by Julie Kibler
Mattie stomped back into the kitchen and clattered dishes against the drain board. For all of Miss Hallie’s distance keeping, at least the woman wasn’t cruel.
But now she’d be watching them like a hawk.
CATE
Arlington, Texas
2017
I allowed myself that one night of unrestricted, unrestrained remembering. I listened to River’s CD and then buried it far back in my nightstand drawer. I could throw it away, but something stops me.
Over the next few weeks, I think of River more often than I have in years. Hardly a day has ever gone by without some song, some movie, some tiny scrap of life to remind me. But I’ve always swept it away. Now, my mind is crowded with all I’ve never been able to forget, and I cannot clear it out.
By the time the semester settles in, with everyone accustomed to the rhythm and flow of classes, papers, and exams, Thanksgiving break is around the corner.
My experience starting college was overwhelming—exceptionally so, considering what had happened that spring and summer. College was the last thing I wanted to think about then.
I assume most students I meet in the course of my work are facing various pressures, but I’ve rarely allowed myself to get close enough to know how they’re really doing—especially the freshmen. Are they coping with the different expectations college presents? Are they overwhelmed? Homesick? Missing family and friends?
I’d been all that and more, because I’d been cut off from my support system in one fell swoop. Or, more precisely, I cut myself off. But I still missed them.
A week before Thanksgiving break, on a quiet afternoon, Laurel finishes her routine work and pulls the Berachah collection. I’m reviewing activity logs at the desk, but I can see her. First, she dons the gloves and sifts through the photos. She looks up at one point, sweeping her long bangs off her forehead and behind an ear.
“Lotta white girls in these pictures,” she calls, a smirk on her face. I’ve noticed too. In one photo of everyone gathered in the tabernacle, I had spied a lone black woman at the very back of the auditorium, with a young black boy a few rows ahead. I’ve wondered who they were. A family housekeeper? Her son? And if they were welcomed, why only them?
Laurel’s last name, tawny skin, rich brown eyes, and jet-black hair would have made her stand out, too, though not quite as much. Would a Latina girl have been admitted into the Home? It’s impossible to guess. There’s one girl with coloring similar to Laurel’s in a group photo, but her ethnicity isn’t clear.
“It was the times,” I say, sighing, with no other explanation to offer, though I realize how pitiful it sounds. “In one Journal, JT mentioned a rescue home for black women in St. Louis. Maybe some women were referred up there. But it’s hard to say. And maybe those families weren’t so quick to kick girls to the curb.”
“Yeah,” she says, resigned to the hypocrisy—the indisputable flaws of this history we’ve come to love. We can hope things have changed, but we both know how much disparity there still is in our world.
Laurel opens one of the ledgers. After a while, she pushes back her chair and slams it closed. She’s never handled anything in the collection carelessly, not even the newest, sturdiest items. She gazes straight ahead, with a set to her mouth I haven’t seen. Without looking my way, she says, “I need to talk to a teacher about an assignment. Can I leave early?”
Today is Laurel’s longest afternoon shift. She’s proven to be a meticulous worker, reliable and responsible to a fault. Her sudden request surprises me, even though it’s a quiet day. “Sure,” I say. “Will you be back?”
“Would you mind if I just took off the rest of today?” She twists her bangs forward again, nearly covering her eyes. It’s no wonder her hair often appears oily, though I wonder how often she washes it—much less gets it cut.
I stand and walk close to her. “Are you okay? Anything going on?”
“Nope. I’m fine,” she says. Her nervous hands contradict her. Something has shifted, but she’s not going to say why. Witnessing someone shut down like this is eerie. Like a mirror I don’t want to look into but also can’t escape.
“Okay, then,” I say. “See you Thursday?”
Laurel shrugs and quickly returns the ledger to the box. I glance at the year on the cover: 1921. “Anything interesting in there?”
Instead of my question breaking the tension, her voice gets an even sharper edge. “Yep. Instead of taking girls in, they were turning them away.” She loads the cart and pushes it to the desk, then retrieves her overflowing backpack from the drawer. I watch through the glass doors until she steps into the elevator, then pull the ledger back out of the box.
Laurel is correct; the majority of entries for 1921 pertain to requests for the Home to accept new girls, followed by the matron’s reasons for rejection, reiterating their lack of space. The few accepted were pregnant, jilted by sweethearts or deserted by husbands. One entry catches my eye: Mrs. Mattie Madigan, Oklahoma City, called to see if we will take a young girl who works in a laundry, susceptible to advances of young stepfather. Turned down. Not ruined.
I’ve read it before—and had been thrilled to see her name. But the surname is different and Mattie wasn’t an unusual first name for that time. I haven’t been able to confirm for sure if it’s my Mattie. Now, though, I’m really worried. Laurel has hinted that she left home before finishing her senior year of high school, staying with friends a few weeks at a time until she graduated. Her abrupt departure today has me especially curious to know why.
I peer closer. Halfway down the page, something has dripped onto the page, but it’s not faded, as damage a century old would be. The smear is in process. Still damp. The words, firmly penned years ago, distort before my eyes. I replay the image of Laurel at the table. Liquids aren’t allowed anywhere but the break room, and besides, Laurel doesn’t break rules.
This teardrop is fresh.
I file the ledger again, then grab my jacket and umbrella from my office. It was pouring when I left for work this morning. Another student worker is manning the desk, so I peek into my boss’s office to say I need to run across campus. A good delegator, she rarely questions anything I do. Today, she hardly looks away from her screen.
On a hunch, I walk toward the busy road at the edge of campus. I’ve worn practical boots for a change, and I’m grateful as I cross the footbridge and wind through the rooted path. It’s chilly and misty and gloomy—even more under the canopy of trees. The leaves haven’t all fallen, but the ground is strewn with them, and it’s muddy and slick. Autumn has finally, forcefully, made an appearance after the green but hot and humid months that began the school year. I’ve avoided the cemetery since the concert, and the change is startling.
Today, I knew Laurel would be here, for reasons more instinctive than logical. I debate entering. I mostly want to see if she’s okay. That she’s safe. The realization jars me. I never expected to—never wanted to—experience these kind of maternal feelings, but they’ve crept up and slammed right into me. My relief at seeing her is, undoubtedly, one of the most unsettling emotions I’ve experienced in years. Of course, this fall is already one for the books.
She stands before the memorial to Reverend Upchurch, and from a distance, I watch her grip the top, firmly, almost as if she’s shaking someone by the shoulders, though the stone doesn’t budge. Then she steps back, and I can’t decipher her words, but she speaks loudly, harshly. She sinks down by the concrete block and her entire body trembles. I can’t help myself—I rush through the gate, but carefully, so I won’t frighten her.
When she sees me, she flinches, and she hides behind those bangs. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have lied, but I had to get out of there.”
I shake my head. “You’re not in trouble.”
Her expression remains defiant. “You know, I like my job. I love looking at the archives—especially the Bera
chah things. But some of it makes me so sad. And mad.” Her fists are still clenched.
“Yes,” I say.
“An entry in the ledger…” Her voice fades, but I wait. “About them not taking a girl Mattie wanted to send?”
“I read it after you left,” I say. “I knew something upset you.” I note how she says Mattie, just like I do, as if we both know for sure it’s our Mattie. My obsession is hers, too, now.
She sighs loudly, but then she can’t unload quickly enough. “The Upchurches made a big deal about getting girls off the streets and helping them make new lives. Why wouldn’t they take one before she messed up—before someone messed her up? Why wait for the solution to be hard when it might have been easy?” She throws her hands high, fists finally open. “They only wanted to clean up.”
I nod. “It bothers me too. Society worked hard to make sure girls weren’t doing things they weren’t supposed to—but in general, nobody was there to pick them up after they stumbled. So maybe the Home filled a gap nobody else could. Or would.”
“It was only one girl. They didn’t care about her.” She practically shakes, breathing hard.
“I bet they cared,” I say, even while unwelcome feelings creep up my neck, forcing me to remember things I don’t want to. “Okay. I want to think they cared. I really do. They were willing to take girls who had nowhere else to go, ones nobody else would touch. Surely they cared. But maybe their hands were tied.”
“I guess.” She takes a deeper breath, sighing.
I do too. Once again, my excuses sound half-empty.
Laurel gazes into the middle of the cemetery, where stone after tiny stone marks graves for babies and children who perished while living in an institution. It’s hard to call it that, because it feels like the Home was so much more. In reality, it would never have been anyone’s first choice. “Do you ever wonder,” she says quietly, “whether adults who claim to be doing good really do care? Or are they doing it for other reasons? Maybe just for show. Like, ‘Hey, look at us!’ ”
And now I have gooseflesh. Could Laurel know what happened to me at exactly her age? Because what she says is true. The adults in my life were too busy maintaining the illusion of doing good works. The adults who were supposed to look out for me protected themselves instead—especially one who should have taken the blame but left me to clean up alone. There’s no way Laurel could know this. I’ve never spoken of it to anyone. But there must be a reason she’s so tuned in to how I felt.
I’m scared to be blunt, though. I recognize her tendency to run when things get personal. I’m the pro, after all. “You’re right,” I say, carefully. “Life is unfair. People often worry more about their own reputations than about what happens to those who depend on them. I wish I had a better answer.” I run my fingers across flecks of lichen encrusting the rough surface of the Home’s dedication stone. They catch at my skin, and suddenly I’m spurred to impulse.
“What are you doing for Thanksgiving? Will you be with family? Friends?”
The simple question shutters Laurel’s face again. She shrugs. “Probably. But right now I can’t worry about anything but school and getting my work done.”
Thanksgiving is nine days away. I plunge on. It seems critical now. “I don’t have family around, and I’m not a big holiday person, but I usually try to scrounge up something festive—even if it’s a little turkey dinner from a restaurant. If you have no place to go, let me know before school’s out. You can even text me that morning.”
Eating turkey and dressing alone is not necessarily festive, but I make a mental note to actually order dinner, Laurel or no. I’m not sure what I’m suggesting is allowed. Instructors aren’t supposed to fraternize with students, but I’m not an instructor, exactly, and we’re more or less co-workers. I need to not worry about that right now. “I hope that doesn’t seem weird. I just hate thinking of anyone being alone on the holiday.” Like I’ve been, I think. For nearly twenty years.
Laurel shakes her head. “I’m sure I’ll end up somewhere, but…thanks.”
She claims she needs to prepare for her night class. We walk back toward campus, where we part, me toward the library, her to who knows where, and I promise myself I’ll keep an eye on her over the next week. Someone needs to care about her, and it looks like that’s me.
In the process—in the caring—my cold heart may thaw a little. I struggle with the full knowledge that there might be—most certainly will be—pain in the thawing.
LIZZIE
Arlington, Texas
1905
Lizzie walked with more drag in her step than ever. All the years of hard living hindered her now, especially if she was fretting, as if worries weighed her down in some physical kind of way. Soon she’d have to give up this secret to more than just Mattie. When Lizzie arrived at the barn, though, May was waiting quietly, more peaceful than on any of Lizzie’s other trips, and Lizzie could almost believe the plan might work.
May had come back Sunday, only a day after her departure, tail tucked, but high on dope again. She’d pleaded on the Home’s doorstep, repentant and regretful that she’d wasted her chance to get clean. She couldn’t help her actions in her state, she’d said, but they’d turned her away. Their facilities were inadequate to keep a girl who wouldn’t—or couldn’t—cooperate.
She’d found Lizzie gathering early cotton bolls in the field to make dolls for the little ones and begged her to take her somewhere safe—safe from herself. Somewhere she could get off the dope without hurting anyone. “You’ll have to tie me down,” she said.
Lizzie had gaped at May. Her heart had felt sick. Even if the worst sinner was worthy of grace, she hadn’t expected May to show up in that field, asking her to prove it.
All her life, though, Lizzie had given herself fully when asked, an obedient girl nearly to a fault, for it hurt her more often than not. But between Bible time with the other girls and her talks with Brother JT, she was learning that the evil she’d thought her fault was forced upon her.
Her real pa had drowned before she was old enough to know him. When Lizzie was six, her ma, weary of trying to make it alone, had married the first man who would take her. He was not the honorable sort, nor his sons. She wondered whether Ma had known better when she walked them both into that den of vipers. Maybe she was used to cruelty. Maybe her people were no different. The first time Lizzie’s stepbrother took her, out by the creek, her mother whipped her for tattling. She’d been no more than eight or nine, and so Lizzie assumed that was the way of being a woman. The way they lived, off in the towering pines south of Tyler, there weren’t any girlfriends or teachers to tell her different. Lizzie didn’t learn what was proper until the Home. Sometimes the change had been hard. Sometimes she’d wanted to run away herself, mostly when she tired of the heavy expectations. But she’d stuck it out. Soon May would be strong enough to stick things out too.
That first day, May had cooperated, of course, for Lizzie wouldn’t have carried out her request if not. She’d huddled in the floor of the hayloft while Lizzie brushed away the worst of the moldy straw to make a soft spot to rest her head. She was still there when Lizzie returned with a tattered sheet from the rag bag, a pail for May’s business, and a coiled rope she’d pinched from the new barn after lifting her eyes to ask for grace once again.
Lizzie hadn’t fed her that night, knowing the runs and vomiting would begin before long, and it would go easier and faster on an empty stomach. May went to the pallet and willingly undressed to her shift, even removing her bloomers, then held her wrists out for Lizzie to tie so she couldn’t free herself. She’d cried before Lizzie left, praising her kindness.
And then it was time to wait, for May had been floating in a dope haze, just high enough to forget the hell of withdrawal.
The second night, Lizzie changed the bedsheet, crusted with May’s mess. May was like a child begging fo
r a sweet: “Be a love and clean my face. I can’t stand the stink of my own sweat and vomit. Just a cool cloth to wipe my forehead and mouth. Please, honey?”
Lizzie had thought to trust May, with nearly two days conquered, but May had lurched and clamped her jaw down tight on Lizzie’s fingers. Lizzie knew May felt powerless, like a street dog, a poor, wounded mess of sores and blacked eyes and stink, nothing but rotten teeth to fight with. Why May hadn’t bit her when Lizzie fed her, Lizzie couldn’t guess. Maybe it was the distance of the spoon—or maybe May wouldn’t risk a meal if she wanted free.
“Let go, May,” Lizzie had said, her voice steady, projecting her last bit of calm while her brain screamed she was an idiot. Her dumb trust had brought her nearly all the trouble she’d ever seen, so when it tripped her again, she wanted to strike her own face and call herself all the ugly names she’d tried so hard to forget at the Home.
May had pressed her teeth tighter and glared a hole so fierce it drew a shiver from Lizzie.
“Now, May, you don’t want to do that. I’m trying to help you overcome what’s killing you from the inside out. It’s the dope talking. It ain’t you.”
“Untie me, you little witch,” May hissed. The words were muffled, but Lizzie understood. “You’re short. Fat. Ugly as a troll. How did any man stand getting you with child?”
She let go just enough so Lizzie could free her fingers. May spat as Lizzie backed away. Lizzie wiped her bare arm with a clean rag from the laundry, grateful it wasn’t covered in a sleeve, having pushed hers high before going in the barn. She’d need the carbolic before she returned to the house, but leastways she wouldn’t have to launder her dress. Putting one in the wash that appeared perfectly clean would cause a ruckus.
May screeched again. “You can’t hold me prisoner. If any of those self-righteous bitches hear me scream, you’ll be out on your ass and on the street again. Once a whore, always a whore!”
