Home for Erring and Outcast Girls

by Julie Kibler

  “When’s the last time you had your monthlies?” she said.

  “It…stopped after Cap died. I lost so much weight, I reckoned my body didn’t have the capacity for it.” Mattie shrugged. “I’ve bled since then, though not so heavy. But I’m back on track now. Last week, it came like it used to…nearly. I had to use the rags.”

  “Mattie,” Lizzie said carefully, “that water you used, it ain’t from rain. There’s no rain outside, darlin’.”

  Mattie looked at her skirt, at the torn place along the hem. A look of horror crossed her face. “Is it…do you think I’ve started again? Oh, Lizzie, I think I might be sick—” She leaned to the side and retched, covering her mouth. It was nothing but air, for the storm had come before supper.

  “It’s fine, honey. You didn’t realize. But I’ve been worried about you since—well, ever since that letter come from Charley. And with May and all. You just ain’t been right. Does your head hurt?”

  “No…but it feels like it’s somewhere else, up high above me sometimes. I’ve been having pain in my stomach though. Everything I eat makes me nauseated and dizzy, but also like I’m starving to death. What’s wrong with me, Lizzie? I’m so worried that whatever was wrong with Cap has got me too.” She clutched Lizzie’s arm now, her eyes going dark. Then suddenly, she doubled over, drawing her knees as high as she could, and leaned between them. The noise that came from her mouth then could only be described as keening, going on and on until she went slack again without warning. She gazed at Lizzie, shaking with the terror the pain had drawn from her.

  “Lizzie…am I dying?”

  Lizzie scooted as close as she could and pressed her hand against Mattie’s side, waiting a few seconds to see if Mattie would cringe, and then moved it closer, feeling Mattie’s abdomen through the layers of cloth. Mattie’s corset was laced tightly at the top, but hardly at all near the bottom, with the stays pressed out toward her hips. Lizzie tugged carefully until a wider area was palpable beneath Mattie’s skirts. She pressed her hand against it, waiting.

  Eventually she spoke. “No, honey, you ain’t dying.”

  Mattie looked relieved, but then another pain gripped her, and she bent again, able to lean farther this time without the confines of her corset. She reached to grasp Lizzie’s hand where it still pressed her belly, and held it in an almost viselike grip. Lizzie’s fingertips turned white as she stroked Mattie’s back with her other hand until Mattie relaxed the hold.

  “Then what is wrong with me?” Mattie cried.

  “Honey, don’t you know?” Lizzie whispered, taking Mattie’s hand in both of hers now.

  “What is it? Tell me.” Mattie leaned toward her, deep lines etching her forehead.

  Lizzie shook her head. She was convinced Mattie was unaware of the reason for her pain, and for the contractions that convulsed her body in the midst of the dust floating thickly in the air around them. “It’s a baby, honey. There’s a baby in you.”

  Mattie’s chin jerked down and she stared at the tear in her skirt, and at her heaving belly. “No,” she said. “There can’t…That can’t be.” She looked back at Lizzie, fear and confusion plain now in her eyes.

  “Remember what you told me? That you had relations with a man the day that…the day you came here?” Lizzie couldn’t bring Cap into the conversation. It was obvious anyway.

  “But last time, it was months before…months before I got…”

  “Maybe Charley was careful,” Lizzie said. Not careful enough, she thought. “There’s things that help some.”

  Mattie went silent, as if recounting her days with Charley, comparing them with the time in Fort Worth. “No,” she said again, shaking her head again and again. “I’d know, Lizzie. I’m not stupid. I’d know.”

  Lizzie thought so too. But now she considered the months since Mattie came, the pattern of weight lost, and then gained, and recently lost again, Mattie’s violent nausea for weeks after Cap’s death, her inability to deal with the oppressive heat, her waning appetite and lethargy…

  And then Lizzie thought herself stupid—again. How could she have missed it? How could anyone have missed it? She counted quickly on her fingers. Eight months, nearly to the day, since Mattie had arrived.

  “Mattie, you’re having a baby,” she said, gently as she could, and stroked Mattie’s arm, just as another wave of cramps hit her friend.

  “No. Noooo!” Mattie screamed now, sobbing with the intensity of the pain Lizzie remembered well, and then dissolving into quiet whimpers as it abated. When it had, she sat back against the wall, a resolute set to her chin. After her breathing evened out, she looked straight at Lizzie. “If there’s a baby in me, I never want to see it.”

  She turned her head toward the kitchen door and stayed eerily silent through her next contraction, which Lizzie recognized only by the visible tightening of her muscles. Somehow, she even stifled the coughs the dust wanted to incite in her heaving chest.

  It reminded Lizzie of things she’d rather forget. The chalky taste of clay nearly choked her too. But she was there with Mattie.

  There to stay.

  CATE

  Arlington, Texas

  1998

  Seth caught me after church Sunday to ask if I could help him at middle school youth group that Wednesday. He taught them the first hour, and they joined with the senior high group for refreshments and games the next. Usually another adult was present, but that week’s volunteer had canceled last minute. Seth said he’d worked hard on the study and hated to postpone if they had to combine with the high schoolers all evening.

  I agreed reluctantly, because I’d clearly told him I’d be happy to help. These days, what came out of my mouth didn’t always match the sentiments in my head. I arrived early at his request, and he put me to work placing question sheets in the empty chairs.

  “I need to run through a few songs I’ve been working on for tonight,” he said.

  I watched him pull his guitar from the case, remembering when our youth director had let him play for the senior high group. Even as a starry-eyed freshman, I’d known music wasn’t his gift, but I’d tried to overlook that. He’d been interested in youth ministry even then, and churches were always pleased when paid staff could lead music too.

  When he began strumming, I could tell he’d improved—some. But he still played chords laboriously, with tiny pauses between them while his sturdy fingers, more suited to sports, struggled to press between the frets. At least he knew the right chords these days. Before, we’d all smiled encouragingly and kept singing even when the chord was clearly out of tune. Seth’s voice was passable, but nothing about it stood out—except that he still tried too hard. The volume, for what was meant to be a quiet song, was excruciating. He didn’t say anything when he finished playing until I looked up to find him waiting patiently for my reaction.

  “What do you think?”

  “Wow. You’ve been working hard.” It was the best I could muster.

  He shrugged. “I love music. Sometimes I feel like it’s a wasted gift. If I weren’t going into youth ministry, I’d definitely give music everything I’ve got. You want to hear a song I actually wrote? It’s not a worship song—just warning you.”

  What could I say? I smiled and bit my lips together as I waited, mentally crossing my fingers it wasn’t a love song. If he hoped to impress me, a love song would have the opposite effect. We were both lucky, though. Seth had always loved alternative Christian music—ska, mostly—and he pounded out a decent copycat tune, which made better use of his enthusiasm.

  It was nothing like River’s music, of course, and while I was able to nod and tell him it was a good one when he finished, all I could think of was River at the coffee shop, and the song that “might have been” for me. The one that wrapped me up in bliss.

  I felt sorry for Seth.

  Eventually the middle s
chool kids wandered in. They listened to Seth’s teaching and answered the questions on the sheets of paper. As he played the songs he’d worked on so hard, the boys mostly sighed and scratched at their growing Adam’s apples, some actually moving their lips, though no audible words emerged. The girls sang, several with eyes closed, worshipful expressions on their faces—already so innocent and naïve to me, only four or five years younger. Two couldn’t take their eyes off Seth. I remembered that feeling, watching him adoringly, daring to dream he’d notice my new haircut or the plaid shorts that showed off my long legs, or how eagerly I volunteered to read in Sunday school and showed up for everything. Seth was well out of their age range, but it was hard not to crush on a good-looking older guy—especially one who’d already committed to the ministry. He seemed mature compared to the scrawny boys in the room, and even to the ones in the high school group.

  I wanted to take them aside and tell them, Don’t waste your time mooning over something that can never happen. Look around at these nice boys here—they’ll grow up one day soon. Just have fun! But I knew it would be a waste of breath.

  At the end of the evening, Seth volunteered to give me a ride home. I’d come with my mom, who attended prayer meeting like she brushed her teeth—without fail—and I told him I was good. But Mom overheard me in the hallway. “I have flower committee, sweetie. You go on home and study.”

  I half wondered if they’d planned it. And I didn’t need to study. I’d completed my homework as soon as I got home from school so I could talk to River that night. In the past, Jess and I would have compared notes about the day or youth group over the phone while we finished our math problems or English questions, but now I loved to stretch out on my floor or bed while River and I talked. It required more than the scattered chatter Jess and I happily shared on speakerphone. It required my full attention. I gave it willingly.

  But pressing the point would have been rude. So I shrugged and followed Seth. After a few steps, he dropped behind and put a hand at the small of my back. I tried to contain my shiver at the unexpected touch.

  One of the eighth-grade girls watched us, and when our eyes met, she rolled hers and turned abruptly away. I guessed she’d wanted to tag along as he walked to his car, stealing a last few delectable minutes in his company under the pretext of asking another question about what he’d taught that night. I knew all the tricks.

  At the last minute, Seth called, “Night, Becca. See ya Wednesday!” Her shoulders went back and her face glowed with the thrill of his notice. He chuckled as he unlocked the passenger door. “These girls need to be careful. They’re too mature for their own good, like you were…”

  He winked and my face flamed. I was suddenly torn—in several directions. I’d spent so much time in the past dwelling on Seth to the exclusion of anyone else, I wondered now if I was wasting an opportunity by being standoffish. He was blatantly flirting with me, and I could so easily return the attention. I remembered the shivers that ran up and down my arms if we so much as brushed each other in youth group—and the perplexing shiver of a moment ago.

  And then I recalled the quivering ache that ran up and down all of me when I lay in my darkened bedroom and listened to River’s hushed voice, sharing ideas and dreams that seemed not only plausible, but vital, and River’s attentive silence as I did the same.

  It also occurred to me that Seth hadn’t said he needed to be careful too. These girls were just kids, hardly capable of managing their out-of-control hormones and feelings. That responsibility lay with him. I almost said something but held back. He might have been clueless when I fell over myself to get his attention in middle school and early high school.

  But he was an adult now. He wasn’t stupid. He knew.

  It wasn’t my job to remind him.

  MATTIE

  Arlington, Texas

  1905

  Mattie fought through each contraction, scarcely able to fathom her condition and what was happening now. How could she have been so ignorant? How could she have missed the signs?

  Had she? Now she second-guessed in the quiet spaces between the pains. She’d always been irregular but should have questioned the way her bleeding came at random, never for more than a day or two, and never heavy until the last week. The constant nausea early on, and again lately. Her swollen ankles.

  Lizzie was right. It seemed impossible.

  But she’d never wanted another baby. Not after Cap.

  She couldn’t bear the thought of having to comfort her child again as it cried, as it looked at her with terror. As if she should be able to protect it from anything.

  She loved Docie now, more than she’d ever expected to, and the babies in the nursery were sweet. They were gone before you knew it, most of the time. After the Home’s required one-year stay was up, their mamas took them off to new lives, with everyone crossing their fingers the young mothers would make it and not return defeated—or worse.

  But she would never kiss the silk on the top of her own infant’s head again. She would never grow attached to a creature who smelled like her milk, smiled like her mother, and cried with the echoing timbre of her history. It would kill her if she failed her own child again.

  For it was her failure that had killed Cap. Something in her blood, at the very least. Her mother had lost babies over time, maybe with ailments that mirrored Cap’s, and Iola had lost one before the girls. Some weren’t meant to live. One who didn’t was too many. But at least they’d had partners to walk them through the fire.

  At the worst, she’d made mistakes bringing him into the world. She hadn’t been fit to raise a child, and God, or whatever being had control of these things, had known it. She’d been too stubborn to give up Cap—the only choice her sister had offered. Iola would have taken him and raised him as her own if Mattie had kept her pregnancy secret. But Mattie had refused.

  In the long run, he would have died anyway. She was sure of it.

  Another pain gripped her, and she couldn’t help looking down at herself. This was another baptism, but by fire—so red and sharp and hot that when she cried out for relief, she nearly believed again.

  Lizzie startled from her own reverie—Mattie had asked her not to get Sister Susie, and she’d sighed and said she had to think on it. She sprang from the floor now. “Mattie—oh my! There’s so much blood!”

  Indeed, when Mattie looked closer, what had looked like fire gushed from her insides now. The contraction passed and she glanced up, smiling weakly. “It’s…okay…don’t worry, honey. I’m fine now…just a little…blood. Nothing to…fret about…” Another pain came, almost on the tail of the one that pushed out the blood, and she squeezed Lizzie’s hand. But suddenly, Lizzie seemed far away. No matter how she tried, she couldn’t hold on…

  Maybe it was okay. Maybe it was time to let go.

  LIZZIE

  Arlington, Texas

  1905

  Mattie’s eyes went glassy, and Lizzie knew she was in real danger when flecks of dirt began clinging to their dry surfaces without her blinking—as if the gushing blood hadn’t been warning enough. She wouldn’t leave her as long as she grasped Lizzie’s hand tight, but when Mattie let go and slumped sideways, she knew she was losing her.

  The wind still howled outside, and not a soul had ventured downstairs. Earlier, Lizzie had whispered to Sister Susie that she was going after Mattie, and not to worry—they’d hole up somewhere until after the dust storm if necessary.

  Dilly helped with the laboring women before they sent for the doctor, sitting with them as they faced their early pains, then made them comfortable as the doctor prepared to deliver, providing any assistance he needed. She was nearly a real midwife by now.

  Lizzie grasped Mattie’s hand again and shook her a bit. “Mattie, honey, I’m going for help. You got to hang in here until I’m back. You gonna be okay?”

  Mattie groaned and focused
on Lizzie again weakly. She blinked the dust from her eyes, which Lizzie thought a good sign, but then another contraction stole her strength. “Don’t…”

  “I have to, Mattie. You got to make it through this. I’m afraid, honey.”

  But Mattie held her hand tighter. “Don’t…tell. Give…baby…” She took a deep breath to push out the last word at the end of the contraction. “…away.”

  Lizzie was stunned. Mattie had said she never wanted to see it, but she’d figured it was just her grief talking. Once she’d seen the baby—if she managed get through this birth—she’d surely fall in love. But there was no time to argue.

  “Okay, honey,” Lizzie said. “I hear you. I’m going for Dilly now.”

  She clumped up the stairs and the gathered group in the hallway jumped at the clatter of the door banging open and closed. Lizzie forced a smile as she scanned for Dilly. Sister Susie approached with a look of concern. “Where’s Mattie?”

  “In the kitchen,” Lizzie said. “She’s ate something that made her sick and wants Dilly.”

  Sister Susie furrowed her brow. “Now? Shall I see to her?”

  “No, she said Dilly would know what to do—if she can stand the dirt. You stay with the girls and kids, or they’ll all be vexed.”

  Docie spied Lizzie and came running down the hall. “Mama! I was scared! Where were you? Look how brown my stockings are!” She pulled up her skirt to show the gritty mess.

  Lizzie leaned to whisper in her ear. “I have to go back to Aunty Mat, darlin’. She ain’t feeling good. Will you keep Alpha company while Aunty Dilly and I help? Can you be a big girl and do that for Mama? But don’t tell anyone she’s sickly. We don’t want them worrying.”