Wolf in the Shadows - Marcia Muller [29]
Now I spotted a slight tremor at the corners of her lips; her eyes clouded. The story was true, but something was lost in the telling. Perhaps she’d used this personal history to fuel her passion to succeed so many times that it no longer had the power to stir her.
I started to speak, but Gloria held up her hand, silencing me. “I know this doesn’t seem relevant to your accepting or declining the promotion, but please let me go on.”
I nodded, too interested in both the story and her motives for telling it to worry about lost travel time.
“My aunt made sure I went to school, even though we lived in a series of shacks from the Canadian border to Riverside County. When I was fifteen we were able to settle near Marysville, and there was a teacher in the high school who decided I should go to college and arranged a scholarship to the University of Oregon at Eugene. I did well, applied to law school there, and got another scholarship. Then in my senior year I fell in love—or so I thought. He was an Anglo, his family had money. When they found out I was pregnant, they shipped him off to Europe for a year. Didn’t want a ’wetback,’ as they called me, for a daughter-in-law.”
I made an involuntary sound of sympathy. Gloria’s eyes hardened and she resumed speaking, more swiftly now.
“I had the baby, a daughter named Teresa, after my mother. I moved into a women’s cooperative in Eugene, where we all helped each other care for our kids while attending school. For a while after graduation I worked for the ACLU, then for a small progressive firm in Portland. They’re the people who told me about the job here; they knew it was what I needed to be doing.”
She looked back at me, gaze level, lips pulled into a straight, controlled line. “Teresa’s ten now. Gets straight As. She’s beautiful. She’s also the reason I’m committed to what I do. No one is going to hold my daughter back because of their own narrow prejudices. No one is going to make her feel the humiliation I suffered almost every day of my childhood and young adulthood.”
I waited for her to go on. When she didn’t speak, I said, “So that’s where you’re coming from.”
“Yes.” She paused, watching me. Anger moved beneath the level surface of her gaze now. “I’ve given up a lot, Sharon, to work in behalf of people who are in danger of losing their rights. Other than Teresa, I don’t have much of a personal life. I live and breathe the law eighteen hours a day; the other six I dream it. That’s why I came on so strong with you yesterday—and why I think you should accept this promotion. Right now All Souls is in a critical transition period. We need our people to make sacrifices, to give up their own concerns and make this co-op a truly viable institution. All Souls has been good to you. Why can’t you return the kindness?”
Abruptly I stood and turned my back to her, staring out the window while gathering my thoughts and trying to assemble them within a logical framework that she, as a woman of reason, would understand.
“A great deal of what you say makes sense,” I finally told her. “And what you’re working for—it’s so people can be free to live their dreams. Am I correct?”
“Yes.”
“That’s good. That’s what we all should do, isn’t it? And even though you’ve sacrificed your personal life, aren’t you in fact living your dream?”
“Of course.”
“Then I’m happy for you. But what about my dream?”
“Your dream?” She sounded surprised, as if it had never occurred to her that people like me—who were more or less mainstream Americans, who had more or less not had to struggle—could possibly entertain a dream.
“Yes, Gloria, I have one. And in essence you’re asking me to give up my dream for yours.”
“But mine is—”
“Better? More worthy because you’ve experienced hardship and discrimination?” Now I was the one who felt angry.
“No, no.” She held out her hands placatingly, “I guess I assumed that because you work here, your dream is the same as mine.”
“Possibly it is. At least in the abstract.” I got my emotions under control and sat back down. “You’ve been honest with me,” I said,