Orphan Train

“Ack!” Terry shrieks, clutching the rag she’s holding to her chest. “You scared the hell out of me! What are you doing here?”

“Umm, well,” Molly stammers, beginning to wonder the same thing, “I rang the buzzer a few times and then I just let myself in.”

“Vivian knew you were coming?”

Did she? “I’m not sure that we settled on an exact—”

Terry narrows her eyes and frowns. “You can’t just show up when you feel like it. She’s not available any old time.”

“I know,” Molly says, her face warming. “I’m sorry.”

“Vivian would never have agreed to start this early. She has a routine. Gets up at eight or nine, comes downstairs at ten.”

“I thought old people got up early,” Molly mumbles.

“Not all old people.” Terry puts her hands on her hips. “But that’s not the point. You broke in.”

“Well, I didn’t—”

Sighing, Terry says, “Jack may have told you I wasn’t crazy about this idea. About you doing your hours this way.”

Molly nods. Here comes the lecture.

“He went out on a limb for you, don’t ask me why.”

“I know, and I appreciate it.” Molly is aware that it’s when she’s defensive that she gets in trouble. But she can’t resist saying, “And I hope I’m proving worthy of that trust.”

“Not by showing up unannounced like this, you’re not.”

All right, she deserved that. What was it the teacher in her Legal Issues class said the other day? Never bring up a point you don’t have an answer for.

“And another thing,” Terry continues. “I was in the attic this morning. I can’t tell what you’re doing up there.”

Molly bounces on the balls of her feet, pissed that she’s being called out for this thing she can’t control and even more pissed at herself for not convincing Vivian to get rid of things. Of course it looks to Terry like Molly is just twiddling her thumbs, letting the time slide like a government worker punching a clock.

“Vivian doesn’t want to get rid of anything,” she says. “I’m cleaning out the boxes and labeling them.”

“Let me give you some advice,” Terry says. “Vivian is torn between her heart”—and here she again holds the wadded-up rag to her heart—“and her head.” As if Molly might not make the connection, she moves the rag to her head. “Letting go of her stuff is like saying good-bye to her life. And that’s tough for anybody to do. So your job is to make her. Because I promise you this: I will not be happy if you spend fifty hours up there shuffling things around with nothing to show for it. I love Jack, but . . .” She shakes her head. “Honestly, enough is enough.” At this point Terry seems to be talking to herself, or possibly to Jack, and there’s little Molly can do but bite her lip and nod to show she gets it.

After Terry grudgingly allows that it might actually be a good idea to get going earlier today, and that if Vivian doesn’t show up in half an hour maybe she’ll go up and rouse her, she tells Molly to make herself at home; she has work to do. “You’ve got something to occupy yourself with, right?” she says before heading back to the kitchen.

The book Vivian gave Molly is in her backpack. She hasn’t bothered to crack it yet, mainly because it seems like homework for a job that’s already punishment, but also because she’s rereading Jane Eyre for English class (ironically, the teacher, Mrs. Tate, handed out school-issued copies the week after Molly tried to pilfer it) and that book is huge. It’s always a shock to the system to reenter it; just to read a chapter she finds she has to slow down her breathing and go into a trance, like a hibernating bear. All her classmates are complaining about it—Brontë’s protracted digressions about human nature, the subplots about Jane’s friends at Lowood School, the long-winded, “unrealistic” dialogue. “Why can’t she just tell the freaking story?” Tyler Baldwin grumbled in class. “I fall asleep every time I start to read it. What’s that called, narcolopsy?”

This complaint evinced a chorus of agreement, but Molly was silent. And Mrs. Tate—on alert, no doubt, for the slightest spark in the damp woodpile of her class—noticed.

“So what do you think, Molly?”

Molly shrugged, not wanting to appear overeager. “I like the book.”

“What do you like about it?”

“I don’t know. I just like it.”

“What’s your favorite part?”

Feeling the eyes of the class on her, Molly shrank a little in her chair. “I don’t know.”

“It’s just a boring romance novel,” Tyler said.

“No, it isn’t,” she blurted.

“Why not?” Mrs. Tate pressed.

“Because . . .” She thought for a moment. “Jane’s kind of an outlaw. She’s passionate and determined and says exactly what she thinks.”

“Where do you get that? Because I’m definitely not feeling it,” Tyler said.

“Okay, well—like this line,” Molly said. Riffling through the book, she found the scene she was thinking of. “‘I assured him I was naturally hard—very flinty, and that he would often find me so; and that, moreover, I was determined to show him divers rugged points in my character . . . he should know fully what sort of a bargain he had made, while there was yet time to rescind it.’”

Mrs. Tate raised her eyebrows and smiled. “Sounds like someone I know.”

Now, sitting alone in a red wingback chair, waiting for Vivian to come down, Molly takes out Anne of Green Gables.

She opens to the first page:

Mrs. Rachel Lynde lived just where the Avonlea main road dipped down into a little hollow, fringed with alders and ladies’ eardrops and traversed by a brook that had its source away back in the woods of the old Cuthbert place . . .



It’s clearly a book intended for young girls, and at first Molly isn’t sure she can relate. But as she reads she finds herself caught up in the story. The sun moves higher in the sky; she has to tilt the book out of the glare and then, after several minutes, switch to the other wingback so she doesn’t have to squint.

After an hour or so, she hears the door to the hall open, and she looks up. Vivian comes into the room, glances around, focuses on Molly, and smiles, seemingly unsurprised to see her.

“Bright and early!” she says. “I like your enthusiasm. Maybe I’ll let you empty out a box today. Or two, if you’re lucky.”





Albans, Minnesota, 1929


On Monday morning I get up early and wash my face in the kitchen sink before Mr. and Mrs. Byrne are up, then braid my hair carefully and attach two ribbons I found in the scrap pile in the sewing room. I put on my cleanest dress and the pinafore, which I hung on a branch by the side of the house to dry after we did the washing on Sunday.

At breakfast—lumpy oats with no sugar—when I ask how to get to school and what time I’m expected to be there, Mrs. Byrne looks at her husband and then back at me. She pulls her dark paisley scarf tight around her shoulders. “Dorothy, Mr. Byrne and I feel that you are not ready for school.”

The oats taste like congealed animal fat in my mouth. I look at Mr. Byrne, who is bending to tie his shoelaces. His frizzy curls flop over his forehead, hiding his face.

“What do you mean?” I ask. “The Children’s Aid—”

Mrs. Byrne clasps her hands together and gives me a tight-lipped smile. “You are no longer a ward of the Children’s Aid Society, are you? We are the ones to determine what’s best for you now.”

My heart skips. “But I’m supposed to go.”

“We’ll see how you progress over the next few weeks, but for now we think it best for you to take some time to adjust to your new home.”

“I am—adjusted,” I say, warmth rising to my cheeks. “I’ve done everything you’ve asked of me. If you’re concerned I won’t have time to do the sewing . . .”

Mrs. Byrne fixes me with a steady eye, and my voice falters. “School has been in session for more than a month,” she says. “You are impossibly behind, with no chance of catching up this year. And Lord knows what your schooling was like in the slum.”

My skin prickles. Even Mr. Byrne is startled by this. “Now, now, Lois,” he says under his breath.

“I wasn’t in a—slum.” I choke out the word. And then, because she hasn’t asked, because neither of them has asked, I add, “I was in the fourth grade. My teacher was Miss Uhrig. I was in the Chorus, and we performed an operetta, ‘Polished Pebbles.’”

They both look at me.

“I like school,” I say.

Mrs. Byrne gets up and starts to stack our dishes. She takes my plate even though I haven’t finished my toast. Her actions are jerky, and the silverware clanks against the china. She runs water in the sink and dumps the plates and utensils into it with a loud clatter. Then she turns around, wiping her hands on her apron. “You insolent girl. I don’t want to hear another word. We are the ones who decide what’s best for you. Is that clear?”

And that’s the end of it. The subject of school doesn’t come up again.


SEVERAL TIMES A DAY MRS. BYRNE MATERIALIZES IN THE SEWING room like a phantom, but she never picks up a needle. Her duties, as far as I can see, consist of keeping track of orders, handing out assignments to Fanny, who then doles them out to us, and collecting the finished garments. She asks Fanny for progress reports, all the while scanning the room to be sure the rest of us are hard at work.

I am full of questions for the Byrnes that I’m afraid to ask. What is Mr. Byrne’s business, exactly? What does he do with the clothes the women make? (I could say we make, but the work I do, basting and hemming, is like peeling potatoes and calling yourself a cook.) Where does Mrs. Byrne go all day, and what does she do with her time? I can hear her upstairs now and then, but it’s impossible to know what she’s up to.

Mrs. Byrne has many rules. She scolds me in front of the other girls for minor infractions and mistakes—not folding my bed linen as tightly as I should have or leaving the door to the kitchen ajar. All doors in the house are supposed to be shut at all times, unless you’re entering or leaving. The way the house is closed off—the door to the sewing room, the doors to the kitchen and dining room, even the door at the top of the stairs—makes it a forbidding and mysterious place. At night, on my pallet in that dark hall at the foot of the stairs, rubbing my feet together for warmth, I am frightened. I’ve never been alone like this. Even at the Children’s Aid Society, in my iron bed on the ward, I was surrounded by other girls.

I’m not allowed to help in the kitchen—I think Mrs. Byrne is afraid I might steal food. And, indeed, like Fanny, I have taken to slipping a slice of bread or an apple into my pocket. The food Mrs. Byrne makes is bland and unappealing—soft gray peas from a can, starchy boiled potatoes, watery stews—and there’s never enough of it. I can’t tell if Mr. Byrne really doesn’t notice how dreadful the food is, or whether he doesn’t care—or if his mind is simply elsewhere.

When Mrs. Byrne isn’t around, Mr. Byrne is friendly. He likes to talk with me about Ireland. His own family, he tells me, is from Sallybrook, near the east coast. His uncle and cousins were Republicans in the War of Independence; they fought with Michael Collins and were there at the Four Courts building in Dublin in April of 1922, when the Brits stormed the building and killed the insurgents, and they were there when Collins was assassinated a few months later, near Cork. Collins was the greatest hero Ireland ever had, don’t you know?

Yes, I nod. I know. But I’m skeptical his cousins were there. My da used to say every Irishman you meet in America swears to have a relative who fought alongside Michael Collins.

My da loved Michael Collins. He sang all the revolutionary songs, usually loudly and out of tune, until Mam would tell him to be quiet, that the babies were sleeping. He told me lots of dramatic stories—about the Kilmainham jail in Dublin, for instance, where one of the leaders of the 1916 uprising, Joseph Plunkett, married his sweetheart Grace Gifford in the tiny chapel just hours before being executed by firing squad. Fifteen were executed in all that day, even James Connolly, who was too ill to stand, so they strapped him to a chair and carried him out into the courtyard and riddled his body with bullets. “Riddled his body with bullets”—my da talked like that. Mam was always shushing him, but he waved her off. “It’s important they know this,” he said. “It’s their history! We might be over here now, but by God, our people are over there.”

Mam had her reasons for wanting to forget. It was the 1922 treaty, leading to the formation of the Free State, that pushed us out of Kinvara, she said. The Crown Forces, determined to crush the rebels, raided towns in County Galway and blew up railway lines. The economy was in ruins. Little work was to be had. My da couldn’t find a job.

Well, it was that, she said, and the drink.

“You could be my daughter, you know,” Mr. Byrne tells me. “Your name—Dorothy . . . we always said we’d give to our own child someday, but alas it didn’t come to pass. And here you are, red hair and all.”

I keep forgetting to answer to Dorothy. But in a way I’m glad to have a new identity. It makes it easier to let go of so much else. I’m not the same Niamh who left her gram and aunties and uncles in Kinvara and came across the ocean on the Agnes Pauline, who lived with her family on Elizabeth Street. No, I am Dorothy now.


“DOROTHY, WE NEED TO TALK,” MRS. BYRNE SAYS AT DINNER ONE evening. I glance at Mr. Byrne, who is studiously buttering a baked potato.

“Mary says that you are not—how should I put this?—a particularly quick learner. She says that you seem—resistant? Defiant? She’s not sure which.”

“It’s not true.”

Mrs. Byrne’s eyes blaze. “Listen closely. If it were up to me, I would contact the committee immediately and return you for a replacement. But Mr. Byrne convinced me to give you a second chance. However—if I hear one more complaint about your behavior or comportment, you will be returned.”

She pauses and takes a sip of water. “I am tempted to attribute this behavior to your Irish blood. Yes, it is true that Mr. Byrne is Irish—indeed, that’s why we gave you a chance at all—but I would also point out that Mr. Byrne did not, as he might have, marry an Irish girl, for good reason.”

The next day Mrs. Byrne comes into the sewing room and says she needs me to go on an errand into the center of town, a mile’s walk. “It’s not complicated,” she says testily when I ask for directions. “Weren’t you paying attention when we drove you here?”

“I can go with her this first time, ma’am,” Fanny says.

Mrs. Byrne does not look happy about this. “Don’t you have work to do, Fanny?”

“I just finished this pile,” Fanny says, placing a veined hand on a stack of ladies’ skirts. “All hemmed and ironed. My fingers are sore.”

“All right, then. This once,” Mrs. Byrne says.

We walk slowly, on account of Fanny’s hip, through the Byrnes’ neighborhood of small houses on cramped lots. At the corner of Elm Street we turn left onto Center and cross Maple, Birch, and Spruce before turning right onto Main. Most of the houses seem fairly new and are variations of the same few designs. They’re painted different colors, landscaped neatly with shrubs and bushes. Some front walkways go straight to the door, and others meander in a curvy path. As we get closer to town we pass multi-family dwellings and some outlying businesses—a gas station, a corner shop, a nursery stocked with flowers the colors of autumn leaves: rust and gold and crimson.

“I can’t imagine why you didn’t memorize this route on the drive home,” Fanny says. “My, girl, you are slow.” I look at her sideways and she gives me a sly smile.

The general store on Main Street is dimly lit and very warm. It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust. When I look up, I see cured hams hanging from the ceiling and shelves and shelves of dry goods. Fanny and I pick up several packs of sewing needles, some pattern papers, and a bolt of cheesecloth, and after she pays, Fanny takes a penny from the change she gets and slides it toward me across the counter. “Get yourself a stick of candy for the walk back.”

The jars of hard candy sticks lined up on a shelf hold dazzling combinations of colors and flavors. After deliberating for a long moment, I choose a swirl of pink watermelon and green apple.

I unwrap my candy stick and offer to break off a piece, but Fanny refuses it. “I don’t have a sweet tooth anymore.”

“I didn’t know you could outgrow that.”

“It’s for you,” she says.

On the way back we walk slowly. Neither of us, I think, is eager to get there. The hard, grooved candy stick is both sweet and sour, a jolt of flavor so intense I almost swoon. I suck it so that it tapers to a point, savoring each taste. “You’ll have to get rid of that before we reach the house,” Fanny says. She doesn’t need to explain.

“Why does Mary hate me?” I ask when we’re nearly there.

“Pish. She doesn’t hate you, child. She’s scared.”

“Of what?”

“What do you think?”

I don’t know. Why would Mary be scared of me?

“She’s sure you’re going to take her job,” Fanny says. “Mrs. Byrne holds her money tight in her fist. Why would she pay Mary to do the work you can be trained to do for nothing?”

I try not to betray any emotion, but Fanny’s words sting. “That’s why they picked me.”

She smiles kindly. “You must know that already. Any girl who can hold a needle and thread would’ve sufficed. Free labor is free labor.” As we climb the steps to the house, she says, “You can’t blame Mary for being afraid.”

From then on, instead of worrying about Mary, I concentrate on the work. I focus on making my stitches identically sized and spaced. I carefully iron each garment until it’s smooth and crisp. Each piece of clothing that moves from my basket to Mary’s—or one of the other women’s—gives me a feeling of accomplishment.

But my relationship with her doesn’t improve. If anything, as my own work gets better, she becomes harsher and more exacting. I place a basted skirt in my basket and Mary snatches it, looks at it closely, rips the stitches out, and tosses it at me again.


THE LEAVES TURN FROM ROSE-TINGED TO CANDY-APPLE RED TO A dull brown, and I walk to the outhouse on a spongy, sweet-smelling carpet. One day Mrs. Byrne looks me up and down and asks if I have any other clothes. I’ve been alternating between the two dresses I came with, one blue-and-white checked and one gingham.

“No,” I say.

“Well, then,” she says, “you will make yourself some.”

Later that afternoon she drives me to town, one foot hesitantly on the gas pedal and the other, at erratic intervals, on the brake. Proceeding forward in a jerky fashion we end up eventually in front of the general store.

“You may choose three different fabrics,” she says. “Let’s see—three yards each?” I nod. “The cloth must be sturdy and inexpensive—that’s the only kind that makes sense for a . . .” She pauses. “A nine-year-old girl.”

Mrs. Byrne leads me over to a section filled with bolts of fabric, directing me to the shelf with the cheaper ones. I choose a blue-and-gray checked cotton, a delicate green print, and a pink paisley. Mrs. Byrne nods at the first two choices and grimaces at the third. “Mercy, not with red hair.” She pulls out a bolt of blue chambray.

“A modest bodice is what I’m thinking, with a minimum of frill. Simple and plain. A gathered skirt. You can wear that pinafore on top when you’re working. Do you have more than one pinafore?”

When I shake my head, she says, “We have plenty of ticking fabric in the sewing room. You can make it from that. Do you have a coat? Or a sweater?”

“The nuns gave me a coat, but it’s too small.”

After the fabric is measured, cut, wrapped in brown paper, and tied with twine, I follow Mrs. Byrne down the street to a women’s clothes shop. She heads straight for the sale rack at the back and finds a mustard-colored wool coat, several sizes too big for me, with shiny black buttons. When I put it on, she frowns. “Well, it’s a good deal,” she says. “And there’s no sense in getting something you’ll outgrow in a month. I think it’s fine.”

I hate the coat. It’s not even very warm. But I’m afraid to object. Luckily, there’s a large selection of sweaters on clearance, and I find a navy blue cable-knit and an off-white V-neck in my size. Mrs. Byrne adds a bulky, too-large corduroy skirt that’s 70 percent off.

That evening, at dinner, I wear my new white sweater and skirt. “What’s that thing around your neck?” Mrs. Byrne says, and I realize that she is talking about my necklace, which is usually hidden by my high-necked dresses. She leans closer to look.

“An Irish cross,” I say.

“It’s very odd-looking. What are those, hands? And why does the heart have a crown?” She sits back in her chair. “That looks sacrilegious to me.”

I tell her the story of how my gram was given this necklace for her First Communion and passed it down to me before I came to America. “The hands clasped together symbolize friendship. The heart is love. And the crown stands for loyalty,” I explain.

She sniffs, refolds the napkin in her lap. “I still think it’s odd. I have half a mind to make you take it off.”

“Come now, Lois,” Mr. Byrne says. “It’s a trinket from home. No harm to it.”

“Perhaps it’s time to put away those old-country things.”

“It’s not bothering anyone, is it?”

I glance over at him, surprised that he’s sticking up for me. He winks at me as if it’s a game.