Texas State Historical Association - My Texas

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The Lump Under My Mattress

There were only three houses on our side of Wichita Street and five on the other side for at least three blocks when we went to live there. Gradually wooden frame houses not much larger than freight cars were moved onto the vacant lots. Except for us, this was an Anglo street. Shortly after we arrived, a pretty blonde lady came to ask my step-father if I'd be allowed to play with her child, Clare, a boy about three or four years younger than myself. A Catholic boy lived across the street from them but he didn't play with her son because Clare and his family were Jewish.

Clare was a nice boy, and he owned wonderful books. A couple of years later another family with two boys, Gary and Billy, moved next door to Clare. Shortly afterwards, Clare's family moved to a better part of town. When the moving van pulled up into their front yard, I reluctantly went over to return a book he'd loaned me. It was a massive book of fairy tales, riddles, and nursery rhymes. I'd copied the stories, read them, and disappeared within the book for hours. I even loved the scent and texture of the old yellowed pages.

He wasn't home, so I handed Mrs. Goldsmith the book and asked her to give it to Clare. She looked at me briefly, looked away, and after another moment handed it back and said I could keep it. It was the most wonderful and memorable gift in my childhood.

The new boys were a rough lot, and Mother wouldn't let me play with them in the street. Two new girls moved into the neighbourhood, but Mother called them "marotas," so our contact was limited.

Comics! The boys had piles of them. Sometimes they shared spare copies accumulated after making a two-for-one trade to complete a set. We sat on Mother's front steps displaying a wealth of glossy covers with Tarzan, Tom Mix, Roy Rogers, Rulah, Gene Autry, Allan "Rocky" Lane, Lash La Rue, Superman, the Marvel family, Plastic Man, and many others. Some of these heroes were already known to us from the Saturday matinees at the Rialto theatre, although we didn't call them heroes. The Anglos played good guys against bad guys, whereas Mexican-American boys playing "los valientes" only distinguished between the brave and the bravest.

Comics and movies helped identify who the bad guys were. Indians were untrustworthy and drunks. Mexicans were ugly and drunks. Both spoke English badly, if at all. Anglos couldn't speak their languages either, but that was not the point.

Good guys, like Superman, defended the American way of life. America was the best country in the world. Americans mattered. A war bride living with her in-laws in the next suburb was known only as "La Polaca." In a nearby town, another war bride was known simply as "La Docha." Other nationalities mattered less.

One of our teachers at Thomas Jefferson Elementary ordered comic-book versions of the classics for us, seducing us into an awareness of the world's great literature. We read everything that year from Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, A Tale of Two Cities, Gulliver's Travels, Les Miserables, and Kidnapped to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein . Comics and other reading material taught me to listen to the spoken rhythm of the English language--to colloquialisms, not just correct grammar. They could teach you how to play with words! To love the language!

Many years later I was discussing some language problems with a group of Australian aborigines. One of them nodded in agreement. He'd learned to read in prison. His educational tools? Comics.

When TV came along the heroes entered our homes, but it wasn't the same as going to the movies. The shared experience with school friends as we waited for the next installment of a running series united and sustained us. In one weekly episode a deep-sea diver wearing a bulky outfit that looked much like today's space suits walked on the ocean floor. A bad guy dived into the ocean and swiftly cut the oxygen hose. The last scene focussed on his hands waving wildly as air bubbles filled the screen and hid him from view. That was the scariest thing, and I never found out what happened next!

Mother didn't like for me to read comics, so I hid them under the mattress of my bed. Eventually Mother got curious about the organic lump that seemed to be growing under my mattress. She threw all my comics in the bin. But as it was my job to empty the garbage, I found the comics, rescued them, and put them back under my mattress. We repeated this process several times, until I lost interest in comics and began collecting photos of movie stars I cut out from magazines, and put these under my mattress instead. She threw them out too.

I checked out library books, but that wasn't much fun because I habitually returned them late and was fined. One of Mother's tenants gave me a box full of True Confessions, Photoplay, and Detective Story magazines, so I began reading these. True Confessions magazines, my friends agreed, didn't really tell you anything about sex, but provided information about things I couldn't have found out otherwise, especially as Mother never discussed the physical changes that occurred in pubescent bodies. I didn't have anyone else to ask, provided I could have overcome my extreme sense of shyness to ask in the first place.

One day I came across the word "pregnant." The word tenderly held so much mystery and possibility within itself. Perhaps to a person who speaks English exclusively it is a clinical term and only describes a biological fact, but to me it had the impact of a sacred mantra.

The word itself is pregnant.

Alma Iris Ramirez
Adelaide, South Australia
Published: November 14, 2005