A Life of My Own. Donna Wilhelm

on record in Connecticut. An unheated farmhouse, that frigid February, would have been a risky place even for a young, healthy mother to have a homebirth. And a preposterous place for an older mother. As a child, I didn’t connect Mother’s illogical stories to her unpredictable behavior. Later as an adult, I identified certain common elements had always been there: drama, deception, and willfulness. They had shaped who Mother was and the stories she told.

      The mystery of adoption and the truth about my birth would stay buried for another decade. At age twenty-four, I would return to Arizona as a bride-to-be with joyful news. Instead of celebrating my happiness, my parents would choose that visit to tell me yet another incredible version. Would it finally be the real, true confession about my birth?

       Exodus to Arizona

      Remembering

      In the 1950s, Americans avidly read newspapers and listened to the radio; nearly everyone watched popular TV shows. In 1956 the United States Supreme Court ruled illegal segregated busing in Montgomery, Alabama, and the SS Andrea Doria sank off the coast of Nantucket. The NY Yankees won the World Series, and Marilyn Monroe married Arthur Miller. Elvis Presley appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show, and his hit single “Don’t Be Cruel/Hound Dog” made number one on America’s music charts. Also notable that year, I graduated from E.B. Kennelly public school in Hartford as salutatorian of my eighth grade class. June 1956, how did a girl who feared the spotlight manage to deliver a graduation speech about patriotism to hundreds of people staring at her from the audience? She pulled it together, gave the speech, and the rest was a blur.

      Although my transition to Bulkeley High School must have been challenging, I forgot most of the details, except for one event—the summer of 1957—that changed my life.

      •

      Don’t Trust the Mythmaker

      “Yoo-hoo, it’s me!” Edith, waving both arms in the air, stood next to her 1950s Ford wagon at the bottom of the driveway. “Is anyone there?” she hooted. Edith didn’t believe in giving advance notice about when she’d show up in Hartford. That year, she auspiciously arrived at the beginning of the summer.

      Poking my head out the kitchen window, I shouted back, “It’s just me here!”

      Edith switched from dramatically waving to aggressive pointing at the wagon.

      “Okay, okay … hold your horses,” I mumbled, trekking across the kitchen, down the stairs to the back door and across the lawn to greet my sister. Edith’s visits irritated me because they generally meant I’d be at her beck and call. She behaved like “Free Spirit of the Desert,” a nickname she was given by Hartford relatives who’d never seen the desert but fantasized about it. She dressed like a not-so-young Hopi maiden in ankle-length, pleated broom skirts or long-sleeved buckskin dresses, arms and chest draped with Old Pawn—antique Indian turquoise and silver jewelry. Around her waist she wore a heavy silver concha belt.

      Edith, “Free Spirit of the Desert,” 1958

      Edith’s turquoise skirted bottom was sticking out the wagon’s open tailgate. “Help unload!” came a muffled order that I pretended not to hear. The car’s exterior was encrusted with the grit of 2,500 miles of Southwest desert sands, Rocky Mountain red dust, prairie rainstorms and New England mud. I peered through the grimy side window. Usually the wagon arrived fully packed. This time, there were no stacks of Arizona Highways magazines or boxes full of prickly pear cactus jellies. Just Edith’s leather suitcase and her thin bedroll wrapped around a sleeping pillow wedged behind the front seats. The back seat, down flat, was littered with empty paper bags—nothing new about that. At rest stops and parking lots, Edith typically fed herself from sacks of canned food and dehydrated meals packed at start-up, and she took her naps in the wagon. Free Spirit didn’t believe in wasting money on motels or buying meals at roadhouse restaurants.

      “Time to hose down the wagon.” Edith’s bottom emerged and the rest of her stood upright. I’d learn that Edith took better care of that car than she did the people in her life. Gathering up the accordion hem of the broom skirt, she tied it into a fat knot high on her hip, a way to proudly show off the long legs that, unlike much of her body, had not been scarred in that accident years ago.

      Edith handed me a big sponge. “Scrub it good,” she ordered and pointed to a stack of frayed towels on the floor below the passenger seat. “Use them all!”

      While I scrubbed and sweated, Edith poured cool water from the hose over her legs as if she had nothing else on her mind. We were mismatched in age, looks, and behavior. Edith and I didn’t have much in common. Until—

      “Donna, you’re fourteen years old now, pretty grown up.” Edith suddenly stopped hosing. “Isn’t it time to cut off your long hair?” That got my attention. “If you come back to live with me in Arizona, you can have a whole new life.”

      I couldn’t see Edith’s eyes, hidden behind the tinted glasses that she wore day and night.

      “Think about it—freedom and independence!” Edith untied the broom skirt and let it cascade over her damp legs. “You can be a star at Sunnyslope High with Reggie!”

      How did the sister I saw only once a year, with whom I’d never shared personal stuff, know that I secretly yearned to be a free-spirited woman?

      Edith and I teamed up for a brilliant sales pitch to Mother and Dad. Edith made eye contact with Mother and jabbed at me. “Donna will finally learn how to take care of herself!” She assured our parents that, under her guidance, I’d make a healthy adjustment to desert life and enter my sophomore year at Sunnyslope High School with my cousin Reggie. Remarkably, they agreed to everything. I’d leave Hartford and drive with Edith to Arizona.

      That night in my bedroom, I thought about what I knew and what I didn’t know. Reggie had red hair and lots of freckles. We were the same age. Hartford relatives gossiped about our ages being a “strange coincidence?” But what was coincidental about that? I wondered about the car accident that ended Edith’s future as a concert violinist. What did it do to Edith’s mind? Carl, according to Aunt Mamie, was a “real good dancer.” In their desert home, did he and Edith twirl around in their house doing fancy dance steps? If I went to live with them, would I truly become liberated and turn into the free-spirited woman I longed to be?

      Mid-June 1957, the wagon was packed and the back seat flipped down to receive our supplies. Mother shoved an insulated aluminum chest into the car. It was filled with Polish dill pickles, ham sandwiches, potato salad, and thick slices of poppy seed cake. “Eat good for couple days,” she said.

      Wedged next to the cooler was Edith’s large, leather suitcase that held her Hopi style wardrobe. My much smaller Samsonite was only half full, Edith having culled my Connecticut clothes. “We’ll get you all new outfits in Arizona,” she promised. By special concession, I was allowed to take my plastic bin of art supplies and one square cardboard box filled with my drawing notebooks. The so-called free space in the wagon was only sufficient for two sets of rolled up bedding. Little did I suspect that most nights we’d be sleeping crunched up like stowaways in the wagon.

      On the awning-shaded porch, Mother and Dad stood together and watched their two daughters leave them. From the passenger side, I waved and attempted to stop the unexpected tears that blurred my vision. Hania and Juzo were holding hands, something I’d never seen them do before. In the driver’s seat, Edith backed the wagon out of the driveway and shot up a cursory wave. She made a sharp turn, and the wagon lurched onto the street. The figures of our parents grew smaller and smaller as 360 Fairfield Avenue disappeared from view. Not until much later did I acknowledge the conflicting emotions I felt that day: resignation that I would never again walk through the glass-paneled front door of Boarding House #2; and anticipation about my liberated future.

      How many days and nights did it take road warrior Edith at the wheel of the wagon and me in the passenger seat to drive 2,500 miles across America? I had