A Fighting Chance (3 page)

In 1970, just after I finished college in Houston, Jim was transferred to IBM’s office in New Jersey. Soon after we moved, I got my first real job, as a speech therapist for special-needs kids at a nearby public school. I was twenty-one, but I looked about fourteen. By the end of the school year, I was pretty obviously pregnant. The principal did what I think a lot of principals did back then—wished me good luck, didn’t ask me back for the next school year, and hired someone else for the job.

We had a beautiful baby girl and named her Amelia Louise, after Aunt Bee (Bessie Amelia) and my mother (Pauline Louise).

Jim thought life was just fine. He could support us, and we both assumed I would stay home.

I tried. I really tried.

For a while, I dedicated myself to making a home. We bought a converted summer house, slightly damp in the summer and freezing cold in the winter (my first lesson in the importance of insulation). But it was in our price range, and it had a magnificent rhododendron bush that made spring feel like a celebration. I bought a home-repair book, and with Amelia safely deposited nearby in her playpen, I set about changing my little corner of the world. I rebuilt bookshelves and taught myself how to refinish the floors and lay bathroom tile (only a little crookedly). At one point, I decided I could cover up the cracks in the bathroom ceiling by wallpapering over them. I learned the hard way that wallpapering a ceiling is entirely different from doing the walls; days later, I was
still
washing wallpaper paste out of my hair.

I sewed, and I tried to cook. In high school, I’d won the Betty Crocker Homemaker of Tomorrow Award, but the prize was based on a written test, not a taste test. (Ask me the butterfat content of heavy cream or how to tie off a lazy daisy stitch and I was golden.) For a wedding present, my mother had bought me a Betty Crocker cookbook, but cooking up those recipes day after day made me feel numb, and my attention often wandered. I gave us all food poisoning twice and set the kitchen on fire maybe four or five times. My daddy bought me a fire extinguisher for Christmas.

Amelia and I went everywhere together. She was an adventuresome baby—willing to eat anything, willing to nap anywhere. I loved her until my chest hurt and my eyes filled with tears. I wanted everything for her. But no matter how hard I tried, I felt I was failing her.

The women’s movement was exploding around the country, but not in our quiet New Jersey suburb and certainly not in our little family. I wanted to be a good wife and mother, but I wanted to do something more. I felt deeply ashamed that I didn’t want to stay home full-time with my cheerful, adorable daughter.

My first choice was to go back to teaching, but I never even asked Jim. I knew he would say that a demanding full-time job was out of the question. So somewhere between diapers and breast-feeding, I hatched the idea of going to school. At first Jim resisted, but finally he agreed. School would be okay.

Suddenly the world opened up. It was kid-in-the-candy-store time. At first I thought about graduate school in speech pathology. I also got the applications for engineering school. And then I thought of law school. I knew next to nothing about being a lawyer, but on television lawyers were always fighting to defend good people who needed help. Besides, there was just a little wonderment in the notion that I could actually earn a law degree. I loved the thought that someday Amelia would be able to say that her mommy was a lawyer.

Telling my mother about my plan to go to law school was worse than telling her about college. She was sure something was wrong with me. I should stay home. I should have more children. I should count on Jim to support me. She cautioned me against becoming “one of those crazy women’s libbers” and warned me that they weren’t happy and never could be.

I loved my mother. I wanted her to smile, to believe that I was doing the right thing. But that wasn’t going to happen. So I ducked my head and kept on going.

Law School

For three years, Amelia and I bundled up in the mornings, strapped ourselves into our bright blue Volkswagen Beetle, and made our way in the world. Amelia stayed with a lady who looked after half a dozen other kids, and I went to classes at Rutgers Law School. Every afternoon, when I picked up Amelia, just after lunchtime, we’d tell each other stories about our days—about the boy who smeared pudding in his hair (Amelia) or the professor who couldn’t see very well and called on a coat hanging on a rack in the back of the room (me). We laughed and laughed.

I loved law school. I loved the intensity, the sharp interactions as teachers grilled us and we cross-examined one another. I loved the optimism of it all, the idea that we could argue our way to a better world.

About three weeks into law school, one of the professors was setting up a hypothetical problem, and he referred to “the guy’s secretary, a typical dumb blonde.” A woman a few seats over immediately started booing. For an instant she was by herself, but then the entire class picked it up. We booed and hissed. Someone hollered something. The professor looked up quickly and then actually staggered back as if he had been hit. One tiny collective action and his world had just shifted a bit. So had mine.

During my second year, I interviewed for jobs as a summer associate at Wall Street law firms. Women were relatively rare in law; only about one in ten lawyers was a woman. Stories still circulated about women who graduated and were offered jobs as legal secretaries or assistants—not as real lawyers.

My first interview was with one of the many firms that had plenty of women secretaries and clerks but hardly any women lawyers. I borrowed a dress, a black-and-red wool number that I thought looked very professional. I took the train from New Jersey to Wall Street and made my way to the towering building where the firm was located. The first couple of interviews went well, but the third partner to interview me leaned back in his chair, scowled at my résumé, and looked up at me with barely concealed contempt. “There’s a typographical error on your résumé. Should I take that as a sign of the quality of the work you do?”

I didn’t flinch. “You should take it as a sign that you’d better not hire me to type.”

He jumped. Then he leaned back and laughed. “You’ll do just fine.”

On the train on the way home, I went over every word on my résumé. There was no typo. I thought the guy was a jerk, but I smiled politely when I got the job offer.

I lined up ten weeks of babysitting by getting help from the teenage girl down the street, the lady across the street, and another mom with a little girl the same age as Amelia. The Wall Street money that summer was astonishing—enough to buy us a second car and for me to get my teeth straightened. I headed back to my last year of law school with a mouthful of wires and a four-year-old who was settled in preschool, as well as the faintest hint that I might actually be able to have a career as a lawyer.

By graduation day, the world looked very different. It was June 1976, and on the morning of the ceremony I had the worst headache of my life. I was wearing an ugly maternity dress, panty hose that were way too tight, and stiff shoes that felt too small. The whole outfit was shrouded in a heavy wool graduation gown and a too-big mortarboard that slipped if I shifted my head even a fraction. I was eight months pregnant, and I felt like an enormous water balloon that might roll off my folding chair and explode on the ground. Instead of listening to the speaker, I counted my breaths, partly so I wouldn’t faint and partly so I wouldn’t cry.

For me, law school had been all about possibilities. But now, sitting at graduation, those possibilities seemed to have evaporated. Once I had gotten pregnant, my efforts to find a job with a law firm had been politely but firmly turned aside. Everyone smiled, but no one invited me for a second interview.

My friends were heading off to real jobs. Not me: I was twenty-six, I would soon have two children, and I was heading home. I believed the working world was now closed to me forever.

Several weeks later, Alex was born. He was a cranky baby who cried for hours at a time. I rocked and jiggled and sometimes cried with him. But I loved him dearly, and I knew that my family was now perfect: a steady husband, a clever daughter, a healthy son. I had done everything I was supposed to do. Over and over, I told myself that Fortune had smiled on me. Be grateful; count your blessings.

I tried to settle my heart, but in the quiet spaces early in the morning or late at night, I wondered why I felt as if I had run as fast as I could and just missed the train.

Hire Me—Please!

After a few months, I bounced back a bit and put together another plan. First I would take the bar exam; then maybe I could figure out a way to practice law part-time. When I called the licensing board to say I needed to bring a nursing baby to the exam, the man on the phone seemed flustered. (What on earth were these women up to?) But I got my license, and I hung out a shingle—literally. I had a sign painted up, a classy number with a black background and white printing:
ELIZABETH WARREN,
ATTORNEY-AT-LAW
.
I hung it from a little arm on the light post by the front steps of our house. I figured if I got any clients, I could meet them in the living room and kick the toys under the couch.

In early 1977, I got a call from one of my old professors at Rutgers. The spring semester was starting, and the school had hired a local judge to teach a section of legal writing. But the judge hadn’t shown up, so they were casting about for someone to teach one night a week. Would I be interested?

I started the next night.

My neighbor watched Amelia and Alex, and I got another chance. I was a teacher again: Wow. Babies and classrooms, getting dinner on the table and writing an academic article—my life bubbled over, and it was thrilling. As the term came to a close, the school asked if I wanted to come back the next semester for another part-time gig. You bet.

I’d been teaching nearly a year when Jim announced that IBM would be transferring him again. The company gave him some choices about where he might go, but the mix of possibilities seemed bizarre: Houston, Texas; Vandenberg, California; Concrete, North Dakota.

I went out to our car and got the big map from the glove compartment. Vandenberg was about halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Concrete wasn’t even listed, but Jim said it was somewhere near the Canadian border. I stared at the map, frozen.

My teaching career at Rutgers was over. For days I felt as if I couldn’t breathe. Then I thought: This is stupid. Do something.

One afternoon, I pulled out my Smith Corona portable typewriter and ginned up a résumé. I knew the University of Houston had a law school; I didn’t know whether they had any openings, but what could it hurt to write them a letter? I gave my typewriter a nice big smile and started in. I was now an experienced law teacher (sort of) and I’d be interested in teaching legal writing at the University of Houston (or anything else they needed), and so on. I finished just as Alex woke up from his nap, and I carried him in my arms and walked my letter to the mailbox.

Nothing happened.

Jim talked about the great work the guys in Concrete were doing. He called some friends to find out more about Vandenberg. I smiled and said it all sounded promising. I was determined not to panic.

In the spring of 1978, shortly before Jim had to decide where to go, the phone rang. It was early evening, the cranky time of day. I was jostling Alex on my hip and frying pork chops. Amelia was on the floor with crayons scattered all around. I kept an eye on the clock, knowing Jim would come through the door in about twenty minutes.

The white phone was on the wall in the kitchen, and it had a long spiral cord. I said hello, tucked the phone expertly between my ear and my shoulder, and walked back over to the stove.

“This is Eugene Smith from the University of Houston,” said the man on the phone. “We got your letter and I’d like to ask you some questions.” And off he went. Subject areas? Scholarly interests? Teaching philosophy? Holy cow. I’d never had a job interview as probing as this one, and I was completely unprepared. I tried to sound smooth and relaxed, even as I jiggled Alex furiously in the hope that he wouldn’t start crying. And I kept looking at those damn pork chops and thinking, If you burn, I’ll throw you through the window.

Somehow, it never occurred to me that I could offer to call Professor Smith back later. I figured it was now or never. It also didn’t occur to me to turn off the heat under the pan. At least this time I didn’t set the kitchen on fire.

Finally, Professor Smith stopped asking questions and said good-bye. I put the pork chops on a plate, then sat on the kitchen floor and put my head in my hands. That interview had been my golden opportunity, and I had blown it. I wasn’t ready, I hadn’t worked hard enough, and now my one chance at a good job was gone.

About a week later, Professor Smith called back. Would I fly to Houston to meet the faculty?

I got the job—a full-time, tenure-track, all-the-bells-and-whistles teaching job. I would teach contract law and run the legal writing program. I’d have an office (wow!), and, unlike at Rutgers, I’d be called “Professor.” When I called my parents, my mother reminded me how hard this would be—two little children to care for, a house to manage, a husband to keep happy. I shouldn’t jeopardize all I had by reaching too far. But my daddy gave me no such warnings. He just said, “That’s my Betsy.”

Jim agreed to ask IBM for the Houston transfer, and by late spring we were heading off again on a new life. We bought a nice house in the Houston suburbs. We had two adorable little children, and at twenty-eight, I was about to become a real live law professor. I wished I knew how to do cartwheels, because I would have flipped over and over.

The best I could do was say my prayers every night, always starting with a heartfelt, “Thank you, Lord, for these Thy blessings.”

Smacked Down by Child Care

There was only one other full-time woman on the faculty at UH Law School, and she had landed the job a year after her husband had been hired. In that first year of teaching, I was mistaken for a secretary, a student, the wife of a student, a lost undergrad who had wandered into the law school by mistake, and a nurse (blood drive day).