Coming of Age

by Deborah Beatriz Blum

  7

  PAPER DOLLS

  Bought jam and cards! I must remember afterwards how simple happiness is—I don’t want anything more or different at such times

  —RUTH BENEDICT

  February 1923

  Ruth banged out through the back door, letting it slam behind her. She didn’t care if the noise annoyed Stanley. She needed to feel the freezing air, needed to clear her head. She marched toward the woodpile.

  As long as Ruth was doing the expected, tending to Stanley’s comfort by seeing to it that domestic tasks were done to his liking, he was content. However, now that she’d become absorbed in the research for her thesis, he’d withdrawn. He found small things to criticize, like her tendency to jot down ideas on scraps of paper and leave them in untidy piles on various surfaces. The way he talked to her was harsh, often in a tone that was dismissive and scornful. Just as he had once ignored her deep yearning to conceive a child, he now ignored her desire to find meaningful work. Without giving her a reason, he had moved his clothes out of their closet and retreated to the other bedroom.

  She wrote in her diary, “Stanley finds me sexually undesirable … the situation has tended to fixate my interest on him as perhaps a more normal relation might not have.”

  And Stanley seemingly couldn’t put his disapproval into words. There had been a time, early in their marriage, when it had been different. He had been responsive. Now, rather than engage with her, he barricaded himself in his darkroom, tinkering with his camera, developing negatives.

  A silence hung between them that she couldn’t bear.

  “The greatest relief I know,” she wrote, “is to have put something in words, no matter if it’s as stabbing as this is to me; and even to have him say cruel things to me is better than utter silence.”

  Why was it that Stanley should experience her increasing independence of mind as so abhorrent? He had work that absorbed him. He had the camaraderie and respect of his colleagues. Why couldn’t she try for the same? Why did he fail to see the fairness of that equation?

  She pulled the embedded axe from the stump. Lifting a log from the woodpile she set it on the stump and, standing with her legs wide apart, lifted the axe up over her head and swung it down. The log failed to split. She swung again, this time hearing a resounding crack.

  That New Year’s Day of 1923 she made the following notation in her diary: “A good day to sit by one’s own fire and look out at the rain and at the whipping trees. Toward sunset, cleared under gale from northwest—walked in its teeth as far as sleeting roads allowed.”

  When she returned she found Stanley sitting by the fire. He barely spoke to her. She made tea and toast and they played Go Bang, a Japanese board game similar to Checkers.

  For Ruth, the new year brought with it a sense of anticipation for what was to come, the feeling that she had something of her own to work toward, that she wasn’t just mourning the child that could never, and would never, be conceived.

  Months earlier she had embarked on her dissertation, expanding on the ideas she’d begun in her first paper on the Guardian Spirit in North America. Once again, she’d limited herself to a library project. Recognizing that the Museum of Natural History had become her second home, and that many hours were lost in the commute between Bedford Hills and Manhattan, she’d asked Stanley to give her enough money to rent an apartment near Columbia.

  The apartment was really a room, a ten-by-twelve-foot box with one window that looked out onto the wall of another building, a dozen feet away. Its wooden floors were so worn they’d splintered, its bathroom down the hall shared with three other residents. To Ruth the space was perfect. She liked the look of the walls, an ancient white with hairline cracks running through the plaster. She liked the steaming radiator, with its peeling paint and sputtering noise. And she didn’t mind the shared bathroom with its stained toilet bowl and bare lightbulb hanging from a cord. On the weekends she traveled home by train to Bedford Hills, and found she could appreciate the commodious house with three fireplaces that she shared with Stanley.

  On some nights she would awaken from sleep, filled with a vague fear. She would lie in bed, her heart beating fast, as the anxiety came into focus. What if her gamble failed?

  Stanley didn’t make it any easier. On the mornings in Bedford Hills, she’d enter the kitchen to find him already seated at the breakfast table, eating his oatmeal, silent and glum.

  Sometime in early January she wrote a verse about the state of their marriage:

  We’ll have no crumb in common

  In all our days

  A dream come true by naming it together;

  Nor go full-fortified

  From touch of lips.

  Like the rest of her literary efforts Ruth kept this verse hidden. She stashed it away with her other poems, all penned under the pseudonym “Anne Singleton,” a name that reflected her need for independence.

  * * *

  In January of 1923, Dr. Boas announced that he was moving the location of the weekly anthropology lunches from the old Endicott Hotel to the Stockton Tearoom on West 109th Street. This simple establishment with pale yellow walls and linoleum floor offered an all-you-can-eat buffet at a reasonable price.

  Ruth arrived at the Stockton about twenty minutes late. The large room was filled with long tables, all occupied. Spotting her colleagues, she filled a plate, then squeezed into a seat next to her fellow grad student Gladys Reichard. It wasn’t long before she thought she heard, through the mix of conversation, the voice of Edward Sapir. Peering down the long table she saw him at the far end, next to Marius Barbeau, his colleague from Ottawa.

  When the meal was over and the dishes were being cleared, Edward was suddenly there, standing over her. “Mrs. Benedict,” he said, “do you mind if I sit down?” He pulled out a chair. “How is your mythological research coming along?”

  “Slowly, very slowly,” she said, flattered that he remembered what she was working on.

  “I, too, am moving slowly. I’m preparing a detailed text analysis on Sarcee Myths.” And then, showing his gift as a mimic, perfectly imitated the mannerisms of “Herr Professor Boas,” saying in a stern voice, “Mr. Sapir, your handbook on the grammar is long overdue.”

  “Yes,” Ruth acknowledged. “Dr. Boas is very demanding.”

  Edward moved his chair a little closer. His voice, when it came, was low and rich. “You produce a very fine piece of research,” he said. “Why wouldn’t you do mythology to the bitter end and actually prepare the full concordance we need so badly?”

  Ruth said nothing.

  “There is room somewhere for psychology,” said Edward. “Not just as something that is incidental, but as a powerful cultural determinant.”

  At a loss for words, she just stared.

  “While I am talking,” Edward said with a laugh, “you probably have half done the job already. Really, I seem to waste a stupendous amount of time in various miscellaneous and ill-assorted activities.”

  Ruth, suddenly aware of the time, looked at her watch. “Oh dear,” she stammered, “I must be on my way down to the museum. The students will be waiting.” As she was packing her book bag she told him about the section she was teaching in the afternoons.

  When she stood up he rose also. “Please,” he said, “let me accompany you. If you can bear my black mood, that is.”

  He helped her into her coat.

  “I want to see what a real museum collection looks like these days,” he said as they walked toward the door. “Our own museum is so woefully depleted.”

  * * *

  They walked along the west side of Central Park. She listened as he told her that during the war the Canadian government had withdrawn its support for anthropology and now, even five years after the war’s end, they had not restored his funding. Ottawa’s exhibition cases sat empty, with many of the collection’s best artifacts packed in crates, covered by old gray horse blankets.

  Then he surprised her. “My wife, Flore
nce, is very ill again, he said. “I’m obliged to find lodging for her in the city.”

  “How difficult for you,” said Ruth, “and for the children.”

  “We’ve found a good doctor here. My mother’s brought our six-year-old, Helen, down. The plan is that when I return to Ottawa, Florence and Helen will remain here.”

  They walked along.

  “I’m wondering if you could watch Helen while I search for lodging for the two of them?” He paused. “I know it’s a lot to ask.”

  Ruth was flattered.

  She glanced in his direction. The arrogance in his eyes seemed to mask some unspoken pain. She found herself wanting to hear him laugh again.

  She agreed to help in whatever way she could.

  That night she wrote in her journal, “Bought jam and cards! I must remember afterwards how simple happiness is—I don’t want anything more or different at such times.”

  * * *

  Helen, the little girl, sat on Ruth’s bed, her overcoat still buttoned. She looked wide-eyed and fearful, a sweet little thing who exhibited none of her father’s self-assurance.

  Ruth gently helped her out of the coat and hung it in the closet.

  With this visit in mind, Ruth had gone to the Five and Dime to purchase supplies that Helen might like. She brought them out now, a stack of colored construction paper, a bottle of glue, a pair of scissors.

  Getting down on her hands and knees, Ruth spread them out on the floor and patted a spot next to her for Helen to sit down.

  They spent the morning cutting out paper dolls, making a set of six. Ruth suggested drawing a “printed menu” so the dolls could decide what they wanted to eat for lunch. They illustrated the menu to look like the ones handed out in the dining car of a Pullman, just like the one Helen had taken from Ottawa to New York. After lunch Ruth helped Helen back into her coat and the two ran across the icy street to the soda fountain where they had arranged to meet Edward. He was ten minutes late. When he arrived, he ordered a hot fudge sundae for Helen, with two long silver spoons.

  Between mouthfuls of ice cream and warm chocolate sauce, Edward told Ruth that when he had accepted his job in Ottawa, a decade earlier, it had held great promise. He had been given free rein to organize a program of ethnology for all of Canada. Then Canada had entered the war and budget cuts had hobbled his ability to launch projects. Worse, Edward had started to experience anti-Semitic resentments from the administrative staff, including from his own assistant, Marius Barbeau.

  Perfectly mimicking Barbeau’s French Canadian accent, Edward said, “Sapir spends all of his enthusiasm and best energies turning this into a Jewish division.”

  Ruth could see that as a Jew trying to make his way in the academic world, Edward was every bit as marginalized as she was as a woman. But Edward, at least, had a sense of humor about it.

  As they were leaving the shop, Edward said, “Tonight I’m giving a lecture at Cooper Union. I don’t suppose you’re free for dinner?”

  Ruth felt her face flush.

  She wanted to say yes, but she had already made plans to visit her sister-in-law, Agnes, and her new baby. She had no choice but to decline. At any rate, she was proud of herself for refusing the last-minute invitation.

  It wasn’t until the next day, on February 8, that Ruth heard the news that Marie Bloomfield, one of her students, had committed suicide. That night Ruth made the following entry in her journal:

  It’s unbearable that life should be so hard for them. I know it’s all wrapped up with my wish for children—and dread that they might not want the gift.—It bowls me over completely.

  The next day Ruth sent a card expressing her sympathy to Margaret Mead, the only real friend Marie had left behind.

  * * *

  The knock, a rhythmic rapping, came at half-past six. Ruth opened her door to find Margaret standing there, a small wisp of a girl, her blue eyes fixed on Ruth, her chin jutting slightly forward.

  Margaret stepped into the room and embraced Ruth, holding her tight for a moment, as if a physical connection between them were the most natural thing in the world.

  Ruth pulled back.

  Margaret’s skin was fresh and clear, the bridge of her nose sprinkled with light freckles. The fifteen-year age difference suddenly felt like an unbridgeable chasm.

  “Goodness gracious,” Margaret said, “I never imagined that my first visit to you would be occasioned by something so horrible.”

  Ruth set out teacups, put the kettle on to boil. She placed a cardboard box from the bakery on the little table. Pulling out a chair for her guest, she made sure that Margaret was positioned to talk into her good ear.

  As Margaret was breaking a scone in two, spreading butter across it, Ruth assessed the girl. Even under these circumstances she radiated optimism.

  Facing life from the sunny side lay outside of Ruth’s experience. Always plagued by bleak moods, what Ruth called “her blue devils,” she had a sensitivity for “those who by age or sex or temperament or accidents of life history were out of the main currents of their culture.” This included Marie Bloomfield. It did not include Margaret Mead.

  What Margaret Mead was telling her now was disconcerting.

  “Some people in the administration want me to say things about Marie that aren’t true,” said Margaret. “They’ve been determined to convince me, so that I will convince others, that Marie was insane.”

  “Are you kidding?” said Ruth

  “She wasn’t insane,” said Margaret, beginning to tear up.

  “No,” said Ruth, “I know she wasn’t.”

  They sat in silence for a moment. “When was the last time you saw her?” asked Ruth.

  “When we took her home from the hospital. She was lonely. But I certainly didn’t have any sense that she was going to kill herself.”

  “The police have identified what was in the glass,” said Ruth. “It was cyanide.”

  “Terrible,” said Margaret, her eyes starting to well up. “What a terrible way to die.”

  “It is a terrible way to die,” said Ruth, going to her dresser to find a handkerchief.

  Then Ruth told Margaret about her own childhood in Norwich, in upstate New York. One morning after Sunday School she’d found her mother waiting for her at the door, crying. Sarah, their young servant, had committed suicide. No one ever told her how or why. Even years later, Ruth’s mother wouldn’t talk about it. Sarah’s decision to take her own life was seen as a disgrace to both Sarah’s family and to the Fultons.

  “Someone else from the administration is coming by tomorrow,” said Margaret. “Supposedly to see how I am.” She paused. “What they really care about is keeping me quiet.”

  “These are the ingrained attitudes that we live with,” said Ruth. She explained how in other cultures like that of ancient Rome, when the great statesman Cato killed himself, the act of taking one’s own life was considered noble.

  Ruth had no way of knowing if her words were making an impression. Nor could she know that later that night Margaret wrote to her mother to tell her about their tea:

  The one exception is Ruth Benedict. She wrote me a little note and I went to see her. She was the one person who understood that suicide might be a noble and conscious choice.

  What Ruth also did not realize was that the mere presence of this girl, who she had always viewed as too sunny, too buoyant, had been a comfort to her also. Without knowing it, Ruth had finally let down her mask.

  * * *

  The next day Ruth was working in the small seminar room next to the Anthropology office when she looked up and saw Dr. Boas standing in the doorway. As usual the expression on his face gave away nothing of what he was thinking. He motioned for her to come with him.

  Her hopes soared.

  Surely he was going to bring up the job opening in the department, the one teaching position yet to be filled. She followed him into his cramped office. She knew the salary was considerably less than what any man would expect as an
associate professor, but that didn’t matter. She had Stanley’s money to provision her.

  “Sit down, Mrs. Benedict,” he said.

  Ruth settled into the chair.

  “You know our resources are limited,” Boas said. “Severely limited.”

  She waited.

  “I’ve had a letter from Mrs. Parsons.”

  He rummaged through the papers on his desk until he found it. He scanned it, and then looked up.

  “Mrs. Parsons has offered a grant, a fellowship, in Southwest folklore. I thought to talk to her about you and your interests and well, she fell in with my suggestions.”

  “Oh?” said Ruth. Perhaps he was not talking about a teaching job. This other opportunity involved Elsie Parsons, the same Mrs. Parsons who had been Ruth’s teacher at the New School. A wealthy matron and self-taught anthropologist, Mrs. Parsons was known for making generous donations to the department, and as long as Mrs. Parsons was willing to provide funding, she could call the shots.

  He continued, “Gladys Reichard has accepted our teaching job.”

  Ruth stared.

  He cleared his throat. “She is unmarried with no means of support.”

  “So that’s it,” thought Ruth, knowing that Boas always weighed how best to disseminate the bits of money that had been put at his disposal. Obviously he’d decided that Gladys Reichard needed the teaching job more than she did.

  “Why don’t you talk to Mrs. Parsons,” he said. “She’s expecting to hear from you.”

  That night Ruth wrote in her journal:

  Worst sick headache I’ve had in years. I know my subconscious staged it—But really I suppose it’s hanging on to the idea that I can teach at Barnard—which my conscious self has known I couldn’t do, always.

  * * *

  A few days later at the Stockton Tearoom, Ruth spotted Elsie Parsons presiding over one of the lunch tables. A statuesque lady, dressed in a smart suit, Elsie was blessed with pleasantly symmetrical facial features. She seemed to be thoroughly enjoying her roast beef, while the men at the table listened to what she had to say with rapt attention.