Frances and Earl

Let us return to 17-year-old Frances Woodley, who had vague dreams of becoming a doctor. But then her client’s son took one look at her, plunged his hands down her bodice to fondle her breasts, and she didn’t know what to do. I’m sure she turned pink and got flustered, as she did all her life whenever she fancied some male was interested in her. She had no way of knowing this man was morally unbalanced and took liberties with every female he ran into. She was young and naïve; he was the first man to drool over her.

Earl Beers’ psychic sister Lena had envisioned Frances at a clothesline hanging out diapers, and sure enough by the time her mother Edith died, there were two baby sons. By this time Frances realized she had married in haste; another man smelled her discontent and started sweet-talking her. Offended by her husband’s roving eye, she commenced a sporadic affair with her brother-in-law Verne (which was confirmed decades later by Verne’s wife Ruby). Then, to her horror, she became pregnant with a daughter her husband named Anna May.

Earl and Frances' family lived in various homes in Pasadena. Source: http://www.buncee.com/

In later years, Frances admitted she hadn’t wanted this female child of uncertain paternity, so she deliberately tried to starve the baby. Finally a doctor, upon examining the emaciated, rickets-ridden little waif, threatened to file a complaint with the police. It wasn’t the last time my grandmother was threatened with the law.

Three years later she had another daughter, Virginia Pearl. She liked this pretty girl better, but resentment and bitterness made her an abusive mother. She beat her first four children hard and often; children do try one’s patience and Frances had no patience at all.  Her life’s possibilities had somehow been stolen from her, and it was everyone’s fault but her own.

Earl was worse. The Depression made it hard for a gardener with little education to support his family, so he depended on charity baskets for help.  When his sons Bill and Roy defied him, he reacted savagely. Occasionally the boys had week-long vacations from school while the welts and bruises around their necks faded away. By the time Anna and Virginia were toddlers, their father often plopped them down on his lap and taught them to pleasure him sexually. His demands on them grew as their bodies developed, and he was impervious to their pleas and tears.

Frances didn’t even attempt to protect her children. She would merely pout until he let his sobbing daughters escape, and then turn his amorous attentions on her.

Actually, my grandmother didn’t do much of anything. She was determined not to be a drudge like her own mother, so she became something much worse. Her house was always filthy, and her children were too mortified to invite in their friends. In truth they were ashamed of themselves: their smelly bodies, greasy hair, dirty clothes and reeking underwear. Frances also disliked cooking, and her husband seldom found a hot meal awaiting him when he got home from work. She saw no reason to put herself out for his sake.

They snarled and yipped at each other like a pair of rabid curs. My grandparents poisoned their own lives, and the lives of everyone around them, because they were trapped together. In the 21^st century when people realize they made a mistake, they are able to get divorced almost as quickly as they got married. Only the wealthy had that option in the first part of the 20^th.

Frances finally called the police when her daughters were teenagers. Earl was carted off, but she was horrified when a prosecutor threatened to order her arrest as an accessory.  So, with the help of her brother-in-law Verne, she took her daughters and went into hiding. Because no one appeared in court to testify against Earl, charges against him were dropped.

It amazes me that four of their five offspring survived their childhoods.