My Own Two Feet (13 page)

The bells of the Campanile, and even the smell of catsup, lifted my spirits when I returned to Cal. Red roses from Clarence delivered by a florist, the wildest extravagance, lifted them even more. I kept the roses until their petals faded to dull purple and finally dropped softly to my desk. Clarence invited me to dinner at his apartment, and of course I went. Steak, boiled potatoes, and canned corn. The place was as dreary as I had imagined, with one room, a kitchen not much larger than a closet, and a bath. The one decorative touch was a sock filled with tennis balls suspended from the ceiling
light fixture. Clarence and Ken used it for a punching bag.

The immediate problem at Stebbins was our choice of courses. We thumbed our General Catalogues, asked one another to give us the lowdown on professors of courses we were considering. Several girls said, “Why did I ever choose
this
major?” and changed majors, letting themselves in for a heavy schedule if they were to graduate in May.

From the list of courses “designed primarily for seniors whose major subject is English” I chose Chaucer. Milton lurked on the list, but since Chaucer was a one-semester course, I felt I could postpone Milton for a few months. Other English majors said I shouldn't miss The Age of Johnson, a great course. I followed their advice. I also chose Advanced French Grammar, not because I thirsted for more irregular verbs, but because the University of Washington School of Librarianship required more units of French than I had on my record. Having endured History of Education, I was now entitled to enroll in Elementary Education, which Jane was also taking. I still needed three more units. I longed for a course in household arts but did not have the prerequisites. I had, I discovered, prerequisites for very little. I finally settled on Anthropology 105, The Ameri
can Indian, as the most possible course open to me. Besides, I reminded myself, all knowledge is useful to librarians.

Elementary Education offered unexpected entertainment, not because of the professor, an interesting, kindly man understanding of both children and teachers, but because of a student, an older woman, an experienced teacher who, like other out-of-state teachers, was working toward a California credential because California salaries were higher than those of other states. She arrived at the morning class with liquor on her breath and interesting comments to make. The project method of teaching was in fashion at that time. Choose a project such as American Indians that interests children, and they will be so eager to learn they will read, and so eager to build a tepee they will learn arithmetic. The experienced teacher never hesitated to speak out. “What are we supposed to do with all this garbage if they ever finish their tepee?” she once asked. I could picture the tepee made of sticks covered with brown paper or old sheets. How would the children make it stand up? Another memorable remark was “We would be too tired to go dancing after a day with all that junk.” Jane and I found this course especially interesting for the wrong reason.

Advanced French Grammar was something to dread, for I had not studied French grammar for two years. The small class was taught by Mme Habis-Reutinger. The students were all girls, most of them members of sororities, many of them with excellent accents from having studied French in private schools. A couple actually had been to France. The class, for me, was a nightmare of idioms and elaborate grammatical constructions. I dreaded being called on to read aloud. Eventually I was. In a small voice I stumbled along as best I could, and when I finished, Madame smiled and said, “Oh, dat is so sweet.” A kind woman, she did not call on me to read aloud again.

Anthropology 105. After a class in a building at the bottom of the campus, I raced uphill to a small building at the top, pausing for a few words with Clarence, who was heading downhill. I usually arrived after all the seats had been taken, sat on a cold steam radiator, and left the class with a corrugated bottom. The course was taught by a lecturer, Alfred Métraux, a famous anthropologist, although I did not realize it at the time. As I recall, he taught at Cal only a semester or two, and I was lucky to have chosen his course, for he was a fascinating man in spite of a heavy French accent. He skipped quickly over North
America and lectured on South America, where he had actually lived with the tribes mentioned in our textbook, a book he seemed to regard as a nuisance. I remember his vivid account of a ship dropping him off at Tierra del Fuego, the southernmost tip of South America, a raw and windy place where the native inhabitants had not discovered that their animal skins would be warmer if they wore the fur inside. With a rueful laugh, Mr. Métraux told how cold he had been and how he was afraid the ship would forget to pick him up, leaving him stranded in that bleak place forever.

Alfred Métraux did not often laugh and obviously did not enjoy teaching. He was particularly irritated by one member of the class, a graduate student in anthropology, a neat, earnest, precise woman who always sat in the middle of the front row. Whenever Mr. Métraux mentioned in his French accent an unfamiliar term or tribal name, she raised her hand and said, “Excuse me. How do you spell that?” Through gritted teeth he spelled it. When mid-terms came, he gave her a C, shocking all the graduate students, who could not get C's and remain graduate students. I have often wondered what her final grade was and if Mr. Métraux left her career in shards as he fled Cal for jungles.

Chaucer, the smallest class I had at Cal, was given in sections of twenty students. I was fortunate in choosing Professor Arthur Brodeur, who was recommended by Stebbins girls. He was a handsome, gentlemanly man with white hair who read from
The Canterbury Tales
and
The Book of the Duchess
in a rich and musical voice. Professor Brodeur endeared himself to me by his punctuality in keeping office hours and because he stood when I entered. No other professor had shown me such courtesy. He patiently discussed possible subjects for a paper I was to write, and when I left his office, he again rose to his feet.

Next to The Novel, my favorite course at Cal was The Age of Johnson, taught by Assistant Professor Bertrand Bronson. Students referred to the course as The Age of Bronson. The text was the Oxford edition of Boswell's
Life of Johnson
in very fine print. Instead of our reading straight through, Professor Bronson divided the book, assigning reading according to subject, which made the eighteenth century extraordinarily vivid. Several years later I happened to meet Mrs. Bronson and told her how much pleasure her husband's course had given me. She smiled and said, “I'll tell him. He often wonders.” And I had thought insecurity was an affliction of students, not professors.

While I divided my time among Clarence, American Indians, eighteenth-century England, and solving problems in pupil behavior in Elementary Education, Miriam continued to study with cold, blue feet and was rewarded. One day she took a rich-looking envelope from our mailbox, and when she opened it, she found she had been elected to Phi Beta Kappa. And in her junior year! The motivated girls of Stebbins Hall, who had the highest grade point average of any students on campus, were proud of her. She borrowed a Phi Beta Kappa key and went off to the initiation with the best wishes of all of us. I felt that anyone who could get out of bed at four o'clock every morning deserved to be honored.

Another Christmas vacation. All I remember about it is snow in Portland, Mother's exhaustion in caring for my grandmother, and her disapproval of Clarence. Dad did not comment on Clarence. I assumed his feelings were neutral. When I returned to Stebbins, Miriam told me she was moving out to share a room with her sister, who had enrolled at Cal. This was a shock, for Miriam and I had lived peacefully with our unusual study schedule and had enjoyed good times together. She, too, was in emotional turmoil. Wilfrid wanted to marry her. She wanted to finish college. The terms of his Fellowship required that
he return to England at the end of the semester. Finally, after much anguish, she decided to give up her senior year, marry during the summer, and finish college in England. I missed her.

My next roommate was a beautiful girl, a French major with a broken heart, who seemed to do very little studying. She said she had a photographic memory, which made French easy for her. I liked her and feel I should somehow have been a better friend to her, but like many seniors, I was in too much of an emotional snarl. I often found her weeping over a bundle of letters and some dry, crumbling roses. Late in the evening she sat cross-legged on her bed, a French book on her knees, mentally photographing vocabulary while she put her hair up in thirty-two pin curls.

Early in the second semester I sent off my application, along with my hopes, to the School of Librarianship at the University of Washington. I was disheartened because I was not distinguishing myself at Cal, although today, as I look at my transcript, I can see that at that time I had a respectable B average, higher if all my Chaffey A's were included.

Clarence, in the meantime, had completed his required units midyear, or, as we said, he was a member of the class of 1937½. Because he had
been entirely self-supporting during some grim Depression years, he had spent six years in college. Now he said he was tired of studying, of not having enough money, and so, along with many other students, he took civil service examinations. In those days government jobs were coveted because they offered security, and the hope of many students was to become a P-1, Junior Professional Assistant. Bedding and Linen was not Clarence's life ambition, and at that point he was no longer sure what was.

One damp evening after an Assembly Dance where Clarence had sung into my ear “our” songs, “Does Your Heart Beat for Me?” and “You're the One Rose That's Left in My Heart,” we walked up the hill past Stebbins to sit on a sheltered wall overlooking Strawberry Creek. The pressures of Cal and of barely having enough money had ground me down to the point where I did not expect to be accepted by the University of Washington. What next? Back to Portland and Mother's relentless supervision? I felt hopeless.

Clarence took me in his arms and said that when he found a job, we could do something about it. We could get married. In those Depression days we had not discussed marriage or even love, although I might have guessed he loved me because he sang so tenderly in his beautiful tenor
voice while we danced. I had not allowed myself to think of love and had always thought of marriage as something far in the future. Now, suddenly, I knew I loved and wanted to marry him. We sat in the cold and dark with rain drizzling down and the creek gurgling below us and talked a long time. I was still determined to become self-supporting and to work a year before marriage. He agreed this was probably a wise decision on my part. I also said I would not join the Catholic Church, that I felt my heritage was as valuable to me as his was to him, and the religious education of children would be his responsibility. He said that was all right with him, that he knew I was not cut out to be a Catholic. When he finally said good night under Stebbins's porch light, we lingered longer than Stebbins's propriety considered appropriate.

With Clarence on my mind, I still could not face Milton. The second semester I enrolled in The Age of Swift and Pope, taught by a young man considered a rising star in the English Department. He spoke in a high voice, waved a cigarette in a long holder, and talked about Inglish poy-tree. I stayed in the course long enough to discover that Alexander Pope had written “Hope springs eternal in the human breast” and “A little learning is a dangerous thing,” lines that I
had assumed belonged to Shakespeare. I counted up my units and discovered I would have enough to graduate without Swift and Pope and the waving cigarette holder. I would have more time to study for the Comprehensive. I could even read Milton.

One spring evening, with Milton in hand, I walked up the hill to sit with the little girl in the house with the spiral staircase. I read to her from
Winnie-the-Pooh
and was settled in a comfortable chair, a rare treat for a student, and there I made the biggest mistake of my life. I put Milton aside and wrote a letter to Mother and Dad telling them Clarence and I planned to marry after I had gone to library school and had worked a year.

Although I should have been prepared for Mother's answer, which came by return mail, I was not. She wrote a brief, angry letter telling me they would give me their answer in a week and to remember I had
promised
I would never marry Clarence. I had done no such thing. I had said, early in our acquaintance, that I had no intention of marrying him, and at that time I didn't. After a dismal week a letter arrived telling me that by marrying Clarence I would be disloyal to my family and to my religion. My parents would not give me their approval. Mother, house-bound with the care of my grandmother,
had nothing to do but brood and write letters I dreaded opening.

Pressures weighed more heavily on me. I could scarcely stay awake after lunch. Jane, always understanding, suggested I take a nap in her room so she could wake me in time for my two o'clock class. While calm, organized Jane studied quietly at her desk, I fell into a deep sleep of exhaustion until she woke me, and I went off to The Age of Elizabeth, which I had chosen to follow last semester's The Age of Johnson and allowed me, filled with guilt, to avoid Milton. Elizabethan love lyrics were preferable, but I did skip one assignment, the only assignment I ever skipped, Richard Hooker's
Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity
. I still feel that I should read it, but I know I won't.

Then one spring day I found in our mailbox a letter from the University of Washington. I had been accepted by the School of Librarianship. My Wordsworthian heart leaped again. I dashed off a note to my parents and waited for Clarence to call from Bedding and Linen.

By now all English majors were feeling tired and overwrought. Jane invited me to Mill Valley for spring vacation so we could study for the Comprehensive together. Perhaps we did, a little. Mrs. Chourré, aware of the monotony of dorm food, prepared us a lunch of waffles with fresh
strawberries and whipped cream. I recall going for a walk with Jane and climbing a hill covered with wildflowers. We lay in a field of California poppies and lupine that had the fragrance of grape bubble gum and let the sun drain away our tensions. Wildflowers, sunshine, quiet, and the company of a dear friend—it was a lovely afternoon far from the pressures of Cal and of my family.