Orphan Train(9)

But Mr. Schatzman frowns and shakes his head, and it’s then that I realize just how alone I am. There is no adult on this side of the Atlantic who has reason to take any interest in me, no one to guide me onto a boat or pay for my passage. I am a burden to society, and nobody’s responsibility.


“YOU—THE IRISH GIRL. OVER HERE.” A THIN, SCOWLING MATRON in a white bonnet beckons with a bony finger. She must know I’m Irish from the papers Mr. Schatzman filled out when he brought me in to the Children’s Aid several weeks ago—or perhaps it is my accent, still as thick as peat. “Humph,” she says, pursing her lips, when I stand in front of her. “Red hair.”

“Unfortunate,” the plump woman beside her says, then sighs. “And those freckles. It’s hard enough to get placed out at her age.”

The bony one licks her thumb and pushes the hair off my face. “Don’t want to scare them away, now, do you? You must keep it pulled back. If you’re neat and well mannered, they might not be so quick to jump to conclusions.”

She buttons my sleeves, and when she leans down to retie each of my black shoes, a mildewy smell rises from her bonnet. “It is imperative that you look presentable. The kind of girl a woman would want around the house. Clean and well-spoken. But not too—” She shoots the other one a look.

“Too what?” I ask.

“Some women don’t take kindly to a comely girl sleeping under the same roof,” she says. “Not that you’re so. . . . But still.” She points at my necklace. “What is that?”

I reach up and touch the small pewter claddagh Celtic cross I have worn since I was six, tracking the grooved outline of the heart with my finger. “An Irish cross.”

“You’re not allowed to bring keepsakes with you on the train.”

My heart is pounding so hard I believe she can hear it. “It was my gram’s.”

The two women peer at the cross, and I can see them hesitating, trying to decide what to do.

“She gave it to me in Ireland, before we came over. It’s—It’s the only thing I have left.” This is true, but it’s also true that I say it because I think it will sway them. And it does.


WE HEAR THE TRAIN BEFORE WE CAN SEE IT. A LOW HUM, A RUMBLE UNDERFOOT, a deep-throated whistle, faint at first and then louder as the train gets close. We crane our necks to look down the track (even as one of our sponsors, Mrs. Scatcherd, shouts in her reedy voice, “Children! Places, children!”), and suddenly here it is: a black engine looming over us, shadowing the platform, letting out a hiss of steam like a massive panting animal.

I am with a group of twenty children, all ages. We are scrubbed and in our donated clothes, the girls in dresses with white pinafores and thick stockings, the boys in knickers that button below the knee, white dress shirts, neckties, thick wool suit coats. It is an unseasonably warm October day, Indian summer, Mrs. Scatcherd calls it, and we are sweltering on the platform. My hair is damp against my neck, the pinafore stiff and uncomfortable. In one hand I clutch a small brown suitcase that, excepting the cross, contains everything I have in the world, all newly acquired: a bible, two sets of clothes, a hat, a black coat several sizes too small, a pair of shoes. Inside the coat is my name, embroidered by a volunteer at the Children’s Aid Society: Niamh Power.

Yes, Niamh. Pronounced “Neev.” A common enough name in County Galway, and not so unusual in the Irish tenements in New York, but certainly not acceptable anywhere the train might take me. The lady who sewed those letters several days ago tsked over the task. “I hope you aren’t attached to that name, young miss, because I can promise if you’re lucky enough to be chosen, your new parents will change it in a second.” My Niamh, my da used to call me. But I’m not so attached to the name. I know it’s hard to pronounce, foreign, unlovely to those who don’t understand—a peculiar jumble of unmatched consonants.

No one feels sorry for me because I’ve lost my family. Each of us has a sad tale; we wouldn’t be here otherwise. The general feeling is that it’s best not to talk about the past, that the quickest relief will come in forgetting. The Children’s Aid treats us as if we were born the moment we were brought in, that like moths breaking out of their cocoons we’ve left our old lives behind and, God willing, will soon launch ourselves into new ones.

Mrs. Scatcherd and Mr. Curran, a milquetoast with a brown mustache, line us up by height, tallest to shortest, which generally means oldest to youngest, with the babies in the arms of the children over eight. Mrs. Scatcherd pushes a baby into my arms before I can object—an olive-skinned, cross-eyed fourteen-month-old named Carmine (who, I can already guess, will soon answer to another name). He clings to me like a terrified kitten. Brown suitcase in one hand, the other holding Carmine secure, I navigate the high steps into the train unsteadily before Mr. Curran scurries over to take my bag. “Use some common sense, girl,” he scolds. “If you fall, you’ll crack your skulls, and then we’ll have to leave the both of you behind.”


THE WOODEN SEATS IN THE TRAIN CAR ALL FACE FORWARD EXCEPT for two groups of seats opposite each other in the front, separated by a narrow aisle. I find a three-seater for Carmine and me, and Mr. Curran heaves my suitcase onto the rack above my head. Carmine soon wants to crawl off the seat, and I am so busy trying to distract him from escaping that I barely notice as the other kids come on board and the car fills.