Don’t bounce! V screaming, too. June hates to bounce.
The matron shoving Rose out of the office, latching both locks on her door so V can’t run. You’ll live to see worse, the matron scolds. You’ll forget this in a week.
I won’t, V says, and here she tells the truth.
Attachment Theory: One
June screaming all the way to Minneapolis, frazzled Rose putting her finger in June’s mouth. Mr. C saying, Babies cry. Eventually they quit. [Eventually June claims she cannot cry.] June screaming through tomorrow, and the next day, day after day of racking sobs no one can calm. June in V’s old bedroom, crying in the crib that Cousin Harold bought at Sears. Bottles cold or warm, blankets tight or loose, diapers clean or dirty, rocking, walking, bouncing, nothing comforts June. V’s seamstress mother taking June at midnight so Rose can get some sleep. Rose dead-tired at the bakery, but glad to leave V’s screaming baby at the sitter’s down the hall. June never in Ray’s care because Rose knows. [Or is that just wishful thinking?] Rose a failed mother standing at June’s crib when it’s V that June expects. Forever and forever and forever, it will be V that June has lost.
[Inexplicable to June,
but she cannot love her first-born,
or the ones that follow after
in the years before “the pill.”
Any desperate, cash-strapped stranger,
June will pay to be our mother.
Lazy teenaged girls. Impatient widows.
The indifferent next-door neighbor saving for a car.
When my oldest sister turns six, June lets her take the job.
A heart of stone, June likes to tell us as a joke.
But exactly why she has it, June can’t answer.
That question is the mystery of June.]
Losing June
What V needs now is a dress of mourning crepe. Stiff black. An onyx veil the color of June’s eyes.
All V has learned to love—the smell of powdered skin, the sound of June’s sweet jabber, the rush of June’s milk surging through V’s breasts—all of that is air.
V worships at the altar of lost things, her grief a second skin. A life of constant absence for which V can’t prepare. Nothing in the world will be her own, except perhaps her sins. Every price she’s made to pay, she pays, and pays again.
The life she leads from here—decent or depraved—nothing that V does will bring June back.
Early Lessons Cottage Six
V will live in Cottage Six until parole.
The matron with the spotted hands is mean.
Steal the wooden spools to crimp your hair.
Fast girls do things in private V might like.
Matron Klas smells like moldy cheese and mothballs.
Mary Conway plays the organ Sunday mornings for the service.
Mary Conway is the leader of the Crimps.
If you’re captured on the lam they shave your head.
If you’re captured on the lam then you’ll be tubbed.
If you’re captured on the lam you’re in lock-up for two weeks.
Maybe for a month. Two months.
Bread and milk for meals.
At night you line your shoes outside the door.
Always hang your clothes or they’ll be gone.
The matron does inspection.
The matron with the spotted hands is mean.
If Bonnie Hartman grips your wrist it means you’re in.
Bonnie Hartman is the leader of the Hens.
A girl can’t stand alone here and be safe.
A lone girl is a lamb.
V will need to choose a gang.
The matron with the spotted hands is mean.
“Rules, Regulations, and Disciplinary Policies—[. . .] routine administration of discipline is left to the cottage mothers [. . .] There are no printed rules and regulations and it was stated that ‘ordinary standards of conduct are the basis of discipline at the home school.’
Punishments—The various punishments include deprivation of privileges, confinement in a regular room, extra or unpleasant work assignments, corporeal punishment, cold tubbings, segregation, isolations, and delayed parole.
Corporal punishment, in the form of slapping is permitted but not encouraged.”
—Handbook of American Institutions for Delinquent Juveniles, Vol. 1: West North Central States, 1938
[AND ELSEWHERE OTHER GIRLS
Chillicothe, Tipton, Kearney, Beloit, Plankinton, Mitchellville, Hudson, Geneva, Lancaster, etc. etc. In 1936, young V was not alone. Girls stripped, whipped, laid naked on a desk while others watched. East and West and North and South. Home School, State School, Industrial Training School. State Home for Negro Girls. Schools for problem girls in every state. Girls sterilized against their will, the heyday of eugenics. All girls assigned to house work, farm work, ironing, and laundry. Cottage system as a family so incarceration feels like home.
Firm but loving matrons they call Mother. Schools with sympathetic understanding. Sincere devotion to the training of the immoral and incorrigible. (Of course, the sex problems with some girls cannot be stopped.) Every three months, one month, depends upon the school, visits from the family must be earned. Not here, but there. Dungeon. Hamper. Segregation cells in basements or hot attics. Windows barred with wood or iron. Ventilation adequate. (Not always.) In case of fire, the girls would not escape. Switch across the shoulders. Switch across the legs. School scaled down “to teach the retardation characteristic of these girls.” Library Dewey decimal-ed and censored. Food palatable, or not. Waitress, sink girl, scrub girl. Every girl will get her chance to serve. No social worker, psychiatrist, psychologist. Spanking, slapping, shackled. Or were the shackled only boys? Strapped. Hair cut. Heads shaved. No dinner, no dessert. Deprivation of entertainment, moving pictures, recreation, radio. No records of disciplinary action kept. Punishments at the staff’s discretion. Always their discretion. The law is silent on this matter. The risk of girls going up in flames. Isolation, segregation, standing in a corner for a day.
Not here, but someplace else. Say Ireland, perhaps? The Magdalene’s. Their laundries.
Never in Missouri, Kansas, Minnesota, New York, Massachusetts, California, and every other state.
Never in America. Not us.]
“This training is given to all girls in connection with the regular maintenance work . . . there is no question of ‘cottage training’ being a euphemism for ‘getting institutional work done.’”
“Care of own room and personal sewing 1 month
Room, sewing and halls1 month
Girls’ bathroom1 month
Stairs1 month
Living room1 month
Lower hall1 month
Officers’ room service2 months
When the above schedule has been completed to the satisfaction of the house mother, and the assistant superintendent, the girls are transferred to the dining room and kitchen supervisor to complete the following assignments:
First sink work1 month
Second sink work1 month
Basement1 month
Laundry1 month
Junior waitress1 month
Junior cook1 month
Senior cook2 months
Senior waitress2 months
While serving as senior waitress each girl is required to make her outfit of parole clothing including two work dresses, two afternoon prints, and a silk dress.”
“There is no direct program of character education, it being considered that all activities have character forming as their main objective.”
—Handbook of American Institutions for Delinquent Juveniles, Vol. 1: West North Central States, 1938
Beyond Motherhood
V has grown
solid. Grown strong enough to split the birch and oak, haul it to the fire, and burn whatever love of June is left. Hard work. The matron’s answer to all grief. The lost babies no more than summer frogs the girls found in the forest. Pets the girls couldn’t keep. V imagines her family’s mailbox on Emerson filled with all her secret Missing You’s for June, scribbled notes the school won’t let V send. Maybe a red ringlet of V’s hair. Her mother scent held tight in June’s small hand. V cracks the ax again against the birch, imagines the school disappearing. The dining room of girls. The grimy sink. Anything to make this long day done. Imagines her ax against the matron’s skull. That bitch boss who ripped June from V’s strong arms, whose gravel voice was grit against V’s tender nerves. That bitch. V slams the ax a third time as a wish. How close V comes to murder—the silver second between another’s life and death—how close V comes to knowing she could kill.
Every Two Weeks
V waits for news of June: how many teeth, what new words June can say—just once V wants to hear her daughter’s voice—but suddenly, Rose’s tales of peek-a-boo and patty-cake are gone. Now, the only news of June they write is “fine.”
Fine could be Sally, Susan, Amy, Mary Ann, or Jeanne. Fine is any baby ever born.
V knows the inmates’ missing babies can’t be mentioned at the school; perhaps the families are forbidden from speaking of them, too. Out of sight so out of mind, the staff is quick to say. Cruel silence. But everything is cruel.
Instead, Rose sends V empty updates: A red formal Mother made for Mrs. Winton. Lydia’s Peter sick with sniffles for two weeks. Ray saw a downtown doctor for his hip. (V doesn’t want to hear a word of Ray.) Ida pregnant with her second in Cheyenne.
Time flies, Rose likes to write, and yet it doesn’t.
Hank came by for dinner twice last week. He seems sweet enough on me, but who can tell? He’s working at the brake shop now on Portland. The days are gray. I imagine it’s the same there in Sauk Centre. Maybe we’ll visit for your birthday, if Cousin Harold’s free. Poor Hank’s too broke to buy a car yet, but he will.
June is a happy girl as always.
Two weeks, V waits for this? One short page of nothing. They can burn it in the trash for all she cares. The staff’s already read it; it’s been censored and approved.
Have you finished? Mrs. Klas asks, holding out her hand. Every piece of V belongs to someone else.
V drops the letter on the desk and turns to leave without asking Mrs. Klas first for permission. A serious infraction, but V’s too enraged to care.
Four weeks for your insolence, Mrs. Klas says, locking V’s dull letter in the drawer. I’ll hold onto your mail until your attitude improves.
You go ahead, V says.
Or better yet, six weeks, Mrs. Klas says to V’s stiff back. And they’re not to write of romance. Your sister should know that.
[EVIDENCE OF V: JULY 1975, WYOMING
Imagine someone is a secret.
Imagine all these years not knowing someone lived.
Imagine me, at sixteen on a visit to Cheyenne,
staring at a photo of a strange girl and asking who she is.
She, my great-aunt Ida says,
is our youngest sister, V.
V?
How could there be a sister I didn’t know?
A missing girl
Grandma Rose has never mentioned to me once?
In every tale of her childhood only her two devoted sisters,
Lydia and Ida,
that pair of strong Norwegian women
I’ve loved well.
V? I ask again, confused. Where is she?
Never mind all that, Great Aunt Ida says too quickly,
closing the cover on that history without another word.]
“Each girl is automatically interviewed by the Board of Control at the end of one year in the school. Matron and housekeeper will be asked for their recommendation on her cottage training, work, work habits, and character.
Girl should have clean and fairly new dress when she appears for her interview. Dress preferably made by herself.”
—“Instructions; Sauk Centre Home School.” Reprinted in the Handbook of American Institutions for Delinquent Juveniles, Vol. 1: West North Central States, 1938
Interview Board of Control
For the daughter of a seamstress, V’s sewing is substandard. The Board should check her buttons, take one look at that hem. Obviously, she didn’t dress to impress. (Except V did; she worked hard to sew this modest day dress for the Board.)
Of course, her first months at Fairview Colony can’t be wholly counted toward parole. Those poor pregnant girls are limited in all that they must learn. So busy with their babies in the nursery, and V was meddlesome with hers. Arguing with officers and staff about the child. Coddling. An unnatural attachment to the infant frequently reported by the staff. It’s right there in her records. Not in the best interest of the child.
V’s had four months in Cottage Six to pass personal sewing, and she hasn’t. She’s sloppy and impatient with a tendency to rush. She’ll need better skills to do the sewing for the school. During her first two months with poultry, eggs were left behind. Her attitude is reckless; she forces staff to punish her, she does. And she’s attracted to the worst sex delinquent girls, still too eager to keep company with trouble. Betty Carter. Audra Lamb, who twice tried to escape. So far there’s no sign that V will finish training in a year. Fifteen months would be more likely. And, of course there is the question of the missing father that V named. That Jewish nightclub manager she supposedly brought soup. The Women’s Bureau hasn’t found him yet. Would V like to change her story?
No, she wouldn’t.
It may be another fifteen months before the girl is ready, the Board leader declares.
Fifteen months? V shrieks like she’s insane. She claws deep lines along each cheek, pulls her perfect hair. Let them lock her up; ship her off to the asylum. Other inmates went insane just to get transferred. My baby needs her mother. Every baby does. I can’t train another fifteen months.
Stop with the hysterics, the matron says, unmoved. She doesn’t even glance in V’s direction. This one is a hard case, she says coldly to the Board. Regardless, we intend to persevere.
Escape
When Audra runs in May, V wakes to a shadow in her doorway, wakes to livid Mrs. Klas barking V from bed. Get up, she shouts, and V joins the line of blinking sheep out in the hall. Aiding and abetting: all of them accused of a crime they didn’t commit.
Mrs. Klas zeroes in on V, closes her rough hand around V’s arm. You two lost a spade last week. I read it in the notes. When you were working in the garden.
Audra hid the spade, but V keeps that fact a secret, the same way she’ll keep secret Audra’s shortcut through the corn. Mrs. Klas digs her pointed nails into V’s skin, a little path of puckered moons that leave a pale scar. Proof that V didn’t snitch.
Where is she? Mrs. Klas spits her hate into V’s face.
V hopes Audra’s in a truck with some kind stranger. The sharp spade in her hand in case he isn’t kind. The only weapon she could take for her protection.
How would I know where she went? V yanks her arm away. I’m not my brother’s keeper.
You let V go, Big Martha bellows, and the crowd of captive girls falls into chaos.
V’s ready for a riot, a mutiny, a strike. She thinks about the Teamsters, how they marched on Minneapolis, how they fought in ’34. Mrs. Klas can kill V now; V doesn’t care. The weak light through the windows only means more work to come.
Girls Working in the Field, Minnesota Home School for Girls at Sauk Centre, ca. 1930
State School Pastoral
The aproned servants of V’s nation swelter in the kitchen canning corn, while the officer, Miss Tate, demands perfection.
Everything V does toda
y is wrong.
The silk threads clinging to the cob. Her shucking slow and sloppy.
Who can’t shuck?
A lazy pig like V deserves to starve.
Who does V think she is, the Queen of Sheba?
Miss Tate wants V to crumble, but she won’t.
Instead, V shucks the next husk slower still, calls Miss Tate a bitch, hurls her half-shucked cob across the room.
Bitch, V says again into the slap.
The hot welt a badge of courage V is proud to earn.
“This is by no means a cruel institution, but it is true that house mothers sometimes slap their charges, that tubbings have been used as punishment, and that segregation behind bars and isolation on restricted diet are regular punishments.”
—Handbook of American Institutions for Delinquent Juveniles, Vol. 1: West North Central States, 1938
August 12, 1937
Day 469 finds V beneath a willow, a fallen star weeping like the leaves. Shhh, don’t tell anyone she cried. The days will never end here. Never end. Just once, she wants to jump that late-night train to Minneapolis, the rumbled lure that calls to her in sleep, whistle, whistle, but V’s too small to pull herself into the car. The train’s too fast. Caught beneath the wheel, V would be shredded into slaw.
Not the train, but how?
Four-hundred-sixty-nine days for loving Mr. C. For bringing baby June into the world. For entertaining for good money like girls do every day. She’s nearly seventeen. Everything in Minneapolis has happened without her. She’s a vowel that’s been erased. An I that doesn’t matter to this world.
Evidence of V Page 8