Evidence of V

by Sheila O'Connor

  V’s only friend in this cold city, and he’s more opportunity than friend. I’m in a jam, V frets to Jimmy. I’m dying for the word from Minneapolis, but you know that I can’t get it at the Tafts. If my brother sends a letter, those skunks will read it first.

  The Tafts. He rolls his eyes. Before V did the shopping, Jimmy had to cut the meat for Mrs. Taft. That broad was never happy. He’s told V that before. Heck, you want to use my address, V? Tell your brother to send his letters to my rooming house on Bank Street. 601 West Bank Street. Soon as one arrives, I’ll deliver it myself.

  Jimmy puffs a cloud of Camel smoke into the bitter wind, readjusts the sidewalk sign to make a show of work.

  You got a Camel for me, Jimmy? V hasn’t smoked a cigarette since that terrible day at Lu’s, but Jimmy’s offer of an address makes V’s young heart run wild. She’s going to ditch this place. Write to Mr. C, get out of town. Mr. C will save her. You’re my knight in shining armor. You keep my brother’s letter for me, I’ll get it from you here.

  Sure thing, doll, Jimmy says, giving V that friendly wink. (Even homely boys are winking in the story of V’s life.) You give old Jimmy’s address to your brother. Old Jimmy’s here to help.

  “. . . Only now and then, one born under a lucky star is adopted and educated by large-minded foster parents who recognize that the illegitimate is not responsible for having come into this world under conditions opposed to the best interest of society.”

  —Maurice A. Bigelow, Sex-Education: A Series of Lectures Concerning Knowledge of Sex in Its Relation to Human Life, 1916

  A Lucky Star

  On a day that’s winter blue, in a Nash Hank bought on credit (V rushes to the window hoping for the Ford), Rose and Hank suddenly arrive. Hank holding Rose’s hand like she’s a girl. Hank broad-faced and early- bald, less handsome than the fleeting husband Rose divorced.

  I bet that you’re surprised, Rose says. (Stunned would be a better word.) Rose and Hank acting like two lovebirds in the parlor at the Tafts? Taking a sudden Sunday drive up to Duluth?

  And now inexplicably V’s visitor is here, stamping snow loose from her boots, shaking hands with Rose and Hank and Mrs. Taft. Handing an orange candy stick to Frankie. The visitor V hasn’t seen in months.

  V feels a wheel turn toward some new darkness. An unexpected gathering, like the day Rose walked across the playground to tell V their father died. Rose a stranger at V’s recess; Rose a stranger here.

  June? V asks, seized by mother-terror that nearly stills her voice.

  A handful, Rose says, glowing, but so sharp. Talk talk talk. Another time we’ll bring her. You won’t believe how much she’s grown.

  I’d really like that, Rose, V says. V knows her daughter’s growing; she’s imagined every inch. I would. You can drive up any day. And Mother? Is that why Rose is here?

  Still not fond of cars, Hank says, but that isn’t what V asked.

  Well anyway, Rose rattles like an ordinary day. Surprise! Hank and I got married! Married! So now Rose and V may kiss. A small service after Christmas! Nothing fancy.

  How wonderful! the visitor agrees, a stack of tidy papers in her lap. And how wonderful for you, V.

  Wonderful for V? Have Rose and Hank come to take V home? Is that the Sunday secret no one’s said? Do you two already have a place? V asks, excited. Maybe V and June will live with Rose.

  Yes, Rose says. On Elliot off Lake. Not far from Sears. We’re at Thirty- Fourth. A homey second floor apartment. (Hank rub-rubbing Rose’s hand, tap-tapping his left foot like he’s impatient.) Well-heated. And June is with us, too.

  June? She’s not with Mother anymore? Does she have a little room? A little room that V and June could share?

  She does, Hank says. (V doesn’t want to hear from Hank.) Rose fixed it up real nice.

  So, you don’t mind, then? Rose asks sweetly, her gloves still in her hands, a second question hidden in the first.

  V looks from Rose to Hank to Mrs. Taft. To the visitor with papers. What is it in this news that V should mind? June out of the railroad worker’s reach?

  Mind what? V asks.

  If Hank. If Hank and I—

  They’ve petitioned for adoption, Mrs. Taft announces. In the best interest of the child.

  I have the paperwork in order, the visitor chimes in. The home study was conducted. She’s a lucky little girl.

  No, V says. No adoption. June is mine. You can’t have her, Rose. Now Dr. Taft watches from the doorway of his den. V outnumbered five to one, and still she fights. Why can’t I raise her here? Find a room where we could live? She won’t be any bother while I work.

  You’re hardly fit to be a mother, Mrs. Taft says sternly. And that child isn’t yours, V.

  She is, V says, forced to hide her temper so she doesn’t lose parole. I’m the one who had her.

  But Hank already loves her like his own. Rose’s anxious face moving between love and regret. He’s so good with her, he is. I promise she’ll have everything—

  And what would I be then, June’s aunt? No, V says again. She’s eighteen; they can’t make her sign. I’m her mother, Rose. Why can’t I just go home and raise her now? Live with you and Hank? All of us together? We can be a family. I’m not the girl I was, I swear—

  That isn’t going to work, Hank says. We want her to be ours.

  Quite naturally, Mrs. Taft agrees. And doesn’t V have three more years to serve?

  One-thousand-twenty-seven days to be exact.

  Letter

  Letter up V’s sleeve. Literally. Letter tucked between V’s arm and winter coat. Letter on Dr. Taft’s Italian paper, stolen from the left drawer of his desk. Last chance letter asking Mr. C to save her. Save June. Letter that can’t say exactly all that V endures, but Mr. C can read between the lines. You remember what those men tried at the Cascade? He still has a promise left to keep. Things are critical. Acute. Two desperate words V’s learned from Dr. Taft.

  But first the inquisition from the mistress: Where will you walk, V? When will you return? Thursdays 1:00 to 3:00 are V’s free hours, the only time that she’s entitled, and still she must account for every step.

  The public library, of course, V says, stepping out the doorway. If the letter is discovered, she’ll be sent back to Sauk Centre, locked in isolation, tubbed, and shaved, and starved. But worse, the clock begins again.

  Now V is outside breathing, breathing snow, and lake, and cloud, the distant drone of train giving her hope. Last chance letter to be sent. Hello from Little Fox. Remember me? Letter asking for a ticket, or Mr. C can drive up to Duluth. Bring June. They can cross the border into Canada. If he sends a time and date to V’s friend Jimmy, she’ll be ready to escape. Rose wants to steal our daughter, wants to keep her. Do you ever go to see her, Cousin Harold?

  Letter asking if there’s love. Or was there ever love? Secret letter. Mr. C can’t tell a living soul. Letter saying he lived free. He did. All this time, a man about his business. A man in Minneapolis.

  Letter saying not to worry: If he doesn’t want to marry V, she’ll raise June on her own.

  What V Hears from Mr. C

  Depleted

  Was V smoking with that boy outside the butcher, the doctor wants to know? Again? Hasn’t he forbidden V already? Hasn’t she been punished? (He has; she has. V no longer cares.) I had to hear it from a patient, the doctor says. Again.

  V’s been bad again, Frankie says, hungry for V’s blood. You forbid her, Father. Better punish V.

  Mrs. Taft with her red lips bent in a frown. Pinching her pearl earrings, the way she does when she’s upset. I don’t know how much longer I can do this, she laments to Dr. Taft, as if V’s not at their oven forking porkchops on a plate.

  You want to be a common whore, V? Dr. Taft asks. Smoking on the street? Haven’t you learned anything? Dr. Taft just like her mother’s husband without the
menthol salve and limp.

  It doesn’t seem so, Mrs. Taft says. I’m honestly depleted. And I won’t have that kind of girl—

  What’s a whore? Frankie wants to know. V sets the porkchops on the table, turns to get the green beans sweet with bacon. She’d spit into their beans if they weren’t watching her right now.

  Please let us eat in peace, Mrs. Taft says with a sigh. Go up to your room, V.

  I’ll work with her, the doctor says.

  No, Mrs. Taft says, snatching the crystal bowl of beans out of V’s hand. What more can we do to help this girl?

  “Parolees may be returned at the discretion of the parole agents for violation of parole or for readjustment and retraining. If returned for violation of parole they lose their parole status and must be reparoled by the Board of Control.”

  —Handbook of American Institutions for Delinquent Juveniles, Vol. 1: West North Central States, 1938

  PAROLED CHILDREN

  Returned to Institution:

  Temporarily      5

  Illness         17

  Homes unsuitable      1

  Employment unsuitable      1

  Misconduct      45

  Other causes       40

  Died on Parole      2

  —Minnesota Home School for Girls at Sauk Centre, “Report of Population for Month Ending November 30, 1935”

  Hide and Seek

  Frankie in the playroom with his guns. Mrs. Taft in town to have her waves refreshed. The selfless doctor gone to work.

  V hunts the hidden places for their cash. Cash or coins, she’ll keep either one. Papers beneath the mattress, tins, bedside books, the row of empty handbags on the shelf. Dr. Taft’s wool suits. Every crack and crevice V can find.

  Room by room, methodical, silent as the snow.

  How much will it cost to rent a room for her and June? In Madison, Milwaukee, Chicago, or Detroit.

  How much will it cost to catch a train to Mr. C? Mr. C will have the money to get V out of town.

  V can’t serve another day of her parole. Can’t endure the doctor. He should pay for what he takes, he owes that much to V. She can’t let June be raised without her mother, she just can’t. She needs to get her daughter.

  V! Frankie screams. You need to play with me now!

  V slips the garnet Christmas cufflink in her bra. Maybe she can pawn it in Duluth. Or sell one garnet cufflink to a stranger on the street, the way V and Em used to sell V’s songs.

  But what good is one cufflink?

  V! he screams again. You promised hide and seek!

  She did.

  A set of two is what V needs. A pair. A pair might buy a ticket. Two. V and June a pair. Now V tucks the second cufflink in her sock. Mother- daughter cufflinks. Mother-daughter hide and seek. Mother-daughter running from parole.

  Wicked

  At last V is the wicked girl, unraveled. Locking Frankie in the basement in a game of hide and seek. Nothing but a coat to keep her warm. A pair of stolen cuff links. June’s picture in the pocket of her coat. V can’t be bothered packing, can’t haul a suitcase on the run. Can’t listen to those basement screams, Frankie’s frantic pounding at the door. Or risk Mrs. Taft home early. Mrs. Taft who wants V to be gone. Gone is where she’ll be. So far gone they’ll never find her. No one ever will. V gone from their front door. Running past the wide-eyed witness beating a rug clean in the wind. What’s the hurry, little missy, house on fire? V running down the street. Running between houses. Running toward the tracks. The train. Toward the highway out of town. V that wicked running house girl the good Tafts tried to help.

  [Put her on the train,

  the bus,

  on the floor of a back seat,

  or waving down a ride on 61—

  a beautiful small girl

  shivering in snow.

  Child-girl.

  Who doesn’t want to help

  a pretty girl?

  Put her at the pawnshop

  with her cufflinks for fresh cash.

  The only proof of V’s escape

  discovered in the school’s daily ledger of minutia:

  V escaped parole.]

  “We would also recommend that the present rigid routine of punishment for returned parole violators be modified. Success or failure on parole depends upon so many factors over and above the girl’s willingness to succeed that it seems hardly fair to subject every violator to the rigorous punishment of ten days in isolation and several weeks or months in segregation.”

  —Handbook of American Institutions for Delinquent Juveniles, Vol. 1: West North Central States, 1938

  [And because V’s not only V,

  but in the company of thousands,

  I examine other pages

  from the school’s daily ledger.

  One January week:

  Betty J escaped parole.

  Ruby L escaped parole.

  Marian H escaped parole.

  Lorraine D escaped parole.

  Four girls in seven days.

  And from another in November:

  Gwendolyn R was returned.

  Gladys O was returned.

  Candace T was returned.

  Three girls in six days failed at parole.

  I will leave you to the white space of parole.]

  Minneapolis

  The city stalled by snow just as V remembers; V trudging through the alley in her dull gray winter coat. Weighty dense flakes clinging to her curls. Her stiff hands in her pockets, her wool mittens at the Tafts. Cold men huddle in the cracks between garages, children too. Lucky V, the new escapee indecipherable in snow. Now, V walking east on Lake Street, the parking lot of Sears nearly empty. To the north the city skyline paper-white. The whole city disappearing, and yet V knows exactly where she is, knows the streets of Minneapolis like her skin. A city snowstorm like that blizzard she shared with Mr. C, the two of them sleeping or not sleeping, curled together on their coats until the morning route was cleared. Mr. C carrying high-heeled V out to his Ford to deliver her to Em’s in time for junior high. Mr. C, her second stop tonight in Minneapolis. June first: June always first. Then, Little Fox and her sweet daughter will step into the warm Cascade Club like two small snowy ghosts.

  Homecoming

  1.

  In an alley east of Elliot, hands and feet frozen stiff and numb, V lurks behind a dumpster in the dark, watches as Rose walks across a room of golden light, bends down at the waist, stands, then bends again. In that second-floor apartment, June is playing on the floor. Surely when Rose bends, she bends to June.

  V needs to get to June before Hank comes home from the brake shop. Growing up, Rose couldn’t say no to V. In their roles from Little Women, Rose played the patient Beth to V’s Amy. V the spoiled youngest sister Rose tried to indulge. Benevolent Rose will want V to be happy; she’s always wanted that. Of course, she’s fond of June, but Rose and Hank will have a baby of their own.

  Present, past, and future, June belongs to V. A baby needs her mother; Rose will understand.

  V has to take June now before the cops come on their hunt. The law will look. The law will capture V and lock her at Sauk Centre.

  Rose walks to the window, glances at the alley, then draws the drapes against the snow.

  2.

  No, Rose says when V is at her door. I can’t let you in; you know I can’t. They’re looking for you, V.

  Please, V pleads, showing her white fingers. I’m freezing. I just need to get warm. I’ve been running since this morning.

  And why? Rose says, disgusted. Now you’ll start at the beginning. You’ll be sent back to that school, and who knows after that? Prison for your life? Is that what you want, V?

  No,
V says. Please don’t be angry with me, Rose.

  You’ve squandered every chance you’ve ever had. We spoiled you, we did.

  Rose, V begs. At least let me get warm.

  I can’t, Rose says again. I don’t want trouble with police. They’ve already been to Mother’s. You can’t know the worry that you are. How fragile Mother is now. How much you’ve put her through. And now to be so selfish with those papers. To deny our poor sweet Margaret—

  Margaret? V says, afraid that she might vomit at that word. You can’t call June “Margaret.” She’s not your daughter, Rose.

  She is, Rose says. Who has been her mother, V? These past two years? Who has?

  3.

  June playing on a rag rug. June laying her fancy doll down in the cradle, little wooden rocker Hank made for her last Christmas. A head of wild black curls. Mr. C’s dark eyes. You know me. June? V asks, slipping into the apartment.

  June? V tries again, but June won’t look in V’s direction.

  It’s Margaret, Rose says sternly. She only goes by Margaret.

  4.

  Not Margaret. Not ever.

  Come here, come here, sweet baby. I want to see you, honey girl. V wants June to run into her arms, but June’s indifferent. She’s too busy with her doll, holding her upside down by one black shoe, rocking that homemade cradle back and forth. Singing rock-a-bye the way V did in nursery. Do you remember how we waltzed? V wants to ask, but their waltzes won’t mean anything to June.

  5.

  And how could you? Rose starts in. After the school worked so hard to find you that fine home.

  Not so fine, V says. It wasn’t fine.

  Well, fine enough, Rose argues. You’re eighteen, V. When will you grow up?