Orphan Train(58)

The Nielsens are politely curious about me, and I do my best to answer their questions without sounding either desperate or apathetic. The other three adults watch us with a quivering intensity. I sense them urging me to do well, to sit up straight and answer in complete sentences.

Finally, as one conversational theme after another runs its course, Mr. Sorenson says, “All right then. I believe we all know why we are here—to determine whether the Nielsens might be willing to provide Dorothy with a home, and whether Dorothy is suitable to their needs. To that end, Dorothy—can you tell the Nielsens why you wish to become part of their household, and what you might bring to it yourself ?”

If I am honest—which is not, of course, what Mr. Sorenson is asking of me—I will say that I simply need a warm, dry place to live. I want enough food to eat, clothes, and shoes that will protect me from the cold. I want calmness and order. More than anything, I want to feel safe in my bed.

“I can sew, and I am quite neat. I’m good with numbers,” I say.

Mr. Nielsen, turning to Mrs. Murphy, asks, “And can the young lady cook and clean? Is she hardworking?”

“Is she a Protestant?” Mrs. Nielsen adds.

“She is a hardworking girl, I can attest to that,” Mrs. Murphy says.

“I can cook some things,” I tell them, “though at my previous residence I was expected to make stew out of squirrels and raccoons, and I’d rather not do that again.”

“Mercy, no,” Mrs. Nielsen says. “And the other question—?”

“The other question?” I’m barely keeping up.

“Do you go to church, dear?” Mrs. Murphy prompts.

“Oh, right. The family I lived with were not churchgoing people,” I answer honestly, though in truth I have not been to church since the chapel at the Children’s Aid Society, and before that only with Gram. I remember clasping her hand as we walked to St. Joseph’s, right in the center of Kinvara, a small church made of stone with jewel-toned stained-glass windows and dark oak pews. The smell of incense and lilies, the candles lit for loved ones passed away, the throaty intonations of the priest, and the majestic trumpeting of the organ. My da said he was allergic to religion, it never did anybody any good; and when Mam got grief from the neighbors on Elizabeth Street about not going to services, she’d say, “You try packing up a swarm of kids on a Sunday morning when one has a fever, one has the colic, and your husband’s passed out in the bed.” I remember watching other Catholics, girls in their Communion dresses and boys in their spitshined shoes, walking down the street below our apartment, their mothers pushing prams and fathers strolling along beside.

“She’s an Irish girl, Viola, so I suspect she’s a Catholic,” Mr. Nielsen says to his wife.

I nod.

“You may be a Catholic, child,” Mr. Nielsen says—the first thing he has said to me directly—“but we are Protestant. And we will expect you to go to Lutheran services with us on Sundays.”

It’s been years since I’ve attended services of any kind, so what does it matter? “Yes, of course.”

“And you should know that we will send you to school in town here, a short walk from our home—so you won’t attend Miss Larsen’s classes any longer.”

Miss Larsen says, “I believe Dorothy was about to outgrow the school-house, anyway, she’s such a smart girl.”

“And after school,” Mr. Nielsen says, “you will be expected to help in the store. We’ll pay you an hourly wage, of course. You know about the store, Dorothy, do you not?”

“It’s sort of a general-interest, all-purpose place,” Mrs. Nielsen says.

I nod and nod and nod. So far they’ve said nothing that raises an alarm. But I don’t feel the spark of connection with them, either. They don’t seem eager to learn about me, but then again, few people are. I get the sense that my abandonment, and the circumstances that brought me to them, matter little to them, compared to the need I might fill in their lives.

The following morning, at 9:00 A.M., Mr. Nielsen pulls up in a blue-and-white Studebaker with silver trim and raps on the front door. Mrs. Murphy has been so generous that I now have two suitcases and a satchel filled with clothes and books and shoes. As I’m closing my bags Miss Larsen comes to my room and presses Anne of Green Gables into my hands. “It’s my own book, not the school’s, and I want you to have it,” she says, hugging me good-bye.

And then, for the fourth time since I first set foot in Minnesota over a year ago, everything I possess is loaded into a vehicle and I am on my way to somewhere new.





Hemingford, Minnesota, 1930–1931


The Nielsens’ home is a two-story colonial painted yellow with black shutters and a long slate walkway leading to the front door. It sits on a quiet street several blocks from the center of town. Inside, the floor plan is a circle: a sunny living room on the right leads into the kitchen in the back, which connects to a dining room and back to the foyer.

Upstairs I have my own large room, painted pink, with a window overlooking the street, and even my own bathroom, with a large porcelain sink and pink tiles and a cheerful white curtain with pink piping.

Mr. and Mrs. Nielsen take things for granted that I’ve never dared to dream of. All the rooms have steel air vents with black-painted scrollwork. Even when no one is home, the water heater is on, so that when they come home after work, they don’t have to wait for the water to heat up. A woman named Bess cleans the house and does the washing once a week. The refrigerator is stocked with milk and eggs and cheese and juice, and Mrs. Nielsen notices what I like to eat and buys more of it—oats for breakfast, for instance, and fruits, even exotic ones like oranges and bananas. I find aspirin and store-bought toothpaste in the medicine cabinet and clean towels in the hall closet. Every two years, Mr. Nielsen tells me, he trades in his car for a new model.