I Carry My Grandmother's Name, And I'll Make My Reputation

My grandmother had a reputation. During the war she lived in San Diego with trainloads of Marines going off to war. She had a friend, a woman friend from Iowa, but nobody remembers from where in Iowa. She was the basis of the rumors. But one day before the war ended she came down sick, and died. My grandmother married a marine who made it back from the Pacific. She had six boys, one of them my father. My grandfather was a good man from what everyone says. But he died from cirrhosis and emphysema. Grandma never quite got over him, but her night dreams were about the woman from Iowa.

I'm a woman too, and my dreams are about a woman too. Her name is Mary Anne, she's from somewhere, nowhere really. Of course she says the same thing about me. I know about my grandmother's reputation, because I'm told I'm making my own. I will marry that Kingston boy, I suppose I'll do what my grandmother did. I have thought long and hard about it, having my half dozen. I have to do that, in her memory.