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

by Marilyn June Coffey

  Teresa’s daughters, Doris (left) and Mildred, in 1931. (Courtesy of Teresa Martin)

  When Jess’s brother, George, married Sarah Lewis, Teresa lost her status as the best-educated Binder. Sarah, a high-school graduate, was a college student. Not only was she educated, she had striking good looks and stood so tall she towered over Teresa, who couldn’t like this new Binder no matter how she tried.

  Then George, who still worked downstairs in Mr. Philip’s hardware store, wanted Jess and Teresa’s apartment for himself and Sarah. Since Jess acquired the apartment through George, he and Teresa agreed to move again.

  Jess finally found an apartment for them at 410 Fort Street, a loathsome basement apartment, the ugliest place Teresa ever saw. An armpit, Jess would say.

  Even worse than the apartment were the nosy upstairs neighbors—a Bieker family of tall, skinny distant relatives of Bappa. When one of them accused Teresa of bringing men home while Jess was at work, Teresa lost her temper.

  That night she told Jess, certain he would take her side. But he didn’t. He believed them, which really angered Teresa. She had done nothing to deserve this. Why didn’t Jess trust her?

  For a few days, she vowed to leave him, but as time passed and she could think of no way to support herself and her two daughters, she decided to stay. She kept humming a Volga German song, “Du, Du Liegst Mir im Herzen.” Bit by bit the words came back to her, and she danced around the apartment singing: “You, you give me so much pain./You don’t know how good I am to you./Ja, ja, ja, ja,/Don’t know how good I am to you.”

  Goodness! I’m as bad as Mrs. Denning! At least I don’t dance with a broom.

  •

  That autumn, Doc Maximus’s Marvelous Medicine Show unfurled its colorful tent a few blocks from the Binder apartment. Curious, Teresa took her daughters and investigated.

  The gaudy, noisy show cheered her. Inside a tent, many booths sold strong medicinal drinks. The red-headed show owner, Doc Rufus Maximus, speaking through a megaphone, claimed his medicine made people feel much better. She bought a small bottle, thinking it might relieve Jess’s arthritis, and tucked it in the buggy alongside Doris. Other booths offered prizes. Oddly enough, when they were awarded, Teresa always got one, even if she hadn’t registered.

  Then Doc Maximus, a short dapper fellow, approached her and asked her to go on the road with him, to dance with him on the stage.

  “Let me think about it,” Teresa said, just to be polite.

  Then he mentioned pay, almost as much as Jess made. Before she turned to leave, she won another prize, a cute teddy bear dressed like a Scotsman.

  That night Teresa showed her prizes to Jess. Skeptical, he claimed that the medicine she bought for him was nothing but alcohol and cherry flavor. When she told him of Doc Maximus’s strange offer, Jess took the news badly, calling her a whore and shaking her. She felt her insides tie into knots. Then they fought in earnest halfway through the night, so they all—Jess, Teresa, and the girls—woke frazzled and short-tempered.

  As Jess limped to work that morning, he turned and said, “You stay strictly away from that show, you hear me.”

  I should have known. Teresa watched Jess leave. He’s so quick to believe the worst of me and other men. She did like to flirt, she admitted that, but she never ran around the way he thought she did. Not because she was pure. No, she was too afraid of his temper to cheat on him.

  Their fight made Teresa want to join the medicine show. To get paid for dancing exceeded her wildest dream. She loved the idea of people watching her swirl. She knew she would be good and, wonder of wonders, earn money, too—as much as Jess. Just think how rich she would be. What delightful things she could buy for the girls!

  However, as long as Jess remained in Hays, Teresa knew she must avoid the medicine show. She dared not ignite his anger. So every day she asked him, “Are you driving out of town for Felten?” Every day the answer was, “No.”

  The instant Jess left town, Teresa readied the girls and rushed to the show. But she was too late. Doc Maximus’s Marvelous Medicine Show had departed. Her loss made her sick to her stomach.

  8

  “Maybe I Loved Him”

  Not long after the medicine show left town, Teresa’s bowels locked so badly that Dr. Jameson, who had removed her appendix, operated on her to remove part of her intestine. Afterward, suffering from peritonitis, Teresa swam in and out of consciousness. Sometimes Jess was at her side when she surfaced, sometimes not.

  After nearly thirty days of hospitalization, she woke to see the top of Jess’s head by her bed. Despite his arthritis, he knelt beside her, his body listing.

  “Don’t die, Tootsy, don’t die. Please get well. If you get well, I’ll frigging marry you in the Catholic church or anywhere you want, but you have to get well. When you get out of this goddamn hospital, we will have our marriage blessed. I give you my word.”

  Teresa thought she must be hallucinating. She rolled closer to him. “Say that again.”

  Jess did.

  Before a week passed, Teresa was home, convalescing in the vile basement apartment with its horrid memories. As she improved, Jess’s often poor health declined. He suffered from rheumatoid arthritis, which ran in his family; the arthritis caused his old swimming hole injuries to plague him. His whole body tilted to one side.

  Teresa hated to see Jess suffer, so when Clyde, one of Jess’s brothers, dropped by with an incredible offer, she agreed. Just divorced, Clyde wanted to live with Teresa, Jess, and the girls in a larger apartment. He would pay the rent so Jess, with his worsening arthritis, would not have to work so hard.

  The Binder brothers chipped in and moved Teresa and her family to a comfortable apartment on the second floor of a landlord’s house. Tears welled as she saw the place, located at Seventeenth and Oak. She would actually live in a pleasant residential area, not in some dank basement or some hut by the railroad tracks.

  As soon as they were mobile, Jess and Teresa arranged to go to Saint Joseph’s to get their marriage blessed, Teresa as excited as a bride. Jess still worked, but his illness forced him to walk bent over to his right; the stitches for Teresa’s operation were healing, so Teresa had to walk bent over to her left. Neither could walk the seven blocks to Saint Joseph’s, so Jess borrowed George’s fancy Model A to drive Teresa and the girls to the church.

  “What made you decide to do this?” Teresa asked Jess on the way. “You always were so set against it.”

  “That rosy-cheeked little nurse of yours.” Jess pulled across the intersection. “Hell, I was all balled up, can hardly walk, and who’ll take care of the girls if you go? So I asked her what to do, and she said, ‘Well, maybe if you marry your wife in the church, she might get well.’

  “And hell,” he flipped off the ignition. “She was frigging right.”

  Teresa expected the priest to sprinkle them to bless their marriage. That would take only a few minutes, so she left Mildred, four, and Doris, a big baby, in the car. Teresa figured they’d be fine. However, Father Raphael Engel didn’t sprinkle them. Instead, he remarried them as though they had never been married.

  Jess seethed.

  Then Mildred honked the horn. My God! What if that baby falls! Teresa’s worry obscured the words of the service.

  When they started to leave, Teresa realized she had no money.

  “You’re supposed to pay the priest,” she told Jess.

  He refused. “That priest smiled like a cat eating sour mush.”

  Teresa didn’t think the priest smiled, but she said nothing. He had blessed her marriage. Now she could take the sacraments and go to confession. What a triumph, especially when she found Mildred and Doris alive and well in the car.

  •

  Gradually Jess became too ill to work steadily. One day he could walk but the next day he couldn’t. He never complained, but Teresa could calculate his distress by the set of his jaw. As he became bedridden, Clyde and Teresa heard that boiled ants could draw out pain. They
found a sizable ant pile down by the tracks, hauled a boiler to the tracks in a wagon, and shoveled the anthill into the boiler. Then they hauled it six blocks home and cooked it. When the anthill cooled, they plastered Jess’s arms and back with it, but nothing helped, not even wiring Jess in copper.

  Jess’s doctor cautioned Teresa not to provoke her husband. “With his weak heart, if you rile him, he could die,” the doctor said. Just like that, Teresa’s freedom to blow up at Jess evaporated. Not wanting to be responsible for his death, she curbed her temper in earnest.

  A proud man, Jess held tight to an idea Teresa considered old-fashioned—that he, not Clyde, should earn the family’s keep. She felt she could bring home a salary, but she dare not rile Jess by asking. In addition to paying the rent, Clyde bought groceries, so she, Jess, and the girls had shelter and plenty of food, although she did tire of eating all the cabbages Clyde bought.

  Teresa never had a cent to call her own, not even a dime for the movies. So she crocheted a hat and sold it for a quarter, more than enough “moolah” to see Hot Pepper. Enough “moolah” to treat her friend, Mabel Bieler, to the talking movie. They could see for themselves its star, Pola Negri, the actress who sent four thousand roses for Rudolph Valentino’s bier.

  Mabel agreed readily, but Mabel’s mother, knowing Jess was bedridden, said, “Don’t you think you should buy bread with the money you earn?”

  “No, that’s not my job. When Jess gets well, he will take care of it.”

  Mrs. Bieler shook her head, but Mabel went anyway.

  When Teresa got home from the movie, Clyde was waiting for her. “You may think I’m supposed to pay for your food because I’m Jess’s brother. But I don’t have to pay for anything. I buy groceries of my own free will, not because I have to.”

  Clyde’s angry words confused Teresa. She expected Jess to get well and take care of them, as he had before, but he wasn’t improving. She knew how strongly Jess opposed wives working, but maybe she should. So she crocheted another hat, this one to profit the family.

  Soon Teresa sold her hats to Scheer’s, a fancy dress shop on Hays’s Chestnut Street. When the store featured her hats in its window, she stood outside admiring them. Pretty nifty!

  Teresa spent her profits from her hats on food for everyone. To her surprise, Jess didn’t object. He simply ignored her crocheting.

  Jess remained an invalid during 1932, but then he began to recover, walking on crutches or with a cane. When he was strong enough, he resumed occasional driving for Felten Dreyline. He didn’t attempt long-distance driving but drove the flat wagon in town. Each day during the noon hour, Teresa surreptitiously brought Jess a fresh pair of shoes. He didn’t want his boss to know he needed to change shoes, but fresh shoes relieved the pain in his feet enough so he could go on working.

  Eventually Clyde, tired of spending so much money on Jess’s family, moved out. After he left, Teresa and Jess rented a house on Sixth Street, just east of Chestnut, now called Main Street. Shortly after they moved in, a car rolled up and stopped. Out stepped a man from Felten Dreyline to tell them that Mr. Felten, Jess’s boss, was dead. He had wrapped his car around a telephone pole.

  In the face of such horrible news, Teresa froze but Jess seemed beside himself. He would jump up and pace the room at a fast limp or rush from the apartment, staying out for hours.

  Teresa knew how kind the late Mr. Felten had been to Jess and how doggedly Jess worked for Felten Dreyline. But now, battered by the Depression, the struggling truck line would be run by Pete Felten, the son. Teresa believed Pete would treat Jess decently, but she knew Jess could not count on Pete for favors the way Jess counted on his father. The older Mr. Felten called Jess and Teresa “a couple of kids” and treated them like family. However, Jess was nobody special to Pete.

  Because of Mr. Felten’s death, the need for Teresa to earn money became clear to her and amazingly even to Jess.

  •

  Teresa knew finding a decent job would be difficult without a high school diploma. House cleaning positions were plentiful, but she despised being a domestic servant. After fruitlessly applying for other jobs, she swallowed her pride and answered housekeeping ads.

  Many women turned her down because of her diminutive size: she stood four feet, eleven inches and weighed ninety pounds. Mrs. Homer Reed, for instance, opened her door, looked at Teresa, and said, “What can you do?”

  “Try me!” Teresa cried but Mrs. Reed’s door closed.

  Just as she despaired of finding any job, Teresa found one. However, her pay didn’t stretch far, no matter how hard she scrubbed and polished.

  One day George Philip, the hardware store owner, stopped her on the street.

  “How are you doing, you and Jess?” he said.

  Teresa wondered why he asked. Surely he knew Jess was too ill to work, but she told him anyway.

  “You know what you should do,” he said. “You should go see the county about getting on welfare.”

  Welfare! The very word turned Teresa’s stomach. She wasn’t the sort of person who went on welfare. Since she left Judge Gross’s house, she never asked anyone for financial help. I won’t do it. I’ll manage somehow. Eventually her meager earnings forced her to apply.

  The welfare interview seemed to last for days. Teresa struggled to answer the multitudinous questions that Mr. Giebler, social welfare director, asked, but her shoulders tightened as one question followed another.

  As usual, Teresa was hungry. She habitually ate less so Jess and the girls could have more. Suddenly the room swirled, and she blacked out.

  She revived to find Mr. Huser, a courthouse official, hovering over her. “Don’t worry.” He placed another cool wet cloth on her forehead. “We put you on our roll.”

  She had accomplished her mission, but how her success diminished her!

  For one month, the Binders lived on government money. The actuality proved worse than Teresa imagined. She believed that people in the street looked at her differently, that somehow they could tell by seeing her that she was on welfare. Sometimes when she went to sleep, she didn’t care if she woke. She could hardly wait to be taken off the roll.

  Each morning she told herself, today I’ll earn enough to get off welfare. However, that day never came. At last her pride puffed up so stubbornly she went to the courthouse and declared that she didn’t need any more county help. Saying that cooled her flushed face like a spring breeze. Somehow, the county’s removal of her family from its roll vindicated her, even though Jess continued to be too ill to work regularly.

  For a while, Teresa managed to support her family. Then one month when she couldn’t pay the rent, a social worker told Teresa that she and her family ought to move to a rent-free Ellis County apartment on East Thirteenth Street. Not knowing what else to do, the Binders moved into a former poor house there.

  Their second-floor apartment wasn’t bad, but the area was despicable. Among their sleazy neighbors were thieves, prostitutes, and bootleggers. A bootlegger lived below the Binders and a low-class prostitute across the hall. The area seemed so primitive that Teresa called it “The Jungles.”

  Most people who lived in The Jungles were delighted to receive free rent, but Teresa despised being poor and dependent. Each family agreed to pay its rent by working one day a month for the county, but the workday was not required, so most residents didn’t bother. Not Teresa. Her pride at stake, she worked one day a month as long as she lived there, muttering, “If only Jess let me dance in the medicine show, I wouldn’t be reduced to this.”

  Of course, if Teresa had never worked for stylish families like the Mandevilles and the Combses, then she wouldn’t have known what she was missing, but experiencing that cultivated lifestyle raised her standards. Refined people, she knew, considered living in The Jungles degrading, so she did, too. She understood that she and Jess were not well-bred, but she hoped for something better for their children than growing up low class and using bad grammar. She vowed she would do whateve
r it took to leave The Jungles. However, in order to move out, Teresa would have to earn more money than she could by cleaning houses. But how?

  Soon the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a federal program started by President Roosevelt to help counteract the Depression, hired Teresa as a seamstress. In 1933, the WPA sent her to work in a mattress factory. Unfortunately, she lacked the strength needed to pull the threads tight. The factory boss didn’t fire her, but he treated her with scorn. Sometimes he shouted at her, “I hate little women!”

  Eventually Teresa joined another WPA group that sewed clothes for needy people. Stitching on buttons, a task she completed successfully, required no strength. She sewed well, thanks to restyling dozens of clothes for herself and her children.

  In the summer of 1935, Teresa cleaned churches for the WPA. What a job that was! One day six women started cleaning the large Methodist church, washing walls and ceilings, scrubbing out cupboards. After a while, four worn-out women left, but Frances Phannenstiel and Teresa kept on cleaning. Then Frances left, but the head woman wouldn’t release Teresa. “You are small. You can crawl into the bottom of cupboards, so stay until you’re finished.”

  Teresa considered leaving, but she remembered hearing people call WPA workers “lazy” as though they lived off government dole. What a lie! She knew how WPA women labored, but she feared someone might see her leave early and call her lazy; she had too much pride to risk that. So she stayed, twisting and scrubbing so fiercely she tore a kidney loose and was hospitalized. Again, Dr. Jameson took care of her, again free of charge.

  Shortly before Teresa left the hospital, her childhood playmate, Regina Bieker, Fred’s daughter, visited her.

  “Bappa’s dead,” Regina said. “Heart attack. I thought you’d want to know.”

  “Yes.” Teresa tried to catch her breath. Tall skinny Bappa who’d caused her such agony, Bappa dead? It hardly seemed possible.