Home for Erring and Outcast Girls

by Julie Kibler

  Docie had been restless at bedtime. Lizzie rocked her until she finally slumbered soundly, then settled her in her little cot. Moments later, from their second-story bedroom, Lizzie heard the cries of a young woman, come nearly to the wide steps at the front door. She’d collapsed mere feet away, and she clung to a bundle Lizzie only recognized as human after flying down the stairs and off the porch to where the girl lay on her side, crooning and curled around a child.

  Lizzie took them in her arms and helped them in—a choice that rebuilt her heart but also broke it again.

  CATE

  Arlington, Texas

  2017

  I pretend I don’t see Laurel after she settles herself in her own private corner of the cemetery. She seems okay. Or at least that’s the story I tell myself—the one that allows me to leave quickly, without a glance in her direction as I hurry away.

  At my house, I peel off my work clothes, then find my oldest, comfiest yoga pants and a soft tank top. Barring fire or flood, I don’t intend to emerge all weekend. Digging around online for more information about the girls will take my mind off my crisis of confidence.

  What I’m after is a photo of Mattie. I know her last name and enough details that I keep scouring online census records and newspapers, thinking they’ll lead me to one.

  The library’s collection includes many of the monthly Purity Journals. The bound publications sent out with news of the Home and rescue work in general contained numerous captioned photos, including ones of Lizzie soon after she arrived, as well as her daughter. I have precise mental images of her and Docie, along with other girls and workers in the Home. I can match several names to faces in the thin, unlabeled stack of photos an Upchurch granddaughter donated, and I’ve even identified a woman I’m convinced is Lizzie in the 1931 Homecoming shot, nearly thirty years after her arrival.

  But Mattie remains a mystery. Photos never accompany any mention of her in the Journals. Had she been camera shy? Desired privacy? Or is it coincidence? I want to be able to say, There’s Mattie! as I can with the others.

  In the labeled photos, tragedy and comedy mingle in the depths of Lizzie’s dark eyes, which, like Laurel’s, give too much away. Not like my silvery-blue irises, which reflect instead of invite. What surprises me most is the accompanying innocence in that deep brown, intact in spite of Lizzie’s experiences, contradicting her reflections on a life of horror and heartbreak.

  But maybe the dichotomy makes sense. Maybe a youthful outlook kept her sane.

  Just as I settle into the corner of my sofa with my tablet and a glass of wine, the rest of the bottle nearby, my phone vibrates. When I did grad school an hour north of here, Angela and I connected over shared music taste during a break in a seminar. Later on, we’d attended a few concerts together. The friendship required so little of me, I’d never had a reason—excuse, frankly—to shut it down. She tries to keep in touch and knows I’m back in DFW, not far from where she lives. I let the call go to voice mail. I want to be alone with my thoughts and feelings. I don’t want to cope with anyone else’s. Anyone alive, anyway.

  I consider ignoring her voice mail too. But something compels me to play the message after all. Ingrained guilt. There’s another reason I keep my boundaries out so far: People-pleasing is my superpower—until it’s not.

  “Cate!” she says. “There’s a concert tonight in Oak Cliff—that’s Dallas, in case you don’t know. What I listened to online was so good, and the venue looks amazing. Are you around? It’s at seven thirty. I can swing by your new place at six thirty. Call me!”

  I contemplate my yoga pants and sigh. It feels like too much energy to change again. Then I remember a striped maxi skirt I bought on a whim recently, thinking it would complement a narrow silk tee I already own. I don’t even have a fashion excuse.

  So I temporarily banish Lizzie and Mattie and text Angela my address, in spite of a nervous feeling in my gut that escalates as I get ready. I have time for a snack, but I can’t eat. As much as I love music, I dread crowds more. A room filled with people can be lonelier than solitude.

  Thankfully, Angela has enough enthusiasm for both of us. She arrives twenty minutes late and taps her horn. I’m neither surprised nor offended. She wasn’t known for her punctuality in grad school, and I wonder if she manages to arrive on time for her job at her small-town library on the outskirts of Fort Worth.

  I climb into her classic Beetle and we roar away, defenseless against my own smile. Angela does everything with a roar. She clambers out in Oak Cliff and hugs me—never my greeting of choice, but Angela grabs a person and hugs hard, leaving nothing to decide. I’m awkward, but appreciative. It’s been a long time.

  The stately old home, pristinely kept for over a century, is used for cultural gatherings in the gentrifying Dallas neighborhood. On its grand old porch, a woman hovers at a folding table.

  “So sorry, we’re sold out!” she says.

  “We ordered online. Are we on the list? Connelly?” Angela smiles.

  The woman frowns. “Oh. We admitted a few extras in place of no-shows and started right on time.” She looks at us pointedly. Angela gazes back, equally so. “Unfortunately, there aren’t any seats available in the parlor currently, but during the intermission, we’ll fill in the aisles. Feel free to stand in the hallway.”

  Angela gives me the side eye. It’s 7:33.

  An older man in khakis and a pinpoint oxford descends the ornate central staircase, balancing a few chairs. Most of the other men I see from here are hipsters with volcanic beards or self-conscious waxed mustaches. The man whispers that we can sit near the entrance to the parlor, where we can at least listen, and gingerly places chairs on the parquet floor.

  I realize I have no clue who’s playing. I’ve failed to ask Angela and she didn’t have paper tickets for me to scrutinize. But once I settle into my chair and start paying attention, I realize I quite like this musician’s sound. The solo guitar. A mellow but inviting voice. It’s both energetic and soothing, and the strangely familiar tone compels me to lean forward to try to see around the door frame—with no luck. These days, singer-songwriters are a dime a dozen, and though acoustic folk music is my favorite—my parents brought me up on the originals—the modern stuff is pleasant but usually derivative. Not this. I engage with the lyrics and melody, awed by intricate fingerwork that enhances them.

  Between numbers, the musician banters with the audience, telling amusing or poignant stories about song provenance, and then, after nearly an hour, says, “I hope you’ll say hello after the show. My music’s available online. I’ve also got these round plastic things for those who like souvenirs.”

  The youngest people in my line of view crane their necks, as if to see something, but the older folks nod and smile. “Also—download codes for bonus songs, either way.” A bottle clinks against the floor. “This venue is perfect. The history…the audience members we can’t even see…” A nearby girl drops the embroidery hoop she’s held in her lap the whole time and titters. She wears a short, funky romper and the biggest glasses I’ve ever seen. I’ve been pondering whether her embroidery is performance art, and now I see she’s literally stitching the word EMBROIDERY. Does she take it home after each concert and rip it out so she can start over at the next one?

  “I must have startled a ghost.” The crowd laughs. “Anyway, I always end with this tune. It’s for someone I used to know. She’s never in the audience, but I always wish she were.”

  The room stills, the guitar plays, and I freeze.

  I recognize the simple composition even before the lyrics. How can it be? This place, this concert, is two hundred miles and half a lifetime away from the last time I heard the song—not by accident. I’d never expected to hear it again, but confronted with the haunting melody and River’s warm, soothing timbre, I can’t move.

  Moving should be my first instinct—has been for nearly t
wo decades. I should rise from the chair, turn, and run past the elaborate doors of the old house and away as quickly as I can.

  But all I can do is sit, and listen, and remember.

  Sometimes I look halfway back upon my life, trying to picture the eighteen-year-old me, and think, I don’t remember her at all. Who was she? Did she think the same way? Act the same way? Or was she so different, not a single person—not even myself—would associate me now with that girl.

  In this moment, though, here in this room, where the walls recede and my vision turns fuzzy at the edges, nearly twenty years ago might as well be yesterday.

  LIZZIE

  Arlington, Texas

  DECEMBER 1904

  Sister Susie rushed to the parlor where Lizzie had seated the young woman, who clutched at the limp child desperately. Sister Susie took them to the small room next to hers, reserved for those who arrived unexpectedly, like this, or those too sick to mingle. It was the same room where Lizzie and Docie had fought their battle—for hopeless cases, segregated from the general population of the Home unless and until some glimmer of hope emerged after all.

  The room was plain, but comfortable, with tall windows looking out on the lawn, a bed made up with snowy linens, and on the wall, a framed print of Jesus with children sitting at his feet. Sister Susie helped the woman change into a nightgown and settled her into the bed.

  Lizzie held the child in those moments, over to the side in a little rocking chair, her chin tightening and her hunched shoulders making a shelter around the dying boy as her tears fell on his cheeks and blanket unchecked. Soon, she carried him to his mother, who rocked him and sang to him. But he was already gone. His skin cooled as the fever carried his spirit away.

  Sister Susie ordered Lizzie back upstairs after the doctor arrived, but Lizzie listened outside the door, her feet unable to travel the path to her own room after what she’d witnessed. The doctor’s voice floated from beneath it in the face of Sister Susie’s protests. “She’ll be sick from the hysteria if we don’t.”

  In seconds, the wails ceased. No lingering murmurs. No breaths caught. No easing from sobs to occasional hiccups. The girl was out cold. The Home stood firmly against drugs of any kind, but now and then, they did what they had to do. Lizzie said a simple prayer of thanksgiving that they’d given the girl relief—for now. When she woke, her nightmare would begin again, as if it had just happened that minute.

  Hot tears dampened the bodice of Lizzie’s dress, already scented with grief.

  * * *

  —

  The next morning was silent and gray, and not even the fire’s glow could warm the corners of the house. Winter had arrived overnight, too, without warning. Before long, it would depart again, to reappear at whim, or perhaps on a schedule only the winter itself understood. But this morning, frigid air penetrated the tiniest crevices in newly fitted window frames and wooden thresholds that had hardly had time to cure.

  Lizzie woke too early, her arms so tight around Docie, her girl complained she was hurting her. When she dared peek around their door at dawn, the others hurried quietly through the hallway, busy with morning tasks. Sister Susie hushed her when Lizzie caught her sleeve. Lizzie wanted to be doing something, anything, to help. “No, dear, let’s keep to our routine today. It makes everyone feel better in times like this. You and Docie stay warm in your room.”

  Lizzie cuddled Docie longer than usual when she dozed, and sat closer than ever to her on the floor while she played with lettered blocks a kind soul brought them. Docie held the blocks as if she hadn’t a notion of their use. Lizzie helped her stack them but couldn’t name the letters, and she shrugged when Docie pointed.

  The young woman rested still, she was sure, or she’d have heard those wails again. Lizzie didn’t dare go—until she couldn’t stand not to. She settled Docie for a nap and tiptoed downstairs.

  The door was ajar, and the young woman gazed blankly at the window, that yellow quilted blanket gathered to her chest. She patted it, as if soothing her boy. Her hair glowed red-gold in the dim light of the overcast morning. The events of the night before couldn’t subdue it. But her cheeks were white and her eyes encircled with smudges. She sat straight as a tree, as if the curved rockers beneath her chair weren’t even there.

  “Miss?” Lizzie said, her voice cracking as the vibration passed her still swollen throat.

  The young woman didn’t react. When Lizzie took hesitant steps into the room, the girl moved her chin a fraction, but she clenched the blanket harder. Lizzie tugged a needlework-topped stool close to the rocker. She understood grief, more than anyone could guess, and she knew all the girl might need was someone to sit with her, to let her know she was not alone. She had not been alone the night before, and she was not now. Lizzie waited beside her in silence for the next hour or so, until she feared Docie might be stirring. She rose, patted the girl’s shoulder, and returned upstairs.

  The next three days, she repeated her actions, always finding the girl unmoving, gazing out that same window. After the first day, the yellow blanket was gone.

  If Sister Susie was surprised to find Lizzie there one afternoon, she didn’t react beyond a small flinch when she entered. “Docie’s awake, dear. She’s asking for you.”

  Lizzie flushed. An anguished mother didn’t need to hear about someone else’s child, not when she grieved so desperately for her own. Sister Susie straightened her shoulders and smiled. “Mattie, I see you’ve met our Elizabeth. She hasn’t been with us much longer than you.”

  The girl tilted her head to study Lizzie, and Lizzie eyed Sister Susie. Could the matron have forgotten Lizzie was the one who found the girl at the front steps, and the one who summoned Sister Susie when she wouldn’t—or couldn’t—move? More impossibly, that Lizzie was the one who sat and held her dying child while Sister Susie settled his mother into bed?

  But Sister Susie seemed determined to act as if that hadn’t happened at all. Mattie simply turned back to the window. In all three days, the girl hadn’t said a word, but Lizzie reckoned if she kept at the sitting, she might eventually—if for nothing else, to tell Lizzie to leave her be.

  “I’ll get along back upstairs.” Lizzie rose, patting Mattie’s shoulder, like every day.

  She worried Sister Susie would scold her, but at the evening meal, which Lizzie took with the other girls now after their little ones were settled to bed, Lizzie’s cheeks burned as Sister Susie praised her compassion in front of the household.

  The girl who led the singing glared down her nose. “Isn’t it careless for Lizzie to be so close to anyone—especially to those who haven’t been around her kind”—she drew out a pause—“of sickness?” Several young women at the two long tables gasped at Gertrude’s blunt inquiry, asked as if Lizzie weren’t right across the room. Others nodded or shook their heads.

  “Oh, Gertrude,” Sister Susie said. “Have you learned this from us? To be unkind? To treat girls based on circumstances or perceived value? If so, we’ve failed at our mission.” She paused. “Perhaps it might be tactful to voice such concerns to me privately.”

  Those who’d backed Gertrude stared at their laps, but Gertrude met Sister Susie’s eye. “Please excuse my rudeness,” she said, not turning her head until Sister Susie moved on to another topic. Then Gertrude caught Lizzie’s eye and glared as if summoning knives from her own.

  Lizzie’s stomach twisted to think of hurting Mattie more than she’d already been hurt. She shook herself for not thinking of it. She knew better than most, but had forgotten as quickly as anyone.

  The next afternoon, though, when Lizzie didn’t make her way to Mattie’s room, Mattie found Lizzie instead.

  MATTIE

  Arlington, Texas

  DECEMBER 1904

  Mattie had not been surprised or angered to learn Lizzie was a mother. After all, Mattie wouldn’t have been there herself if not for
Cap. She didn’t have to see Lizzie’s child, and Lizzie never forced conversation, obviously waiting for Mattie to initiate it.

  But she did care to know why Lizzie suddenly quit coming. Mattie hadn’t even wanted to live after Cap died, but the wordless courage of this girl, who found her, then helped her, then kept showing up, and whose sorrow seemed as deep as Mattie’s own, gradually convinced her she had to carry on, with or without him.

  If the others were surprised to see the new girl walking the property after staying hidden for days, they didn’t let on. They simply nodded their condolences as she passed.

  She had no idea where to walk, but by happenstance—or maybe not—she found her new friend near a field shorn to stubble for its winter rest, her knees drawn to her chest atop a cold, flattened boulder, weeping as if she, too, had lost something.

  Mattie climbed the rock, though it hurt her hands and hips and knees, already weakened after sitting empty and idle for four days. She welcomed the pain. She settled herself next to Lizzie, then draped her arm around Lizzie’s sturdy shoulders.

  They cried together in silence.

  MEMORANDUM

  DATE: December 20, 1904

  TO: Mr. Albert Ferry, Printer for the Berachah Rescue Society

  CC: Reverend J. T. Upchurch, Founder and Director of the Berachah Industrial Home

  FROM: Miss Hallie V. Taylor, Secretary and Treasurer of the Berachah Industrial Home

  RE: Next issue of The Purity Journal