Mail-Order Kid: An Orphan Train Rider's Story

by Marilyn June Coffey

  “Hallo!” The priest strode briskly into the room. “Hello.”

  “Hello!” Teresa ran to him, remembering to hold her hands behind her waist.

  “Hallo!” he repeated. “Hallo!”

  She hesitated, and then tried it: “Hallo!”

  “Gut!” The priest clapped. “Gut, good, good!”

  She puzzled a moment, and then clapped, too. “Gut, gut, gut!”

  When the priest’s housekeeper came out of the kitchen, Father Wenzel introduced her as his sister, Miss Wenzel. Teresa stared at the tall, good-looking woman, dressed in a smart ankle-length dress and wearing no shawl on her head. She could be my mother. The priest settled down on his plush, brocaded settee, his sister beside him. Teresa looked at them, smiled. and said, “Kuh.”

  The priest smiled back. “You saw a Kuh?”

  She nodded.

  “Cow,” he said.

  “Cow?”

  “Big.” Father Wenzel held his hand above his head. “Probably brown.”

  “Looks like this.” Miss Wenzel lowered her head, stared and slowly chewed.

  Teresa clapped. “Yes, yes!”

  The priest nodded. “Cow. Kuh.”

  Teresa’s German lessons with the Wenzels had begun.

  •

  Friday afternoon the silent village leaped into life. Adults and children, horses and dogs streamed to their village homes from farms where they worked all week. Next door, Mr. Bieker’s son, Fred, and his family opened doors and windows to air out the house. Fred, only twenty, and his daughter, Regina, visited. Regina, a year older than Teresa, spoke no English, but the girls played with Teresa’s doll, a wooden stick with rope hair. They marched it up and down the floor and hid it beneath the bedclothes. Teresa remembered playing in a closed-in porch with English-speaking children. The nun gave her a doll, prettier than this one, but Teresa didn’t mind. She liked to swing the stick, whipping the rope hair in circles.

  Saturday morning, Mrs. Bieker set a pan of warm water on the table. Then she sat Teresa with her back to the pan, pulled her head back, and covered her hair with water. Teresa screamed and jerked away, shaking her head and scattering water. Mrs. Bieker yanked her back and scrubbed her head with a bar of soap. When Teresa screamed and jerked away again, Mrs. Bieker grabbed her hair, yanked it, and slapped her. Hard. Furious, Teresa spit on the woman. Slapped again, Teresa tried to squirm away, but Mrs. Bieker lifted her by her hair and pushed her back on the chair. Finally, Teresa shuddered and settled into bitter resignation.

  Mrs. Bieker sent Teresa to the store so Mr. Bieker could watch her. Teresa expected Mr. Bieker to be alone but he wasn’t. A well-dressed young man stood barefoot at the counter, turning some liquid-filled bottles, examining their crudely written labels, and arguing with Mr. Bieker. By the time the young man paid for two bottles, some women stepped inside, dropping their shawls from their heads. They stood by a table piled with bolts of fabric, fingering cloth and talking in the same harsh language the Biekers used.

  “Psssst,” Mr. Bieker beckoned. She watched him open a box of cigars, select one, and run it below his nose. He held it for her to smell. She inhaled the pungent earthy odor. Then Mr. Bieker eased the ornate paper circle off the cigar and slipped it on her finger, like a ring. Delighted, she raised her arms. He lifted her, she kissed his cheek. When he sat her down, he patted her rump and pushed her out of the way of a woman bustling to the counter, a bolt of cloth in her arms.

  That night when they went to Fred’s house for a party, Teresa played peek-a-boo with Regina. Around them adults laughed, drank, chattered incomprehensibly, and played cards, their coins jingling. Most men sported flowery mustaches that dangled on both sides of their chins. The women, like Mrs. Bieker, dressed in black with shawls covering their heads.

  Later some grownups sang strange plaintive songs. Then a man with a fiddle joined them, and grownups danced barefoot on the earthen floor. The men’s long hair cascaded around them. The women’s skirts were so long Teresa could barely see their toes. Two women, wearing elaborately embroidered black shawls with fringed hems, opened their shawls as they spun. The air ripened with the odor of moving bodies. As the fiddler’s tunes leaped and soared, a strange energy entered Teresa’s body. She stamped her feet and whirled like a small cyclone, matching the adults’ movements. Once, when she looked up, she saw Regina’s mother clapping and smiling as she looked at Teresa.

  After Sunday breakfast, Mrs. Bieker unpacked Teresa’s good clothes and dressed her in her finery, including her shoes and her hat. What a pleasure! Teresa chattered like a squirrel as she watched the Biekers push their resistant feet into unaccustomed shoes. Mrs. Bieker threw a finely embroidered black shawl over her head; its long fringe quivered with every turn. At ten, they walked to Saint Anthony’s with other villagers, all wearing shoes. She could see leather toes peeking out from under the women’s long skirts.

  The ten o’clock service packed the sanctuary. The organ played and a choir sang exquisite songs. Father Wenzel stepped up to a podium, looked over everyone’s heads, and talked and talked and talked in German. Teresa couldn’t understand him. She squirmed and chattered, even after Mrs. Bieker pinched her. At last, Father Wenzel walked to the altar and spoke Latin. Teresa relaxed. In this odd new world, Father Wenzel’s Mass was the only activity that remotely resembled the Foundling. She drank in the priest’s familiar gesture as he lifted the ornate chalice.

  After Mass, Teresa and the Biekers joined the villagers for a chicken dinner with green beans and dumplings. Shocked, the girl watched as adults ate with their fingers, then she did, too. When children played, Mrs. Bieker kept Teresa beside her. Teresa watched children who rode with her on the train. Little Gertrude played contentedly with a stuffed sock, but Albert didn’t stand still. He turned and twisted and fell down and got up so swiftly that Teresa expected him to turn inside out.

  When the Biekers finally got home, they immediately removed their shoes, and so did Teresa. She still wore her beautiful white dress when the door pushed open and in walked a friend of the family. Teresa, who’d never seen the man before, rushed to him, arms held high. Before the bemused man could lift the headstrong little girl, Mrs. Bieker jerked her away, marched her into her bedroom, and stripped off her clothes. Teresa, in her undergarments, followed Mrs. Bieker into the main room, but the woman pushed her back into the bedroom and closed the door.

  Teresa pounded on the door but no one came for her. She paced around her room, faster and faster, until she burst into dance, twisting and twirling as she had at Fred’s house. She danced until she collapsed. Then, she pulled a feather out of her mattress, took it to the window, and dusted each pane. Outside, the cow stood and chewed its cud.

  •

  By Monday, the town was deserted and would be until Friday afternoon. Teresa had little to do except for her daily German lessons. The Wenzels’ taught her to speak High German, the language that scholars and refined people preferred. She loved these lessons. Their praises pushed her concentration to a peak; before long, she could converse with them. The Biekers spoke a Volga German dialect, but so many Volga German words matched High German words that Teresa could talk with the Biekers, too.

  By the end of two months, she had everyday fluency in both tongues, but the language she cherished was High German. Speaking it made her feel superior, perhaps because only Father Wenzel, his fashionable sister, and a scattered few in Schoenchen could speak it.

  At home, Teresa proved too clumsy to help with household chores and taciturn Mrs. Bieker didn’t care to chat, so Teresa occupied herself. As she played, she spoke English so Mrs. Bieker couldn’t understand. Sometimes she played with her rope hair stick; sometimes she draped a towel over her head and pretended to be a nun. Now and then she danced, crazy little dances in tight circles, dances she invented. Her imagination entertained her for hours. Sometimes she dreamt about the gorgeous clothes she would wear instead of the ill-fitting old-fashioned dress Mrs. Bieker sewed for her. Sometimes
she imagined her real mother walked by the Bieker house, looked through the window, and recognized her daughter. Teresa’s heart tightened when she saw her beautiful mother, dressed as finely as Mrs. Spallen or Miss Wenzel. She thrust both arms in the air and ran to the window.

  “Halt!” Mrs. Bieker’s harsh voice crackled.

  Teresa stopped and dropped her arms. Mrs. Bieker waved her away from the window. When the girl looked out again, her mother was gone, so she played another favorite game: she pretended her shoulders sprouted wings, like an angel, so she could fly away.

  On nice days, Teresa sat outside with Fanny and Kitty, unexpected treasures. Her initial fear had dissolved into love, especially for Fanny. Teresa adored him; she petted him whenever she could. She tried to teach him to dance, but he was awkward on his two hind legs and didn’t last long. All summer Fanny and Kitty sat side by side in the yard. If a strange dog appeared, Fanny and Teresa watched Kitty skitter up a tree. When the animals tired, Fanny stretched out on his side, and Kitty used his soft belly as her pillow. Occasionally a buggy would stop by the yard, and the occupants would point at the unusual pair. Sometimes a villager walked across town to see what the dog and cat were doing. Then Teresa, forgetting Mrs. Bieker’s lessons, would fly across the yard, arms outstretched, lips pursed. Every strange woman had begun to look like her mother.

  The Biekers named their little male dog Franz but called him Fanny, so Teresa thought he was female. Every day she crawled under Mr. Bieker’s store porch, her private place, to pray for puppies, but Fanny never became pregnant. Still he listened well. Teresa could confide in him, and he never told a soul, but she continued to pray for pups so she’d have more playmates, maybe one that would love her as much as Fanny loved Mrs. Bieker.

  Teresa noticed that she petted Fanny whenever she could and Mr. Bieker petted the dog every so often, but Mrs. Bieker never did. Of course, she never caressed anyone, but Fanny didn’t mind. He followed only Mrs. Bieker, obviously his favorite. Because she feeds him, Teresa thought. As she watched the two, she understood that Fanny loved Mrs. Bieker because she loved him and he knew it. She envied Fanny.

  •

  So the weeks passed until the end of June. Then someone knocked on the Biekers’ door, an odd occurrence; villagers just walked in. Mrs. Bieker opened the door to an outsider: Ann Spallen, the Foundling agent who rode from New York to Hays on Teresa’s train. The girl fled to her, arms held high. Mrs. Spallen set down her satchel and squatted to embrace the girl. She’s come to take me home! Teresa clung to Mrs. Spallen’s neck. I knew it, I knew it, I knew this was a mistake, I knew this couldn’t be my home. Then she realized in surprise that neither Bieker had jerked her away from Mrs. Spallen. Instead, both watched with expressionless faces.

  Soon Teresa, Mrs. Spallen, and Mrs. Bieker sat around the table waiting for Mr. Bieker to return with Father Wenzel to help in translation. While they waited, Mrs. Spallen sorted papers on the table, then asked Teresa, “Are you happy here?”

  The girl knit her eyebrows.

  “Do you have plenty to eat?” Mrs. Spallen said.

  Teresa nodded.

  “And a nice room of your own?”

  She nodded again.

  “And new clothes that Mrs. Bieker made for you?”

  “Yes.”

  “So you’re happy here.” Mrs. Spallen made that sound like a statement, not a question.

  If I say “yes,” nothing bad will happen, but if I say “no,” what will she do? Maybe tell Mrs. Bieker, who will slap me later.

  “Yes.”

  “Good.”

  The door opened, and Mr. Bieker entered with the priest. How Teresa wanted to run to Father Wenzel with her hands up! Sometimes during lessons, he let her kiss him, but never in front of Mr. Bieker, so she pinned her arms to her sides.

  After everyone sat, Mrs. Spallen showed the priest her papers, and he translated them for the Biekers. Since she heard her name, Teresa struggled to understand Father Wenzel, but the flip-flop of Mrs. Bieker’s curtains distracted her. Tacked top and bottom, they snapped and buckled like the sails of a ship. Still, even with the curtains flapping, Teresa understood that the Biekers were agreeing to house her, clothe her, and feed her until she grew up, to treat her like their own child. In turn, she would work for them. But other parts she didn’t understand, something about indenture, about “ordinary branches” of learning and about inheritance.

  She watched Mrs. Spallen and Mr. and Mrs. Bieker each sign the document, Mrs. Bieker with an “X.” Then Mrs. Spallen folded the document and placed it in her satchel; the Biekers’ copy lay on the table.

  Mrs. Spallen patted Teresa on the cheek as she and Father Wenzel rose to leave, but when the Foundling agent left, Mr. Bieker spoke privately to the priest. Father Wenzel turned to Teresa and smiled. “He says to tell you that from now on your last name will no longer be Feit, it will be Bieker.”

  “I’m Teresa Bieker?”

  The priest nodded.

  Teresa shook her head. “No. No. I won’t be Teresa Bieker, I won’t, I won’t.” She stamped her feet on the floor. “No! No! No!” she screamed. Even the Biekers understood the girl’s “No.” The adults stared wide-eyed at the tantrum Teresa threw. When it ran its course, Mr. Bieker grabbed the contract, shook it in Teresa’s face and shouted at her in German. Too shaken to follow his words, she turned to Father Wenzel.

  “He says you agreed to be his daughter.”

  Then the priest sat Teresa on his lap and said, “You’re lucky, you know. Not every orphan gets to be somebody’s child. Most of them become chore boys who get up every morning at dawn to work on the farm. Or kitchen helpers, scrubbing floors and baking bread and taking care of babies. But you get to be the Biekers’ daughter.”

  Teresa squirmed off his lap. She knelt beside the Biekers’ bed, fished out her stick doll, went into her room and closed the door. As she sat on her bed, combing the doll’s thick hair with her fingers, she talked to it. How could she be a Bieker? She wasn’t coarse and dumb like them. She was a Feit, who spoke English and High German and knew how to eat with a fork and spoon. Besides, if everyone called her Teresa Bieker, how could her real mother find her?

  She dropped her doll and chewed her stubby nails.

  3

  Teacher’s Pet

  In the fall of 1912, Teresa entered first grade. Hand in hand with Bappa, as she now called Mr. Bieker, she walked not to the schoolhouse but to Saint Anthony’s. The buzz of children’s voices enveloped her as she entered the sanctuary. Down the aisle she and Bappa walked, row by row, past children in pews according to their ages. When they reached the front row, Bappa gave her to the nuns, owl nuns whose pleated white wimples circled their faces.

  Teresa clambered onto the pew, swiveled, and stood to look at the children. She knew most by sight and some by name. She spotted other orphans, pretty Mary Ruder, near the back, and John Graf with his shock of red hair. A tug on Teresa’s dress made her turn. A stern-faced nun stood face to face with her and pointed to the pew. Teresa, afraid of the nun’s long, overlapping front teeth, sat.

  Too excited to remain still, Teresa discovered that nuns quieted children who whisper or squirm. After Father Wenzel’s Mass, the Sisters escorted the children to Schoenchen’s tiny schoolhouse adjacent to the church. Only nuns taught in this public school. There Teresa entered a classroom for first-, second-, and third-grade students. She was among the youngest and certainly the tiniest of those students.

  School confused Teresa. She spoke three languages: elitist High German the Wenzels taught her, Volga German dialect with its smattering of Russian that the villagers spoke, and English she used personally and when the men who wanted to buy her at the train depot came to visit. Mr. Funk from LaCrosse or Mr. Tillison from Hays visited her regularly, especially Mr. Tillison.

  At school, her teacher, Sister Gertrude, spoke only English or High German while the students spoke nothing but Volga German. Teresa was the only child in the first three grades wh
o could speak three languages; it marked her as the teacher’s pet. What should she do? Speak High German and English to impress the teacher? Or speak only Volga German and align herself with her classmates? Who would befriend her?

  She soon found out, for the schoolchildren’s taunts began immediately. Their words rang in her ears. At recess, children called her “das verrucktee” or “the crazy one.” This brought her to tears. She knew she was different, tiny and dark-haired and excitable, not stocky and stolid like them, but that didn’t make her crazy. On the way home from school, other children called her ugly. No wonder. Grandma, her name for Mrs. Bieker, braided Teresa’s naturally curly hair so tightly that she looked homely, even to herself.

  A few days later, children called Teresa “ein yud,” meaning a Jew. Was she? The Biekers sometimes called her “Jude,” which meant Jew in German, but Teresa thought they were guessing. What was a Jew anyway? Something bad? She tightened her stomach against them all.

  But when children start to sing, “Nobody wants you! Your own mother didn’t want you,” Teresa’s stomach twisted into a knot. How dare they say such a thing! She knew her mother wanted her. She knew it! Then she wondered, did her mother really want her? A warm flush of shame drenched her when she thought her mother might not.

  One day some schoolchildren cried, “Da komt ya das geschickte” or “Here comes the sent-for one,” as though she were a mail-order kid requested from a catalog. Teresa considered that. In a sense, the Biekers had sent for her. Still, the children’s ridicule made her feel small, especially when one said: “You were shipped like a package of Arbuckle’s coffee.” Teresa knew Arbuckle’s coffee. Grandma used it when she had no time to roast green coffee beans in the oven. Bappa didn’t sell the popular coffee in his shop, because people could buy it only from a catalog, as Teresa’s tormentors well knew.