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

by Marilyn June Coffey

  “No, I didn’t have a heart attack,” she said. “I’m just in great pain because I lost Frenchy.”

  The doctors insisted, but she denied it until they showed her the results of her EKG test. It clearly showed her heart attack, so she agreed to take Papaverine to improve her circulation.

  Since Teresa worked for the Seventh-Day Adventists, she chose Pastor Christian of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church for Frenchy’s service. Mildred came from Seattle with two of her eleven children and Doris, leaving her three boys behind, came with her husband from Hays. Surrounded by her family reduced Teresa’s sense of being badly bruised. When the organ belted out “The Old Rugged Cross,” Teresa almost heard Frenchy chuckle. He knew that tune well. When he was young, he sang it over and over for the folks at his local barber shop. They gave him a free beer just to hear him sing it.

  1

  2

  Horse Thieves

  Each morning after Frenchy’s death, Teresa told herself she must buy a scrapbook to hold the dozens of condolence cards she’d received, but she never bought the book. Instead, she tucked cards away in odd places until she couldn’t open a drawer or pull a book off the shelf without finding a card.

  At bedtime, unwilling to lie alone between the sheets, she lay on top of the covers to sleep—or read. She read voraciously, especially in the evening when she missed Frenchy keenly. They spent so many hours in the TV’s twilight, talking or watching Columbo or dancing. Reading blunted the reality of Frenchy’s death, so Teresa often read half the night.

  But she agonized over paying bills. When she reached for the checkbook, she saw Frenchy writing checks, calculating their debts, calibrating how much money to set aside for her savings. This memory nearly did her in, so she shoved the bills aside until shut-off notices arrived.

  Then shortly before Christmas, Teresa noticed a TV listing for a three-hour CBS special called Orphan Train. She’d never heard of an orphan train, but she felt it must have something to do with her, so she determined to watch it. On the broadcast day, she planted herself before the TV, expecting to watch a film featuring nuns tending a trainload of little girls in white dresses.

  Instead, the movie featured dirty orphans off the streets of New York. Tough street boys and girls. Hoodlums. Teresa wrinkled her nose. This was nothing like her experience. Where were the nuns? The children didn’t wear tags bearing the name of their caretaker. Instead, agents lined them up like cabbages in the grocery store so people could look them over and pick one. Or not. Teresa shuddered. So, it could have been worse. She remembered the calling out of numbers when the nuns gave her to the Biekers.

  Of course, the film was not meant to be true, and it wasn’t, with its fire and its train wreck and romantic undertone, although the hostility the orphans received from respectable people seemed accurate enough.

  Afterward, Teresa stared at the dark screen. How disappointing! She was so certain the show would dramatize a life similar to her own. She thought CBS made a mistake showing orphans as a bunch of hoodlums. Holding her head up as an orphan had proved difficult enough without negative publicity.

  Later, Teresa noticed that broadcasters and others referred to this relocation of children as “the orphan train movement.” Obviously, the CBS movie made an impression, for the name stuck.

  •

  When Doris heard about the broadcast, she urged Teresa to search for her relatives, but Teresa demurred. “My birth certificate tells me all I need to know.”

  Doris persisted, “Let’s go to New York and see what we can dig up.”

  “We won’t find anything. Whenever I contact the Foundling, the nuns always tell me, ‘Your case is closed.’”

  “We can look other places.”

  “Besides, what if my birth certificate’s wrong, and I was born out of wedlock?” Teresa asked Doris. “It would be awful to visit a woman who didn’t want to see an illegitimate daughter she gave away.” Although imagining her mother fascinated Teresa, she feared an actual meeting.

  “But you’re seventy-three now. Chances are your mother isn’t alive. Even if she is, you don’t need to protect her. You can’t possibly hurt her now,” Doris insisted.

  “That’s not all. Suppose we do find my relatives? You don’t know who they might be. Given my luck, they’re probably a bunch of horse thieves.”

  But Doris persevered until her mother yielded. Maybe going to New York would be better than mooning around about Frenchy. So Teresa went to the bank to withdraw money to buy two round-trip tickets. As she waited in line to receive funds that Frenchy had so carefully amassed, she experienced the now-familiar pang that accompanied any thought of her husband. Her grief was dimming, but her memory of finding him on the basement floor still tortured her.

  Early that June, Teresa and Doris arrived in New York, checked into their hotel, and then left to visit the Foundling. As Teresa predicted, they learned only that her case was closed, but she did remember to ask about the Foundling laundry. Her memory proved correct: the Foundling’s laundry was in the basement of the building she knew as home. Securing this morsel of information satisfied her.

  She’d turned to leave when the lanky nun in charge said, “I can make a copy of your baptismal certificate if that would help.”

  Teresa and Doris exchanged startled glances. “Oh, please!”

  Soon the nun handed Teresa an ornately decorated document. As she walked toward the door, she squinted at the slick gray paper. The type was so fuzzy she couldn’t read a word.

  “Here.” She handed the page to Doris. “You read it.”

  Doris scrutinized it. “It shows that Teresa Feit, born May 26—Hey! They’ve got your birth date wrong, Mom.”

  “And my name. I was Jessie then, until they baptized me.”

  “It says the nuns baptized you in the Church of St. Vincent Ferrer on Lexington Avenue on July 31, 1907.”

  “How many months old would I have been?”

  Doris ran a quick finger calculation. “A year and two months.”

  “Just what Mrs. Spallen said. Somebody paid my keep for fourteen months.” Teresa folded the precious document and tucked it in her purse. “Probably my mother.”

  Then she remembered what else Mrs. Spallen told her, that she was a favorite of Sister Teresa. “Doris, do you think they named me after Sister Teresa?”

  “Maybe. Or maybe after Saint Teresa.”

  “Oh, I don’t think they’d name a little orphan after such a great mystic.”

  Stepping into the spring air and heavy roar of traffic, Teresa sighed. “Didn’t I tell you this would be a wild goose chase? We’ve come all the way from Colorado just to hear, ‘Your case is closed.’”

  “But it wasn’t closed entirely. At least you got your baptismal certificate,” Doris said.

  “True. But we don’t know a thing about my relatives.”

  “Not yet. We’ve barely started to search. You’re the librarian. Where should we look next?”

  Teresa thought a moment. “Maybe we could find a phone book.”

  “Great. But where?” Doris said.

  They glanced up and down the long Manhattan avenue until Doris spotted a YWCA sign dangling from an old brick building. “Let’s go there.” The closer they got, the more rundown the building looked. “Oh, Mom, I don’t think we should go in. It looks too seedy. Let’s go somewhere else.”

  “But where, Doris? Let’s just step in the lobby and see if they have a phone.”

  Both felt relief to see an old-fashioned wooden phone booth with New York City’s telephone book, as thick as an unabridged dictionary, dangling at its side. Doris turned to the “F’s,” looking for Teresa’s birth name, Feit.

  “Oh, my gosh, Mom, will you look at this?” Doris flipped page after page, each filled with lists of Feits. “Why your name’s as common as Smith!”

  “In New York, anyway. Why don’t you look up my mother’s name?”

  “How do you spell it?”

  “B-r-e-i-t-o-w
-i-c-h,” Teresa spelled out.

  Doris scanned the B’s, ran her finger down a column, then stopped. “Success! Only two Breitowichs listed.” She stepped into the phone booth.

  “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe we shouldn’t bother anyone.”

  But Doris dropped a coin into the slot, checked the dial tone, and handed the receiver to her mother. Teresa reluctantly dialed the first listing.

  To her surprise, a man answered. He told her to call Etka Slota. “She’ll be able to tell you.”

  Disappointed to learn so little, Teresa wrote down Etka Slota’s phone number and started to put it in her purse, but Doris wanted to call immediately.

  “Come on, Mama! We haven’t come all this way to stop now.”

  So Teresa handed Doris the number, “You call, then.”

  Standing beside her daughter, Teresa heard the phone ring twice. When a woman’s voice answered, Teresa started. Why, she sounds just like me! That seemed impossible, until Doris covered the mouthpiece and whispered, “She sounds just like you!”

  Doris and Etka Slota talked for a long time, maybe ten minutes, as Teresa marveled at how much that woman sounded like her. Mrs. Slota told Doris that a cousin, Arthur Weinstein in Chicago, had researched the Breitowich family tree and might be able to answer her questions.

  “She doesn’t seem to know anything about the Breitowichs,” Doris said after she hung up. “But she mentioned that she and Arthur are ‘double cousins.’”

  “I expect that’s all we’ll find out.”

  But Doris disagreed. “I’m sure we’re on the right track, Mama. We just have to reach this Arthur.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. I don’t think there’s any point in that, really. He can’t be interested in us.”

  But when she heard Doris’s eager, “Don’t worry, I’ll contact him,” Teresa gave in. If Doris wanted to find her ancestors that badly, at least let her try.

  •

  Back in Denver, Teresa immersed herself in work, friends, and other activities, soon forgetting the New York trip. After sleeping between the sheets in the hotel bed, she slept between them at home too now. Though picking up her checkbook still pained her, she paid the June bills on time. She also joined the Lady of Lourdes senior citizen group, and she noticed Captain Korb. She had met the captain in the Porter Hospital library where he came to research the cancer that had hospitalized his wife of fifty-eight years. Teresa could tell that he adored her. When she died, he was distraught.

  After his wife died, Captain Korb dropped by the library to chat, and Teresa discovered he was an aviation doctor during World War II. That’s why he carries himself so erect. It’s that military training.

  Then he asked her out to dinner, but she couldn’t date him, she just couldn’t. She knew he was lonely; so was she, but it hadn’t been a year yet since Frenchy died, not until July 17. Maybe she’d agree after that. She did like him; he displayed so much integrity.

  On July 18, she started to date Captain Korb. They had delightful times together, as she knew they would, even if he did reminisce about his wife. He soon proposed marriage, and Teresa was tempted. Her house sometimes felt so empty, but she couldn’t bear to relinquish her freedom again. She turned him down, but they continued to see each other.

  During this time, Doris, at home in Hill City, Kansas, heard from Arthur Weinstein. She mailed Teresa a copy of his book, Our Exodus, which detailed the history of the Feit, Weinstein, Breitowich, and Fenig families. Teresa flipped through the opus; its pages seemed crammed with genealogical charts and stories about people she didn’t know. Unimpressed, she set the book aside.

  Then Doris called. “I wrote Arthur again, and sent him all the information you’ve given me about your relatives. But then I didn’t hear from him all during July.”

  “Slow down. I can hardly follow you, you’re talking so fast,” Teresa said.

  “Well, I just got his letter! Listen to this—he says he didn’t write because he had to review his notes and call up other relatives to ‘stretch their memories.’ He says he’d hoped one of them might remember hearing of a Rosie Breitowich or a Wolf Feit or, for that matter, a Jessie Feit, but nobody had.”

  “A Jessie Feit.” How odd to hear someone use that name. But that would be my name if I grew up in New York.

  “Here. Listen to this.” Doris read Arthur’s letter. ” ‘From the first I thought that Jessie must be a rather close relative, because we don’t know Breitowichs that are not related. The astonishing point is that you have come up with a Breitowich and Feit background.’ Mama! He’s really helping us!”

  Teresa saw that Doris was excited about this letter, but for her part, she couldn’t understand why this man found a Breitowich and Feit background so astonishing. After she hung up, she promptly forgot Doris’s call.

  When Arthur called Teresa later that August, she didn’t remember him. “Arthur who?”

  “Weinstein. Your daughter wrote to me.”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “My wife, Bernice, and I want to meet you and Doris in Denver,” he said.

  Surprised, Teresa agreed.

  “Do you know a good eating place?”

  Teresa suggested Denny’s; it would be good enough.

  “No,” Arthur said. “We don’t eat at Denny’s.”

  Teresa raised an eyebrow, wondering what could be so terrible about Denny’s. Arthur chose an unfamiliar restaurant where they agreed to meet in a few weeks.

  During that time, Teresa wasted no energy speculating about Arthur. She agreed to the dinner primarily to satisfy Doris’s desire to find her ancestors. Personally, she didn’t think meeting this man would mean much. If seeing an unknown person who might be a relative didn’t interest her, why would it interest him? He’s just curious. He’ll see me and be satisfied and that will be that.

  On the day of the dinner, Doris and her husband, Don, picked up Teresa to drive to the restaurant Arthur had chosen. “How sophisticated,” Teresa murmured as she saw glittering white trees around a palatial building. As they drove in, she spotted a couple standing outside the restaurant. Probably Arthur and his wife. The man appeared to be Jewish, sort of short and chubby with curly hair framing his baldness. He looked quite unlike the man Teresa expected: shorter, lighter skinned, and an entire generation younger. Since Arthur was Rosie’s relative, Teresa had thought he’d be from that generation, not hers.

  Teresa and her cousin, Arthur Weinstein. (Courtesy of Teresa Martin)

  As she walked toward this curly-haired man, who indeed was Arthur, she gasped; they looked so much alike he could be her brother. Waiting beside Arthur was his wife, Bernice, a pretty woman in her middle fifties. Teresa admired her stylish dress. Bernice, who didn’t look particularly Jewish, was short but not as short as Teresa, perhaps five foot four.

  “My God,” Teresa heard Bernice say as they approached. “She looks exactly like your mother!”

  “Yes,” Arthur said. “She does.”

  How strange that I should look like his mother! Teresa couldn’t believe that these fine looking, expensively dressed people might be related to her.

  After introductions, Arthur said to Teresa, “Take your shoe off. Let’s see your foot.”

  His request amused her. So unusual! She obediently removed a shoe. Arthur looked at her foot and said, “Oh, with that wide foot, you belong to us. Besides, there’s such a strong family resemblance, we can’t deny you. You look every inch a Breitowich.”

  As she slipped her wide foot into her shoe, she felt like Cinderella donning the glass slipper. Up from ashes. She could hardly breathe. After all those school children’s taunts, after the years living with the hurtful Biekers, the years scrubbing floors, the lonely fight to be educated, after a lifetime of being a mail-order orphan, now, at last, in her seventies, blood relatives had claimed her. She blinked back tears.

  As they turned to enter the opulent restaurant, Teresa experienced a surge of happiness, like bubbles in a fountain, clean and delicate,
unlike any joy she had known, although similar to her feelings when she saw her firstborn. She wanted to pinch herself, to make sure this wasn’t a daydream, but instead she followed Bernice into the restaurant to partake in what seemed, oddly enough, like a family reunion. The maitre d’ seated them at a private table in a group of artificial trees.

  A thick white cloth covered the table, and each place was set with heavy silverware and spotless glasses in a manner Emily Post would approve. The maitre d’ lit two rotund candles on either side of an exquisite bouquet of real flowers. Soft music muted the bustle of the restaurant. Well, this certainly isn’t Denny’s! Teresa had never encountered such luxury; it made her apprehensive, as though she had no right to be there. What in the world shall I order? She picked up the massive menu, but Arthur solved her problem by ordering for her.

  Then he and Doris talked, Arthur providing incomprehensible details of genealogical topics, and Doris telling Arthur more about Teresa’s background. Teresa did learn that Arthur’s mother, like hers, was born a Breitowich, and that Breitowichs were known for being short, plump, and frivolous. They also had wide feet and wide noses.

  “Breitowich,” Arthur said, “means ‘son of wide.’”

  Teresa giggled. “Thank goodness, I didn’t inherit a Breitowich nose.”

  Arthur glanced at her quizzically, then smiled and said that the Feits, like his father and hers, were tall, slim, reserved people. Arthur used Weinstein as his last name instead of Feit because his father, the son of a Weinstein-Feit marriage, had taken his mother’s name to keep the Weinstein name alive, so Arthur, like Teresa, had Breitowich-Feit parents.

  “If your father was a typical Feit,” Arthur said, “he was dark with a prominent nose. The Feits are intense, energetic people. Your father might have been a scholar, but definitely not a mixer.”

  As the waiter placed more food before Teresa than she could eat in three days, she considered what Arthur had said. Was she mostly Feit or Breitowich? Scholarly or frivolous? A little of both, she decided, suppressing a giggle and pinching herself.