Orphan Train

As with Dutchy and Carmine on the train, this little cluster of women has become a kind of family to me. Like an abandoned foal that nestles against cows in the barnyard, maybe I just need to feel the warmth of belonging. And if I’m not going to find that with the Byrnes, I will find it, however partial and illusory, with the women in the sewing room.

BY JANUARY, I AM LOSING SO MUCH WEIGHT THAT MY NEW DRESSES, the ones I made myself, swim on my hips. Mr. Byrne comes and goes at odd hours, and I barely see him. We have less and less work. Fa

One day in early February, Mrs. Byrne enters the sewing room silently and unexpectedly. She seems to have stopped grooming. She’s worn the same dress all week, and her bodice is soiled. Her hair is lank and greasy, and she has a sore on her lip.

She asks the Singer girl Sally to step out into the hall, and several minutes later Sally returns to the room with red-rimmed eyes. She picks up her belongings in silence.

A few weeks later Mrs. Byrne comes for Bernice. They go out into the hall, and then Bernice returns and gathers her things.

After that it’s just Fa

It’s a windy afternoon in late March when Mrs. Byrne slips into the room and asks for Mary. I feel sorry for Mary then—despite her mea

When Mary and Mrs. Byrne leave the room, Fa

A week later, the doorbell rings. Fa

We hear Mrs. Byrne rustle down the stairs, undo the heavy locks, open the squeaky door. We hear her talking to a man in the hall.

The door to the sewing room opens, and I jump a little. In comes a heavyset man in a black felt hat and a gray suit. He has a black mustache and jowls like a basset hound.

“This the girl?” he asks, pointing a sausagey finger at me.

Mrs. Byrne nods.

The man takes off his hat and sets it on a small table by the door. Then he pulls a pair of eyeglasses out of the breast pocket of his overcoat and puts them on, perched partway down his bulbous nose. He takes a piece of folded paper out of another pocket and opens it with one hand. “Let’s see. Niamh Power.” He pronounces it “Nem.” Peering over his glasses at Mrs. Byrne, he says, “You changed her name to Dorothy?”

“We thought the girl should have an American name.” Mrs. Byrne makes a strangled sound that I interpret as a laugh. “Not legally, of course,” she adds.

“And you did not change her surname.”

“Of course not.”

“You weren’t considering adoption?”

“Mercy, no.”

He looks at me over his glasses, then back at the paper. The clock ticks loudly above the mantelpiece. The man folds the paper and puts it back in his pocket.

“Dorothy, I am Mr. Sorenson. I’m a local agent of the Children’s Aid Society, and as such I oversee the placement of homeless train riders. Oftentimes the placements work out as they should, and everyone is content. But now and then, unfortunately”—he takes his glasses off and slips them back into his breast pocket—“things don’t work out.” He looks at Mrs. Byrne. She has, I notice, a jagged run in her beige stockings, and her eye makeup is smeared. “And we need to procure new accommodations.” He clears his throat. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

I nod, though I’m not sure I do.

“Good. There’s a couple in Hemingford—well, on a farm outside of that town, actually—who’ve requested a girl about your age. A mother, father, and four children. Wilma and Gerald Grote.”

I turn to Mrs. Byrne. She is gazing off somewhere in the middle distance. Though she’s never been particularly kind to me, her willingness to abandon me comes as a shock. “You don’t want me anymore?”

Mr. Sorenson looks back and forth between us. “It’s a complicated situation.”

As we’re talking, Mrs. Byrne drifts over to the window. She pulls aside the lace curtain and gazes out at the street, at the skim-milk sky.

“I’m sure you have heard this is a difficult time,” Mr. Sorenson continues. “Not only for the Byrnes but for a lot of people. And—well, their business has been affected.”

With a sudden movement, Mrs. Byrne drops the curtain and wheels around. “She eats too much!” she cries. “I have to padlock the refrigerator. It’s never enough!” She puts her palms over her eyes and runs past us, out into the hallway and up the stairs, where she slams the door at the top.

We are silent for a moment, then Fa

Mr. Sorenson clears his throat. “Well,” he says, “perhaps this will be for the best for all concerned.” He fixes on me again. “The Grotes are good country people, from what I hear.”

“Four children?” I say. “Why do they want another?”

“As I understand it—and I could be wrong; I haven’t had the pleasure to meet them yet, this is all hearsay, you understand—but what I have gleaned is that Mrs. Grote is once again with child, and she is looking for a mother’s helper.”

I ponder this. I think of Carmine, of Maisie. Of the twins, sitting at our rickety table on Elizabeth Street waiting patiently for their apple mash. I imagine a white farmhouse with black shutters, a red barn in the back, a post-and-rail fence, chickens in a coop. Anything has to be better than a padlocked refrigerator and a pallet in the hall. “When do they want me?”

“I’m taking you there now.”

Mr. Sorenson says he’ll give me a few minutes to collect my things and goes out to his car. In the hall I pull my brown suitcase from the back of the closet. Fa

When I’m done, we go back in the sewing room and Fa

“Won’t you get in trouble for giving me these?” I ask her.

“Pish,” she says. “I don’t even care.”

I do not say good-bye to the Byrnes. Who knows where Mr. Byrne is, and Mrs. Byrne doesn’t come downstairs. But Fa

Mr. Sorenson’s vehicle, parked in the driveway behind the Model A, is a dark-green Chrysler truck. He opens the passenger door for me, then goes around to the other side. The interior smells of tobacco and apples. He backs out of the driveway and points the car to the left, away from town and toward a direction I’ve never been. We follow Elm Street until it ends, then turn right down another quiet street, where the houses are set back farther from the sidewalks, until we come to an intersection and turn onto a long, flat road with fields on both sides.