My Story

5 marriage knell

Jim joined the Merchant Marine in 1944, and I went to work in a parachute factory. The great war was on. Battles were being fought. Juke boxes were playing. People’s eyes were lit up.

I wore overalls in the factory. I was surprised that they insisted on this. Putting a girl in overalls is like having her work in tights, particularly if a girl knows how to wear them. As parachute inspector I was back in math class again. The men buzzed around me just as the high school boys had done.

I have noticed since that men usually leave married women alone, and are inclined to treat all wives with respect. This is no great credit to married women. Men are always ready to respect anything that bores them. The reason most wives, even pretty ones, wear such a dull look is because they’re respected so much.

Maybe it was my fault that the men in the factory tried to date me and buy me drinks. I didn’t feel like a married woman. I was completely faithful to my overseas husband, but that wasn’t because I loved him or even because I had moral ideas. My fidelity was due to my lack of interest in sex.

Jim finally came home, and we lived together again. It’s hard to remember what you said, did, or felt when you were bored.

Jim was a nice husband. He never hurt me or upset me—except on one subject. He wanted a baby.

The thought of having a baby stood my hair on end. I could see it only as myself, another Norma Jean in an orphanage. Something would happen to me. Jim would wander off. And there would be this little girl in the blue dress and white blouse living in her “aunt’s” home, washing dishes, being last in the bath water on Saturday night.

I couldn’t explain this to Jim. After he fell asleep beside me at night I would lie awake crying. I didn’t quite know who it was that cried, Mrs. Dougherty or the child she might have. It was neither. It was Norma Jean, still alive, still alone, still wishing she were dead.

I feel different about having a child now. It’s one of the things I dream of. She won’t be any Norma Jean now. And I know how I’ll bring her up—without lies. Nobody will tell her lies about anything. And I’ll answer all her questions. If I don’t know the answers I’ll go to an encyclopedia and look them up. I’ll tell her whatever she wants to know—about love, about sex, about everything!

But chiefly, no lies! No lies about there being a Santa Claus or about the world being full of noble and honorable people all eager to help each other and do good to each other. I’ll tell her there are honor and goodness in the world, the same as there are diamonds and radium.

This is the end of my story of Norma Jean. Jim and I were divorced. And I moved into a room in Hollywood to live by myself. I was nineteen, and I wanted to find out who I was.

When I just wrote “this is the end of Norma Jean,” I blushed as if I had been caught in a lie. Because this sad, bitter child who grew up too fast is hardly ever out of my heart. With success all around me, I can still feel her frightened eyes looking out of mine. She keeps saying, “I never lived, I was never loved,” and often I get confused and think it’s I who am saying it.