Evidence of V

by Sheila O'Connor

  For you, V says, forcing a twenty-dollar bill into her mother’s wrinkled hand. The youngest daughter of the family, but V is finally old enough to help. I’m earning money now. Enough that we could move. Move from him.

  Move? her mother says. I can’t just leave Ray, V.

  Still, her mother hides the twenty-dollar bill safe inside her ragged bra without asking how V earns it, kisses V’s cheek as a thank you, tucks a strand of curls behind V’s ear. You stay safe? She isn’t asking for an answer. You’re up with Em now in her attic? You be good with Em. V’s mother doesn’t want to hear the truth about her girl. You could come home to your family. A girl belongs at home.

  Not now, V says. You know I hate it here.

  I wish—her mother weeps. V lets her mother cry—a sign her mother might be sorry. Remorse for that wrong marriage is all V really wants. Remorse and curiosity. Just once, V wants to hear her mother ask: What did my second husband do to you, sweet daughter?

  But V’s mother never asks. Not tonight. [Not later when V leaps.] Her mother leaves that truth unspoken as a dare. Daring V to tell her. Daring V to say: I’m bad fruit your second husband handled.

  You and Em must go to school, her mother says, struggling the cast iron soup pot from the stove into the sink. Good girls go to school. I don’t want a letter from the principal again.

  I go to school, V sighs, sure that she’s been asked again to keep the second husband’s secret.

  His secret, and whatever secret brought those twenty dollars to her door.

  Truancy

  V arrives at school, but cannot stay. Second period, while Em is gone to Lower English, V slips down the vacant north-end stairwell, and bolts for Mr. C at the Belvedere Hotel.

  Mr. C with the taste of buttered toast still on his tongue, his olive skin a winter cure for V. A morning goblet of warm milk beside the bed for V’s good health.

  Mr. C who arranges naked V on his settee and calls her Venus. Mr. C who says she should be art.

  Nothing but that man can hold her now. Not loyal Em with her young clowning, not junior high with its Civil War and Shakespeare, not her old-world mother who fears V’s truancy’s a crime. Good girls go to school. You be a good girl.

  Only Mr. C and their perfect, private mornings unfolding at the Belvedere Hotel.

  The First Day V Suspects

  The third of March and snow ponds on the sidewalk. A man smoking on his balcony leans low and whistles twice. Ain’t you the Cascade Fox? he calls to V, but V just walks. She needs a bigger city like New York. A Broadway club called Foxy’s owned by Mr. C. V a story in the scrapbook of another dreaming girl. “Dashing Mr. C and His Young Beauty Take the Town.”

  Hey, little girl, the stranger calls again. I know I seen you dance.

  Suddenly, a lurch inside her stomach, not butterflies, but dropping, like the time she tumbled from the tree at Bryant Square.

  V hurries onto the streetcar, the seats all full, the weary passengers worn thin from work. The boy ahead of V digs into his pockets. No money and no token, so V quickly pays his fare. I’ll take care of it, V says gently, the way a mother might.

  No, V is not a mother.

  Still, she senses a small nub inside her soul, an uninvited second spirit, a light illuminating all that is behind her and ahead. Light invisible. Unwanted.

  V swallows down her spit, ignores the nagging knowledge of that nub. A stray cat scratch at her door. V could kill the cat, flounce down the streetcar stairs into the dusk, her handbag swinging at her hip, parade into the Cascade as the wild Little Fox. A reckless showgirl happily half-dressed, her winter coat at home, brand-new Oxfords stained with melted snow. The girl men pay to see. Men don’t pay to see a mother dance.

  Before the streetcar reaches Franklin, V decides to be that girl again.

  [V invented out of what?

  Changed addresses. Four apartments

  in five years listed in the file.

  Possibly evictions?

  Uptown, Loring, Phillips.

  Minneapolis neighborhoods

  where V and I both lived.

  My own apartments so like V’s.

  The first basement apartment after June’s divorce.

  Musty childhood home.

  Strangers’ shoes glimpsed through narrow windows.

  I create from clippings. Scrapbook work.

  Evidence uncovered:

  The city solo contest in 1933.

  V performing for nine thousand and taking home the prize.

  V, collaged from my own life at fifteen.

  Smoking on the lawn at Holy Angels.

  Shut inside a closet when I didn’t behave in class.

  Greyhound bus to California.

  Skipping school for beers at Westrum’s bar.

  V inspired by nightclub ads and 1930s movies.

  Matchbook covers. A faded postcard of Mr. C’s hotel.

  Now an apartment on LaSalle where I loiter in the lobby

  willing V to walk out of his room.

  V mirroring my mother,

  pregnant at fifteen because

  the daughter must resemble—

  Or invented from my classmate Patty Darling,

  who disappeared sophomore year with her night boss from McDonald’s.

  The blank space that straight-A Patty left behind.

  V collaged from pieces that I paste into a girl.]

  First Offense

  [Here let us reconstruct the crime.]

  1.

  V and Em, young and loose on another day of hooky, stroll the March-mud streets of Minneapolis, soak up the city symphony of cars, the welcome honks from strangers meant for V, the screech of streetcars coming to a stop. Em in ragged boy-pants she found at Bethel Charity. V with freckled bare legs, winter white. Their bulky boots abandoned. A stripe of flowered summer skirt beneath V’s coat. Spring fever and it isn’t even spring.

  Em says a day like this demands a lark like Lu’s apartment. Lu in South Dakota with her folks. A prank that Lu will love, Em’s sure of that.

  Em knows the secret way in through the alley. Nights while V’s performing at the Cascade, Lu’s the friend Em likes to run with now. A better pal than V.

  But didn’t V give up the Belvedere to spend the day with Em?

  Em finds the hidden milk crate stashed behind the trash, climbs the crate, gives the unlocked window one strong nudge. You first, she says to V, cupping her hands into a stirrup to give V one big boost. V tumbling head-first onto Lu’s apartment floor. Behind V, hearty Em landing with a thud. The two of them so thrilled with this adventure, Em pees her baggy pants. So drunk with wild laughter they don’t wonder at the neighbor who hears them through the wall.

  While Em strips out of her wet pants and into Lu’s pajamas, V ransacks the tidy kitchen for a stale, half-burnt biscuit and a jar of cherry jam. A dish of thick canned peaches from the cupboard in the hall.

  Won’t Lu love this lark? Em says, happier than V has seen her since the Cascade visits stopped. Em lifts Lu’s satin quilt to make room for waitress V. Won’t she be surprised that we were here?

  You know it, V says, handing Em their scavenged picnic, then climbing in beside her, her cheek against Em’s arm just like old times.

  Lu can’t be a better pal than me, V says. Lu Nyquist with her boring Baptist parents, the fancy prism lamps beside her bed, a silver-plated brush V plans to steal. V shoves a piece of sticky biscuit into Em’s always open mouth. Lu wouldn’t do a lark like this with you.

  2.

  Later, V trembles in a cop car while Em jokes that they’re two jailbirds, begs the cop for handcuffs because it’s always been her dream. She wants to see the Big House for herself. Get a file in a cake. Go on the lam. Em telling the cop that Lu’s nosy neighbor ought to learn to mind his own biz. They had Lu’s p
ermission to play hooky at her house.

  You’re a regular Jack Benny, the cop says to shut up Em. He’s had it with her chatter: her fake addresses, fake names. Thirty-Fifth and Portland. Eighteenth Avenue. Twenty-Eighth and Park. She’s Mary Christmas. V’s Eileen Sideways. Hahaha. A wild goose chase to locate parents, but he’s done with fun and games. He can’t blow his whole day driving two dumb broads through town. Better looking than the bums, but still he drops them at the station and leaves them with, Good luck.

  Fingerprints and phone calls. Mr. C won’t answer; Em’s mother can’t be found. Hours later, it’s V’s mother, her own stomach sick with shame, who begs the cop to release V to her home. V’s mother who swears that V’s a good girl. All her girls are good. V’s mother with the husband right beside her, already whiskey-soaked from Topps, insisting they should send V to detention, saying he won’t have a whore inside his house.

  3.

  On the street outside the station, he slaps V across the face. Whore, he says again, and he should know. You want the belt, too, V? You want it now?

  Be good now, V, her mother frets, stepping in between her daughter and that man. You don’t want to be a bad girl.

  I do, V says. Why not?

  4.

  And who will dance for Mr. C tonight?

  “. . . The term delinquent child shall mean a child who violates any law of this state

  or any city or village ordinance;

  or who is habitually truant or incorrigible;

  or who knowingly associates with vicious or immoral persons;

  or who without just cause and without the consent of his parents, guardian, or other custodian absents himself from his home or place of abode,

  or who knowingly visits any place which exists,

  or where his presence is permitted,

  in violation of law;

  or who habitually uses obscene, profane, or indecent language;

  or who is guilty of lewd or immoral conduct involving another person.”

  —William H. Mason, “Chapter 73A; Dependent, Neglected and Delinquent Children,” Mason’s Minnesota Statutes, 1927

  Reformed

  1.

  V, trying to climb back from delinquent, attends school like a good girl, completes her daily homework, goes to bed in that apartment with her mother’s sewing scissors in her hand. He touches her again she’ll take his heart.

  Sunday mornings, feigning purity, she sings beside her mother at Mindekirken Church. In that stony, steepled house of stiff wood pews and stained-glass windows, V stumbles through the hymns in strange Norwegian. Prays the little she remembers: La ditt navn holdes heelig. La ditt rike komme.

  Kill this cell, she adds silently, in case God really hears.

  Then, Please God, let Mr. C be there Monday, because sometimes now he is. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday; V is never sure. But there is Mr. C as a surprise: Waiting in his black Ford after school, parked on Emerson or Fremont, or across the street from Jefferson to be sure V’s staying true. He doesn’t want some ninth-grade punk walking his girl home. Mr. C forcing V to take his money because he knows she needs it now. Reminding V to keep his secrets. Their secrets. Each time warning V to steer clear of the law.

  When things quiet with the cops, he’ll be waiting at the Belvedere for V. A month or two without more trouble, and V will star again as Little Fox.

  2.

  Saturdays, V spends his money on a matinee and more. First, Chesterfields for Em. For V, a cape trimmed with silver fox fur. Fake, but Em swears V wears it well. Chocolate balls and taffy, peppermints and popcorn, treats that they can feast on through the show. V and Em just like the old days, curled up in the velvety day-darkness of the Uptown, Em practicing her smoke rings while V dreams of her future as a dancer in New York. The blinding costume of gold coins she’ll get to wear. V another girl about to make it big.

  Don’t worry, V, Em whispers in the darkness. You can marry Mr. C and be a mother.

  Clever Em who somehow sees the truth that V can’t say. Sees that secret cell.

  No, V says. That isn’t what I want.

  3.

  Afterwards V vomits in the street. Chocolate balls and popcorn bits splattered on V’s boots.

  [And what does V want at fifteen if not motherhood and marriage?

  To have her worthy talent acknowledged by the world?

  To use the gifts that she was given?

  My own dream at fifteen, not to sing, but to write.

  Did V dream beyond the Cascade

  yet settle for a brothel

  like so many shining talents of her time?

  Because the artist must begin her work where she can.

  V burning with the stage-dream my brother chased to Europe.

  Or later still the song and dance obsession consuming my young son.

  Tap-shoe boy at three,

  fixated on Tchaikovsky.

  At ten, phoning for auditions

  he’d found in the Star Tribune.

  Boy dreaming the same V dream.

  Boy who didn’t begin as Little Fox.]

  The Last Good Day

  Forever they will have this last good day.

  The smell of melted snow through his propped window, a closed rose between V’s breasts, the sweet strain of a Victrola through the vent.

  Mr. C telling V her beauty should be bronzed, her flock of perfect freckles, her flawless child face.

  V flutters her sure fingers through his forest of dark chest hair, presses her hot palm against his heart to feel it beat.

  Always that strong heart.

  I want you to just love me, V says. For evermore.

  Sure thing, he says. But forever is a long time when you’re young.

  Luck

  Leaving the Belvedere at lunch time, V runs out of luck. The crabby cop that caught V and Em in Lu’s apartment is standing on LaSalle. Well, Eileen Sideways, he says with a mean smirk. Half-past noon on Wednesday? Shouldn’t you be in school?

  Across the street, the man huddled in the blanket lifts his head to listen. He’s been watching V all winter; he knows where V has been.

  You know someone in that place? the cop asks V. Maybe that fella from the Cascade? The one with all the liquor violations? You come to see him here?

  No, V lies. How does this cop know Mr. C? The Cascade Club? I stepped in to use the toilet.

  Long time to pee. He studies V’s new cape, the fake fox fur, the silk stockings that she wore for Mr. C, the fancy high-heeled Oxfords her school wouldn’t allow. I saw you slip in there this morning.

  This morning? V repeats like he’s confused. She knows better than to glance over her shoulder, to look up toward Mr. C spying through the crack of his closed curtain. He always watches for V’s wave when she crosses on LaSalle.

  A lady thing. V blushes, embarrassed. I didn’t feel up to school, so I stopped here. My girlfriend has a place.

  I bet she does. Good old Mary Christmas? And what room number would that be?

  Six twenty-three, V lies again, hoping if he knocks that guest is gone.

  Sure, he says. Just like you lived on Elliot. And Oakland. And every other street you had me chasing to that day. He squints his eyes at V, bends low to her face, lifts her nervous chin to sniff her breath for booze. What are you, thirteen? Fourteen? He clicks his tongue, tugs the brim of his flat cap. You know I got a girl your age.

  You do? V says, relieved he has a daughter. A father might be kinder. Her father would be kind. She go to Jefferson like me? Ninth grade? Homeroom Mrs. Paisley?

  You’re a damn far way from homeroom, he says, taking a long, slow glance at the seven floors of curtained windows on LaSalle. Six twenty- three? he says, suspicious. Girls get started on the wrong foot, who knows where they end up.

  Life Science


  A full investigation into charges will be made: immorality, truancy, whatever shady business V had in that hotel—but first while V’s in custody, the county doctor must determine if the rabbit lives or dies.

  It’s routine, the awkward county doctor says. He’s college-young, baby-faced, in-training, eager to return to his family farm in Windom. Good clean living in the country. You ought to try it out. He tells all this to V with his fat cheeks burning red.

  When was your last? he asks. You know, any blood down there that you remember?

  V’s desperate for a memory of blood, the sludge-soaked cloth between her legs, but all the days and nights since Mr. C have been a blur.

  Last month? V lies. I’m still too young to be regular. I only got my visitor last year. Too young. The same excuse she gives Mr. C when he asks her why she doesn’t bleed like other girls.

  A river of fresh sweat runs down her ribs onto the table. No blood-smeared sheets with Mr. C, that much V knows. He doesn’t want her girl-stains on his mattress, her blood to touch his skin. Once, in the storeroom of the Cascade, he felt the shame between her legs, then washed his hands with whiskey while V watched.

  Not last month, the county doctor says, laying his hand over V’s abdomen. I can feel a hill already.

  That’s food, V says. I’ve had the money to eat more. Same thing she says to Mr. C when he asks about the weight.

  The doctor glances down V’s gown to see her swollen breasts. And those, he says. Can’t you see they’re awfully big for a small girl? What are you, ninety pounds? The Women’s Bureau will want names—

  But I’m not, V pleads, before he has a chance to finish. College boys have liked her at the Cascade, the rich ones have tipped well. I could get my monthly any minute. And isn’t there a way? You know? Something with a wire? A tea girls drink?