Chapter 25

Huntingon, West Virginia

September 1957

Collecting garbage did not make for much of a living, even in Huntington. Until Brenda was five years old, she, Sam and Virginia lived in a two-room apartment above a hardware store across the street from the farmer’s market sheds. Virginia and her daughter shared the one bed. Sam slept on the sofa. With only two windows at front and a small one in the kitchen to the rear, the apartment was perpetually gloomy. In the summer, it was stifling. What little breeze managed to find its way in the windows seemed only to bring the stench of the refuse from the market.

So Brenda was exhilarated when they moved to the four-room, wood frame house in Guyandotte on the outskirts of the city. The neighborhood had declined precipitously since its heyday as a town in the nineteenth century, before Huntington was founded. But a child does not notice such details. The house had a yard, and Brenda had a bed of her own. She was so content that the lack of indoor plumbing and trek to the reeking outhouse seemed only minor inconveniences.

It did not last. After six months, they moved to a different house two streets away. Brenda and Virginia were back to sharing the bed. Sam again bunked on the sofa, which was fine with his wife. Nine months later, they packed up their few belongings and moved to another house in the neighborhood.

They changed homes so frequently because Sam had played cards one night with the owner of these and several other similar properties. The man preferred not to have them sitting empty when they were not rented, and Sam preferred not having to pay rent. Over a beer and a shot of whiskey, they agreed that Sam, Virginia and Brenda could live in the houses in exchange for maintaining them, provided they were willing to depart on short notice if the man found long term tenants.

Eventually, even Sam tired of the nomadic lifestyle. He bought a little two-bedroom house in a tidy, leafy working-class neighborhood. In the kitchen of this house, one Sunday afternoon, he sat Brenda down at the table and told her she was adopted.

“That woman who had you,” Sam said, “didn’t want you, and we did. They were just no-account people. She didn’t even know who got her pregnant.”

It was too stark and sudden a pronouncement for Brenda to comprehend. When Sam called her to the kitchen, she thought he was going to punish her for knocking the drying laundry from the clothesline that morning while she was playing in the yard.

“I … I don’t understand,” Brenda said. “What do you mean? You’re not my dad and mom?” She had sensed for as long as she could remember that something was off with their family. It was an inchoate feeling, and she always suppressed it when it crept in. She never imagined that Sam and Virginia were not actually her parents

“Of course, we’re your mom and dad,” Sam said angrily. “I just told you, she didn’t want you, so we took you.”

“But … but how did you find me?” she asked.

Sam was tremendously irritated by having to reveal even this much information to her. “Your Aunt Elsie knew the people, and she got you for us.”

“But wh … why didn’t my mom want me?” Brenda asked. She began to cry.

“Ginny’s your mother!” Sam thundered. “That woman’s nothing to you. And don’t you go telling anybody now that you’re adopted. And don’t ever talk to me or Ginny about it again.”

“But why?”

Sam leaned across the table. His face was so close to hers that Brenda could smell the coffee and cigarettes on his breath. “Because it means you don’t really love us if you do. And stop that crying. You’re twelve years old, not some little baby.”

But Brenda desperately wanted to know more. “Who was my mo … who is she? Where does she live?” she asked.

“I told you,” Sam shouted, “I don’t want you to talk about it. It doesn’t matter who she is or where she lives. I’m only telling you now because we had to let them know at your school, and I didn’t want you to hear it somehow from somebody there.”

“But—” she began again.

“That is enough, Brenda!” Sam yelled even more loudly and smacked his hand on the table. “No more questions. And I’m telling you, don’t you breathe a word of it to anybody, anybody, if you love us.”

Virginia sat silently in the bedroom she shared with her daughter, listening to the conversation in the kitchen.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Today I turned thirteen. Aunt Elsie gave me some money for my birthday, and I bought you with it. I’ve got to find a good place to hide you because Dad can’t ever be able to find you.

I wonder where my real mom is today and if she is thinking about me. I hope she remembers that it’s my birthday. I wish I knew why she didn’t want me. I guess she thought I wasn’t worth keeping. Sometimes I think she was right. I’m always doing something that makes Dad mad.

I hate junior high. Some of the girls are so mean to me. They make fun of my shoes and my coat. I can’t help it that they came from the Salvation Army. When I’m grown up I’m going to get a good job and buy myself nice clothes all the time. And if I ever have a little girl I’d never give her away and I’ll always buy her pretty things. Everything she wants.

We’re going to visit Aunt Elsie on Saturday and I’m soooo excited. Dad never yells at Mom and me when we’re there and Aunt Elsie always is so nice to me and she always has a bowl of the best cookies. I can’t eat enough of them fast enough. I wish we would stay for a month with her.

Brenda

* * *

Dear Diary,

I love these kinds of days. Dad and Mom and I went fishing at the river for the whole day. I caught two fish and Dad caught three but we threw them all back because he said it’s not safe to eat them because of the stuff in the water from the factories. But I didn’t care. It was so much fun just to catch them. Mom made fried egg and bacon sandwiches and Dad bought two bottles of pop for each of us and we had such a good time. Then when we got home we all sat on the porch and Dad played his guitar and sang us songs. He never yelled once all day and Mom laughed a lot. I wish it was like this all the time.

Brenda

* * *

Dear Diary,

Today was the last day of school. I’m so glad. I like learning stuff, but there are too many mean girls and boys. My friend Caroline and I are going to bicycle together every day. Dad brought a bicycle home for me two weeks ago from the dump where he works and fixed it up and painted it red. It is beautiful! He is always bringing things home and fixing them up for us to use. I can’t believe what all people throw away.

We’re going to visit Dad’s other sister Aunt Louvina in Kentucky next weekend and I wish I could stay home or that we were going to Aunt Elsie’s instead. Aunt Louvina always treats me like I don’t belong there and she and Dad always end up drinking a lot of beer and fighting with each other. Mom doesn’t like it either and we always try to go to bed early before they start yelling about something.

Brenda

* * *

Dear Diary,

I’m sorry I haven’t written in so long. I stopped a couple years ago because it seemed like a little girl thing to do, writing in a diary. But I found you hidden in the bottom of the chest of drawers, and reread all my entries, and I feel like you are an old friend.

I’m in the spring of ninth grade now, my last in junior high. I met the sweetest boy, Tom, this year, and he has asked me to the prom! He’s shorter than I am, but most of the boys are, and a little skinny, but he treats me like a princess, and he is the star shortstop on the baseball team. I go to all of his games (when they’re at home or at other Huntington schools—Dad won’t let me go on the bus to the games in other towns), and the other girls envy me, which is nice.

Mom and I went last weekend to buy my prom dress. It is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever had. White with lots of lace on the top and a flared satin skirt with a petticoat. Three more weeks till the dance. I can’t wait!

I promise I’ll keep writing, now that I’ve started again.

Brenda

Huntington, West Virginia

May 1961

* * *

“Wait for me at the fence at the back of the schoolyard,” Virginia whispered to Brenda as she started out the door, so Sam could not hear her from the kitchen. “I’ll bring the money to you there.”

“Thanks, Mom,” Brenda whispered back and kissed Virginia on the cheek.

After classes ended on sunny Fridays, many of Brenda’s friends went to the nearby dairy shop for a hotdog, Coca-Cola and ice cream. Sam always refused to give her the dollar and a quarter it cost, even when he had the money. Embarrassed by standing around and watching the others enjoy their treat, Brenda usually made some excuse to beg off.

It was one of the thousand things that made Virginia furious with Sam, though she never confronted him about it. He shouted at her enough without provocation. She did what she could to scrape together a little spending money for Brenda, gathering the loose change which slipped from Sam’s pocket and into the crevices of the sofa and selling the crafts she made in her free time.

In the evenings, Virginia liked to crochet, mostly doilies and little teacups which she would starch so they would stand upright. She sold them, for a quarter or fifty cents, to the middle-class women for whom she cleaned house. Sometimes she went door to door with them in the nicer neighborhoods of the town. A lady who lived near Brenda’s school had ordered eight of the teacups, and on this Friday, Virginia was delivering them and collecting her payment.

“Here you go,” Virginia said, slipping the folded dollar bills through the chain-link fence to Brenda. “Have a good time, and don’t stay too long so he doesn’t know you were there.” She never used Sam’s name in conversation, just an acidic “him” or “he.”

Brenda unrolled the little clutch of cash. “Oh, Mom, this is too much,” she said. “I only need a dollar and a quarter. Here.” She pushed two of the bills back through the fence. “And I’ll bring you the change tonight.”

“No,” Virginia said. She refused to take the money. “Save it somewhere he won’t find it, and go again next week.” She turned and walked away down the alley.