Last year homely Donna Rice got sentenced to the state school for eight years for being pregnant. Her empty choir chair was a sin for all to see. If there really is a baby, V needs it to be gone.
A wire? he says, worried. Don’t ever try that trick.
V shivers as he writes that in her record. Not that, please, V begs. I honestly didn’t mean it. You can cross that last part out.
I wish I could, he says, concerned. But the Women’s Bureau needs to know the trouble with you girls.
Not with me, V says. I don’t have any trouble. Whatever trouble he discovers can quickly disappear. V heard that a waitress at the Cascade “was,” then wasn’t. Mr. C can end it; he’ll know someone who will.
What V Knows from Her Clippings
Any star can fall.
Don’t lose your heart or your head.
A girl needs courage.
Put on a costume. Get to work.
A determined girl moves on from heartbreaks.
Remember men act foolishly. Don’t be a foolish girl.
Keep your sights set on the stage.
The world rewards a smile.
Applause can’t last.
Don’t dally at a table full of drunks.
Lots of girls have looks and talent.
A figure only goes so far, but a showgirl won’t go far without her figure.
Girls are always waiting in the wings.
When a star runs into trouble, she should take it like a champ.
[INCIDENTAL EVIDENCE]
Girls and women who become mothers out of wedlock may be divided into the following types:
(a)The mentally subnormal girl who lacks controlling inhibitory instincts and is an easy victim because of helplessness;
(b)the young, susceptible girl, unprotected from dangers, who gets into trouble because of lack of understanding, or through force;
(c)the more mature young woman of good character who is led by false promises or who weakly or rashly follows an instinct that under other conditions would have been normal and social;
(d)the really delinquent girl or woman, who knowingly chooses antisocial conduct, her illegitimate maternity being only an incidental evidence of repeated immorality.
—Emma O. Lundberg, Children of Illegitimate Birth and Measures for Their Protection, Bureau Publication No. 166, U.S. Department of Labor, Children’s Bureau, 1926
Consolation Mr. C
Of course, Mr. C can’t find a doctor or propose. Not with V fifteen, the court involved, the cops, a baby on the way she can’t abort. A short stint at the state school and the worst of this will pass.
Behind him the night laughter of drunk men escapes the Cascade Club. At V’s wet feet, the alley puddles blue with melted snow. Oil rainbows and bar garbage is how V will think of spring.
Spring, a season V will finish someplace else.
Is she his Freddy Burk now? She can almost feel the press of gun against her skull. She’s a girl without a suitcase, a girl who needs to dig her way to Timbuktu or China.
But I don’t want to go, V says, swallowing her sob.
You’re a few years short of marriage, kid.
This isn’t about marriage. It’s V caged until she’s twenty-one. V caged while Mr. C—
The county could commit me for six years.
Mr. C’s a man of means. He owns a Ford, a wallet thick with bills. He knows businessmen and bootleggers from California to New York, men building a bright city called Las Vegas. He could run away with V before tomorrow’s hearing. V’s sister Rose lives in Milwaukee; they can hide with Rose.
Six years, V repeats. Six years ago, she played with Ziegfeld paper dolls and patterns. She started that stupid scrapbook about showgirls, their tragedies and triumphs, while dreaming of her own. Six years from now—
Who will that V be?
Don’t worry, Mr. C soothes, taking the starched kerchief from his pocket to dab at V’s wet cheeks like she’s a child. She is a child. You go off and lay that robin’s egg. Get done with that, and then you can come home.
Minnesota History Center Notes, January 10, 2001
In this hushed library of history, pale wooden tables and chairs, a cardboard box of fragile documents delivered by the clerk, I sit beside my gray-haired mother poring over papers for the story of her birth. A state-held mother-daughter puzzle made from yellowed scraps.
Baby________ 1936. June’s adoption record sealed by law for one hundred silent years, but steely June has pried it open with a letter to the court. A plea to know her truth before a century has passed. The court can do the math; in 2036 June will be dead.
June stares down at her slim archive, studies buried facts and data trying to find the story. Familiar names and addresses. Faint type-written notes we struggle to decipher. Words gone with time and now are lost.
She was dancing at fifteen? June says with concern. Singing? At the Cascade Club on Nicollet? And he was thirty-five? June, the dispassionate accountant, distressed by addition and subtraction, by the numbers in her file that lead to a father.
And this! June says, her shocked whisper pulling me from my own pages, causing quiet patrons to turn toward June’s alarm. June’s palm pressed to her chest as if an accident has occurred. Until twenty-one, she says with disbelief. V was sentenced until twenty-one, for what?
June passes me the judgment, points to that terrible wording that commits her ninth-grade mother as an inmate for six years. For me, June says, answering her own question with an unfamiliar mix of guilt and sadness. Six years for being pregnant? Can you imagine at fifteen?
No, I lie, because I’m already imagining a fifteen-year-old dancer, imagining the Sauk Centre institution where baby June was born.
[HERE THE WRITER TURNS TO RESEARCH]
•Mason’s Minnesota Statues 1927. Supplement 1936.
•Laws of other states.
•Books on girls. Girls as entertainers. Delinquents. Reformatories. Unwed mothers 1935. The history of unwed mothers.
•Juvenile crime in Minnesota.
•Antisemitism in Minneapolis 1930s. (Why the many mentions of “Jews” inside V’s file?)
•Minneapolis liquor violations: Cascade Club.
•Organized crime in Minneapolis.
•Carnal knowledge.
•Adjudication of paternity.
•Bastards.
•History of prisons Minnesota. History of prisons.
•History of girls.
•History as context, not conclusion, because so little of this history is true.
Finding of Facts
First, the air lost from V’s lungs. A quiver in her heart that can’t be heard. The county courtroom closing on all sides.
Then the fat judge makes a joke about fast girls, and someone laughs. Her stepfather. Yes, the disabled railroad worker is laughing with the judge. And he’s done all he can to help the girl.
Her mother’s narrow face folds to a frown. The distance between her heart and V’s is a sea that V can’t cross.
The girl’s a deviant and truant, her mother’s husband says. Every fact the county found against V is in the record now. The Cascade Club. The dancing. This pregnancy. The day she stayed too long inside the Belvedere Hotel. A showgirl at that club run by the Jews. She’s been immoral with those men and now she’s pregnant. My good wife is too lenient. She can’t control the child.
What’s the matter with you girls? The judge shakes his head disgusted. V’s sorry for so much, but she can’t say it. Half-dressed and entertaining drunks just to earn a dime. Pregnant with a child this country can’t afford.
V can’t afford it either.
Gonorrhea. Syphilis. Who knows what diseases— The stepfather again. She’s worse than weekend sailors—
; I don’t have— V interrupts, because she doesn’t.
You don’t have common decency, the judge says before V can correct him. But you’ll learn it at the state school. They’ll see to it you do. Twenty- one, he orders, scrawling his name across a paper V will never see. I hope that baby finds a family. I hope to God it’s not another girl.
Guardianship
Because no crime has been committed, because a house has not been robbed, because nothing has been vandalized or stolen, and no one has been harmed, except for V, there is no crime for which she has been charged.
Instead the state commits V as IMMORAL: an offense against society. An offense reserved for girls. (Or Incorrigible/Immoral, depending on the class.) Delinquent boys are arsons, fighters, thieves.
The state so much better suited than V’s working, widowed mother (an eighth-grade education, foreign born, a seamstress) to reform a wayward girl.
[The crime is Mr. C’s,
but do you think he served six years?]
[THE WRITER TRIES TO MAKE SENSE OF THE LAW]
The law authorizes the school to receive girls between the ages of eight and eighteen
[eight and eighteen]
upon commitment by a juvenile court
commitment [consignment to a penal or mental institution]
after a finding of delinquency
delinquency [behavior especially by the young, that is antisocial]
The commitment proceedings are in the nature of guardianship hearings
guardian [a person who guards, protects, or takes care of another]
and do not constitute a criminal record
criminal [involving illegal activities]
The guardianship may be extended until a child is twenty-one years of age
[twenty-one years of age]
—Handbook of American Institutions for Delinquent Juveniles, Vol. 1: West North Central States, 1938
“The commitment proceedings are in the nature of guardianship hearings and do not constitute a criminal record.”
—Handbook of American Institutions for Delinquent Juveniles, Vol. 1: West North Central States, 1938
The Last Gift That He Gives Her
A teardrop necklace. Costume jewelry cheap. Rhinestone blue and common; V has seen the same on other girls.
She rolls it between her thumb and fingers like a thing that she doesn’t want.
I wish I could do more, he says. I do. A lie so weak, V vows in that moment to forget it’s what he said. Those words, and his impatient, perfect knuckles drumming on the desk. Mr. C so obviously eager for the last of V to end. I’ll come to visit when I can, he says rising from his desk chair. His eyes already leaving V and looking toward the door. You keep our secret, Little Fox, we’ll be together.
How? V asks. She tries to slit her thumb on the sharp edge of the rhinestone. No blood, the stone still teardrop blue. He can give it to another girl. He will.
You wait and see, he says, rushing V out toward the alley, giving her a bird kiss before he opens the back door. I might be a man of minor honor, but sometimes minor honor is enough.
Were
Fallen woman. Fallen girl. Fallen from the grace of God. Parading like a peacock. Bringing home sin money from those men.
This is what V’s mother says, as she snips a keepsake souvenir of V’s red curls, returns the scissors to the basket for tomorrow’s seamstress work.
I remember who you were. You were the apple of my eye. Your good sisters never would have done so wrong.
Now V is wrong and were. Someone past. Someone loved and lost. Her last supper of chipped beef simmers on the stove. Her oldest sister Lydia on the way to say good-bye. Rose married in Milwaukee. Ida in Cheyenne with a baby of her own.
Tonight, the railroad worker’s gone to Topps, and V is glad.
Tonight, he’ll try to visit V in bed and call her whore.
Once you were a good girl, V’s mother says, confused. Reading on that rag rug. Always Little Women.
For so long V played the role of pampered Amy. But weren’t they all the March girls, industrious and brave, learning to make do without a father?
What happened to that girl? her mother asks, sealing V’s curl into an envelope she’ll find in thirty years.
Where did that girl go?
[Where did that girl go?
Those girls?
V not only V now.
V, yes, but V also a statistic.
V about to be a girl among the thousands who were held.
June about to be a baby among babies
whose birth stories can’t be known.
Stories sealed into silence.
But wasn’t that the point?]
[EVIDENCE OF V: 1970, DOWNTOWN MINNEAPOLIS
On a sick day home from school, accountant June is home, too—an anomaly, June never misses work. June takes me on an errand, for what she will not say. There is no reason that June should want me with her. June prefers to leave her children, sick or not. And yet, this day, June oddly needs me near. Needs me with her at the counter once her number has been called. It’s her birth certificate she’s after; I’m twelve, so that much I understand. The wait is slow. Already, the customers behind us have been helped. I’m fever-sweating in my turtleneck and Levi’s, the fake-rabbit-fur cropped jacket June gave to me on Christmas. (My sister gave to me on Christmas; my older sister shops for June.)
When the clerk finally returns, the birth certificate she offers June is wrong. This isn’t it, June says. June’s a force; if she wants a different piece of paper the clerk should find one fast. I want to warn the nervous clerk, but I stand quiet. This can’t be mine, June says. I’m thirty-three; I should know where I was born. I wasn’t born in Sauk Centre. The nervous clerk is sorry, very sorry. There must be some mistake, June says, go back and look again.
My fever, I remind June, tugging on the sleeve of her old coat. Everyone is watching; but watching won’t stop June. June doesn’t give a shit what people think, and we shouldn’t either.
Look, June insists. Go back and look again.
Madame, you should leave. Now it’s a man who tries to quiet June. Man-ager. This is all that we can give you. Do you want your birth certificate or not?
Go to hell, June says, I don’t need a man to tell me—but then she grabs the paper, storms out of that office leaving me to trail. (All my life I trail June.)
This much I know for certain: That birth certificate, it isn’t what June wants. That’s what I’ll remember. That, and June folding that horrible paper into thirds like a letter she won’t read. June stone silent until the elevator empties, but then that whispered warning: Don’t you ever tell a living soul what we did today. Not a living soul.
I won’t, I promise June, proud to share her secret.
Unsure for years of what our secret is.]
II.
AND HER THERE SAFELY KEEP
In the name of the STATE OF MINNESOTA, you, the said SHERIFF are hereby commanded and required forthwith to convey the said ______________ into the custody of the Superintendent of the Home School in Sauk Centre, Stearns County, Minnesota; and you, the said SUPERINTENDENT are hereby commanded to receive the said ______________ into your custody, and her there safely keep until she shall become 21 years of age.
—Found legal document
[ERASURE: THE SUPERINTENDENT SPEAKS]
“now that I may keep to my subject I may show you in a more intensive way the purpose of our institution our Minnesota Home School state institution for delinquent girls on petition or complaints of parent, guardian, or officer of the law, any girl if found guilty of incorrigibility, immorality, vagrancy nor is an actual offense always a necessity girls have been sent to us “in danger of becoming delinquent, incorrigible, immoral” while
by law all commitments must be “until the age of twenty-one” following an intensive training in the institution the girl is paroled by the board to a home or occupation of the state’s finding in our school at Sauk Centre 310 girls with 270 under our care in the community the motive of the institution a social readjustment of the girl who through disadvantage has become a social offender or social misfit its purpose the making of decent wives and mothers and home-makers built on the cottage plan each such cottage represents an independent family unit or group family room, dining room, kitchen, and individual sleeping rooms scattered over large acreage of open space and woodland administration building, hospital, chapel, and farm buildings mention should be made here of our colony for the young unmarried mother a mile and a half from the institution proper added to this group, supplementing and humanizing another group of our girls, who because of mental defect, should not be returned to the community the latter we term the non-social group the advantages of the cottage system segregation into small groups according to former experiences and offense so complete is our segregation many a girl on the completion of her training goes out ignorant of the names of the mass of girls outside her cottage group society’s greatest need today is the home to grow in the girl this home sense: a consciousness of the possibilities of a home, a desire for it how to fulfill it the home as a factor in the building of women the girl’s first loaf of bread is to her a greater pride than is many a college diploma farm work and gardens, planting of shrubbery and trees, mowing of lawns as a means of humanizing the girl I refer to the actual production which the farm labor of our girls today represents this last year over 900 acres were cared for; over 500 acres of this under field and garden cultivation largely the work of the girls thousands of quarts of vegetables have been canned the educational department lends itself almost entirely to the one purpose of the institution, training for home life education through books is a slow process nor have most of our girls a basis for such to what degree is our work proving good? all success is relative, but would you count a mean accomplishment the rehabilitation of a home by a girl of fifteen; the carrying back family standards and domestic values no girl leaves without a higher ideal that in the inevitable, natural force of things must somewhere, somehow, some time find expression. A denial of this would be a denial of the eternal.”
Evidence of V Page 4