Mail-Order Kid: An Orphan Train Rider's Story
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Fortunately, Teresa found a champion in Sister Gertrude, her first-grade teacher. Like all the Saint Joseph teachers, Sister Gertrude wore black robes topped with a white yoke, a pleated white wimple encircling her face, and a white boxlike hat. When the nun heard the schoolchildren’s taunts, she said, “Teresa, you stay in for recess today. I want to talk to you.” The children cheered.
After they left, Sister Gertrude sat Teresa on her lap, “Don’t let those dumb Roosians bother you.”
The nun’s words poured over Teresa like cool water on a hot day.
“Pay no attention to them. You’re better than they are. You are smart.”
That soothed Teresa, even though her teacher—like the schoolchildren and the Biekers—called her Jewish.
“It’s your Jewishness that makes you so bright.”
That made being a Jew sound attractive, if, indeed, she was one.
“Don’t tell the other children what I said to you,” the Sister cautioned as she released Teresa to the playground, but when children yelled, “Goodie, goodie, you had to stay in,” Teresa yelled back, “I am smarter than you.” Then she remembered the nun’s caution and fell silent.
Sister Gertrude’s words healed some of Teresa’s anguish, but they also made her smug. When children called her names, Teresa called back, “I’m not dumb like you are.” Her pride swelled. In class when a student stood to read and stumbled over words, Teresa, who could read so much better, plugged her ears.
None of this increased her popularity.
But Sister Gertrude ameliorated the stings. The nun often held the girl on her lap during recess or gave her a holy card featuring a picture of Mary, Christ, or the Sacred Heart. However, not even Sister Gertrude could keep the boys from throwing snowballs at her as she ran home from school that winter.
•
When Mr. Funk or Mr. Tillison visited, Teresa no longer held up her arms. Grandma had divested her of that evil. Still the girl missed Mr. Funk’s sweet smell, the roughness of Mr. Tillison’s cheek. Sometimes she imagined that one of the men would say, “It’s all arranged. You’re coming to live with me.” After all, the nuns gave her away to the Biekers; why couldn’t the Biekers give her away just as easily? However, her visitors always left without her.
When they asked Teresa about school, she told them how she wrote many words, both German and English, and how well she could read. Once she astonished Mr. Tillison when she read from his English-language newspaper. Sometimes she would recite a prayer or sing a song she had learned, but Teresa never mentioned the children’s taunts. That embarrassed her, as though being an outcast was her fault.
•
In late December, Teresa heard her classmates describe in detail the coming of the Christ Child. She’d never heard of this so, on Christmas Eve as dusk fell, Teresa slipped outdoors and stood between her house and Fred Bieker’s to watch. Around her, the village lay hushed. Teresa stood quietly working her rosary; the Hail Mary rolled through her mind like beads.
Then down the street flowed a heavenly apparition—the Christ Child’s herald, she knew—wearing a white gown. Behind the herald walked Mr. and Mrs. Mentsch from the south end of town, each carrying a big bag stuffed full. When the apparition drew closer, Teresa saw a veil over its face and a switch in its hand. It’s coming here, it’s coming to see me! But no, the specter turned.
From where she stood, she saw the shiny faces of Regina and her younger brother at the door as they watched the herald ring a tinkling bell.
“Praised be Jesus Christ,” it said, its voice low, mysterious. A chill ran down Teresa’s spine.
Teresa watched through Fred’s window as the herald scattered nuts on the floor. While the children grabbed them, Mr. and Mrs. Mentsch reached in the bags and laid cookies, candy, and presents on Fred’s table. Oh, how I wish I were Fred’s daughter, not Bappa’s!
Teresa slipped back into the shadows as Christ’s heralds left. She didn’t want them to see her; that apparition might whip her with that switch. Still, better a switch than a visit from der Belznickel, that stout old man who came in the night to strike bad children with a chain. Teresa hoped never to hear his warning, a rattle of his chain at your window.
That night a strange sound woke Teresa: chains rattling outside her bedroom window! Der Belznickel, coming for her! Terrified, she cocooned herself in her blanket. It’s my temper, my bad temper that brought him! She didn’t mean to lash out at the Biekers, her schoolmates, at nearly everyone. Her tantrums never lasted long, but oh! until they stopped, they blazed!
The next morning when Teresa dared to crawl out of bed, she received—to her relief —a present from the Biekers of two pretty, little dolls instead of a whipping. So I must not be all bad. Grandma sat the dolls high on a shelf for Teresa to see but not touch. That was all right. Teresa pretended they came alive and danced with her. Oh, how they danced!
•
One spring day as Teresa sat at her desk inscribing letters, she heard Father Wenzel cry out. Her habit slapping, Sister Gertrude ran to the window, then turned, “Quick! We must go outdoors. He’s calling for us.” They all bustled into the yard where Father Wenzel stood staring at the sky. Teresa looked up to see a huge silver object.
“An airplane,” Sister Gertrude said.
Teresa clapped. She’d wanted to see a plane ever since she found Grandma in the backyard, whispering, “The world is coming to an end! The world is coming to an end!” and craning her neck to look at one. Teresa had looked up to see only a trail of smoke. But she could see this airplane; it resembled a fish with wings. How curious!
Back in the classroom, Teresa raised her hand. “Is it true what Grandma’s friends say that someday they’ll fasten wings on their arms and fly?”
Sister Gertrude smiled. “Would you like to do that, Teresa?”
“Oh, yes!” Then I’d fly out of this village and far, far away.
“Maybe it will happen, who knows? Nobody thought those Wright brothers could fly either. We’ll have to wait and see.”
Teresa’s heart skipped. With wings, she could fly to her mother.
•
Teresa wept as the villagers left town that May for the summer. Even Sister Gertrude and the other teachers returned to their Motherhouse in Concordia, Kansas. Who would console her? Oddly, Teresa also cried when her tormentors, the schoolchildren, returned to their farm homes. She knew that if the children stayed, they’d torture her, but Schoenchen would be so quiet without them. Everyone would be gone. She’d be the only child in the village with nobody but the little dog, Fanny, for company.
Soon Teresa invented a game, school, which she played for hours. Her ten fingers became schoolchildren. All her “pupils” were girls, each with a name and a distinct personality. Teacher Teresa talked to each girl personally, as Sister Gertrude spoke to her. Quick to punish her poor students, Teresa vigorously shook any bad finger. If a finger didn’t behave well, she lost her temper. Sometimes she whipped it. Once she imagined that her real mother visited this school. Teresa made her fingers promise to be on their best behavior then, so her mother would nod her head and smile approval.
All that laid-back summer, Teresa tended the nuns’ petunias, marigolds, and phlox, sometimes touching delicate petals, imagining each blossom a nun. The flowers reminded her of Sister Gertrude’s kindness. Teresa missed the nun, but not so much that she couldn’t find time to dance in the street. She loved the warm street dirt, the way it pushed between her toes and swirled into the air.
Teresa also helped the Biekers farm. In addition to his store, Bappa had land near Schoenchen that his son, Fred, farmed. Grandma owned a nearby eighty-acre farm, which she rented out, receiving a third of the produce.
Plus they owned an acre plot behind their house. Here Teresa, still too clumsy to aid with household chores, could help garden. Grandma raised potatoes, watermelons, and cucumbers as well as her prized pumpkins and tobacco from seeds that Bappa’s parents had brought from Russia.
Not only did Teresa delight in tending the tobacco, but also she loved the pigs that lived in a sty between the tobacco plot and the house. She liked to pet their short tight hairs and watch dust fly, but she particularly liked their oink. However, that summer, Grandma showed Teresa how to feed them pigweed, an awful chore.
Finding pigweed was easy; it grew all over town. Since everyone was gone, Teresa could find pigweed in any yard. Then Teresa had to pick it. Unlike tobacco, pigweed didn’t snap off readily; she had to grab the bottom of the thick stem and break it.
Grandma demonstrated how to fill the bucket. She punched weeds deep and she punched vigorously. “Arbeit macht das Leben suess,” she said, or “Work makes life sweet,” but Teresa saw nothing sweet about punching pigweed. As soon as Grandma stopped supervising her, Teresa stopped punching. Instead, she packed the weed loosely so the bucket looked full. Then she danced to pass the time when she should be punching pigweed. Finally, limbs tense, Teresa showed Grandma the bucket. Grandma nodded and shooed Teresa away. She ran to the pig pen smiling for she knew she’d get a licking if Grandma punched that bucket and saw how lazy she was. Grandma whipped her whenever she made a mistake.
Bappa believed in physical punishment, too. Both Biekers hit or whipped Teresa at the least annoyance, and particularly at her frequent loss of temper. Bappa struck her head and said, “I’ll slap you on this ear until the other one rattles.” She learned to dodge her caretakers whenever she passed them. Now seven, she hated them far more than she did when she first arrived.
Sometimes the Biekers didn’t hit but made Teresa kneel on her bedroom floor for an hour. She didn’t mind that. Used to kneeling in church, she entertained herself with her ten fingers. Sometimes her tall, slender mother, who became more real with each visit, came to see her. Thanks to her vivid imagination, Teresa’s punitive hour evaporated.
When Bappa sent Teresa to the post office, she walked down dusty streets imagining that her real mother walked alongside her. Her tall beautiful mother wore a handsome ankle-length dress with a smart hat. As refined as Father Wenzel’s sister, Teresa’s mother looked totally unlike any Volga German woman. Teresa, walking beside her striking mother, turned into a tall beautiful woman, too. Together these two remarkable ladies strolled down Schoenchen’s streets. Teresa knew that anyone who saw them couldn’t help but be impressed.
To her delight, her mother talked to her.
“Why did you give me up?” Teresa said.
“Because I had to,” her mother said. “I didn’t want to. Oh, God, no! But I had to.”
These conversations comforted Teresa so much she often talked to her mother. Soon every time she walked alone, her mother joined her.
So the long slow summer days slid past until August 15, Assumption Day, when Catholics celebrate the ascent of the Blessed Virgin Mary into Heaven. Even more exciting, on that day the Sisters, including tall stately Sister Gertrude, returned to Schoenchen. When Teresa saw them in the front pew during Mass, she had to restrain herself from dashing across the sanctuary and throwing herself in their laps.
During their first week, the nuns let Teresa help them clean, sweep, and scrub the convent house and the school. She worked much harder for them than she did for Grandma, but she couldn’t keep up with tiny Sister Borgia, who worked like a draft horse. When the house and school were clean, Sister Gertrude thanked Teresa and gave her two holy cards. She hid them under her mattress so she could find them when she had to kneel for an hour. That night, whenever she glanced at the Biekers, she smiled and thought, The Sisters are back! The Sisters are back!
•
That fall Teresa expected school to begin with Mass as it had last year, but no. Students went directly to school. Nor was Sister Gertrude teaching first, second, and third graders, as she had last year. Instead, behind her desk stood Claud Urban, a trained secular school teacher who replaced the sister when Kansas forbade Saint Joseph nuns to teach in Schoenchen’s public school.
Mr. Urban seemed nice. Every day he sported a red necktie and smelled as fragrant as a flower. Still, Teresa felt queasy as she watched him rip students from their desks and beat them. Would he whip her? But why? She came on time to school with her lessons prepared and never made a fuss.
During one study period, her lessons already prepared, Teresa flipped page after page in her reader. Absorbed in the book’s illustrations, she didn’t notice Mr. Urban until he grabbed her and flung her across her desk. His wooden stick bit the backs of her thighs.
Teresa told no one. She knew the Biekers, like most adults, would side with Mr. Urban. After that, her chest tightened whenever Mr. Urban walked near her. Is it my turn? In self-defense, she studied her teacher’s whippings. She expected him to whip most frequently students who ignored their lessons, but he didn’t. In fact, he just nodded when some children said they couldn’t finish Monday’s assignment because of their parents’ Sunday night beer party. He didn’t even protest when mothers pulled their daughters from class to help with the washing. Maybe he knew, as Teresa did, that Volga Germans respected teachers but had scant use for education. Eventually she determined that while Mr. Urban whipped everyone, he whipped noisy students more often than quiet ones. Look at that, she told her mother. He’d rather have students silent than learning.
•
On Saturday, August 1, 1914, a rumor whipped through Schoenchen like a train whistle on the night plains: the Germans had declared war on Russia. Adults, frightened for relatives living along the Volga River, talked of little else. Their insistent talk scared Teresa. What if Germans came to Schoenchen?
Then that autumn by God’s good grace, Hattie Weigle—not Mr. Urban—taught third grade.
Mrs. Weigle, a lovely woman, favored white blouses and long form-fitting black skirts. She encouraged students and never threatened to whip, so Teresa hoped for another Sister Gertrude. However, Mrs. Weigle failed to challenge Teresa’s mind like the Sister. Nor did her teacher consider Teresa special. At last, Mrs. Weigle became a bore, hammering the same simple ideas day after day until Teresa longed for Sister Gertrude’s active classes, full of guessing games, cheerfulness, and learning. She dreaded Mrs. Weigle’s favorite subject, Helen Keller.
“Just think,” the teacher would say, “here was a woman born blind and deaf and yet learned to read, write, and speak. Now if she could do that, just think what you could do if you tried.”
By this time, Teresa had advanced so rapidly in reading and writing that she read and wrote letters for several illiterate Volga Germans, including the Biekers. That season these villagers kept her busy writing to relatives living in Russia. From reading letters, Teresa learned that the Germans had attacked France and that Britain had attacked Germany.
“Don’t worry,” wrote one relative. “It can’t last long.”
Despite Mrs. Weigle, Teresa preferred school to home. The Biekers, however, forbade her to leave early for school after lunch.
“You’ll wear out your shoes,” Bappa said, “running around on the playground.”
“No, I won’t. I won’t run at all,” Teresa said, although she knew she might skip or dance.
Nevertheless, the Biekers persisted unless they drank too much.
Bappa used to drink only on Sundays and holidays, but now every day was a holiday and frequently Grandma drank with him. Whenever Teresa came home for lunch and saw beer mugs already on the table, her spirits soared for she knew they’d send her to school early. This delighted her, even though those “dumb Roosians,” her classmates, continued to taunt her.
Then Grandma’s father, Johann
es Werth, died.
When Teresa arrived at the wake, a lively affair that featured plenty of eating, beer drinking, and reciting the rosary, she intended to see what a dead person looked like.
“Bappa,” she said, “lift me so I can see in the casket.”
He did.
There lay Grandfather Werth, suited out in his Sunday best, his eyes closed and his hands folded. Oddly, he wore a cloth tied around his head and under his chin.
“Why is he wearing that bandana?” Teresa asked.
“Keeps his jaw shut.”
From this she learned that when you die, you can’t keep your mouth closed, a curious fact.
Then amazingly, the next day she found herself a celebrity among her classmates for having dared to look at a corpse.
Teresa’s celebrity was short-lived, but she thought of another way to win friends. One day when she heard Bertha, a classmate, talking about Johanna, she told Johanna what Bertha said.
Johanna’s reaction—“What else did she say?”—startled Teresa, as did the stares of Johanna’s friends.
“Nothing much,” Teresa said. “I didn’t listen long.”
Johanna convinced Teresa to go back and listen for them. She did this enthusiastically; her reports brought her a lot of attention. At last, she thought, these girls are my friends.
Then Bertha, ringleader of the other clique, noticed that Teresa was spying.
“They found out,” Teresa told Johanna. “They’re mad at me.”
She dared not eavesdrop again, so Johanna promptly shut Teresa out. Once more, her classmates ignored her or taunted her.
This failing lay heavy on her mind.
Soon after, Teresa spotted Mary Childs, her big sister on the train. Mary often visited from Victoria where she lived with the Schumachers. She never calls me names. Maybe she can help. Teresa raced to catch up with her.