Immigrant

by Sally Bennett

  To be sure we would have actual plates and cutlery for daily use, I had been saving coupons from the Kellogg’s cereal packages. In those days, you could send the required coupons, add cash, and eventually acquire many place settings of silver plate, even monogrammed. I also bought bath towels and sheets from my savings. It all seemed normal and right, built on solid ground, not on the shifting sand of my childhood.

  As a bride, I wore one of my mother’s evening dresses from her prewar life with Jack. It was cream-colored, with inserts of lace. My sister, Janine, and Ronnie’s sister, Mary, were bridesmaids, and one of Ronnie’s friends was his best man. The scale of the wedding was small, as was the reception in our living room at home. In the photographs of Ronnie and me cutting the wedding cake, we look handsome and excited.

  Afterwards, we drove in our old Plymouth to a small lodge somewhere in the Pocono Mountains, a modest resort in those days before there were heart-shaped beds. We put a towel on the bed before we lay down in order not to stain the bed sheet. We need not have worried. Whether it was my teenage horseback riding or some other athletic activity, there was no blood.

  From there we moved to Davidson College, where Ronnie had rented an apartment for us—the second floor of a private home. There were not many married undergraduates in those days. I got a secretarial job in the college alumni office.

  I remember being homesick. But I also remember the newness of living as a wife. Ronnie was busy being a student, and I was working, but I also had to do things like cook and, I suppose, clean. I remember the cooking but not the cleaning. We drove to the supermarket once a week where we bought our week’s groceries for $10. We did not starve; we did not even go hungry. My small salary and some money Ronnie had saved from his summer work seemed to be sufficient. On Sunday mornings, our only day together, we lay in bed, making love and reading the paper.

  When my in-laws came for Ronnie’s graduation, I wanted to cook a picnic shoulder (we called it ham) but could not find a recipe. In the South, everyone knew how to cook a ham: it was like looking for instructions to boil an egg. But we had never cooked large pieces of meat, or much meat at all. I remember cutting the hard outer rind off the ham before scoring the fat and piercing it with canned pineapple, brown sugar, and cloves before putting it in the oven. Fortunately, all these small picnic shoulders were precooked as part of the chemical preparation. The real hams were hung and smoked prior to cooking. I had eaten these in Winchester, but had no clue how they were prepared. My first ham (shoulder) was pretty tasty, and no one got sick, so I considered it a culinary success. Ronnie’s father gave him a watch for graduation, which was a surprise to everyone, including his mother. Why didn’t he tell me, she asked?

  During the first year of our marriage, Ronnie had applied to the Graduate School of Psychology at Yale University and was accepted. We were going to New Haven. I had not been up North since I was a child in Jackson Heights.

  We hired a U-Haul trailer for our few possessions and when school was over we set off for New Haven, following Route 1 through all the small towns and strip malls to the New England city of New Haven with its Green and white-steepled churches. Our apartment was a street away from the Green and a few blocks from the Institute of Human Relations, where Ronnie had his classes and where I worked as a secretary in the Child Studies Department.

  It was in New Haven that I became a naturalized American. It was so easy in those days. I was married to an American and had spent and uninterrupted number of years in residence. The government forgave my failure to register annually at the post office: I blamed my mother, and the immigration officer nodded sympathetically.

  Meanwhile, my mother had sold our house in Winchester, along with most of the contents, and had booked a flight to England. My sister, Janine, was going to live with us in New Haven and finish her last year of high school there before going on to college.

  All this sounds rational. Why didn’t it work better? With the benefit of 50 years plus hindsight, I believe it was because none of the three of us were doing what we wanted. We could not afford to do what we wanted so we followed a plan that suited no one.

  My sister, Janine, entered an inner city school as a senior and learned very quickly that the only way to survive and get her diploma was to keep a very low profile. She had no friends; she went to class and came home. She had wanted to finish high school with her friends in Winchester, but no one had offered to take her in for her final year, so she had stoically fallen in with the plan. It is to her credit that she finished the year and graduated. She had decided on Duke University in North Carolina for college.

  During her first year there, she met a boy, and they fell in love. He must have been in his final year, because they decided to marry, and Janine dropped out of college. She wanted a home of her own, she told me many years later. Her grandmother disowned her: stopped her allowance and removed her from her will. As we learned years ago, June Mullaney was smart but cruel.

  The marriage produced three children and, eventually, divorce. Whatever regrets my sister had about leaving college and marrying, they did not include the children who she says provided her happiest moments.

  Meanwhile, our mother had flown to England with a small nest egg from the sale of the house and its contents. It must have been very hard for her to part with the pieces of furniture and other objects she had acquired during her prewar life. For her, it was one more adjustment downward. She lived for a time with my brother and his wife and their two small children. Not surprisingly, the two women did not get along. Sylvia had not lived in someone else’s house since she was young, and Kem’s household, built around the needs of a writer and his family, was not a comfortable place for her. I am sure she was jealous of my brother’s family and ill at ease without a place of her own. She moved out and became a wanderer for the last 20 years of her life, remaining in England for a time but then returning to Portugal. Her last home was Cascais, only a few miles up the coast from Estoril, where she had lived happily before the war.

  During the next two years in New Haven, Ronnie studied for his Ph.D. in psychology, as well as working for one of the young professors in the department—a typical arrangement at the time that paid his tuition and provided a small stipend for living expenses.

  I worked for a Viennese child psychologist, a follower of Freud and his psychoanalytic theory. Unlike all the other secretarial jobs I had held, this one required that I be part of a team, not just a hired hand. At first, this was flattering and intriguing. After a time, I realized that it was a kind of indoctrination. In order to satisfy Katie Wolfe, my boss, I had to reveal myself in ways I had not previously imagined. It was not that she wanted details of my private life, rather she expected a kind of intellectual openness that I had no previous experience with nor, at the time, any capacity for providing. I had no intellectual training beyond high school and whatever I taught myself by reading. After the initial feeling of admiration wore off, I felt frightened and bewildered. I tried to tough it out and behave as if I understood what was expected of me and how to contribute something. Finally, I resigned, after trying to explain to Katie why I did not want to work there. I no longer remember what reasons I gave except she listened to me and accepted my resignation. She probably understood more of what was happening to me than I did.

  At the same time, I fell in love with one of the other graduate students. How could this happen only a little more than a year after Ronnie and I were married? It is probably the kind of thing that happens regularly to high school sweethearts when they go away to college. The comfortable cocoon we lived in during high school was somewhere else in another time. Ronnie was working hard at his profession; I was in free-fall. I did not even have a home to retreat to for advice or, at least, refuge.

  For a time, I survived by finding another job in another department, a job that required organizational skills and more independence than my previous one. This provided a lifeline for a time. Meanwhile, my lover and I met when we co
uld and lived from day to day. He was married with two children. I started seeing a psychotherapist, who I believed kept me out of the hospital but provided almost no other help of any kind. It was during the period when therapists did not say anything; they simply listened. I badly need some sort of advice.

  Finally, towards the end of our second year in New Haven, I could not stand the pressure any longer and told Ronnie I thought we should separate. I told him about the affair. He had accepted an internship for the following year at a hospital in Chicago as part of his training. I believe if I had had anywhere else to go, we would have separated. He would have gone to Chicago without me.

  This did not happen. We decided to go to Chicago together and try again. At the time, I believed this had all been a kind of growing experience that would produce a more adult me, that I would be able to love my husband as I wanted to and that we would be able to continue a life together. We spent a year in Chicago, then back to New Haven where our son was born and Ronnie wrote his dissertation. From there, we moved to the University of Iowa in Iowa City for his first job. I took courses in the English department and the creative writing program. Four years later, our daughter was born.

  But you could have had anyone you wanted, my mother cried when I told her I was going to be divorced. That was certainly not true, but it was true that I did choose Ronnie and not because there was no one else around. I needed safety. He made me feel safe, and then that was not enough. He was the smartest boy I knew, and I needed smart. Perhaps we were just too young and unformed. He deserved a whole heart, which I was unable to give.

  University towns are good places for immigrants: many of us are drawn to places of learning where our family and place of origin are unimportant. It felt like home. It was here that I met the man I would marry and live with for the next 45 years, most of them in a university town or in Europe and Africa. Now we live on a small island off the coast of Massachusetts. The same ocean that laps our beach laps the shores of England and Portugal. This does not make me less of an immigrant; it reminds me of who I am.

  AFTERWORD

  After our mother left Portugal in June 1940 with me and my sister, Janine, Jack remained behind in Lisbon to continue his work with Ingersoll-Rand. What we did not know until years later, was that he also worked with the OSS, Office of Special Services, forerunner of the CIA. My sister learned years later that he successfully arranged for Jews to escape from occupied France into neutral Portugal. After the war, France awarded him the Legion of Honor for his work.

  Since the end of World War II, all the countries that remained neutral, joining neither the Allies nor the Axis powers, have been severely criticized and some prosecuted for the part they played in persecuting the Jews. All of them sold raw materials such as wolfram to Germany for use in making arms and munitions. Many of them, including Portugal, stored Nazi gold, stolen from refugees and the inmates of the concentration camps. This aspect of the conflict was not widely known until years after the war ended, including the full extent of Switzerland’s involvement.

  During World War II, Portugal was a conduit for Jews escaping occupied France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. They had to find their way across Spain, a fascist country, over the mountains into Portugal. There were heroes like the consul general in Bordeaux, Aristides de Sousa Mendes, who defied Salazar’s decree to deny Jews entrance into Portugal. In three nights he issued 30,000 visas. He was later fired from his job and died penniless.

  The Germans never invaded the Iberian Peninsula, and Lisbon and Estoril became hotbeds of spies and refugees. The shops were full of luxuries and the Palace Hotel and casino in Estoril welcomed rich and aristocratic Europeans. The Parque Hotel was a center of the German propaganda machine, busily making future business contacts. Meanwhile, charities in Lisbon were helping refugees who were being fleeced of whatever they brought with them to secure passage out.

  It was in this atmosphere of excitement, intrigue, and terror that Jack met a Spanish aristocrat and spy who had been working in France when she was discovered and was able to leave France only because her cousin was king of Spain. She then went to work for Jack and the OSS. One thing led to another, and they started living together. She must have been in the photos Jack sent to us in Savannah: a group of young people enjoying a picnic.

  Jack Pratt, handsome look-alike for Clark Gable: intelligent, brave, charming, resourceful, and definitely not a stay-at-home Dad, must have had a helluva war. Afterwards, he and his new family, including another baby girl, lived well in America and Europe until his fortunes ground to a halt and he declared bankruptcy. His mother, whom he despised, was always nearby, offering help along with unwanted advice. We knew none of this and believed he was lost somewhere in the postwar world. Not a bit of it. June knew where he was at all times but never revealed his whereabouts to us or to our lawyer.

  APPENDIX

  Transcribed from a copy of the original letter written to my father, William Deverell Bennett, from his father, James William Bennett, dated July 6, 1933:

  I will write from myself so you will know to think of them as generations older than yourself.

  For instance: My grandfather, William Bennett (your greatgrandfather) was an Indigo Dyer in the West of England and was brought over to Leeds by “Sheepshanks,” a founder of the cloth Industry in Leeds and developed largely by him.

  Grandfather settled down in Kirkstall near Sheepshank Mills and I think he and Grandma and their children must have been induced to come to Yorkshire about 1835 or near. Mother used to tell me how they related about the journey in a carrier’s cart with their young children (no railways available then). He brought up Uncle Sam and Uncle William to be Indigo Dyers and father also, but father gave it up and went into the manufacture of cloth and did well until the Germans put on such duties as to kill the manufacturers who were in connection with this.

  I was sent to Germany age 17 for 16 months to learn German in making cloths for Germany. (Pilots and other plain cloths I believe were cotton warps.)

  Well, Uncle Sam started for himself at Horbury and did well. His son George carried on; I believe the business is still in the Indigo Dyers Association.

  Uncle William was a clever Indigo Dyer and had some fine chances of being employed by leading firms but he never kept his jobs. He was a wanderer and was often restlessly shifting about. He had a son who went to America and at one time was Mayor of Chicago.

  Well, I must return to Grandfather Bennett who died when about 76 (I think). He had the honor of gaining the FIRST Diploma for Indigo Dyeing at the first Exhibition ever held. I think it was in the early (eighteen) fifties and in Hyde Park. The building was moved to Sydenham and is now the Crystal Palace near us.

  The family was located in Gloucestershire amongst the West of England Cloth Mills. These were founded by the Huguenots, as you know, in the previous (18th) century. Grandfather William Bennett married into the Deverell family, one of them was a great and good lady known in the District for good works. I suppose Grandma was a daughter, being a Miss Deverell. (They must have married between 1820 and 1825 when he would have been in a position to marry. His father had trained him for at least ten to twelve years. They had six children.) We called my second son, William Deverell (Bill), after them.

  I should like to mention that I remember my father’s cousin, Jim Paton, dead many years, who came from the same district and was about Father’s age. He was established in London as a cloth finisher: the firm was Nicole & Paton, the former still in existence. I saw their cart the other day in the City. Father used to tell us of wonderfully strong deeds done at “Mount Vernon” where they lived. One was the wheeling of a tremendous load in a wheelbarrow up a fearful hill there. I cannot recollect if it was one of the family; I think so, as he was very proud of it! They were all big men except Grandfather, only medium. Father and Uncle William were over six feet: hefty chaps.

  The rough notes I make are actually from my father and his cousin so we can claim to carry the f
amily history back to the Huguenots (who) settled in Gloucestershire.

  William Bennett proceeded to Leeds with his family [in] 1835 as a Master Indigo Dyer, being called there by William Sheepshanks.

  I remember Grandma always called him Ben-nit not Ben-nit as pronounced now. They [women?] called their husbands by their surnames.”

  Signed Jas Bennett 6/7/1933, born 1855.

  REFERENCES

  Anderson, James M., The History of Portugal. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2000.

  Livermore, H. V., A New History of Portugal. London: Cambridge University Press, 1966.

  Quarles, Garland, John Handley and the Handley Bequests to Winchester, Virginia. Winchester, VA: Quarles, 1969.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I want to thank my sister, Janine Moden, for sharing the information regarding her father, Jack Pratt and my sister, Anne Gisburn for information about and photographs of our father, William D. Bennett, and his family. I am also grateful to Kim Chang and Tom Protisto for her help in editing and his with photographs. Last but not least, thanks and my love go to Nicola Bennett, my niece, who read and commented on the manuscript.

  Copyright © Sally Bennett 2013

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