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

by Marilyn June Coffey

  After she caught her breath, Teresa asked Mary, “Why do they hate me so?”

  She expected Mary to say, “Because they envy you.”

  Teresa knew her position was enviable. Bappa was rich. She had her own room while most of her classmates slept five or six in a room, maybe five or six in a bed. And she slept on a plush Russian feather mattress while most Schoenchen residents slept on straw.

  But to her amazement, Mary answered, “Because you’re stuck up.”

  Teresa considered that. She did believe herself better than her classmates, but she was! Brighter. Quicker to learn. Sister Gertrude told her so. Besides, she knew she was superior to the Biekers: already she could read and write, which Grandma couldn’t do at all and Bappa couldn’t do well. And certainly she held herself above the villagers who ate with their fingers, hardly ever washed their hair, and liked their liquor almost as much as Bappa did. Did that make her stuck up? Or just better?

  As she considered this, Teresa noticed she differed not only from her Volga German classmates but also from the local orphans. They managed to blend right in. Teresa didn’t understand how. The other orphans spoke only Volga German, stumbling over English when they read aloud in class, She spoke every language used in Schoenchen, even bits of Latin, but she remained isolated.

  Were the other orphans as unhappy as she was? Mary Childs was not. Teresa knew, because Mary told her so: “No point in being miserable.” Gertrude Deoger, only six, who came on Teresa’s train, sat contentedly in Saint Anthony’s with the Rupp family.

  Mary Ruder, John Graf, and Joe Wagner, older orphans who came to Kansas years ago, seemed satisfied. Beautiful Mary said her life with the Paul Ruders was “wonderful.” John Graf, only two when he came, had a good home with Ferdinand and Pauline Graf. With his bright red hair and lively, often loud, manner, John didn’t look a bit like a Volga German, but he fit in.

  Joe Wagner refused to discuss being an orphan. “My parents didn’t want me, so I don’t want them, either.” Was he unhappy? She wasn’t sure.

  Teresa’s favorite orphan, Pete, was content. Dark enough to be Italian, Pete rode the train ten years before she had. He was so sweet that everybody loved him. After Sunday’s High Mass, he led the Windholtz’s team to Bappa’s water pump. How those horses adored him! They nudged him, nuzzled him, and rubbed their heads on his body.

  In all of Schoenchen, only orphan Jody Gassman seemed as unhappy as Teresa, although she wasn’t sure, for Jody didn’t talk much. She lived catty-corner from the Biekers, but she kept distant and looked dissatisfied. If Jody is as unhappy as she looks, then she is like me.

  Teresa became convinced that Mrs. Gassman treated Jody unfairly and paid more attention to her own children than to Jody.

  Teresa understood that indignity, for Grandma kept candy in an upper kitchen cupboard for Bappa’s numerous grandchildren. Fred and Theresia were producing children at the rate of about one a year; Fred’s older sister, Dorothy Hepp, already had a brood of ten. When the grandchildren visited, Grandma gave each one a sweet, but none to Teresa. Her protest resulted in a well-placed slap, so she stopped protesting. Instead, she began to steal.

  First she considered stealing pennies for pennies definitely tempted her, but in the end, she only stole candy. Again and again and again. Her real mother didn’t mind. Teresa knew because she could see her mother smiling when she climbed to the upper kitchen cupboard and grasped, oh, maybe two or three pieces of candy that melted in her mouth with a sweetness that lasted for hours.

  Then one day Bappa said, “The Gassman’s little orphan’s run away.”

  “Jody?”

  “Whatever they call her, nobody’s seen her. Looks like they won’t find her.”

  That night in her room, Teresa wondered: How did she do it? How did she get away? Where did she go?

  •

  On the day of Mrs. Spallen’s spring visit, Teresa kept bouncing outdoors, hoping to spot the Foundling agent’s hired buggy.

  “Sit down,” Bappa said. “The watched kettle never boils, you know.”

  But Teresa couldn’t sit. As she waited outdoors, safe from Bappa, she practiced a little dance step she’d invented.

  Finally Mrs. Spallen came, right on time. She greeted Teresa with a kiss that left a moist spot on her cheek. As the agent rustled into the house with her satchel, the Biekers’ main room seemed warmer. Grandma poured Arbuckle’s coffee for the grownups and put a glass of milk in front of Teresa.

  “Well,” Mrs. Spallen said, “how are you? How are things working out?”

  She addressed Teresa, but Bappa answered, “I don’t think we’ll have to send her back to New York this year.”

  He laughed, but his joke chilled Teresa. For some time, whenever she became too energetic or lost her temper, Bappa threatened to send her to the Foundling, which he described as a reform school. Or Grandma mentioned Albert, alarming Teresa. Grandma knew Albert; she was a Werth before she married, and the Werths took Albert. He rode out on the same train as Teresa, but they soon sent him back.

  “Albert looks just like you,” Grandma would say. “He’s your brother.”

  Teresa hated it when the Biekers compared her to Albert; how could she possibly be as horrible as he was. The Werths had sent him back. She knew Grandma meant she and Albert were related because they both were so contrary and high-spirited. The thought that Mrs. Spallen might take her, like the notorious Albert, back to New York made her shrink.

  But Mrs. Spallen spoke again, asking routine questions: “Are you getting enough to eat? Does Mrs. Bieker make you new clothes? Are you happy here?”

  Teresa answered affirmatively. What else could she do? Say that living with the Biekers left her feeling unwanted, a feeling that haunted her like a ghost. Mention the slaps and the whippings? The strange way Bappa touched her? But the Biekers sat right there listening!

  Besides, if she said she was unhappy, what would Mrs. Spallen do? Take her to New York as she’d taken Albert? Would living in that reformatory be better than living in Schoenchen? So Teresa smiled, nodded, and tried not to choke on her milk.

  •

  Bappa’s drinking often resulted in his touching Teresa. Sometimes he looked at her and she saw desire flush his face. Since Bappa was the only father she knew, she supposed all fathers acted this way, even though Bappa warned her to tell no one about it. She never said anything. No! Oh, God!

  Teresa feared Bappa’s fondling, insistent even when she tried to wiggle off his lap, but her fear of Grandma weighed like a block of ice in her stomach. What if Grandma found out? Or even suspected?

  One day, as he sometimes did, Bappa gave Teresa a penny after he finished. She laid the coin down in the kitchen, but later, when she returned to pick it up, it was gone. It has to be here somewhere. She searched and searched.

  Then the door opened, and Teresa saw Grandma staring. “What are you looking for?”

  “A penny.”

  “Where’d you get a penny?”

  “Bappa gave it to me.”

  “What for?”

  Teresa considered saying, “For running an errand.” She often ran errands for Bappa, whose store doubled as a central office for the telephone company. His were the only phones in town except the priest’s, but many villagers had telephones at their farms. Sometimes a farmer called Bappa to bring a person to the store phone, and Bappa often sent Teresa to fetch the person. Usually she received a nickel or a dime in return, sometimes only a penny.

  When Teresa looked up, Grandma’s eyes seemed to bore into her. The girl could almost hear her say, as she often did, “Wer einmal luegt, dem glaubt man nicht, selbst wenn er auch die Wahrheit spricht” or “He who tells one lie will not be believed even though he tells the truth.” Teresa shivered. She dared not lie to Grandma, but she dare not break her promise to Bappa either. Whose anger should she risk? She chose a small lie to Grandma to avoid both Biekers’ wrath.

  “No reason.”

  4

 
“Oh, Sweet Jesus!”

  In the fall of 1915, when Teresa entered fourth grade, her teacher’s homeliness, his buggy eyes and full lips, surprised her. She was even more astonished to learn that this same Carl Engel was engaged to marry snobbish Alicia Werth, a beautiful young woman.

  “How can that be?” Teresa asked Grandma, formerly a Werth.

  “The Engels carry weight,” Grandma said. “Carl teaches and his brother is a priest. People will look up to Alicia.”

  In the classroom, Teresa stared at ugly Mr. Engel and shook her head. How dare Alicia marry a man she can’t possibly love? When I marry, I’ll marry a good-looking man. She barely heard Mr. Engel call her name.

  “Do you know what ‘veracity’ means?” he said.

  “No.” She knew the answer, but better to wait and let a boy reply. In fourth grade, the world seemed disparate for male and female students. Mr. Engel told the boys, “You can grow up to be president,” but such an idea seemed absurd for girls. Not only were Kansas girls denied the presidency, as adults, they could not even vote for president. Somehow these differences made Teresa feel horrible to be a girl, but she didn’t want to be mistaken for a boy either.

  Often she squeezed her fingers to prevent her hand from shooting into the air in response to Mr. Engel’s questions. Secretly she hoped that not answering might make her seem less of a teacher’s pet, which in turn might make her classmates like her, but they didn’t. She remained isolated, except for her imaginary mother and for the Biekers’ little dog.

  Teresa was surprised to discover that Mr. Engel didn’t teach German. No High German? But she loved the language, ever since she’d studied it with the Wenzels. She lingered after school, stood beside her teacher’s squat wooden desk, watched him grade papers so rapidly the sheets fanned by. Then she said, “Why aren’t we studying German?”

  “Nobody’s teaching it.” Mr. Engel looked at her briefly. “The war, you know. Teaching German’s no longer prudent.”

  She knew what he meant. The Great War seemed an obsession in Ellis County. Teresa watched the adults seek military news from each other, make phone calls in Bappa’s store, and send letters to relatives still living along the Volga River. At home, Teresa translated war stories from the Ellis County News for the Biekers and listened to the grownups argue about European hostilities.

  Of more immediate concern was the news that German-Americans had become targets of hostility. In Nebraska, the paper reported, a German-American was jailed for four months for not buying war bonds, even though he couldn’t afford them. Closer to home, the familiar “dumb Roosian” jeer seemed mild compared to “dirty Kraut” and more odious names Schoenchen villagers heard. Hays residents long considered Volga Germans “benighted foreigners, bowed down with superstition” and inclined to vote in blocks when they couldn’t even read. However, this name-calling was worse. Bappa refused to take Teresa or Grandma into Hays.

  Despite their unease, Schoenchen villagers continued to celebrate New Year’s, Teresa’s favorite day. They celebrated with a custom, Wünsching or wishing, that Teresa loved. On Wünsching day, she rarely had reason to lose her temper.

  Wünsching started at four or five in the morning. Lights flickered on in houses all over the village as people prepared to receive guests. As soon as Teresa dared, she ran next door to Fred’s house.

  “Regina,” she called. “Hurry, let’s get started.”

  The girls ignored their freezing hands as they went from house to house wishing a Lucky New Year, often with other children. When they came to a door, they pushed it open slightly, squeezed in, and recited their piece: Ich wünsch Euch ein/glückseliges Neues Jahr,/langes Leben, Gesundheit,/ Friedeneinigkeit und nach/euren Tot das Himmelreich or “I wish you a lucky New Year, long life, health, peace and after your death, eternal happiness.”

  For this recitation, each child received a gift, often a penny and sometimes two cents or a nickel. The amount of money received usually depended on the child’s importance to the adult who gave the money, but Teresa often received generous contributions from Volga Germans who barely knew her. She wondered what they thought as she squeezed through the door, a strange little creature with bushy hair and an excitable manner among such stoic, stolid Germanic people.

  In one house, a big man with a huge mustache stared at Teresa.

  “Who is that?” he said. “I doubt if she’ll ever do a day’s work. She looks so English.”

  Volga Germans called people “English” if they looked as though they couldn’t stand at a wash tub all day—that is, if they didn’t look German.

  Then the big man grunted and said, “Give her two cents.”

  Lucky Teresa, to receive two pennies so often, even from frugal Volga Germans with large families. No matter how the villagers regarded her, her difference turned, on New Year’s Day, from a blemish to an ornament. Her pride swelled. Here she was, nothing but an orphan, the lowest of the low, yet able to participate in the great day.

  That year, even though most children only wünsched twenty-five or thirty cents, Teresa wünsched $2.88. Was she rich and happy, even though she knew Grandma would just tuck her money away. When other children asked, “Why do you get two cents?” she bragged, “Because I am an orphan.”

  Wünsching day was the only day when she didn’t feel like an outsider.

  •

  Early in April 1917, Teresa sat at the Bieker table watching Bappa light the kerosene lamp. He never lit the lamp until it was so dark she could hardly see. He was stingy that way, but Teresa didn’t mind. Watching dusk fall inside the house pleased her.

  When the lamp glowed, Teresa pulled the Ellis County News close and translated. Congress was debating whether to draft citizens, a horrible prospect to Volga Germans who had left Russia to avoid a draft there. Before the villagers could decide whether to honor a draft, their sons settled the issue for them: they volunteered.

  Their parents threw a big party for the boys; everyone attended to drink, laugh, dance, and gamble. On Sunday before the young men left, Teresa shook their hands after Mass, as did the rest of the congregation. Where would they go? What would they have to do? Face tanks? Machine guns? That awful yellow gas?

  A few days later, Bappa stormed into the house.

  “Those sons of bitches! A man can’t even shop in peace.” Bappa laid his rifle on the table and poured a beer. He told them how the fathers of a couple of boys that enlisted “went shopping in Hays, and those SOBs grabbed them right off the street and took them to some Veterans of War lodge and made them kneel in front of the American flag and say the Pledge of Allegiance. Just to prove they weren’t slackers. Slackers! Not likely, when they let their sons go.”

  Bappa gulped some beer, then loaded his rifle. “Well, those bastards aren’t going to grab me.” After that, he carried his loaded rifle everywhere.

  The war brought many changes. “Uncle Sam wants you” recruiting posters decorated the Schoenchen post office wall. The government had rationed flour, so the Biekers ate corn bread so often that Teresa grew to despise it. Fanny liked it though.

  However, deprivation didn’t color all life. The Volga Germans partied each weekend, so Teresa danced to the fiddle and the pipe. How she loved it! The music’s energy seemed to slip inside her body, pressuring her until she had to move. At eleven, she danced as well as some of the women, but she’d learned never to dance in front of Bappa; that seemed to set him off.

  One day Mr. Funk from LaCrosse arrived driving a Model T, a rare sight in Schoenchen. Americans had driven Ford’s Model T for nearly a decade, but Schoenchen residents still considered horseless carriages a novelty. The Funks took Teresa for a ride. The sensations awed her: the movement, the breeze blowing through the car, the curtains, tacked at top and bottom, flip, flop, flopping.

  Before long, nearly every family in town owned a car, and each driver considered his superior. Even Fred Bieker bought a car, not a practical mass-produced Ford but a much more expensive Maxwell. With it
s white-walled tires, electric horn, folding mohair top, and sporty lines, Fred’s extravagant car seemed elegant to Teresa. She envied Regina, even when she heard Bappa worry about how deeply into debt his son had gone to buy it. Soon, over Grandma’s protests, he loaned Fred money to make the payments.

  •

  That summer, Teresa heard that the nuns might return to teach. She could hardly believe it: Sister Gertrude back in the classroom? To Teresa’s delight, the rumor proved true; that fall of 1917 the Saint Joseph nuns returned. The state certified the new school, built on church land, and the nuns, trained as public school teachers in the interim, now qualified to teach school.

  Here Teresa entered sixth grade, dismayed to be too old to have Sister Gertrude teach her. Instead Sister Rosina, an erudite nun whose flaming red hair sometimes peeked out beneath her wimple, taught Teresa’s class along with seventh and eight grades. Despite her disappointment, Teresa reveled in memorizing religious prayers and songs again and in hearing a nun call the class to order.

  Sister Rosina, like Sister Gertrude, led a variety of classroom activities. She sometimes held a spelling contest or played “Questions and Answers.” Sister Rosina might ask, “Who wrote ‘The Children’s Hour’?” Students, when they knew, replied, “Longfellow.” Teresa no longer pretended to be ignorant. Her hand often shot up first. Having a bright female teacher role model made participation easy.

  Sister Rosina also read to her students, often choosing biographies about women. Teresa particularly enjoyed hearing about Ann Rutledge, the young woman Abraham Lincoln loved.

  “One day,” the nun told Teresa, “you’ll see a building filled with books. That is a library.”

  A building filled with books didn’t sound too plausible. Teresa had never seen a library, not even the Carnegie Library in Hays, despite the Biekers’ frequent trips to town.