The Truth According to Us (3 page)

[Telegram]

May 23, 1938

Charles: Please meet 11:32 tonight. Must talk. Situation dire. One solution possible. Love. Layla

May 25, 1938

Layla—

I'm sorry you were crying when I saw you off. It disfigures you to give way to tears. Not your face—I consider your beauty your least significant attribute—but your mind and your soul. You dread work; you fear it, but this terror is the delusion of your class. Work is noble. It dignifies; it elevates the spirit. I can imagine no better fate for you than to learn firsthand the transcendent effects of labor; you, who sucked the platitudes and superficialities of your class with your mother's milk, can only exterminate the false consciousness that permeates your existence by making common cause with the laboring men and women of this country. Throw yourself on the mercies of work, Layla. A period of shock is to be expected, but in due time, you'll find true companionship in the hearty clasp of callused hands; in labor, you'll find nourishment for your underused mind and deserving objects for your uncontrolled emotions. As you rise from the ashes of your degenerate life, you'll see your banal nuptial dreams for what they truly are: a bourgeois charade, a tinsel ritual that has no place in the Workers' Future.

On the chance that you, with your talent for willful misinterpretation, find me unclear: I mean no. And good-bye.

Charles

May 27, 1938

Mr. Benjamin Beck

WPA/Federal Writers' Project

1734 New York Ave. NW

Washington, D.C.

Dear Ben,

Let's pause for a moment and discuss this calmly, just the two of us, without Father's lash of fire cracking over our heads. Now,
Ben, I don't know what Father's got on you, but it must be something pretty awful to bring you to the point of hiring me—and for the WPA, too. Have you killed someone? Even if you have, there must be a better way to expiate your crimes than putting me on the Writers' Project, which is nearly a crime in itself. I certainly understand that if Father's twisting your arm, you have to give me some kind of job. I understand and I sympathize. But consider: Father will be perfectly satisfied if you put me in a dainty little secretarial position, and so will I. Simply by offering me a temporary place in your office, you'll meet Father's requirements, and your arm will be your own again. There's no need to go to extremes. I refer to West Virginia. Sending me to West Virginia is extreme.

Not to mention ostentatious.

Toadying.

And mean.

Yesterday afternoon, after I had got over my first shock at your letter, I betook myself to the library to read up on the Writers' Project (You see? I do know where the library is) and discovered that your arguments in favor of West Virginia (state flower: the rhododendron) are completely erroneous. Yes, I was born in Washington, D.C., but it's ridiculous to say that I'm obliged to work in the state closest to my birthplace. You made that up, you know you did.

Do you know the motto of West Virginia? It's
Montani semper liberi:
Mountaineers are always free. Need I say more? Do you and Father think that by packing me off to the Mountain State, you will turn me into a fresh-faced, wholesome girl in ankle socks, bounding over the rocky heights? You're mad. You'll drive me to drink, and in West Virginia the drink is probably moonshine, which will rot my entrails and make me blind.

Not only will I be miserable, I'll be terrible. I'll be the worst researcher in the history of the Writers' Project, and that includes the seventy-year-old Stalinist morphine addict you told me about. Can you picture me interviewing the farmers' wives and coal miners?
Asking tactful questions about baths and head lice? Counting pigs and dogs and babies? Honestly, Ben, they'll shoot me, and I won't blame them if they do.

Please reconsider. You're my uncle. You're supposed to dote on me, and I'm supposed to be the sunshine of your lonely bachelorhood. Perhaps I haven't lived up to my end recently, but give me a chance. Indulge me just this one last time: Take me off the West Virginia project and give me a job in your office, and I swear to you that I'll be the best secretary you ever saw. I'll arrive at your office by 8 (in the morning!). I'll type my fingers to the bone. I'll be lovely on the telephone. I'll contemplate serious topics. I'll be a credit to you.

Just don't send me to West Virginia.

Please.

Your loving and usually obedient niece,

Layla

May 28

Layla,

Do you realize that nearly one-quarter of the employable citizens of this country are out of work? Do you realize that I receive dozens of letters each week from diligent, well-educated men and women imploring me for a job, any job, on the project? These people are desperate, Layla. They've been unemployed for so long they've forgotten what it's like to work, they've sold everything they had for pennies, they go to bed hungry—inside if they're lucky, outside if they're not—and they wake up hungry. They've been wearing the same suit of clothes for years, sponged off each night because if they scrub it on a washboard, the cloth will shred to rags. Their children are sick because they don't get enough to eat, and they're dirty because
there's no place to wash. These are people who never thought they'd have to beg, and yet here they are, begging me for a job that won't pay them enough to keep food in their stomachs.

There's an opening on the West Virginia Writers' Project. I have, against my better judgment, given you that position. Be grateful or be damned.

Ben