Home for Erring and Outcast Girls

by Julie Kibler

  The sheriff knew Hugh’s reputation. He remembered Lizzie too. He’d locked her and Docie up when they were sent away sick from the county farm, and let the jailer’s wife call Berachah all those years ago when they lay dying in his cell. She told him how she’d straightened up, then returned to help her folks—in hopes they’d straighten up too.

  “I shouldn’t of come,” she said. “You can lock me up for what I done, but I were protecting my girl. You’d do the same.”

  He saw no need to fine Lizzie, much less jail her. “Let’s make this simple,” he said. “Elsie, you go on home, and tell Hugh next time, it’ll be the state pen.”

  Lizzie’s last goodbye could have been nothing but a measured look, for there was nothing to say, but Elsie pushed at Lizzie the papers she’d shoved in her bag. Though Lizzie only knew some of the words, she shuffled through scores of letters, from Docie, Brother JT, Sister Maggie Mae, and even one forwarded from Mattie.

  “I reckoned if you knew they’d written, you’d decide to leave,” Elsie said.

  She might have. Instead she’d worried that nobody had thought of her at all.

  Her mother had picked up the mail at the store every week while Lizzie loaded their purchases in the wagon, and never said a word. Lizzie had believed even Docie had carried on fine without her, choosing not to write because she knew Lizzie would struggle to read them. If she’d received them, maybe she would have known Docie was coming, and this night would never have happened. Angry tears soaked the letter, but not before Lizzie pulled Docie close, along with the bundle that carried love she couldn’t read but that had reached her anyway.

  When the door closed on her ma, the sheriff turned with a questioning glance. It was Sunday now. She reckoned they’d be frantic over Docie at the Home and might answer the telephone in desperation, in spite of the rules, but she wouldn’t take chances. She didn’t want to wait.

  “Sir, can we use your telegraph machine? I got to let our family know my girl’s safe.”

  She wanted to hear Docie’s story, why she’d come and whom she’d told. But first she had to ask if they’d allow them back in, though she knew deep inside they would.

  The sheriff transmitted her message to the Arlington telegraph office.

  DOCIA BATES SAFE WITH ELIZABETH. MAY WE PLEASE RETURN?

  No trains would run before morning, but no respectable hotel would receive them now. The sheriff offered the sparsely furnished room behind the desk, where he rested when he worked around the clock. He lived just up the road, and the jailer was on duty all night.

  They cleaned up in a small washroom and exchanged their bloodstained garments for clean, and though Lizzie couldn’t sleep, Docie dropped off quickly and deeply, her head in Lizzie’s lap, her hands grasping Lizzie’s. Docie was sixteen, but she was still her baby.

  In the morning, the jailer greeted them with strong coffee—which Lizzie gratefully drank, though she would quickly learn to wake without its kick again as soon as she had the privilege—and milk and toast for them to share. On the tray, as well, was their answer:

  COME HOME, DAUGHTERS!

  On the train, Docie sobbed. “You never answered my letters, and I was afraid you weren’t coming back. I was so scared. I had to come find you.” Suddenly, she hung her head.

  “What is it?” Lizzie said.

  “I love my friends and school, but I never want to be away from you again. I love you more than anyone.” She wept into Lizzie’s shoulder, and though Lizzie knew one day her daughter would be her own person, it spoke to a question Lizzie had long nursed: With so many to mother Docie, did Docie need her at all?

  Now she knew nobody could take her place. It humbled her. It filled her with relief.

  She patted Docie’s back and berated herself for putting her through this absence. “I love you more than anything, my girl. I’m the sorry one. I’m sorry for leaving you.”

  Docie had convinced a school friend to loan her money and left home Saturday under the pretense of visiting the same friend. She’d left a note for Ivy to find when she didn’t show up for supper. She’d arrived without a firm plan for finding Lizzie. A man at the depot told her he was going her way. He was family, you see, and he’d walk her to the house. She’d hesitantly agreed. Once there, she’d dozed off, then woke to him drunk and pawing her. She begged him to leave, praying Lizzie would come soon. She’d started screaming just as they arrived.

  Lizzie shushed her. Indeed, she wanted to strangle Docie for lying and coming so far alone—she was lucky Hugh had brought her to the house and not taken her somewhere else. But Docie had suffered more than enough already.

  “You mustn’t blame yourself,” Lizzie said. “Hugh’s an evil man. Everything he done is wickedness. It ain’t your fault.”

  Before they pulled into the Arlington depot, Docie told her one last thing. “Mama?” she said. “When that man woke me up, I remembered him. I knew something bad was going to happen. I don’t know where, but I’d met him before. I didn’t recognize him in the light, but I was sure in the dark.”

  “What do you remember?” Lizzie said, her heart sinking.

  Docie’s face shuttered. She shook her head hard. “Just his face. That feeling.”

  Lizzie felt certain now: One of the times she’d left her daughter alone with her ma, Hugh had gotten to Docie. For this, she blamed herself.

  She didn’t tell Docie what she guessed he’d done. That was for another time. Maybe.

  Instead, she kept her daughter close, even as they stepped off the train and into the arms of Sister Maggie Mae, who drove them to the Home and seemed to know Lizzie needed time before talking. Docie chattered in the back with Miss Ruth, home for her holidays. Docie had such a sure place in this life, she could step right back in, still a child in so many ways.

  When they reached the archway over the gate, Lizzie looked up and took a whole breath.

  Home again.

  MEMORANDUM

  DATE: January 1, 1918

  TO: Mr. Albert Ferry, Printer for the Berachah Rescue Society

  CC: Reverend J. T. Upchurch, Founder and Director of the Berachah Industrial Home

  FROM: Mrs. Nettie Norwood, Matron of the Berachah Industrial Home

  RE: Two items for next issue of The Purity Journal

  1917 statistics:

  • 24 new girls admitted

  • 105 refused admittance

  • 18 girls and 10 babies dismissed

  • 11 babies born

  • 2 deaths, one of our young ladies and one baby

  • 2 young ladies married

  • 39 girls and 21 babies remain

  Sister Hallye has returned and would like her poem printed on the front page, along with attached photograph showing the play presented by our girls’ literary society on the same subject.

  The Prodigal Daughter

  BY HALLYE V. TAYLOR

  To the Father’s home now returning

  Is the prodigal weary and worn.

  Is she hailed with joy and with pleasure

  As she was on her first natal morn?

  Oh, no! the poor prodigal daughter

  Who has wandered away from her home

  With no hand outstretched in fond pity

  As she stands all forsaken and lone.

  Ah! the man who caused her dire ruin,

  And left her to bleed and to die;

  Thinks not of the life he has blighted

  Nor the answers, to his sins, on High.

  But thanks to the Shepherd’s great mercy,

  That follows His sheep tho’ they stray,

  Has love and pardon for the prodigal

  In His Home at Berachah today.

  CATE

  Arlington, Texas

 
2017

  After Thanksgiving break, I wait nervously for Laurel to return to work. Her anger over my shutting her out when we returned from Fort Worth was so hot, I’m afraid she won’t even show up. But Monday, she’s there, as always. Her attitude is cool and polite. I tiptoe around her, closeting myself in my office when I can get away with it. I’m embarrassed by my behavior, but I have no experience in seeking out people when things get tough. I miss Laurel’s quiet laughter, our little sarcastic exchanges…her excitement when she finds something in the Berachah collection she hasn’t seen before.

  At the end of the work day, I’m so sad and anxious I consider calling my therapist. I haven’t seen Diana since before I moved here, when it seemed she’d done all she could to help me. I was stubborn when it came to some of the things she wanted me to try. She wanted me to journal, but all I could think about was the high school journal my mother discovered. How if a bulldozer hadn’t plowed it under yet, it was still buried with River’s CD under the rotten floorboards of that old church, a memorial to everything I’d left behind. That journal had been exciting at first, and then a necessity, but finally, just part of the misery I never wanted to revisit.

  And my feelings for River were so entangled with everything else that had happened, I didn’t even attempt to mend things with her. I didn’t think she’d understand.

  Now, I realized, I hadn’t given her a chance to understand.

  Diana thought I needed to unpack my experiences, and I did the best I could—talking. But I refused to write them down. When she released me from care, I’d convinced myself she thought I was “fixed.” But looking back on our last session, I realized she simply figured she’d done all she could at that point, and that it would take something bigger to stir me into doing the hardest work. She was right.

  After Laurel left that night so furious with me, I went inside my house and experienced a glut of emotions I didn’t know how to navigate. Bitterness and sadness, I’m used to, but the sense that I’d finally found a meaningful relationship, and then lost it, is new again.

  My feelings for Laurel fall somewhere between maternal—something I’ve never intended to explore again—and sisterly, as if I’ve found a younger sister I never knew I wanted. The rest of that weekend, I’d raged at myself, mostly, for being unable to give what she needed, but also at the world, for its double standards, its mixed messages, and the injustice of it all.

  By Monday night I’m frantic. I leave a message with Diana’s answering service. When my phone rings minutes later, I lunge to answer and immediately burst into tears.

  “Hi, Cate,” Diana says. “Not trying to be funny, but can I assume you found someone to love?”

  I’m stunned into silence, but then I actually laugh through my tears. She knows me well enough that she recognizes my issue before I ever voice it—or maybe she simply knows that I’d never have called if I weren’t struggling with allowing someone else in.

  But she has no idea how vast this is.

  I tell her what’s happened. She asks me the requisite questions about my state of mind—No, I don’t feel like hurting myself. No, I’m not contemplating suicide. No, I’m not feeling completely hopeless.

  Then she says, “Cate, have you considered it might be time to do what we talked about?”

  I’m silent.

  “Tell you what,” she says, “I’m penciling you in for a phone session in ten days—the first free spot I have for nonemergencies. Between now and then, I’d like you to get a journal and write. It doesn’t have to be about the past. It can be about the present. It doesn’t even have to be feelings. It can be whatever you’d like to write. Empty slate. See where it takes you. It’s not the method I’d use for everyone, but my gut says it’s right for you. The thing we are most resistant to, sometimes, is the very thing we need to do.”

  I sigh, but agree to her plan. I promise to call if I decide not to keep the appointment. She has no interest in returning to our old cycle. We’d just get stuck again.

  I drive to the drugstore, where I pick out the plainest, least expensive spiral notebook I can find. Wide-ruled, seventy pages. Blue. At home, I gaze at the corner of my sofa, but I reject its comfort in favor of the table. And I put my pen to the page.

  Where I begin takes me by surprise, but I repeat Diana’s words—Whatever comes. My pen picks up speed, and though I pause now and then to sift through everything I’ve collected in my mind for so long, it surges out of me like a flood. I couldn’t stop it if I tried.

  MATTIE

  Oklahoma City

  1918

  Mattie hadn’t set foot inside the church in months. The boss would have given her Sunday mornings, easy, and the other maids could have used the wages, with nothing to sacrifice beyond a few extra hours of sleep and a lazy afternoon.

  But the church had taken her in after her worst sin, and pushed her out for the mildest.

  She had returned to the picture shows the very next week after her first time, and every time she had a day off after. Mr. Chaplin was her first love, but she enjoyed them all. She wasn’t smoking or drinking or carousing, and most of the shows wouldn’t have offended a child—in fact, the audiences were mainly kids. Back when Mattie arrived at the Home, women in their thirties seemed ancient. She knew kids likely thought her ancient now, at nearly thirty-seven, but because she’d never married and worked a simple job, she was still treated like a girl.

  One afternoon, as she exited the theater, a church deacon passed by. She knew the rules of her membership and the consequences for breaking them. This would go from his eyes to the deaconesses’ ears, and before she knew it, she’d be out.

  She was old enough and mature enough to attend a movie without mortal fear for her soul—and frankly, she no longer cared, not even when the committee of three showed up on her doorstep with the accusation and evidence that violated her membership covenant.

  She’d expected it, but for fifteen years, church had been her entire social life, and she hadn’t expected to miss it—ironic, considering the detachment she’d always felt. When she saw the local sisters now, they still reached to hug her. She kept them at arm’s length.

  She wasn’t bitter—just lonely, until a motherly but irreligious woman took her in.

  The irony wasn’t lost on her.

  The hotel management changed constantly, and with each new one came new policies. Some things were better, some things were worse. She rarely pulled twelve-hour shifts anymore, but she had to pay for her breakfast. She didn’t mind. She’d managed to save a little nest egg. A nickel breakfast at the grill next to the hotel wasn’t going to send her to the poorhouse any more than movies or coffee would send her to hell.

  Mrs. Stella worked the counter at the grill. She learned Mattie’s name and greeted her each morning with a coffee—two sugars, splash of milk—a medium-hard egg, and a “Mornin’, darlin’!” To Mrs. Stella, customers were family, and over time, she learned more than just Mattie’s breakfast order. At some point, she invited her up to her rooms over the grill for a cup after her shift. Mattie was thrilled to have someone to chat with again. She didn’t share much about her past. Mrs. Stella didn’t push. Anything she did tell her, Mrs. Stella kept to herself, and Mattie began to feel her new life was just what she’d wanted—or close, anyway.

  Mattie’s letters to Lizzie became sporadic. Lizzie’s little notes, messy as ever and nearly impossible to read unless others helped, mentioned how Docie begged to visit, but after the Tyler fiasco, she wasn’t sure she’d ever let her travel again. Mattie figured Lizzie would never give Docie permission anyway. It wouldn’t be because of the travels or Mattie’s little pleasures, but because Lizzie feared for Mattie’s soul.

  Mattie hadn’t been to a Homecoming or Camp Meeting since she’d left, at first because she was too busy and it was expensive to travel. Now she wondered if she’d even be welcome. If she couldn
’t sit with the congregation because of her membership status, she was better off staying away.

  In the meantime, Mrs. Stella made a more than decent substitute. She and Mattie shared a similar sharp humor—what had always caused her trouble in the past. They laughed over the regulars at the grill, or what hotel guests expected as part of Mattie’s housekeeping services—the answer being no in nearly every case.

  Mrs. Stella’s family had lived over the grill nearly since statehood. When the children grew up and moved on, she and her husband took in lodgers. After her husband passed unexpectedly, more lodgers filled the gap. Now four respectable older men rented her extra rooms—two in each, sharing. The rent covered her expenses, but she figured she’d miss the grill if she retired.

  The apartment felt like a genuine home, with worn but comfortable furnishings and pictures on the walls. Mattie loved visiting as soon she finished her shift. She regularly helped Mama Stell—as the stout, warm woman soon asked Mattie to call her—get supper on the stove for the “boys,” and then they played records on Mama Stell’s tabletop Victor Victrola.

  Mama Stell couldn’t get enough of that. Mattie rewound the machine again and again, and Mama belted along with her favorite, Marion Harris. “I…ain’t got nobooooody…Nobody’s there for meeee…” Mattie swung an invisible partner around the tiny parlor, and Mama Stell laughed until she cried. Other times, Mattie read Mama Stell’s beloved Zane Grey and Gene Stratton-Porter novels aloud, as Mama Stell’s vision was getting cloudy.

  For the first time in more than two decades, Mattie had something close to a regular home life, even if she returned to her small hotel quarters to sleep. Mama Stell depended on her more every week, with legs increasingly lame from holding water, and hands bent from the rheumatism. She couldn’t make the stairs without stopping to rest every few, and she took breathers so often at the grill, customers who didn’t know her—and even some who did—began to gripe. Mattie had taken to jumping up to bus a table or plate and deliver eggs. With her hotel uniform, customers didn’t give it a second thought.