Self-Made Woman

Front matter

Self-Made Woman

DuBois, Denise Chanterelle. Se/f-Made Woman: A Memoir. E-book, Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2015, https://doi.org/10.3368/LITM1964. Downloaded on behalf of University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

LIVING OUT

Contents

Acknowledgments ix Prologue 3 ‘Part 1. 1958—1972 13 San Diego, 1983 53 Part 2. 1972-1983 59 Oregon, 1997 107 Part 3. 1983-1997 116 Kauai and Tribeca, 2008, and Oregon, 2002 157 Part 4. 2002-2004 174 Epilogue 202 vii

DuBois, Denise Chanterelle. Self-Made Woman: A Memoir. E-book, Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2015, https://doi.org/10.3368/LITM1964. Downloaded on behalf of University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

DuBois, Denise Chanterelle. Self-Made Woman: A Memoir. E-book, Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2015, https://doi.org/10.3368/LITM1964. Downloaded on behalf of University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Part 1. 1958-1972 15 DuBois, Denise Chanterelle. Self-Made Woman: A Memoir

E-book, Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2015, https://doi.org/10.3368/LITM1964 Downloaded on behalf of University of Michigan, Ann Arbor start of another pattern. Playtime with Cindy was over for that day and for good. Later, my parents treated me very coldly. I felt extremely guilty over what I had done and didn’t know how to fix things. Their silence and avoidance hurt. I already had no one to talk to about my yearning to be a girl. Now this scolding after asking a girl to spank me further isolated me. Loneliness was setting in.

Tied repeat kindergarten in Greendale due to its different school district rules. I loved nap time and rolling out my green and red mat on the floor to sleep on among the girls, whom I preferred playing with over boys. My parents were determined that I get a Catholic elementary school education, and so the next year I transferred to Saint Alphonsus grade school. I got excited at the idea of wearing the traditional Catholic schoolgirl uniform for first grade—white blouse, plaid skirt, and bow in hair. The girls also had a particular hat they were expected to wear to Mass, which was celebrated every day at school. Of course I didn’t get to wear any of these clothes. I had to wear boy clothes. But I wanted nothing to do with boys because I wasn’t one, and I avoided them as much as possible. Mrs. Mertens, my teacher, allowed us to sit wherever we wanted and I purposely chose a desk in the middle of a group of girls. That year I got As in my subjects, conduct, effort, and religion. No one at school had yet flagged me for wanting to be with the girls, so I was a happy and well-adjusted student. Then in second grade, everything changed, making the next seven years at Saint Alphonsus horrendous. Sister Vivian must’ve been around seventy years old, meaning she had to have been born sometime in the 1890s. She noticed that I preferred being with girls and made it her mission to separate me from them, even forbidding conversation with them. I instantly began to rebel, thereby becoming a favorite target of hers. One of Sister Vivian’s favorite punishments was to have me stand with my face against

DuBois, Denise Chanterelle. Self-Made Woman: A Memoir. E-book, Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2015, https://doi.org/10.3368/LITM1964 Downloaded on behalf of University of Michigan, Ann Arbor the blackboard in front of the class, then she would draw a circle on the board with the chalk and make me keep my nose in that circle. She frequently walked up to my desk and pounded her bony fingers into the side of my head, yelling that I had no sense in me, no sense at all. This nun actually turned me away from God, though not so much that I didn’t pray for a gorgeous white dress to wear for my upcoming First Communion. “My God, you ve finally come to me,” I prayed, and I meant it.

or an occasion like First Communion, my staunchly Catholic family celebrated in a big way. A party was held at the house and relatives came from both sides of the family —a rare event, as there was much discord between them. Except for these milestone occasions, they didn’t intermingle. Tables were set up on the back lawn and then loaded down with food. It was a beautiful late spring Wisconsin day; winter finally felt gone for good. I was the center of attention. Whenever the doorbell rang, I stood with either of my parents to meet and greet the new guest. Being shy, I didn’t like doing this, but it was necessary if I wanted to get my First Communion cards. Since every card contained hard cash, I listened carefully for that doorbell, which produced one of those funny 1960s chimes. For many guests, this was their first look at the new house that my parents had painstakingly furnished and organized. My dad and mom enjoyed ushering arrivals through the living room with its red-and-orange-striped couches, maple coffee tables, an oversize table lamp in the picture window, a bright blue vase with a long neck (into which I frequently threw bits of trash as it was a convenient receptacle), and the old cactus we had in Milwaukee, still in its red planter on black rod iron legs. I greeted each new person or group with a smile, said hello, got my card, and then ran off to my bedroom to open it. Many of the cards had $5 or $10, but some had $20 and even $50. Astounding. I had never held so much money in my life. As the afternoon wore on,

Part 1. 1958-1972 17 DuBois, Denise Chanterelle. Self-Made Woman: A Memoir.

E-book, Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2015, https://doi.org/10.3368/LITM1964 Downloaded on behalf of University of Michigan, Ann Arbor poker games started up. The men drank beer, and the women sipped grasshoppers or Tom and Jerrys, each frothy cocktails that looked innocent but were loaded with booze. The Communion cards kept piling up, and my grand total surpassed $500! I was elated. Once the party ended and everyone had left, my father told me to bring all the cards and money down from my room. He went through everything, counted all the money, and when he was satisfied, he handed me $10, keeping the rest. He took my money without saying a further word about it. He was drunk, and when he saw my crestfallen face, he got angry. As usual, my mother managed to disappear just as he started to beat me.

That beating wasn’t the first. One of the most shattering events of my childhood happened soon after my near drowning. We were still living in the old house in Milwaukee. One afternoon my mother and sister were getting ready to go shopping for school clothes. I was mad that my sister was going to get new dresses, shoes, underwear, socks, the works—which I wanted too. I raised a fuss, pleading to be allowed to come along. I wanted to try on dresses and see all the frilly fun things a girl gets to handle and experience when shopping. My father was in the master bedroom watching television, but he was also listening to my noisy protest. When he entered the room and my mother said it would be fine if I came along, I knew she sensed what I did: my father was not safe to be around. At that moment he erupted. He bolted into our midst and pushed my mother and sister out the door without me.

Now it was just the two of us. Though petrified, I tried not to show it. I went to my room to hide, hoping he would resume watching TV and fall asleep. I was not so fortunate. Soon he called for me. I remember emerging from my room but hesitating at his bedroom door. He had such an evil look as he coaxed me to his bed, a place I didn’t want to go. If he lunges toward me, I thought, Pll run to the door and out of the house. I was that afraid of him. He was clever and pretended to have what looked like a piece of

DuBois, Denise Chanterelle. Self-Made Woman: A Memoir. E-book, Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2015, https://doi.org/10.3368/LITM1964 Downloaded on behalf of University of Michigan, Ann Arbor chocolate candy in his hand. I fell for the ruse and went in. He grabbed me at once and threw me on the bed, covering me with his entire body and whispering, “I’ve got you now! You're not going anywhere.”

Did he understand why I wanted to go clothes shopping with my mother and sister? Was that what set him off? I started screaming and pounding my tiny fists against his hairy chest, but he buried my mouth under a pillow until I couldn’t scream and I was surrounded by darkness. I felt so alone, afraid and helpless. There was no one around to save me from my own father. Then — I must have fainted or passed out from lack of oxygen—there was only darkness. When I regained consciousness, he was asleep on the bed next to me. Terrified of waking him up, I very quietly slipped off the bed and sneaked out. I went back into my room and hid until my mother came home. I never said a word to her or anyone else about what happened and really can’t say if my father beat me that day or not. The details, though still haunting, aren’t sufficiently clear in my mind. The episode taught me one thing: never trust your own father again—or any other male. That day began a lifelong mistrust of men, attributable to the central man in my life, my father, the hero who had battled the blizzard. Our bond was broken.

In a separate occurrence around the time we were preparing to move to Greendale, my father took me along on a bank errand. The bank was located on South Twenty-Seventh Street, a good mile from our house. After he parked three blocks away, I asked him how come he never got lost driving the car around. He found my question funny. What happened next though was anything but humorous. He got out of the car and began walking quickly toward the bank; I couldn’t keep up. I began crying and then started screaming for him to slow down, but he only went faster until I lost him on the sidewalk. By luck I looked up and saw the bank. Inside, however, I still couldn’t find him. I went back out

Part 1. 1958-1972 19 DuBois, Denise Chanterelle. Self-Made Woman: A Memoir.

E-book, Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2015, https://doi.org/10.3368/LITM1964 Downloaded on behalf of University of Michigan, Ann Arbor onto that very busy city street in absolute panic and sat down on the sidewalk bawling. An elderly woman came over, calmed me down, and ended up walking me home, no easy feat since I had misjudged the number of blocks and had to coax her along until at last we were at my back door, through which my father appeared with a look of rage. The Good Samaritan tried to reassure him that I had caused her no trouble and was a very courteous boy. He behaved kindly toward her and insisted she wait by his car so he could give her a ride home. As soon as she was out of earshot, he told my mother, “You beat him first, then I'll beat him when I get back.”

My mother didn’t beat me that day, showing some compassion, but my dad kept his word.

I wasn’t the only recipient of his rage. He beat my sister and mother on a regular basis and was verbally abusive to all of us. His violence instilled in me a sense of worthlessness at a very early age, and despair began to build up inside. This manifested itself in strange ways. Like the “son of bitch” muttering habit. I would go to a corner of the kitchen and, making sure no one was around, I would play at snapping my fingers (I couldn’t do it correctly), saying, “Son of a bitch!” I did it very theatrically, getting the right look on my face, a look that had the effect of imbuing the words with hatred. One day my mother, stealthily observing me, followed me into the kitchen just as I was snapping my fingers and uttering the phrase. She beat me and then washed my mouth out with soap. She likewise had a temper, and it showed often.

"The place I felt happiest during my childhood and adolescence was the woods behind our house. It was there that I had my earliest encounters with animals in the wild, a source of enthrallment my whole life. My parents bought me a bow and arrow set—my birthday is four days after Christmas, so it could have been for either—when I was nine or ten years old. This was the real thing: a fiberglass bow with a wax string and steel-tipped arrows that were

DuBois, Denise Chanterelle. Self-Made Woman: A Memoir. E-book, Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2015, https://doi.org/10.3368/LITM1964. Downloaded on behalf of University of Michigan, Ann Arbor stored in a quiver, which I strapped to my back. I had never considered bow hunting before but thought it might be like fishing, which I liked, so I set out one morning like a character out of the popular TV show Daniel Boone, starring Fess Parker. I went further into the woods than ever before. As I was standing near a huge dying tree, I heard a loud screech and saw the biggest bird ever alight on a branch about ten feet above me. It was resplendent, with beautiful light brown, tan, and white feathers on its overcoat and reddish white ones on the belly. The tail feathers were a distinct red. Its huge yellowish clawed talons that gripped the branch told me this bird was a hunter, a ruling predator of the woods. Its curved beak was huge and sharp, its eyes a piercing, clear brownyellow. It started to preen itself until I moved ever so slightly and then it stopped, those radar-like eyes focused on me. We held each other’s gaze for several moments, me because I didn’t know what to do. Suddenly it stretched its wings out and lifted itself up into the blue sky, screeching as it flew away, saying goodbye. It was a red-tailed hawk, the same bird I saw that first morning in our new house. I spent many hours of my childhood and adolescence in these woods; it was a refuge where I sought safety and privacy to be myself.

Tig at home weren’t always bad. Wisconsinites had a peculiar tradition back in the day, particularly those who lived near the Illinois state line, known as “oleo running.” Oleo was a brand of corn-based margarine, and in our household oleo running was a family event. Between 1895 and 1967, colored corn-based margarine was illegal in the Dairy State for masquerading as butter. Despite this, it was also quite popular and significantly cheaper than the real thing. My father organized oleo runs every couple of months. We kids were props, packed into the car to look less suspicious to the imagined Wisconsin State Oleo Patrol that was on the lookout for types like my dad.

Part 1. 1958-1972 21 DuBois, Denise Chanterelle. Self-Made Woman: A Memoir.

E-book, Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2015, https://doi.org/10.3368/LITM1964 Downloaded on behalf of University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

The state line lay thirty miles to the south, and as we approached it, my father would say without fail, “Help me watch for cops.” After crossing into Illinois, he exited the roadway almost immediately and pulled into a dingy-looking gas station. Hopping out of the car, he’d walk over to a beat-up car where a man calmly sat waiting. The man would open the trunk, which was fully loaded with cases of oleo, usually available at two or three different price levels. My father always got the cheapest. He’d pay in cash and quickly step back to our car, where my mother sat waiting with a worried look on her face. One never knew if the oleo patrol might be watching from some distant point with binoculars, ready to radio us in.

My father put our two cases of the contraband into the trunk, covered it with several blankets, and further hid it with the spare tire. The return trip was the dangerous part, so in order to avoid the oleo patrol, and perhaps to make it a little more fun for us kids, we always stopped at the same hamburger place on the state line. We all trooped into the restaurant like nothing was amiss, each of us looking about for anything unusual or suspicious. I always ordered a cheeseburger, fries, Coke, and a chocolate malt. As we casually ate our food, my father cast frequent glances out to the parking lot. If the coast was clear we'd pay up and hit the road. Rumor had it that you were safe several minutes back into Wisconsin. We were never busted, but later in adulthood it interested me to consider how my first taste of lawbreaking happened under parental supervision.

A more wholesome rite of passage in Wisconsin was learning to ice skate. My initial attempt didn’t go well. A neighbor gave me an old pair of hockey skates, but these have no ankle support, so you already needed to be a proficient skater to handle them. Then at Christmas one year I got my first pair of figure skates. My sister also got a pair. Mine were black and hers were lily white; you can

DuBois, Denise Chanterelle. Se/f-Made Woman: A Memoir. E-book, Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2015, https://doi.org/10.3368/LITM1964 Downloaded on behalf of University of Michigan, Ann Arbor guess which pair I liked best. Still, one touch of the blades, so tapered and sharp, and I couldn’t wait to get on the ice. We had two skating areas within a short distance of the house. Whitnall Park was the preferred one because it had an island that you could skate around or cut across walking on your skates. There was a shack heated by a wood stove where you could sit on a wooden bench, put on your woolen socks, and lace up, leaving your boots in a numbered cubby hole. There was always a lot of commotion in there with people wanting to get out on the ice and others wanting to come in from of the near-zero outdoors. You could hear the clunking of skates on rubber mats, and lots of excited chatter filled the large room as skaters tried to balance upright and make a quick exit onto the ice.

I learned to watch for the Milwaukee County trucks outfitted with huge bristled ice shavers that resembled giant rolling pins. These machines repaired the cracks, dents, and small holes made by all the skate blades. A different truck came by with a cylindrical polisher that smoothed the ice until the top layer sheened like crystal. The best time for skating was after these wonder trucks did their magic. I could skate fast, do complete body turns, skate in tandem, cross over, skate backward, pretty much anything. I loved being last in the chain of skaters for crack the whip and getting pulled around by the centrifugal force created when the chain made a sharp turn. All the latest pop music blasted from a loudspeaker at Whitnall, and one snowy night I remember being mesmerized by a song called “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” sung by a new band from England called The Beatles. There was another reason I liked skating so much. Out there on the ice pond I was able to play with girls unnoticed. Everyone was wrapped up like a mummy, so it was hard to recognize who was who. On the ice, I forgot about hating being a boy because I could feel like a girl.

At home, too, I never passed up a chance to be around women. My mother belonged to something called Club. It was a group of

Part 1. 1958-1972 23 DuBois, Denise Chanterelle. Self-Made Woman: A Memoir.

E-book, Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2015, https://doi.org/10.3368/LITM1964 Downloaded on behalf of University of Michigan, Ann Arbor her girlfriends who had started getting together soon after high school for a monthly social and had kept it going through the years. They did a round-robin, so sometimes it would be held at our house. I loved it because my father would always disappear on those evenings and I could sit in the room with all the ladies and listen to them talk and feel as though I was one of them. But when I turned twelve, I was blocked, excluded. My mother told me I had to go downstairs to the basement or to my room and leave them alone. I was devastated by the new rule and being pushed away yet again from the feminine world that I so desperately wanted to be a part of.

Tre summer between second and third grade my parents signed me up for little league. I was horrible at it and felt completely out of place; it didn’t help that all I had for a glove was a catcher’s mitt. I played right field, where all the worst players were always stuck, and never once caught a fly ball or grounder. I wasn’t any better at hitting the ball. The only time I got on base was if I got walked or hit by a pitch. Mostly, I simply struck out. The constant jeers, laughing, and name calling by my own teammates and the other boys made me feel worthless.

Meanwhile, my father had begun doing the same to me at home. I now entered a period of indentured servitude to him. There’s no other way to describe the endless number of chores that filled the hours of my days. The first big project that I had to help him with was building a rec room in the basement. He had ordered a huge amount of wood, and one day he began drilling holes in the tiled cement floor and pounding in 2 x 4s with concrete nails. My job was to hold the light for him, hand him nails, get more nails when needed, hold the wood while he sawed, and get more tools. If I didn’t do each task the right way, I got yelled at and called names. “Idiot,” “moron,” “asshole,” “stupid dumb-shit.” He called me just about anything that entered his mind. He would

DuBois, Denise Chanterelle. Self-Made Woman: A Memoir. E-book, Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2015, https://doi.org/10.3368/LITM1964 Downloaded on behalf of University of Michigan, Ann Arbor also hit me on my upper arms with his fist, leaving me with large bruises. The rec room included a drop ceiling, bar, back bar, lighting, veneer and pinewood walls. It was his obsession. I dreaded going down there with him to suffer hours of being continually berated. I could do nothing right or correctly.

He did do one nice thing. When the rec room was finally completed — it took over a year—he bought me a woodcarver’s set along with some balsa wood to carve with. I was touched by this act that showed some gratitude and kindness toward me. All I ever really wanted was for him to love me, but never once did he say he did. Such a simple thing could’ve made all the difference.

My chores multiplied. Gardening, which had started off as a pleasure, turned into agony. I was put to work in the yard not only to help plant the garden but also to maintain it, as well as all the new trees and plants my father and I had already put in. My expanded list of duties included weeding, fertilizing, watering, lawn mowing, edging, tree trimming, harvesting the fruit and the garden vegetables, planting bulbs, and putting chicken wire around the trees for the winter to keep the rabbits from eating the bark. I also had to help out painting the entire house both inside and out, cleaning the outside house windows, and cleaning the rain gutters. I became invaluable too in the garage, for my father never took our two older model cars in for service unless the repair work was beyond his knowledge. Tune-ups, oil changes, switching the cars to snow tires in the fall, washing and waxing, all done by him with me assisting by holding a light on the engine or under it, fetching him tools, trying to be an able helper and forever being put down or hit by him. He was relentless. And there was still more work: cleaning the garage every spring, changing the winter storm windows to summer ones all around the house and vice versa, digging up the all plant bulbs and storing them in the basement for the winter, shoveling snow off the sidewalks and driveway, and later,

Part 1. 1958-1972 25 DuBois, Denise Chanterelle. Self-Made Woman: A Memoir.

E-book, Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2015, https://doi.org/10.3368/LITM1964 Downloaded on behalf of University of Michigan, Ann Arbor when I was older, using the snow blower (in addition to repairing electrical appliances, tuning up the lawn mowers and snow blower annually, and preparing the lawn each spring with fertilizer). My cash allowance for each week consisted of one dime for each grade level I was in, or thirty cents per week that summer when I worked on the rec room.

Jhon was no escape. Fourth grade with Mrs. Schultz was a year of punishments. She would take a page out of one of our reading books and have me copy it as many times as there was a check for disobedience after my name on the blackboard. Many times there were ten or more checks. I was out of control and acting up every day. Some days, I was placed out in the hall with my desk, which I kind of liked because I didn’t have to see Mrs. Schultz. I was also placed in the wardrobe closet, where I was forced to stand for hours, all this time missing out on valuable classroom work, interaction, and socialization with the other students. I also had to sweep the floor on my hands and knees with my bare hands during class, up and down the desk rows and around the legs and feet of my classmates. For the first time in my life I was starting to feel sexually turned on by being humiliated. I couldn’t quite know what is was then, but something was happening inside of me. Like my father, it seemed this woman was totally out to break me. Another tactic she used to humiliate me was to put me over her knee in front of the class and spank me to the jeers and laughter of my peers. She made a big deal of it and was very ritualistic about it. I had that faint first stirring of sexuality in my crotch area when I was over her knee. I liked getting spanked by her. I found it arousing, even though I was still too young to do anything about it.

That year, on November 22, the school principal, Sister Henri- Anne, came on the PA system to announce the death of President John F. Kennedy. I made a grand motion of dropping my Planters

DuBois, Denise Chanterelle. Self-Made Woman: A Memoir. E-book, Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2015, https://doi.org/10.3368/LITM1964. Downloaded on behalf of University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Peanut pen onto the floor and gasping; I had developed a flair for the dramatic and was always seeking attention. We were let out of school early, and when I got home I discovered my mother crying over the news. I had a picture of JFK on the wall in my bedroom and stood in front of it. I remember having this feeling that things were going to change in America really fast. We lost our innocence as a nation that day.

“Whe following summer my mother enrolled my sister and me in day camp. She was also one of the camp chaperones and went with us each day. I wasn’t sure I would like it, but what a surprise when I boarded the school bus for the forty-five-minute ride to camp and it was full of girls. I was in heaven until I had to sit next to the only other boy besides me. I wanted to interact with the girls, but they all ignored me because I was a boy. “No,” I wanted to tell them, “I’m not a boy, I’m a girl.” My favorite part of the bus ride was to and from the camp because we sang songs, so at least I could sing with the girls. There was one song where all the girls would turn and look at me at the words “a naughty little boy”; they giggled and laughed at me every time the phrase was sung. I felt embarrassed, but again there was that faint stirring in my crotch area that I couldn’t understand, though I knew it felt good.

On the first day of camp, six or seven school buses headed out in the early summer morning. I was so excited at the idea of playing with all the girls for the next three weeks. I was imagining all the fun things we'd be doing, but then after we arrived I was suddenly segregated from the girls and sent over to an area for boys only. I hadn’t figured on the other buses having boys, but they did. There were about eight of us total and we had an elderly male chaperone, retired obviously, who was going to teach us how to do “man” things, as he put it. I was devastated. Our little camp was up on a hill overlooking the girls’ activities, which only made things worse