Home for Erring and Outcast Girls

by Julie Kibler

  Hours later, Jim walked her all the way to her building, and waited at the foot of the stairs until she called out from just inside her door. She felt safe and secure, in all the ways she wanted.

  Over the next few months, the two of them made a life. Jim was good with money. With the economy iffy, he suggested transforming her good-sized rooms into space for twice as many lodgers—still all men, for with Mama Stell’s example, they tended to become her “boys,” and Mattie’s Place their harbor of good food and quiet rest.

  She made enough money to render Pat’s absence immaterial, and soon she gave herself the pleasure of telling Mr. Gaston to take a hike—but politely. She had no desire to move.

  Mattie made good on her promise to herself. She went from local to local, organizing a fund for women left out in the cold for refusing their bosses, fired from their jobs for complying, or for becoming pregnant out of wedlock, regardless of their situations. She mentioned some details of her own story. Sometimes the union members listened politely, sometimes they jeered. But eventually, more interest in rights particular to female workers emerged—nearly always because the women supported that interest first.

  Finally, in June 1923, twenty-one months after the parade, and after being granted an annulment upon confirmation that her marriage to Pat had indeed been a fraud, Mattie married Jim. Her new surname seemed appropriate. For the rest of her days, she’d be Mattie McBride.

  Mattie went through her documents before they went to the courthouse and realized her papers were in messy order, replaced in haste. An old letter of reference from Brother JT was on the top, brought from Texas in case she’d ever needed to prove her time and work experience at the Home. Underneath was the pamphlet she’d pulled from the light pole in Fort Worth, telling what the Home did for erring women of any stripe—and saved because of its fateful part in her story. She pictured Pat digging through her papers at some point, seeking dirt on her as his jealousy intensified, but saving what he’d learned for the morning of the parade. She was sad, but not especially surprised to recognize that he’d been the one to tip off the committee, so petty he’d nearly ruined the entire parade.

  Instead, it had turned out just right.

  The wedding was small, just the bride and her bridegroom, with Jeanette and Travis for witnesses. Lizzie still wouldn’t come, and Mattie didn’t push. She’d see her soon enough.

  For the wedding, she wore her white parade dress. She’d worn it the day she fell truly and irrevocably in love. And Mattie and Jim consummated their marriage, truly, irrevocably, and over and over again. If they practiced a little beforehand, who needed to know?

  Ye shall not need to fight in this battle; set yourselves, stand ye still, and see the salvation of the LORD with you, O Judah and Jerusalem; fear not, nor be dismayed; tomorrow go out against them; for the LORD is with you…

  And on the fourth day they assembled themselves in the valley of Beracah; for there they blessed the LORD; therefore the name of that place was called the valley of Beracah, unto this day.

  2 CHRONICLES 20:17, 26

  CATE

  Oklahoma City

  2017

  Oklahoma City in late December is cold and windy, though the snow that dusted the South and Midwest over Christmas is gone. I walk the entire length of the parade route, in a long loop around downtown. Some of the buildings that were along the route in 1921 remain, and I pause to read historical markers, then step back to imagine them through Mattie’s eyes.

  Finally, I contrast my walk around the downtown landmarks, still freezing even in my heavy jacket with a warm scarf around my neck, with how Mattie must have felt on an oppressive July day in 1933, and my eyes water.

  The city tore out the trolley tracks decades ago, but they’re laying new ones for modern streetcars. Soon you’ll be able to travel the same area Mattie must have for more than twenty years. Humans move forward, backward, and forward again, like streetcars—depending on what drives us in the moment.

  I save Mattie’s block for last. Her building has been gone almost fifty years, but I want to see the spot. I walk south from where the original courthouse stood—where Mattie and Jim registered their marriage—until I reach Reno Avenue. I peer west, toward a corner where a rescue mission still stands, where Mattie must have spent much of her first years in Oklahoma. I walk east, past Myriad Gardens, with impressive modern art, water features, gorgeous things growing tall and strong, and a small ice skating rink, where children race to stay warm in the bitter wind.

  I wait where Jim might have leaned against the old-fashioned light post, watching Mattie turn into her stairwell and climb until she was safely inside, and then finally, I arrive in front of the hulking concrete convention center. It looks like an alien spaceship that landed fifty years ago, swallowing up the beehive of activity that kept these blocks busy from sunrise to sunrise for nearly a century. First, as that brand-new city on the plains. Next, as an area booming with businesses below and housing above—not so different from the walkable urban areas everyone wants to create now. Finally, as the classic Skid Row of Oklahoma City, crawling with homeless people and junkies. I spy a young man behind a column, resting on a slab of cardboard until a security guard moves him along.

  Tearing down buildings doesn’t make the problems go away.

  Right here, I think, standing on a broad sidewalk to the left of the entrance, leaning against a reproduction ornate iron post topped by a clock. Right here is where Mattie might have stood at the grill, turning eggs or bacon on the griddle. I look up and know with certainty that Mattie slept above me, though not precisely where her bed was located. I close my eyes and soak up the presence of thousands of souls who have flowed through this living river, in search of new lives, or in defense of old ones, including a woman who simply wanted to love and be loved.

  All their stories resonate with me, but maybe Mattie’s the most.

  When I open my eyes again, the sun, just visible on the horizon, is sinking. It’s time to say my goodbyes to Mattie, and hello to possibilities, old and new.

  But first, I step inside a gift shop, surprisingly still open, to warm up before I leave. My eyes alight on two identical tumblers, ivory crystal-cut glass, filled with delicately scented wax. Fleur de Sel. Flower of salt. I pull out my phone. A salt that crystalizes on the surface of the sea, forming intricate, flowerlike patterns that never touch the bottom of the pool.

  I turn one over. They’re overpriced, but I purchase both anyway.

  Mattie. Lizzie. I’ll finish my notebooks by their light.

  I pass several antique and junk shops on the way to my car. Their Closed signs are all turned out, but I slow to gaze through a display window at tiny christening gowns and other vintage children’s clothing. I’m drawn to a single toddler’s shoe, resting on its side near two complete pairs. The leather is scuffed and the sole worn, but beyond a tiny stacked heel, the arch is nearly smooth—except for small scratches that look like they may have once been letters.

  I swallow the lump in my throat.

  * * *

  —

  At the Blue Door, parking is easy on the street or in the tiny lot, but it’s early yet. There’s nothing to see except this small building with, appropriately, blue doors. On New Year’s Eve, the adjacent college campus is a ghost town. The local coffee shops are closed, and the only place lit up is Asian. Any other day, I’d grab some pad Thai, but food seems iffy just now.

  Eventually, I park near those blue doors just as River should be taking the stage. I’m ready to see her—I think—this time, on purpose, with time to observe through my eyes and listen with my gut and heart. I check my name off an unattended will-call list—Laurel purchased my ticket before I even agreed to go. I slip down the side aisle and into the last row of folding chairs. The industrial space is all painted brick and concrete and exposed pipes. Music is the main thing, no loud drinkers or blari
ng TVs, and the sold-out audience honors the small stage just inside those doors with single-minded focus. The kind of audience River’s music craves.

  She plays songs I recognize from the CDs Angela purchased, dug out before I left and played on repeat in the car. She plays songs I’ve never heard, but they’re as familiar as my own heartbeat. She plays songs I remember from twenty years ago.

  I feel almost as if I should close my eyes to experience their full essence, but I can’t take my eyes away. If I hadn’t seen her the previous fall—or photos on her website, on her social media pages—I’d still recognize her. But I look through different eyes now.

  Her jeans, frayed over suede moccasins, cling to hips that don’t allude to the widening of childbirth, yet are softer than the lean angles of an adolescent. Her ivory blouse, loose, but collared and open to the third button, flows with her movements—a style I’d never pull off. I always admired that about River—her ability to wear anything with an ease I was completely missing. But I see now: Her style was already in place, even then. She’s not so different now. Her golden-brown hair is pulled through a ponytail holder into a messy loop, and random strands dangle loose around her temples, her neck. A feather pendant rests against her collarbone. Otherwise, even her earlobes are free of adornment. She doesn’t need jewelry. Hers is the simplest beauty I’ve ever witnessed, then and now.

  And I may be looking through different eyes, but all I see is River.

  At the end of her set, she places her guitar in its stand, and she says nearly the same thing she said that night last fall in the historic Oak Cliff house, mere blocks from where the Upchurches lived before they built the Home in Arlington.

  “This is my last song. Thanks so much for coming out to listen to a simple girl and her simple tunes. I always finish with this one. I usually play, too, but tonight I’m a little shaky. A little uncertain. It’s for someone I used to know, someone I always wish was around to hear it. It sounds silly, I imagine. The funny thing is, sometimes wishes come true.”

  River takes a breath and then looks straight into my eyes and sings the words she wrote before I even knew they were for me.

  MATTIE

  Oklahoma City

  JULY 13, 1933

  It was hot. It was so hot. Mattie knew she should take a break, try to cool off, but there was too much to be done. Friday evenings, the men with pay packets—not many these days—wanted a clean place to shower and rest for the weekend, even if they’d slept outside the rest of the week. Where she’d once had six beds, now there were twenty—ten, nothing but floor space. Thursdays, she had ten real beds to strip and double that many sheets and towels to get to the laundry and back by the next morning. The toilet and tub to scrub. Decide what to prepare for dinner—breakfast was easy, never different, but figuring how to make it stretch was a feat. Make a list and run to the market, find what she could afford to fill bellies—those who could pay, and those who couldn’t too. Everyone came in exhausted and hungry. Food was their only comfort.

  She’d sent Jim with a dollar to the air-conditioned theater downstairs to watch a double feature. He’d yammered and fussed, wanting her to stop working and go with him. It had been tempting, and holding hands with him in that cool, dark place—an irony, right down there while they sweltered in the rooms above—seemed like a dream. She’d said no, go on, there was too much to do. She was younger. Stronger. He’d had trouble lately with his heart beating out of rhythm. So he went on. And she got to work.

  But it was just so hot.

  By the time she lugged the linens to Henry’s, then climbed the stairs again, it was over a hundred degrees. The radio said the temperature would keep climbing all afternoon—find shade, drink water, generally keep cool if you had any way at all. She laughed. As if.

  To be honest, she and Jim were both a sight. She’d been coughing and sputtering all morning. Nothing would budge in her lungs. Lately, she’d had more and more of that. She couldn’t catch a good breath. The doctor at the County couldn’t tell her anything different to do, just kept giving her the same advice, which didn’t help at all. And her stomach was killing her, though she’d gone through nearly a full bottle of BiSoDol salts in the last several days. In fact, she needed to mix a glass, but she’d been too busy to slow down just yet.

  The last time she remembered being this hot—even hotter than that first parade she’d watched, followed by her first picture show—was the summer after she arrived at the Home. She’d been out in the field, her and Lizzie and a few others, picking cotton they’d worked so hard to plant and keep alive. That summer had been brutal for several reasons. But she didn’t recall feeling this weak. Somehow, that sun beating on her, making sweat ooze from her pores like thick, salty tears, gave her relief from the grief she’d carried so many months. She’d welcomed the pain, as if it cleansed what she’d been unable to release before.

  But not this pain. The heat and the pain were too much. After she mixed her salts with tepid water from the tap—it wasn’t even a pleasure to drink the stuff right now, like drinking dirty bathwater—she sat at the kitchen table to make her market list. She sipped, hoping it would ease the place under her ribs that never ceased aching these days, bloated while the rest of her wasted away. She could never eat enough to feel full, but what she ate made her hurt more.

  No surprise, what with the plain and simple stress of living. The economy was so bad, the papers screamed with the news of folks living in the most horrifying conditions anyone had seen in America. Mattie thanked her stars she and Jim had a roof over their heads, even if she couldn’t predict how long they’d hang on to it. All Jim’s careful saving had dwindled the last few years, and if they couldn’t keep the business, how would they pay for the roof? The only reason they paid the full rent now was being on the relief—the same reason most of the men could pay for a room some nights.

  So many were alcoholics. Selling liquor and alcohol had been illegal since statehood—but that didn’t mean you couldn’t get it. You could call a bootlegger and have it in five minutes, but raids were common—especially in this part of town. Mattie didn’t allow alcohol in the apartment. A sweet shop had opened on the other side of her stairs from the grill, with patrons not strictly in the market for candy. Maybe not even for liquor. Bottle-shaped bags came out the door, but the owner sold girlie magazines, too, and who knew what else? Just being upstairs made her nervous these days. The vice squad could swoop in any time, tumble a place, then book folks on charges of running a disorderly house.

  Her house was not disorderly. As long as they kept things straight, they’d be okay. But every time she saw the girls who worked in the candy store, she worried for them.

  She pressed against the soft spot again. Sometimes pressure eased it for a spell.

  The movement reminded her of Cap, and how when his stomach hurt so bad, sometimes the only thing she could do was push that same spot, rubbing back and forth, up and down, singing him the little song that soothed him a minute or two.

  “Hush, little baby, don’t say a word,” she sang now, quietly.

  It brought pain and peace all at once.

  She’d been singing it to him off and on the day he died. Walking from the trolley to the Home, she kept telling him to hold on, sure someone could produce a miracle for her baby boy.

  And when Lizzie found her and stepped off the porch for the first time since they’d brought her and Docie in, and she helped Mattie stand and took her to Sister Susie, Lizzie, too, had been sure. They’d saved her and Docie, hadn’t they, nursing them back from the threshold of death to health so well they were nearly ready to participate in the life of the Home?

  If they could do that, Lizzie had believed, they could surely help a little boy with a bellyache and a cough.

  “Suffer the children to come unto me,” Mattie remembered thinking, gazing at the portrait of Jesus on the wall as Sister Susie helped h
er undress and put on a borrowed nightdress.

  Lizzie had held Cap in those moments, over to the side in that little rocking chair, and for that Mattie had been thankful. She’d had no idea Lizzie had only just recovered, but in retrospect, it hadn’t mattered. What had mattered was Lizzie’s knack for comforting babies, and Cap had relaxed in her arms, gazing up at her honest brown eyes as if he trusted her to keep him safe while his mama was occupied, and as if that mutual focus somehow drew the pain from his emaciated body into hers. Mattie knew, when she witnessed Lizzie’s glistening tear fall upon Cap’s cheek, tenderly anointing it, that the woman understood.

  When Lizzie lifted her from where she’d collapsed on the lawn, she’d been grateful, but when Lizzie held Mattie’s dying boy, it forged something between Mattie and Lizzie that the years apart had never been able to break.

  Mattie raised her head from the table where she’d rested it a minute. She’d drifted in a dream of sorts, thinking about that day. She struggled to get her bearings—to recognize the water and grease-stained paper on the walls of her tiny kitchen, worse behind the stove where she’d boiled countless pots of beans and cabbage or anything cheap the last several years—bacon, when Lady Luck smiled. Mattie wondered that she’d ever dreamed of being a fancy hotel cook.

  But this was her hotel. This was what she cooked.

  Never let it be said that a man left her home hungry, she thought, and smiled. That was what they could put on her headstone when she died. She’d tell Jim later, and he’d get a charge out of it. She could still make him laugh.