Bridesmaid

We graduated from high school in June of 1928 and before we could turn around Twink was a married woman and I was the maid of honor. It was the hottest day of summer so far and every face in that church was dripping with sweat. Arthur Schloenfield, the groom's best man, fainted two minutes before the bride was set to walk the aisle and we had to stand there in the church lobby with the flowers getting hot and sticky in our hands and the only breeze in the whole town wafting in over our faces--I'll tell you, that's when I realized I'd rather do most anything than get married. Of course a person wasn't supposed to think that way then so it took me a while to come around to it.

I guess Helen already had that figured out and so I went to visit her in her summer digs in Des Moines, see if I could glean some magic trick or something for making myself not feel like a spinster. From where we were out in the sleepy sticks it seemed like she was leading some kind of glamorous life, working as a typist in the big city, renting her own apartment for the summer. This is what you're thinking too, I can tell by your letters. Great Aunt Helen, the glamorous city aunt.

Well, let me tell you, it was nothing like that. She had this cramped little place up on the third floor and she shared a bathroom with three other women and that place was a pigsty, makeup caked in the sink, stockings drying every which way, the bathtub something you could barely bring yourself to touch let alone get in to clean yourself. And Helen tried to pass herself off as happy and successful but it was clear she hated every minute of it, rushing off to work in the morning, to type all day for a man who hadn't half the education she had and she was only a sophomore in college at the time. Evenings she'd come home with her face pinched and tired the way Mother's used to get and she'd strip off her stockings and rub her feet and try to make conversation but it was clear she'd just as soon I wasn't there.

Instead I went home and spent the summer kicking around the house, bored out of my skull and lonely as all get out. Buddy didn't want me to cramp his style and Mother was going through the change so most of the time I just took Baby down to the pictures and afterward we'd get a soda and count the cars going by on the street. Me a big girl of eighteen years old. Wasn't any wonder I broke down that fall and consented to go to college even though it was the last thing on my list of things I wanted to do.

Well, this was a cheerful one. Let me know what else you want to know about. One of these days I'll tell you about the curling iron Helen bought me with the wages from her first job. Quite a sight, I tell you.

Love,

Aunt Jessie

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