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

by Marilyn June Coffey

  “Are you going to tell?”

  “No.” Teresa smoothed the covers. “But if you tell your folks I broke that record, I’m sure the ghost will come back to haunt you.”

  To Teresa’s relief, her ruse worked.

  •

  The weather turned unseasonably cool that August. Teresa nearly froze as she sat on the Dreilings’ front stoop, shivering and wondering if she would ever return to Girls’ Catholic High in Hays. She used to believe her eighth-grade education made her “learned,” but reading newspapers and listening to her high-school teachers revealed her ignorance. Much as she wanted to return to high school, Teresa didn’t know how to part company with the Dreilings. She had never quit a job.

  Day after depressing day passed until finally, after working there six months, she woke one November morning, packed her clothes in a bundle, and slipped out a side door. Only four miles north of Hays, she could walk to town if the Dreilings didn’t catch her. She rubbed her chilly hands, grateful when a neighbor stopped and drove her into town.

  School had started several months ago, so she couldn’t attend, but she expected to find an employer who would let her go to school next semester. This proved difficult. Although quite a few people wanted to hire her for room and board, no one promised her time off for school. At last, she turned to Father Julius, head of the local Capuchin order, who sent her to Mrs. Rupp, a widow suffering from ill health. However, Mrs. Rupp, like the others, offered only room and board.

  Teresa gave up. She moved into Mrs. Rupp’s house.

  From the beginning, this job lay on her heart like a block of ice. She spent her days sweeping, mopping, scrubbing, polishing—all activities she hated. When Mrs. Rupp inspected her work, she’d sniff and say, “Tibbie could do it better.” Tibbie was her nickname for her slightly retarded son, Tibalt, who cleaned houses professionally. Still, Mrs. Rupp didn’t make her repeat her work the way Mrs. Herman had.

  One benefit was Mrs. Rupp’s radio—or wireless telephone, as some called it. Radios were a novelty in Hays in 1922; Mrs. Rupp’s radio was the first Teresa heard. She loved it. When it poured out dance music, she had to shake a leg until Mrs. Rupp forbade dancing. Sometimes they listened to Dr. John R. Brinkley, who made millions implanting goat testes into men to increase their sexual vigor. He spoke twice a day. Mrs. Rupp, who hated him, dubbed him “goat man.” Whenever she heard his voice, she hit the radio, which amused Teresa.

  The radio’s pleasures didn’t offset Teresa’s discomfort around Mrs. Rupp’s slow son, Tibbie, who sometimes looked at her the way Bappa did. Tibbie kept asking Teresa to marry him and, worse yet, Mrs. Rupp kept saying she should.

  When the weather warmed, Teresa went out in the afternoons to meet a new friend, Irene. One day she complained about her lack of dates to Irene. They decided that Teresa needed to look more popular, so Irene fetched two men, youngsters, really, and the four paraded in front of Mrs. Rupp’s house, talking and laughing. Once Teresa saw a curtain twitch in the front window and knew Mrs. Rupp must be spying on them. What must she think? Such a straight old woman, set in her ways. She’d never do something like this.

  A week later, Teresa met Mrs. Howard Brown, a pretty little woman who struggled to keep her three young children in line while she pushed her baby in a buggy. Teresa helped her. Soon they sat on a park bench talking and taking turns bouncing the baby. When Mrs. Brown learned that Teresa had minded seven Dreiling children, she said, “Oh, I wish you’d work for me. I do so need help with the children. If you do, I’d pay you $4 a week plus room and board.”

  Four dollars! Such largesse astounded Teresa, who had yet to earn a penny. Besides, she liked this tiny brunette with the high thin voice, so she agreed. She didn’t tell Mrs. Brown about Mrs. Rupp, and she didn’t tell Mrs. Rupp that she was leaving. Abandoning her clothes, she worked for Mrs. Brown.

  Mrs. Brown complained a lot about her “worthless” husband. Often out of town, Howard, a sales agent, provided so poorly for his wife and four children that Mrs. Brown couldn’t pay Teresa.

  “I’m so sorry.” She twisted her hair. “If only he would apply himself … ”

  Teresa didn’t care. She liked working for Mrs. Brown who treated her like family, at least when Howard was away, which was most of the time. Teresa enjoyed minding the children, and she saw that Mrs. Brown did need help. Taking care of four lively children left Teresa little time for housework, which suited her fine. She did have to wash loathsome diapers, but that seemed better than working for Mrs. Rupp, so Teresa stayed. She knew she should return to Mrs. Rupp, inform her of the change, and pick up her belongings, but fearing trouble, she didn’t go.

  Then one bright June day trouble found her.

  As Teresa and Mrs. Brown chatted and sorted clothes, someone knocked. Teresa ignored the dirty clothes strewn around the living room and opened the door. There stood her agent, Mrs. Spallen, on her annual visit from the Foundling.

  Mrs. Spallen stepped into the living room, but she didn’t smile and hug Teresa. “I stopped at Mrs. Rupp’s, looking for you,” she said.

  Teresa cringed.

  “Mrs. Rupp said someone told her you’ve been going to the Methodist church.”

  Teresa froze. Unless a dire emergency, such as a funeral, justified it, attending a Protestant church was a Catholic sin. Maybe Mrs. Rupp told Mrs. Spallen that the Browns weren’t Catholic, but why would her agent think Teresa went to the Browns’ church?

  “Oh, my!” she cried. “I would never, ever go to a Protestant church. I’ve never been to a Protestant church in my life, and I’ll never go to one.” She winced as she glanced at Mrs. Brown. What must she think to hear Teresa speak so heatedly against Protestant churches? But she dared not have Mrs. Spallen turn against her.

  Next Mrs. Spallen, still solemn, removed a bungalow apron from her satchel. “Mrs. Rupp told me this was yours. She said you took it off for someone so you could give him sexual favors.”

  “Let me see it.” Teresa took the bungalow apron, a tent-like cotton garment similar to a housecoat with scooped neck, sleeves, and belt. When she unfurled it, it spread out as big as a blanket, so Mrs. Spallen saw it was much too large to fit her. Teresa believed she knew why Mrs. Rupp accused her. She remembered when she, Irene, and their presumed boyfriends paraded in front of the Rupp house. She knew Mrs. Rupp had watched them and no doubt surmised that Teresa was a “loose” woman.

  After Mrs. Spallen heard how Mrs. Rupp wanted Teresa to marry her retarded son, she relaxed and arranged to move the girl’s few possessions to Mrs. Brown’s home.

  Before she left, the agent stepped outside with Teresa and said, “I think you should know that when you were an infant, someone paid your keep at the Foundling for fourteen months.”

  Paid her keep! For more than a year! A chill careened down her spine. Then she hadn’t been discarded like a piece of bad luck. Someone—surely her mother—actually cared for her.

  “Did she come every month to see me?” Teresa said. “Where did she get her money? Was she working somewhere like me?”

  “I don’t know. All I know is that someone paid your keep. Sister Teresa told me. You were one of her favorites, you know.”

  Teresa tucked Mrs. Spallen’s words away as a bride preserves a piece of wedding cake. She always felt her mother loved her, but the agent’s words solidified that belief. Precious, they illuminated her past. This was all Teresa knew about her family except, of course, that her mother had given her to the Foundling.

  •

  Near the end of August, someone inside Byers upscale clothing store rapped on the window as Teresa walked past. She looked up to see a woman in an up-to-date suit motioning her inside. Surprised, Teresa entered the store where the smartly dressed woman, Mrs. Combs, called Teresa by name and took her to the bathroom.

  “Why would a cute girl like you use all this makeup?” She washed Teresa’s face. “You don’t need it. It only distorts you. There.” She patted Teresa’s cheeks with a towel. �
��See how pretty you look?”

  Teresa glanced at the mirror. It confirmed that she didn’t look a bit pretty—her nose was too big and her forehead too high—but she smiled as though she agreed.

  “You do housework for Mrs. Brown, don’t you?” Mrs. Combs plucked the rats out of Teresa’s hair.

  Teresa nodded.

  “How would you like to work for my husband and me instead?” Mrs. Combs combed Teresa’s curls lock by lock, turning each one around her finger and gently disentangling snarls. “Our housework isn’t difficult, and we need someone to keep our daughter, Ruth, company in the evenings while Jack and I work in the store. We don’t like to leave her alone at night. You’d like Ruth. She’s about your age.”

  Mrs. Combs flounced Teresa’s curls on either side of her face.

  “There. Don’t you look much nicer? You don’t need those rats, you have such beautiful hair. So black and curly. I wish I had your curls.” Mrs. Combs styled her straight hair in a bob. “But what do you think? Would you like to work for us? We could pay you room and board, and I’ll buy you some new clothes.”

  New clothes! Teresa had long wished to dress in style, and Mrs. Combs certainly seemed to be the woman who could help her. Then, too, chumming with someone her age appealed to her. It was bound to be more fun than washing diapers for the Brown children. So she agreed.

  She returned to the Browns unnerved about telling her employer. Upstairs, she packed her clothes in her satchel as she had when she slipped out on the Dreilings. For a moment, she considered slipping out on Mrs. Brown, but she liked Mrs. Brown; she couldn’t just ditch her.

  Teresa found her employer in the kitchen peeling potatoes. “Oh good, you’re back,” she said. Then her eyes fell on Teresa’s bundle.

  “Actually, I’m just leaving.”

  A long brown potato skin spiraled to the floor. Davey, the youngest, picked it up and played with it. Mrs. Brown didn’t stop him.

  “I’m going to work for the Combses.”

  Mrs. Brown twisted her hair. “It’s money, isn’t it. They’re paying you, and Howard makes so little, I don’t have anything to give you. If only he had more ambition! I keep telling him … “

  “No, it isn’t the money.” Teresa decided not to mention the clothes. “But the job will be easier. The Combses have only one child, a daughter.” No need to say how old.

  “So it’s the children.” Mrs. Brown looked down. “Oh, Davey, don’t eat that dirty old potato skin.” She yanked it out of his mouth, and then looked up. “Well, go, if you have to go. Go!”

  So Teresa moved in with the Combses, an “upper crust” family whose manner of living fascinated her. The Combses not only ate with knives and forks, but they also placed them just so on either side of the dinner plate. They spoke politely, saying “Please” and “Thank you” to each other. They even owned a player piano where Ruth and Teresa pedaled favorites like “Barney Google” and “I Want to Be Happy.” And they wore nightclothes to bed, even Mr. Combs. Teresa could imagine what Bappa would say about that.

  Being a companion to Ruth satisfied Teresa. Ruth was shy, but Teresa’s tales of life as an “Orphan Annie” drew her out until they laughed and fell against each other on the sofa like any two teenagers. When she wasn’t entertaining Ruth, Teresa struggled with the dreadful housework. Mrs. Combs, to Teresa’s relief, found her work good enough. In return, she received a smart-looking frock—from Byers, of course. As she had hoped, Mrs. Combs chose an up-to-date style that flattered Teresa. Best of all, the Combses encouraged her to return to school.

  In January, at Mrs. Combs’s insistence, Teresa enrolled in a Hays public high school, not her beloved private Girls’ Catholic High. Studying with boys seemed strange, but she reveled in resuming her education. Teresa was older than Ruth, but they attended some of the same classes since Teresa’s education had been interrupted. At night, after supper, around the dining room table, the two girls compared their homework.

  Then late in February, someone knocked on Teresa’s door as she got ready for bed.

  “May I come in?” Ruth called.

  Teresa, dressed in her nightgown, ran to the door. Ruth stood there, her face ashen.

  “Ruth! What is it?” Teresa pulled her into the bedroom. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “Worse than that.” Ruth collapsed on the bed. “Oh, Teresa, Mums and Pop lost their jobs.”

  Teresa tried hard to occupy Ruth so she wouldn’t dwell on her parents’ plight. Before a week passed, Mr. Combs announced at the dinner table that they had decided to move to Wichita where jobs were plentiful.

  “Won’t you come with us?” Mrs. Combs laid her hand on top of Teresa’s. “You and Ruth get along so well. And who knows, we might even be able to place you in a nursing school.”

  But Teresa, afraid of moving hundreds of miles away to a town even bigger than Salina, turned the Combses down.

  Before they left, Mrs. Combs arranged with a friend, Twyla Brown, to hire Teresa. This Mrs. Brown, the second one to employ her, was as upper crust as the Combses. These Browns, a middle-aged couple, had been married only a few months. The wife reminded Teresa of Mrs. Rupp; she was fussy about housekeeping but not a stickler. Unfortunately, she didn’t allow Teresa to go to school, not even half days. Without school or children to tend, Teresa had nothing to do but housework.

  Teresa disliked Mrs. Brown. She was a snob, maybe because her mother taught at the local college, or maybe because Mrs. Brown herself had earned a master’s degree in domestic science from the University of Kansas. She was so proud of that degree! When the family ate, she lectured about the food’s scientific part, describing how food changes when cooked.

  Once Mrs. Brown found Teresa in the basement talking to a man who came to repair the furnace. “Teresa,” Mrs. Brown called. “Come upstairs.” When Teresa did, her employer said, in a hushed voice, “We do not talk with people who fix furnaces.”

  Another time, after Teresa cut her finger, Mrs. Brown opened the wound and washed it each morning. Eventually, the wound healed, but Teresa couldn’t understand why Mrs. Brown had to work on that finger so diligently. Perhaps she believed that the wound, like food, could be transformed by an external force.

  •

  One Sunday that spring, Irene, Teresa’s friend, introduced Teresa to an odd-looking fellow, Jess Binder. He held his head to one side, the result of diving into some mud at a swimming hole. His friends, trying to pull him out, twisted his spine and broke his neck, nearly paralyzing him.

  Jess seemed to like Teresa, and afterwards Irene teased, “Ooooo, I saw you making eyes at him. You better watch out for him. He jazzes.”

  “Jazzes!” Teresa’s ears perked at the word; she knew it meant sexual intercourse. Just as well I don’t have a crush on him.

  Teresa didn’t know what to make of Jess. He did look strange, but he couldn’t help that. He seemed friendly, despite his dirty mouth. She’d never heard a person use so much profanity, but he was a Binder, and the Binders had such a reputation for being hot heads. But Jess had a steady job; he drove a truck. And jazzed. Teresa decided to write him off.

  A few days later, Jess grabbed her arm as she walked up Chestnut Street and said, “Hey, why the devil did you tell Ida I got the clap?” Ida Binder was a sister-in-law.

  Teresa froze. “I told Ida no such thing.” She didn’t know what clap meant, but from Jess’s tone, something bad. She shook off his hand and kept walking.

  “Bullshit! That’s not what she says.” He grabbed Teresa’s arm again and stopped her. “That bitch says you told her I got a dose.”

  Dose? That made no sense either, but Teresa didn’t want to look green. “Oh that Ida! She must have a screw loose. I never said anything like that.” She shook free again.

  Jess’s face looked like a thundercloud. “You frigging expect me to believe you?”

  “Why not? I’m telling the truth,” Teresa, a bit frightened, cried.

  “Oh, Christ, don’t do
that.” Jess pushed his hands in and out of his pockets. “I don’t have a frigging handkerchief.”

  “That’s all right,” Teresa said as she used the back of her hand to wipe her tears away.

  “Come on. I’ll walk you home.”

  That seemed safe enough, so they walked down the street, Teresa a respectable distance from Jess’s side.

  To her disgust, a few days later Jess told her that Ida was joking about Teresa saying Jess had a dose. Just like that Binder bunch.

  By that time Irene, now a senior in high school, explained what clap and dose meant.

  •

  Early that October, F.P. Mandeville, the popular football coach at Kansas State Teachers College in Hays, asked Teresa to live with him and his wife and care for their little daughter. When he told Teresa she could go to high school, she left the snobbish Browns. The Mandevilles proved to be as upper crust as the Browns and the Combses combined.

  Mrs. Mandeville, who called most people “commoners,” came from “high society.” A commoner was anyone she deemed beneath her, including her husband. When Mr. Mandeville, an Oklahoma boy, attended Kansas University, he washed dishes and played football to earn his way. He was a KU football hero when the two met, and Mrs. Mandeville was the beautiful daughter of a wealthy Kansas City family.

  When she was not in school, Teresa spent most of her time minding little Peggy Jane, only a year-and-a-half. Both Mandevilles doted on their daughter, a picture-perfect blonde who took after her gorgeous mother. Teresa also helped cook, washed dishes, and fired up the furnace every morning before the family rose. Mrs. Mandeville rarely asked her to help with housework, so the only part of the job Teresa disliked was washing the revolting diapers.

  Teresa (right) with her little blonde charge, Peggy Jane Mandeville. (Courtesy of Teresa Martin)

  Many people dropped by the Mandevilles. They liked and trusted Coach Mandeville, or “Mandy,” as his fans called him, and he clearly loved and spoiled his wife. Mrs. Mandeville fascinated Teresa, especially the way the woman went to the beauty parlor to prepare for faculty wives’ meetings. Afterward, Teresa lingered to hear Mrs. Mandeville describe the meeting, certain that belonging to the faculty wives’ club must be heaven.