Back then, in the late seventies, I was finishing college with dreams of a year off and a job in engineering. At that time my sixteen year old cousin was a ninth grader in a Catholic school for girls, well known for moving girls on into becoming nuns. My aunt’s dream for her daughter. The school found my cousin in a sexual embrace with a new teacher. It wasn’t just kissing. The teacher was fired and my cousin expelled because of her orientation.
The embarrassment of the family, the ruin of the daughter, the realization that she would never become a nun (no one had asked her) destroyed her family. I was approached because I was just finishing college and I had always been there to defend her, to take her in marriage and hide her. New name, another city, fill her full of babies. Everyone felt that solution was perfect. For me? Well her parents offered to buy a house clear of any mortgage in a town of our choice, not where they lived.
The marriage was kept quiet, rumors were that she was being sent to Switzerland to a convent. She came with me, and my dreams of a year off died with it. She turned out to be very clingy. Needed permission for anything. She was shy and resisted any physical behavior. Because of her age, and that she was still in high school, I said OK I’ll hold off until she graduates. Then she will have to accept her wifely duties. All along she took care of the ‘cooking and cleaning’, she was not a spendthrift and took good care of money. We slept together, but she dressed and undressed in the bathroom and slept with her back to me. If I grabbed her she put up with it, but it wasn’t her favorite.
On her eighteenth birthday I told her I expected her to be my wife in all senses and I wanted her pregnant. I was turning 29 and she was an adult 18 year old. It was a submission, she got pregnant, everyone around her was happy for her. A baby was going to help everything. When I grabbed her at night, she reluctantly rolled onto her back until I was done with her.
She had two babies 18 months apart, she nursed both babies and they were fat and happy. For a skinny girl she produced milk by the gallon, and those babies lapped it up from her. Two boys, big healthy boys. I had enough money to hire a day nanny for light housekeeping and the babies, and she signed up and went to college to study journalism.
One day I came home and heard giggling and laughing. I went into the kitchen and the two women were smiling and kissing. They were caught red handed. She stood in front of her and asked that I not fire her and offered herself up for another child. I asked the obvious question, what about her? By the time things calmed down, and the situation was settled both women were pregnant and sleeping together.
In our house there was the man’s room, and the women’s quarters. No man was allowed in, and the boys only until they turned seven. What went on behind closed doors stayed behind closed doors. If I wanted to grab one, I grabbed her from the kitchen or the dining room. The rule was simple, the women delivered themselves. That rule is true today as it was when we were all younger, not as often perhaps, but I still grab one or the other. What happens or doesn’t happen behind closed doors is not for public consumption.
