Harriet—Irina

Harriet and Irina’s mother-daughter relationship is seen largely through the care Norma Jeane Baker gives the child and through the uncertainty left when the pair disappear. Harriet is Irina’s mother and takes her away in March 1944, but the narrative offers no destination or explanation. Before that departure, Harriet’s withdrawal, Norma Jeane’s practical tenderness toward Irina, and reports that Harriet may have harmed her make the bond difficult to read as either secure or simply neglectful. Its unresolved ending turns Norma Jeane’s affection into a lasting mixture of grief, fear, and helplessness.

A mother and daughter under wartime strain

Harriet and Irina live at Verdugo Gardens, where many wives are separated from husbands serving in the war. Irina’s father is officially missing, and Harriet has spoken of not being cut out to live as a widow. The story places her isolation within a community of wives whose circumstances differ: some husbands serve far from home, while others remain in support work or the rear. The account does not identify Harriet’s precise circumstances beyond her husband’s absence, but it makes the strain of wartime separation part of the setting for her withdrawal from both her daughter and the people around her.

When Norma Jeane takes Irina for walks, Harriet commonly stays on a battered living-room couch in the shared apartment, with the blinds down and no radio playing. The silence stands out to Norma Jeane, who cannot bear to be alone at home for more than a few minutes without turning on the radio. On returning, she cheerfully announces that she and Irina are back, describes their walk, and hands the child to Harriet. Harriet gives little or no response. She is described as lying rigidly on a couch soaked with tears, and as having gained ten kilos since December, with swollen, sallow skin and bloodshot eyes. The repeated handoff makes the difference between the women visible: Norma Jeane tries to draw Harriet into an ordinary exchange about their day, while Harriet appears unable or unwilling to meet her.

Care, distance, and suspected harm

Norma Jeane’s care for Irina is concrete and affectionate. Using a pattern, she makes the child a small cloth tiger from orange cotton socks, strips of black fabric, cotton stuffing, a fabric-covered wire hanger for its tail, shiny black buttons for eyes, and pipe cleaners for whiskers. Irina hugs the toy, puts it on the floor, and crawls after it. Norma Jeane watches happily; Harriet, smoking another cigarette, remains indifferent. Her dry praise of Norma Jeane as a perfect wife and mother stings rather than reassures. Norma Jeane responds with a gentle rebuke, telling Harriet that unhappiness in the presence of such a splendid child is a sin against the Lord. Harriet then turns the exchange sharply against her, making clear that Norma Jeane’s sunny manner has not brought them into agreement.

The narrative also shows Harriet withdrawing from other relationships. She does not want contact with the women with whom she shares the apartment, whom she considers pathetic and depressing, and often refuses telephone calls from either her own parents or her husband’s. This avoidance is not presented as the result of a quarrel; Harriet says she is too exhausted to bear other people’s emotions. Norma Jeane fears that Harriet might hurt herself or Irina. She raises the concern indirectly with Bucky Glazer, who dismisses it as women’s business. Norma Jeane cannot bring herself to confront Harriet directly, believing that provoking her is dangerous. Her attachment to Irina therefore develops alongside a fear she cannot turn into effective action.

Disappearance and the uncertain record

In March 1944, Harriet leaves Verdugo Gardens with Irina without telling Norma Jeane or the other women in the apartment. She leaves most of her few possessions behind, but has paid her share of that month’s rent. The roommates say she had spoken more than once about disappearing and that she left without a goodbye or note. Neither Harriet’s parents in Sacramento nor her in-laws in Washington, D.C., have any news of her. These details offer signs of preparation and prior distress, but no confirmed account of where she went or why she took Irina away.

The roommates also tell Norma Jeane that Harriet had tried to hurt Irina and may have caused harm that was not visible. Norma Jeane recoils and rejects their account, insisting to herself that she would have noticed and defending Harriet as her friend. The narrative does not resolve the contradiction between that loyalty and her earlier fear. Nor does it establish that Irina was injured: the allegations remain reports from the roommates, not confirmed facts.

Aftermath and the limits of protection

Norma Jeane tries to report the disappearance to the Mission Hills police, but she stammers too badly to complete the call. She understands that there may be little the police can do: Harriet is an adult and Irina’s mother, and the departure appears voluntary. Norma Jeane’s conviction that she loves Irina more than Harriet does, and that Irina returns that love, cannot give her any authority to keep the child or discover where they have gone. Harriet and Irina vanish from her life as suddenly as they entered it, leaving no farewell through which their relationship might be understood or concluded.

The uncertainty returns as a nightmare-like scene in which Norma Jeane imagines Harriet bathing Irina in boiling water. Irina cries out, and Norma Jeane races through a steaming corridor with no doors, unable to find the room or reach her. The passage is presented as a vision that may be a dream, not as proof that Harriet actually scalded the child. Yet it gives bodily form to Norma Jeane’s fear that Irina may be suffering somewhere beyond her reach. On waking, Norma Jeane climbs into a tub of boiling water herself; Bucky finds her there at six in the morning. The dream thus connects the vanished mother and daughter to a later crisis in Norma Jeane’s own life, while preserving the central unanswered question: what became of Harriet and Irina?