“Penny, let me talk to you about what happened,” he said.
Like the good guy that he was, he came over and took me for a walk, and with more compassion and gentleness than you’d ever expect from a star football player, he explained the facts of life to me. This was the talk that I never got while growing up. I guess it says something about me that I didn’t just have sex with the captain of the football team. I learned about it from him, too.
Tragically, Chuck died in a car accident the next year. In his honor, the university created the annual Chuck Cummings Memorial Award for the most inspirational player. They still give it out. I also think it’s kind of cool that there’s a memorial to the first guy I did it with.
I know that I’ve never forgotten him.
CHAPTER 10
Mrs. Henry
Penny and Mickey Henry cutting the cake at their 1963 wedding in New Mexico
Anthony Marshall
TOWARD THE END of my sophomore year, I met Mickey Henry and I quit thinking about all the other boys I had been dating or wanted to date. A freshman, Mickey was in school on a football scholarship. An All-State end from Highland High, he was large and strong—exactly the type I liked—with short, dark hair and a puckish grin like a young Burt Reynolds. I came up to his shoulder and practically disappeared when he wrapped his arms around me.
You couldn’t find two more different people, though. Mickey and his two sisters had been raised by his grandmother. His mother worked at the local military base. His father had been in an institution since Mickey was a baby. If not for football, he wouldn’t have traveled outside of Albuquerque. He was shocked by the stories I told about my family and growing up in New York. If I didn’t amuse him, I confused him. Like when I tried to explain why my brother, sister, and I had all been confirmed different religions but were atheists.
Then summer came. I was a counselor for the second year in a row at Diana-Dalmaqua, a camp in the Catskills run by the parents of my mother’s dancing school favorite, Lois Rosenberg. Mickey worked construction in Albuquerque. We kept in touch with letters and lengthy long-distance phone conversations.
When we returned to campus late that summer for what was my junior and his sophomore year, we picked up where we left off. We even discussed marriage in that dreamy, what-if way kids do when they’re in love for the first time. But I wasn’t in a rush, and Mickey said we needed to wait until after graduation when he would have a job and could start building a stable and solid future. I admired his self-control and common sense.
Then, one weekend early in the season, Mickey didn’t make the travel team and he sunk into a deep depression. I’m sure it was the first time in his sporting life that he had been left behind, and he didn’t know how to handle the setback. We went out the next night and in the process of consoling him, we ended up getting romantic in his car. I’d been in a front seat before, except this time I knew what I was doing.
Or so I thought—until I missed my period. I made an appointment with the campus doctor, who gave me a cursory exam and said I was stressed. I knew stress didn’t affect me that way, though. Without going into detail, I asked the doctor to give me a blood test. Even though the chance of me being pregnant from that one time was one in a million, I knew a baby was growing in me. And a few days later, the test results confirmed it.
For the first twenty-four hours, I was numb. All I could think about or hear in my head was my mother. She epitomized all my fears, frustrations, and sense of failure. I knew I was going to have to tell her, and before her, I had to tell Mickey. But before telling either of them, I wanted to think through my options, because maybe, just maybe, I might come up with a solution.
The most obvious option was to get an abortion in Juarez. I knew some girls who’d gone there. But I ruled it out immediately. Another option was to ride horses and push myself physically in an effort to cause a miscarriage. I’d also heard stories about girls who’d gone that route, but I didn’t know if they were true, and I thought, with my luck, I’d botch the job and make a tough situation worse.
Still another option was to move to Amarillo and have the baby on my own. I don’t know why Amarillo. I’d never been there. It started with an “A.” It sounded far away. I had made my bed, and I would sleep in it—but out of town. I liked that scenario. I would be running away from Mickey and my mother, the two people I didn’t want to face.
Yet they were also the two people that I needed to tell. I don’t know why, but something about me would rather face the fire than torture myself, so I worked up my courage and broke the news to Mickey.
His reaction was much better than when he didn’t make the travel team. He listened to me run through the possible scenarios, and after I finished, he brought up another option—marriage.
“It’s mine, too,” he said. “We’ll get married.”
I had purposely avoided the M-word. Despite whatever Mickey and I had said in the past, I knew deep down that I wasn’t ready to get married, and I probably didn’t want to spend the rest of my life with him. But Mickey wrapped his strong arms around me and assured me that we were doing the right thing and would get through this together.
I called home, and my mother answered.
“I have news,” I said. “I’m getting married.”
“You’re pregnant,” she said.
It wasn’t even a question.
“No, I’m not,” I said reflexively.
“Yes, you are. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m not coming for the wedding. You’ll need me more when the baby is born.”
I suppose the conversation could have been worse.
My father was upset. He blamed Mickey and said he wanted to fly out and “kick that Indian’s teeth in.” Mickey was half Irish and half Mexican, hence the slur. My father was 6’1”, but Mickey was 6’4”—and younger. I didn’t think any teeth would be kicked in. Daily phone calls helped everyone cool off. It was like we all went through the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.
Mickey and I set November 23 as our wedding date. We picked up a marriage license at city hall. They also gave us a marriage “starter kit”—a cardboard box containing Tide, a bar of soap, and a tube of toothpaste. My father flew into town on November 22, the same day President Kennedy was assassinated. The news set a tone for the weekend.
On Saturday, after playing in a game against Brigham Young, Mickey changed into a suit and drove to his mother’s house, where the two of us were married in a simple and somber ceremony in the backyard. I wore a beige winter suit with a thick fur collar. My father had brought it from New York. I looked like an animal was swallowing me. I never wore it again.
Afterward, Mickey’s mother served cake and Kool-Aid. Then Mickey and I went to a motel, where we spent the rest of our honeymoon weekend watching President Kennedy’s funeral on TV.
Once married, we left our dorms and moved into an apartment near school. There was an avocado tree in the backyard, and I discovered that I liked them. So there was that. There was also an effort to make the best of the situation. My parents sent Mickey’s mother a letter expressing their appreciation for her watching out for me. They included a loaf of New York rye bread.
Mickey responded with a multipage thank-you, asking my parents to forgive me for not telling them sooner (“She was so upset that she had let you down.”) and assuring them that we were going to make it. “I want you to know that I do love Penny very much and will do my best to make her happy and provide for her every need,” he wrote. “Please don’t think I’m helpless or irresponsible. I realize the overwhelming responsibility and pressure that I now have.”
Before Christmas, I found out that Mickey’s family members were Jehovah’s Witnesses. His sisters pushed me to go with them to the Kingdom Hall. I tried it once. The big joke there was “How do you tell Adam and Eve apart in Heaven?” The answer: “They don’t have bellybuttons.” I didn’t get it—and I didn’t go back.
A
s a Jehovah’s Witness, though, Mickey didn’t celebrate the holidays, so I took him to New York and we had Christmas with my family. It was his first time in the city. He was nervous but excited. My father showed him the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty, and the other sights. They went by themselves. I didn’t do tourist attractions. I had seen them all in school.
But I did take Mickey to his first Broadway show. As we waited for the subway to take us downtown, I got nauseated. My morning sickness struck at night. Mickey turned away from me as I bent over the garbage can to throw up. I thought I detected some small-town embarrassment. “What?” I said. “This is New York. I’m not the first person to throw up in the subway.”
Back home, our lives changed. I realized why it takes nine months to have a baby. You need the time to adjust and prepare. Money became an issue. To cut expenses, we moved into Mickey’s mother’s house. It was shades of my own parents as I found myself living with his mother and grandmother. Mickey also sold his station wagon and got a job at night after school. Wanting to contribute, too, I dropped out of school midway through the year and signed up for office temp work as a Kelly Girl.
Before accepting any jobs, I had to learn to drive. Mickey taught me on his mother’s car, an automatic sedan. Then he bought an old stick shift. I don’t know what was he thinking. I spent months riding around in first gear.
That spring, as my stomach grew beyond a bump, Mickey’s mother moved into an apartment in a new development. She had her own money problems. Mickey and I scraped up enough cash to rent a studio apartment in her development. But that tapped us out. If my parents hadn’t bought us a hide-a-bed, we wouldn’t have had anything. Some nights I wrestled Mickey for food.
By June, I had gained fifty pounds. At night, I laid on the floor like a beached whale. Tracy was due in early July. I couldn’t wait to give birth and feel normal again, if that was possible. I counted the days and braced myself for the big event: my mother’s arrival.
CHAPTER 11
Forget the Gas, I Want the Jell-O
Penny and her young daughter, Tracy, in 1965
Marjorie Marshall
MY MOTHER ARRIVED after the Fourth of July. I wasn’t due for a few more days. At that point, my sole preparation for the baby had been to choose between the two local hospitals, the Presbyterian one or St. Something. I’d asked which one had a TV in the room. A day later I began to hear gurgling sounds in my belly. I thought it might be time and I turned to my mother, who had come, as she said, because I was going to need help.
“So?” I asked.
“What do you expect me to say?” she said. “I’m not a doctor.”
I didn’t know anything about labor, and she couldn’t remember shit. Neither could Mickey’s mother. Between them, they had seven children and neither of them knew a thing. They were mute when my water broke the next afternoon. I grabbed my Dr. Spock book, went into the bathroom, and looked up water breakage. It said, “Call the doctor.”
For some reason my doctor said I didn’t have to go to the hospital yet. My mother opened the pullout couch, spread some newspaper, and we watched TV until my contractions grew stronger and more frequent. Then even I knew we had better start timing things. Finally, I decided to go in. It seemed early, but I thought it was better to be safe than have my mother deliver the baby.
I also wanted to be in the air-conditioning at the hospital. It was summer and close to a hundred degrees outside. I was dying. We got word to Mickey, who was working construction. At the hospital, they ushered me to the maternity ward and assigned me a bed. I remember there was a curtain between me and some other lady who kept screaming, “I’m doing it myself.”
I soon understood why. As I waited, everyone and their uncle stuck their fingers in me to see how much I was dilated. I think the janitor checked, too. It didn’t seem to matter. Mickey came and went because my labor went on for twenty hours without any signs of a baby. At some point, the nurse asked whether I wanted gas or a spinal block during delivery. No one thought of natural childbirth then. I leaned toward the gas because I don’t like needles. I’d never even had Novocain. But it was still too early for either. They told me to walk around or take a shower.
I mentioned that I was very hungry. I hadn’t eaten since the previous day, and this was when I would fight Mickey for food, so just imagine how badly I wanted something to eat. I asked the nurse if they had any food they could bring me.
“You can’t have any food with the gas,” she said. “If you have the spinal, I can give you Jell-O.”
“Okay, forget the gas,” I said. “I want the Jell-O.”
The final six hours were hard labor. They continued to check how much I was dilated and they preferred to do it during a contraction. But something came over me when the nurse tried, and I said, “Get the hell away from me,” and hit her. It was a reflex. Enough was enough. The woman on the other side of the curtain yelled, “You tell ’em, sister!”
Soon after, on the afternoon of July 7, 1964, amid much relief from all those around me (by this time the spinal had kicked in and I didn’t give a shit), especially the nurse, I gave birth to a baby girl. Checking in at seven pounds, fourteen ounces and twenty-two inches, she had a full head of dark hair and brown eyes just like her father. She looked like a miniature Beatle.
Mickey had hoped for a boy, but by the time he finished counting her fingers and toes he was in love with his little girl. As for her name, all Mickey knew was that he didn’t want Robin or any other birdlike names. As we traded suggestions, I remembered the name of a girl I liked from camp, Tracy Saturn. Tracy was a happy name, as my mother would have said. I liked it. She was Tracy Lee Henry.
I tried breastfeeding Tracy, but my milk didn’t come out. They put her on Similac and gave me a shot to dry up the milk in my breasts. In the meantime, I developed a kidney infection. So there I was, with an ice pack on my chest and a heating pad on my sides. It was lovely.
They kept me in the hospital for nearly a week. Back then they didn’t kick you out in two seconds like they do now. When we finally took Tracy home, our studio apartment seemed even smaller. I emptied out a dresser drawer and she slept there. It was an instant nursery. Despite my happiness and relief, I was disappointed at not being able to go to camp that summer. If not for getting pregnant, I would’ve been at Diana-Dalmaqua again.
But I adapted and turned my attention to being a mom. I fed Tracy, bathed her in the kitchen sink, and learned to rest her in an infant’s seat on top of the dryer or the idling car when she couldn’t go to sleep. I didn’t like the morning feedings, which I had to do when Mickey started school again in the fall and traveled with the team. Otherwise he was good about getting up with her.
I lost twenty of the fifty pounds I’d gained right away. It melted off. I’m sure it was all the running around I did. Like most new mothers, I was amazed at how much work was required for this tiny thing that didn’t do much. I remember being thrilled when Tracy was finally old enough to prop herself up in her playpen and hold her own bottle just like my mother had me do.
At the end of summer, we moved to a two-bedroom apartment. It was roomier and cheaper than our studio, and Mickey was closer to school. After seven weeks at home, I went back to work, too. Mickey’s grandmother watched Tracy, as she’d done with Mickey and his sisters. We also used their swimming pool. I don’t know what we would have done without them.
We had nothing. Our one luxury was a diaper service. It had been a gift, and we had it for three months. I was supposed to rinse the poop in the toilet before putting it in the diaper pail. Sometimes I forgot and the toilet clogged. Hey, I didn’t pretend to be the paradigm of motherhood or domesticity. But I never forgot the strong smell of ammonia in the diaper pail. Just lifting the top for two seconds let out a blast that burned my eyes.
In 1965, my New Year’s resolution was to find work that didn’t require me to get up in the morning. I wanted some kind of life back. My mother suggested that I try teachi
ng dance. Ordinarily I ignored whatever advice she gave me. It was a reflex response. She said something, and I kicked back. But this time I listened. I made a list of dance schools and looked for a job.
My first stop was the Litka School of Music, the city’s top dance school. The owners, Muriel and Adolph Litka, liked my experience and hired me on the spot. They knew how to sell. In a press release, they described me as a Junior Rockette, a June Taylor Dancer, and the winner of the Ted Mack Amateur Hour. Even I was impressed. “At the Litka School, she will specialize in precision dancing, acrobatic ballet, and tap dancing,” they said. “She can also teach some jazz.”
As if that wasn’t enough, they added, “Her brother, Garry Marshall, is a writer for Danny Thomas’s production company, which includes shows starring Dick Van Dyke, Danny Thomas, Lucille Ball, and Gomer Pyle.”
I knew Gomer Pyle wasn’t real. Likewise, my credits weren’t entirely accurate, either. But why correct the Litkas? They were happy, and I was employed. The hours were exactly what I had in mind. The preschoolers came in at eleven o’clock and the older kids arrived in the afternoon. I played the same songs my mother had used and taught the same routines. It was easy. I sat next to the record player, smoked, and said, “Left, right, left, right.”
CHAPTER 12
Take Everything
Penny and Mickey at the 1965 New York World’s Fair
Marshall personal collection
BY THE MIDDLE of spring, I had lost the remaining thirty pounds of my pregnancy weight. I felt much better. Later, when Tracy turned one, the three of us went back to New York and spent a week on the beach in Avon-by-the-Sea. We also went to the World’s Fair to see my mother’s students entertain on one of the stages. When my mother insisted on hiding an entire roasted chicken in the front pouch of my cotton pullover so we could save money and not have to buy dinner there, I thought I might be getting my life back, the crazy life that I knew.
My Mother Was Nuts Page 6