Never Assume

In one of the dozens of boxes roughly packed with printed materials, wedged along the tables at the flea market, I found a faded clothbound book labeled Betty’s Diary. I was intrigued, what had Betty written seventy years ago? 

On the first page, dated December 26, 1949, was written in an elegant script, “Aunt Maureen wishes you the best for your senior year in high school.” 

Entry One Dated: January 20, 1922

Today is only Monday, and I am already writing in my diary. See. If anyone reads this, you can tell my aunt that I do write in the diary. I write and write and write and write, until I have written 100 words, 100 words, 100 words. This is like in school last year when the teacher caught me gossiping with Mary in the back of the room, and made me write I will not gossip in class, I will not gossip in class, I will not gossip in class, I will not gossip in class, etc. 100 times.

My thought was the less than twenty entries in this diary were probably not worth reading, and would be a disappointment to her generations who followed. 

Entry Two Dated: March 1, 1950

Dan is going to ask me to the Spring Fling, I just know it. He’s been teasing me to ditch school at lunchtime and ride around in his car instead, like maybe going all the way out to the coast. This is my last year at Fortuna High School.

In the back of the diary she has written:

If found, please return to Betty at 219 N. Mason Street, Fortuna, California.

I drive to 219 N. Mason Street, and there is only a Fast Food Burgers.

Entry Three Dated April 1, 1950

Oh, Diary, he didn’t ask me. He asked Louise instead. I can't write anything else cause I am crying to hard.

My son is pursuing his own research, he has this unattractive need to prove he is the most intelligent person in the family. “Here she is,” he pronounces suddenly this afternoon, “one of three girls listed in the 1950 Fortuna High School Year Book.” 

All three look like girls who would want to ride in Dan’s car. Why?

Because my son has also picked out who must be Dan; in that graduating class there is only one Dan. Dan Johnson is in every goddamn club, sports and activity. I can’t imagine how he could have time to drive out to the coast. 

Entry Four Dated May 15, 1950:

I just know, after last Sunday out at the coast with Dan, that he is going to ask me to the Prom. It was so beautiful there and it didn’t really bother me that it hurt so much. When I screamed, Dan slapped me hard. It was my first time, and afterwards Dan kissed me again and again, then started cussing at the blood on his back seat. 

Entry Five Dated May 20, 1950:

Dan is going to ask me, he'll have to now, cause of last Sunday and all. I am telling mom I have to go over to Redding and find something a prom dress that no one else will have. It has to be a dream dress. Do I want the dress to be sleeveless or strapless?

Entry Six Dated June 10, 1950: 

Okay, it’s done, my high school career. I’ve graduated. I didn’t go to my senior prom. Dan had to still take Louise, because of their mothers being best friends. I feel both ashamed and angry. I blew my chance, I’ll never have another. You only get one prom in your life, and I didn’t have it. 

My parents weren’t happy after the expense of the dress, the shoes, new slip and bra. I needed a special bra because I chose a strapless dress. Dan had said how much he’d like to see me in a strapless dress.

My dad said we didn’t have to take the dress and shoes and under things back because we could just keep it for my wedding. We all laughed.

Anyway, Dan called me up this morning, to say he was really sorry again, that he wanted to still take me out to the coast. I am very excited, so dear Diary, wish me luck. 

And what do people mean by a high-school career? It is not a career.

“What a jerk!” My daughter still thinks it’s wrong we’re reading Betty’s diary, and has taken on a strong dislike and distrust of Dan. My son wants us to use the pictures of the three Betty’s to find the diarist’s family. Can we really post them in the paper? No. Not the right thing to do. We don’t have to guess, we just have to follow the names. 

Betty Lou Smith

Betty Jo Anderson

Betty Marie Jenson

Entry Seven Dated July 1, 1950

Every Sunday Dan takes me out to the coast with him and all we do is fool around in the backseat of his Buick. I am a little frightened of him, because he badgers me until I agree with whatever he wants. I wish I could talk to my mother about this, but she would just freak out. So I’m talking to you, Dear Diary. Is it okay that he takes my panties every time we do it. He suggests if I don't want him to take them, than I shouldn't wear any.

Entry Eight Dated July 20, 1950

I missed my time this month, maybe because I’m so worried about what I am going to do now that I no longer have my high school career to depend upon (what my father says). My mom wants me to work in our uncle’s ice cream parlor downtown, and I guess I will because I have nothing else in my life right now. I am worried that I might be losing Dan, because he said if I didn’t get with it, well, he could find other girls who’d be more cooperative. 

Diary, it is right that he is so rough sometimes? 

This is horrible, my daughter is horrified. “We’re watching, literally, in real time this guy taking over her body, like it is his to do with what he wants, and he threatens her if she doesn’t go along.” 

This was 1950. 

Entry Nine Dated August 10, 1950

Dear Diary, I really like working for my uncle, he has always been super nice and what is fun about working in an ice cream parlor is that eating ice cream seems to make all the customers happy. Maybe I need to bring ice cream on my dates with Dan. 

Anyway there is another boy, Sam, who is a freshman at the college and super nice. I know I am not smart enough for him, but he makes me laugh.

I have missed my time of the month again. What should I do?

Entry Ten, dated September 1, 1950

Wow! When Dan heard I had a picnic with Sam, he blew his top. His girl doesn’t fool around if she knows whats good for her! That is what he said. And that his buddies had seen us together and called him up to let him know. He came tearing over to my house. He knew my parents were gone for the weekend, somehow, and he climbed into my room through the window and started slapping me. See I was still in bed. I didn’t feel well. That’s partly why I stayed home.

Do we want to really know which Betty of the three had written these lines? What granddaughter would want to read this diary? 

Entry Eleven Dated: September 15, 1950

This morning my mother came into my bedroom. I was supposed to be going out to the coast with Dan this afternoon, for our weekly fuck-fest, as he was now calling it. 

I was feeling sicker than ever. I had stopped flirting with Sam and I knew he didn’t know why, and I couldn’t tell him that Dan said he'd kill him. But I was sorry, because Sam didn’t treat me like I was stupid like Dan and my dad have always done. 

My mom was very calm.She was taking me to the doctor’s to see if we can figure out why I was still sick. She wanted me to know that she knew I was feeling lost. 

I was terrified. Because I just knew it was Dan. I was so miserable that I just went along with her. But I had to call Dan and tell him I couldn’t go because I had to do something with my mom.

He didn’t see it that way and cussed me out. Said he’d show up later and we would just go out to the woods behind the park.

Weird. Weird. The Diary had been in the boxes of books donated to the Women’s Shelter for the Flea Market. This woman, this girl, Betty, had not burned this book. Had she kept it for seventy years before sending it out into Fortuna California? I

1950. Two decades before I was born, before women’s liberation, before rights for women and courts providing justice for women who have been abused. Here was this plain girl, caught into the lie of that time period, that you would find a man, fall in love, be married and then have children, stay home to raise them, and when the husband falls away, you only then finally have to grow up, learn to be independent and live as a full adult. My mother would have been close to this girl’s age, she was born in 1935, and I knew how miserable her marriage made her.

Entry Twelve Dated September 30, 1950

Dr. Johnson made me uncomfortable, he was sticking his gloved fingers up inside me, pressing my belly, squeezing my breasts, all things his son did weekly. After he told me I could get dressed, I heard him talking with my mother in the room next to the examination room. Dr. Johnson told her I’d been abused sexually, he could tell by the bruises and still healing lacerations to my private parts. For over a period of time, perhaps months. Does she have a regular boyfriend? Do you know the guy? Because I would start with him, and until she has this baby she shouldn’t be having sex period. 

Dear Diary, you know, don’t you? I’m pregnant, over four months pregnant. I can’t write anything more. My mom is going to talk with me after I take a nap and she gets back from picking up special vitamins and also a salve I need to put down below. I’m so confused and frightened. 

My mom thinks we need to speak with Dr. Johnson and his wife, even though Dan’s parents divorced over ten years ago. 

The Diary, I had come to believe, had been put in that box, who knows how many years ago, how long it had been in the basement of the Women’s Shelter, just waiting to tell the truth or right a wrong.

Entry Thirteen Dated October 15, 1950

Dear Diary. Everything has blown up. Everything. My parents met Dan’s parents at a coffee shop to explain to them what had been going on, and I think Dr. Johnson nearly had a heart attack on the spot. My mom said that Dan’s mother didn’t seem surprised, just sat and stared at her husband, stared and stared, throughout the entire awkward meeting, until Dr. Johnson finally calmed down and was willing to admit it was possible that Dan was the father of the baby. 

My mother had assumed that Dan would marry me, but Mrs. Johnson, said that would not be the right thing to do. My parents were upset, as though they were being told I was not good enough for the doctor’s son. Instead, and she evidently started to cry when she said this, that Dr. Johnson had been mean, that he’d gotten her pregnant, that everyone made them get married and her life was hell. That just because I was pregnant, there was no reason to sentence me to a life of misery.

After this, my son was even more determined to find Betty, asked us to give him a few minutes, as he sat down at his laptop at the kitchen table. We were going to figure this out right away. 

“We can find out who Dan Johnson married, if he got married and when. This was Fortuna in 1950, population in the greater area was no more than 4,000.” 

Dan Johnson married Louise Shepherd on May 7, 1958. 

Entry Fourteen Dated November 15, 1950

Dear Diary, we were married last week at Dan’s parents Presbyterian Church in Eureka. I did not wear the white strapless prom dress my dad had said I should keep for my wedding. I can’t fit into it anyways. Dan’s parents set us up in a small apartment in Arcata, because Dan starts Humboldt State next month. I have grown big, I mean fat, and Dan won’t have anything to do with me, which is okay. His parents warned him that he if hurt me again, they would cut him off entirely.

There is nothing to do, really, but just living through the next three months. 

Entry Fifteen Dated December 15, 1950

It’s been a month, hasn’t it, since I last wrote. When I look back over you, dear Diary, I can’t believe what has happened to me in a year. Oh, a funny thing, I am volunteering in the little library near our apartment, just two afternoons a month until the baby is born, and this afternoon Louise, Dan’s real girlfriend, came into the library to speak with me. You can imagine I was shocked. Dan is never around, and I heard it’s because he is secretly living with Louise. 

I think Louise just wanted to see if it was true, that I had Dan’s baby, that I was pregnant. And she wanted to let me know that she was pregnant and as soon as I got divorced she and Dan were going to be married. I wished her all the luck in the world. That was nice, right, to say that to her. Because I think she is going to need it. 

Betty as the diary keeper and me as the invading reader had both had a journey, and we had both changed. My kids agree that reading what poor Betty went through over a year made us aware of how we can’t assume. Her first entry was so silly, her most recent one so aware, so honest. I had never given the Women’s Shelter enough notice, and this diary was a wakeup call to the grave need it met in our and others communities around the world. 

Entry Sixteen Dated December 20, 1950

I am really big now, my Dr. Susan Bills promises I am going to have this baby soon. Yes, our family has changed doctors. I can still feel creepy at the way Dr. Johnson felt all over my body just two days after Dan had raped me. 

Dr. Susan has arranged for me to be in a birthing room with just my mom.

Entry Seventeen Dated March 1951

Dear Diary, I am a mother, and a good one, I think. My mom thinks so, and also my good friend Sam. I haven’t written for months because I was too busy with my little girl Jennie to do much of anything. And to be truthful, Diary, I’m happy and I haven’t had anything to worry you about for months, now. 

The divorce has come through. Sam would like me to move in with him, but I told him not yet. Until my baby is two years old, I might as well live with my parents. Will just have to wait and see what will be my life. I might go to college.

Weird. If Mrs. Johnson hadn’t spoken up, Dan may have beat me up again after we were married, may still be driving around bragging about his harem, Louise the wealthy girl, and Betty the tramp. 

But that is over now. Not that I don’t love you, Diary, but I don’t really need you anymore. But thank you, thank you.

So I am putting you in the drawer and if something else ever comes up in life that I can’t find a human friend to share it with, well, I’ll have you ready. 

This is a diary with only seventeen entries, and I would say it was successful. We realized this week that our Betty was Elizabeth Smith Swanson. The final clue was her baby’s name, Jennie. Jennie Swanson is the owner and operator of our favorite coffee shop. Her mother had been the mayor for many years. Elizabeth. Elizabeth was a big advocate for the Women’s Shelter, until she retired from public life. She had passed away only recently. 

We had come full circle. Neither my kids nor I thought that Jennie would want to read about her real father. She is very happy with Sam Swanson as her dad. 

So, the Diary, not returned, but read and investigated, is now sitting in a box at the flea market, waiting to found again.