Missing Jolene by Gretchen Gales

Missing Jolene
     
        Jolene Buchanan has been missing for twenty years. Her ‘Missing Child’ poster has broken from the rusted staples trapping it on the wooden electrical pole. It rained three days after Jolene’s disappearance, eating away at the thin corners of the poster until it softly ripped away. The heavy rain water had probably swallowed it into the sewers by now. It isn’t certain where the poster had ended up, just like no one ever found any trace of Jolene. No body, no blood, no fingerprints, no hair. A red smear was found on the floor, but it was only a smeared chunk of bright red lipstick. There are thousands of staples on that same pole from other posters, less important announcements and advertisements that can never overshadow Jolene.
        Dana Buchanan sits next to the phone — corded to the wall the way it had been in 1997 — the same as she does every evening after her receptionist job. Her friends and family tell her to disconnect it, move out of the house, get a new number. But she has to stay by the phone. Just in case. What kind of mother would she be if she didn’t? She still deserves to be a mother, no matter what Nancy Grace says. She still is a mother. Jolene is out there. She has to be out there.
       She gets hundreds of calls a week asking for interviews. Dr. Phil’s team called last year to invite her as a guest alongside JonBenét Ramsey’s father and her brother. The cases are both eerily close to one another; Both involve beauty pageant daughters, both six year-old girls, both never solved, and both involved the parents as prime suspects. Jolene had also been named after a father — Dana’s father Joe, who passed suddenly in a car accident when she turned sixteen. He was only forty. Maybe it was a mistake naming her child after her dead father. Maybe she shouldn't have named her child a name with the letter J, J for Jinx! You’ll never see them again.
 
                                                                                                                                ***
 
       While she sits at the phone, she replays the moments the investigators asked her to recall the day Jolene disappeared. It was Saturday, January 18th at 8:35 a.m. Dana’s husband Shaun had just dropped off the two at the door in front of the Greater Richmond Convention Center. That’s where that weekend’s pageant was happening. Downtown Richmond was always hectic, but pageant season made it worse. Dana barked at her then-husband Shaun to just drop them off and to deal with parking himself while she rushed to prep Jolene for the show.
       Dana dragged Jolene into the dressing room and began unpacking her costumes and makeup bag. She dropped a round container of blush on the ground and groaned as it rolled beneath another contestant’s vanity. Dana grumbled and told Jolene to stay right where she was and to try and get at least part of her costume on. She crawled on the glitter and sequin-sprinkled floor, the sequins getting stuck to her knees and good panty hose. Dana sneezed as black feathers from other costumes floated like tumbleweeds across the floor. One even went straight up her nose! Reaching under the vanity the blush had rolled under, she retrieved it along with clinging dust-bunnies that attached themselves to her Ralph Lauren blazer. She brushed what she could off of her and watched them accidently float towards Memphis Hazelwood, a judge favorite and town sweetheart. Her mother June gave Memphis everything a little girl could want: the most expensive costumes, a personal dance instructor, a pony. It never ended. Dana was convinced that the pageants were often rigged in Memphis’ favor. She felt that June was good at bribing a judge in more ways than one.
       June glared at Dana and pulled her daughter in protectively enough to dodge the aerial threat, but not hard enough to touch her done-up hair.
       “Keep moving, bitch,” snapped June. “If you know you can’t keep up, don’t bother showing up."
         Dana just ignored June and walked back towards Jolene’s vanity.
“Alright, missy,” began Dana, “We’ve gotta get that hair brushed again and —”
Dana stopped. The makeup bag had been untouched and Jolene’s costume was sitting right where she left it. But Jolene...
         Jolene was gone.
         Just.
         Gone.
         Dana frantically searched for Jolene in the dressing room, shouting for Jolene. Only a few of the other moms noticed and tried to help her find Jolene among clouds of hairspray. They tried looking in the lobby. Dana found Shaun and began screaming and crying that their daughter was missing. Security guards stepped in to assist in the search. Her memory was fuzzy as to how long they canvassed the Convention Center, but after what must have been hours, the pageant was put on hold. Police officers came into the building later on and started taping off the area.
         “Do you have any enemies or people that would want to hurt your daughter?” the initial police officers had asked.
         “June Hazelwood has it out for me,” said Dana, “She basically accused me of trying to sabotage her daughter’s dress earlier.”
         But the police couldn’t find any connection to the Hazelwoods. Or anyone. There were no clues. Jolene had just vanished. Her entire life had vanished. Reporters would crowd around her doorstep every day for a month.
          “Mrs. Buchanan, have there been any leads on the case?”
          “Mrs. Buchanan, do you think a sexual predator in this area is responsible for her abduction?”
          “Do you think the same person who killed JonBenét kidnapped your daughter?”
          “Do you think you daughter is alive?”
          “Did you kill your daughter?”
 
         Shaun left Dana a year after Jolene’s disappearance. He couldn’t live like this, he would say. He didn’t even want children to begin with, but she had to beg for a child. And he had grown to love that child so dearly. She couldn’t even keep an eye on her. She lost her.
 
                                                                                                                              ***
 
           Dana jerks awake at the sound of the doorbell ringing. Her eyes dart at the clock: 8:53 a.m.
           Who is here this early? It might be the local church group that brought food to her along with the elderly shut-ins. But they only come by after Sunday service, not on a Saturday morning. She had not ordered anything from the catalogs lately, so it isn’t the UPS man. Dana wanders up to the door and peers through the peephole. It is a young, frail woman dressed in tight black leather shorts, fishnet tights nearly covered by knee-high black boots, and a tethered gray tank top beneath an over-sized plaid button-up. Her fingers alone are as thin as the needles Dana would use to quickly fix ripped fabric on Jolene’s dresses. In a rush, Dana would grip the needle too hard and snap it in half. She wonders if the lightest touch would snap the mystery woman outside of her door.
          “It’s me, Mom,” the young woman announced loudly in a raspy voice, “Jolene. I’m Jolene Rosemary Buchanan, your daughter.”
          Dana froze. Many people called her home claiming she was her daughter, but never came to her doorstep. What should she do? Her first instinct was to yank open the door, grab her long-lost daughter, and cry as she grips her tightly. But though the woman at the door claims to be Jolene, time and captivity seemed to have altered the brightness of her eyes. They aren’t a vibrant hazel like they were, but a deep brown. Her hair looks frayed and brunette, not the shining blonde it used to be.
            “Your hair…” muttered Dana.
            “I know it isn’t blonde like everyone sees in the pictures, but my captor made me dye my hair,” she says, pulling at the scraggly tangles. “His name was Joe or something. I didn’t know much else, I’m just glad to finally be home. Can I go sleep in my bed?”
           Of course you can sleep in your bed… it’s just the way you left it.  Dana wants to think. She’s wanted to think it for a long time. But how can she be sure?
           “If you are r-really Jolene,” said Dana, stumbling over her words, “what is my first name?”
         The woman thought for a moment. “Dana. Dana...Marie Buchanan.” the woman responded. “Is that right? I mean, I was only six-ish when the man grabbed me from the Convention Center so if I got it wrong you’ll have to forgive me. Maybe a nap will help. ” She pulls a pack of Marlboros out of one shirt pocket and a pink BIC lighter from the other, lighting one.
           “So can I come in?” she asked with a cigarette hanging out of her mouth.
           Dana stares at this Jolene. This dark-eyed Jolene. This tangled Jolene. This long-missing Jolene. She has been missing Jolene. Dana cracks the door open a little wider until the sunlight touches the hardwood floors.
             She will let this missing Jolene inside.

Bio: Gretchen is currently the managing editor of Quail Bell Magazine. Her written work has appeared in Wear Your Voice Mag, ROAR Feminist, The Establishment, Bustle, projects of SFG Media, and more. Gretchen has also been interviewed for Her Campus as part of their “How She Got There” series as well as a segment on For Creative Girls. She is based in a small town in Virginia.

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