Blueberry Hill: a Sister's Story(5)

“Or what?”

Donna never tells me what she said, but weeks later I hear that she’d threatened to hold Sally down and shave her head bald. By then the trouble has died down, and Sally’s picture is again hanging in Tommy Ballinger’s locker.

~

You’ll notice when I speak of Donna’s movement I use the word “sashay” not “walk.” That’s because walking is different. Walking moves a body by simply placing one foot in front of the other. Sashaying takes attitude, the sort of attitude Donna had. It takes command of a room and draws people in like a magnet. It says, Here I am, and this is what I am! If you don’t like it, well, that’s just too bad! Only a fearless person can sashay into a room. Only a person like my sister.

Having such an attitude is both a gift and a curse. It gives the bravado to muscle through life but adds in the type of recklessness that can one day rob you of all you are.

~

Three years later, before she finishes high school, Donna runs away from home. No note, no goodbye, no nothing. She just up and disappears one morning after she and Mama have yet another argument.

It starts when Donna gets ready for school. Mama takes a look at how she’s dressed and says, “You’re not leaving here with those blue jeans on!”

“Yes, I am,” Donna says and heads for the door.

Mama, who is a snip shorter than me, steps in front of the door with her arms folded. “No, you’re not! Wearing blue jeans to school is unacceptable.”

“Everybody wears them.” Donna tries to squeeze by Mama first on one side and then the other.

Mama stays with it. Whichever way Donna moves, Mama moves. The truth is that Donna outsizes Mama by nearly ten inches, and she is all muscle. If she’d a mind to, she could pick Mama up and set her aside. But that’s something not even Donna will do.

Anyway, the argument rages on. Just words, no pushing or shoving, but the words are loud and repetitive.

“You know what people call a girl who dresses like that?” Before Donna can squeeze in a word, Mama answers her own question. “Trash, they say. That girl’s nothing but trash!”

“You think I care what people say?”

“Well, I care! I don’t want any daughter of mine—”

“Enough!” Daddy finally yells. After twenty minutes of them going at it, he is sick to death of listening.

“Donna Sue,” he thunders. “Get back to your room, and if you come out wearing those jeans again you won’t be going anywhere.”

When Daddy calls any of us kids by our full name, it means we’re in big trouble. Donna turns on her heel and heads back to her room. It’s a good fifteen minutes before she comes out again. When she does she’s wearing a pleated skirt.

“Ah, now.” Mama gives a sigh of satisfaction. “That looks much better.”

I can’t recall Donna answering, but if she did it was nothing more than a grunt. Then she walks out the door.

Mama believes that for once she’s won a battle with Donna, but I’m wary that such a victory came too easily. I’m right.

That afternoon Mama finds the skirt and Donna’s schoolbooks on the back porch. She comes in waving that skirt in the air and fussing to beat the band.

“This is the last straw!” she hollers. “When that smart aleck gets home from school, we’ll see about this!”

I’m the only one within hearing range but that doesn’t stop Mama from fussing. The whole of that afternoon she argues with Donna, who is nowhere to be seen. Donna doesn’t come home for supper, and she still isn’t home when I fall into bed at eleven-thirty.

Given Donna’s rebellious nature, it isn’t anything for her to thumb her nose at curfew and come home whenever she’s good and ready. So at first nobody worries about it.

Mama might be a bit worried, but her concern is hidden beneath a thick layer of mad. She sits in the living room chair and waits for Donna all night long. When morning arrives and Donna still isn’t home, Mama starts calling around.

First it’s her friends. Then the teachers. When everybody claims they haven’t seen Donna since day before yesterday, Mama calls the hospital and police station. That same morning, a patrol car arrives and sits in our driveway for a good three hours. The officer helps Mama fill out a missing person report, and when he asks what Donna was wearing when she left home Mama has to admit it’s probably the blue jeans. Before noon, the police department sends out an all points bulletin and starts checking the local haunts.

After a few days of searching it becomes obvious that Donna is gone. She continues to be listed as a missing person, but it’s a file now relegated to the far corner of a junior detective’s desk.

“Most likely a runaway,” the detective says. “Runaway kids seldom leave a trail.”

Hearing such news, Mama falls to pieces and keeps imagining Donna lying dead in some God-forsaken ditch. Mixed in with all her worry is a fear that she’s the one responsible.

“It’s my fault,” Mama moans. “I should have just let her wear whatever she wanted to wear.”

Daddy tries to calm her down by rubbing her back and saying things like she was only doing what any mother would have done. But Mama will have none of it. She swears that Donna’s disappearance is the Lord’s way of punishing her for being a terrible mother.