by Julie Kibler
Miss Hallie was no more attractive than Lizzie herself, but Lizzie’s dark hair and eyes increased the sharpness of her nose and square chin, while Miss Hallie’s mousy waves washed out her softer features. Today, though, her cheeks and eyes glowed, nearly pretty in spite of nature’s hand. In fact, Lizzie would almost vouch that Miss Hallie was flustered.
Brother JT strode around the desk. At the pulpit, you’d never suspect the Reverend Upchurch was shorter than most men by half a foot, hardly bigger than a boy. He was gentle and sweet-tempered with the girls, but when he preached the Word, he seemed to impart the actual voice of God. He appeared anything but small.
“Good morning, Sister Elizabeth!” he boomed. “To what do we owe this pleasure? Are we running short of diapering cloth? Toys? The budget is dire, but we won’t let our little ones suffer—even if I go without a pay slip again this month.” Brother JT often refused his modest salary from the funds he raised—he said so frequently in his addresses.
Lizzie twisted her fingers into the edges of her apron. “Some things been puzzling me lately, if you got the time.”
Brother JT waved Lizzie into his study. “Come, come! Your curiosity keeps me honest, in my own studies and other ways.”
Lizzie felt her cheeks burn, but his smile calmed her. She sank into a springy upholstered chair near his desk, then moved back to the edge. She shouldn’t get comfortable. Not today.
Miss Hallie pulled her desk chair just inside the door. She no longer glowed. Lizzie dragged her gaze away from Miss Hallie’s glare and swallowed her nerves. She hadn’t expected an extra audience that treated her like a bother at best and a threat at worst.
Brother JT didn’t seem threatened. He leaned his chin on his clasped hands, bolstering her with his warmth.
“Brother JT, you brung so many here in the worst condition, hardly worth the trouble—”
He interrupted. “Every single soul is worth saving and absolutely worth the trouble.”
“But you let a girl go when she were at her worst. Is she not worth it too?”
Brother JT stilled. As always, he carefully weighed his response. He gave every complicated question a thinking reply, not rattled from a list of easy answers. She trusted him as she’d trusted no other man.
Miss Hallie had been silent. Now she drew her shoulders back. “We can’t have girls doing whatever they please and jeopardizing our reputation. We have our limits. We help those willing to help themselves.”
Lizzie took a big breath. “But sometimes you have to do the thinking if a girl can’t do it on her own. Sometimes dope speaks louder than the truth.”
“A valid point,” Brother JT said. Miss Hallie plucked at her collar, as if her brooch pin suddenly poked her sallow neck. “We often ask ourselves how far to go…how forceful we should be. Should we keep a girl against her will? It’s not our practice. You must be thinking of May.” He paused for an instant, and Lizzie pressed her fingers harder into her apron. She forced herself not to scratch her arms, for they always set to itching again when she felt nervous. “May was the hardest case we’ve attempted. We didn’t think she’d survive the first night. We believed we were providing a final resting place for a girl too far gone.”
“I were far gone, too.” Lizzie released her apron and grasped the edge of Brother JT’s desk. “I shouldn’t have lived through what I done.”
Brother JT leaned closer and covered Lizzie’s hand.
“You had a reason to fight,” he said. “An angel needed her mother. One of the best motivators we have is the innocent child that so often accompanies the woman. It gives her a real, tangible reason to make good.”
Docie had been her reason; Lizzie knew it. Without her and the grace of God, she’d never have pulled through. But that didn’t answer the rest. “If ever’ single soul is worth saving,” she said, “why wouldn’t we fight for those who can’t do it for themselves?”
Brother JT sighed. “We make our hardest decisions in the interest of who could be hurt by our stubbornness. May was given more than a fair chance. We were willing to look past the damage to Sister Susie’s quarters, but when she threatened physical harm to those caring for her, we let her go. We couldn’t force her to stay, not at the risk of the health of our workers, or girls, or heaven forbid, our children.”
He searched her face. “Can you understand, Lizzie? You have a generous heart. You want every fallen girl—every human and…every creature—to gain the security you’ve found. The sad truth is, though we can attempt to emulate our savior, we are not God. We can only do so much. I wish as much as you do that we’d been able to help May to a better life. She was so very sick. No telling where she might be now—or if she’s even alive.”
Lizzie couldn’t look him in the eye. “I’d best get back to my babies. They’ll wonder what’s happened to me.”
Brother JT followed her to the door. He patted Lizzie’s shoulder. “You’re always welcome here. I’m proud you’re strong—and courageous enough—to devote your heart and mind to difficult questions. Our Heavenly Father must smile.”
Lizzie forced a smile of her own and walked toward the outer door, where Miss Hallie had positioned herself, as if to be sure Lizzie left. Lizzie reckoned Miss Hallie needn’t worry about anyone but herself.
On her way out, Lizzie recalled a few months before, when she’d seen a stray dog wandering the property. She’d watched first Gertrude shoo it from where it begged at the kitchen door, and then Sister Susie, who backed away from it on the front porch, commanding it to leave.
The dog had run off down the walk into the dirt road but returned eventually to where Lizzie sat on the steps. She hadn’t the heart to yell. The dog followed her all the way beyond the buildings to the farm field, then clambered up next to Lizzie on her favorite sitting rock.
Lizzie had noticed that the dog’s belly was full, her teats pink and hanging low. Her heart sank. The dog’s patchy hair teemed with fleas, eyes and ears crusty from scratching, but Lizzie knew she was expecting pups—any minute by the looks of her. And she gazed at Lizzie through weepy golden eyes.
Sighing, Lizzie had hopped back off the rock and walked farther with the dog. Several in the Home had campaigned for a house pet but were firmly turned down by Sister Susie. It was no use asking if they could make a place for it, even in one of the outbuildings.
The dog trotted alongside her with swinging belly and panting tongue as Lizzie approached the Berachah Beauty Spot—a little meadow near the southwest property line, so named for the wildflowers that bloomed there each spring. It was usually one of the quietest places on the grounds, away from the clatter of everyday activity. But that day, Lizzie heard an unmistakable sound—Brother JT’s gentle, but booming voice.
She and the dog came up over a small rise, and there he stood, before the field of flowers that quivered in the breeze, like a sanctuary full of rapt worshippers nodding with each beat of his sermon. He held up a hand to prevent Lizzie from speaking until he finished. She waited patiently, the dog beside her.
“What have we here?” he said a moment later.
She blushed, embarrassed to be interrupting. He assured her he was simply rehearsing his message for the following Sunday. “It’s my favorite place to preach,” he said. “The flowers tell me if I’ve been listening to God or chasing rabbits. Now, who’s this?”
“A stray, I reckon. I never seen her and she’s covered in fleas—and about to have her some pups.”
“Ah. Sister Susie won’t have her at all, will she?” He grinned at Lizzie’s shrug of mouth. “My wife and Susie would have my head for this, I think, but lead her to that old barn across campus. Surely we can find a few rags to stuff down in a crate, and I’ll get my hands on something to feed her until they’re ready to move on. You know we can’t keep them, don’t you, Lizzie? But I’ll ask around town to see who’s in the market for a puppy.”
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br /> She’d followed his directions, and by the time he appeared in the barn, the mama dog was pushing the first pup out. They settled her quickly in the wooden crate and watched together as she birthed the first, and then three others. The last one didn’t wriggle, not after its mother licked the membrane away or when she pushed the tiny creature with her nose to the far corner of the crate. Lizzie’s eyes filled as she carefully removed the runt, feeling how cold he already was.
“I was afraid that might be the case,” Brother JT said. “I’ve seen a few litters of pups in my lifetime. I’ll bury it after a while.”
She nodded. The other three latched on to the mother’s teats and sucked vigorously, with tiny mewling noises.
“I’ll check on them, morning and night. Don’t you worry, we’ll find them homes.” Brother JT’s eyes twinkled, and Lizzie grinned in spite of her sadness over the dead one. “It’ll cost an arm and a leg in meat as long as she’s feeding the babies. We’ll have to be creative.”
Lizzie’s neck and ears had burned. She’d brought yet another expense upon an already struggling household of nearly forty. “I can get you some money easy,” she said.
The words tumbled out, before she could think to stop them, as if her life hadn’t changed at all since coming to the Home. Brother JT swung his head from the litter. She clapped her hands over her mouth, her face aflame.
“No, no…” he said. For once, he seemed otherwise speechless.
In her contract, she’d promised to never to be alone with a man. She’d promised to think before acting. And she’d promised to never again offer her body in exchange for money or favors. In less than ten minutes, she’d broken the first two and suggested the third.
She cowered against the crate. “I don’t know why I said it. Please don’t think I’m bad.”
When she dared to look at his eyes, he shook his head. “I’ll take responsibility for the dog and puppies. But see, Lizzie, we must be careful. People like you and me, when we see a need, we struggle to manage our hearts.”
She’d run back to the house, begging the Lord’s forgiveness the entire way. She told herself her extreme desire to help one of God’s creatures was the only reason her shameful words surfaced, a knee-jerk reaction.
Several weeks later, the Upchurch children squealed in their yard as their daddy carried a puppy under each arm across the road. The mama dog was gone, and Lizzie assumed she was safe on a farm somewhere, maybe with her third baby. She’d wondered now and then where Brother JT had buried the littlest but trusted he’d taken care of it, just as he’d taken care of the entire situation, quietly and without judgment.
Leaving Miss Hallie’s office today, Lizzie said, “Bye now.”
Miss Hallie sniffed and nodded, but as Lizzie went down the hall, she sensed those eyes boring a suspicious hole in her back. She didn’t blame her. She didn’t trust herself some days either.
Brother JT’s arguments about May were sensible. But when Lizzie thought of her, tied up in the moldy hayloft in that same old barn where the pups had lived, in the fight of her life, she knew the Home had missed a chance. They had to go further, in spite of everything, and Lizzie had to be the one to prove it.
MEMORANDUM
DATE: June 1, 1905
TO: Mr. Albert Ferry, Printer for the Berachah Rescue Society
CC: Miss Hallie V. Taylor, Secretary and Treasurer of the Berachah Industrial Home
FROM: Reverend J. T. Upchurch, Founder and Director of the Berachah Industrial Home
RE: Statement for next issue of The Purity Journal
Please include the following thoughts in next month’s issue (bordered box, page three):
Among all the sinners he redeemed, none attracts and holds the attention of a lost world like fallen women. There is something so utterly hopeless in their case that even an attempt to reach them immediately attracts widespread attention.
The work has suffered some on account of enthusiastic workers persuading girls to go to the Home, as if it were Heaven, which, when reached, would settle all other questions.
The most difficult of all the work we do is out at the Home. Every girl admitted there is a problem in need of a solution.
And some are stubborn problems.
—J.T.U., ed.
MATTIE
Arlington, Texas
1905
Mattie had wanted to stop Lizzie from rushing off after breakfast. She knew where she was headed and hoped she’d take care. If she got herself thrown out—and heaven forbid Docie with her—the world would chew her up and spit her out as fast and as far as you could think. She was an angel with the babies but had no skill for anything else but menial labor. Her family had plainly told her if she darkened their doorstep again, they’d kill her.
Lizzie hadn’t deserved the hand dealt her the first twenty years of her life.
Mattie’s own family hadn’t been so evil. She’d disgraced them, after all. It was only fair they’d pushed her away. And she’d pay the rest of her days—in all likelihood, alone. A man who would take on a woman with her history was rare.
Sister Susie caught her arm on her way out of the dining room. “Come by my desk when you have a minute, dear. I have something for you.”
Mattie could have gone then, but Lizzie would walk directly past the kitchen after leaving Brother JT’s study. She propped the swinging door open with a bootjack.
Gertrude slammed a lid on a pot. “Five minutes until the nursery tray has to go up.”
“Olive’s feet are swollen, and Lizzie Bates is down the hall. She can take the tray up with her.”
Gertrude harrumphed, but Olive’s time was nearly on her, and they insisted she keep her feet up when possible. Olive shot a grateful look from where she dried dishes, belly crowded against the drainer.
“What’s Lizzie bothering Brother JT about now?” Gertrude said.
Mattie held her tongue—biting hard—until she was able to speak without yelling. “You know Lizzie always has questions about how to truly love one another.” She couldn’t help dripping sarcasm like honey.
Gertrude ignored it. “Well, we must be mindful of Brother JT’s time. Oh! Mattie,” she said, pausing to slice bread for the griddle, “someone’s been downstairs in the night, snitching food. Would you know anything about that?”
Mattie nearly dropped a plate as she stepped back and forth loading the tray. Gertrude monitored what went in or out as if she paid the food bill herself. “Who would do such a thing without asking?”
“With you and Lizzie loitering on the porch by my kitchen door, you might wonder.”
“Oh, Gert. If Docie were still hungry after her supper, you wouldn’t begrudge her a bite, would you, even from your kitchen?”
“That child eats entirely too much,” Gertrude said, shaking out her apron. “Everyone spoils her. And the other little ones don’t run wild with the Upchurch children when they visit. She should know her place.”
Mattie gaped. “At three years old, she should know that other children are better and can’t be her playmates because of who her mother is? Was?” She placed extra emphasis on the last word, for they were daily reminded they were new creations, not who they used to be.
“Well, that’s not exactly what I’m saying.”
Mattie couldn’t bite her tongue again. “And why would a woman with an illegitimate girl in the nursery keep company with a man of the cloth? Surely she should know her place.”
Gertrude gasped, and spots rose on her cheeks. “Reverend Woods and I have Brother JT’s blessing. I’ve confessed, I’m forgiven, and the Lord is gracious. How dare you suggest I don’t deserve a second chance?”
Mattie gazed at Gertrude, her lips set in a line.
They heard Lizzie’s dragging steps in the hall. Gertrude scowled and banged a mug onto the tray, shoving it at Lizzie
as Mattie pulled her into the kitchen. “Mattie said you’d take it, seeing as you’re already downstairs. You two know too much about what the other is up to.”
Lizzie’s mouth went slack. Mattie simply shook her head and touched a finger to her lips. Following Lizzie into the hall, she leaned to whisper. “What were you—”
“For heaven’s sake, leave Lizzie to her work,” Gertrude hollered. “Can’t leave the two of you alone. Maybe the Devil has hold of you both again.” Lizzie cowered, the weight of the tray dragging at her. “Mattie, we thought you’d experienced a real conversion, but maybe it was all for show. Are you trying to bring Lizzie down with you? Make her think she can do as she pleases? For shame.”
Mattie felt mad enough to hit the woman, but Lizzie jumped between them as Gertrude approached. “She ain’t done nothing wrong. She encourages me, straight in my ear, when I can’t hardly stand being good. She’s an angel.”
Gertrude pressed her palms against her waistband, looking from one girl to the other, clearly unconvinced. Lizzie wasn’t one to make a speech. “I won’t remind you again to hurry with that tray. Those poor babies surely think you’ve abandoned them with no morning milk.”
Lizzie cringed. Mattie closed her eyes. Gertrude herself knew how to hit harder than Mattie would ever think to.
Suddenly, Miss Hallie emerged from the shadows, startling all three. “Gracious, Miss Gertrude! Those were stinging words. No need to shame Lizzie. The children are fine.”
Had she been listening all along?
Gertrude drew herself up. “Please forgive my thoughtlessness.”
Lizzie gave Mattie a sideways glance. Mattie was still furious. “Sister Susie asked me to see her in her office,” she said. “And I don’t believe the kitchen is the best place for me.”
“Nonsense,” Miss Hallie said. “Two new girls arrive this afternoon. They’ll need feeding.”
