No. 4 - I Will Take It

Wednesday, January 18, 1911

To Mother, Tower of David,

The wind pleased me today, taking me to wherever it pleases. The snow stayed put.

Today I picked up a postal order from David. In it, I found a considerable bump in my allowance. I pocketed the money inside my bodice and seated it firmly with its button.

This seating I learned from my training at the Davenport Orphanage for Girls in Bath, New York: I learned how to keep it hidden. The teachers drilled into us that we were all alone.

My two younger sisters and I were sent to the orphanage all the way from Cedar Falls, Iowa in 1887, when I was nine years old. The orphanage was close to my father’s sisters. One of these aunts had a husband who was on the board of trustees there, which no doubt enabled us to be placed there, because there was a rule that only people from that area could go there.

We were lucky, not like the other girls there. We were not alone, because we had each other, our aunts, and their influence and affluence, and the respectable surname and heritage. We knew our ancestors laid out the village there. Our father was still out there, back in Iowa, to see to the family ventures, and we knew that we would reunite with him, and our brother Henry, after we grew up. But I will never forget when I watched as my father sign off on custody.

Our friends called us half orphans, but our teachers never allowed discussion of our personal history, because if they did, then all forms of indoctrination would dissolve into chaos.

From my teachers, I learned how to squash rumination and sentimentality.

From Arthur, I learned how to travel. He was a traveling salesman I met on the sidewalk after teaching one day in Sioux City. He was ten years older than me, From Aurthur, I learned how easily I found it to dismiss my training, and how to cut ties with my father. Although, I had learned that one the day I watched my father sign off on custody.

We all thought we’d be staying with my aunts, and that this is why we moved to New York. But it was found out that we could and would be better off at the orphanage, and so we were supposed to be thankful that strings were pulled and that we were placed and we were given up.

My sister Cornelia was only three years old when our mother died. She could not go to the Orphanage until she was toilet trained and at the age of five. For those two years she lived at my father’s sister’s house in Bath. She had night terrors and brought those with her to the orphanage. I slept with her at first, then near to her as was allowed.

My sister Frances was six years old and adjusted well. Later she became the most excellent dressmaker. The competitive culture in the orphanage for this occupation made her that way.

But I worried about Cornelia all the time, and for those early years, my aunt did bring Cornelia to the orphanage to visit and we all called her Nellie. We told Nellie to master her big girl pants. We insisted that she could herself climb the many steps up to the door and join us, and all the other girls would become her comfort, her sorority, and her work, which in the beginning was only to take care of her doll and to find clothes and a face for her, because she was a blank doll.  I was very pleased with helping her set the eyes straight on that face.

I promised her that I would be a mother to Cornelia, and when the older teachers were not looking, I smothered and spoiled her, usually this took place on the steps to the magnificent orphanage, which had a tower look out.

We went to the tower when we were sick. In that cupola we could allow all four windows to be opened to and air out the illness, but having the view, also, if not more so, allowed us to get away from the intense drill, and we enjoyed a new pace of life, where the wind could flow and come into our lungs as it pleased. There we recuperated, vomited, or attended to the sick ones, but we also felt the presence of God, for the view was spectacular.

I will find it satisfying to teach my students, when they come over later today, that a cupola is an upside-down cup, and how satisfying it is to know that there, in that tower, we were safe enough for the emptying out. It reminds me of how Our Lady said yes to God, allowing the seven swords pierce you, for the secret thoughts of many would be seated there, in your tower.

All this I remembered while I was walking to my apartment from the post office, holding the last letter from my guardian, David.  The note was not on official letterhead. Did his daughter know about this disbursement?

But this truly was, Dear Mother, the end of my guardian’s direct application to my aid. He insisted on this hard end: that there should be no response. He left no return address. He insisted that I be attached to none other but Christ.

I kept stopping on the sidewalk to read the letter again, interrupting the flow of traffic behind me. 

I lifted the letter, put it to my breast, then read it again. Was it true? Was it breaking inside of me? Was David correct? How could this be? How did I know to believe in his sincerity? Do other people know this?

He told me that loneliness is a lie.

A woman with chatterbox friends came up from behind me, bumping my elbow, and my fancy hat fell over my eyes, I quickly set to adjust it, and when I came to see again, I realized that the jolt from behind tossed the letter out of my hand. I chased it on the ground, but the wind kicked it up and further south.

When I finally caught up with the letter, going slow because I did not want to slip on the snow and ice, I was far from where I started off.

I found myself outside of the St. Vincent DePaul Catholic Church. I could not sit on the steps there, because of the snow, but I stood in the center of the heavy wooden doors and read the letter one more time.

I wanted to go inside, away from the wind, but the doors were locked. I read the letter again.

Now, standing at the foot of the steeple, I looked up at the tower and thought about the orphanage.

And David’s last words. If I can say this rightly: His words, well, became an object for me to hold in my hand, like a trinket that I promised never to forget, something that I would sew into my garment and wear every day, underneath the lace, as a foundation. It was not like a key or a latch, nothing of utility, but something quite basic, bland.

But in holding it, I felt I was vulnerable, superfluous, stupid; but the thing itself was venerable: to hold it in my hand and to also think someone might bump me from behind.

But, knowing my proclivity to sin, I could only imagine the day when I forgot about it. I could already see myself forgetting this object on my dresser and this seeing myself as I truly was, so irresponsible, made me feel sick, limp, just like how I, if I was worthy of the thing, should in fact have to cancel any engagement or the ceremony altogether and never plan for any adventure, like, EVER, unless I had the object not only stitched to my undergarment, but inside of my skin itself.

 Staying in that sick feeling, on those steps, looking up, it was that same feeling I had when we were sent to the tower at the orphanage.  Someone often had to carry us as if we were wounded or fading in strength, or in and out of consciousness, from the battlefield. The way my father might carry us out of the carriage after a long day at the fair and place our sleeping bodies up in the loft. I can still hear the steady footsteps of a strong man carrying me up to the tower. I can still feel the covering and tucking in.

Over my settling in Bedford, David had been such a tremendous help, that I didn’t want to end his support. He had, over this time, encouraged me to become soft, like a snowflake, not something sensitive and wounded by the world, but something that would not last long. The flake might nice to look at, before it lost its shape, when it was complicated, intricate, nice to sit with as long as it didn’t talk, and falling upon everyone equally, slowly, making it level only when working together well with others, and even, not special at all, and then going away with no whaling about the time for the melting.

I felt a cutting up beginning, a dissolving. What David did for me I shall never forget.

What is beautiful is not the snow itself, but the blanket of purity tucking us in from the Decision Maker.

That orphanage was a tower to us and would offer us protection and prestige. There, we could play, dance, and learn behind a wall of protection. Maybe that other David—the one in the Bible—he could only dance with abandon after his loins were girted, after he knew he was safe. Our father could only work and make a living for us, later, if he first installed us in some tower and kept us safe.

There had to be a compartment for the treatment and care of girls, so that we could learn to be superfluous, not useful, but insignificant. And with his last words to me, I got it.

The Italians here show me their work as stone carvers. They start with the sketch books and dictionaries of ornaments. When they came to America, some brought with them their favorite tools, others become serious about their craft only after they left their childhoods. I enjoyed listening to their stories of when they knew they were going to be artists. The day when they received their first batch of soft rock and tools and started shaping, they started to see the movement within the limestone. I enjoyed their description of scrolls, leaves, and other useless decorations for the gravestones or altars and porch railings: leaf flopovers, arches, columns, swords in the hands of saints and angels. I loved how they argued about balance and proportion. And when, with a mistake, they tossed their hands and spoke very fast.

And after their work was completed, how satisfying it was to sit with them, swing or perch on a porch railing, and watch them have a cigar, even before they washed their hands, cover their work, and have a simple meal with friends, and forget about it.

But why am I telling you, Dear Mother, what you already know. It is time to tell it. I will take it, what David has taught me, and tell it now, to his daughter, Emma. For love of you, Dear Lady, I pray that I remove my own petition and only tell her what would be pleasing to you. I will take it, whatever God wants, I will take it, for the tower is ever with me.

Copyright 2026 Christine Friesel