CALL ME PHAEDRA. Lise Pearlman
Abrahams, just after Fay turned three. The young family was now complete. In 1936, the Abrahams’ one-year-old contracted pneumonia. Lisie wound up hospitalized for several weeks as she dwindled to an alarming thirteen pounds, losing more than a third of her body weight. For another three months, Lisie seemed to wake only long enough to eat. Decades later, Lisie would speculate that her mother’s prolonged distraction and grief instilled in Fay an enduring sense of abandonment and anger. Yet it was Lisie who was raised to take a back seat to her extraordinarily talented older sister in whom both parents evinced great pride.
A gifted musician with perfect pitch, Fay was eager to learn the piano at age three, but her mother made her wait until she was four to begin lessons. With Ruby as her first tutor, Fay happily practiced daily. Fay soon became the center of the entire extended family’s attention. She could play a song after hearing it once. Her parents began providing her with private lessons. The first to be hired was Pauline Newman, a lovelorn spinster, who recognized in Fay signs of depression. Newman shared her concerns with Ruby and Sam. The worried Abrahams ultimately took Fay to see a psychiatrist. The subject was so unmentionable that the couple tried never to discuss it in front of Lisie. Bouts of prolonged unhappiness would trouble Fay throughout adulthood as she exhibited other classic symptoms of bipolar mood disorder.
During the 1930s, Sam developed a specialty in asbestos, perfecting a number of patents. Sam designed non-combustible covers for ships’ boilers and pipes. In 1941, he was offered a prestigious job in Berkeley overseeing the construction and management of a plant that manufactured insulation for the war effort. Sam was not tall, but the successful chemist cut a dapper appearance with his well-trimmed mustache and stylish attire.
Sam and Ruby always lived in all-white neighborhoods. When they moved to the East Bay in the early 1940s, they found a modest rental home in North Berkeley and entered both of their girls in a local elementary school. School came easily to Fay, who soon skipped a grade, but Lisie always had to work harder. To assist with household tasks, Ruby hired a string of mother’s helpers from the Midwest, as did many of Ruby’s friends. Fay and Elise shared one bedroom; the mother’s helper stayed in the third bedroom. Each boarder received “pin” money for helping Ruby prepare meals for the family and for babysitting when Sam and Ruby occasionally went out in the evening. The mother’s helpers were not allowed to eat with the Abrahams. Instead, Ruby trained them to serve the vegetables at dinner in a side dish at each place setting and to answer to a bell that Ruby rang for additional assistance. Fay disliked her mother’s pretentious household arrangement and objected to treating the live-in household help as servants of a lower class, unwelcome at the family table. When Fay reached high school age, she insisted on having her own room apart from her sister. That ended the era of live-in mother’s helpers in favor of a once-a-week cleaning woman.
Though Sam had grown up in an Orthodox Jewish household, Fay and Lisie were raised Reform. They observed the Sabbath on Friday night, celebrated the holidays and studied for confirmation with the rabbi at a local synagogue. After dinner, the family played cards or a board game for an hour or so before each turned to other interests. Sam taught the girls the rudiments of chess, but had no patience for coaching them on the finer points of the game at which he excelled. Though Sam was authoritarian, Ruby’s controlling nature weighed much more heavily on Fay. Her mother tended toward hypochondria and took Fay to the doctor frequently. Fay particularly found oppressive Ruby’s preoccupation with making sure Fay’s feet and smile would be beautiful when she grew up. Fay wore glasses and orthopedic shoes with arch supports Fay considered hideous and unnecessary. Her teeth were straightened with braces she also abhorred.
At a young age, Fay began nervously chewing her fingernails until they were gone, which the doctor suggested could be cured by applying a bitter coating. Ruby gave up on the suggestion after a few tries. As an adult, despite her great pride in her beautiful hands, Fay could not altogether shake the habit of nibbling her nails to the quick. A more worrisome concern to her parents was a chronic breathing problem that, in retrospect, Fay assumed was probably psychosomatic. Lisie later believed Fay may have suffered from allergies as their father did. At the time, Fay’s constant snuffling perplexed them all.
Fay had many battles with her parents over breathing through her mouth instead of her nose. In the midst of a game of Parcheesi, she might excuse herself to go to the bathroom just to breathe without criticism. She told an interviewer thirty years later, “At times I felt I was literally gasping for life itself.”2 Ultimately, Fay’s mother took her to an ear-nose-and-throat specialist who attributed Fay’s problem to enlarged adenoids and recommended their removal along with her tonsils. The thirteen-year-old insisted that her younger sister be examined too. Much to her dismay, Lisie, who had just been along for the ride, wound up scheduled for surgery at the same time.
Encouraged by Fay’s rapid progress as a piano student, the Abrahams devoted much of the family’s disposable income to more expensive lessons. Fay met with a highly acclaimed tutor twice weekly, while Lisie was offered lessons by his assistant. Though proficient, Lisie soon quit, finding the contrast in their abilities too painful. When Fay periodically shirked practice, her parents threatened to discontinue the lessons, but Fay always opted to reapply herself with renewed vigor. She gave her first recital before she turned ten.
Soon afterward, Fay was accepted as a student of the renowned concert pianist and professor, Bernhard Abramowitsch. When San Francisco Chronicle music critic Alfred Frankenstein heard eleven-year-old Fay play, he confirmed her parents’ opinion that she possessed exceptional talent. Any chance for her to become a virtuoso, however, necessitated long, regular hours of practice. Her parents decided to send Fay to the prestigious Anna Head private school — the only school around where classes terminated at one p.m., which allowed Fay all afternoon to practice.
The Anna Head boarding and day school then stood at its original 1887 location, on Channing Way in Berkeley. (It has since moved to the Oakland Hills and changed its name to Head-Royce.) Its Berkeley campus included a well-tended rose garden. In springtime, the quadrangle was surrounded by blooming wisteria. To Ruby, it seemed nearly ideal. The school had an excellent academic reputation with a top-notch faculty hired from Smith College. One of Anna Head’s alumnae was celebrated war correspondent Marguerite Higgins, who had just made headlines reporting from the front lines for the New York Herald Tribune. Marguerite’s mother was a French teacher at Anna Head. When Fay started seventh grade, the acting head mistress was Lea Hyde, a Smith Classics major who had been widowed at a young age. Smith taught English with sensitivity and compassion. It became Fay’s favorite subject.
Source: Head-Royce websiter https://localwiki.org/oakland/Head-Royce_School
The Anna Head School was still in its original location on Channing Way in Berkeley when Fay Abrahams attended it. The school later moved to Oakland where it is now known as Head-Royce.
Source: http://stitchesthrutime.blogspot.com/2015/07/marguerite-higgins-award-winning.html
War reporter Marguerite Higgins in 1942, whom LIFE magazine featured as a “Girl War Correspondent,” was one of Anna Head’s most famous graduates. When Fay later attended Reed College, she had a month-long affair with Higgins’ then estranged husband, Prof. Stanley Moore.
World War II imbued the Anna Head faculty and student body with a strong sense of purpose. The new school newspaper, Quips and Cranks, urged students to save metal, paper, cork and rubber goods for the war effort. Students knitted socks and sweaters and took first aid courses. The school social service club “adopted” two British children, mailed packages to soldiers overseas and organized a clothing drive for residents of a war-torn French town. Yet Fay hated her new regimen, particularly the drab gray skirts with white blouses and matching gray sweaters that all the girls were required to wear. Anna Head had recently established the then-novel concept of student government. The elected