Posted by:
Tevai
(
)
Date: May 16, 2019 05:40PM
My aunt (the one I so frequently talk about) was a problem child when she was growing up, so far as my maternal grandmother and her step-father (my maternal step-grandfather) were concerned.
She was always dramatically beautiful, in a Vivian Leigh kind of way. (I grew up seeing startled strange men drop their jaws and turn around on the sidewalk to get a longer look, as she and I walked by, during that period in my life.)
From a fairly earlier than average age (I don't think she was even a teenager then), she went out with boys, stayed out all night on at least some nights, and had adventures that (back then, in Tulsa) qualified her as a out-of-control "juvenile delinquent"--maybe not legally (she never got arrested for anything), but with full force socially.
She could not be controlled by anyone, and after some particularly noteworthy adventures (even for her), some of which brought extreme local social embarrassment to her mother and step-father, my incredibly prejudiced, anti-Catholic, maternal grandparents decided that the only answer was to ship her off to a Catholic girls boarding school, just over the Oklahoma state line, in Arkansas--where she was a "student" (read: inmate) for at least a couple of years.
When she was finally allowed to come back home, to Tulsa, she had many stories to tell: of how, at intervals, there would be sexual activities (think: "swing parties") in the underground rooms of the school, where nuns and priests would meet late at night and have sex together. She said that when these parties were happening, she and some of her follow "students" would creep down the top stairs and just sit there, in the dark, watching what was going on below them.
She told these stories throughout the following decades (including, as I grew older, to me). I do not know whether my maternal grandparents believed the stories....I know that my Mom DID believe them.
I always thought that, despite the fact that my aunt was undoubtedly one of the most adventurous (in many different ways) girls growing up in Oklahoma at that time, she was making up dramatic stories which were without foundation, which she figured would be easily believed by my anti-Catholic maternal relatives who were ready to believe the worst about anyone who was not a WASP whose entire family tree began in Protestant western Europe.
Now, and beginning a few years ago, I am beginning to question my reflexive belief that she was making up all those stories.
What sounded totally ridiculously absurd, and over-the-top dramatic, back then is beginning to look a bit more possible now.
Maybe.
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/17/2019 12:26AM by Tevai.