For almost ten years, after they had left the Communist Party and before my father was called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1955, my parents held tight to the secret of their Communist past. As a consequence of their chronic fear of exposure, the atmosphere in our home was fraught with tension. Sensing that something was terribly wrong but not knowing, I often complained of stomachaches and hurt feelings; many nights I cried myself to sleep. Victor Navasky, author of Naming Names, suggests that, “The progressive-school thinking of the [‘50s] said, Don’t burden the kids with things they can’t handle. But the one thing a kid can’t handle is not knowing.”
On the night that my father told my brother and me about his political past, he warned us “not to discuss this with anyone.” Now the family secret became a secret that my brother and I would guard as well.
On July 10, 1955, the story of my father’s HUAC testimony broke in the Washington Star. For the next two years it was national news – for us, an open sore oozing shame, humiliation and paranoia. When it was all over and the crisis was behind us, the secret, in its new form, went underground. This time, with only a hint of a reminder of those fretful months it yielded grief and guilt. For the next forty years we avoided talking about “the troubles” – until my parents died and my need to write, to rid myself of the family shame, became an obsession.
