The Borrowed Child

This thread follows Norma Jeane’s intense bond with Irina and shows how caregiving briefly lets her imagine motherhood before loss repeats the pattern of disappearance that has marked her life.

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A Child to Care For

An Unexpected Maternal Role Irina enters her routine While living at Verdugo Gardens, Norma Jeane helps care for Irina, the young daughter of Harriet, a fellow resident whose husband is away at war. Walking Irina in a stroller gives Norma Jeane a daily purpose separate from housework and marriage. A borrowed future Norma Jeane speaks to strangers as if she were Irina’s mother, answers questions about the child, and delights when Irina calls her “Mama.” She imagines that a baby can make the world feel whole and keep loneliness at bay. Her attachment is sincere, though Irina remains another woman’s child. Caring for the girl lets Norma Jeane practice a hoped-for identity before she has any child of her own.

The Tiger for Irina

A Gift Made by Hand The walk in the park Norma Jeane regularly takes Irina outside while Harriet remains withdrawn and unresponsive. She tries to make their outings cheerful, speaking to the baby and describing the small pleasures of the walk. A toy as a promise Using a pattern from a magazine, Norma Jeane makes Irina a soft tiger from old socks, fabric strips, cotton, buttons, and pipe cleaners. Irina plays with the toy while Norma Jeane watches with pride. The gift expresses more than kindness: it is a small image of the secure family Norma Jeane longs to create. Harriet’s failure to respond warmly leaves the young wife wondering whether her care is welcomed or merely tolerated.

Harriet Disappears

An Empty Apartment The missing mother and child Harriet vanishes from Verdugo Gardens with Irina, leaving behind many of her belongings and no clear explanation. Norma Jeane asks the neighbors and even tries to report the disappearance to the police. A loss she cannot resolve She knows Harriet is an adult and Irina’s mother, so there is little anyone can do. Yet she cannot accept that her friend has left without allowing a goodbye, and she fears that something may have happened to the child. Irina disappears from Norma Jeane’s life as abruptly as earlier family members. Her devotion cannot protect the child, and her role as a surrogate mother ends without closure.

The Bath Dream

Fear Reappears as a Dream A remembered danger Norma Jeane dreams that Harriet is bathing Irina in scalding water and that the child is in danger. She runs through a corridor trying to find the room, but every effort to reach the child fails. The old terror underneath The dream draws on Norma Jeane’s childhood memories of hot bathwater and Gladys’s dangerous behavior. She wakes frightened and crawls into a bathtub, where Bucky finds her at dawn. The missing child has become inseparable from Norma Jeane’s own abandoned-child memories. Her longing to save Irina cannot undo what she experienced herself, and the dream reveals how little control she has over the people she loves.

A Child Lost to Memory

An Unfinished Goodbye The past resurfaces As Norma Jeane’s life becomes increasingly divided between her private self and her public career, she continues to remember Irina as a child she once cared for. She sometimes feels certain that she introduced Irina to Gladys and received her mother’s blessing, though the memory is blurred and uncertain. The absence remains No reunion or explanation resolves Harriet’s disappearance. Irina’s fate stays outside Norma Jeane’s control, leaving her with a grief composed partly of memory and partly of imagined possibilities. The relationship remains a private measure of what motherhood means to her: not merely having a child, but protecting someone vulnerable and being allowed to stay. The loss gives force to her later hope for a child of her own.

Early 1943, during Norma Jeane’s first year with Bucky

Winter 1943, during the daily stroller walks

March 1944, after Bucky leaves for Australia

The weeks after Harriet and Irina disappear

Years later, during Norma Jeane’s life as a Hollywood actress