March 20, 1924
Kansas City, MO

When Frank Pulliam crashed into my mother Marjorie’s life, chaos followed close behind. What began as disruption became a chain reaction, spreading outward and stealing the oxygen from everything it touched, like an uncontained wildfire. My mother spent her life moving through the flames. She stamped out what she could, tended what she couldn’t, and rushed toward the hot embers no one else would touch.

But long before Frank, my mother had already learned how to survive.

At just fourteen, she showed up on Delores Pulliam’s doorstep, Frank’s older sister. It was the dead of winter. She was half-frozen and nearly gone. Her own family had abandoned her, and in a fierce moment of determination, she decided that would not be the end of her story. Delores took her in. She fed her, warmed her, and taught her to read better than anyone ever had before. She offered discipline, structure, and something close to safety. And for a short time, that was enough.

But there was always Frank.

Delores’s younger brother moved through the house like a storm. He was smart. He could hunt and trap better than anyone in their small Kentucky holler. He was a carpenter, trained by his father’s hands before him, capable of building things meant to last: rocking chairs, cedar chests, dining tables, bedsteads sturdy enough to hold whole families.

He made beautiful things. But when the moonshine came around, he became another man entirely. And the moonshine always came around.

Delores eventually left Marjorie with Frank in that small Kentucky shack for the convent in Covington, carrying with her a private resolve. It was unspoken, unwritten, and fixed. She would keep watch over the children tied to Frank’s name. Neither distance nor the veil released her from that duty. She carried it with her when she took the vows that made her Sister Dominica.

My mother wanted nothing to do with Sister Dominica’s charity. Letters mostly went unopened, tossed aside, though never so far that her curious daughters didn’t find them. Curious daughters who never dared speak a word of the things they knew.

So when Frank Pulliam appeared on the front stoop of the apartment building at 1010 Park Avenue, on the first day of spring in Kansas City, inclined to crash in and out once again, he did not find Marjorie. She was ill and worn thin and had gone to live with her daughter, Peggy, who was older, practical, and in no position to care for children while tending to a sick mother.

My sister, Marie, and her new husband, Charlie, had taken in the three little girls: Dorothy, eight; Regina, three; and me, the baby, only two. It was the early years of the Depression. Charity was stretched thin. Wages were unreliable.

One night, my sister Catherine, only fourteen, came home with a gash across her face so deep it would mark her for the rest of her life. She had slipped while carrying a heavy pressing iron in the garment district, the edge of it striking her forehead. She lost a great deal of blood before anyone thought to fetch a rag.

It wasn’t long after that, she disappeared from the house. She left without ceremony or goodbyes.

No, on this crisp Kansas City morning, Frank found something different.

For once, he did not arrive in the midst of chaos. He arrived to find its aftermath. And in a rare moment of clarity, he saw what stood before him for what it was. This was not misfortune, but the sum of his own making. The moment did not last long. But it lasted long enough for him to write to his sister Delores, Sister Dominica.

When she arrived, Sister Dominica saw the truth Marie had been quietly carrying. Marie was with child herself and already pressed beyond what any girl ought to bear. It did not take long to understand the situation. Too many mouths. Too little money.

Sister Dominica made the decision.

Dorothy, Regina, and I would be turned over to the care of the Catholic Church. St. Joseph Orphan Home for Girls. We would be fed. We would be clothed. We would be housed and schooled and kept until such a time as our family could stand on its feet again. Or, until we were old enough to stand on our own.

It was not spoken of as mercy. It was spoken of as necessity. Not a penance, but a reckoning, all the same.

Marie wept the day she took us to the orphanage. I did not yet understand why.

I did not yet understand that some heartbreaks are completely necessary.

Dorothy, Nadine, and Regina Pulliam, circa 1924. Intake photograph, St. Joseph Orphan Home for Girls.

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.