Dana wakes up one morning to the awful sound of snoring. She’s confused at first because she is neither married, nor does she share her bed with anyone. As morning rays cut into her lavender curtains and onto her lavender bed spread, she realizes it is her who is snoring. Impossible she thinks. I do not snore.
She looks at her dollar store clock and knows that it is 7:30 in the morning of September 29. It is her birthday. Today Dana turns 67 years old. At 8:00 a.m., she receives a call from her sister who called to wish her a happy birthday. They hang up and Dana goes into her kitchen. A 1970’s museum of yellow cabinets and mint colored appliances. Dana pulls out some leftovers from last night’s dinner. Fish fry from local Esther’s diner down the road. She eats quietly in her little table and stares at her hands which no longer look like her own, but those of someone…old?
As Dana chews, she looks out the window. She can still see her daughter’s chestnut hair, lifeless in the dull fall morning of September. She can still see herself running her fingers through her daughter’s hair in an attempt to add volume. “Don’t part your hair down the middle,” she’d say. And together they’d wait for the bus to roll down their street and take Jenny away to school.
The burnt orange morning sun would illuminate their modest two bedroom duplex. The wind would blow golden leaves off the trees, and the sight of a school bus would disappear in the distance, leaving Dana behind to style her own hair into a neat bun.
Then on the morning of September 29, Dana woke at 7:55 a.m. Dana rushed to get Jenny up. She would surely miss the bus she thought, which meant she would have to drive her to school, she would be late for work, and Dana couldn’t afford to lose her job, not on September 29, her 24th birthday.
So she rushed Jenny out of bed and out the door while she hurried and brushed her own hair, parting it down the middle in a hurry.
“Don’t part your hair down the middle,” Dana yelled out the window. But on that day the bus did not stop, and the sun didn’t touch the little duplex they called home. Dana didn’t notice the leaves ruffling in the wind, and she just missed the quick flutter of her daughter’s hair. She looked out the window and snow covered the ground. Jenny had disappeared; taking with her the sun and golden leaves that matched her lifeless hair.
For many years all Dana heard was the phrase “time heals”. But for parents of missing children, time does not heal, it stands still. And for Dana, her calendar always says September 29, she still waits for a bus that will never come, and she is still telling Jenny not to part her hair down the middle.