Mennonite in a Little Black Dress (Memoir) (2010) by Rhoda Janzen Page B
Authors: Rhoda Janzen
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the most. Here are five that rankled:
1. There was no intellectual insight behind my good memory.
2. There was no creative spark beyond my scholarly vocabulary.
3. There was no original taste beneath my aesthetic copycatting.
4. I was fat; I didn't know how to dress myself.
5. My parents had created a toxic environment of religious judgment, which I had been stupid enough to believe was love.
Over the first five years I gradually convinced myself that remarks like these were a reflection of the bipolarity. Nasty insults would shoot up like geysers, but underneath, I told myself, Nick loved me. He was with me, wasn't he? That meant he loved me, didn't it?
As Nick's depression escalated that winter, my gently irrelevant solution to this problem was to stay out of his way. I began volunteering to work twelve-hour shifts at the law firm, which offered the twin rewards of overtime and cab fare if I worked past 10:00 p.m. I loved this job and its big stiff silence. It was the only job I've ever had in which nothing whatsoever was expected of me. Doing nothing, attracting no attention, achieving a kind of gracious invisibility, were the principal conditions of employment. "The previous receptionist," said Lavinia, my interviewer, "sometimes lacquered her nails at this desk"-she thwapped the gorgeous mahogany desk at which I was to sit-"Ms. Janzen, I trust that you can resist the temptation to lacquer your nails at this desk?"
"I can."
"Ms. Janzen, yours will be the first face that clients see. Do you think you can consistently cultivate an image appropriate to this firm?"
"I do."
"We will contact you within forty-eight to seventy-two hours."
Within forty-eight to seventy-two hours, I began my sojourn at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher and Flom. I smiled a half smile, I murmured a low-pitched hello, I wore pearls, I pinned my hair back in a discreet chignon. For twelve hours I sat at my handsome desk in a skyscraper on Wacker Drive, in a reception area positively austere in its formality. Even the potted plants stood up straight, groomed and smooth. The carpet was thick as a biscuit, and I barely heard the muffled steps of attorneys and their clients, coming and going with due discretion. Twenty-one stories below, the river lay like a dropped ribbon of ice. From the window I could see only gray skies and the tops of other skyscrapers. Sometimes I thought my headset was the only thing keeping me tethered to the world, that without it I'd drift off and up into all that gray.
As a low-level employee, I probably never would have attracted my boss's notice again, but Lavinia learned that I was a grammarian in a doctoral program, and that I could reliably settle the usage disputes that sometimes flared up in the proofers' room. Later she became even more charitable toward me when she realized that I had a background in European languages and could assist international callers. One day she asked me if there was anything she could do to make my work easier. Easier! I asked for a typing tutorial on my computer. The next day it was in place, and in a few weeks I could really spank those keys. Denial tip: when you are trying very hard not to think about your life, consider the select pleasure of typing the same sentence three hundred times in a row, with gathering, clattering speed.
As Nick fell apart, I fell into what felt like a deep-freeze. When I wasn't in the coldly elegant law office, I wanted to be. I thought about it on the train; I thought about it when I was teaching; I thought about it when I paused on the front step of Nick's and my coach house. I'd always stop on that step to take a deep breath, dreading what I would find behind the door. The law office was my safe zone, my precious nullity. Slowly my wardrobe darkened. I wore navy with navy. The chignon tightened. I began to wear hairspray, to like the bite and scrape of bobby pins. Arriving at dawn and departing long past rush hour, I shadowed in and out of my
1. There was no intellectual insight behind my good memory.
2. There was no creative spark beyond my scholarly vocabulary.
3. There was no original taste beneath my aesthetic copycatting.
4. I was fat; I didn't know how to dress myself.
5. My parents had created a toxic environment of religious judgment, which I had been stupid enough to believe was love.
Over the first five years I gradually convinced myself that remarks like these were a reflection of the bipolarity. Nasty insults would shoot up like geysers, but underneath, I told myself, Nick loved me. He was with me, wasn't he? That meant he loved me, didn't it?
As Nick's depression escalated that winter, my gently irrelevant solution to this problem was to stay out of his way. I began volunteering to work twelve-hour shifts at the law firm, which offered the twin rewards of overtime and cab fare if I worked past 10:00 p.m. I loved this job and its big stiff silence. It was the only job I've ever had in which nothing whatsoever was expected of me. Doing nothing, attracting no attention, achieving a kind of gracious invisibility, were the principal conditions of employment. "The previous receptionist," said Lavinia, my interviewer, "sometimes lacquered her nails at this desk"-she thwapped the gorgeous mahogany desk at which I was to sit-"Ms. Janzen, I trust that you can resist the temptation to lacquer your nails at this desk?"
"I can."
"Ms. Janzen, yours will be the first face that clients see. Do you think you can consistently cultivate an image appropriate to this firm?"
"I do."
"We will contact you within forty-eight to seventy-two hours."
Within forty-eight to seventy-two hours, I began my sojourn at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher and Flom. I smiled a half smile, I murmured a low-pitched hello, I wore pearls, I pinned my hair back in a discreet chignon. For twelve hours I sat at my handsome desk in a skyscraper on Wacker Drive, in a reception area positively austere in its formality. Even the potted plants stood up straight, groomed and smooth. The carpet was thick as a biscuit, and I barely heard the muffled steps of attorneys and their clients, coming and going with due discretion. Twenty-one stories below, the river lay like a dropped ribbon of ice. From the window I could see only gray skies and the tops of other skyscrapers. Sometimes I thought my headset was the only thing keeping me tethered to the world, that without it I'd drift off and up into all that gray.
As a low-level employee, I probably never would have attracted my boss's notice again, but Lavinia learned that I was a grammarian in a doctoral program, and that I could reliably settle the usage disputes that sometimes flared up in the proofers' room. Later she became even more charitable toward me when she realized that I had a background in European languages and could assist international callers. One day she asked me if there was anything she could do to make my work easier. Easier! I asked for a typing tutorial on my computer. The next day it was in place, and in a few weeks I could really spank those keys. Denial tip: when you are trying very hard not to think about your life, consider the select pleasure of typing the same sentence three hundred times in a row, with gathering, clattering speed.
As Nick fell apart, I fell into what felt like a deep-freeze. When I wasn't in the coldly elegant law office, I wanted to be. I thought about it on the train; I thought about it when I was teaching; I thought about it when I paused on the front step of Nick's and my coach house. I'd always stop on that step to take a deep breath, dreading what I would find behind the door. The law office was my safe zone, my precious nullity. Slowly my wardrobe darkened. I wore navy with navy. The chignon tightened. I began to wear hairspray, to like the bite and scrape of bobby pins. Arriving at dawn and departing long past rush hour, I shadowed in and out of my
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