In the Night of Memory, page 13
At the end of the day our keeper escorted us to the front door and waited with us until we got into Junior’s car.
The next day we were on our own. Remembering Allison’s words of wisdom, we brought a picture of a teddy bear cut from one of Dolly’s old magazines, which we taped to the inside door of our locker; we showed our teeth to Mr. Conkler and he brushed my back, near my bra strap, with his creepy, overly friendly hand; like the other girls we stood on the tops of our shoes as we changed clothes for gym in the locker room; I half-smiled at the school nurse, who stood outside her door between classes looking crabby but half-smiled back, nodding her head choppily; we ate lunch with Allison and her friends, all serious, no-nonsense girls who didn’t shriek and toss food like the kids who were cutting loose and having fun in the lunchroom.
On the way to English class after lunch I told Rain that I’d be right there and stopped at the girls’ washroom on the second floor, which was empty except for two tough-looking girls standing at the mirror who glanced at me and then back at their reflections, one running a makeup brush of blush back and forth across her cheeks and the other fluffing the front of her teased-up black bangs with a brush. I rushed into the second stall from the end on the left and heard one of the girls at the mirror whisper to the other, who whispered back. I heard the pshhhht of hairspray, then the rummaging sound of brushes being stashed into book bags. The washroom door opened, and I heard footsteps that became stomps as someone approached the door to the second stall from the end, where I sat perched on the edge of the toilet behind the latched door, and kicked it, twice.
“Who’s using my toilet?”
I jumped from my perch, yanking up my jeans.
“Who’s in there?”
I flushed the toilet and took my book bag from the hook on the back of the door and held it to my chest for protection as I unlatched the door and opened it.
“Who do you think you are using my toilet?” She was as terrifying in person as I had imagined from my seat on the toilet, and she was big, bigger than me, and angry, angrier even than Mrs. Kukonen had been before Rain said “Praise the Lord our Savior!” and Mrs. Kukonen split the side of Rain’s lip. She took a step forward, trapping me in the toilet stall, and I hadn’t known I had it in me, but I dropped my book bag on the grimy, water-spattered bathroom floor and got ready to grab her by the shirt, knock her off balance, and then run for my life.
“What’s it to you, Collette?” The teased-hair girl had come over from the mirror. Her stance was wider than mine, and she held a can of hairspray in her fist like a weapon.
“She’s a new girl; leave her alone.” The brilliantly blushed girl was standing next to the teased-hair girl and looked ready to pull back for a punch.
I stepped around Collette and stood next to the two rescuers, thinking the three of us could take her if we had to.
“Well, she better not do it again.” Collette went into her toilet stall and latched the door.
“Hey, new girl, we’re gonna be late to class,” said hairspray. “We’re in English with Miss Tallakson, too—we’ll go in with you.”
“Where’s your warden?” This from the girl with the blushed cheeks. “Allison. How do you like her lunch table?”
“Do you know Nolie Dulebohn? We saw you sitting with his grandma at the powwow. Are you related?” asked hairspray.
“We’re not related, I don’t think—I don’t know for sure,” I answered.
Hairspray looked disappointed.
“Who was that girl from Mozhay he was talking to? Is he her boyfriend?” asked rosy cheeks, obviously hoping that he was not.
“The fancy dancer in the blue dress? That’s Crystal, and he’s not her boyfriend.”
“I didn’t think so,” said rosy cheeks happily. “Hey, this is Kim, and I’m Amy.”
“Azure. My sister Rain is in ninth grade, too.”
We hitched our book bags onto our shoulders and swaggered out of the bathroom. Just outside the door to English class, Amy said, “Ready for Kissy-Face Tallakson?”
Kim snorted; she and Amy tossed their heads, flipping their hair to the side. I did the same, and then we three bad girlfriends sauntered into the classroom.
“Azure Gallette, Kimberly Olson, and Amy Pierre, you are late. Green slips.”
Rain looked horrified. She raised her hand, which the teacher ignored.
What did green slips mean?
“One for each of you. Let’s go, ladies.” Miss Tallakson was scribbling on a tablet.
With Kim and Amy I walked to the teacher’s desk, where she handed each of us a small piece of paper on which she had written our names, circled and with a capital T larger than the circle firmly printed over both. Green slips.
“Bring those to the office; they’re going in your files. Not a good start to the school year, on the second day of class,” she said.
Our transgression was awarded by five minutes of freedom walking to the office, handing our tardy slips to the secretary, and walking back to class. Along the way Kim and Amy asked me if Rain and I would like to eat at their lunch table.
“Since you know Nolie Dulebohn, maybe he would eat with us sometime, too,” said Amy.
2
We lived less than two miles from Washington Junior, which meant that we weren’t eligible to take the school bus. Dolly said that thinking about us walking by some of the neighborhoods between school and our house, especially those stretches of vacant lots and woods above the Point of Rocks, made her nervous and so Junior drove us to school most mornings before he went to bed. Junior would sleep until three o’clock or so and then drive back to Washington to pick us up after school. On the afternoons that Dolly had a cleaning job and needed the car, we walked to the hospital coffee shop in downtown Duluth, which wasn’t far from school, just five blocks east and a half-block down the avenue. Dolly’s friend Florence Sweet worked there, and we sat at a table by the window and watched for Junior’s car. When Dolly got done with her job, she went home and while Junior picked us up she would put her feet up for a few minutes before getting supper on the table.
We loved coffee shop days. Florence watched us from the cash register as we drank our glasses of water (no ice for me; I had a habit of chewing ice cubes loudly, which Florence thought might drive the people who were at the hospital to visit their sick relatives crazy—because it did her) and did our homework, and sometimes someone from the neighborhood would stop by for coffee and pie and visit with Florence, who seemed to know what was going on with everybody in town. Occasionally one of the neighbors offered to buy a pop for me and Rain; we were instructed by Dolly to always say, no thank you, that we had drunk a lot of water and weren’t thirsty. That was so that people wouldn’t get tired of us, Dolly explained to me. And besides, we shouldn’t be filling up on pop. That didn’t keep us from accepting an occasional quarter, or even a dollar, from somebody who wanted to give us something.
One afternoon in October we turned down the avenue to the coffee shop entrance and I could see Florence through the window—she had left the cash register and was sitting at the counter next to the old man who read the Herald every afternoon, so close that their heads nearly touched. With her forefinger, she followed the words in the news story. Florence and the old man read the story aloud but not in unison, commenting and asking one another questions. Rain and I got our glasses of water and sat next to Florence, sipping as we listened.
“I heard it on the news last night, on WDIO, before I went to bed,” said Florence. “Dennis Anderson said that she could be Native American.”
“Rolled in a blanket and left in the ditch on Rice Lake Road,” said the old man. “It says here that she has long dark hair and is somewhere between eighteen and thirty-five. Who do you think she is?”
“She could be anybody—somebody who comes in here, or one of those young women who hangs out in front of the Twins Bar, or even a high school girl. What a terrible thought.” Florence glanced at Rainy and me. “See Junior out there yet? Why don’t you girls go look out the window so you don’t miss him. Don’t go outside until you do, though.” She always made us wait inside the coffee shop for Junior to pick us up, and not out on the sidewalk.
“How long had she been there, did they say? Probably not all that long, but still, on the way to the dump things drop out of people’s cars, out of the trunk or the back of the pickup if they don’t secure the load. Driving on Rice Lake Road I bet most wouldn’t even notice until they got to the dump if a mattress, say, had rolled off the pile of junk in the bed of a truck. . . . happens so much that driving by, a person would go right past that stuff; not many would bother stopping to look at an old mattress or a cruddy rolled-up rug. So who knows how long she could have been there?”
“Blanket, it says here. Rolled up in a blanket and dumped there, at the side of the road.”
“Somebody will miss her. Somebody from Duluth, or somebody from Fond du Lac or up north who doesn’t even know yet that their daughter is missing. They’ll pick up the paper and see this, and they’ll wonder if it could be their girl. Or maybe somebody will just tell them. Terrible thing, just terrible.”
“It was a stranger,” Rainy whispered. Florence’s head snapped in our direction. “A stranger must have grabbed her.” Dolly had told us about strangers, and cars, and vacant lots, bushes, and ditches.
“Are you keeping an eye out for Junior? Why don’t you girls go stand over by the window; don’t make him wait.” Florence was trying to get our attention off the conversation. We obediently picked up our school bags and moved to the windows, turned our faces towards the glass and the street, and our ears to the conversation, until Junior double-parked and we ran out to get into the car.
“I hope it wasn’t Crystal,” Rainy said just before we opened the car door.
I shivered.
At Dolly’s the conversation was about the body, too. Junior had read the Herald before he went to bed that morning and had not slept well. Now, sitting at the kitchen table where Dolly served him his plate of hash and green beans, he reread the story. “The poor little girl,” he said. “I wonder who she is.”
“These young women, they don’t know how much trouble they can get into, how much danger is in the world. They could be gone before anybody knows they’re missing. Rolled in a blanket and just left at the side of the road. Somebody is going to know who she is. Her poor family.”
The story was on WDIO news, but there was nothing more than had been in the morning Herald story.
“Well, that will get the word out more,” said Junior, “although there have probably been people calling the police already once they saw the paper or heard about it.”
“There’s probably people calling the police right now—somebody who didn’t see the paper or hear about it—wanting to ask about their missing girls,” said Dolly. “Whoever she is, God bless her family; they will have a sad, hard night.”
But by the next morning, nobody had come forward to say that their daughter had run away, that their sister hadn’t come home from visiting grandma, or that their coworker hadn’t shown up for her shift. I got up early, before Junior got home from work, read the Herald as soon as the paperboy threw it onto the porch, and turned on the TV at 6:54 to watch the five-minute local news. The investigators now thought that the woman was likely older than eighteen, perhaps thirty to thirty-five. Anyone with any information at all should call the Duluth police department.
After school, Nolie and Duane offered to walk us to the coffee shop; Kim and Amy, who lived just east of Washington but on the hillside, joined us. As we walked towards the hospital the dead woman on Rice Lake Road was not mentioned; instead, Rainy, Kim, and Amy chattered about gym class. It had been rope-climbing day, and one girl had gotten halfway up towards the ceiling when she froze and had to be talked down by the teacher. I could not get my mind away from the body and didn’t have much to say; neither did Duane and Nolie, who eyed every stranger on foot and car that passed us on Fourth Street.
“She had rope burns on the insides of her legs,” said Rain.
Amy and Kim burst into giggles.
“They were all red and scraped up where she was holding onto the rope really tight with her thighs,” Rain continued.
Amy and Kim laughed louder and held onto each other, unable to stand alone.
“The teacher sent her to the nurse to get some cream put on them,” Rain continued.
“Holy,” commented Duane. Kim punched him in the arm.
“Why so quiet, Azh?” asked Nolie.
“Oh, I don’t know; too much homework—don’t you get sick of English class? So boring; Miss Tallakson never stops talking about herself.”
“I just don’t listen to Kissy-Face. Try it, it helps pass the time.”
At Third Avenue East, Duane and Nolie offered to split up, and one of them stay on their usual route with Kim and Amy and the other with me and Rain (Kim glanced at Nolie and then me, a signal that I should choose Duane).
“Nah, that’s all right; it’s still light out; we’ll be fine,” I said, regretting my words as they crossed Fourth Street and Rain and I were left alone: the short walk in those few blocks towards the hospital was uneasy, our steps longer and faster than usual. That afternoon the narrow walkways between houses, stores, and apartment buildings were not interesting spaces to look into backyards but places of unknown danger, where the light of the sun never reached, where inside lights were turned on during the day, and shades were pulled against the eyes of neighbors, whose windows looked directly into their lives from just five feet away. A stranger, dark-clothed and evil, might lurk between the basement windows that were covered with newspaper that tore and disintegrated as it aged, leaving gaps where an old woman hand-washing her laundry in a stationary tub, lonely and nosy, might glance out to see two girls, Rainy and Azure, grabbed and pulled into the basement through the door that she had forgotten to lock, the stranger knocking the old woman against the stationary tub so that she fell, her head cracking like an egg on the cement floor, then dragging both girls into the windowless furnace room. These were my thoughts, felt by Rainy, who held tight to my school bag handle with both hands as we walked. My gait off due to her weight, I stumbled over an uneven crack in the pavement; she clutched at my elbow. I would have told her to let go but her grasping fingers reminded me that we were still alive and that life was precious.
At the coffee shop Rain and I sat at the counter, near the cash register, in order to hear as much as we could from both the kitchen and the dining room. Neighbors and regulars stopped by, reading the newspaper and asking one another if there was anything more on the news. The murder of the unknown young woman was all anyone talked about. If she was one of the Indian women from Duluth or Fond du Lac, or one of the reservations up north, wouldn’t somebody identify her pretty soon? Could she be from Canada, or the Dakotas, a young woman come to Duluth looking for a job and then, desperate, duped into prostitution?
Prostitution?
Florence asked us if we had homework; we took our history books from our bags and opened them on the counter, leaning over them as we listened. I chewed on my hair for studious effect.
The older people talked among themselves about other women who had died tragically, or mysteriously, or disappeared. Charlotte Sweet, who put on her coat and walked down that same Rice Lake Road a half-century ago and was never seen or heard from again. Charlotte’s daughter Violet, who in her early teens and not long after her mother’s disappearance left town with the Sweets’ neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Bjornborg, her relatives not finding out until she was gone. Julia Ricebird’s friend from the dormitory at the Harrod School, who didn’t return to school one September and whose father said she had never gotten off the train at Lengby that June. Young women who took the bus to Minneapolis to work in the defense plants or the mills during the Second World War and never came home. Women who left bars with strangers, women whose husbands and boyfriends said they left the house after a fight; women out walking at night in search of earning money in ways the older people at the coffee shop didn’t go into. And then, as my head turned toward the windows to see if Junior’s car had pulled up, I thought I heard her name whispered. Loretta. Rainy heard it, too.
“Loretta . . . West End . . .”
“. . . Amber Flow . . . if that was her, they thought she caught a ride . . .”
“Could have been on her way to Sweetgrass . . . Miskwaa River . . .”
“Sssshh.” This from Florence, who puffed her lower lip out delicately in our direction, her frown deepening the worry crease between her eyebrows. The conversations regrouped into pairs and threes and continued, with voices now lowered to whispers; two women at the condiment stand stood closely together, shoulders nearly touching and their bodies in the shape of a V. One touched the other’s arm as they carefully kept their eyes off and their attention on Loretta’s girls. Me and Rain.
Rain and I turned the pages of our history books, seemingly fascinated by our studies; a hospital security guard paid for a cup of coffee and a roll at the cash register, his badge catching the light from the fixture above Florence’s head. He dropped his change into the nearly empty common tin cup, dimes chiming against nickels.
