Today’s installment is written by
Mary Ann.
continued from Friday...
The experience of our first morning on campus was like a warning shot. There was no way to know for sure if we’d been discovered, if they were aware of our presence, if they were looking for us. But, whether by chance or design, we now knew we were not alone in Austin.
I wanted to keep my head about me, not to over react. It had been such a struggle to get to Austin, I had arrived there with the notion that it would be our promised land. It was not a reasonable expectation, and I had been jerked back into reality by the events of that morning.
The few weeks that followed were busy, there was so much to be done. I couldn’t allow my fears to take my focus off the job at hand. Certainly, there had been a few tense moments, but also a few false alarms, and more than a few times had I let my imagination get the better of me. It was easy to do.
Prentice warned me that being too worried, too cautious, could be just as dangerous as being too lax. Nervous behavior draws attention, and attention leads to scrutiny. The key was to keep on an even keel.
On my second day in Austin we made what was to me an unexpected trip to the Travis County Courthouse. As we walked the ten blocks from campus, struggling at times against a strong, January northern wind, Prentice explained to me an initiative he had undertaken before I’d arrived in Austin. Something he’d taken upon himself. The money I’d sent ahead to pay a semester’s room rent, well… he had applied it to a different purpose. All of it.
After paying one month’s rent on the rooms we were occupying, he had combined the remaining money with what he’d put together during his months alone in Austin. The aggregate he’d used to prepay the rent on a small one bedroom apartment several blocks east of campus. Conveniently, the apartment lease was to begin on February 10th, the very day our room rents expired. We would be sharing that one bedroom he said , and we were on the way to obtain a marriage license. I did my best to act surprised.
I had read a curious story in the newspaper that morning about a state commission in California that recommended legislation that would require young couples to prove financial solvency as a condition of getting a marriage license. Fortunately, no such law had been passed in Texas.
• • •
It had taken a while, but in the week before our wedding I had found a part-time job that would fit my class schedule. All of my classes were in the morning. Prentice was taking far more hours than a full course load in an effort to graduate by the end of the year.
The pay was short, the work not very hard. I was typing letters, doing light bookkeeping, and shuffling papers from noon until 6:00 p.m. weekdays, with a few hours thrown in on Saturday. All for minimum wage, and for more hours than conveniently accommodated our plans. Still, it was a job, and it would have to do until one of us could make some better arrangement.
The job was located on a city bus route, only fifteen minutes from campus. This was important, since we had no car. Prentice’s car had broken down months ago on a highway west of Odessa, and I had sold mine for a little cash in a hurried sale the day before I left Atlanta.
Prentice helped me scan the little cluster of commuters waiting at the bus stop before I advanced toward the bus and boarded every day. Unless I was followed from campus, no one would know where I worked. Following me would have been difficult.
I never talked to anyone on the bus, I didn’t talk about my life with anyone in class, and there was no reason to think the newspapers would take any interest in an unknown college student taking a minimum wage, part-time job.
I worried about the large, plate glass window that spans the front of the office and the sliding glass door on the right wall. All that glass would allow anyone on the street a full view of the people inside. It also keeps the office cold.
The building sits in the middle of a long block of intermixed retail stores and office buildings, set back from the street just far enough for two cars to park in front. When cars occupy those spaces the bus stop can’t be seen from inside. A cheap motel next door, also owned by the company, blocks the view out the sliding glass door.
It was my job to lock up the office every evening, then I would walk to the bus stop down the street. There I felt exposed and vulnerable.
I told my boss of my wedding plans before I’d been hired. He seemed genuinely pleased to hear them, and told me that he preferred married employees. He offered his opinion that married employees are more reliable, need the money more, and are less likely to come to work with the after effects of a night of partying. I got the job.
He generously told me to lock up the office an hour early on my wedding day, and gave me the following two days, Friday and Saturday, off. On the afternoon of Thursday, February 10th he presented me with a gift wrapped box of plastic storage bowls. On the whole, he was a nice man.
* * *
Nothing had ever been simple in our lives, nothing had ever been easy for the two of us. Nothing common, average, usual, ordinary or normal had so much as brushed against us since we first met. For three years we had struggled for many things, but most importantly we had fought against all odds to make this day a reality. At 7:00 p.m. we would be in the preacher’s office at the University Church of Christ, and by 7:10 p.m. the State of Texas would say we were husband and wife.
At least, that’s what I thought.
To be continued…
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
You know, as I wait daily for these little snippets of your journey together it occurred to me that it reminds me a lot of a book that I have by Elizabeth Forsythe called “Joanna’s Husband and David’s Wife” that came out in the mid=-80′s. It’s the story of a couple’s history together written in a diary form to give to their two small daughters after they came of age. Each basically told their story as they remember the events of their marriage. VERY cool book and I have re-read it more than once.
If anybody thinks she’s making it up, there really was a proposal a long time ago to require financial statements from couples who wanted to get married. If they couldn’t show sufficient income, and I forget how much that was, they were to be denied a marriage license. That was just one of the kooky ideas that California considered to reduce the welfare rolls back in the Seventies. Somebody suggested that we look at that again just last year as a means of reducing California’s huge deficit. Incredible, but true.