by Jane Fonda
I have a vivid image of Margaret Sullavan, from the way she looked to the deep, husky quality of her voice. But what impressed me most about her was how athletic and tomboyish she was. Dad had taught her how to walk on her hands during their courtship, and she could still suddenly turn herself upside down—and there she’d be, walking along on her hands. At the Hayward house there were always lots of games and laughter. Mother laughed in those days, too, and had many friends, but she tired easily and was not at all athletic. She would dress me up in frills and pinafores, which I hated, but Mrs. Hayward let her kids wear comfortable clothes and she herself wore old slacks and sandals.
The other major factor in my life after Peter’s birth was the impending war. I remember Mother and Father leaving home to go watch the night sky for enemy bombers. This was something patriotic civilians volunteered to do: “keep our skies safe.” The governess would get me all dressed for bed and then let me go downstairs to say good-bye as they walked out the door. I was filled with dread. What if they got bombed and didn’t come back? The fact that the adults would try to reassure me by explaining that we weren’t actually at war yet and certainly weren’t being bombed made no difference. If there were no bombs, what were they scanning the sky for? It made about as much sense as the “finish your plate, think of all the starving children in China” routine. If they’re hungry, send them the food, right? I mean, where’s the logic? Adults!
CHAPTER FOUR
TIGERTAIL
I am much too alone in the world, and not alone
enough to truly consecrate the hour. . . .
I want my own will,
And I want to simply be with my will,
As it goes toward action . . .
I want to be with those who know secret things
Or else alone.
—RAINER MARIA RILKE,
“I Am Much Too Alone in This World,
Yet Not Alone”
MOTHER AND DAD decided around 1940 to buy nine acres of land on the end of a dirt road called Tigertail because of the way it wound around the mountain. That part of the Santa Monica Mountain range was all beige undulations like a woman’s body, the curves blanketed in native grasses and tattooed with occasional scrub oaks and sturdy California oak trees. On the steeper slopes, red-barked manzanita, chaparral, and sage grew thick, and from the canyon bottoms arose the California sycamores, their thick, gnarled trunks and mottled bark looking like Maxfield Parrish’s trees where gremlins live. You won’t see this today—those rolling hills are covered with houses now, and the exotic, imported landscaping that surrounds them has all but obliterated the beige California of my girlhood.
My parents built a home there that was as close to a Pennsylvania Dutch farmhouse as was possible, given that this was Hollywood and Mother was, well, Mother.
It is conceivable that their marriage was fairly happy, although the abrupt change in lifestyle must have been hard on Mother. She went from being a lively New York City society widow, in charge of her own life, to being, at least at first, the stay-at-home wife of a constantly working movie star who left her alone a lot and wasn’t very good company when he was there.
After several years, my father began having affairs. Mother seems to have known nothing of this until one of the women filed a paternity suit against him. Mother used her own money to buy the woman’s silence. Pan recalls, “I remember vividly the heavy atmosphere and anguish in Mummy’s bedroom . . . her talking with Grandmother.”
I am quite sure that this crisis was only the most dramatic of the problems in their marriage. Dad was so emotionally distant, with a coldness Mother was not equipped to breach. Grandma Seymour told several family friends how her daughter would beg him, “Talk to me, Hank, tell me what I’ve done wrong. Say something, anything.’ But he would never say a word.” I don’t believe he meant to be cruel. Perhaps it was the chronic depression that ran in the Fonda family.
Then there were his rages. They were not the Mediterranean, get-it-all-out-and-over-with variety. They were cold, shut-you-down, hard-to-come-back-from Protestant rages. Except for Peter, who didn’t seem to pay attention, we all took great care to avoid his trip wire.
His movie work frequently took him away from home, and even when he was there, he was often studying scripts and preparing his roles. He would sit for hours in our presence and never speak. It was a deafening silence. Mother must have been so lonely, and I think, like me, she blamed herself for his moods. She was outgoing and emotional, and this was surely what had originally drawn Dad to her. But he also saw emotional needs as a weakness. I think he felt that a strong, mature adult was someone who did not need others, except perhaps to satisfy needs like sex or work (although even in his career he seemed to disavow relational needs), or to keep you from feeling lonely. But the needs were what mattered most: The people themselves were more or less fungible.
One of the lessons I internalized from my parents, when I was no taller than the fashionable hems of Mother’s Valentina dresses, was that a woman has to answer her husband’s emotional and physical needs. She has to twist herself into a pretzel: not let him see who she really is. She should let her more fulsome self express itself outside the relationship—in the house, in her work, with girlfriends, affairs, whatever. Like so many wives, Mother did this, I think, not because Dad specifically asked her to but because that’s what disembodied women do in order to be “good” wives. One thing this does not do is promote intimacy.
Then came the fateful day, December 7, 1941, the day, as Roosevelt said, “that will live in infamy.” The radio broadcast news of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Eight months later, Dad joined the navy. He didn’t have to go, since at age thirty-seven he was over draft age and had three dependents. But he told Mother, “This is my country and I want to be where it’s happening. I don’t want to be in a fake war in a studio. . . . I want to be with real sailors, not extras.” He was genuinely patriotic and hated Fascism, but I think it was also about him wanting to get away . . . anchors aweigh! Mother must have known this, and it must have created a deep sense of abandonment.
Dad graduated at the top of his naval officer candidate school class, selected air combat intelligence duty, and came home for one last week before shipping out to the Pacific. He was wearing an impressive officer’s uniform with brass buttons, insignias, and cap. I remember the evening he came to say good-bye. I couldn’t remember him ever sitting on my bed to say good night before. Then he sang me a song! When he was done, I sang him one, too. Then he hugged me and was gone.
I’m supposed to be this unemotional, immovable character, but after I kissed Jane and left her room, I stood outside her door, pulled out a handkerchief, and wiped my eyes. Isn’t that a crazy thing to react to? I listened to her singing that song and suddenly, I didn’t want to leave my family.
I was so happy to read that in his biography. I only wish he could have let himself cry in front of me so we could have shared our tears and I could have seen him vulnerable and human.
During the Tigertail years, the bad news was that I was pretty much left on my own. The good news was that I was pretty much left on my own. I became increasingly independent and found solace in the dry, pungent, natural world of Southern California.
A photo taken of Mother, Peter, and me to send to Dad during World War II.
Mother, Pan, Dad, Peter, and me (in the tree, in the hat), and our Dalmatian, Buzz, after the war. This was my favorite oak tree to climb.
(John Engstead/MPTV.net)
I was still called Lady, but now I could wear blue jeans and baggy shirts and I was always full of splinters, burrs, and ticks from roaming the mountains and climbing the oak trees. I would get way up to the top of one particular oak and look out over the Pacific Ocean; triumphant martial music would ring in my head, and I would imagine myself leading an army up the hill to conquer the enemy. Peter wasn’t fascinated with Indians the way I was and wasn’t quite as adventuresome, so I created a fantasy brother who was Nativ
e American. I used to pray: Dear God, please ask Santa Claus to bring me an Indian brother for Christmas.
We were required to take hour-long naps every afternoon when we weren’t in school. I hated it, because I was never tired. Lying there for that endless hour, I would create a family out of my fingers. The middle finger, the biggest, was the father, the index finger was the mother, Peter was the pinky, and so forth. I would dress them up in robes made of tissues, and if I’d thought to sneak a pen into bed with me, I’d give them faces. When I was through, I’d wad up the Kleenex into tiny balls, as small as I could make them. Then I would try to smooth the pieces out on the bed so that they’d be just like new, with no wrinkles. While I did this, I’d say to myself, I can make it better. I can make it all better. That’s when that personal mantra began.
My very best friend was Sue Sally Jones, the best athlete in school. I always felt I could never be as brave and strong, but maybe I could copy how she did things. I remember once asking Peter in all seriousness, “Who do you think could round up buffalo better, Sue Sally or me?”
Without hesitation he said, “You, sis.”
That’s my bro! Of course he probably thought that if he said Sue Sally, I’d push him off the roof.
The only time I can remember ever being sat down on an adult’s lap and told how to behave was by Sue Sally’s mother, Mrs. Jones. I had said the f-word to a boy in the playground. I was spending the night with Sue Sally, and Mrs. Jones took me aside, sat me on her lap, looked straight at me with her pale blue eyes, and said, “Lady, you know the other day on the playground you used a bad word when you were talking with one of the boys? Do you remember?”
“Yes, Mrs. Jones.” I felt even worse because she wasn’t yelling.
“It is not right for you, or anyone, to use dirty words. It makes you seem like you’re not a nice girl. But you are a nice girl. Do you understand what I am telling you?”
“Yes, Mrs. Jones.”
“Will you promise never to do it again, Lady?”
“Yes, Mrs. Jones.” It is a vivid memory, I think, because of its uniqueness in my life.
In third grade, I decided to take my destiny into my own hands and announced to all that from now on I wanted to be called Jane, with no “y.” My third-grade report card says, under the heading “Personality”:
Jane is well adjusted, dramatic, has self-confidence and assurance. She is well liked by the children because she is interesting and vital in her responses. Jane has the ability of telling experiences in a very interesting and graphic manner. I think she has dramatic ability and a talent for making the common place have life and interest.
I treasure this evidence that I once possessed self-confidence and self-assurance. They would soon be gone.
Sue Sally at age ten, just before we moved east. This is how we both looked at that time. Later, Sue Sally played professional polo for twenty years disguised as a man, because women weren’t allowed to play. She became the first woman to break that gender barrier. I keep this photo on my desk to remind me of her courage.
At Tigertail: me on Pancho, Peter with Pedro, then Dad, Pan, and Mother.
(Motion Picture TV archive)
As for sex, my first encounter was traumatic. We had two donkeys, Pancho and Pedro, and one afternoon I took them both out, riding Pancho and leading Pedro. I was seven years old, it was a hot day, and I had on shorts. I was on the top of a nearby hill, in an oak forest, when all of a sudden two hooves clamped themselves over my bare thighs from behind and all hell broke loose: Pedro, I later realized, had decided to hump Pancho—with me astride! There was a lot of thrashing about, with bucking and with hooves digging into my legs from behind. Eventually I fell off, onto my back, and found myself staring up at—well, it was about two or three feet long, almost touching the ground, and it was all nasty and scabby.
I knew it was about sex. I don’t know how, but I just knew. I looked over at Pancho’s underbelly. This was the first time I’d been face-up with Pancho almost on top of me. Pancho was different down there from Pedro. Then it dawned on me: Pancho was really Panchita! A girl! She’d arrived with that boy’s name and nobody told me to check it out. See what happens when you don’t teach kids the facts of life? I’m not absolutely sure I’ve ever recovered. Stunned, in pain, and shaking with fear, I picked myself up, saw that I was bleeding where Pedro’s hooves had dug into my thighs, and limped back home. I led both of them this time, making sure to glance constantly over my shoulder in case there was any more hanky-panky.
This was the time in my life when sex first reared its head, an unfortunate but apt pun. One day shortly after the donkey incident, I was playing catch with some friends in the school playground. There was this boy I had a crush on, and I noticed that he kept throwing the ball to this one girl over and over again but never to me. Then I heard him say to her, “I’m trying to sex you up.” My heart skipped a beat. I didn’t really know what that meant, but I knew that him saying it to her and not to me didn’t augur well for me.
When I got home that afternoon I found Mother in her bedroom and asked, “Mom, what does ‘sex you up’ mean?” I’m not certain it happened this way, but what I remember was that before my eyes, she seemed to go into a sort of slow-motion meltdown. Mouth open, she stammered. But I don’t think she actually said anything. Maybe she said, “Later, Lady,” or, “Go ask your sister.” I know I left her room as uneducated as I went in, and even more curious as to the meaning of those words. Up I went to Pan’s room. She didn’t seem surprised at all and proceeded to go into scatological detail about who puts what into which hole, followed by, “And then the boy goes pee pee,” and so on—followed by a description of how babies come out. What I was seeing in my mind, though, was the image of what had been hanging down underneath Pedro that day on the hill and somehow trying to put that together with my own “down there” and pee pee and . . . well, I was horrified. I had to go sit in my room for a long time and take deep breaths just to settle down from this terrifying but titillating revelation. I don’t remember much else about that year of my life, but I remember every single word Pan said that afternoon.
Within days our governess appeared with a book about where babies come from. It had drawings of the fallopian tubes, uterus, and penis. My mother, like so many mothers and fathers still today, was so out of touch with where I was emotionally and developmentally that she thought a mere mention of the word sex meant I needed to know all about the plumbing and mechanics. What I really needed was for her to sit me down, put her arm around me, and ask about where I had heard the expression sex you up. Then she would have realized that I needed to know about feelings, not mechanics; that I was jealous and hurt and thinking that I wasn’t good enough to be the one that the boy wanted to “sex up.” An understanding hug from her right then would have helped. And then she might have said, “He probably doesn’t know what it means, either. He probably heard some man say it and thought it sounded grown-up. It doesn’t mean he loves that girl and doesn’t like you. It’s just that this is a time when you begin to have new feelings kind of all stirred up inside when you’re around a boy or girl you really like. Have you had feelings like that?” Then I would have felt safe to say, “Yes, I have those feelings around that boy and that’s why it felt bad when he said that to the other girl,” and she and I would have talked about those feelings and how beautiful and how natural they are—a part of growing up.
But though others may have seen Mother as “the one you’d go to if you had a problem,” that’s not the mother I knew. If it had gone down that way, I would have been able to come to her the following year, when really scary things began to happen. But as it was, I never asked her another sensitive question again.
It seemed there’d be a new nanny every few months; none were helpful in the sex-and-feelings department. On the contrary, one of them was very religious. Every morning she would come into my room before I was out of bed and smell my fingers to see if I’d had my hands “down there.
” She made it clear that pleasuring oneself was a mortal sin.
The next nanny was young and pretty and had a boyfriend in the army. One afternoon when he was home on leave, she brought him into the bathroom when I was taking a bath. She asked me to get out of the tub, and when I did, I remember her turning me around. I felt scared. But I have no memory beyond that. I do not know if he molested me, but something bad must have happened around that time, because that was when I began to behave differently and have recurring fantasies in which I either watched or participated in sexually disturbing, even violent, acts. This was also when I began to feel terrible anxiety whenever I saw public displays of sexuality—people necking in movies or smooching on the beach. This anxiety lasted into my fifties, and I do not know why. Could it be that as a child I saw something I shouldn’t have? Did something happen with that nanny’s boyfriend? I also began getting into trouble at school. I was caught getting a girl to pull down her pants and show me her wee-wee. I was sent to the principal’s office for a “good talking-to.” This was about the time when I said the f-word, the same period that Mother was having her affair with Joe Wade. I mention these experiences because during much of my life, issues of sexuality and gender have been a source of trouble and anxiety (as they are for many women and girls). That is why today I help young girls and boys work on these same things.