Letters of Recommendation
Letters of Recommendation
Marinda Burningham Fowler
Anne always sat facing the window. She set up her classroom backwards so that her desk could be in the corner that faced outside, despite the fact that it meant her students would have to turn around and strain their necks to see what she wrote on the board. In the end, it didn’t matter. Anne never wrote on the board. Her handwriting was atrocious.
Summer was coming, Anne could feel it, and not just because of the sudden jump to 80 degrees and 60% humidity. Summer meant escape fiction, jackets worn inside as she pumped the air conditioning, cantaloupe, trips to Dallas with John to see shows and try new sushi restaurants, Chaco’s, and that letter that came every second week in July. Anne tried not to think about that letter in its blue B&R Family Services envelope, always smelling like spaghetti or grass stains or the kind of perfume a housewife would wear. She grew antsy and couldn’t wait to check the mail today, even though she knew the letter probably hadn’t even been written yet.
Outside, few cars remained parked along the street and Anne knew there were even fewer in the parking lot. The second to last day of school, traditionally known as senior skip day, had prompted many of her junior students to skip also. Anne had a remedy for that: final exams.
She surveyed her classroom, studying each sixteen-year-old face that belonged to her honors English class. She remembered being sixteen, unlike most of the parents of her students. At sixteen she really had things going for her. Everybody said so, from the prep schools trying to recruit her for their music programs to her violin teacher to her father, who thought she could do no wrong except when she told him she wanted to try out for the volleyball team. “No daughter of mine is going to wear spandex in public,” he’d said. In retrospect, he might have preferred the spandex to the maternity dress she’d worn just a year later to her high school graduation.
Of her twenty-two students, five had finished the exam and sat with their pencils down, reading novels. Two had fallen asleep, three methodically chewed their pencils, seven furiously scribbled answers, and five stared at the clock on the wall, not knowing that Anne set it six and a half minutes slow on purpose. When she announced, “You have three minutes to finish your exams and set them on my desk,” they looked at her in surprise and went back to their essays right along with the pencil chewers.
The bell rang and instead of the excited running of the bulls that usually accompanied the last full day of class, her students slowly reenacted the Bataan death march as they filed to her desk and then in a straight line out the door.
The last in line was Shanna. She had perfected the mournful look, Anne thought as she noticed a tinge of green in Shanna’s pale cheeks. Shanna took the role of Anne’s top student and may have been her favorite if Anne played favorites. She was a cheerleader, but Anne didn’t hold that against her; instead Anne admired the way the girl could balance cheer practice, three AP courses, and a boyfriend and still maintain her position as first chair violin in the school’s orchestra.
Solemnly Shanna set her test on the top of the pile and rested her hand on top of the stack as she spoke. “Mrs. Melken?”
“Yes?” Anne replied, noticing how Shanna’s eyes shifted away from her, darting from quote to quote on the wall around the window.
“I…um…” Shanna took a deep breath and rattled off her news. “I’m not going to need that recommendation I asked you for. I’m not applying for the Top Scholar’s program anymore.”
” Why not, Shanna?” Anne asked, suspicious.
“I’m not coming back to school next fall.”
“Did you get into TAMS?” Anne inquired, remembering that Shanna had said something about applying to the local university’s program that allowed high school seniors to basically enter college a year early by moving to campus and taking freshman courses that also fulfilled senior credits.
Shanna let out a short chuckle. “No. I didn’t apply.”
“Would you like me to write you a letter of recommendation anyway? I’m sure a girl as bright as you will have more than one scholarship to apply for her senior year.” Anne said.
Shanna looked at Anne, stubborn and sad and frustrated at all the same time. Her golden curls bounced as she said, “I’m not gonna need the letter. Thanks though.”
“Everyone needs a letter. I’d be happy to write one for you.”
“With all due respect, Mrs. Melken, I don’t need you to write a letter for me. I’m sorry I asked.”
“That’s fine,” Anne paused, feeling like Nancy Drew and Eleanor Roosevelt and Mother Theresa all at the same time. “May I ask why?”
“I…um…” Shanna looked away again, focusing on the blue cardstock sporting words from zippidee do dah Uncle Remus that said “You can’t run away from trouble. There ain’t no place that far.” Anne knew that most of her students wouldn’t know who Uncle Remus was, but she liked the quote so she put it up anyway. She considered it an anti-procrastination reminder.
“Like I said, I’m not coming back in the fall.” Shanna’s lip trembled.
Any other teacher might have dismissed her, saying “we’ll miss you” or “good luck at your new school” but Anne knew what it felt like to wear the expression on Shanna’s face and she just couldn’t let it go.
“Why, Shanna?”
She watched as Shanna placed a protective hand over her abdomen and wiped a tear with the other. “My parents are sending me to my grandparents for a while. I guess you can’t be a teen mother and valedictorian at the same time. Gives people the wrong idea or something.”
“Let me guess,” Anne said. “You’re pregnant?”
Inside, Anne’s stomach lurched. She worked so hard to tell her students to make good decisions, to constantly think about their futures, to be adults. None of the students knew it, but she was the one putting up abstinence flyers on each bulletin board at five a.m. Monday morning and arranging for the annual abstinence assembly. She knew that what she did was important, but she also knew that accidents happened. Anne wanted to reach out, place a hand on Shanna’s shoulder or arm, but she wasn’t close enough. She leaned forward over her desk. “You are going to finish, though? Right?”
Shanna nodded. “Definitely. My mom and I found an online program that I can do next year, so by the time my baby’s a year old, I’ll be able to go to college.”
“You’re keeping the baby?” Anne was shocked.
“Of course,” Shanna said, wrapping her arm around her abdomen tighter. “I can’t just give away my baby and there is no way I’m gonna kill it!”
“Oh, no, no, I didn’t mean that,” Anne stuttered. “I just…wow. That’s a big undertaking.”
“I know, but…I just can’t consider any other option.”
Anne wanted to lecture her, tell her that there was an option that would open up a million more options for Shanna and her baby, give her the same lecture she’d received from her parents at age eighteen. Keeping the baby was only an option to John, and she’d told him no, she couldn’t do it.
“Well, good luck,” Anne said, knowing her comment sounded short but she had to close her mouth before it let loose.
“You know what, Mrs. Melken? It probably would be a good idea to have a letter.” Shanna picked up the post-it notes pad sitting on Anne’s desk and scribbled an address. “Would you mind sending me one?”
Anne nodded her agreement and watched as Shanna bounced out of the room, very much the cheerleader. The girl showed no signs of remorse, of guilt, of anger—all of the emotions that had plagued Anne for the last fifteen years.
*****
June came and left and July kept Anne waiting like a five-year-old waiting for Santa Claus on Christmas Eve. Anne hated summer; she always did by the time June was over. She didn’t handle anticipation well. She’d already lost ten games in a row to her mother in their cross-country online Scrabble tournament. She’d started her summer reading list but Anna Karenina just wouldn’t hold her attention. She’d replanted the flower bed twice and finally pulled it up all together, deciding she didn’t like Impatiens anymore. They looked too content, too bright and smiley for their name.
By the time July 12th rolled around, Anne had given up.
“She forgot,” Anne said to John as they ate their annual slice of funfetti birthday cake. This year she’d written “Happy Birthday Joshua!” on it in red icing and there were holes where fifteen unblown birthday candles had been planted and quickly taken out.
“She didn’t forget.” John took a big bite of his spongy white cake and reassured his wife. “She’s probably just a little slow getting it written this year. Life is busy when you have teenagers.”
“That’s no excuse!”
“Anne,” John said slowly, placing his hand over hers. Then he started chuckling and smiling, which irked Anne because she knew that smile meant he knew something she didn’t. “I noticed you didn’t check the mail today,” he said.
“It hates me.”
“Well, it doesn’t hate me.” John stood and retrieved the stack of mail that he’d set on the counter next to the phone, glad she was too busy making dinner when he came in to notice.
“You didn’t tell me?!” Anne’s eyes flashed a critical mass warning and she held her hand out for the letter.
“Surprise?” John said, shrugging his shoulders. She knew he dreaded this letter’s arrival every year. There was no band-aid for the kind of hurt that came with pictures of somebody else holding your son and giving you a yearly report of his activities. The adoption had been John’s idea, and she couldn’t blame him. He was only eighteen when they’d found out she was pregnant. How were they supposed to know that things would work out between the two of them?
“That’s no excuse.”
“I’m sorry love.” John apologized, sitting back down at the table and handing her the blue envelope. “Will you read it to me?”
Anne held the letter to her chest with both hands. “I don’t know if I can.” She held it up to her nose. “It smells different,” she said.
“How can you even tell?”
She looked at him and cocked her head. “I just can. It’s a mom thing.” She opened the letter vertically, ripping the edge off the postage side and pulling out familiar pink stationary. The paper always reminded her of baby lotion; John said it looked to him like Pepto-Bismol.
She handed him the letter as if she were passing him communion.
He took a deep breath and began, tripping over the greeting. Josh’s mom always left out his name—they’d never had the chance to tell her they’d gotten back together after a year-long separation following Josh’s birth. Anne knew this bothered her husband deeply, that sometimes he felt like an outcast because of it, even though after the seventh letter received during their fourth year of marriage he’d stopped saying anything about it. He continued reading,
Dear Anne,
I hope this year’s letter finds you well. Josh is doing amazing and we love him more and more everyday. This year has brought many twists and turns in our lives and he’s had to grow up a lot. We—well, I—think you’d be proud of the man that he is becoming.
He finished his first year of high school this past May. His grades leave something to be desired, but as you know it’s just not cool to get straight A’s. So he gets straight B’s without trying and spends all of his time shooting a basketball or playing the Wii with his little brother.
I’m not sure how to put this, or even if I should tell you this, but if Josh were writing this letter he would so that gives me courage. Last March, shortly after Josh’s father and I separated
Anne drew a quick breath and put her hand over her abdomen. John paused to look at her but the reprimand came quickly: “Keep reading.”
Last March, after Josh’s father and I separated, he was studying genetics in his science class. As you know, we agreed that this would be a limited open adoption. It was my intention to not tell Josh about his adoption until his eighteenth birthday for reasons of my own.
Anne looked at John and she could feel hope rising. The thing with feathers, she thought, feeling very Emily Dickenson. How quickly and often she’d seen hope fly into their lives, only to float away with another failed pregnancy test and thousands of dollars spent in fertility treatments because that first pregnancy hadn’t turned out so well and had messed up her insides permanently.
However, when Josh had to map out his family’s eye color genes with Punett squares and he asked me how it was possible that he had brown eyes when both my ex-husband and I have blue eyes, I didn’t have much choice but to tell him. He wouldn’t accept anything but the truth.
Needless to say, he was upset. So were his brother and sister. After many long hours of discussion with Josh, family counselors, and negotiating with the adoption agency we have come to an agreement. If you so desire, Josh would like to meet you. Please contact Lisa at the agency and let her know and we will go from there.
Sincerely,
Carol
PS: I have enclosed a picture of Josh in this past year’s basketball uniform. You can’t really tell, but he grew four inches this year. He started as a forward this season and was the highest scorer on the team!
There was no picture in the envelope. Anne checked again and excused it by saying, “She must have forgotten. Life gets busy.”
John handed her the letter and sank back into his chair, lifting his arms above his head and running his hands through his hair. He wore the same expression on his face that he had when she’d told him she was pregnant fifteen and a half years earlier.
“Where’s the phone?” Anne asked, standing up.
“What are you going to do?”
“What do you think I’m going to do? I’m going to call Lisa.”
“Anne, wait—” John stood and took the phone from her. “Let’s think about this.”
She maintained her grip on the phone as his hand closed around hers. He placed his left hand on her waist, protective and patronizing.
“John, what’s to think about? He wants us back.”
“No, Anne, he wants to meet us. There’s a difference.” John walked her back to the table and they sat down, setting the phone in between them like it was a legal document. “He’s not ours anymore, Anne. We can’t just take him back.”
“I know,” she said, finding it hard to block the image of John and Joshua playing basketball together in the driveway with the basketball standard John had installed last year. She saw the three of them going to a Cowboys game and fishing at Possum Kingdom Lake. She saw herself helping him with his homework and signing permission slips. She saw a Father’s Day dinner with someone more than herself to give John a hug and a card with a new tie.
“Maybe it’s better to not know,” John said. “For him.”
Anne nodded.
“He has siblings there,” John thought out loud. “We can’t give him that.”
So it doesn’t matter that we can give him absolutely everything else, Anne thought.
“And a spot on the team. He wouldn’t get one here. Basketball is so political.”
Anne nodded again.
John couldn’t think of anything more to say, so he sat silent. They sat there and stared at the phone, letter, and each other for ten minutes. Finally Anne whispered, “I wish she’d sent a picture.”
*****
Anne took three weeks to mail the letter. She felt bad to keep Shanna waiting so long, but she knew that the girl had other things on her mind and probably wouldn’t notice that for the first time in her life, Anne hadn’t acted promptly on a promise. The three letters needed to be mailed together, Anne knew. They belonged together.
It was hard to figure out what to write to Shanna. I hope the heat isn’t getting to you and that you are having an enjoyable time at your grandparents. The words seemed so superficial. Anne knew she could just send the traditional “Shanna is everything an altruistic high school student ought to be” letter by itself, but then she thought—maybe the one she wrote the night that Carol’s letter came might be the letter Shanna was asking for without knowing it.
Dear Shanna,
I know that you’re probably not having the most enjoyable summer ever (it isn’t fun being big and sick and uncomfortable, is it?) but I do hope you are having a good time with your grandparents. I’m sending your letter of recommendation soon, but there was something else I needed to tell you.
I know you said you’re keeping your baby. That’s a good option. I wish it had been mine. Life would have been so different if I kept my baby—but then again, if I had, I probably wouldn’t be your teacher. I’m not saying you can’t make something of your life, Shanna. You can. You must. Just know that you’re one of the lucky ones. Not many parents support their single-parent children and not many teen moms get to marry the boy that knocked them off their feet. You might get one or the other, but either way you are blessed.
Explore your options, Shanna. Don’t make this decision all at once. Talk to a social worker. Talk to your parents. Think about your future. And if, in the end, you decide that keeping your baby is still your only option—love him or her with all your heart, because there are dozens of other moms out there who didn’t get that opportunity.
Good luck.
Your teacher,
Anne Melken
Anne wrote the letter in twenty minutes. It just flowed, like when she was in college writing that literary analysis paper about Anne Bradstreet at three a.m. She knew what needed to be written and she wrote it. Her letter to Joshua, however, was another matter.
She knew he’d want to know why she and John had decided not to contact him. She knew he’d feel abandoned twice-over. She also knew, just as she did when she was eighteen, that he was never meant to be hers. So she pulled out the letter she’d written to him the night before he was born but never had been able to send and added a PS.
July 11, 1995
Dear Baby,
I’m not really very good with words, but I really wanted you to have something to hold on to that explained some things. The lady at the adoption agency said that I should write you a letter, that that would be okay. So, I guess that’s what I’ve ended up doing.
First of all, I love you. I wish with all my heart I could keep you, but it just seems impossible and so unfair to you. I’m only eighteen and your father isn’t much older and the two of us barely know how to take care of ourselves, let alone a baby!
The doctor tells me you’re just about done and you’ll be here soon. The thought makes me excited and nervous and very, very sad. Because after you’re born, you’re no longer mine.
I want you to know we’ve had a lot of fun over the past few months, you and I. We’ve read Dr. Suess and watched Sesame Street and I’ve come up with a dozen names for you—and secretly I’m hoping that your adoptive parents will pick one. It seems fair to me that I should get to pick your name, since I’m the reason you exist, but you’ll find out—grown ups always live by silly rules.
I don’t know if I’ll send this letter with you, or maybe I’ll send it to you later down the road. Life is just full of a lot of unknowns right now. There’s one thing I do want to tell you, and that is that no matter what anybody tells you, I do love you. Lots! I want more for you, and they tell me that giving you up is the only way you’ll get it.
I’ve been doing a lot of reading lately and one of the brochures says that to be adopted is to be doubly loved. I think that that is true and that is how I like to think of this decision. We’re giving you more love. And like the Beatles say, “All you need is love.” Remember, you can always trust the Beatles.
I guess that’s all I’ve got to say. I hope your life is great and that once in a while you’ll think of me and that someday I can be somebody you’ll be proud of. I love you!
Your mom,
Annie Halverson
PS. August 5, 2010
Dear Joshua,
I’m sure you’re wondering why you’re getting a scribbled letter instead of a visit. With all my heart, I wish that we could meet. I decided once that I would do what was best for you, and so you get a letter instead.
This won’t make sense to you, I know. But you have a life, Josh, and although it isn’t perfect, it is yours. When I handed you to your mother, I agreed to be part of your life at a distance. She is your mother now, so give her all your love. She deserves it.
I’m so proud of you! You make my life worth living each day. I’m doing my best to make you proud of me. Someday we will meet, Josh, but that day can’t be anytime soon. You have to become your own person first. Find out who you are, figure out what you want to be. Make good decisions. Don’t bother with the “what if’s” because they will only cause you grief. You’ve taught me so much, and you continue to teach me and inspire me daily.
I love you. Doubly. So does your father.
Your friend,
Anne Melken
My handwriting hasn’t gotten any better, thought Anne as she placed the letter into a white envelope and licked it shut. She brought it up to her nose but couldn’t smell anything but the apple cinnamon candle she’d been burning that afternoon.
She walked out to the mailbox and placed the letters inside. Ceremoniously she raised the red flag and walked away.