Pinioning

Pinioning

Abby Reiter

September 13, 1929 

Dear Timothy,

From my 2^nd story window, I am watching the autumn gusts kick up litter and throw it about in sporadic spirals. I can’t help feeling that my heart and brain are spinning around in much the same way.

I have been here just a week now.

My grief for you, for us, for what we could have been, has coated me in a thick sticky syrup of despair. I do the things I need to do – finding the landlord to fix the leaking faucet, buying a new pair of oxfords for my position that starts Monday – but it’s all done as if I am covered in a gluey tar that traps every step I take and every thought I have within the pain of no longer belonging to the world we shared together.

I don’t know how I can live without you, but I fear if I don’t try to, I will die anyway.

On Monday, I will start out shelving books. Mrs. Watters says I can move up to cataloguer by the end of March if I live up to my efforts.

Love Always,

Mindy

Your Goose

p.s. The address for this place, for emergency:

3224 ½ N. Lawndale Ave.

Chicago, IL 60647

September 17, 1929

Dear Mindy,

I hate hearing of your despair. I never want you to feel in those ways. You know I feel just as badly, if not more so because you left me so abruptly. After four years together, suddenly my Goose is no longer my Goose. I can’t stand the idea of you with another man. Just the idea of you without me, without you even being with another, makes my blood boil.

But we live in different universes now, I’m certain. And I don’t mean just Dubuque and Chicago. It’s now down to the question of whether or not either of us really wants to continue in the other’s orbit.

Are these Virginia Woolf-esque ideas that you’ve been crooning on about for the last few months the only reason for your departure from our beautiful life together? These “women don’t need men” and “woman is equal to man in every moral, spiritual, and intellectual capacity” ideas? If so, then let me ask you a question. Do you not think the devil may be coercing you? Do you not feel this sadness and confusion you feel may be the result of faulty reasoning? Of the poor logic that is has been attributed to the female throughout history? That God is willing you towards me, towards a life of love with me? Towards bearing our children? And that anything pulling you in any opposing direction is the result of something sinister? Do you not feel that in your bones? Because I do. You belong with me.

All My Love,

T

September 19, 1929

Dear Tim,

I know. I have apologized profusely for my abruptness in leaving, and I can’t express it enough. I am truly sorry I devastated you so. Please know even though I did the leaving, it brought me a plunging desperate grief that I have never known before. The longing for you is so great it feels, in every new moment, that it overtakes me and sends me plunging again, deeper than the moment before.

I understand, from your end, that this has felt abrupt. However, for me, it has been a gradual separation of our story over time that just simply culminating in my absence. Maybe most was in my head and was never verbalized properly. But then I think back, and no, I expressed to you my concerns, willfully, many times over. I am wondering if you remember the conversations we had at dead man’s curve, on many nights, regarding my feelings of unrest? I remember them well. That was ages ago and yet you tell me you knew nothing of my feelings of restlessness. I find that odd.

If I look deep, down to my soul, I do not feel something sinister at work. But then again, maybe if evil was at work, I wouldn’t know it. Perhaps the devil disguises things. But I am not even sure if I believe in the devil anymore. And given that, I do wonder about how we would exit in one another’s orbit.

Let me ask you a question of my own. Do you really feel that a woman belongs to a man? Because I feel I was born the same as you, from a woman’s womb, a whole person, in full body and mind. But to you, it seems I am merely a fragment – a smaller piece of a whole and you are the whole to which I belong. But I don’t see how that could be. Could it be that the Greeks were all wrong? Did the goddess not ever deserve her worship? I have so many questions.

Love,

Mindy

September 24, 1929

Dear Goose,

You seem lost. I can help you. But not if you run from me and from the world. Your questions are good ones but can only can be answered by God and the laws of the universe. And I think, if you look deep enough, you’ll find the answers are there already. This situation, this system, for which we have all been a part of for eons now – the ways things are from which you so desperately run – is one of divine origin and therefore, flawless. God, Jesus, Man, Woman, Children, Animal, Plants. In that order. And while your new ideas may seem as if they put that order up for debate, it’s actually just not possible. For this is how things have been and always will be ordained. How would children be born otherwise? How would man achieve such greatness? The role of a woman is of the utmost importance. And the household is of the utmost importance. And raising family is of the utmost importance. Wouldn’t you say so? Your role on this earth is divinely ordained and one that God thinks highly of.

I can be there in a day’s time to pick you up. Get your case packed. I’ll come and get you. And we’ll be finally out of this mess and back to our lives together. I need you Goose.

Love,

T

September 26, 1929

Dear T,

I understand you need me. I’m not dead. I’m not gone. I am still here. Just because there is not a tether on my hip holding me to your side does not mean I have vanished from the earth. I pray for you every night that your pain will be less and that you are okay.

Sometimes if feels like it’s as if you’ve read an entirely different letter than the one I’ve sent to you.

It sometimes seems like you don’t speak to what I’ve asked or said. But I suppose you’re just passionate about things and that takes up most of your letter’s space.

For instance, I thought I wrote you about my job that started Monday? You didn’t ask about it at all.

I am not questioning God. And I’m not questioning the role of women. I think children and the home are incredibly important. We agree there. But what I have been thinking about lately is the question of whether it’s the only role women can play. Are there some women just not cut out to be in the home? Not cut out to be mothers? What about those women? Why are men afforded the ability to choose where they spend one’s hours of the day? When women don’t seem to have much choice at all?

I am not ready to be picked up just yet. I have some more things I need to think on first. Can we keep talking?

Love,

M

September 26, 1929

Dear Goose,

I’m coming for you on Saturday. See you then.

Love,

Me

September 27, 1929

Dear T,

Let me write you in a week? After I’ve had time to think some more on my own? All these letters back and forth so quickly, my thoughts need space to spin on their own and sort things out.

Love,

Me

October 4, 1929

Dear T,

It’s been a week since I wrote you. I was surprised I didn’t hear from you after my last letter.

Are you okay? I worry about you. I want to ease your pain.

Love,

Your Goose

October 6, 1929

M,

You are surprised you haven’t heard from me? When you so eloquently blew me to the wind in your last letter? I hope your happy with how things have turned out. I can’t take this ridiculous feminine confusion any longer – the chaos that is the emotional female brain is too much for me sometimes. Please let me do what I do best and make sense of things for you. It doesn’t have to be this hard.

Tim

October 8, 1929

Tim,

I am so confused by your letter. I reread our last few notes to one another and I can’t figure out where I blew you to the wind. When you told me you were coming on Saturday, that was just too soon for me. I needed more time. That wasn’t a rejection of you. I hope you didn’t think it such.

I wish you would ask me things instead of telling me them. If you did that, I am sure that I can make sense of them myself. I just need time to do it. You say I cannot make sense of things myself but I think I can. My brain works much the same as yours I feel. It may favor emotion over the logic of the male brain, but I like emotions – they gives me all the good things in life. I wouldn’t want to give that up I don’t think.

I love you deeply. But talking only through the written word has made me see some things that I haven’t seen before. It seems without the physical affection between us fogging up the lens, I can more clearly see the true energy in our union and, at this moment, it doesn’t ring of love for me. At least from your side. More of possession and control. And that scares me. Because it used to be love. It used to be good. I remember the good. I always will. But now I must stay here for a while. Please understand. Please keep writing, don’t forget me like you can sometimes, I love you.

M

October 12, 1929

Dear Mindy,

You are right, it was good. And it still can be good. We are perfect together. We are all that can ever be. I need space from you and this encumbering situation. Please don’t write to me again unless it’s to let me know to come and get you. Please understand.

Tim

October 28, 1929

Dear Tim,

It has been three weeks since you showed up at my door, expecting me to get directly into the Chevrolet without a conversation. I am sorry we fought so. I was surprised that’s all. I feel terrible for the things I said. I am so sorry I said you were controlling and cruel. I didn’t mean those things, it was just the upset of the fight. Because I know you mean well and want what’s best for me. I really understand that. I just find the way you express what is best for me to be unsettling at times. I love you so much.

Goose

November 11, 1929

T,

How are you? I miss you so. And I still love you so. I always will.

Please don’t forget me. I will figure things out. Maybe we will meet again in a different lifetime under different circumstances. And there, all will be right with everything and we can be together well. I long for that day.

Love Always,

Goose

November 21, 1929

M,

I’m doing well. God is good. I miss you too. And I will always love you too, very much. Maybe, Goose - I like to think so. Only God knows.

Love Always,

Tim