Evidence of V
Page 9
In the yard the average girls play kickball, lap the bases, while V feigns sick with cramps. Another Sunday afternoon of Recreation. Nest of gnats, the cling of fresh-cut grass against her calves. Next month, for thirty healthful days, V will mow the grounds.
She tries to bolt her heart against the tyranny of numbers. November 3, 1938. Three-hundred-ninety-seven days until she’s sent out as a servant.
One-thousand-five-hundred-forty-five, until she’s twenty-one and free.
1,545.
She can’t last through four long digits; she can’t last.
Run
Before milking, in the dark of 5:00 a.m., down the back path past the barrels, through the thin break in the trees, straight into the corn, V and Dodie run. Out of breath, keep running. Knife pain cutting through V’s ribs. Ducking in a ditch or waving down a pick-up that won’t stop. Neither knows the way to Minneapolis. They piss in waist high weeds, keep running with a rhythm that promises new life. June and June and June inside V’s head. The girls that didn’t get caught—Audra, Grace, Gazelle—run beside V now. Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, New Orleans, Chicago, Kansas City, all of these are places they could live. They know the towns from movies; they’ve seen them on a map. Darting through small backyards lit by moon, or a lamp in someone’s window, surviving on small carrots caked with dirt. Wormed green apples off the ground. A swig of whisky, a hunk of bread, offered by a hobo. He’s too poor to own a car or he would help. He draws a cross into the dirt, says they’re running North when they need South, but Minneapolis isn’t safe for two young girls. Murders and the like. All kinds of cunning men riding in on boxcars, jumping off for soup.
Okay, V says, we’ll head someplace else. A trick in case he snitches to the cops. Run and run.
We can mate for life like doves, dumb Dodie says. We can raise your girl together. Whatever place you want. That night, V wakes with Dodie’s wet cheek nuzzled in her breast, her hand between V’s legs. She won’t be Dodie’s dove in Minneapolis. But here—
V wonders if her mother has been warned, if she’ll prepare a feast like that father in the Bible, or cling to June, report V to the cops. V’s mother can’t have June. June belongs to V. To keep June is to covet. To steal. V’s mother knows the Ten Commandments in English and Norwegian. Thou shall not.
Run and run. Rats and mice and bats, abandoned barns, loose dogs, red welts across their legs, mosquito bites and itch weed, snakes, then waiting in a drugstore for a thunderstorm to pass, the county sheriff strolls in calmly with handcuffs for them both.
Girls received during year ending June 30, 1937, by type of admission:
From courts 97
Returned from parole83
Returned from runaway20
Transferred—
Other 23
Total223
—Statistics for the Minnesota Home School for Girls at Sauk Centre, Minnesota, from Handbook of American Institutions for Delinquent Juveniles, Vol. 1: West North Central States, 1938
Reformation
After the torture of cold tubbings—V forcibly submerged until she’s ready to give up—three weeks in isolation, V’s curls shaved to the scalp, two weeks of bread and milk, six long grueling months in Pioneer, the prison uniform of blue chambray and bloomers, no general conversation, no recreation, iron bars over her window, V up at 5:00 a.m. to do the laundry for the barn girls, scrub the cow shit from the clothes, filthy shit-soaked water eating at V’s skin, birthday without family, Christmas day without a word of June, without a present to her name, every single meal spent in silence, after that, repentant V is broken, and properly reformed.
[Or, perhaps in 1938 punished V was spared the tubbings?
I will leave that to the reader to decide.]
“It was the consensus that we emphasized the use of tubbing in a manner disproportionate with its use in the program. Its efficacy was openly questioned and it was reported at that time of the survey that it had not been used for onto two years (and not since). And the attitude was not one of vindictiveness to the offender any more in that treatment than any other.”
—Minnesota Home School for Girls at Sauk Centre refutes the present use of tubbings reported in the Handbook of American Institutions for Delinquent Juveniles, Vol. 1: West North Central States, 1938
[Why not assume that V was happy,
grateful to be trained,
glad-hearted with the poultry,
content to milk the cows,
adoring of the matron
in a place so like a family home?
Why not believe waking up at 6:00 a.m.
to iron for the officers,
V looked forward to her day?
Looked forward to the laundry:
boiling, hanging, wringer, washboard—
those dark hours in the basement
or being summoned before bed
to wash the hair of the officers?
Why not write that story?
The story of V lucky, saved,
redeemed from her own sins,
rescued by the state?
Why doubt V’s compliance at that school?
An inherited distrust of institutions?
My own adolescent refusal to conform?
High school classes spent confined to a dark closet.
Or 1950s June, who despised all things domestic,
who would not cook or clean or sew or iron or care for a sick kid.
June’s pathological aversion to homemaking,
a loathing I imagine young V shared.]
February Death
They take Toots out on a stretcher. A public spectacle V watches from the window of her room. Nightgowned girls from Cottage Four sobbing in the snow; the matron trying to shoo them all inside. Dead Toots under a sheet. Suicide, that’s the rumor handed from one gossip to the next. Slit wrists. Hung. No one knows for sure.
Toots dead like the tragic showgirl stories V clipped from the Tribune. Falling stars leaping out of windows to their deaths. Or the young Minneapolis teacher who jumped from the Franklin Bridge. But where did Toots get the nerve to end it all? To step into the darkness? Did she panic in the end? V needs to know.
Suicide at fourteen.
Tough Toots. V’s first friend in Higbee Hospital. The girl who built a shanty underneath the Lake Street bridge. Crooked grin. During that long month in Reception, Toots always had a joke.
V marks a sharp black tally in her heart. She’s too young to have a once-friend die, but Toots is dead. After this, other friends will follow. V will die. She hopes it isn’t here.
She puffs a patch of fog onto the glass, draws a cross before the stretcher disappears.
Tomorrow someone new will take Toot’s seat at supper, someone new will be the third in line. Toots who always snuck a secret wave to V in their two years without speaking.
Hello. Goodbye. Words V didn’t get to say. Toots a friend from Higbee Hospital.
A friend.
And now Tough Toots is gone.
[Summer 2016,
I drive out to see the place where V was held—
the cottages where V trained as a domestic,
the land where she once labored,
the hospital where June was born.
Former institution now a home for veterans.
The years of girls all gone,
their stories lost.
Miles of summer corn the girls once canned,
painted buildings white and scabbed,
front pillars peeled away to wood.
The silence of the grass browned by the sun.
That grand administration building
Fannie French Morse ordered on a hill.
A private rise dug out of the school’s flat land.
A perm
anent depression Fannie left after her reign.]
The Third Summer
Bright azaleas in full bloom, V seventeen, and June turns twenty months in Minneapolis. V hopes that in November, for her birthday, her sisters will bring June. She’s asked and asked again without an answer. She’s promised she won’t be locked in Pioneer this time. She needs more than the single tiny photo sent from Rose. She wants to feel June’s head of thick black curls, sniff those little ears she used to nibble, see her girl in buckle shoes and gloves. June too far beyond the baby that V held. She needs to cup her daughter’s face, lift her to her hip, hear June call her Mama.
V records today in pencil on the back of the McCall’s. 6/06/1938. IMYBJ ILY. Forbidden words V can’t write or say, but she has a secret code: first letter of each word she must keep silent. Inside the magazine, the pattern for a dress she’ll sew June for her birthday. Sweet sailor dress. Red ribbon trim. V’s mother will be proud of her clean seams. The tidy stitches she’s perfected at the school.
The dress is all V has to show her steady love for June. Not letters—they won’t let V write to June. But years from now, June will have that sailor dress as proof V didn’t forget. At eighteen months and twenty, when June turned two and three, every day V held June in her heart.
Or maybe June will never know that V was gone. Will never know these years they spent apart. Lost days erased like dust. No child can remember her first years.
The first thing V remembers is their Grand Avenue apartment. V, probably two or three, marching in a circle while everybody clapped. Ida, Lydia, and Rose. V’s mother, too. V’s father’s work cap on her head while he sang his favorite song: Tramp, tramp, tramp, keep on a-tramping.
Nothing doing here for you.
Nothing doing here for V now either. Nothing here, but missing June. ILYBJ. ILY. ILY. ILY.
V wonders if her dead father can see June in that basement, if he can watch June like an angel, protect V’s dark-haired girl. Don’t let her dance for Ray, she prays in case her father loves her still.
DDFR, she writes to June. DDBJ.
“On leaving the institution almost every girl is placed in a position to give her practical experience in a small home.”
—Minnesota Home School for Girls at Sauk Centre, “Report to Minnesota State Board of Control,” June 30, 1936
What V Owns When She Leaves
1 suitcase
1 coat
1 hat
1 silk dress
1 pair chamoisette gloves
1 nainsook slip
3 pair nainsook bloomers @ 40c
2 cotton crepe nightgowns @ 30c
4 print dresses (2 light) (2 dark) @ 55c
2 cotton vests (if desired) @ 16c
2 pair of cotton hose @ 16c
2 kitchen aprons @ 12c
1 pair going out shoes
1 two-way stretch girdle
1 sanitary belt, 6 outing napkins (and safety pins)
4 handkerchiefs
1 toothbrush
1 tube toothpaste
1 bobby comb
1 small box powder and puff
Also, one pair of good used shoes for work, original cost $2.00
—Reprinted in the Handbook of American Institutions for Delinquent Juveniles, Vol. 1: West North Central States, 1938
Release
V packs her suitcase in the matron’s room, every school-permitted item carefully inspected, every piece of clothing pressed and clean. The dresses that she made. The handstitched kitchen aprons. Two pair of cotton hose. The few things that she’s saved during these years—a pencil sketch she did of June in recreation, Walt Whitman’s words she copied down in English (“failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged”), letters from her mother and her sisters, the little gingham bear she’d just begun for June—the matron will discard all that; V doesn’t need it now. Parole is not a place for V’s mementos. The only thing V is allowed is June’s small picture. That, and the last letter sent from Rose. No envelopes with addresses. No papers. No names of girls she knew at school. Those girls should be forgotten. V is starting fresh now on parole. The matron won’t say where V is going; V will know when she arrives.
Do your best, the matron warns. Or you’ll be sent back for retraining.
I will, V vows. As every prisoner vows.
III.
PRACTICAL EXPERIENCE
“Placement of girls on parole continues to be largely in domestic work where they receive the benefit of close association with people who have economic and social security and will take an active personal interest in the girl.”
—Minnesota Home School for Girls at Sauk Centre, “Report to the Minnesota State Board of Control,” June 30, 1938
“We expect the girl to work faithfully for you. We trust you will remember this girl has not a woman’s judgment. Do not expect too much of her. We ask from you a wise, motherly interest in her welfare, so that by your hearty cooperation with the School, the girl may make real development in character in your home. We hope that you will help us to train her to become a good woman and a useful member of society.”
—Instructions to Employers, Minnesota Home School for Girls at Sauk Centre. Reprinted in the Handbook of American Institutions for Delinquent Juveniles, Vol. 1: West North Central States, 1938
A Good Woman
Mrs. Taft expected a brunette. Most certainly a house girl larger than a child. She already has a child of her own.
Well, may we, Mrs. Taft? V’s visitor asks firmly.
They’re stalled outside the Tafts’ door in Duluth, V’s goose-pimpled girl legs burning from the cold. The great gusts from Lake Superior blowing the hat off of her head.
Is that an ill wind? Mrs. Taft sniffs, and V sees the misgiving in those eyes. Mrs. Taft has changed her mind about a girl the likes of V. She doesn’t want V’s trouble in her house.
Really, Mrs. Taft, V’s visitor insists. V’s “visitor” not a friendly visitor, but a field agent for parole. We’ll catch our death of cold out in this night.
Mrs. Taft opens the carved oak door just enough to let them pass. Her dear son upstairs with a slight fever; these two must mind their noise. The girl may set her bag down on the floor.
V unloads the school-issued suitcase, takes in her towering new mistress in the belted rayon dress. Puffed sleeved. Padded shoulders. A shirred bodice that her mother would admire. A polished egg-white face. Thin gold hair crimped into perfect waves.
I wouldn’t imagine you’ve been in a house like this, she says to V.
V’s stood in grander mansions while her mother measured drapes, measured breasts and hips and waists, the shoulders of small girls. Still there’s enough work to be done in this large house—three meals a day to make, miles of oak to polish, ten windows in this sitting room alone, a fireplace to sweep, expensive rugs to beat, a little boy to tend—V isn’t going to wish she had more work.
No ma’am, V lies, demurely. It’s truly marvelous. Magnificent. V knows Mrs. Taft expects demure. Mrs. Taft won’t be the school’s fabled mistress who treats V like a daughter. V knows that from the failures on parole—girls returned or run away, all sent back to Sauk Centre for readjustment or retraining—you ask those girls, they’ll say their parole homes were all cruel. A loving family a lie the school tells.
Well, Mrs. Taft says, nodding toward the street. The girl is in good hands now. I shall see to her myself.
But Mrs. Taft—this is not a visitor easily dismissed. She has her practiced lecture to deliver; V’s endured it twice already on the drive from Sauk Centre to Duluth. But V will listen for a third time in order to impress. The litany of improvements for V to cultivate: propriety, chastity, and hygiene. The skills to run a proper home. I’m afraid we still have more details to discuss, V’s visitor insists. Placement rules to be reviewed: No contact with strang
ers in Duluth. Constant supervision. The darkness in V’s future if she fails at this chance.
Received and read last week, Mrs. Taft says, before the visitor can speak. For now, you are dismissed. If I’m in need of more direction—
But Madame, if I may—
You may not, Mrs. Taft says briskly. Rest assured, dear woman, I know how to train a girl.
Housewarming
1.
New room, new hope, new morning. A small twin bed against a papered wall. A three-drawer bureau of her own. A round mirror V won’t share with other girls.
The other girls all gone.
The girls?
Milking cows and boiling porridge, wringing laundry without V. Shouldn’t V be relieved to leave those other girls? To live outside that institution? Shouldn’t she be ecstatic to finally have a home?
2.
It’s Mrs. Taft who yanks V’s curtains open, tells V not to linger when work needs to be done. It’s already past 6:30; V’s expected to be dressed. Didn’t V keep a schedule at the school? Frankie’s awake and hungry; Sunday biscuits must be baked. The doctor likes his breakfast before church.
He’ll be in the parlor with his paper and his pipe. Please put yourself together so the doctor’s not alarmed. We have standards in this family you must follow.
3.
Downstairs, V finds freckled Frankie amused with two small trains and Dr. Taft setting aside his pipe and Sunday paper to offer V his clammy hand. (His apologies, he was needed at the hospital last night when V arrived.) Not exactly Cary Grant, but distinguished in the way tall rich men are. Satin smoking jacket. Long legs crossed at the knee. He takes a slow draw from his pipe, studies V’s small body the way a doctor would. So, I understand you danced, he says with a slight smile. A showgirl in your day? He gives a little laugh like V’s job was a joke.