The Crazyladies of Pearl Street Read Online Free PDF Page B

first letter back to Mother called 'prohibited merchandise' from Canada to 'deprived communities'. National prohibition had just ended, but the old supply systems remained functional because there were still dry states and counties. A second letter told her that he missed her more than he could say because 'You Were Meant for Me', Toots. Following this letter, there was a three-year silence, during the first month of which my sister was born.
    It was while we were in Schenectady that I ran away from home for the first time. For some reason, perhaps because the return of my father suddenly deprived me of my mother's undivided attention, I began to wet my bed at night, although I had been toilet-trained for a year. The first couple of times this happened, my mother dismissed it as a 'phase', but she was ultimately obliged to accept that it was full-blown regression. She decided to correct my urinary insouciance using a method she had read about in a book on 'modern' child-raising, a book that was against corporal punishment, preferring bloodless tactics that caused only emotional and developmental damage. One evening she came back from shopping with a package for me. I eagerly tore off the wrapping and discovered to my surprise, but not to my horror, a dress that she had picked up in a second-hand clothing shop. Following the advice in her book, she told me that if I was going to act like a little wet-the-bed girlie, then I would have to dress like a little wet-the-bed girlie, and she made me take off my clothes and put on the dress. At first I didn't realize this game was meant to be a punishment. Dressing up like a girl seemed strange, but not shameful; and I was far from displeased by the attention I got as I pranced around the room in my dress. It was only when my father grasped my arm angrily and said that I would have to wear the dress like a little girlie until I decided to stop wetting my bed that I realized the costume was meant to be humiliating. I was first confused then hurt by the realization that my mother... my mother was trying to shame me. And this big man was angry because I had found the punishment amusing. I threw myself to the floor and kicked and screamed and tried to tear the damning dress off me. But I was put into my crib wearing the dress, and long after my incensed screams had collapsed into sobs and gasps, I lay in the dark, my teeth clenched.
    I had overheard my mother talking about a naughty boy in the apartment above ours who ran away from home, not caring how much his parents suffered and worried until he was found and returned to them. This equipped me with the means to avenge my humiliation. I would run away to my grandfather LaPointe, who had been the only man in my life before the return of this father who had changed my loving mother into a woman who liked to shame me. They would suffer and worry about where I was, but I would never return to them; instead I would go live with my grandfather who had choo-choo trains and would give me rides all the time.
    The next evening, when this... father... was safely out of the house and my mother was upstairs having coffee with the neighbor lady, I collected my knitted winter hat with a green tassel, a folded-over piece of bread for sustenance, and my red Christmas tricycle for transportation, and I left home forever. I can recall only blurred snapshots of the great escape: pushing my tricycle along the edge of a sidewalk crowded with impatient workers swarming out of some big factory; then night fell, and I was cold and scared. I remember waiting forever for the courage to cross a wide street with floods of noisy, speeding traffic, then being helped across by an old lady; and I asked a gasoline-smelling man in a service station with green-and-orange pumps which way it was to the choo-choo trains; and later I got tired of pushing the red tricycle, so I left it in a dark narrow space between two buildings where I could find it when I needed it. But I