Wayward Girls

There are references to potential abuse, physical and sexual   

I retired early, got bored, so I went into private investigating. I got bored with that too. I never got the chance to sink my teeth into any crimes, or at least nothing that concerns the law. I was paid to document moral crimes for the sake of retribution and civil suits. But after a friend called and teased me about Marilyn of Sister Margeret’s School for Girls, I remembered, how the nuns treated her was a crime. The rest of that memory, clear as a spring day, but smelling like swamp water, was pressure creeping up my torso.

    It was the summer of 77, I couldn’t afford college, so after two years of Navy life I was home on leave, extra leave. Although it was a time of peace, the Cold War was hot, and I had survived an unusual encounter with the crew of a Russian spy boat pretending to be a troller. Their captain was defecting, and chancing it all on meeting American who’d ask questions first and maybe shoot later. I listened and we all lived to tell the tale.

    My twenty-first birthday happened at home with my Mom and Dad, but I celebrated at Steve’s place. He had a little bachelor pad in Grand Rapids across from Sister Marie’s Home for Girls. Because of the location, and being young, Steve and I coined his place the Home for Wayward Girls. We were clever with the name and the jokes about having sex with a minor, like fifteen will get you twenty. Or most miners are men, so I’m not interested. Not surprising, we never saw any action from across the street, let alone a wayward woman on our doorstep. Except for Marilyn.

    I met her a late Sunday morning, with still and gray air, like it could drizzling any moment. Steve and I were listening to Jimmy Buffett’s album, Changes in Latitudes, because we were changing attitudes: beer before lunch? We were sitting on the porch, debating who should go get said beers.

    “I’ll shower, then decide,” Steve said.

    “Don’t delay the inevitable. Have one in the shower.”

    Steve shook his head and left the door open.  His strategy, I had to get up to close it. “Have one ready for me when I come down.”

    I still had an immature hang-up about drinking alone, pondering if I should have a beer without Steve. A teenage girl storming down the sidewalk shifted my mind. She did one of those cartoon character skids on the concrete, planting her feet then hopping to a stop. Then she ran up our steps.

    “You gotta save me. Hide me. Inside your house.” She was sweating, jerking her head between me and the sidewalk from whence she came.

    “What?” I held my hands for her to keep her distance, wanting to pinch myself, but she went towards the open door.

    “Don’t let them get me. If they get me, its gonna be bad.”

    “What’s gonna be bad?”

    “Please, save me,” she screeched.

    “Okay,” I stepped back. “Let’s hat inside.”

    She jumped inside and I followed. She went to the front window and rattled through the aluminium blinds before I got the door shut.

    “Shit, they saw me.”

    “Who saw you?”

    “Them. Sister Argenta and her pack.”

    I crinkled a blind to peer down the street. Three sisters, or nuns, were coming down the sidewalk like it was high noon. They looked odd in their brown habits and white head scarves, particularly the one in the middle. She looked to be a foot taller than the women on her sides.

    “Be quiet,” I said. “Relax. I won’t let her in.” One of many inadvertent lies I have told.

    “But if she knows I’m in here, she’s got me. Do you have a back door?”

    I shook my head. “Shh, let’s see if she stops.”

    They walked like hunters worried they’d miss a sign. They came into Steve’s yard, then stopped at his mail box. I was thinking one of them might lift a leg. When they came to Steve’s walkway, they looked at his front door, waited as if smelling the wind, then turned in unison, like Marines. Three abreast, they walked up the steps until their leader wrapped on the door. One of the others pointed to the door bell, and the tall one pressed it and the bell rang.

    I looked at the girl.

    She mouthed back, I’m not here.

    “This is Sister Argenta.” The voice was low and forceful. “We saw a young girl run into this house. It is important she comes back with us, immediately.  She’s not well when she doesn’t take her medicine.”

    What? I mouthed to the girl. Are you alright? I pointed to my temple before twirling my finger.

    She pulled up her sleeve on her left arm to show me the blotches of bruises that ran from her elbow to her shoulder. Her lips formed the words, they did this, pointing outside.

    Then another knock on the door, the tall one speaking again. “Do you know, the girl you have, in your house, is a fifteen-year-old runaway? Sister Elena here, who has seen you on your porch, says you’re a young man, an adult. It won’t look good for a man your age to harbor an innocent, female child.”

    Woah, I mouthed to the girl.

    Tears were running down her cheeks as she shook her head. Beside the silence, I could hear her wheezing and shaking until she broke and began sobbing. “You’re evil,” she yelled. “Leave me alone.”

    “Marilyn, you’re not yourself without your medicine.” The leader leaned towards the door. “Come along now, open the door.”

    “I’m not going back to that room. I won’t see that man anymore.”

    “Marilyn, listen to yourself, talking about men again. Is that why you ran into this house? If you don’t come out right now, you are putting this young man in legal risk.”

    “I don’t believe you. You said that before, but you sent me to that creep again. He’s a gross thing.”

    “Marilyn, I am warning you. Come out right now.”

    The girl whispered to me with her eyes closed: “My name is Marilyn Tigsby, Call my mother, Marla Tigsby. She’s in the book.”

    “What book?”

    “The Newaygo phone book. Marla Tigsby. Tell her to come get me asap. Please.”

    “I promise.”

    Then Marilyn slid down along the window frame, turning her back to slide down the wall. I reached out for her, see she was going to flop on the floor, but she pulled herself up with the door knob and yanked it open. 

    “You’re evil,” Marilyn screamed and held out her arms. The two smaller nuns grabbed her arms while the older one slapped her in the face. “Get a hold of yourself. You do not, I repeat, do not speak to me like that. Take her away.”

    “Hold on,” I yelled. “You can’t hit a girl like that.”

    The tall stood into my face. “Stay out of this, or I’ll make your life hell, Mister Peeping Tom.”

    “Get out of my face.” I pushed her back to create a buffer from her spittle. “What the hell are you saying?”

    “Look at you, with your shorts, no shirt. A mermaid tattooed on your forearm. Beer cans on your porch. We’ve had a Peeping Tom over at the school. The police would have no problem bringing you for questioning. Do you have a clean record?”

    “That’s besides the point. You can’t smack kids.”

    “You have no idea what you’re stepping in. I know the police and the police know her, and they’ll know of you, if you don’t shut it.”

    I heard Steve call from upstairs: “What’s all the racket.” He bounded down the stairs and presented himself on the porch, unshaven with a towel wrapped around his mid-section. “Is there a problem?”

    The tall one looked Steve up and down, and kicked a beer can. “Oh, I think we have it sorted out now.”

    Steve and I looked at each other before I said, “don’t get involved.”

    Sister Argenta turned and walked down the steps.

    “What was that about?”  Steve watched her cross the street.

    “You’ll never believe it if I told you.”

    I did tell Steve about it, over beers on the porch. To this day, I’m not sure if he believes me, but once in a great while he’ll mention the time I lost my mind over Marilyn. About a decade ago, when he was going through a divorce, he asked me if I have heard from Marilyn. He liked sharing his pain by being a pain in the ass.

    He hadn’t referenced her in a few years, but this morning when I called to ask how his prostate surgery was holding up, he responded “with flying colors, but at half mast.” He was feeling a bit sensitive as his next comment was “so how’s your old friend Marilyn?”

    I hadn’t thought of her for months, but it made me remember the call with her mother. I was drunk, so I probably should’ve have waited another day, but I wanted Marla to come down as soon as possible. The problem was Marla didn’t want to come down. 

    “That tart needs some humility” is what Marla said.  “Somebody needs to straighten her out. Lord knows I’ve tried.”

    I left it at that until today. After Steve made the snide comment about Marilyn, I decided I should find out if the old broad is still alive. Marilyn was cute, and now we were practically the same age. To do that, I called an even older broad, Marla.

    Luckily, she’s still alive. “Have you seen Marilyn?” she asked me over the phone.

    “I have not.”

    “Funny, I thought you had knocked her up.” I could hear Marla laugh. “She wrote letters from Sister Margeret’s the first year. But then she didn’t write anymore. And on her seventeenth birthday I called down to her, find out how she was, and they said her father picked her up two months before and she hadn’t returned. They knew that was a lie.”

    “How do you know?”

    “Because he died. When she was thirteen. That was hard on her.”

    “You never heard from Marilyn again?”

    “Not a whisper. She loved to whisper in my ear when she was like three. She was a fun child. But she became too wild for me.”

    After that conversation, I called Sister Margeret’s. I claimed to be an attorney trying to settle a probate estate, and asked for the records for Marilyn Tigsby. “That would really help me to find her and any other next of kin.”

    I was smiling to myself, like I had won the lottery as my little lie had worked, then I almost fell off the chair. “We have no records for a Marilyn Tigsby. Are you sure you have the right name? Or the right school?”

    “She was a student with Sister Argenta. Do you have a number for Sister Argenta?”

    “No, she left here twenty years ago. She has since died.”

    “Just like Marilyn Tigsby.”

    “We’ve never had a student by name.”

    The admin had to call in the head nun, and we went round and round on Marilyn Tigsby.  The old bat was firm: there was never a student at Sister Margeret’s by that name. She kept on saying that name. If you’re going to make any money in PI, you got to know when a person was lying, and my lie detector was beeping loud, before she slammed the phone down.  They way she did it made me think she wished my head was on the cradle.

    Finally, I had something I could sink my PI canines into. Like a pit bull, there’s no way they were going to pull it away until I found out what happened.

    I went straight to Marla. She had not saved any letters from Marilyn during her Sister Margeret stay, she did give me the names and contact details of people who might.

    Milly Townsend was Marilyn’s best friend from Newaygo, before she was sent to Sister Margeret. I drove up and got them, and sure enough, in Marilyn’s handwriting there are complaints about the nuns, especially Sister Argenta. She mentioned creepy behavior and being forced to do things she couldn’t write about. That gave me some proof as well as a willing witness who’d say Marilyn was scared at Sister Margeret’s, and that she was sure she would’ve heard from Marilyn if she was free.

    The other contact, Shannon Siles, went cold and cautious after she heard the name. I taped the conversation, so this is verbatim:

    “Marilyn who?” Shannon said.

    “Marilyn Tigsby. You were friends at Sister Margerert’s, right?”

    “I’m not sure I know who you’re talking about.”

    “I got your name from Marla Tigsby. She said you were Marilyn’s closest friend there.”

    “I’ve heard the name, but I don’t have anything to say about her.”

    “Do you know there’s never been a confirmed sighting of Marilyn since 1977. The last sighting would have been inside Sister Margeret’s. Does that bother you?”

    “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Then the line went dead.

    I wanted to reach through the phone line and slap Shannon, shouting, “Wkae up. You’re messing with someone’s life.”

    The tone was clear.  I needed to step back because, and I was breaking one of my cardinal rules of PI work: Never become emotionally attached to the case or client. I was getting bent out of shape over someone I had met for less than five minutes, and hadn’t seen in years.

    I had no professional or monetary obligation to the case, which was another of my PI rules: No dough, no go.  Don’t even pick up the phone. I had spent probably 15 hours on this if I included drive time.

    I was past those rules. I tried Shannon again. I even drove up to see her, and approached her at the dentist office where she worked. She threatened a restraining order if I didn’t leave. I knew it would take her a while to get an RO, but you can’t get words out of someone who was too scared stiff.

    That leads to my guideline I never had a problem with: Not all cases can be solved. Know when to give up. How do you define give up. That’s a part of the solution. I interpret that you can’t force things, but that doesn’t mean things don’t change over time. 

    On the phone, I went back to Sister Margeret’s with different personas, hoping to slip past the gate keepers to a naive nun. I conned Steve into calling, but they were forewarned about requests. I even tried to find out where they sent nuns who were no longer pulling their weight or had retired. Funny thing is, I doubt those nuns ever left. They stayed there, they just moved to another building. But it’s all speculation as the Apparatus of Sister Margeret doesn’t have to share any info with anyone. Or at least in practice because there’s no enforcement mechanism. I don’t expect it to change.

    What might change is a new name might appear like an eclipse. There are others who knew Marilyn at Sister Margeret’s, who know something crooked happened. Would they be willing to talk and make conjectures? Maybe somebody who knew about the inside from outside the school, like a janitor or some guy fixing the furnace. 

    I’d also do a stake out when I’m bored or want to read a mystery novel. I park down the street from the gates of Margeret’s, just to see who goes in and out. It’s pure conjecture, but there are older, solo gents who get waved in. Maybe they’re Dads, maybe they’re perps. But catching them, or having them come forward, is less likely because if they did, they’d be implicating themselves. Something doesn’t smell right. And no, that’s not reek of some half-baked smear campaign. The record on these kinds of schools indicate you should expect a few kids to be abused.

    It’s a waiting game. Waiting for something to shake loose, and hoping you’re in position to catch it. Financially, it’s a bit dry, but it’s something I can bite into if I see something interesting. I can be patient, but the longer I wait, more things can go stale.