Home for Erring and Outcast Girls Read online

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2019 by Julie Kibler

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Crown, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  crownpublishing.com

  CROWN and the Crown colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

  ISBN 9780451499332

  Ebook ISBN 9780451499356

  Cover design by Alane Gianetti

  Cover photograph by Ildiko Neer/Arcangel

  Cover texture by Yurlick/Shutterstock

  v5.4

  ep

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Epigraph

  Prologue: Berachah Industrial Home Arlington, Texas, July 25, 1933

  Part One

  Cate: Arlington, Texas, August 2017

  Lizzie Bates: Tyler, Texas, Fall 1904

  Cate: Arlington, Texas, 2017

  Mattie B. Corder: Fort Worth, Texas, December 1904

  Lizzie: Arlington, Texas, December 1904

  Cate: Arlington, Texas, 2017

  Lizzie: Arlington, Texas, December 1904

  Mattie: Arlington, Texas, December 1904

  Mattie: Arlington, Texas, Early 1905

  Cate: Arlington, Texas, 2017

  Lizzie: Arlington, Texas, Summer 1905

  Mattie: Arlington, Texas, Summer 1905

  Cate: Grissom, Texas, 1998

  Lizzie: Arlington, Texas, 1905

  Mattie: Arlington, Texas, 1905

  Cate: Arlington, Texas, 2017

  Lizzie: Arlington, Texas, 1905

  Cate: Grissom, Texas, 1998

  Mattie: Arlington, Texas, 1905

  Lizzie: Arlington, Texas, 1905

  Mattie: Arlington, Texas, 1905

  Lizzie: Arlington, Texas, 1905

  Cate: Arlington, Texas, 1998

  Mattie: Arlington, Texas, 1905

  Lizzie: Arlington, Texas, 1905

  Mattie: Arlington, Texas, 1905

  Part Two

  Cate: Arlington, Texas, 2017

  Mattie: Arlington, Texas, 1910

  Lizzie: Arlington, Texas, 1910

  Mattie: Arlington, Texas, 1910

  Cate: Grissom, Texas, 1998

  Lizzie: Arlington, Texas, 1910

  Mattie: Oklahoma City, 1910

  Cate: Arlington, Texas, 2017

  Lizzie: Arlington, Texas, 1910

  Cate: Grissom, Texas, 1998

  Part Three

  Lizzie: Arlington, Texas, 1916

  Cate: Grissom, Texas, 1998

  Mattie: Oklahoma City, 1916

  Lizzie: Arlington, Texas, 1917

  Cate: Grissom, Texas, 1998

  Lizzie: Tyler, Texas, 1917

  Cate: Grissom, Texas, 1998

  Lizzie: Tyler, Texas, 1917

  Cate: Arlington, Texas, 2017

  Mattie: Oklahoma City, 1918

  Mattie: Oklahoma City, 1920–1921

  Cate: Arlington, Texas, 2017

  Mattie: Oklahoma City, 1921

  Cate: Arlington, Texas, 2017

  Mattie: Oklahoma City, 1921

  Cate: Arlington, Texas, 2017

  Mattie: Oklahoma City, 1921

  Part Four

  Cate: Oklahoma City, 2017

  Mattie: Oklahoma City, July 13, 1933

  Lizzie: Arlington, Texas, July 14, 1933

  Lizzie: Arlington, Texas, July 25, 1933

  Cate: Arlington, Texas, April 2018

  Author’s Note

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Julie Kibler

  About the Author

  “They fell down and there was none to help.”

  PSALM 107:12

  PROLOGUE

  Berachah Industrial Home

  ARLINGTON, TEXAS

  JULY 25, 1933

  Even when Mattie’s great big dreams had troubled Lizzie, she’d envied her something fierce, for Lizzie came from nightmares, too fearful to dream. But if the Lord gave, and the Lord took away, how did he choose? The choosing he’d done between them, she didn’t envy, or even understand.

  Their own choices were hard enough.

  Still, it was plain that Mattie had found what she needed. In her own way, she’d made good. And even if Lizzie stumbled now and again, she’d come to be her most improbable self in this place. She feared the day she’d need to leave. Soon, she reckoned. They couldn’t keep the Home going much longer—an unexpected shame.

  But things changed. Girls had more choices now. Maybe more chances.

  The Homecoming picture wouldn’t be the same this year. Yesterday, Lizzie had gazed at that one in the parlor again—the first-year girls, all in matching white dresses, their hair silky like ribbon, scraped up into pretty buns. They were the picture of innocence.

  Well. They were something anyway.

  It had taken an act of the Almighty to get them before that camera, and this year, another. The girls were nearly thirty years older now, but when they were Home to see their sisters, no matter where they’d been or what they’d witnessed, they wore their finest dresses and smiled.

  Lizzie’s tears nearly choked her to think of the last few weeks. How had Mattie stood it as long as she had? Why hadn’t she called? She’d promised she would.

  They would have said, “Come Home.” They’d said it to nearly any girl who entered the place—any time, any reason, arms open wide.

  She hoped it wasn’t pride that kept Mattie away….

  But now was Lizzie’s time to make good. Docie was tapping at her door and whispering through the crack. Brother JT wanted them in their places on the lawn.

  Lizzie didn’t know how she’d do what she’d said she would, even with the promise between them. But she’d do anything for Mattie. Of course she would. Mattie was the sister of her heart and soul, a mirror that reflected everything Lizzie wanted but could not ever choose.

  And Lizzie would see Mattie soon enough.

  Didn’t she always?

  CATE

  Arlington, Texas

  AUGUST 2017

  I crawl out of a hotel bed while it’s still dark to meet the movers at my new house near the university. My furniture and boxes, enough to fill a few rooms—but not enough to weigh me down—were the last loaded into the huge van that pulled up to my old place. First in, first out.

  They place things where I want them and assemble my dining table and bed in thirty minutes. The house isn’t much bigger than my apartment was, and with an extra bedroom and a garage, my belongings hardly dent the space. The van rumbles off to meet the next wanderers, and I take my first real breath since I gave stranger
s access to my possessions.

  My running shoes are near the top of my suitcase. I ditch my flip-flops and tie the laces quickly. The first thing most people do when they complete a move is unpack the bedsheets or locate the coffeemaker. Not me. What convinces me I can start over again is reminding myself that when the time comes, I’ll still know how to run.

  I drop my key in my pocket and stretch only a moment before beginning a slow jog along a circle drive that borders the neighborhood of midcentury homes, with mine at the back. The air is thick with the heady scent of flowers, and lush, dense grass covers lawns instead of the usual pale stubble of late summer. After crisscrossing the country a few times, I worried that returning to Texas in August would be depressing. Everyone has a different theory about the record-breaking rain this year. I’m just happy to see color. The morning humidity, though, has me dripping before I even pick up my pace, and breathing takes extra effort.

  At the edge of the neighborhood, I pause. A park is visible from my new backyard. It’s the last quiet weekend of the year. Soon, it will teem with students playing intramurals, studying, or socializing, instead of the solitude I seek this morning. It’s a good day to explore.

  The park is small, and thick with trees. Only a few paved paths connect the busy roads and a parking lot, and it takes no time to run the length each way. On my second circuit, I cut through a playing field near the back edge to see how vulnerable my yard is. The campus police patrol the park and nearby neighborhoods, but now that I see how secluded the area is, I’m relieved my wood fence is in good repair. Fortunately, an even taller industrial fence makes it nearly impossible to access it from the field. My windows and yard aren’t visible at all.

  I slow my pace, cool down as much as the humidity allows, then walk, taking a long draw on my water bottle.

  The sun is at the treetops now, and the sound of traffic is increasing, but still muffled by huge oaks. I walk toward the far corner of the park, curious what lies beyond in the dusky woods. I’m surprised to find another grassy area surrounded by a simple chain-link fence. It’s a small cemetery, memorial stones scattered here and there—an odd discovery in this modern-day park. Perhaps early settlers buried their dead here, and the city graciously fenced the space instead of incorporating it into the park.

  A historical marker catches my eye near the gate. I struggle to read it in the early-morning light. Site of Berachah Home and Cemetery…

  The Berachah Rescue Society was organized at Waco in 1894 by the Rev. J. T. Upchurch (b. 1870) for the protection of homeless girls and unwed mothers. Nine years later, he opened the Berachah Industrial Home at this site. Ten buildings were located here, including a print shop for publication of The Purity Journal. The cemetery, which contains more than eighty graves, was first used in 1904…

  Eighty graves? It hardly looks big enough. Before I can finish reading the plaque, though, my gaze is drawn to movement inside the fence. A young woman lies flat in the grass, raven hair splayed against the green. She gazes straight up beneath a tall, jagged tree near the edge of the graveyard. Gray and leafless, the tree appears to be dead—for years—perhaps struck by lightning. It’s split nearly straight down the middle.

  I don’t want to startle her, but I worry, in spite of an intense desire to leave well enough alone. Is she ill? Injured? Or just resting?

  Suddenly, though, she stretches to stand, retrieves an overstuffed bag, and exits the cemetery without a word or even a glance in my direction. I shiver as she disappears beyond the dark canopy of trees.

  I’m not superstitious. I don’t believe any place or person is haunted by anything but the past. But suddenly, that old saying about a ghost walking over a grave crosses my mind.

  And suddenly, I can’t wait to get home.

  LIZZIE BATES

  Tyler, Texas

  FALL 1904

  The two ladies dressed all in white hovered over where Lizzie and Docie lay huddled in a fetid pile of rags, and she thought it was angels come, finally, to take them away up to heaven. Her heart quickened. She’d figured on the Lord forgetting her and her girl—or maybe just turning his back.

  Keys clinked as the jail keeper unlocked his steel cage, shoved into a corner of the room, with rusting shelves for bunks in each half. They were alone in it but for a man sleeping off drink on the other side. The angels bent inside to whisper over her and Docie. Now she feared they’d take her girl but leave her to die alone and suffer eternal hell. She wouldn’t have blamed the Lord for thinking to do it that way, for Docie was surely not liable for her mother’s sins. Even if Lizzie was not worthy, her Docie was innocence itself, though her tiny body was riddled with the same sick. The child slept at her teat whenever they were together, but Lizzie couldn’t bear to think what might have befallen Docie when she couldn’t watch her every minute of the day and night. Either way, Lizzie was to blame. She had let her down so many ways.

  No more. She wouldn’t let anyone, heavenly or not, snatch her girl without a struggle. She sat as high as the metal above her head allowed and wrapped her arms around Docie. The little girl flirted with waking, but her exhaustion was plain, and she slumped against her mother, cheeks fever red and dark lashes scarcely visible against the purple smudges beneath her eyes. Docie could not fight; it was up to her mother to see that they remained together.

  But the angel ladies didn’t move to take Docie. They only stooped to look, speaking hushed words Lizzie couldn’t plainly make out. The swirling in her head and burning in her throat made it too hard to ask their intentions. Perhaps she had not moved to gather Docie closer after all. Perhaps she had simply wished it. Or, perhaps Docie was already close, as she should be.

  Lizzie caught scraps of what they said, and the jailer’s voice rose as he described their history and condition. How they both suffered from a foul disease. How Lizzie had earned her keep out at the county farm lately, cooking for the Negro inmates. How the farm superintendent had taken her into his own shack to live in sin, feeding her heroin to subdue her, and then passed her to the chain gang boss when he tired of her. How she’d taken sick, and it crippled her so badly she couldn’t stand. And finally, how they’d sent her and Docie to the jail, no regard for whether they lived or died.

  Her skin crawled. Damn the farm boss. While many around her had been hooked on dope for years, she’d managed to keep off it until he’d sensed her desperation. Then she took it gladly.

  But she hadn’t needed subduing, not like a wild animal.

  She’d needed to forget.

  Lizzie had lived hand-to-mouth as long as the jailer had known of her, a decade or more, drifting in and out of town, lately only with her girl, but for years with her people—a no-good cracker and his half-Injun wife. Docie, a wispy towhead with skin so milky the blue showed through, had piercing, near-black eyes from Choctaw still running in those veins, same as her ma and granny.

  Lizzie marveled at all the jailer knew from his tenure of locking her up when she had nowhere else to go. One thing they were all sure of: She and Docie weren’t long for this world. One or both would slip away soon, with or without angels to guide them. To hear him say it plain was a comfort. She was weary of fighting for a place for her and Docie on this earth.

  The women gasped at the jail keeper’s speech. Had they come only to eye her condition? Society ladies who wanted to witness the scum at the bottom to comfort themselves? Then they could return to their pillowy houses to preach the perils of drink and heroin and impurity. She shrugged. If she could be a warning, she reckoned her life had some sliver of purpose after all.

  She cowered when one lady inched closer to kneel near the pile of shredded bedding.

  “You poor dear. We’re from the King’s Daughters. The jailer’s wife asked if we’d take you and your little one to a place we know—a wonderful new home for young women where you could find healing and comfort, Lord willing.”

&n
bsp; Now Lizzie grinned. Maybe, instead, the lady was a haint! Who’d suggest such a thing?

  But the woman stretched her ungloved hand to touch Lizzie’s shoulder, and Lizzie felt it, warm and firm, and next, the back of Docie’s head, unafraid of the pus-filled sores on their skin or what clouded Lizzie’s vision until it was near impossible to make out the woman’s features.

  Tears cut a path through the crusted grime on her cheeks. She nodded, then fell into a stupor, blissfully free of nightmares.

  * * *

  —

  Her next awareness was of struggling in a darkened room, of sweating and screeching and scratching her skin until it bled.

  Vomiting until her throat burned raw.

  Hissing and kicking at demons who played at being humans who claimed to be for her, when she knew they wanted to pierce her with knives and prod every secret place of her body.

  Throwing herself off the cliff where she slept and then grasping and tearing at the bed until they took it away, leaving her to kick at the floor and walls with fingers and toes that wept blood until they were so scabbed they couldn’t.