No 1.

May 28

I Will Do It.

October 14, 1910

Dear Mother Mary,

Today I taught the children the history of the word “baton” as a stout staff to carry something or to clobber them over the head as they would not sit still.

Thomas raised his hand and announced, before I gave him permission, that it is used in relay races and asked, “Can go outside already, Miss. Kurtz?”

I set down my list of spelling words and said that sure, we had better get to it, why procrastinate any race?

Today was unusually warm and sunny. We headed away from my dining room table, out of the house, and out to the cemetery, which is our playground now. Of course, we start off with prayer. This proves to the sexton that we mean business, which we certainly do, but then the children race and wiggle. The rule is that they stay off the grass, any mud, and this way the dead are not annoyed with us. The children obey. I have not yet been told that we violate any rules there, but I expect at any moment new rules to be posted or a letter of litanies will be delivered to me, that children must be with their real and true parents or must not have a good time or something along those lines.

The children attend the regular schools here, but their parents work odd hours and want more training. After their secular seat work is done, the children walk to me, or I meet them on the sidewalk, and I babysit. I don’t call it babysitting because I was trained as a schoolteacher and if it wasn’t for my scandal, I would be more than a babysitter. My training was always to be more. Sometimes we have lessons at their house and sometimes they come to my apartment, located at the back of the big house with the family I work for, but they don’t always need me, and I promised David I would work as hard as I could to repay him and so I need the money.

I am writing so that my joy will be complete in letting you know everything that you already know, Dear Lady, but it must be passed on the story of that David, my guardian, the attorney selected by Daddy who did in fact, and in truth and in beauty, help carry me through. And yes, they say faith alone will bind us, but some put off their work, their calling to compete in that race, not with rats, but in relay. I must relay the message from David.

Father was given a wonderful grace in finding him, this Knight of Columbus, who allows me to write to him from time to time. I let David know how I’m progressing and ask him for more money. Sometimes I get money, but always I get encouragement.

Mother, you must remember David in your rounds. He is older now, of course, and complains more, but I believe he still has fight and loves America, which inspires me to handle the children well. And that means I teach them to fight. I will teach them to run.

This week David writes to me on official letterhead from Iowa that his daughter, who is clerking for him, will now attend to my needs as he now taps out for Florida. The new attorney, her husband, will be too busy to read my letters. I can accept this, because of you, Blessed Queen, I am now practical and simple. However, she won’t understand my background well enough to release the money like David did.

I will write to her and tell her my story, because while he is good with the law, he is not good at indulging me for how I want to talk about his goodness.

I know David is tired of people, their same sad stories, and their spinning and gnawing on the same fleshy ugliness until they are mushy and rotten, and he gets impatient and may forget how wonderful he was, in detail, to gullible people in trouble like me.

I will tell his daughter all that I remember about her father so that she has sympathy for him and patience when he refuses to go to the doctor, for I know he will, and this story may aid her in softening with him, for there needs to be some softening otherwise he will stroke out.

I will tell his daughter all about my life before I came to Bedford, Indiana, and how David played a hand in that, passing me on, like a candle with no wick, but I carried that remnant of hope left in my genes, my father, into my new home, my new boarding, and my new family, and finally, this makeshift school.

I will tell his daughter and be short, for the new rates are to the rooftops, and because if anything David was stoic. He pushed me into reason and work. Sigh! Could I dare but honor my guardian’s wishes properly by staying in the lane of reason and work? Well, thanks to him, I do have work. I have a lane. I have a baton.

I will tell his daughter that my father, a Civil War veteran, knew her father, another Civil War patriot, and how they met not on the battlefield but later, at the lodge. It appears my father pulled her father out of something. One of those occasional battles of the mind. It was sudden and serious. This he did at some risk to his own life, something to do with a train and a financial panic. I can be vague with this part of the telling.

I will tell his daughter that as my father was done dealing with me, he connected with David by way of the Grand Army of the Republic. And he asked if David could take care of me, financially, and accept a transfer of wealth and to keep it hidden. This agreement took place as we packed up my things so that I could be installed elsewhere and bolted down.

I will tell his daughter that these veterans and friends did this in a way that kept my inheritance hidden.

I will tell his daughter how David, in letters, treated me like a daughter; how her sweetness must have reminded him of what I might, in fact, have still yet some tiny potential. I always called him my guardian.

I will tell his daughter that after I graduated from the orphanage in 1896, I was happy to be teaching in Sioux City, Iowa. I advanced greatly from books, but more so by direct attention to the other, girls there, and from the systems and routines we learned there for it was discipline, military, and Christian drill with confidence and ample time for play on the gorgeous grounds. Like I said, I was happy to be teaching at last in the public school in Sioux City but only became frustrated in my inability to be loved because of that one rule that teachers could not be married. It was the rules that hurt my feelings.

I will tell his daughter that it was a terrible thing that I never learned to be with boys and how I missed the men (still do) and let go of all training and reason when I was courted.

When Arthur overtook me with his romance, he said he understood my private dilemma. We agreed to lie about our marriage and to live separately and sneak around. My joy and face could not be hidden! A dear friend broke the scandal but broke my joy even more and turned me dark! Now there were headlines in the newspapers, and a force of authorities demanding I repay my salary for all the time I was lying and married.

Finally, after great procrastination and the running to and through the levee district of Seattle, Washington, I saw that Arthur got along so well with me keeping it secret because this way his wife would never find out. That he aimed to collect a schoolteacher, anyone would do and did for my holding of his lie and the next gullible runner taking off with his lie, excited for the heat it held.

I would never work again in the public-school system because there could be no references. I was ruined. And I was in deep trouble.

Arthur was now passing his old sins onto me. I took off running with no scruples, only to run around and look for and grab onto his hand. But he tossed my way not his hand but his baggage, his filth. How I tripped all over the place for his relay of lies, chronic gesticulations, and procrastinations. But I recognized his procrastinations because I invented them. Soon I ran from the law. Then, I avoided my father.

My father was so very angry with me that, when I called to beg for money, but not forgiveness, he said that he can no longer talk to me. He was cutting me off. From now on I must deal with his attorney because he wanted nothing more to do with me.

I understood that this meant that he was going to clobber me if he heard my whining anymore. For my protection, my father let me experience dryness, fatigue, and the bottom.

I called David. He expected my call. I didn’t know who this man was. He told me that I would have to do exactly as I was told. Follow his rules or it was cut off time in the raw. Said that I would be sent to prison at the rate I was going, with no representation.

He said that I could fight Arthur in the courts and be dragged further into emotionalism.

Or, I could just be someone else.

Either way, he would help me pay back my debt to relieve pressure, but I would have to work it off in private arrangement, on his terms, in something along those old lines of decency and a chorus of Or get-thee-to-a-nunnery, and it worked.

Yes, someday I will tell his daughter that David found me a new job teaching in Bedford, Indiana. He gave me a new name (Beatrix Kurtz, which I like it very much), because he told me to “just be” and that had a special meaning to it. And it was a short window of opportunity and to keep it short or else. I told him my name would be even shorter: just Bea. He said my job was to just be still, to sit tight, and make my own money.

He made a contract with a young couple I now board with. He told these parents that if I would ever become much trouble, he would take the train himself down to Bedford—not sending a messenger, escort, or clerk—and he himself would pick me up in the middle of the night with no conflict or legal action or scandal for the neighbors. The exit strategy was solid for them. He would pay them for their trouble. And he would pick me up, blindfold me, and drop me off at another state, where they had a poor farm, and ride away, whistling.

How could I now be any trouble? All my problems were fixed at last. I was just going to “JUST BEA” – and I wrote to him, often and carefully, reporting in serious, businesslike manner, my new budget. I removed emotion. David kept sending me money.

I will mention to his daughter, however, that David could have been more, well, more of a brother or proper uncle to me, actually, well, come to think of it, when I introduced myself to my new family. At least he could have warned me that they were Catholic. This I could not swallow.

I suppose, though, I will have to tell his daughter later, or next, I guess, sometime, when I can find the words, how it came to be that it was only a few weeks later that I misplaced one of the children in my care. A lost child. The screaming. The train and the panic. And how David was not called. How the family did not call David. I will tell her later about all this. First things first. For now, I hear the little ones at my door, ready for another victory in our ancient games.

That’s enough for now, Dear Mother. Holy Mother, pray for us. Cause of our joy, pray for us.

Christine Friesel