Monodia - The Story of One Life

Salome was born on June 29, 1914 in a small town in Pennsylvania, where her parents had settled after migrating from Lithuania before "The Great War" started. She attended school until the 8th grade, and was known as Sally by her friends and family. She had two brothers, Walt and Joe, and an older sister, Bernetta, who she had an on-going rivalry with when they grew old enough to start dating.

She started smoking when she was 13 years old and five feet tall.

A small and attractive woman, she was also driven. She moved to upstate New York at 16 and worked in a cigar factory called "Collingwood's". She met her future husband Harold a year later, and they soon began to date. Both went to work at the shoe factory in 1932, where should would work most of her life.

They were married in 1936 when she was 22.

Soon thereafter they bought a factory-built home on Jennings Street through an employer-financed loan program. In 1938 they had a son named Gene, who also grew up to be a factory worker. A talented young man, he played accordian, drums and other instruments, usually with a polka band. He was also a very skilled bowler. As he grew older he also tended and drank frequently at a local bar near where he lived.

When he was in his early 20's Gene accidently scalded his lungs with lye while working at a factory.

Since Salome and Harold were sociable people, they also frequented parties and bars, and drank regularly, and in Harold's case, heavily. Since it was common during that time, they were not considered alcoholics. They worked hard during the week, played hard on weekends, and were very happy until one day Harold noticed a strange lump growing on his leg.

Three months later Harold died of lukemia at the age of 28.

It was 1941, and widowed at 27, Salome increasingly turned to drink and often complained of perceived illness. She also began working second jobs as as a waitress or a barmaid. One year later, while bartending, she met Fenton, a local police officer. He was a large, jolly fellow who drank in moderation and kept three blanks and three live bullets in his gun, prefering to be safe and "shoot to scare, not kill". He was well-liked and was promoted to Captain after many years of service.

Fenton would rather take a drunk back home than arrest them.

He had been separated from his wife for many years but she would not grant him a divorce. She did not work, visited the hospital regularly to maintain that she was too ill to do so, and Fenton was forced to pay alimony to support her. She, in turn, was using the money to put her brother through medical school more than paying her own bills. Fenton didn't like this so he quit the police force on his Captain's pension and refused to work, hoping to force his wife to grant him a divorce.

On charges of not paying alimony, Fenton was arrested several times, although having been in the police force, was always released.

Fenton visited Sally at the bar she worked at and after some time, started to visit her at her home, where she was raising her son. Despite gossip about town, Salome insisted that she and Fenton were just "good friends" who spent their time together talking and playing cards. She would always deny strongly that they were in any kind of relationship or involved in any way.

Salome, who was raised as a Catholic, became pregnant in 1942.

A stubborn woman, she went against the will of her family and friends and refused to have an abortion, despite being advised to by everyone she knew. On July 28, 1943, a girl was born, named Sally after her mother, whose last name she also took. As time went on, Salome became more and more convinced that she was getting sick and would soon die. In 1946, she moved with Fenton and her family to New Mexico in the hopes of curing what turned out to most likely be a case of hypochondria.

Unable to find work, she moved back one year later.

Fenton stayed in New Mexico four months longer in order to sell their house there, that they had purchased under Salome's name. When she returned, she immediately went back to both her jobs, and once the house in New Mexico was sold, bought a new house on Laurelton Drive, where she would live until her death.

She also returned to work as a barmaid.

Fenton continued to avoid work. He did odd jobs and was paid under the table, but it was irregular and oftimes Salome worked three jobs to support her family. She continued to drink, often to excess. Increasingly bitter, she turned angry and abusive, often taking it out on Fenton, who refused to fight or argue, and would usually leave, and stay for a few days with a friend or even sleep in his car, some times parked in the driveway.

Their daughter Sally was 7 when Fenton broke off the relationship for good.

Tired of the fighting and abuse, both verbal and physical, he moved into a nearby apartment. He continued to help Salome maintain her house and provide for his daughter, whom he visited regularly until she was 16, when he died of a massive coronary thrombosis while mowing the lawn. His daughter found him after it happened, and was very disturbed despite the doctor's insistance that it was "quick and painless". Fenton did not have a will, so all his belongings and what savings he had were taken by his wife, while Salome and his daughter received nothing.

Salome remained an unmarried widow.

In 1951 Salome met Cosmo, most likely at the bar where she worked as a waitress and bartender. Soon thereafter, after much persistance, he convinced her to make him her second husband and he moved into her house. Cosmo worked in the produce department of a grocery store. He had two sons, a 3 year old named Chet and a 5 year old named George, both from a previous marriage. He was also an abusive alcoholic prone to fits of anger and violence that made Salome's own outbursts pale in comparison.

Several times he beat her so badly that she needed to be hospitalized.

The children would watch in terror as Cosmo would get drunk and slap and punch her. She would some times hit back or throw things at him, which would only escalate things further. He would often beat her with a cane, and the children would hide in their room during his rampages. Some times he would chase her with a hot poker from the coal furnace, and once he smashed her over the head with a case full of silverware. Fortunately he never found Fenton's old lead-filled blackjack that was hidden in the basement.

Salome was just as prone to violence herself.

Cosmo was a slight man and not much larger than she. An angry drunk herself, she would sometimes be the first to strike or lash out, and once her daughter Sally came home to find Salome holding him upside down by his legs at the top of the staircase outside their bedroom, bouncing his head off the stairs and threatening to drop him down the flight.

But she was far more likely to be on the receiving end.

Her last beating took place in that same location. She was pummeled so severely that her left eye had been pulled from its socket and was hanging on her face held only by the optic nerve and blood vessels. Still uncompromising, stubborn, and hot-tempered, she beat the drunken Cosmo back until he fell down the stairs, just as she had threatened.

An ambulance arrived, along with the police.

Her eye was treated successfully although it would eventually go blind when she was in her early 70's. Even after she was released from the hospital she would not press charges because she believed the children should not have a criminal for a father, although he spent three days in jail before he was released because he could not afford bail. Salome did not leave her husband until the night he came home, late and drunk as always, and yet another loud and violent argument ensued.

This time Cosmo pulled out a gun.

Stumbling and waving the pistol, he chased the children up to the bedroom, where they locked the door and huddled behind the bed, crying and praying. Gene, the oldest, jumped out the second-story window and ran to his Uncle Walt's house over a mile away. Salome talked Cosmo into putting away the gun, and waited until he passed out. When her brother Walt arrived, she took the children with her and stayed with him for the night. The next morning the police arrived to arrest Cosmo, and later that day Salome filed divorce papers and returned home, having taken out a restraining order against Cosmo.

She packed his things and left them on road in front of her house.

When Cosmo was released from jail, he gathered his things and left town, four years after they married. It was 1955. Bitter and defeated, Salome swore that she would never marry or date again. She gave up all of her hobbies and interests, such as knitting and dress-making, and continued to work 3 jobs to support her family. She was only at home when her children were asleep, and only to sleep herself. Gene had started working in an industrial factory but Sally was left to fend for herself.

Sally often went days without seeing her mother.

Sally, like her mother, was driven, and worked after school and saved up enough money to both buy a 1965 Pontiac GTO, and also enroll in a Secretarial School program in Washington D.C. She moved there after she finished high school, and stayed for just over a year, before returning to live with her mother and work as a secretary in an office. Her boyfriend, who Sally had been with since high school, convinced her to marry him before he was sent to Korea in the Army, and when he returned, she became pregnant with her first child.

In 1981 Salome was forced to retire from the factory at the age of 67.

She was angry because while she believed she had worked there for 42 years, the company records showed only 38, and it reduced the amount of her already small pension slightly. She applied and was granted Social Security. Salome did not celebrate her retirement but insisted that because she was not working, she would soon die. Having resigned herself to this fate, she spent most of the next 17 years of her life sitting at her kitchen table looking out the window and playing Solitaire.

Alone.

In 1974 her daughter Sally moved in with Salome, along with her second husband and two children from her first failed marriage. Since they worked until late each night, including Saturdays, Salome helped watch her grandchildren. Almost every night, and sometimes in the afternoon, Salome would have a drink or two, and given her age and small size, it was enough to make her drunk.

Usually she would waver between reminiscence and over-enthusiastic affection.

If she continued, one or two more would often leave her crying or more commonly angry, quick to lash out against the grandchildren, who she saw as disrespectful and unmindful of her. Her constant arguments and aggression towards the oldest child and Sally's husband led to many arguments and outbursts. Sally, ever the mediator, grew more and more distressed by the constant fights and shouting matches.

They moved out in 1977.

In 1979 her son Gene and his wife Patty moved in with her. He was of poor health and not working regularly, except to tend at the bar where he also drank. They argued and fought regularly, with Salome gaining the upper hand by threatening to cut him out of her will.

A will he was never a part of.

Gene died of emphysema in 1988 at the age of 50, in part due to the damage to his lungs from the accident over 20 years before. He was convinced that he would die, like his father, before the age of 30, and had continued to smoke three to four packs of cigarettes a day and drink excessively in spite of the effect on his health.

Frightened, Salome quit smoking and drinking, cold turkey, for the first time in 61 years.

Between 1988 and 1996 a number of people lived with Salome in her home on Laurelton drive. Some were old friends, some were not, but all eventually moved out, tired of the endless arguments and meddling. In 1993, her sister Bernetta died, and unable to take care of the house or herself, she moved into the care home where her sister had lived. Away from her home and the few family members who bothered to keep in touch with her, she acted out bitterly and complained constantly of various ailments until she was taking dozens of pills each day.

She hospitalized herself unnecessarily several times.

The last time the doctor explained to the care home that she was in fine health and that they should not allow her to call an ambulance. Having had their fill, they refused to let her return, and she was moved to a nursing home. After again alienated everyone with her bad temper and constant attempts to start arguments and turn people against one another, the nursing home ejected her and she returned to her own home. No one came to see her except for her brother Walt, who warned her he would leave if she grew angry or argumentative.

His visits rarely lasted more than a few minutes.

During the last months of her life, they took Salome off the myriad list of medications she was taking. This caused a transformation in her attitude and outlook, and for the first time in so many years she seemed happy and at peace with herself. Family members, surprised and delighted by the change, began seeing her again, even her daughter Sally who had not spoken to her for several years.

One month later she died on January 23, 1999 at the age of 84.

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