The Velvet Bridge
by
Anita Stubbs
This true-to-life rags to riches tale, my first novel, is set during WWII and could have actually happened if not for one thing: Mattie Featherstone never existed, other than between the covers of this 381-page book. But the lifestyles, the culture of the time, and some of the places ring so true, you'll wonder. It's classic 1940's, Dallas, Texas, in and around Oak Cliff.
Too young to be
widowed and too pretty to be alone, Mattie Featherstone is both. Suddenly
impoverished, this confused, tormented woman abandons her children and seeks
refuge in an encampment for vagrants situated near the Trinity River on the
west side of Dallas during World War II.
When a twist-of-fate encounter eases Mattie out of destitution into the
genteel world of her paper doll dreams, she manages to conceal the truth
about her past from her benefactors. She even justifies - in her own mind -
the abandonment of her daughters.
However, everything changes when yet another unforeseen event turns her life
into sensational headline news, revealing more than even she could imagine.
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Women And Children in Need
When my husband was two years old, according to court documents, his mother, a widow, left him and his sister in the care of "vicious and immoral people, without proper food or sanitation." Due to her neglect, the county removed her youngest two children—my husband and his sister—from the residence and she lost all parental rights. The older daughter, thirteen years old and pregnant, was sent to a state school for girls, where her baby was born and placed for adoption. An older son, age sixteen, joined the army. When my husband was two and a half and his sister was five, they were separated, each adopted by different families. They never saw their mother again.
The tragedy of his situation, the desire to know why the circumstances occurred in the first place, and a personal concern for the role poverty and illiteracy play in the destruction of families prompted me to write my first novel, The Velvet Bridge. The book is fiction, a creation of my imagination, inspired by the facts found in the court papers preceding my husband’s adoption. Using all the extravagance and opportunity that fiction writing allows, my tale offers the happy ending I wish had been possible for my husband’s birth mother.
I created Mattie Featherstone, and placed her in the same environment, during the same period of history. The character-driven book reveals the stark consequences of poverty and illiteracy in the lives of a young widow living in Dallas, during WWII, and her children. Mattie, poor and uneducated, was too unbalanced psychologically and emotionally to hold her family together. However, Mattie and her daughters overcome the humiliation and indignity they suffered, and are eventually re-united because of the compassionate associations and gentle friendships extended them. This kind of intervention by caring, charitable people in real life can be just as effective and powerful as it was in my happy ending story.
I find myself exploring, in most of my writing, circumstances where people are in conflict with their own environment and their need to escape—no matter what. I am drawn to the conditions of poverty and ignorance, and the injustice and the absence of dignity found there most often for women and their children. Most people do not choose to live in poverty, or in ignorance. Too often, they simply lack the physical, emotional, or mental strength required to rise above the daily grind of it, in an honorable and noble way. The very nature of poverty and ignorance keeps people, most often women and children, trapped by it, enslaved in a curious way to its degradation.
But sometimes, not often, I read or hear about a mother running away, abandoning her children. The powerful influences that would trigger such an unnatural act intrigue me. In the case of Mattie, in The Velvet Bridge, she had been a loving mother. She and her husband, poor but hardworking, were managing, little by little to move out of the Great Depression, and to build a better life. But, when suddenly widowed, everything changed.
The neglect did not happen all at once. It began as a gradual downward spiral she seemed powerless to control. She did not actually make a premeditated decision to leave her girls, permanently, for Mattie did not think long term at that point in her life. She lived in the moment, much the way a teenager does, when at some point she simply stopped caring about anything other than self-gratification. Her neglect was more an act of carelessness fed by her own frustrations and fears, tempered with childhood trauma that had always pressed her ‘escape’ button, rather than a case of calculated abandonment.
Mattie shirked her responsibility by going to the bars, where she picked up men. Later she would describe herself as having gone "haywire". When her older daughter, Judith, expressed fear of boys from school who were stalking her, not even her pathetic pleading could persuade Matte to stay home with them. She would leave them alone and frightened in their ramshackle shanty house on the far side of West Dallas without enough food. Toward the end, she stayed gone for days. During one of Mattie’s absences, the authorities came to the house and took custody of her daughters. Mattie was later arrested and charged with child abandonment.
Mattie’s case is an example of the consequences of living in isolation, without any kind of family backup system or community support. She had no family, for she had been an only child, her parents both dead. No friends, and no contacts, other than the men she met in the bars. Her husband, much older than she, had been more of a father figure. Mattie married him as a teenager, needing even then to escape her abusive home life. He became her caretaker, her protector, her provider. When he was killed, she lost her anchor and, like a ship adrift in an unfriendly, foreign sea, became more isolated and lost.
Had there been a helping hand, some loving intervention offering a dignified respite, a safe haven for her and her children, a place where she could receive physical assistance and sociological and emotional guidance, the consequent maladies, including the near fatal physical abuse Judith later suffered, could have been avoided. In the book, there was no early intervention for Mattie, just as there was none at any time in the real life situation that prompted me to write it.
My fictitious family splintered, each fending for herself in the war-absorbed society of the early 40’s where self-preservation, class and gender distinctions, and foreign affairs dominated. It is from the reality of that environment, that the telling of my story begins, with the characters in The Velvet Bridge following parallel paths as each searches for happiness and a better life.
Fate intervened—in the novel—offering new pathways and opportunities. Through the compassionate generosity and loving natures of strangers, poverty and illiteracy were overcome, empowering Mattie and her daughters with opportunity and a subsequent sense of obligation. Mattie and Judith go on to establish privately funded shelters for abused women and children in need. The Velvet Bridge is a story with a happy ending, one I wish I could create for all women and children living in poverty, abuse, and illiteracy today.
Women—poor, uneducated, and without assistance—like my husband’s mother, living out their lives during the first half of the 20th Century, rarely raised themselves above such a low position, affecting the quality of life for their children and grandchildren. In that real life situation, there was no positive intervention for her. She lost her children, and that was it. She died of regret and a broken heart, her family destroyed, her children separated, their names changed.
Reports show, even now in the 21st Century, as many as one out of five adults is illiterate, unable to read most of the writing on their own paychecks. When that adult is a woman, alone, or in an abusive situation, with children, the urgency intensifies. Add drugs, and alcohol into the mix, and you have, in too many cases, near hopeless catastrophe. Children are growing up illiterate and abused more today than ever, patterns of family violence repeated, generation after generation, affecting us all as a community, as a nation.
Government can only do so much, but the human touch—the helping hands and caring hearts of gentle people in every community—can change lives, strengthening families for generations to come. Friendship, offered in a thoughtful, non-judgmental way, can give a woman, like Mattie in The Velvet Bridge, the guidance and support she needs.
Early childhood abuse contributed to Mattie’s inability to cope with her husband’s death, or the subsequent rape of her daughter, and sent her into mental and emotional upheaval. Mattie’s salvation came from strangers, before it was too late, through a random act of kindness.
Judith’s case (Mattie’s daughter in the book) presents the classic battered wife abuse pattern, with all the visible injuries. The same is true for Karen, the young mother introduced in the epilogue of the book. Both these young mothers finally reach out for help. Judith contacted a distant cousin, while Karen went to the authorities who worked in conjunction with a private shelter. Only tender and genuine concern from gentle people can provide the dignity so necessary when anyone is feeling victimized, and too often, demoralized.
During the process of writing The Velvet Bridge, I became aware of women shelters’ need for volunteers in so many areas. You can contact a center in your area for acceptance into their program as a volunteer worker. Of course, common sense must always be applied, as you work closely with professionals in the field..
Each case is unique, with its own set of circumstances to be considered, and respected. In my husband’s case, his mother’s need for help should have been obvious to anyone who cared to notice, in the fact than her children were left home alone for extended periods. In her case, apparently nobody cared. But it was a time and place where people minded their own business, taking care of their own, too apathetic due to personal poverty and hardship to take notice of anyone else’s. It was a time when school attendance was not closely supervised, and a student’s difficult home life of little concern to the system. Just one instance of neighborly concern might have changed the course of events for her.
In closing, I want to encourage you to volunteer at your local shelter, or at any agency where you can play an important, positive role in a woman’s life. There can be no greater service than to provide hope and possibility for a better life for women and children in crisis due to domestic violence.
Statistics are alarming, and the need for volunteering your time, if not your money, is great. No child should have to live in an abusive environment, just because he or she may have been born into it, or helplessly introduced into it. When the mother lacks the ability to remove the children, or to properly care for her children, for whatever reason, outside help is required. Often, because of governmental bureaucracy, a dignified approach is lacking. A caring friendship with a mother in crisis can make such a difference in resolving the situation in a positive way.
Children in need are everyone’s responsibility, and the safety, well-being, and self-esteem of their mothers is the first step in breaking the pattern of poverty, abuse, and illiteracy. If your town has no shelter for women, become active in advocating the need for one.