Orphan Train(44)

Inside, a goose roasts in the oven and the black-and-white dog, Monty, waits under the table for scraps. Granddad’s out fishing for trout in the river with a homemade rod or hunting grouse or partridge across the fields. So it’s just Gram and me, alone for a few hours.

Gram is rolling dough for a rhubarb tart, back and forth with the big rolling pin, dusting the yellow dough with handfuls of flour, stretching it to cover the brimming pie dish. Now and then she takes a puff of her Sweet Afton, wisps of smoke rising above her head. She offers me a bull’s-eye sweet, which she’s stashed in her apron pocket with a half-dozen half-smoked Afton butts—a mix of flavors I’ll never forget. On the front of the yellow cigarette box is a poem by Robert Burns that Gram likes to sing to an old Irish tune:

Flow gently, sweet Afton, among thy green braes.

Flow gently, I’ll sing thee a song in thy praise.



I sit on a three-legged stool listening to the crackle and spit of goose skin in the oven while she trims a ribbon of dough from around the rim of the pie dish, making a cross with a remnant for the center and brushing it all with a beaten egg, finishing with a flourish of fork pricks and a sprinkle of sugar. When the tart’s safely in the oven we move to the front room, the “good room,” she calls it, just the two of us, for afternoon tea, strong and black with plenty of sugar, and currant bread, sliced and warm. Gram chooses two teacups from her collection of rose-patterned china in the glass-front, along with matching saucers and small plates, and sets each piece carefully on a starched linen placemat. Irish lace, hanging in the windows, filters the afternoon light, softening the lines on her face.

From my perch on the cushioned chair I see the wooden footrest with its floral needlepoint cover in front of her rocker, the small shelf of books—prayer books and poetry, mainly—by the stairs. I see Gram singing and humming as she pours the tea. Her strong hands and kind smile. Her love for me.

Now, tossing and turning on this damp, sour-smelling mattress, I try to focus on my perfect day, but these memories lead to other, darker thoughts. Mrs. Grote, back there moaning in her bedroom, isn’t so different from my own mam. Both of them overburdened and ill-equipped, weak by nature or circumstance, married to strong-willed, selfish men, addicted to the opiate of sleep. Mam expected me to cook and clean and take care of Maisie and the boys, relied on me to hear her troubles, called me naive when I insisted things would get better, that we would be all right. “You don’t know,” she’d say. “You don’t know the half of it.” One time, not long before the fire, she was curled on her bed in the dark and I heard her crying and went in to comfort her. When I put my arms around her, she sprang up, flinging me away. “You don’t care about me,” she snapped. “Don’t pretend you do. You only want your supper.”

I shrank back, my face flaming as if I’d been struck. And in that moment something changed. I didn’t trust her anymore. When she cried, I felt numb. After that, she called me heartless, unfeeling. And maybe I was.


AT THE BEGINNING OF JUNE, WE ALL COME DOWN WITH LICE, EVERY last one of us, even Nettie, who has barely four hairs on her head. I remember lice from the boat—Mam was terrified of us kids getting it, and she checked our heads every day, quarantining us when we heard about outbreaks in other cabins. “Worst thing in the world to get rid of,” she said, and told us about the epidemic at the girls’ school in Kinvara when she was a boarder. They shaved every head. Mam was vain about her thick, dark hair and refused to cut it ever again. We got it on the boat, just the same.

Gerald won’t stop scratching, and when I inspect his scalp I find it’s teeming. I check the other two and find bugs on them as well. Every surface in the house probably has lice on it, the couch and chairs and Mrs. Grote. I know what an ordeal this will be: no more school, my hair gone, hours of labor, washing the bedsheets . . .

I feel an overwhelming urge to flee.

Mrs. Grote is lying in bed with the baby. Propped on two soiled pillows, the blanket pulled up to her chin, she just stares at me when I come in. Her eyes are sunk in their sockets.

“The children have lice.”

She purses her lips. “Do you?”

“Probably, since they do.”

She seems to think about this for a moment. Then she says, “You brung the parasite into this house.”

My face colors. “No, ma’am, I don’t think so.”

“They came from somewhere,” she says.

“I think . . .” I start, but it’s hard to get the words out. “I think you might need to check the bed. And your hair.”

“You brung it!” she says, flinging back the covers. “Come in here, acting all high and mighty, like you’re better than us . . .”

Her nightgown is bunched up around her belly. I see a dark triangle of fur between her legs and turn away, embarrassed.

“Don’t you dare leave!” she shrieks. She snatches baby Nettie, wailing, off the bed and tucks her under one arm, pointing at the bed with the other. “Sheets need to be boiled. Then you can start going through the kids’ hair with a comb. I told Gerald it was too much, bringing a vagrant in this house when Lord knows where she’s been.”

The next five hours are even more miserable than I imagined—boiling pots of water and emptying it into a big tub without scalding any of the children, pulling every blanket and sheet and piece of clothing I can find into the water and scrubbing them with lye soap, then pushing the sheets through the hand wringer. I’m barely strong enough to load and turn the crank, and my arms ache with the effort.