There Was an Old Woman
IN the late spring, Donny brought me a letter. “I decided I was too old to ask Santa Claus again, this last Christmas. So I thought I ought to do it directly.”
“Do what directly?” I asked. I looked at the letter. “This begins, ‘Dere Lady.’ Does that mean me?”
“No, Mama,” Donny said. “I wrote that to the lady who owns the orphanage.”
“Which orphanage?”
“Any orphanage. Any place that’s got boys to adopt, just the right size of me. You can read it.”
The letter said, in a bold scrawl:
Dere Lady,
I would like a bother 9 years old, my father made me a room, it has a desk, a doubble desk, cowboy BunkBed, Cowboy and Indian wallpaper, two rugs a table some blocks a car and other toys so you see theres lots of room for a new bother.
Donald Doss
“Will you put it in a letter and send it for me?” Donny asked. “You see, I don’t know any address.”
That night I told Carl about the letters Donny and I had sent to an orphanage in the Rocky Mountain area.
“Ummmhmm,” Carl said, from deep inside an editorial in the Christian Century. He hadn’t tuned in on me yet; he was just nodding in an abstract way.
“Donny’s letter was really cute,” I said. “When he copied it over, I saved his original.”
“That’s nice,” Carl murmured, turning a page, still nodding absently.
“He was asking for a brother, only he spelled it ‘bother,’” I laughed. “When he gets one, he may find that a brother his size might be a bother, too. But if we can only find one, I’m sure it will be worth all the trouble. As the old saying goes, the more the merrier!”
The magazine lowered and Carl looked at me with a startled expression. “The more the what?”
“When Donny gets a brother,” I explained.
“He’s got brothers,” Carl sputtered. “Brothers all over the house.”
“No, the one he’s hoping to get, just his size. We sent letters—”
The Christian Century hit the floor and Carl hit the ceiling.
“Letters? Letters?” he roared. “We’ve been through all this before.”
“It does sound familiar,” I agreed.
“We can’t afford another child! Nine is all—”
We started going round and round at this point, and we were still going round and round a week later when our answer came from the orphanage.
“We are sorry to disappoint you and your Donald,” the director wrote. “At the present time we have no older boys for adoption. I don’t suppose you would be interested in a baby? We have here a seven-month-old Cheyenne-Black-foot Indian boy, named Gregory. . . .”
Carl stopped arguing and looked interested. “Well, now, if you must have another boy, this one might be worth considering. Now that Alex is past two, I kind of miss not having a little baby around the house.”
“Don’t change the subject,” I said. “I’m looking for a big boy, and not another baby.”
“Sorry you took Alex?”
“What a silly question. Just the same, I can’t stand the thought of more diapers, bottles again—”
Carl wouldn’t let go of his brass ring, so we were back on the merry-go-round. After days and weeks of going in rhetorical circles, another letter arrived. It was the letter Donny and I had waited for all these years, the letter I was beginning to think never would come.
“Perhaps you won’t be interested in our little Gregory,” the director of the orphanage wrote, “when I tell you we now have a boy the age of your Donald. Richard is Chippewa Indian and Canadian on one side, Blackfoot Indian and Scottish-American on the other. He was nine years old this winter. Although Richard is not nearly so dark as little Gregory, he may be even more of a placement problem. Because he has had so little love or security, he has become uncooperative, sullen, and withdrawn.”
“Another Little Beaver,” Carl said.
“Y—you wouldn’t think of turning this Richard down?” I gasped. “Would you?”
“I’m thinking quite definitely along those lines.”
“After all these years of hunting, searching, just hoping to find a boy the size of Donny? A boy who needs us, and here we are, wanting him, too—”
“Look, Helen,” Carl said, putting the letter away with an ominous finality. “In the first place, I’ve dedicated my life to my faith, and if I’m tied to the ball and chain of a big family, how can I serve? In the second place, we both have an obligation to the nine we already have. Bring home a problem child, and you’re apt to throw the house into an uproar.”
“But Donny wants—”
“Donny’s too young to know what he wants. He’s just as apt to end up bitterly jealous of a new, competitive brother.”
Now I clutched the brass ring, and we were back for another long ride on the merry-go-round. Several weeks later, another letter came. It was from the same orphanage.
“If you are thinking of choosing between Gregory and Richard for your last child, you may not be interested in a girl who has come to us for permanent placement,” the letter read. “Like Richard and your Donald, she is just nine years old. Her name is Dorothy, and she is a lovely and talented girl, with an artistic bent and a nice singing voice. Her mother was Welsh, English, and French. After the death of her parents, she lived with her maternal grandmother; when the grandmother died, she came here. No one was left who could give us data on the father’s background; as nearly as we could guess, he was possibly Brazilian-Portuguese. Dorothy is a pretty child, with fair complexion, blue eyes, and curly, dark-auburn hair. In spite of Dorothy’s charm, she will be difficult to place. Not only is part of her background unknown, but it is also at least partly ‘foreign.’ As one set of would-be parents objected, ‘How could we be absolutely positive that she doesn’t have some hidden Negro blood?’ And they wouldn’t take a chance.”
“How ridiculous can people be?” Carl said. “I wouldn’t mind if Dorothy actually were Negro, and dark. I’ve always been sorry we couldn’t get Gretchen.”
I threw my arms around Carl’s neck. “Let’s bring home all three! Richard, Dorothy, and the baby. Let’s splurge, and not be so timid!”
Carl looked stricken. “Three more? All in one swoop? I’ve told you and told you—”
“Don’t be so worried,” I laughed, giving him a kiss that smothered his arguments. “Pooh, what’s a few extra? As the old saying goes—”
“I know,” Carl said. “The more the merrier.” There was no conviction in his voice.
Donny went with me to bring back our three new children. He would not only provide company for Dorothy and Richard on the return trip, but he could be an advance-guard kind of friend, in helping them meet the strangeness and inevitable adjustments of a new home.
Carl drove us to the Sacramento station, where Don and I boarded the California Zephyr. We arrived at the orphanage two days later. First, the superintendent took us to see Richard.
Our new son looked like a typically American boy, with his straight brown hair and brown eyes, his light skin sprinkled with freckles; only his slightly high, flat cheekbones revealed the Indian side of his ancestry. When I put my arm around him, he hung his head; but he looked more lonely than sullen. I knew he would be willing to give his love, when he knew it wouldn’t be ignored or thrown back in his face.
If Richard had nothing to say, Donny more than made up for the lack. “Hey, Richard,” he chattered, “did you get my two letters I wrote? Hey, wait till you see our room, wait till you see our bunk beds, do you want to sleep in the top or the bottom one? Hey, Richard, we got two dogs. One’s Patsy and the other one’s Rufus, and we got—”
They walked on out to the playground, shoulder to shoulder, while the superintendent took me to see Dorothy. I found her to be an unusually attractive girl, with fine dark eyebrows and curling dark lashes to frame her blue eyes. Not as tongue-tied as Richard, she shyly began to call me “Mama.”
Dorothy accompanied us to the nursery, to see the baby who was to be her new brother. Gregory was a husky, brown-skinned little boy, pink on the palms of his hands and the soles of his feet, with silky-straight dark hair and enormous brown eyes. I picked him up and he was dumply, fitting into my arms as if he were made to be there. He poked at my eyes with his chubby finger and said, “Goo?” As I kissed him, the thought of more bottles and diapers didn’t bother me at all, any more.
For Don, Richard, and Dorothy, the train ride home was a picnic, with no time for the games I had brought to amuse them. We rode upstairs under the transparent bubble top of the Vista-Dome chair car, and the nine-year-olds watched the stars go by overhead at night, counted deer in the mountains by day. They dashed downstairs for an endless supply of paper cups and drinking water. With their heads together, wavy yellow-blond hair contrasting with straight dark Indian hair and crisp curls of chestnut-brown, the three were as thick as pudding. They chattered and giggled as if they had always been brothers and sisters.
On our last morning, they had been crowding around while I handed out breakfast, begging, “Please, Mama, give us some more sweet rolls,” and “Please, Mama, can we have our apples now?” I was giving the baby his bottle, and burping him with experienced pats at my shoulder, when the lady across the aisle engaged Donny in conversation.
“Are all of you brothers and sisters?” she asked, incredulous.
“Yep,” Donny said, his mouth full of apple.
“The baby over there, too? He’s your little brother?”
“Yep,” Donny nodded.
“You certainly have a big family!”
“This is nothing,” Donny said expansively, waving his apple. “You ought to see what we got back at home.”
When tired, the three nine-year-olds curled up in their seats and slept, but I hardly dared to close my eyes for the whole trip. Gregory intermittently dozed and bounced in my lap; I was afraid that if I drifted to sleep, my arms might let him drop. Compounding my general weariness was a knifing pain in my back. I had sprained it severely, once, when I skidded on icy steps at Hebron, while carrying Laura and Susan from the buggy into the house. Now, on this trip, with the load of a heavy baby and bulky hand baggage, I had twisted my back again.
Carl met our train at Sacramento, and drove the tiring travelers home. By the time we came over the mountains to Santa Rosa, and along the winding valleys to Boonville, it was dark. Carl carried the baby and my luggage into the house. The two new nine-year-olds followed with lagging steps, dragging their own suitcases and looking around with apprehension at the strange surroundings. Donny bounced all over, greeting everyone with his usual volubility and unrestrained exuberance.
Carl kissed the whole family around, dumped the baby into my lap, and excused himself to take the baby sitter home. When the door shut behind him, complete pandemonium broke loose in our small living room. The eight younger children jumped up and down, yelling a welcoming “Mama, Mama!” They tried to swarm over my lap, shouting simultaneously about everything that had happened in my absence. Gregory, hungry and wet, frightened by the noise, started howling like the Duchess’s baby in Alice in Wonderland.
Laura screamed in my ear, “Mama, hey Mama listen, will you curl our hair tonight, will you?”
Donny was leaping all over the house, flourishing his choice possessions to impress his new brother and sister; but Richard and Dorothy, so self-possessed and excursion-happy on the train, were suddenly overwhelmed with loneliness in the midst of the confusion.
“That big new boy is out crying in the hall,” Rita shouted, over the din.
“That big new girl is out by the steps, crying,” Diane reported three times, at the top of her lungs.
I groaned. Gregory had soaked through to my lap; Timmy, holding his nose, said frankly, “That new baby doesn’t smell good.”
“He needs clean diapers,” I said. My back ached as if I had been freshly stabbed. “He’s also hungry.”
“So are we,” Timmy said. “We haven’t eat yet.”
At that moment I would have traded the whole howling mob for a deserted island in the Pacific. I pulled up the corners of my face into a reasonable facsimile of a calm smile.
“Let’s be more quiet, now, shall we? If you will give Mama a chance to take care of the new children first, then there’ll be time to sit down quietly for talks, one at a time, later.”
Nobody heard me, of course.
I gave Gregory a quick bath, put him into fresh diapers and a nightgown, and fixed him some formula. Carl arrived then, and gave the baby his bottle, while I turned my attention to the weeping Richard and Dorothy. After cuddling them both, I racked my brains to think of a diversion for their sudden loneliness.
“It’s past suppertime,” I said. “Would you two like to be my helpers?” With brighter faces under the tear streaks, they followed me into the kitchen. I found some carrots for Dorothy to scrub, some oranges for Richard to peel and slice.
The rest of the children crowded into our Pullman-sized kitchen, demanding to know why they couldn’t help, too. Many of them dragged out chairs to stand on, so they could reach the counters. I couldn’t turn around without bumping into a chair or treading on small toes. Keyed up by the homecoming tension and excitement, the children pushed each other and quarreled, whining and fussing about everything. Suddenly I felt like the old woman who lived in a shoe and had so many children she didn’t know what to do. I knew exactly how she felt when she gave them some broth without any bread, and spanked them all soundly and sent them to bed.
That night, after the twelve were finally fed and tucked into their cribs and cots and bunks, I tumbled into my own bed like a broken sack of wheat. I had pulled my happy little world down around my ears, and I felt as low and cheerless as a dungeon.
The next day I discovered that my troubles were just beginning.
Laura kept glaring at her own straight hair in the mirror, then went about telling everyone that Dorothy didn’t deserve to have curly hair. “I wish Mama would send that girl back to the orphanage,” she muttered in jealous spite.
Donny tried to boss Richard around in the high-handed way he sometimes bossed the younger children; Richard, after three patient warnings, finally took Donny down and pummeled him good. Donny came sobbing to complain about a microscopic bruise and a cut lip, proclaiming loud and long that he didn’t want his new brother any more.
Even roly-poly, good-natured Gregory added to the troubles. It was on his medical record that he had suffered a cold that spring, with ear complications, but the nurse at the orphanage thought that the infection had cleared up. On the second night home, I had to walk the floor with him when he awoke screaming with earache, both ears discharging pus. The next morning our family doctor found Gregory’s ears perforated and severely infected; the baby was put on around-the-clock doses of an antibiotic.
This was not the last link in our chain of trouble. On the following morning when the children came thundering into the dining room for breakfast, I noticed that several looked flushed. A closer inspection revealed rashes on the necks and chests of three children.
“Oh, no,” I groaned. “Not measles, not now!”
It wasn’t technically measles, but a kind of virus which attacks the glands and causes a skin rash. It was sweeping through the schools in the valley, and the children called it the “speckles.” Most children would not suffer after-effects, the doctor told us, as long as they had sufficient rest; but babies, and occasional adults, might come down with very severe cases. We concentrated on protecting little Gregory, who needed all his resistance to fight the remaining infection in his ears.
Now I came to the full realization of the staggering number of children I had proposed to care for. As fast as two or three recuperated from the speckles, several more came down sick. I thought the siege would drag on into forever, would never be over. Night after night I went from one bed to another, holding wet cloths on feverish foreheads, soothing restless ones back to sleep.
The last straw was the stream of visitors.
The publicity from the Life magazine and the NBC “Welcome Travelers” show was beginning to bear some unpalatable fruit. People motoring through northern California would detour to our isolated, mountain-rimmed valley and knock on our door at all hours, just to have something to tell the folks back home.
One morning three strange ladies stood on the front step. “We read in the newspaper that the International Family had three new children,” one gushed, “so we thought we’d drive up and look them over.”
“I’m sorry,” I said wearily, “but some of them have the measles now.”
“That don’t bother me,” the spokesman said, as she pushed into our front room. “I’ve had everything.”
Walking around the children, patting them on their heads, one said, “This one is kind of cute. Is he part Jap, or what?”
While we were eating lunch, two more strangers rang the bell. They were a middle-aged couple, the man with yellow false teeth that clicked, and the lady with a very large and slightly soiled bosom.
“We heard your family over the radio,” the lady twittered, “and I vowed that if our vacation took us to California, we’d certainly look you up, so here we are!”
They strode on through to the dining room, stared at the toys on the floor, the piles of laundry waiting to be folded on the window seat, the rolls of dust in the corners on the floor, and at the children, who had stopped eating to watch.
The man started counting with his forefinger. “Let’s see, is it nine you have?”
“Twelve now, some are sick. It’s contagious,” I added hopefully.
They weren’t listening, but the children were. They were all ears.
“What a wonderful thing you and the Reverend are doing,” the soiled bosom gushed, “to take in all these poor, neglected little orphans that nobody wanted, and give them food and shelter. The good Lord will certainly reward you with stars in your crown. Now I want you to tell me all their names, and what they are. . . .”
Emily Dickinson’s lines went through my head:
How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!
I tried to cut short my visitors’ thoughtless prattle, and head them back toward the door, when the husband spoke up.
“Photography is my hobby.”
I noticed for the first time the camera slung around his neck.
“Mind if I take a few souvenir snapshots of the kids? Thought you might sort of help me line ’em all up, outside.”
“They’re eating, now,” I said through my teeth.
“No rush at all,” he said with a generous wave of his hand. “Me and the missus will sort of mosey around outside while we’re waiting, and maybe get a few shots of the yard and the church. Take your time, we don’t want to interfere with your privacy.”
When the door was shut, I went back to the dining room. “Finish your lunch,” I said. My head was whirring. “I want you all to hop in bed immediately, and take naps.”
The older ones put up a wail.
“Remember what the doctor said about the speckles,” I said. “It leaves you weak and cross for a while, and the naps build back your strength.”
“But that man said—”
“The man came to see me, not you,” I told them. “You get off to bed, and I’ll talk to the man.”
When our visitors bustled up to the door again, I managed a wan smile.
“I am honestly sorry that I have to disappoint you,” I said, “but I’d be even more sorry if I let our children be spoiled by too much public attention. I’m afraid I can’t let you take any pictures of them.”
“But—but you said,” the man sputtered, “at least I gathered—”
“It is a rather new rule,” I admitted, “but, from now on, we can make no exceptions.”
That evening, as I was slogging around the kitchen cooking supper, the vent plugged up in my pressure cooker and the emergency pressure valve blew out. Thick potato chowder was plastered over walls, counters, and stove, and dripped down from the ceiling to add to the soupy puddle on the floor. By the time I had the mess cleaned up and the children fed, my ears were ringing and my head was going around. I was helping the children into their pajamas when there were knocks on the front door again.
A couple stood there beaming.
“We made a long detour, just to swing around through your town and see your precious kiddies,” the lady gushed. “My, what a wonderful thing, taking these poor little orph ”
“Yes, I do feel sorry for them,” I interrupted. “They’ve got the measles.”
It didn’t stop them. The strangers shoved right in, and the children crowded around, in various stages of undress.
“This is a real sight,” the man confided. “We never got to see the Dionne quints when we went to Canada, so we thought that this would make up for it.”
“Won’t you excuse me?” I said, swaying. “It really is past their bedtime.” I herded the children off, while Carl chatted politely with the strangers, and sent them on their way.
When the children were in bed, I collapsed in Carl’s arms. “I can’t take any more,” I wailed. “I’m going to blow up, just like the pressure cooker. The kids are driving me crazy. And the last straw is all the nutty sightseers who keep sticking their noses into our private lives. As if—as if we were running a circus sideshow—”
Carl patted my shoulder. “Don’t let them get under your skin, honey. People may seem nosy, but they mean well. You’ve had a tough day.”
The tears were running down my cheeks. “It’s not just today. It’s every day. Look at the dishes piled in the sink! The laundry tub is full of wet diapers, the dirty-clothes baskets are overflowing, and the school children haven’t any clean clothes left to wear. The ironing’s piled up and all my cooking pots are too small for f-fourteen p-p-people—”
“There, there, it’s nothing that can’t be worked out with a little organization, now that the children are getting well, I’ll see if I can arrange my time so I can help you some.”
“No,” I wept. “We can’t fix it that easy. You were right all along, when you said that nine were enough to take care of. I’m a blind, headstrong, know-it-all fool.”
Carl hugged me. “That’s what I like about you. You’ll rush in where angels fear to tread.”
“Carl, I’m serious. I’ve made a terrible mess of our lives. How can I put us back the way we were, so—so peaceful, before I brought all the extra children home? And what’s to happen to Richard and Dorothy and Gregory, after we take them back?”
“Take them back? How could we take them back?”
“B-but how can we manage if we don’t?” I sobbed. “I feel like I’m at the end of my rope—”
Carl took his handkerchief to wipe the tears from my face, then pulled me toward the light. “Oh, boy! No wonder.”
“No wonder what?”
“That you’re so feverish and down in the mouth.” He turned me toward a mirror. I looked and saw the rash climbing up my neck, spreading over my cheeks.
“You’ve got the speckles,” Carl said.
. . .
After three days the rash went down, but the gland infection had left me so weak I could hardly lift my arms. I felt as if I had gone through the washing-machine wringer.
“You just rest and get well,” Carl said. “At the end of the month, go down to the University of Redlands for summer school. What you need is a vacation.”
“But Carl,” I wheezed, “I can’t go off and leave you.”
“Don’t worry about me, because it will be good for me to spend my vacation with the kids. That way, I can still preach on Sundays, too, and we won’t have to close the church down. You and the children made it possible for me to go to college. Do you mind, now, if we all send you?”
“But honey,” I groaned. “It’s much different now. We’ve got twelve children.”
Carl laughed at me. “As you have often said, the more the merrier!”