Heaven is not high. Do you wish you had been a better person?

 

          MOM:   In Heaven we are not capable of feeling regret, we’re perfectly happy no matter where we are, & of course, saints enjoy more bliss than I do, but what I have is the justice of God. I deserve no more, so I don’t wish for any more.   {End chapter 7}