Free The GI Bride by Iris Jones Simantel

Bob’s parents gave us their old
washing machine, an ancient top-loader with a wringer on the side. You had to fill it
using hoses, which youattached to the taps, one for cold water and
the other for hot. At least a dozen lines were strung across the basement for the
building’s occupants to hang their washing to dry.
    Worse than doing the laundry, though, was
the ironing. At work, Bob wore what he called wash-pants and wash-shirts. In those days,
they were made of heavy 100 per cent cotton twill and were almost impossible to iron. My
mother-in-law told me I needed ‘pants stretchers’, which was what she used
for Daddy’s bus-driver uniforms she always called him ‘Daddy’ when
speaking to or about him so Bob and I duly bought some. They were metal frames in the
shape of a trouser leg that you inserted into each leg while they were wet. The frames
were expandable and once you had them inside the legs, you stretched them as far as they
would go. This stopped the trousers shrinking and supposedly made them easier to iron.
Ha, I thought, easy for them to say. But I digress.
    The new apartment was directly across the
street from Our Lady Help of Christians Catholic Church on Iowa Street, which turned out
to be a source of free entertainment as there were always weddings to watch on Saturdays
from the glassed-in sun-porch. We moved in when I was seven and a half months pregnant,
which was also the right time for me to stop working. I hated to leave my job with Happy
Harry’s, but since the season was slowing down anyway, it seemed perfect timing.
Besides, I knew the Morrises and I would remain friends, and that I could rely on Joan
if I needed advice or help, but I hated leaving my British friend Alice Hawryluk and all
those lovely cups of tea.
    Bob and I enjoyed shopping for our new home.
We’d had to do it quickly because we had no furniture, except the kitchen table
and chairs, which had been a gift. We bought a suite of living-room furniture, including
curtains, table lamps, rugs for the floor and a TV set. We also bought a bedroom set,
complete with cut-glass dressing-table lamps, and put it in the dining room, leaving the
bedroom as a nursery for the baby. Everything we bought was the latest fashion. The
couch and chair were covered with turquoise bouclé fabric, which had silver thread
running through it. The curtains were bark cloth, with huge country scenes, in pink,
turquoise and grey. The bedroom furniture and living-room tables were in blond wood. I
thought it was all very posh, and although it would take a long time to pay it off, the
whole lot had cost only about three hundred dollars. The entire apartment had recently
had a fresh coat of paint heaven compared to our previous, rather grim home. There were
plenty of windows, too, making the rooms light and cheerful, and we could open them and
enjoy refreshing cross-breezes. Summer had finally ended and the weather began to cool.
I could now see a strong possibility that I might survive in this strange country, after
all.
    Shortly after we moved into our lovely new
apartment, I received some bad news. Alice had had a freak accident about two weeks
after we’d moved out of our old place. She had fainted in the bathroom one day
when no one else was at home and had lain unconscious, her face wedged against the
radiator’s hot-water pipe where it came out of the floor. It had burned her flesh
to the bone and left her terribly disfigured. I wanted to visit herbut she wouldn’t let me. ‘I don’t want you to see me like this while
you’re pregnant,’ she said. ‘It might not be good for you or the
baby.’ I didn’t understand at the time but someone later told me that,
according to old wives’ tales, your baby could be disfigured if you looked at
someone’s deformity. I was surprised that Alice still believed such nonsense but I
appreciated her concern for our unborn child.

7: Our Baby, Motherhood and My First Visit
Home
    We walked into Bob’s