The Orphan Collector

by Ellen Marie Wiseman

“The churches and schools are to be closed,” she said. “All places for gathering, even the factories and moving picture houses, will not be open. No funerals are to be allowed either. Many people are getting sick, so everyone is to stay home.”

It made no sense, of course—fresh air was supposed to ward off influenza—but the urge to shut out the disease and fear-filled air everyone else was breathing outweighed any common sense.

Then she remembered what her teachers said about the shortage of doctors and nurses because of the war—that those left behind were overwhelmed and the hospitals were full—and a cold block of fear settled in her chest.

panic gripped the city. The director of the Philadelphia General Hospital pleaded for volunteers to relieve nurses who had collapsed from overwork. Doctors and nurses started dying, three one day, two another, four the next. Undertakers ran out of embalming fluid and coffins, and masked policemen guarded what coffins were left. Gravediggers were either ill, overcharging people, or refusing to bury influenza victims. The director of the city jail offered prisoners to help dig graves, but withdrew the offer when he realized there were no healthy guards to watch them. Thirty-three policemen had already died. The citizens of Philadelphia began whispering the word plague. Meanwhile, The Philadelphia Inquirer scorned the closing of public places: What are the authorities trying to do? Scare everyone to death? What is to be gained by shutting up well-ventilated churches and theaters and letting people press into trolley cars? What then should a man do to prevent panic and fear? Live a calm life. Do not discuss influenza. Worry is useless. Talk of cheerful things instead of disease.

wailed with her brothers, fighting the urge to scream and vomit, the black manacle of grief closing around her shattered heart and locking into place with a horrible, sickening thud.

Since the epidemic started—Had it been a week? Ten days? Fourteen?—no one dared let anyone but family into their homes, and sometimes not even them. No children played in the alley below, no women hurried out to run errands, no men whistled or smoked on their way home from work. Even the laundry lines hung empty. The only living things she’d seen over the past few days were a street sweeper sprinkling some kind of powder along the cobblestones and a brown dog sniffing two sheet-wrapped bodies across the way before dashing down the alley, his nose to the ground. More often than not, she wondered if she was the last person alive on earth.

Then he woke up with a fever and a cough, refusing to nurse. After two days of trying every recommended cure for the flu—onion syrup, chloride of lime, whiskey, Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup—she bundled him up and ran what seemed like a hundred blocks to the nearest emergency hospital—the local poorhouse, which had been converted after the epidemic started. Crying the whole way, she prayed that the good Lord would save her only child. She’d already lost her husband to war. How much misery was one person supposed to endure? But when she reached the hospital, she’d slowed. Every type of vehicle she could imagine crowded the street—trucks and cars and wagons and carts, all of them bringing the sick, the dying, and the dead. Even police cars were bringing in victims. What looked like thousands of people—some wearing yarmulkes and dark clothes, others in babushka scarves and colorful skirts—swarmed the building, trying to get inside. Some sat or lay on the ground wrapped in blankets, while others were half-naked and soaked in sweat, moaning, coughing, and struggling to breathe. A number of them were already dead, their faces as purple as plums, their mouths and noses and eyes caked with dark blood.

Beneath a canopy on the sidewalk, Red Cross workers handed out masks and sewed burial shrouds. A chorus of voices cried out for water and prayed in what seemed like a dozen different languages—English, Russian, Italian, Yiddish, Polish, German.

She turned and looked up at the nun and policeman again. “What are you doing?” she cried. “Half these people are foreigners. They shouldn’t be trying to get help from doctors meant to help Americans. It’s not right!” “We’re here to help everyone,” the nun said. “I’m sorry, but you’ll have to wait like everyone else.”

Just six days after he was let go, her father had died—liver failure, the doctors said. But losing his job to a foreigner was what killed him.

children of all colors filled the alleys and streets, shouting and playing games in strange languages. Even the number of homeless had increased since the waves of peasants arrived. She wouldn’t have been surprised to learn the flu started with them. After all, everyone knew migrants brought disease across the nation’s ports and borders—the Irish brought cholera, the Jews brought tuberculosis, the Italians brought polio, and the Chinese brought bubonic plaque. She and some of the other women in her prayer group had often discussed the personal hygiene habits, unhealthy tendencies, and questionable morals of foreign-born people. And they all agreed the “Don’t Spit” signs should have been printed in all languages, not just English.

Another article stated trucks were being used to carry bodies from the morgue to potter’s field. Corpses were tagged for later identification before being buried in a trench dug by a steam shovel, and the men filling in the mass graves were falling sick.

The thought briefly crossed her mind that the Germans had started the epidemic and Pia and her family were immune, but she pushed it away. Mr. and Mrs. Bach and their four daughters were German too, and every last one of them was dead. In spite of her anger with Mr. Lange for stealing her father’s job, and the fact that they were German, Bernice could tell that normally, Mrs. Lange was a good mother. If there was a chill in the air, the twins and Pia always wore warm coats and knitted hats.

Then she remembered what Mutti always said whenever she felt confused or unsure, “Just do the next thing.” Whether it was getting dressed in the morning or doing chores and homework, the best way to move through a complicated situation was to decide what needed to be done next and just do it.

Announcements with black lettering on buildings and telephone poles read: ALL SHOWS AND CHURCHES ARE ORDERED CLOSED TO FIGHT THE EPIDEMIC. CASES IN THE STATE 100,000. STATE AND CITY HEALTH BOARDS MAY TAKE MORE DRASTIC STEPS—COMPLAIN THAT FAILURE OF PHYSICIANS TO REPORT CASES HANDICAPS THEM IN THEIR WORK—DEMAND FOR PHYSICIANS GREATLY EXCEEDS THE SUPPLY.

Normally she hated when people said everything happened for a reason. Because what reason could there possibly be for her husband to be shot in the head during a war? What reason could there be for allowing Wallis, a perfectly innocent baby, to get sick and die? There were no reasons for such horrible things. But maybe, sometimes, good things did happen for a reason. Maybe she was meant to save these boys.

Then again, it seemed anything was possible in this day and age. Immigrants had taken over the city, and foreign languages could be heard throughout the streets. Her husband and son were gone, and the flu had become an epidemic, killing off the population of Philadelphia one by one by one. Everything was out of control, and she was helpless to change any of it. Until now. She could right this grievous wrong.

Now they were all gone. Mutti. Ollie and Max. Finn. Maybe Vater too. And she was being kept in an orphanage. How was it possible for life to turn into a nightmare so fast?

The number of immigrants living in big houses and nice neighborhoods both surprised and angered her. They had stolen jobs from real Americans and didn’t deserve to be living the American dream.

Being in this beautiful house with such kind people didn’t seem right when everyone she loved and cared about had suffered so much. Vater had struggled so hard to provide for and protect his family, and he was sent off to fight in a war. Mutti did everything for everyone, including sick neighbors and strangers who needed help, and she had died a horrible death. Then there were poor little Ollie and Max, loving and innocent and new, whose older sister locked them in a cold cubby and left them there, crying and hungry and scared. Not only had they lost their entire family, but who knew what horrible fate they’d endured? And it was all her fault. She was the one who had abandoned them when they needed her most.

She shook her head to clear it. Nothing she felt mattered anymore. The only thing she could do was keep going and do the next thing, even when she didn’t have the strength or desire to go on. She undressed, shut off the spigots, and got into the tub, the hot water slipping like silk over her dry, grimy skin.

She’d never understood how poor they really were until now. The difference between this home and the Hudsons’ was like night and day, black and white, diamonds and dirt. Again she asked herself why God allowed such injustice. Why should some suffer based on matters of luck and circumstance and place of birth? On top of everything else, she felt like kicking herself. Why hadn’t she asked Mrs. Hudson to send food and clean linens for these poor people?

Along with making her cold and wet, the miserable weather seemed to mirror her mood. After helping Mrs. Hudson get breakfast ready while listening to Dr. Hudson read an article in the morning newspaper about the new immigration act signed by Calvin Coolidge limiting the number of southern and eastern Europeans, Arabs, and Jews allowed into the country—the purpose of which was to preserve the American ideal of homogeneity and stabilize the ethnic composition of the population—a feeling of sadness had come over her that she couldn’t seem to shake.

The third wave of the flu epidemic had finally subsided during the summer of 1919, nine months after the terror began. Everyone said the aftermath was chaos and record-keeping had been a muddled mess, with children unaccounted for and families separated or wiped out completely. Hundreds of children, too sick or too small to remember their names after being picked up by visiting nurses, had been given to other people or sent away, some by mistake. Pia wondered how many times Nurse Wallis had taken advantage of the situation, how many times she’d made money off lost orphans and other children.

While she was glad to help him and his patients, at the same time she dreaded putting her hands on strangers, waiting for the first stab or twist or throb of pain to strike. After a while it seemed as though the patients’ suffering had become part of who she was, like an invisible, heavy burden carried in her body and soul. Or maybe it was her shattered heart that weighed her down. She often wondered what an X-ray of herself would look like. Would it show the broken bones and ruptured masses, the enlarged organs and rotted membranes of all the ill and damaged people she’d touched? Or would it show the emptiness and sorrow she carried inside, like a black space in the night sky?

“What did she do for the unwed mothers?” Pia said. “Why, found good homes for their babies, of course.” Of course. Pia thought. Her stomach shriveled, thinking about Nurse Wallis taking and selling the babies of women and girls who were already scared and heartbroken. Did Mother Joe know about that too? The thought of it made her sick. But she had to stay calm. She couldn’t afford to upset Mother Joe or accuse her of anything. Not yet, anyway. “You must have those records then,” she said. “Maybe one of the unwed mothers would know how to get in touch with Nurse Wallis.”

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” Bernice said. “Even President Coolidge knows we can’t let immigrants take over the country. We’re being overrun. I gave those children a chance to become regular Americans.” Pia couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Not only was Bernice stealing and selling babies, she was prejudiced too.