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

Page 3

by Marilyn June Coffey


  What had happened to Teresa in these four decades to let her proudly embrace her heritage instead of trying to hide it? Two forces changed her: support from other orphan train riders and from blood relatives. Finally, she knew who she was and where she was from. That made all the difference.

  Part I: Bitter and Battered

  1

  Out of the Foundling, into the Fire

  “What’s the matter with you!” Bappa, her foster father, said. “You don’t even dress like a girl.” He reached across the table, grabbed the bread, tore off a hunk, and pointed it at Teresa. “And what kind of hairdo is that? You look like a rat with your hair slicked back that way.”

  Teresa, who had lived in this cracker-box house with Bappa and Grandma Bieker for ten years, knew better than to answer. She touched her hair, carefully combed and secured at the nape of her neck with a bright yellow bow. Leaving her lunch on her plate, she rose, hoping to retreat to the security of her room, but Bappa stood up, too.

  At fourteen, Teresa stood as high as she ever would, four feet, eleven inches. Bappa towered over her. “Here, let me show you how a real girl wears her hair.”

  He moved toward Teresa, but she knew he just wanted to grab her breasts. She tried to keep the table between them, but for an old man, he was agile. Soon his rough hand was heavy on her upper arm. Before she could cover her breasts, he’d grabbed a nipple and twisted it sharply. She cried out, wrenched out of his grasp, and ran for the front door, but he stood before her, panting, his beer breath hot on her face.

  Teresa, center, with her caretakes, Conrad “Bappa” and Elizabeth “Grandma” Bieker. (Courtesy of Teresa Martin)

  “Not so fast, young lady.” He swung at her. She sidestepped him, crossing her arms to protect her breasts. The two seemed caught in a strange dance, she lithe and agile, he long-limbed and lumbering, stumbling, catching himself, his face crimson. He missed her again, brayed like a donkey, and cried for her to stand still. She ignored him.

  Grandma watched, saying, as usual, nothing.

  Then Bappa twisted and grabbed Teresa’s hair where she’d tied it at the nape of her neck. Roaring in triumph, he yanked it up so hard that he ripped the skin off the bottom of her head. Teresa heard someone howl in anguish before she recognized her voice. Bappa let loose. She grabbed her hair with both hands. She felt the yellow grosgrain ribbon still tied, she felt her clump of hair, but her skin, still attached, rose in the air like a clamshell opening.

  “You’ve scalped me!” she screamed as she saw her hands, red with blood, felt her hair a damp weight flopping against the back of her head.

  •

  She screamed again when she saw the wrinkled face of their next-door neighbor, Aldo Finster, at a window. He looked like a huge owl, staring.

  “Now you’ve done it.” Grandma walked to the window and pulled the curtains shut.

  Bappa stood looking at Teresa, his body limp. “It’ll be all right.” He reached toward her.

  She struck his hand.

  What was that flat slapping noise? She looked down.

  Her blood, dripping. Already a cranberry pool.

  “Do something!” she cried.

  “Here, it’s not so bad.” Bappa lumbered across the room and returned with an old gray enameled wash basin, big enough to bathe a baby. He held it toward her. She jerked away.

  “Here. You do it.” Bappa thrust the pan toward Grandma, but she ignored it. “She’s scared. Take it! Take it!” Grandma didn’t move. “She won’t let me do it.” He thrust the pan at Grandma again. “What? You want to let her bleed all over your floor?”

  Grandma took the pan and held it below the nape of Teresa’s neck to catch the blood.

  Teresa felt weak. She could hear ping, ping, ping as her blood hit the pan’s bottom. Then she heard splash, splash as blood hit the blood pooled in the big basin. Eventually the noises stopped.

  Grandma set the basin in the kitchen and returned with a cold, wet towel.

  Teresa pressed the towel against the back of her head. She looked around for Bappa. He sat at the table, his fingers full of food. She watched him pour another glass of beer.

  Grandma walked Teresa to her room. As soon as she left, Teresa collapsed on her Russian feather mattress, her hair and the bow bunched beneath the towel. Gingerly, she untied the bow. It uncurled in her hand, no longer yellow but covered with orange splotches. It had been so beautiful. She whimpered.

  Through her bedroom window, she saw the garden, its brown stalks and leaves blowing. She folded the towel, no longer cold, and pressed it against her neck. She heard the front door slam, then saw Bappa in the garden, basin in hand. What’s he going to do? Give it to the cow? But no, at the garden’s edge, he poured the blood out.

  She nestled in a corner of the bed until she heard voices, Bappa’s and someone else. She turned to the window. There stood funny Mr. Finster, his overalls hanging in the crotch, his wiry hair standing like a sentinel. He spoke loudly, but not loud enough for her to hear, and pumped his arm up and down like the handle of a water pump. Bappa scowled. Then Mr. Finster shook his fist at Bappa—whatever could they be talking about?—and Bappa wagged his head and shouted, “Nein! Nein! Nein!”

  Mr. Finster shrugged and cut across the yard, heading toward Saint Anthony’s church. Before he disappeared, he turned again and called out, punching the air to accent his words. Bappa made a dirty gesture.

  She returned to her bed, her back against the wall, determined to sit tall and ready to defend herself against Bappa should he dare to come into her room, but before long, sleep pressed her head against her shoulder. Then her body slumped and she stretched out on the bed, her bloody towel falling to the floor.

  Teresa woke like a shot when she heard her door creak, but it was only Grandma. The day had turned dark. Grandma carried a kerosene lamp.

  “Hold this.”

  Teresa held the lamp.

  Grandma picked up Teresa’s few clothes and stuffed them in an old cloth sack.

  “What are you doing?” Teresa put down the lamp and tried to retrieve her clothes. “Sending me back to New York?”

  “Stop!” Grandma slapped Teresa’s hand. “Mr. Finster called the law.”

  After Grandma packed Teresa’s clothes, they went into the main room. Teresa put the lamp on the table. Bappa sat, his back to them.

  Then Teresa noticed Sheriff Loreditch standing awkwardly at the door.

  “Hello, Teresa,” the sheriff said. “You’re coming with me now.”

  Grandma handed him Teresa’s bundle of clothes.

  “No! I’m not going with you! I’m not going anywhere.” Teresa tried to wrestle her clothes out of his hand.

  “Stop!” Grandma slapped her. “Do what he says.”

  The sheriff grabbed Teresa’s arm and pulled her, crying, out of the Biekers’ house.

  •

  Ten years earlier in New York City, little Teresa Feit had roused when a rough hand had clamped on her shoulder and shook it. “Rise and shine!” The Foundling nun’s shoes clattered to the next bed. Teresa snuggled into her warm blanket and opened her eyes. Kerosene lamps bobbed around the large New York Foundling Hospital dormitory, illuminating dozens of small iron beds. But why were they rising so early? Uncertain, Teresa closed her eyes.

  “Come, Missy.” Another Sister of Charity nun whipped the blanket off Teresa’s body. Cool air struck her legs, a smarting sort of pleasure. She lifted her arms, but the nun moved to the next orphan.

  Awake, Teresa scooted to the edge of her narrow bed and waited for the next nun. Her feet dangled above the floor. Less than a month shy of being four years old, she was small for her age. Around her, girls edging out of bed made creaks, their bare feet plopped on the floor, but Teresa sat still. Someone would come for her. Someone always did.

  This time a nurse nun came; her white habit glowed in the dim light. Teresa raised her arms high and smiled as Sister Agnes enveloped her. Teresa dipped inside the nun’s ruffled bonnet to ki
ss her ample cheek, and then snuggled into her neck as they hurried away.

  When Teresa saw the washroom, she struggled to get down, but Sister Agnes laughed and pressed the girl into her cushiony body.

  “No, you don’t, Missy! The last time I let you go, you ran down eight flights of stairs, before anyone could catch you. Sister Ursula! Hurry up! I can’t hold her much longer!”

  When warm water cascaded over her curly black locks, Teresa screamed.

  “God forbid!” Sister Ursula said. “You’d think I was torturing her, not just washing her hair.”

  She gently massaged suds into the girl’s mop, but Teresa’s ringlets managed to coil themselves around the nun’s fingers like grasping tendrils. Each scrub of the girl’s head—and each twist and turn of her agile body—yanked her hair, uprooting her black curls follicle by follicle.

  Sobbing when Sister Ursula released her, Teresa plucked at the wet nightie stuck to her chest.

  •

  So far this spring day, April 30, 1910, seemed like many days Teresa spent at the Foundling since she arrived nearly four years ago. Then the day turned topsy-turvy. Nuns shepherded her with about fifty other girls into a dressing room. There Sister Ursula removed Teresa’s nightie and held out a pair of new white bloomers. New bloomers! Teresa had worn only bloomers well bleached by multiple washings. She stepped into them and pressed the smooth cotton cloth against her thighs.

  “Teresa! Pay attention!” Sister Ursula’s pinched face swam into view. The nun held a scrunched piece of white cloth.

  Another new garment! Teresa’s arms shot into the air. What was this? A slip cascading around her body, pure white, and—amazingly—a perfect fit.

  Around her, dozens of other girls stood dressed in equally fine undergarments. Some already wore radiant white dresses. Then Sister Ursula turned back to her, bearing a gorgeous white dress, all pleated and puckered. The Sister turned over the dress’s hem to show her where nuns had stitched her name and birth date. What curious dark marks! Teresa held her breath as sheer fabric swirled around her tiny torso. Then she patted it in place.

  Then here came Sister Ursula bearing a white hat trimmed in narrow ribbons. The nun set the remarkable creation on Teresa’s head, fluffed up her curls, and said, “Don’t you look sweet.”

  Little girls dressed in brand-new frocks and hats filled the room. Teresa hardly recognized them, although she’d played dolls with some on the Foundling’s sun porch. They seemed transformed, from orphans into real children, as splendid as the children she’d seen on the street when Sister Ursula took her for a walk. Satisfied, Teresa patted her hair. She, too, must look radiant, her black curls glistening beneath the fine white hat.

  A clatter of horses drove Teresa to the sooty window pane. Below her on the sunny street stood five large wagons. Why were they here? Perhaps she’d go for a ride in her splendid new clothes instead of being pushed up the street to the post office lobby, which Sister Ursula liked to do.

  “Teresa! Hurry!” Sister Agnes beckoned, and they joined orphans streaming from the ornate building and down the double set of stairs to the sidewalk. The boys, in sailor suits or Buster Brown outfits, looked as resplendent as the girls did. Nuns pulled their charges aside so younger nuns could load boxes into the wagons.

  Then Teresa noticed Sister Teresa, head of the New York Foundling Hospital. The administrator stood at the crowd’s edge, her ruffled bonnet neatly tied, her shoulders stooped from long hours at her desk. She smiled and patted nearby boys and girls, but her eyes roved over the crowd.

  “Oh, there you are!” she said as she strode toward Teresa, her long legs rippling her habit. When she reached the girl, Teresa held up her arms.

  “Aren’t you sweet!” The Sister picked her up; Teresa planted a moist kiss on the nun’s cheek.

  “You be a good girl, my little namesake.” The nun brushed the corner of her eye. “Don’t forget me.”

  As the crowd moved forward to the wagons, Sister Teresa put little Teresa down.

  “Good bye,” she called.

  Teresa turned and waved.

  “Where’s she going?” Teresa asked Sister Agnes who held her hand. But the nun didn’t answer. Instead, she said, “You were her favorite.”

  Sister Teresa Vincent, co-founder of the Foundling Hospital. (Courtesy of New York Foundling Hospital)

  Then the drivers helped the Sisters into the wooden wagons and handed children up to them, first blanketed infants, then squirming toddlers. A gnarled driver plucked Teresa from the sidewalk with two strong, heavily veined hands. Sister Ursula pulled her into the wagon and set her on a long wooden row that ran along the side.

  A breeze tilted Teresa’s hat. She straightened it and swung her legs. What an outing this is! Then Sister Ursula placed a skinny older girl right beside her.

  “Mary Childs, this is Teresa Feit. Teresa, Mary. You two will ride together.” The nun patted the older girl’s knobby knee, and then turned to help some other child.

  Teresa knew Mary. At meals, she sat farther down the table, and sometimes Sister Ursula took them on walks together. Teresa didn’t much like Mary; she had a long face and she looked mean, but Teresa smiled anyway. Mary stuck out her tongue, so Teresa kicked a big burlap sack beside her.

  “Don’t do that.”

  Startled, Teresa stopped.

  “Thems apples in that bag. We gotta eat ’em. We don’t want your feets in them apples.”

  Then both girls grabbed the seat as the wagon lurched forward and the horses’ hooves began a steady clop, clop, clopping.

  Teresa turned and looked back at Sister Teresa alone on the sidewalk, a black figure waving a white handkerchief. Teresa waved vigorously, but the Sister, now far away, turned and walked toward the main building. It looked tiny from this distance. So did the four nearly identical buildings that created an inner courtyard where Teresa played. The whole complex covered a city block, but as the buildings diminished from view, they glowed like sand castles in the morning sun.

  New York Foundling Hospital as it looked when Teresa lived there. (Courtesy of New York Foundling Hospital)

  •

  After the children rode some twenty blocks south, much farther than Teresa had ever gone, the wagons stopped before a huge structure, even bigger than the Foundling’s main building.

  “Grand Central Station,” Mary’s voice sounded singsong.

  “Is this where we’re going?”

  “No, silly. Here’s where we catch the train. Now sit still. Don’t get down ’til I tell you.” Mary pushed Teresa back in her seat. The little girl brushed her dress where Mary’s hand had touched it.

  Soon the wagon driver lifted her and Mary out of the wagon. “Careful,” he said. “Watch your step.” The place was a mess. Pieces of wood, slabs of stone, and construction workers stood scattered all over the lot.

  “Don’t be afraid.” Sister Agnes, the hem of her white habit already dusty from dragging along the ground, took Teresa’s hand. “They’re tearing down the old building, so they can build an even bigger one.”

  “Biggest in the world,” Mary said.

  Sister Agnes smiled, “That’s right.”

  The nun helped the girls step around the debris. Holding hands, the children wound their way into the temporary structure. Inside, grownups rushed this way and that. Such activity electrified Teresa. So many travelers staring at her, even though she was only one child in a parade of little girls in smart white dresses and lively boys in sailor suits, all herded by the Sisters of Charity.

  Her elation swung to fear as she hastened through the havoc caused by the construction. The Sisters swooped down on her and swept her beneath the protective wings of their raven-black habits as they hustled her between flimsy board fences that shielded pedestrians from the rubble.

  Finally, Teresa walked down a long narrow platform. The air smelled metallic. Then she saw the train. It was huge, as big as a house, its wheels as high as her head. She and the other children walk
ed alongside it for a while. Then the nuns separated the children, putting some in one railroad car, some in another. Teresa had to stretch to climb up the train steps. Inside, two long rows of seats nearly filled the car. She’d never seen anything like it. She delighted in it, it was so different, but at the same time she couldn’t help wondering why she was on this train and where the nuns were taking her.

  Teresa sat where Sister Ursula pointed, on the stiff seat beneath the smeared window. She held up her hands so the sister would pick her up, but the nun walked away. Around her sat many other children, some a few years older, some younger, some just babies. Up and down the aisles scurried the Sisters, two nurses dressed in white habits, the other nuns in their floor-length black habits with their big ruffled bonnets tied neatly under their chins. They loaded boxes of milk, of bread and fruit, of cloths for diapers on the overhead shelves.

  Then Mary sat next to her. “Mary will be your big sister for the trip,” Sister Ursula said. “Both of you are going to Hays, Kansas. Won’t that be nice?”

  Unsure how nice it would be, Teresa peeked at Mary. The girl sat staring straight ahead, her face frozen into a frown, but when she noticed Teresa staring, she smiled a bit. Just then the train jolted forward. The girls fell against one another. When they sat up again, they were holding hands.

  Teresa watched the nuns coming down the aisle, stopping to undress each child and redressing her in everyday clothes. When they reached Teresa, she clung to her hat with both hands.

  “Come now.” Sister Ursula pried Teresa’s fingers apart. “In a few days, you can wear your new clothes again.”

  The girl let the nun change her clothes, but she was not consoled. In her new clothes, she was someone special, but this everyday wear transformed her. The other children became common, too. They looked as they did sitting around the long dining room tables or playing with used and often broken toys on the orphanage sun porch.

 

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