Orphan Train Read online

  “Did we ever. Roast beef and potatoes. And a clean bed. But I don’t trust it. I wager they’re paid by the head, the way Indians take scalps.”

  “It’s charity,” I say. “Didn’t you hear what Mrs. Scatcherd said? It’s their Christian duty.”

  “All I know is nobody ever did nothing for me out of Christian duty. I call tell by the way they’re talking I’m going to end up worked to the bone and not see a dime for it. You’re a girl. You might be all right, baking pies in the kitchen or taking care of a baby.” He squints at me. “Except for the red hair and freckles, you look okay. You’ll be fine and dandy sitting at the table with a napkin on your lap. Not me. I’m too old to be taught manners, or to follow somebody else’s rules. The only thing I’m good for is hard labor. Same with all of us newsies and peddlers and bill posters and bootblacks.” He nods toward one boy after another in the car.

  ON THE THIRD DAY WE CROSS THE ILLINOIS STATE LINE. NEAR CHICAGO, Mrs. Scatcherd stands for another lecture. “In a few minutes we will arrive at Union Station, whereupon we will switch trains for the next portion of our journey,” she tells us. “If it were up to me, I’d send you in a straight line right across the platform to the other train, without a minute’s worry that you’ll get yourselves into trouble. But we are not allowed to board for half an hour. Young men, you will wear your suit coats, and young ladies must put on your pinafores. Careful not to muss them now.

  “Chicago is a proud and noble city, on the edge of a great lake. The lake makes it windy, hence its appellation: the Windy City. You will bring your suitcases, of course, and your wool blanket to wrap yourself in, as we will be on the platform for at least an hour.

  “The good citizens of Chicago no doubt view you as ruffians, thieves, and beggars, hopeless sinners who have not a chance in the world of being redeemed. They are justifiably suspicious of your character. Your task is to prove them wrong—to behave with impeccable manners, and comport yourselves like the model citizens the Children’s Aid Society believes you can become.”

  THE WIND ON THE PLATFORM RUSHES THROUGH MY DRESS. I WRAP my blanket tight around my shoulders, keeping a close eye on Carmine as he staggers around, seemingly oblivious to the cold. He wants to know the names of everything: Train. Wheel. Mrs. Scatcherd, frowning at the conductor. Mr. Curran, poring over papers with a station agent. Lights—which to Carmine’s amazement turn on while he’s gazing at them, as if by magic.

  Contrary to Mrs. Scatcherd’s expectations—or perhaps in response to her rebuke—we are a quiet lot, even the older boys. We huddle together, complacent as cattle, stamping our feet to stay warm.

  Except for Dutchy. Where did he go?

  “Psst. Niamh.”

  When I hear my name, I turn to glimpse his blond hair in a stairwell. Then he’s gone. I look over at the adults, occupied with plans and forms. A large rat scurries along the far brick wall, and as the rest of the children point and shriek I scoop up Carmine, leaving our small pile of suitcases, and slip behind a pillar and a pile of wooden crates.

  In the stairwell, out of sight of the platform, Dutchy leans against a curved wall. When he sees me, he turns without expression and bounds up the stairs, vanishing around a corner. With a glance behind, and seeing no one, I hold Carmine close and follow him, keeping my eyes on the wide steps so I don’t fall. Carmine tilts his head up and leans back in my arms, floppy as a sack of rice. “Yite,” he murmurs, pointing. My gaze follows his chubby finger to what I realize is the enormous, barrel-vaulted ceiling of the train station, laced with skylights.

  We step into the huge terminal, filled with people of all shapes and colors—wealthy women in furs trailed by servants, men in top hats and morning coats, shop girls in bright dresses. It’s too much to take in all at once—statuary and columns, balconies and staircases, oversized wooden benches. Dutchy is standing in the middle, looking up at the sky through that glass ceiling, and then he takes off his cap and flings it into the air. Carmine struggles to free himself, and as soon as I set him down he races toward Dutchy and grabs his legs. Dutchy reaches down and hoists him on his shoulders, and as I get close I hear him say, “Put your arms out, little man, and I’ll spin you.” He clasps Carmine’s legs and twirls, Carmine stretching out his arms and throwing his head back, gazing up at the skylights, shrieking with glee as they turn, and in that moment, for the first time since the fire, my worries are gone. I feel a joy so strong it’s almost painful—a knife’s edge of joy.

  And then a whistle pierces the air. Three policemen in dark uniforms rush toward Dutchy with their sticks drawn, and everything happens too fast: I see Mrs. Scatcherd at the top of the stairwell pointing her crow wing, Mr. Curran running in those ridiculous white shoes, Carmine clutching Dutchy’s neck in terror as a fat policeman shouts, “Get down!” My arm is wrenched behind my back and a man spits in my ear, “Trying to get away, were yeh?” his breath like licorice. It’s hopeless to respond, so I keep my mouth shut as he forces me to my knees.

  A hush falls over the cavernous hall. Out of the corner of my eye I see Dutchy on the floor, under a policeman’s truncheon. Carmine is howling, his cries puncturing the stillness, and every time Dutchy moves, he gets jammed in the side. Then he’s in handcuffs and the fat policeman yanks him to his feet, pushing him roughly so he stumbles forward, tripping over his feet.

  In this moment I know that he’s been in scrapes like this before. His face is blank; he doesn’t even protest. I can tell what the bystanders think: he’s a common criminal; he’s broken the law, likely more than one. The police are protecting the good citizens of Chicago, and thank God for them.

  The fat policeman drags Dutchy over to Mrs. Scatcherd, and Licorice Breath, following his lead, yanks me roughly by the arm.

  Mrs. Scatcherd looks as if she’s bitten into a lime. Her lips are puckered in a quivering O, and she appears to be trembling. “I placed this young man with you,” she says to me in a terrible quiet voice, “in the hopes that you might provide a civilizing influence. It appears that I was gravely mistaken.”

  My mind is racing. If only I can convince her that he means no harm. “No, ma’am, I—”

  “Do not interrupt.”

  I look down.

  “So what do you have to say for yourself ?”

  I know that nothing I can say will change her opinion of me. And in that realization I feel oddly free. The most I can hope for is to keep Dutchy from being sent back to the streets.

  “It’s my fault,” I say. “I asked Dutchy—I mean Hans—to escort me and the baby up the stairs.” I look over at Carmine, trying to squirm out of the arms of the policeman holding him. “I thought . . . maybe we could get a glimpse of that lake. I thought the baby would like to see it.”

  Mrs. Scatcherd glares at me. Dutchy looks at me with surprise. Carmine says, “Yake?”

  “And then—Carmine saw the lights.” I point up and look at Carmine, and he throws his head back and shouts, “Yite!”

  The policemen aren’t sure what to do. Licorice Breath lets go of my arm, apparently persuaded that I’m not going to flee.

  Mr. Curran glances at Mrs. Scatcherd, whose expression has ever so slightly softened.

  “You are a foolish and headstrong girl,” she says, but her voice has lost its edge, and I can tell she’s not as angry as she wants to appear. “You flouted my instructions to stay on the platform. You put the entire group of children at risk, and you have disgraced yourself. Worse, you have disgraced me. And Mr. Curran,” she adds, turning toward him. He winces, as if to say Leave me out of it. “But this is not, I suppose, a matter for the police. A civil, not a legal, matter,” she clarifies.

  The fat policeman makes a show of unlocking Dutchy’s handcuffs and clipping them to his belt. “Sure you don’t want us to take him in, ma’am?”

  “Thank you, sir, but Mr. Curran and I will devise a sufficient punishment.”

  “As you say.” He touches the brim of his cap, backs away, and turns on his heels.

&nb
sp; “Make no mistake,” Mrs. Scatcherd says gravely, staring down her nose at us. “You will be punished.”

  MRS. SCATCHERD RAPS DUTCHY’S KNUCKLES SEVERAL TIMES WITH a long wooden ruler, though it seems to me a halfhearted penalty. He barely winces, then shakes his hands twice in the air and winks at me. Truly, there isn’t much more she can do. Stripped of family and identity, fed meager rations, consigned to hard wooden seats until we are to be, as Slobbery Jack suggested, sold into slavery—our mere existence is punishment enough. Though she threatens to separate the three of us, in the end she leaves us together—not wanting to infect the others with Dutchy’s delinquency, she says, and apparently having decided that taking care of Carmine would’ve extended my punishment to her. She tells us not to speak to or even look at each other. “If I hear as much as a murmur, so help me . . .” she says, the threat losing air over our heads like a pricked balloon.

  By the time we leave Chicago, it is evening. Carmine sits on my lap with his hands on the window, face pressed against the glass, gazing out at the streets and buildings, all lit up. “Yite,” he says softly as the city recedes into the distance. I look out the window with him. Soon all is dark; it’s impossible to tell where land ends and the sky begins.

  “Get a good night’s rest,” Mrs. Scatcherd calls from the front of the car. “In the morning you will need to be at your very best. It is vital that you make a good impression. Your drowsiness might well be construed as laziness.”

  “What if nobody wants me?” one boy asks, and the entire car seems to hold its breath. It is the question on everyone’s mind, the question none of us are sure we want the answer to.

  Mrs. Scatcherd looks down at Mr. Curran as if she’s been waiting for this. “If it happens that you are not chosen at the first stop, you will have several additional opportunities. I cannot think of an instance . . .” She pauses and purses her lips. “It is uncommon for a child to be with us on the return trip to New York.”

  “Pardon me, ma’am,” a girl near the front says. “What if I don’t want to go with the people who choose me?”

  “What if they beat us?” a boy cries out.

  “Children!” Mrs. Scatcherd’s small glasses flash as she turns her head from side to side. “I will not have you interrupting!” She seems poised to sit down without addressing these questions, but then changes her mind. “I will say this: There is no accounting for taste and personalities. Some parents are looking for a healthy boy to work on the farm—as we all know, hard work is good for children, and you would be lucky to be placed with a God-fearing farm family, all you boys—and some people want babies. People sometimes think they want one thing, but later change their minds. Though we dearly hope all of you will find the right homes at the first stop, it doesn’t always work that way. So in addition to being respectable and polite, you must also keep your faith in God to guide you forward if the way is not clear. Whether your journey is long or short, He will help you as long as you place your trust in Him.”

  I look over at Dutchy, and he looks back at me. Mrs. Scatcherd knows as little as we do about whether we’ll be chosen by people who will treat us with kindness. We are headed toward the unknown, and we have no choice but to sit quietly in our hard seats and let ourselves be taken there.

  Spruce Harbor, Maine, 2011

  Walking back to the car, Molly sees Jack through the windshield, eyes closed, grooving out to a song she can’t hear.

  “Hey,” she says loudly, opening the passenger door.

  He opens his eyes and yanks the buds out of his ears. “How’d it go?”

  She shakes her head and climbs in. Hard to believe she was only in there for twenty minutes. “Vivian’s an odd one. Fifty hours! My God.”

  “But it’s going to work out?”

  “I guess so. We made a plan to start on Monday.”

  Jack pats her leg. “Awesome. You’ll knock out those hours in no time.”

  “Let’s not count our chickens.”

  She’s always doing this, crabbily countering his enthusiasm, but it’s become something of a routine. She’ll tell him, “I’m nothing like you, Jack. I’m bitchy and spiteful,” but is secretly relieved when he laughs it off. He has an optimistic certainty that she’s a good person at her core. And if he has this faith in her, then she must be all right, right?

  “Just keep telling yourself—better than juvie,” he says.

  “Are you sure about that? It’d probably be easier to serve my time and get it over with.”

  “Except for that small problem of having a record.”

  She shrugs. “That’d be kind of badass, though, don’t you think?”

  “Really, Moll?” he says with a sigh, turning the ignition key.

  She smiles to let him know she’s kidding. Sort of. “‘Better than juvie.’ That would make a good tattoo.” She points to her arm. “Right here across my bicep, in twenty-point script.”

  “Don’t even joke,” he says.

  DINA PLUNKS THE SKILLET OF HAMBURGER HELPER ON THE TRIVET in the middle of the table and sits heavily in her chair. “Oof. I’m exhausted.”

  “Tough day at work, huh, babe?” Ralph says, as he always does, though Dina never asks him about his day. Maybe plumbing isn’t as exciting as being a police dispatcher in thrill-a-minute Spruce Harbor. “Molly, hand me your plate.”

  “My back is killing me from that crappy chair they make me sit in,” Dina says. “I swear if I went to a chiropractor, I’d have a lawsuit.”

  Molly gives her plate to Ralph and he drops some casserole on it. Molly has learned to pick around the meat—even in a dish like this, where you can hardly tell what’s what and it’s all mixed together—because Dina refuses to acknowledge that she’s a vegetarian.

  Dina listens to conservative talk radio, belongs to a fundamentalist Christian church, and has a “Guns don’t kill people—abortion clinics do” bumper sticker on her car. She and Molly are about as opposite as it is possible to be, which would be fine if Dina didn’t take Molly’s choices as a personal affront. Dina is constantly rolling her eyes, muttering under her breath about Molly’s various infractions—didn’t put away her laundry, left a bowl in the sink, can’t be bothered to make her bed—all of which are part and parcel of the liberal agenda that’s ruining this country. Molly knows she should ignore these comments—“water off a duck’s back,” Ralph says—but they irk her. She’s overly sensitive to them, like a tuning fork pitched too high. It’s all part of Dina’s unwavering message: Be grateful. Dress like a normal person. Don’t have opinions. Eat the food that’s put in front of you.

  Molly can’t quite figure out how Ralph fits into all of this. She knows he and Dina met in high school, followed a predictable football player/ cheerleader story arc, and have been together ever since, but she can’t tell if Ralph actually buys Dina’s party line or just toes it to make his life easier. Sometimes she sees a glimmer of independence—a raised eyebrow, a carefully worded, possibly ironic observation, like, “Well, we can’t make a decision on that till the boss gets home.”

  Still—all things considered, Molly knows she has it pretty good: her own room in a tidy house, employed and sober foster parents, a decent high school, a nice boyfriend. She isn’t expected to take care of a passel of kids, as she was at one of the places she lived, or clean up after fifteen dirty cats, as she was at another. In the past nine years she’s been in over a dozen foster homes, some for as little as a week. She’s been spanked with a spatula, slapped across the face, made to sleep on an unheated sun porch in the winter, taught to roll a joint by a foster father, fed lies for the social worker. She got her tatt illegally at sixteen from a twenty-three-year-old friend of the Bangor family, an “ink expert-in-training,” as he called himself, who was just starting out and did it for free—or, well . . . sort of. She wasn’t so attached to her virginity anyway.

  With the tines of her fork, Molly mashes the hamburger into her plate, hoping to grind it into oblivion. She takes a bite and smi
les at Dina. “Good. Thanks.”

  Dina purses her lips and cocks her head, clearly trying to gauge whether Molly’s praise is sincere. Well, Dina, Molly thinks, it is and it isn’t. Thank you for taking me in and feeding me. But if you think you can quash my ideals, force me to eat meat when I told you I don’t, expect me to care about your aching back when you don’t seem the slightest bit interested in my life, you can forget it. I’ll play your fucking game. But I don’t have to play by your rules.

  Spruce Harbor, Maine, 2011

  Terry leads the way to the third floor, bustling up the stairs, with Vivian moving more slowly behind her and Molly taking up the rear. The house is large and drafty—much too large, Molly thinks, for an old woman who lives alone. It has fourteen rooms, most of which are shuttered during the winter months. During the Terry-narrated tour on the way to the attic, Molly gets the story: Vivian and her husband owned and ran a department store in Minnesota, and when they sold it twenty years ago, they took a sailing trip up the East Coast to celebrate their retirement. They spied this house, a former ship captain’s estate, from the harbor, and on an impulse decided to buy it. And that was it: they packed up and moved to Maine. Ever since Jim died, eight years ago, Vivian has lived here by herself.

  In a clearing at the top of the stairs, Terry, panting a bit, puts her hand on her hip and looks around. “Yikes! Where to start, Vivi?”

  Vivian reaches the top step, clutching the banister. She is wearing another cashmere sweater, gray this time, and a silver necklace with an odd little charm on it.

  “Well, let’s see.”

  Glancing around, Molly can see that the third floor of the house consists of a finished section—two bedrooms tucked under the slope of the roof and an old-fashioned bathroom with a claw-foot tub—and a large, open attic part with a rough-planked floor half covered in patches of ancient linoleum. It has visible rafters with insulation packed between the beams. Though the rafters and floor are dark, the space is surprisingly light. Levered windows nestle in each dormer, providing a clear view of the bay and the marina beyond.

  The attic is filled with boxes and furniture packed so tightly it’s hard to move around. In one corner is a long clothes rack covered with a plastic zippered case. Several cedar chests, so large that Molly wonders how they got up here in the first place, are lined up against a wall next to a stack of steamer trunks. Overhead, several bare bulbs glow like tiny moons.

  Wandering among the cardboard boxes, Vivian trails her fingertips across the tops of them, peering at their cryptic labels: The store, 1960–. The Nielsens. Valuables. “I suppose this is why people have children, isn’t it?” she muses. “So somebody will care about the stuff they leave behind.”

  Molly looks over at Terry, who is shaking her head with grim resignation. It occurs to her that maybe Terry’s reluctance to take on this project has as much to do with avoiding this kind of maudlin moment as avoiding the work itself.

  Glancing surreptitiously at her phone, Molly sees it’s 4:15—only fifteen minutes since she arrived. She’s supposed to stay until six today, and then come for two hours four days a week, and four hours every weekend until—well, until she finishes her time or Vivian drops dead, whichever comes first. According to her calculations, it should take about a month. To finish the hours, not to kill Vivian.

  Though if the next forty-nine hours and forty-five minutes are this tedious, she doesn’t know if she’ll be able to stand it.

  In American History they’ve been studying how the United States was founded on indentured servitude. The teacher, Mr. Reed, said that in the seventeenth century nearly two-thirds of English settlers came over that way, selling years of their freedom for the promise of an eventual better life. Most of them were under the age of twenty-one.

  Molly has decided to think of this job as indentured servitude: each hour she works is another hour closer to freedom.

  “It’ll be good to clear out this stuff, Vivi,” Terry is saying. “Well, I’m going to get started on the laundry. Call if you need me!” She nods to Molly as if to say All yours! and retreats down the stairs.

  Molly knows all about Terry’s work routine. “You’re like me at the gym, hey, Ma?” Jack says, teasing her about it. “One day biceps, next day quads.” Terry rarely deviates from her self-imposed schedule; with a house this size, she says, you have to tackle a different section every day: bedrooms and laundry on Monday, bathrooms and plants on Tuesday, kitchen and shopping on Wednesday, other main rooms on Thursday, cooking for the weekend on Friday.

  Molly wades through stacks of boxes sealed with shiny beige tape to get to the window, which she opens a crack. Even up here, at the top of this big old house, she can smell the salty air. “They’re not in any particular order, are they?” she asks Vivian, turning back around. “How long have they been here?”

  “I haven’t touched them since we moved in. So that must be—”

  “Twenty years.”

  Vivian gives her a flinty smile. “You were listening.”

  “Were you ever tempted to just toss it all in a Dumpster?”

  Vivian purses her lips.

  “I didn’t mean—sorry.” Molly winces, realizing she’s pushed a little far.

  All right, it’s official, she needs an attitude adjustment. Why is she so hostile? Vivian hasn’t done anything to her. She should be grateful. Without Vivian she’d be sliding down a dark path toward nowhere good. But it kind of feels nice to nurture her resentment, to foster it. It’s something she can savor and control, this feeling of having been wronged by the world. That she has fulfilled her role as a thieving member of the underclass, now indentured to this genteel midwestern white lady, is too perfect for words.

  Deep breath. Smile. As Lori, the court-ordered social worker she meets with biweekly always tells her to do, Molly decides to make a mental list of all the positive things about her situation. Let’s see. One, if she can stick it out, this whole incident will be stricken from her record. Two, she has a place—however tense and tenuous at the moment—to live. Three, if you must spend fifty hours in an uninsulated attic in Maine, spring is probably the best time of year to do it. Four, Vivian is ancient, but she doesn’t appear to be senile.

  Five—who knows? Maybe there actually will be something interesting in these boxes.

  Bending down, Molly scans the labels around her. “I think we should go through them in chronological order. Let’s see—this one says ‘WWII.’ Is there anything before that?”

  “Yes.” Vivian squeezes between two stacks and makes her way toward the cedar chests. “The earliest stuff I have is over here, I think. These crates are too heavy to move, though. So we’ll have to start in this corner. Is that okay with you?”

  Molly nods. Downstairs, Terry handed her a cheap serrated knife with a plastic handle, a slippery stack of white plastic garbage bags, and a wire-bound notebook with a pen clipped to it to keep track of “inventory,” as she called it. Now Molly takes the knife and pokes it through the tape of the box Vivian has