The Grasinski Girls by Mary Patrice Erdmans

Author:Mary Patrice Erdmans [Erdmans, Mary Patrice]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, United States, General
ISBN: 9780821415825
Google: 3ZGFngEACAAJ
Publisher: Ohio University Press
Published: 2004-01-15T05:08:27+00:00

Fig. 26. Mari and Raphael at the Chateau Chantal Winery, 1993

We went to Reno and got married. [laughs] So. Um. Some people say they’re risk takers. Some people are just stupid. I guess you have to make up your own mind. [laughs] One of the reasons I [married Raphael] was [here she described in detail a date-rape that she later edited out of the manuscript, writing in its place, “After being date-raped by someone I worked with”]. I think that was another reason why I said yes to Raphael, because I wanted some security, because I felt up until that point, I felt that I could be anything I wanted in this world, and after that experience [trails off]. Psychologically, for me, he [the rapist] showed me that, I don’t know, he took something away from me. And now I needed someone, someone to help me or protect me, whereas before I never thought that way. [Quoting a source she doesn’t remember, she writes on the draft, “My thinking that I was strong was just an illusion. Violence had not stopped because of the feminist movement.”]

So, anyway, he flew down, and we got married and we flew back to Brooklyn, and it was wintertime, and we got in this cab with this woman with bleach-blonde hair and she yells [in a rough, masculine voice], “Eh, what you want me to do with these suitcases?” And I remember it was snowing and it was cold. [laughs] I was, like, “Oh, my god, I think I made a mistake.” I mean, Brooklyn is not San Francisco.

When I met Raphael, I remember writing on a picture he gave me, “You’re like a never-ending holiday.” But he could be very confrontational at times, which I didn’t see when we first met. [She edits out some scenes she described in the oral history and writes, “His behavior was non-negotiable at times so I moved out with my daughter and grandson only to find the apartment we rented was in a pocket of poverty. Eventually he moved out and we came back to live in the same house.” They then got a divorce.]

In the meantime, here again I’m starting to get emotionally overwhelmed, but it also may be I was not very into the career thing at that time in my life. I liked working with people. I was very good at observing people, instinctively knowing what they wanted and needed in stressful and painful situations and helping them feel more at ease. I had been in New York only three months, and I just happened to walk into the employment office of a large New York hospital and was hired. My starting salary and benefits were much higher than in retail, plus things always happening at a clip. I stayed for twelve years.

At the hospital, a strong union was in place. I was a working-class woman. [laughs] You found me. I even belonged to a union. Nonprofessional working woman. [laughs] But I learned a lot, I really did.

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