Joanne

The blistering heat created subtle waves across the fields for as far as I could see. As I waited in the beating sun, I saw Little Orphan Annie dancing across the waves, Sandy in tow. 

Instead of the dog, I had a worn, brown suitcase at my side, containing whatever would fit from my room at Miss Eleanor’s House for Girls. I was standing at the bus stop a mile and a half down the road, which was more or less a weathered sign on a pole that the driver of the 152 knew to slow down for when they saw a person standing idle. 

The fields and dusty air of Jackson, Michigan was a far cry from New York City, and still a world’s difference from Dearborn.

In Dearborn, street after street, neat rows of bungalows sat with their swung porches and pretty yards. There, doting husbands came home from work at 6 o’clock to their beautiful wives and their beautiful children, whose foreheads were kissed upon arrival just before they all sat in a circle around the dinner table and bowed their heads to pray. Prayer before dinner was optional at Miss Eleanor’s; I guess she thought we didn’t have much to be grateful for. 

If pity was currency, I’d be one rich girl. Forget your run-of-the-mill orphan, everyone at Miss Eleanor’s knew I was a special case. The talk started eight years ago when I stepped foot into the house, and the whispers followed me everywhere I went. I could hear them from under the bathroom stall door in the morning and I overheard girls at tables behind me while I shuffled through the lunch line. The worst of them all was Miss Eleanor’s assistant, Miss Julia, an awkward 30-something, with a perpetual frown, which only deepened when she encountered me. 

At times, I wished I was one of them - one of the many girls who didn’t know another way. I wish I could have said this was all I’ve ever known: the revolving door at Miss Eleanor’s who housed the girls who despite being different ages and having different faces all had the same forlorn look. But the day dad’s ‘33 Ford V-8 drove onto Miss Eleanor’s property is scorched into my memory. He pulled the little suitcase that was next to a cooing baby from the backseat, and lugged what was all of maybe 10 pounds to the house as if it took every ounce of his energy to carry. I stood frozen by the car as he walked toward the front door where Miss Julia was waiting. Arms folded in the arched doorway, she looked so small compared to the massive Victorian-style home she stood within. 

Come on, Jo. His voice was small and worn like the little suitcase he toted.

As Dad handed the bag to Miss Julia, it was the first time I saw her deep frown, and the last time I saw his. When I think about his face today, I picture it never having gone away.

***

When I heard the click click click of Miss Julia’s heeled Oxford’s coming down the hall, I was reading The Glass Menagerie, a novel I finally got my hands on after the latest shipment from Used Books came last Tuesday.

Tap. Tap tap. 

Jo? Are you in there? 

I emerged from under the quilt. 

I have a letter for you. It’s from...it’s from Donna. 

I slapped the pages of the hardcover shut. The last time I heard her name was when Miss Eleanor told us a girl named Donna, a pale, sheepish 12-year-old, would be staying here for a few weeks until her adoption papers went through. She was nothing like my Donna. My Donna always had more to say than Chatty Cathy, dark ringlet curls that fell messily around her plump, pink cheeks and enormous brown eyes, just like our mother. With those features, I bet she’s beautiful now. 

Donna was just two years younger than me, and a devoted sidekick of her own making. If dad needed me to pick up cigarettes from the corner shop, Donna’s shoes were on and waiting to be tied before I reached the closet. If I was reading before bed, Donna was curled at my feet like a dog, sleeping there until I gave her a gentle nudge to drag herself to the bed opposite mine. 

Despite our big-little relationship, Donna wasn’t the youngest and I wasn’t the oldest. Jack was, then Shirley, followed by Bill and Helen, and me. Donna was the baby until John and James was born, and Jerry just a year and a half after them.

I’ve always told myself that they didn’t write because they were ashamed - the older ones - for not stopping it. I remember looking up the staircase to see them huddled on the top step while dad rushed around the house looking for the last bits of Jerry and my life there, scooping them up and tossing them in a bag with some of our loose trinkets.

Mom wasn’t home that day. She hadn’t been in weeks. She was having an episode. I wouldn’t know if it was her last, but it was the one that pushed dad over the edge. He was getting crushed by the weight of nine kids, his post as the city’s fire captain and a mentally ill wife. 

Years into being at Miss Eleanor’s, I’d often fall asleep thinking about him -  pitying him. Becoming an empath for his strife. I longed for clarity, so I told myself that dad lay awake at night, just as I was doing, thinking about what he was going to do.

The older ones can fend for themselves, but they’re too young to care for the little ones. They aren’t parents, they didn’t sign up to be. It’s not their job. 

There’s five young ones. Mary next door can help me care for Donna and the twins.

Jerry’s a baby, he has a fighting chance. But Joanne.

By the time I pictured him thinking about what to do with me, I’d be thrust from the lucid dream with tears streaming down my face and a cold, wet pillow to show for it. 

***

Miss Julia knocked again.

I’ve got to get back downstairs. A new family is coming for pick up in 20 minutes. The letter is on the floor. 

I slid into my slippers and poked my head out into the empty hall. The only sound was a distant melody and the rich tone of Billy Holiday spilling out of the laundry room. 

I walked the envelope back to the room’s writing desk, studying the handwriting. The address was scrawled with a neat, plump cursive - a departure from the wobbly letters she’d scribble on scratch paper next to me as I journaled years ago.

Miss Eleanor’s House for Girls

Attention: Miss Joanne O’Connor

23315 North Rosehill Road

Jackson, Michigan 49202

I turned the letter over in my hands. My eye caught the return address.

Miss Donna O’Connor

562 Silvery Lane

Dearborn, Michigan 48128

It wasn’t my home address. It was mailed from the opposite side of town from where we grew up. There was money in those parts.

I don’t know what I expected, but my heart sank at the realization that things in my family’s life had changed. When people are out of sight, it’s easy to press the memory of them in a book like roses. Frozen in time, they become carbon copies of the last moment you felt them wrap their arms around you or heard them say your name. 

I stared at my reflection in the mirror that hung above the writing desk. In eight years, I grew five inches taller, said the pencil markings on the bedroom door. My hair no longer laid in fits of curls, but smoothed out into soft waves with time. Just last year, Miss Julia smirked while measuring me for spring clothes, noting my adherence to each food group was paying off - I measured a “perfect 35:29:35.” Back home, there were some days I told Donna I was full just so she could have the last of my bread, and it showed on the skinny frame I donned when I first showed up at this place.

 I ripped the envelope from the top, exposing a single piece of paper. 

Joanne,

I hope you are well. First and foremost, I’m sorry this is the first time I’m putting pen to paper, I really am. But I think I’ll just get on with it. 

Jack’s back from France and has a girl he really likes. I think he’s going to ask her to marry him soon. I like her and dad thinks she’s swell. Shirley just started a job as Mr. Kelly’s secretary. You remember Mr. Kelly? The lawyer. She can type a whole 80 words per minute! Dad’s happy about that. Bill and Helen are about to finish high school and John and James are Thunderbirds now. John got hit in the head the last game so I think he’s out for a while. It was pretty bad. After he came to, he didn’t know where he was for a second.

I’m doing just fine, don’t you worry. Miss Mary and Mr. George moved out of the neighborhood because Mr. George got a new job running a bank. Sometimes I walk the two miles over here and help Miss Mary garden while Mr. George works. I think she likes the company since there’s no kids to care for. She gave me the envelope and stamp and said I could write to you, but if you decided to write back, it should arrive here.

Dad wants you to come home. He tells his glass of Jameson after work if you know what I mean. Things are different now with mom gone. Maybe Mr. Kelly knows another lawyer friend who is hiring for a secretary. How fast can you type?

We really miss you, Jo. He’d write, I just think he’s too sad. 

With love,

Donna

I refolded the tri-folded letter and slid it back through the jagged slit in the envelope.

Eight years of silence, and Donna writes to come home, as if the last near-decade of my life was a separation by choice. At eighteen, now it was. 

I looked out the window toward the dirt road and fields in the distance, out onto a clear summer day. A slow rumble built out of sight, slightly shaking the legs of the desk. As it grew louder and the tremor magnified, the 152 appeared, zooming down North Rosehill, kicking up dust in its path, No one was standing at that rusty pole, so it tumbled on.