Home for Erring and Outcast Girls

by Julie Kibler

  River slowed too, and suddenly leaned to grab my ankle, pulling me down into the grass.

  “Right here! I win!”

  “You cheated,” I said, laughing as we rolled into a heap, with more body parts connecting than just our hands or shoulders now. River was skinny, but no athlete, and I continued to laugh as our chests rose and fell together—mine beneath, heaving from adrenaline, River’s above, from true exertion. Eventually, my laughter faded, and though I kept my mouth carefully closed, the sound of air flowing through my nose grew so loud, I worried River might think I was afraid.

  I wasn’t afraid. I was terrified. But not afraid.

  River leaned closer, bringing our foreheads together too, and then our noses, making it clear now that I wasn’t the only one who struggled to silence my longing. I closed my eyes, unable to focus, dizzy from our proximity. Almost too much. We stayed there until River gently pushed back again, rolling away until we both lay on our backs, gazing at a patch of bright sky through the trees. Wispy clouds threaded the blue, but they had no chance of darkening this sky, or this day. It might have been the best day I’d ever had.

  “Hey,” River said, eventually.

  “Hey.”

  “Now will you tell me why you quit running? For real?”

  “I never said I quit running,” I said. “I quit track.”

  “Still. Why?”

  “It’s hard to explain.”

  “I’m fairly intelligent.”

  “Yes, you are.” I took a deep breath. To me, my reason for quitting didn’t seem strange; however, I knew that from the outside looking in, it wouldn’t make sense. But River hadn’t given me reason to be leery of telling the truth so far.

  “Our youth minister always says we shouldn’t miss church for other things—especially not for sports. It’s about priorities. God is more important than anything else.”

  River had rolled onto an elbow. “Okay. I get it, I guess. Except church isn’t exactly God, right? Church is church. God is God. What am I missing?”

  That actually made sense. I didn’t have an answer.

  “Sorry,” River said, and I shrugged.

  “I guess church attendance is equated with serving God, to make things simple. So when I started track in high school, practice always made me late to youth group. And when we had meets on Wednesdays, I didn’t get back in time at all. But the final straw…” I paused, because suddenly, I saw it in a new light.

  “Was?”

  “I was running varsity as a freshman, beating upperclassmen at meets…”

  “Uh-huh…because you aren’t any good at running.”

  I pushed against a skinny elbow enough to knock River off balance.

  “We had this invitational meet—by runner, not by team. It was to pick kids for a summer training camp, where they’d stay on a college campus, compete with other good runners, and get trained by college coaches scouting for their teams.”

  “And they picked you?”

  I sighed.

  “Seriously?” River said. “That’s amazing. I bet everyone was so excited and proud.”

  I nodded. “It was an honor to get picked for the camp. But by then, my youth minister had been giving me flack, and…some of the kids. They thought my priorities were mixed up. Anyway, I couldn’t go to the camp. It was the same week as mission trip.”

  River sat up and stared at me in true disbelief now. “You didn’t go?”

  “Nope. I quit.”

  “You quit something you were amazing at because you had a—wait, what’s a mission trip? Did you, like, go to Africa?”

  I laughed, though it hurt a little. “No, silly. We went to another town in Texas and built handicap ramps for disabled people for a week. It was fun.”

  River’s eyes were closed by then. I was sure it was to keep from spouting obscenities or other seemingly inappropriate expressions of incredulity. I wouldn’t have minded. I felt incredulous now too.

  “Let me get this straight. Your parents made you build ramps instead of going to a running camp with the best coaches and runners in the state?”

  “No,” I said. “They’ve never forced me to do anything at church. That’s not their style. I just…I wanted to go on the mission trip. It’s the highlight of our summer—an entire week with your best friends, doing crazy stuff, not just free labor. Music, swimming, food fights. It’s a blast.” I felt the need to keep explaining, though River nodded.

  “Okay. I can see that, I guess, but that happens every year, right? Wasn’t the camp, like, the opportunity of a lifetime? What if you did so well you earned all kinds of scholarships and every coach was fighting over you?”

  “I don’t think I was that good,” I said. “I made a choice. I chose the mission trip. And it was easier to quit track than deal with my coach’s disappointment. So I…walked away.”

  River’s head moved in a very slow shake, and I felt nearly nauseated watching. “That was what you really wanted?”

  My nod took so long, I’m sure we both doubted it.

  If what I’d told River was bad enough, the whole truth was worse. After I was invited to the camp, Jess bragged about me in Sunday school, and I’d lowered my face, embarrassed by the attention. I hadn’t decided whether to go yet, and my parents had left it up to me—they knew my priorities were fine. I’d never been rebellious.

  But Seth hunted me down between Sunday school and church. “The track thing is cool, Cate. But you’re not going, right?” he’d said. “You’re not skipping mission trip for some running camp.” His lip curled as he said it, and I felt his derision, but I forced myself to ignore it.

  “I haven’t told them one way or the other yet,” I said. I’d heard a rumor Seth and Miranda were on the rocks—that they would definitely be breaking up before summer. We’d both be on that mission trip if I went, and he’d finally be available.

  “I’d think about it hard,” he said. “You know what Brad’s always saying, and Pastor Lance. Church is our first priority. We’re supposed to be set apart.”

  My stomach twisted at his words. He was right. He was older, wiser, already talking about going into the ministry after college. My personal calling, even as a fifteen-year-old high school girl, was supposed to be the most important thing in my life. If it wasn’t, well, what would God think of my commitment? Of me? And what would Seth think?

  “Of course I’m not going,” I said. “Are you crazy?”

  His smile lit up my face again, even if doubt lingered in my heart. I’d needed to be set straight, and I was glad it was by Seth. Maybe he’d want to go out when he and Miranda split.

  Monday, I handed in my uniforms. I explained I had to miss too much church for track. My coach tried to talk me out of it, saying I could keep running for the team even if I didn’t go to the camp, but I was firm.

  “I don’t know anymore if it’s what I really wanted,” I said now. River had waited patiently through my silence, and waited longer as I saw that conversation in a whole new light. Seth hadn’t broken up with Miranda for another year, and hadn’t even spoken to me much on the mission trip. Not on purpose, I was sure, but because he really hadn’t thought about me like that. He’d just been exerting the authority he thought he should as a student leader.

  I’d thrown away a chance at what might have been something big.

  Not for God. For a boy. I’d been trying to impress Seth.

  River’s voice snapped me back to the present. “I think you really wanted to go, but people were pressuring you. Wrongly.”

  My face went hot. Because I knew, deep inside, for the first time maybe, that what I’d tried to believe was the right choice probably hadn’t been. When I’d quit, I’d given up the opportunity to do what I loved nearly more than anything. Not more than God, but definitely more than building ramps in hotter-than-hell Texas
summers. I ran like I had wings on my feet—and if I was good at it, if God had given me that talent, would he have wanted me to waste it?

  Now I’d never run track in college. I could walk on, maybe, if I was lucky, but I doubted I’d have the time. I’d have to work to pay what my academic scholarships wouldn’t cover and my parents couldn’t afford. At any rate, I’d been dreaming of running a library since I cataloged my books at age six. I’d have loved competing, though. Now I never would.

  But I could still run. River had reminded me.

  I jumped up again. “Race you to the car.”

  “You’re on,” River said. “But this time, run like you goddamn mean it.”

  “Despair in matters temporal and material is often terribly crushing and saddening, but when it comes to the heart of a fallen girl, it is fearfully enhanced, not alone by the consciousness that she has lost her good name, and that she has no one to look to for help, but far beyond this in the depths of her being, she feels her condition takes on the awfulness of the loss of her soul as she realizes she is bankrupt before two worlds.

  No one who has not been in her case can fathom the unspeakable depths of her grief, or taste the bitterness of her cup of self-lashing torment; albeit she is filled with the bitterest contempt and fiercest anger, at the monster who has wrought her ruin.”

  —ANNIE T. ARMOUR, “None to Help,” HERALD OF HOLINESS, MARCH 13, 1913

  MEMORANDUM

  DATE: July 10, 1916

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

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

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

  RE: Three items for next issue of The Purity Journal

  Dangerous Occupations for Women:

  Trained Nurses: Exhaustion and stress create desire for drugs and alcohol easily obtained.

  Domestic: Vicious or loose women work alongside her, or her employer may take advantage.

  Factory Hand: Subject to the same environment as the domestic.

  Waitress: Customers consider her fair game, yet she cannot reject advances for fear of offense.

  Stenographer: Perilous field, especially for newly educated girls, ignorant of men.

  —Summary of report by Charles P. Neill, U.S. Commissioner of Labor

  TWO COWS NEEDED

  Two good cows could be used in Berachah. Who might consecrate one, and who, the other, for our cause and sanctified mission?

  How many bank ledgers will gaze us in the eyes when we appear before the Greatest Judge, and how many professing followers will face the outcast girls and hear this: “Ye did it not unto one of the least of these.”

  Shall our Home be closed? Shall our Mothers and Babies be cast out once more, and left to perish on the commons? They Await Your Reply.

  —HVT

  LIZZIE

  Arlington, Texas

  1916

  Change and unrest overseas eventually made their way to Berachah’s little corner of Texas. War seemed nearly inevitable, though they appreciated President Wilson’s efforts to keep them out of it. Sister Susie had finally been granted a mission to India, to care for girls who needed help as much or more. The girls saw her off with both joy and sadness. Two years later, she contracted malaria and never recovered. Her fellow missionaries would write them at length about her lengthy illness later, but the night of her death, they sent a simple, devastating telegram: SINGLETARY DEAD.

  Nobody at the Home could bear to think of their dear former matron suffering. They held their own tearful memorial service and placed a stone in her honor in the burying ground.

  The Upchurches allowed another preacher couple to take over the running of Berachah for a time so they could spend more time crusading. But it was as if a bad spirit slowly took over too. The usual joy-in-trials attitude dissipated, and even the children became insolent from breathing the poisoned air. People with grudges against the Upchurches spread false stories, and when he took back control, Brother JT was forced to place a notice in the Journal to quell them. What had been a flood of nasty notes from disgruntled donors finally slowed to a rare drip, but everything had left Lizzie feeling scarred, once again, even after the situation improved.

  After five years away, Miss Hallie had returned too. It hadn’t been terrible without her sour face hanging over them at every turn, but it wasn’t terrible to have her back, either. She spelled her name differently upon her return, as if to say she’d turned over a new leaf. The girls who remembered her rolled their eyes at every Hallye V. Taylor they read.

  But Miss Hallye did seem changed, like her name.

  She wasn’t so stiff-necked as before, though still frazzled at times, and she worked as hard as anyone. She spent more time with the girls and even seemed to enjoy it, even if they still kept her at arm’s length. Her prickly reputation had been handed down like a family heirloom.

  That wasn’t the only change. Miss Hallye, having become thoroughly modern, ordered a textbook on women’s health and venereal diseases. Their old-fashioned line of treatment—prayer and faith alone—wasn’t completely successful. She spoke up in a staff meeting after studying the book, saying that God had given men—and women—brains, and quite often the tools to fix things. It was a disservice to their residents to ignore the latest treatments.

  Sister Maggie Mae and Mrs. Nettie, the matron who’d replaced Sister Susie, waved her off, as if she had no standing—and worse, not enough faith. But while Lizzie squirmed to hear Miss Hallye speak so frankly, she appreciated her honesty and diligence. It might have saved her and Docie much heartache if people had been blunt about what was right and wrong and what could kill you before they’d ever set foot in the Home. They’d suffer some of the effects forever.

  Lizzie had begun to doubt whether she and Docie would both survive the girl’s growing up intact. The fifteen-year-old swung from happy to sad to angry and back in the space of a minute, enough to make a person dizzy.

  Ivy knew what to expect from girls Docie’s age. She talked Lizzie out of burying the young lady alive more than once. Lizzie’s own wildness had surely given her mother fits, though understanding that now didn’t change anything.

  While she and Ivy fed the babies their midday meal one Friday, she asked Miss Ruby—the new children’s home matron hired when their numbers increased to where they needed an additional paid worker for consistency—to read the first letter she’d had from Mattie in months. Sometimes Docie read them, but these days, Lizzie was careful. Mattie didn’t go into much, knowing Lizzie was at the mercy of volunteers, but she seemed restless. Lizzie kept waiting for her to say she’d gone and done something foolish.

  Mattie had gone quieter around the time of the tenth anniversary of the Home. She’d never come back to visit, and in spite of Lizzie’s pleas, she’d even refused to attend the special Homecoming celebration, which they’d planned and prepared for extravagantly. Lizzie figured Mattie worried about seeing the Hydes and their adopted daughter, but personal discontentment became obvious in her words, too, though she claimed she was just going through a spell. She wrote that she badly wanted to cook for a fancy hotel, but nobody would train a woman—much less one with a murky past. She had no choice but to keep at church work. Sister Welch still fed her and clothed her and kept a roof over her head.

  Mattie still poked fun at Lizzie’s friendship with Ivy too, though she’d never met her. It annoyed Lizzie, but she ignored the digs. She wanted letters for catching up, not fussing over silliness. For several years now, Lizzie hadn’t mentioned Ivy in any of her dictated replies.

  As Miss Ruby read this letter, Lizzie was thrilled to learn Mattie had a new job and living quarters, imagining how elated Mattie must have been to escape old Sister Welch. But then she set in on Ivy. This day’s letter went farth
er than usual. Lizzie was sure Mattie hadn’t meant anything by what she wrote—How’s your little girlfriend, Ivy?—for Lizzie had never told a soul what had happened. But Ivy’s hand stilled from flying Duncan’s spoon into his mouth with a buzz—they couldn’t get him to eat otherwise. He tilted his head back and screeched when the pretend flying machine stopped midair. “Mohhh bite!” he shouted, and wailed.

  Ivy shoveled carrots into his mouth and slammed down the spoon. She glared at Lizzie and stalked out, leaving Duncan sputtering and Lizzie with a stone in her throat.

  Miss Ruby finished Ivy’s job. “Goodness. I didn’t even read the part where Mattie asked if she was ‘still clingy, like her name.’ What was your friend thinking?”

  Lizzie’s face was surely red, it burned so hot. “Mattie’s jealous I’m friends with Ivy.” She couldn’t tell Miss Ruby the whole truth.

  “But Ivy seemed upset with you. Will she be all right, do you think?”

  “I hope,” Lizzie said. Ivy was likely thinking all kinds of untrue things. Lizzie remembered Ivy’s frantic fear after she’d tried to hold Lizzie’s hand.

  “They’ve eaten what they will. I’ll stay so you can find her once they’re down for naps.”

  Lizzie prayed the babies would go down easily. Thirty minutes later, all but one slept soundly. Miss Ruby sent her on. “Settle things. I’ll need you both in time for their walk.”

  Every afternoon, Lizzie and Ivy piled the toddlers into a contraption Mr. Gus had fashioned, like eggs in a basket, and wheeled them around the grounds. The kids adored it, but it took two workers—one to pull, and one to keep babies from toppling out when they went over bumps or to carry the fussers.

  Lizzie tiptoed from the nursery. Ivy’s dormitory was quiet and dim, with everyone busy this time of day. The common room was empty but for a sick girl reading. Lizzie pictured where she’d go if she needed to hide. The only quiet space today was the laundry. By Friday, the Home clothes were clean, and nobody in town wanted deliveries on the weekend, so the laundry girls usually helped in the fields or with stacking and cutting in the printing office.