Norma Jeane—Harriet

Norma Jeane Baker and Harriet’s relationship moves from neighborly intimacy into painful estrangement, with Irina—the child Norma Jeane helps care for—at its emotional center. Norma Jeane tries to reach Harriet through ordinary kindness, but Harriet’s withdrawal makes that care feel unreturned and, at times, unwelcome. When Harriet disappears with Irina in March 1944, Norma Jeane loses not only a friend but also the child she had come to love as her own.

Friendship Under Strain

At Verdugo Gardens, Harriet is one of several wives whose husbands have gone away to war. The story places her among women living with separation and uncertainty, but distinguishes her response from the ideal of dignified courage: Harriet does not try to present herself as resilient. When Norma Jeane takes Irina for walks in the park, Harriet often remains stretched out on the worn sofa in the shared apartment, the blinds drawn and the radio off. That silence is striking to Norma Jeane, who cannot bear to be alone at home for more than a few minutes without turning on the radio. Bucky is only a few miles away at Lockheed, but he does not bridge the distance between the two women.

Norma Jeane returns from the walks cheerfully announcing that she and Irina are back, then talks to the child as she lifts her from the stroller and hands her to Harriet. Harriet gives no greeting and lies rigid on a sofa soaked with tears of anger, resentment, or perhaps deeper pain. Her swollen, sallow appearance and bloodshot eyes register how physically depleted she has become; since December, she has gained ten pounds. The contrast between Norma Jeane’s bright chatter and Harriet’s refusal to answer turns a routine handover into a repeated scene of attempted connection and withdrawal. Harriet eventually takes Irina, who has begun to fuss and kick, as if the child were an inconvenient bundle rather than someone she was glad to receive.

Care for Irina and the Limits of Intervention

Norma Jeane’s attachment to Irina grows through practical, affectionate acts. She takes the child outside, carries her home, and tries to make the return pleasant even when Harriet remains silent. The care also gives shape to a longing Norma Jeane cannot comfortably voice: she wonders why she cannot be Irina’s mother if Harriet does not want the role. This wish is not presented as a formal claim to the child, but as a measure of how strongly Norma Jeane has become attached to her.

The relationship leaves Norma Jeane worried that Harriet might hurt herself or Irina. She raises the danger only indirectly with Bucky, who pays little attention and treats it as women’s business. Norma Jeane does not dare confront Harriet outright; provoking her seems dangerous. Her concern therefore produces no effective intervention. She is close enough to notice signs that trouble her, but neither Harriet’s silence nor Bucky’s dismissal gives her a workable way to act.

A handmade cloth tiger makes the difference between the women’s responses to Irina especially visible. Using a pattern from Family Circle, Norma Jeane sews the toy from orange cotton socks, black fabric stripes, and cotton batting. She shapes its tail around a metal coat hanger, gives it shiny black-button eyes, and makes whiskers from pipe cleaners bought at Woolworth. Irina embraces the tiger, puts it on the floor, and follows it on all fours. Norma Jeane laughs happily at the child’s play; Harriet watches without interest and smokes another cigarette. The toy becomes a small, tangible gift of the attention Norma Jeane wants to give, while Harriet’s indifference leaves that generosity unacknowledged.

Affection, Sarcasm, and Rupture

Harriet does acknowledge Norma Jeane, but in a way that exposes the strain between them. She calls her a treasure and a perfect wife and mother, and Norma Jeane smiles before recognizing the remark as sarcasm. Norma Jeane answers with a gentle rebuke, saying that it is a sin to be unhappy when blessed with such a splendid daughter. Her response draws on the moral language of gratitude and faith, but it also presses Harriet to feel what Norma Jeane believes a mother ought to feel.

Harriet first laughs, then fixes Norma Jeane with a sudden, intense stare and rejects the rebuke. She accepts the label of sinner and tells the bright, cheerful visitor to get out and go to hell. The exchange exposes the mismatch in their ways of approaching distress: Norma Jeane tries to soften pain by speaking warmly and urging gratitude, while Harriet will not accept comfort on those terms. Their closeness has become brittle enough that an attempt at moral encouragement provokes an open dismissal. The scene also complicates Norma Jeane’s caretaking: affection for Irina does not give her authority over Harriet, and her belief that she knows what Harriet should feel cannot restore their friendship.

Disappearance and Unresolved Loss

In March 1944, Harriet leaves Verdugo Gardens with Irina without saying anything to Norma Jeane. She leaves most of her few possessions behind. Her roommates say that she did not say goodbye or leave an explanation; she had paid her share of the rent for March. Harriet had spoken more than once about disappearing and about not being made to live as a war widow, but no one knows where she and Irina have gone. She has not returned to either her parents in Sacramento or her in-laws in Washington.

The news is almost impossible for Norma Jeane to accept. She insists that Harriet would not have left without saying goodbye or allowing her to say goodbye to Irina, and clings to the belief that God would not have permitted it. She recalls, indistinctly and almost as if in a dream, taking Irina to Gladys and receiving Gladys’s blessing. Now the child is gone, and with her the blessing Norma Jeane remembers. Her response makes plain that Irina had become a source of imagined maternal belonging as well as a child she cared for day to day.

Norma Jeane tries to report the disappearance of mother and daughter to the Mission Hills police station, but she stammers so badly that she has to hang up. She also recognizes that there may be little anyone can do: Harriet is an adult and Irina’s mother, and Harriet appears to have left voluntarily. Norma Jeane is convinced that she loved Irina more than Harriet did and that Irina returned that love, yet conviction cannot change the legal and practical limits on her action. The friendship ends not with reconciliation or a clear account of Harriet’s motives, but with Norma Jeane’s helplessness before a departure she cannot understand or reverse.