The Anthem of Marilyn's Girls.
My sisters and I had names growing up - Meg, Mary, and Marti. But we were collectively referred to as "Marilyn's Girls" by the rest of the family. It was said in a lowered voice with a certain tone. In the midst of a conversation about planning a bridge party, one of my grandmother's friends would ask with concern, "And how are Marilyn's girls?" I hear my grandmother on the phone in her soft martyred drawl, "Well you know, I have Marilyn's girls for a few weeks. She's in the hospital again, and it just breaks my heart...."
Marilyn's girls. It branded us. We grew to hate that tone, that hushed designation, that loving condescension that reeked of pity.
Mama was, politely put, nuts. But God, she was elegant. Women of her generation did not make five-foot-ten, but she did. Every inch of it was lean, and bright, and restless, and finely wound; everything around her vibrated with a cool fire that unsettled everything. She was hard to ignore.
The pity was not all bad. When she was ill, when her mind finally took her to the places where she lost us, lost what little money there was, lost the water and the lights and groceries, lost everything, the family was a necessary evil. After all, someone had to take us in, feed us, clothe us. But after the electroshock therapy, the numbing pills, the weeks of desperation, Mama would eventually claw her way back to coherence, and start asking the doctors, "Where are my girls? I want my girls."
We would rally round her, her miniature army - two blonde, one brunette. The grandmothers and aunts and concerned hovering matrons got told, in our minds, "Thanks for putting us up, but I'm fine now. Mama's back. Go away." Our fierce loyalty to her and to one another bordered on the pathological - no one could circle the wagons like Marilyn's girls. Her resistance of the whole constrained world in which she was raised (indeed, of reality itself) skewed our world view. Normalcy? Ha! We laugh at your normalcy! Our Mama holds long conversations with thin air about the failings of Jung and Freud while reading aloud from Sonnets from the Portuguese And The Hound of Heaven. Your mama makes jelly. It's hardly the same - you wouldn't understand.
Which brings me to the song. It was our anthem. It had a purpose. Our old rattletrap car would be crunching into my grandparents driveway for a visit at Christmas or whatever, and there they would be - all of the nice normal family (who did indeed love us), stepping out onto the porch and yard to greet us. People did that then, they came out to greet you when you pulled up. The uncles, the cousins in their Keds and Aunt Connie in her inevitable Bobbie Brooks would be there, just as stoutly middle-class southern Baptist as it is possible to be.
Mama would roll down the windows and light a cigarette in that way she had that looked like a movie star, and adjust her sunglasses. "Okay, girls, let's sing." she would say. And we would.
Oh, we ain't got a barrel of money,
Maybe we're ragged and funny;
But we travel along, singin' our song,
Side by side.
Don't know what's comin' tomorrow,
Maybe it's trouble and sorrow;
But we travel the road, sharin' our load,
Side by Side.
Through all kinds of weather,
What if the sky should fall;
Just as long as we're together,
It doesn't matter at all.
When they've all had their quarrels and parted,
We'll be the same as we started;
Just travelin' along, singin' our song,
Side by Side.
If I had to choose one snapshot to encapsulate my childhood, that would be it. My grandmother's screen door slamming in the hot damp Georgia dusk as they came out and we pulled in, Mama in all her long-limbed beauty flicking her Salem menthol out the window and grinning that "They just don't know what the hell to make of us" grin. The three of us hanging out the car windows, singing our theme song at the top of our lungs, defiant in our impoverished solidarity.
We were Marilyn's Girls. Pull your chin up when you say that.
Marilyn's girls. It branded us. We grew to hate that tone, that hushed designation, that loving condescension that reeked of pity.
Mama was, politely put, nuts. But God, she was elegant. Women of her generation did not make five-foot-ten, but she did. Every inch of it was lean, and bright, and restless, and finely wound; everything around her vibrated with a cool fire that unsettled everything. She was hard to ignore.
The pity was not all bad. When she was ill, when her mind finally took her to the places where she lost us, lost what little money there was, lost the water and the lights and groceries, lost everything, the family was a necessary evil. After all, someone had to take us in, feed us, clothe us. But after the electroshock therapy, the numbing pills, the weeks of desperation, Mama would eventually claw her way back to coherence, and start asking the doctors, "Where are my girls? I want my girls."
We would rally round her, her miniature army - two blonde, one brunette. The grandmothers and aunts and concerned hovering matrons got told, in our minds, "Thanks for putting us up, but I'm fine now. Mama's back. Go away." Our fierce loyalty to her and to one another bordered on the pathological - no one could circle the wagons like Marilyn's girls. Her resistance of the whole constrained world in which she was raised (indeed, of reality itself) skewed our world view. Normalcy? Ha! We laugh at your normalcy! Our Mama holds long conversations with thin air about the failings of Jung and Freud while reading aloud from Sonnets from the Portuguese And The Hound of Heaven. Your mama makes jelly. It's hardly the same - you wouldn't understand.
Which brings me to the song. It was our anthem. It had a purpose. Our old rattletrap car would be crunching into my grandparents driveway for a visit at Christmas or whatever, and there they would be - all of the nice normal family (who did indeed love us), stepping out onto the porch and yard to greet us. People did that then, they came out to greet you when you pulled up. The uncles, the cousins in their Keds and Aunt Connie in her inevitable Bobbie Brooks would be there, just as stoutly middle-class southern Baptist as it is possible to be.
Mama would roll down the windows and light a cigarette in that way she had that looked like a movie star, and adjust her sunglasses. "Okay, girls, let's sing." she would say. And we would.
Oh, we ain't got a barrel of money,
Maybe we're ragged and funny;
But we travel along, singin' our song,
Side by side.
Don't know what's comin' tomorrow,
Maybe it's trouble and sorrow;
But we travel the road, sharin' our load,
Side by Side.
Through all kinds of weather,
What if the sky should fall;
Just as long as we're together,
It doesn't matter at all.
When they've all had their quarrels and parted,
We'll be the same as we started;
Just travelin' along, singin' our song,
Side by Side.
If I had to choose one snapshot to encapsulate my childhood, that would be it. My grandmother's screen door slamming in the hot damp Georgia dusk as they came out and we pulled in, Mama in all her long-limbed beauty flicking her Salem menthol out the window and grinning that "They just don't know what the hell to make of us" grin. The three of us hanging out the car windows, singing our theme song at the top of our lungs, defiant in our impoverished solidarity.
We were Marilyn's Girls. Pull your chin up when you say that.