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remember when I was twelve I wanted
a bright red bike with a white basket for
Christmas.” She sighed unhappily. “I got
a boy’s used brown Schwinn.”
When Louise told me she couldn’t
remember her mother’s mother wearing
anything but black or dark brown, it
became obvious there was a family
pattern of the women being extremely
modest and self-effacing. As we drilled
down, a light bulb finally went off for
Louise. “Oh, my God!” she exclaimed.
“I remember there was a picture of
Grandma taken in Paris right before
World War II. She had pink cheeks and
was wearing this beautiful pink dress
with a pink bow in her hair and she
looked so happy.”
gestured to her uninspiring outfit. “And “What happened to her?” I asked.
I know I should get a newer car. But it all
feels wrong. I’m freaking out and I don’t Louise blushed and ducked her head. “I
know why. It’s just so stupid!” forgot because it was never talked about.
But she was raped by a German soldier. My
It’s not like she came from a poor mom was born nine months later and after
background. An only child from a the war the family moved here to America.”
solid middle class family, she’d gone to
good schools and had never wanted for And there it was. All of her life Louise had
anything … except, as it turned out, lived in the shadow of that rape. Driven by
anything fashionable or colorful. Her concern for her safety, her grandmother
mother, a nurse whom she desperately had taught her daughter to never call
admired, never wore makeup. She attention to herself by wearing colorful
had shopped for drab, unfashionable things—to never look pretty or make a
clothes for herself and Louise at bargain statement with her cars, clothes or makeup.
basements and Goodwill. Even Louise’s Louise’s mother, in unconscious loyalty
bike, which she rode to school for years, to her mother, raised Louise the same
was old and ugly when she got it. “I way. Now Louise, in unconscious loyalty
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