Home for Erring and Outcast Girls

by Julie Kibler

  “Come with me,” I say, wheeling the cart around a glass-fronted display case that currently houses a set of black-and-white photos of professional wrestlers. I seat her in the dimly lit area beyond the partition.

  I take a deep breath. “The Berachah Industrial Home was a religious home for women and girls who’d been thrown out for getting pregnant before they were married, or who were on the streets for other reasons—prostitution, drug addiction, and so on. They were considered ‘fallen women.’ ” I make finger quotes around the words. “The couple who started the Home thought they deserved second chances. The pregnant ones had to agree to remain there, along with their babies, for at least one year, which was unusual back then. Usually, homes for unwed mothers made them give their babies up. This one was pretty revolutionary for its time—though some now would disagree with their motives.”

  I open a box from the collection, remove a folder with typed pages, and point to the simple index at the front that lists what the boxes contain. “Here’s the finder. This collection is small, but deep. It could take weeks, months even, to wrap your mind around everything it contains once you get started. So much good stuff.”

  Now I struggle to contain my enthusiasm. I tell myself to slow down. To pace myself. “Go ahead and explore. If you’ll note any obvious inconsistencies between the documents and the finder—dates and so on—or things that aren’t filed where they’re supposed to be, we can keep you on the clock.” I half wink. Research universities develop a ton of knowledge through their students. I’m not worried about whether it’s in the budget.

  “Open one box at a time, and when you get to the photos, you’ll need to wear gloves.” I point to a pristine pair I’ve placed on the table. They remind me of the ones I wore for handbell choir back in high school, made of pure, white cotton to keep grime and oily skin from marring the shining surfaces. These make me oddly nostalgic, or sad, depending on the day.

  Laurel seems intimidated now. Good, I think. As long as she isn’t completely afraid to dig in, she’ll take care. Reverence is critical when working with archival objects.

  But I’m not ready to leave her alone with this just yet, and our other student is working the desk. “I’ll be tackling paperwork over here in case you have any questions.”

  Laurel hesitates, and I point to the finder again. “Start there. Then open box one.”

  She begins to read. Two hours later, she’s still there, immersed in one of the journals. I point out it’s past her quitting time, and she asks if she can stay. There’s no reason to send her away. The collections are available to anyone, anytime. But it’s a little unnerving that she’s fallen in as hard as I did when I opened these boxes only a few weeks ago.

  By the time we close at five thirty, Laurel seems numb. Or far away. It’s hard to tell the difference. Her backpack drags at her shoulders as she waits for the elevator, and once again, she’s that lost girl who came in the day of her interview.

  I sigh. Letting her look at the Berachah collection could have been a mistake.

  As I gather my things to leave, I can’t stop thinking about the girls from the Berachah Home either. It’s Friday, and my weekend is a blank slate. I have nowhere to be and nowhere to go. It’s been weeks since I felt the urge to run, but I keep cross-trainers in my car for emergencies, and they’re handy for other things now and then. So I stop by my car and change out of my work shoes with their absurdly high heels—absurd, but oh, how I love them; they make me feel powerful and in control. Then I cross the busy main street to the tree-filled park at the edge of campus, trudging across the arched wooden bridge I now know becomes treacherous if it’s the least bit damp, then up the barely noticeable dirt path strewn with leaves and the uneven steps created by the exposed roots of century-old trees, farther and farther away from rushing traffic and exhaust.

  The nearer I get to my destination, the more the present world fades, and relief floods my body as I inhale the scent of earth, leaves, quiet peace, easing the tension I hide like a spool of thread frayed somewhere in the middle. Here, if the thread snaps, the witnesses are silent and full of grace.

  Even after that somewhat spooky first visit to the cemetery, I’ve returned again and again, often like this, after a long day at work. Today, freshly mowed grass softly carpets the ground, inside and outside the fence. Its bittersweet aroma lingers. Thanks to photos in the collection, I can now picture the structures that embraced the graveyard a century ago. A white, two-story building with wraparound porches that housed the first girls. A newer, larger dormitory constructed of beige brick, and a homey white cottage for the workers. A windmill. A water tower. Small buildings for various industries—the printing office, the laundry. The white frame tabernacle with a peaked roof that held a thousand or more for community rallies and Camp Meetings. Tucked away, the old barn. And closest to the graves, between the fence and the creek that trickles mere yards beyond, a tiny stone chapel with an arched doorway, a place for solitary prayer. Though hints of the foundation remain, this last existing structure was finally demolished in the 1990s because beer cans and graffiti turned it into an eyesore and, likely, a liability. I’m sad I missed it.

  The Berachah Home has quickly become my main research interest. Most of our archives are Texas-themed, with many specific to our area—in this case, right under our nose. The university purchased the property in the 1960s, and in the eighties, the founders’ descendants donated the bulk of the memorabilia.

  It’s not my job to become an expert on one collection among so many, but that hasn’t stopped me from trying. I’ve sifted through gingerly, sorting, noting, and charting on a growing stack of paper—a figurative archaeological dig, as Laurel might realize by this point in her semester. But there are questions I can’t answer yet. They keep me awake, often, deep into the night. Censuses and genealogies and archived newspaper websites offer clues, but much is unanswered. I’ve wished desperately I could take the collection home, but it’s against the rules. If I could immerse myself all weekend, I would. Maybe I’d discover details I’ve missed—more pieces to this puzzle. Having only fragments of time to learn everything frustrates me.

  I want to know what happened to my girls.

  That’s how I think of them already—my girls. My favorites, if it’s possible to have favorites among the dead. Two women I’ve come to regard as having souls that mirrored each other in spite of vastly different beginnings—and likely, their endings too. Two women I’ve come to adore as if I’ve known them forever, though I’ve never met them and by now, they’ve both been gone for decades.

  I enter the simple gate, pass the now-familiar historical marker, a memorial to the founder, and the few other sculpted memorials or headstones, so weather-beaten their inscriptions are difficult to decipher—except now, after poring over the records, I can.

  In Memory of Susie Singletary…The beloved matron for so many years.

  Pearl Simmons, Missionary for Berachah, Buried in India…And a prostitute before she found the Home.

  Dorothy Myrtle Carter, Safe with God forever…Erected by the Make-Good Club…

  The phrase Make-Good Club practically jumped off the page the day I came across it in one of the Purity Journals—the newsletters published nearly every month the Home was in existence. Dorothy Carter started the club to help the girls stay accountable for their actions after they were rescued by the Home. There, I thought. One small mystery neatly solved.

  Well, not so neatly once I learned the rest: When Dorothy died, she left a little girl behind.

  I walk the rows of graves, weaving my way from beginning to end. I pronounce each name as I pass, pausing to study every stone, the majority no bigger than a shoebox lid, flat against the ground. One of the first marks the grave of the founder’s sister. Annie and JT had been poor and desperate, too, growing up with a widowed mother in Waco. After JT and his wife moved to Arlington, Annie car
ried on the work in Waco, but they brought her here for burial.

  Carline…Elsie…Homer…

  After several visits, I think I know what each visible headstone reads, but sometimes, I’m surprised. Some names, I recognize now from the Journals. Others I don’t. I wonder why they’re here, how they died. Mostly, to whom they belonged. One, especially, stops me a bit longer every single time. I can tell the stone read Beatrice originally, but something—the weather? Or something human?—has flattened certain letters until the stone appears, at first glance, to read Be True. Be true to what? To whom?

  Another has no legible letters at all. But someone was buried there.

  Interspersed between the named ones are some I can hardly stand to read aloud: Infant no. 17…Infant no. 8…Twins no. 6…Painful reminders that many of the graves, if not most, are for children. Babies.

  Finally, I approach a memorial in the corner, near the massive stump of what once must have been the majestic guardian of the cemetery. Other trees grow inside the fence, including several coppiced oaks with double or triple trunks, but this stump is closest to the graves.

  Lined and gnarled, he’s a wise old guy who, before he was cut down, overlooked the only memorial here that hints at the support of a partner—one man, besides the founder, who was honorable enough to claim an eternal tie in this sacred space to one of the thousands of ruined women who passed through the Home’s gates, broken and weary; deserted or addicted; carrying a child, the scars of one, or the promise of one that never came to be.

  I kneel and lean against the comforting old stump, especially thankful now that I changed shoes, and gaze at the rose granite memorial. This one fascinates me most. It stands out, being substantial and one of the newest in the enclosure—if nearly a century old could be considered new. The inscription is fascinating. Heartbreaking. What it represents feels nearly tangible, almost personal, more than the simple names on the others, even with the mysteries embedded in their surfaces. I need to know what happened to this woman. She has taken hold of my heart.

  I shake myself. I’m dwelling too much. Again. When my therapist discontinued our sessions several months ago, right before I accepted my new job and prepared to move, she said it was time I dealt with real people and real situations—instead of the dead people I learn about at work, who can’t hurt me, who can’t break my heart without my permission.

  I felt unconvinced then, and I’m unconvinced now. Even though I saw her once a week for a year, she still didn’t grasp my internal state, how I barely keep things together sometimes.

  How I don’t like to get involved.

  Except that’s a flat-out lie. I love to get involved. I long for and crave involvement.

  And it always backfires.

  I don’t know. Maybe it has been long enough now since I stumbled blindly into a relationship without tools to handle the inevitable twists and turns flung at its fragile bond.

  Maybe I’m fixed.

  The words on the memorial recede into the dusk beneath the ancient trees that surround the cemetery like quiet sentries. And like the words, my optimism retreats too. My eyes fill with the sadness that overflows my heart. The truth is I feel more alone as each day fades into night.

  But then I glance toward the fence, where a small figure leans against the chain links, chin on the rail, an overstuffed backpack on the ground beside her. Even at a distance, I know Laurel, my student worker, and now I understand why I recognized her before, as well as her urgency and fascination with the boxes.

  She was the girl lying in the grass beneath the jagged tree when I found the cemetery.

  That tree isn’t comforting—not like my peaceful companion. Its slightly feminine austerity seems a dark reminder of the girls who didn’t “make good”—those who couldn’t live with the rules and ran away, sometimes straight into the arms of death; or those in need who never found the Home; or, worst of all, those turned away, even in their desperation.

  My silent tears are drying on my cheeks, and I long to wipe away their salty sting. But I don’t. I don’t move at all. It seems inappropriate for Laurel to find me in this vulnerable state.

  The tears surprise me every time. I like to pretend they’re a response to this small, fenced space. But they wouldn’t fall so freely without a personal catalyst beyond them. I often visit the cemetery when I’m bursting with the longing for something I can’t have.

  Home.

  It’s possible to long for home, even when you don’t have one. I’m an expert.

  Situations that require intimacy of any kind, however, topple the careful balance I’ve worked so hard to create. I accepted it years ago. And despite my therapist’s confidence, it remains painfully obvious when I attempt to engage on anything more than a surface level.

  I’m a grown woman. I’m a professional. I manage my life well.

  But I’m broken. People sense it, and when they do, they walk away.

  Me? I run.

  MATTIE B. CORDER

  Fort Worth, Texas

  DECEMBER 1904

  A month after Mattie Corder’s twenty-third birthday, she settled her debt on the room she and Cap had called home for four weeks. She gazed at the stained ceiling while a stranger who stank of tobacco spittle where it had trickled through his whiskers poked and pulled, grunted and groaned, and finally collapsed against her chest. No different than being with Charley, she told herself. If she didn’t watch, she could bear it.

  But that wasn’t so, she knew, not even with her eyes closed tight. Nothing about this compared with what she’d done nearly three years earlier, at the cost of her first job and her home. Despite what her sisters or anyone thought, Charley’s touch had seemed sacred. But neither true love nor Mattie’s turning up pregnant had kept him from chasing a rumor that money flowed like honey from the molybdenum mines in Colorado—or inspired him to send a single letter since.

  Last month, she’d lost another job because pride and impulse got in the way of common sense. Today, after many inquiries at businesses who assessed her situation—an unwed woman with a small child to tend and no family to help—she’d asked her neighbor down the hall, who came and went at odd hours, bringing men back to her room, how she might earn a little money. The girl set her up, clearly pleased for a little break and a cut of the fee.

  Now Mattie lay resorting to the most desperate measures a woman could take. She’d spent her final pay packet on two weeks in this dark, overheated room too close to the scarlet district for respectability, and this would pay the balance.

  She’d leave the man’s thin stack of folded bills untouched until the landlady knocked for her rent, and if she could help it, she wouldn’t spend another night here. The hot, damp air was poison to Cap’s lungs. Her boy needed a real doctor, not charlatans who took money just to hem and haw. Cap hadn’t improved with time, as they’d suggested and she’d dared to hope. She was desperate now, and while love for him had made her stronger than she’d ever imagined, love would not remedy this.

  A rattling gasp from the bureau interrupted her thoughts, and Mattie braced herself for a cry. The man still lay against her, fondling her breasts as if they were pears at the market. He turned his head only briefly. Perhaps he believed the sound of labored breathing came through thin walls from similar activity.

  Her neighbor had warned her to keep Cap out of sight. “Johns ain’t the patient kind, hear. They won’t want no whiny kid interrupting.” The woman had tilted her head toward the bureau that crowded the tiny room, toward the deep drawer nearly the size of Mattie’s trunk, then reminded Mattie to clean herself later with a solution she left on the washstand, if Mattie “wanted to live long.” She’d hurried away.

  Mattie had given Cap an extra dose of the syrup the last doctor dispensed. She’d worried it was too much but couldn’t stand for him to observe her shame, even if he was too young to know the differen
ce. She’d spooned the bitter concoction into his mouth, paused to kiss his forehead, and whispered an apology before slipping him inside, atop their extra clothing. It wasn’t so bad—even at two years old, he was tiny, so frail he had room to roll over. She tucked his yellow blanket around him and watched to see if he would stir, then closed the drawer, all but the last few inches. She’d waited for his wail, but a sharp knock at the door had come instead.

  Her neighbor had said when the man finished to let him stay in her bed a quarter hour, but her nerves jittered over Cap. He seemed settled to sleep again, but she pushed at the man gently now, restraining her desire to shove him off. “Hour’s up, sir.”

  They’d not even exchanged pleasantries when he’d arrived, but just as the woman promised, he’d not been rough. He pulled on his boots and buttoned his trousers, neglecting to wipe away the seed that ran down his thigh, then pushed hair from his eyes, shoved his hat over his brow, and left.

  Mattie tugged open the drawer. Cap still slept. But she’d just begun to cleanse herself when he gasped again, louder, then coughed in the way that terrified her. She sprang up and yanked at her drawers, tying them as she hurried to the bureau. At the sight of Cap’s face, she gasped too. She pulled him from the drawer and pounded on his back until he spit up phlegm and his cough settled, all that ever seemed to help, and then she threw on her dress and retrieved her string purse, shoving the money inside. She hesitated, then put one dollar back.

  She rushed from their room with Cap wrapped in her shawl and clinging to his favorite blanket—yellow muslin on one side, printed flannel on the back, quilted with knots, and edged in white eyelet tattered from use. It had been her sister Iola’s solitary token of support the day she threw Mattie out. Mattie hadn’t been particularly enthusiastic to keep it, but Cap adored it now.

  The air seemed thicker than ever. Coal smoke from trains and nearby factories mixed with heavy wood smoke. The sky was dark, even for a gloomy December day. There were fires every day in this part of Fort Worth, where wooden buildings had gone up unregulated during the turn-of-the-century boom.