June 8, 1940

On the train to Washington, D.C., the morning of my nineteenth birthday, I had nothing but time. Time to watch the bright green fields slip past the window. Time to measure the distance between who I had been and who I was about to become.

I grew up in St. Joseph Orphan Home, during the Great Depression, pressed tight between girls whose parents could not afford to keep them. We learned early how to keep our heads down. How to make do. How to work for everything and expect nothing.

From there, I was truly fortunate to spend my high school years at Loretto Academy in Kansas City. What a warm and thrilling time that was. An education. Young womanhood unfolding. Dreams stitched quietly into the steady thrum of the sewing machines during home economics; into the crisp clack of the typewriter keys in typing class.

And yet, even then, I knew I didn’t quite fit in.

The other girls had security. Homes that would catch them if they fell. They had fathers whose names opened doors and mothers whose luncheons were printed in the Sunday society pages of The Kansas City Star. They had never known the particular cold that comes from going without. They didn’t know the quiet calculations of learning to rely only on yourself.

The nuns told me I should enter the Order. They said I was made for it. Quiet. Obedient. Devout. I believed them. I believed I was.

Still, there was a small insistence within me. Not loud. Not defiant. Only a tug, as though someone had caught the edge of my sleeve. I glanced back at it from time to time, but I didn’t stop walking along the path I believed the Lord had laid at my feet.

Less than a year ago, I stepped into a convent in Kentucky as a young postulant, prepared to surrender myself entirely to a life of service.

Today, I sat on an eastbound train with my only two decent outfits, my rosary, a few boiled eggs, two sandwiches, a couple of apples, a small amount of cash, and a letter. 

Hours earlier, I had sat before Mother Superior and received my sentence. No longer fit for the vocation of Sister in Christ, she informed me I might be better suited to a more traditional life, perhaps as a wife and mother, but never could I wear the habit. Not now.

Not after what I had done.

Not after what I had failed to do.

Now I was a young woman marked by what was meant to be shame and regret. Yet, it felt like something closer to relief.

I stared at the only photograph I had managed to save from my teenage years. I was sixteen the day it was taken, standing in the courtyard at Loretto. My eyes looked so full of curiosity and wonder. I did not yet know how costly both could be. I mistook them for virtue. In truth, they were armor.

In the wider world, France was collapsing under German advance. Men on the radio spoke in steady baritone voices about mobilization and preparedness, as though careful speech might keep our boys home and the war from touching our shores. 

Hours earlier, I had been told I was unfit for surrender in the Order. Now I was being sent to our nation’s capital, bracing for war, with a letter in my handbag assigning me to a teletypist’s desk at T.W.A. All alone. My stomach in knots.

“Where ya from, miss?” the elderly gentleman across the aisle asked. “Boston born myself. Been ridin’ rails since before the war.” The r at the end of war softened and slipped away, sounding more like wah.

“I’m from Kansas City.”

“Kansas?”

“Missouri,” I corrected quickly, bristling.

“That right?” His voice drifted off into the rhythm of the chug, the coal smoke, the hiss of steam against the windows.

My thoughts slipped back to Kansas City. To my girlhood, my mother, my sisters. Washington would change me in ways I could not yet imagine. The war would, too. But I would be back to Kansas City. I knew that much to be true. Kansas City is not the sort of place that ever quite leaves you, even if you try to leave it first.

Nadine Burnett (née Pulliam) as a teenager. Date and location unknown.

Nadine’s Northeast follows the life of Nadine Burnett (née Pulliam), who was born in 1921 and spent most of her life in Northeast Kansas City, where she raised ten children amid the city’s rapid changes in the 20th century. Written by her granddaughter, Betsy Cochran, these historical fiction stories draw from Nadine’s lived experiences, local history, and a little family lore. Each installment stands alone while weaving into a larger portrait of Nadine’s past. For a deeper dive, visit betsycochran.substack.com, where you can subscribe for free or choose a paid plan for extended content.