My Story

2 my first sin

My mother’s best friend was a woman named Grace. I called nearly everybody I knew Aunt or Uncle, but Aunt Grace was a different sort of make-believe relative. She became my best friend, too.

Aunt Grace worked as a film librarian in the same studio as my mother—Columbia Pictures. She was the first person who ever patted my head or touched my cheek. That happened when I was eight. I can still remember how thrilled I felt when her kind hand touched me.

Grace had almost as rough a time as my mother. She lost her job in the studio and had to scrape for a living. Although she had no money, she continued to look after my mother who was starting to have mental spells—and to look after me. At times she took me to live with her. When she ran out of money and had only a half dollar left for a week’s food, we lived on stale bread and milk. You could buy a sackful of old bread at the Holmes Bakery for twenty-five cents. Aunt Grace and I would stand in line for hours waiting to fill our sack. When I looked up at her she would grin at me and say, “Don’t worry, Norma Jean. You’re going to be a beautiful girl when you grow up. I can feel it in my bones.”

Her words made me so happy that the stale bread tasted like cream puffs.

Everything seemed to go wrong for Aunt Grace. Only bad luck and death ever visited her. But there was no bitterness in my aunt. Her heart remained tender, and she believed in God. Nearly everybody I knew talked to me about God. They always warned me not to offend Him. But when Grace talked about God, she touched my cheek and said that He loved me and watched over me. Remembering what Grace had said I lay in bed at night crying to myself. The only One who loved me and watched over me was Someone I couldn’t see or hear or touch. I used to draw pictures of God whenever I had time. In my pictures He looked a little like Aunt Grace and a little like Clark Gable.

As I grew older I knew I was different from other children because there were no kisses or promises in my life. I often felt lonely and wanted to die. I would try to cheer myself up with daydreams. I never dreamed of anyone loving me as I saw other children loved. That was too big a stretch for my imagination. I compromised by dreaming of my attracting someone’s attention (besides God), of having people look at me and say my name.

This wish for attention had something to do, I think, with my trouble in church on Sundays. No sooner was I in the pew with the organ playing and everybody singing a hymn than the impulse would come to me to take off all my clothes. I wanted desperately to stand up naked for God and everyone else to see. I had to clench my teeth and sit on my hands to keep myself from undressing. Sometimes I had to pray hard and beg God to stop me from taking my clothes off.

I even had dreams about it. In the dream I entered the church wearing a hoop skirt with nothing under it. The people would be lying on their backs in the church aisle, and I would step over them, and they would look up at me.

My impulse to appear naked and my dreams about it had no shame or sense of sin in them. Dreaming of people looking at me made me feel less lonely. I think I wanted them to see me naked because I was ashamed of the clothes I wore—the never changing faded blue dress of poverty. Naked, I was like other girls and not someone in an orphan’s uniform.

When my mother was taken to the hospital, Aunt Grace became my legal guardian. I could hear her friends arguing in her room at night when I lay in her bed pretending to be asleep. They advised her against adopting me because I was certain to become more and more of a responsibility as I grew older. This was on account of my “heritage,” they said. They talked about my mother and her father and brother and grandmother all being mental cases and said I would certainly follow in their footsteps. I lay in bed shivering as I listened. I didn’t know what a mental case was, but I knew it wasn’t anything good. And I held my breath waiting to hear whether Aunt Grace would let me become a state orphan or adopt me as her own. After a few evenings of argument Aunt Grace adopted me, heritage and all, and I fell asleep happy.

Grace, my new guardian, had no money and was out looking for a job all the time, so she arranged for me to enter the Orphan Asylum—the Los Angeles Children’s Home Society. I didn’t mind going there because even in the orphanage I knew I had a guardian outside—Aunt Grace. It wasn’t till later that I realized how much she had done for me. If not for Grace I would have been sent to a state or county institution where there are fewer privileges, such as being allowed to have a Christmas tree or seeing a movie sometimes.

I lived in the orphanage only off and on. Most of the time I was placed with a family, who were given five dollars a week for keeping me. I was placed in nine different families before I was able to quit being a legal orphan. I did this at sixteen by getting married.

The families with whom I lived had one thing in common—a need for five dollars. I was, also, an asset to have in the house. I was strong and healthy and able to do almost as much work as a grownup. And I had learned not to bother anyone by talking or crying.

I learned also that the best way to keep out of trouble was by never complaining or asking for anything. Most of the families had children of their own, and I knew they always came first. They wore the colored dresses and owned whatever toys there were, and they were the ones who were believed.

My own costume never varied. It consisted of a faded blue skirt and white waist. I had two of each, but since they were exactly alike everyone thought I wore the same outfit all the time. It was one of the things that annoyed people—my wearing the same clothes.

Every second week the Home sent a woman inspector out to see how its orphans were getting along in the world. She never asked me any questions but would pick up my foot and look at the bottoms of my shoes. If my shoe bottoms weren’t worn through, I was reported in a thriving condition.

I never minded coming “last” in these families except on Saturday nights when everybody took a bath. Water cost money, and changing the water in the tub was an unheard of extravagance. The whole family used the same tub of water. And I was always the last one in.

One family with whom I lived was so poor that I was often scolded for flushing the toilet at night.

“That uses up five gallons of water,” my new “uncle” would say, “and five gallons each time can run into money. You can do the flushing in the morning.”

No matter how careful I was, there were always troubles. Once in school, a little Mexican boy started howling that I had hit him. I hadn’t. And I was often accused of stealing things—a necklace, a comb, a ring, or a nickel. I never stole anything.

When the troubles came I had only one way to meet them—by staying silent. Aunt Grace would ask me when she came to visit how things were. I would tell her always they were fine because I didn’t like to see her eyes turn unhappy.

Some of my troubles were my own fault. I did hit someone occasionally, pull her hair, and knock her down. But worse than that were my “character faults.” A slightly overgrown child who stares and hardly ever speaks, and who expects only one thing of a home—to be thrown out—can seem like a nuisance to have around.

There was one home I hoped wouldn’t throw me out. This was a house with four children who were watched over by a great-grandmother who was over a hundred years old. She took care of the children by telling them blood-curdling stories about Indian massacres, scalpings, burnings at the stake, and other wild doings of her youth. She said she had been a close friend of Buffalo Bill and had fought at his side in hand-to-hand battles with the savage Redskins.

I listened to her stories with my heart in my mouth and did everything I could to make her like me. I laughed the loudest and shivered the most at her stories. But one day one of her own great-grandchildren came running to her with her dress torn from her neck. She said I had done it. I hadn’t. But the old Indian-fighter wouldn’t believe me, and I was sent back to the orphanage in disgrace.

Most of my troubles were of this minor sort. In a way they were not troubles at all because I was used to them. When I look back on those days I remember, in fact, that they were full of all sorts of fun and excitement. I played games in the sun and ran races. I also had daydreams, not only about my father’s photograph but about many other things.

I daydreamed chiefly about beauty. I dreamed of myself becoming so beautiful that people would turn to look at me when I passed. And I dreamed of colors—scarlet, gold, green, white. I dreamed of myself walking proudly in beautiful clothes and being admired by everyone and overhearing words of praise. I made up the praises and repeated them aloud as if someone else were saying them.

Daydreaming made my work easier. When I was waiting on the table in one of the poverty stricken, unhappy homes where I lived, I would daydream I was a waitress in an elegant hotel, dressed in a white waitress uniform, and everybody who entered the grand dining room where I was serving would stop to look at me and openly admire me.

I never daydreamed about love, even after I fell in love the first time. This was when I was around eight. I fell in love with a boy named George who was a year older. We used to hide in the grass together until he got frightened and jumped up and ran away.

What we did in the grass never frightened me. I knew it was wrong, or I wouldn’t have hidden, but I didn’t know what was wrong. At night I lay awake and tried to figure out what sex was and what love was. I wanted to ask a thousand questions, but there was no one to ask. Besides I knew that people only told lies to children—lies about everything from soup to Santa Claus.

Then one day I found out about sex without asking any questions. I was almost nine, and I lived with a family that rented a room to a man named Kimmel. He was a stern looking man, and everybody respected him and called him Mr. Kimmel.

I was passing his room when his door opened and he said quietly, “Please come in here, Norma.”

I thought he wanted me to run an errand.

“Where do you want me to go, Mr. Kimmel?” I asked.

“No place,” he said and closed the door behind me. He smiled at me and turned the key in the lock.

“Now you can’t get out,” he said, as if we were playing a game.

I stood staring at him. I was frightened, but I didn’t dare yell. I knew if I yelled I would be sent back to the orphanage in disgrace again. Mr. Kimmel knew this, too.

When he put his arms around me I kicked and fought as hard as I could, but I didn’t make any sound. He was stronger than I was and wouldn’t let me go. He kept whispering to me to be a good girl.

When he unlocked the door and let me out, I ran to tell my “aunt” what Mr. Kimmel had done.

“I want to tell you something,” I stammered, “about Mr. Kimmel. He—he—”

My aunt interrupted.

“Don’t you dare say anything against Mr. Kimmel,” she said angrily. “Mr. Kimmel’s a fine man. He’s my star boarder!”

Mr. Kimmel came out of his room and stood in the doorway, smiling.

“Shame on you!” my “aunt” glared at me, “complaining about people!”

“This is different,” I began, “this is something I have to tell. Mr. Kimmel—”

I started stammering again and couldn’t finish. Mr. Kimmel came up to me and handed me a nickel.

“Go buy yourself some ice cream,” he said.

I threw the nickel in Mr. Kimmel’s face and ran out.

I cried in bed that night and wanted to die. I thought, “If there’s nobody ever on my side that I can talk to I’ll start screaming.” But I didn’t scream.

A week later the family including Mr. Kimmel went to a religious revival meeting in a tent. My “aunt” insisted I come along.

The tent was jammed. Everybody was listening to the evangelist. He was half singing and half talking about the sinfulness of the world. Suddenly he called on all the sinners in the tent to come up to the altar of God where he stood—and repent.

I rushed up ahead of everyone else and started telling about my “sin.”

“On your knees, sister,” he said to me.

I fell on my knees and began to tell about Mr. Kimmel and how he had molested me in his room. But other “sinners” crowded around me. They also fell on their knees and started wailing about their sins and drowned me out.

I looked back and saw Mr. Kimmel standing among the nonsinners, praying loudly and devoutly for God to forgive the sins of others.