Orphan Train

You will be cooperative and listen
     to instructions. You will be respectful of your chaperones. You will treat the train
     car respectfully and will not damage it in any way. You will encourage your seatmates
     to behave appropriately. In short, you will make Mr. Curran and me proud of your behavior.”
     Her voice rises as we settle in our seats. “When you are allowed to step off the train,
     you will stay within the area we designate. You will not wander off alone at any time.
     And if your behavior proves to be a problem, if you cannot adhere to these simple
     rules of common decency, you will be sent straight back to where you came from and
     discharged on the street, left to fend for yourselves.”
    The younger children appear bewildered by this litany, but those of us older than
     six or seven had already heard a version of it several times at the orphanage before
     we left. The words wash over me. Of more immediate concern is the fact that Carmine
     is hungry, as am I. We had only a dry piece of bread and a tin cup of milk for breakfast,
     hours ago, before it was light. Carmine is fussing and chewing on his hand, a habit
     that must be comforting to him. (Maisie sucked her thumb.) But I know not to ask when
     food is coming. It will come when the sponsors are ready to give it, and no entreaties
     will change that.
    I tug Carmine onto my lap. At breakfast this morning, when I dropped sugar into my
     tea, I slipped two lumps into my pocket. Now I rub one between my fingers, crushing
     it to granules, then lick my index finger and stick it in the sugar before popping
     it in Carmine’s mouth. The look of wonder on his face, his delight as he realizes
     his good fortune, makes me smile. He clutches my hand with both of his chubby ones,
     holding on tight as he drifts off to sleep.
    Eventually I, too, am lulled to sleep by the steady rumble of the clicking wheels.
     When I wake, with Carmine stirring and rubbing his eyes, Mrs. Scatcherd is standing
     over me. She is close enough that I can see the small pink veins, like seams on the
     back of a delicate leaf, spreading across her cheeks, the downy fur on her jawbone,
     her bristly black eyebrows.
    She stares at me intently through her small round glasses. “There were little ones
     at home, I gather.”
    I nod.
    “You appear to know what you’re doing.”
    As if on cue, Carmine bleats in my lap. “I think he’s hungry,” I tell her. I feel
     his diaper rag, which is dry on the outside but spongy. “And ready for a change.”
    She turns toward the front of the car, gesturing back at me over her shoulder. “Come
     on, then.”
    Holding the baby against my chest, I rise unsteadily from my seat and sway behind
     her up the aisle. Children sitting in twos and threes look up with doleful eyes as
     I pass. None of us knows where we are headed, and I think that except for the very
     youngest, each of us is apprehensive and fearful. Our sponsors have told us little;
     we know only that we are going to a land where apples grow in abundance on low-hanging
     branches and cows and pigs and sheep roam freely in the fresh country air. A land
     where good people—families—are eager to take us in. I haven’t seen a cow, or any animal,
     for that matter, except a stray dog and the occasional hardy bird, since leaving County
     Galway, and I look forward to seeing them again. But I am skeptical. I know all too
     well how it is when the beautiful visions you’ve been fed don’t match up with reality.
    Many of the children on this train have been at the Children’s Aid for so long that
     they have no memories of their mothers. They can start anew, welcomed into the arms
     of the only families they’ll ever know. I remember too much: my gram’s ample bosom,
     her small dry hands, the dark cottage with a crumbling stone wall flanking its narrow
     garden. The heavy mist that settled over the bay early in the morning and late in
     the afternoon, the mutton and potatoes Gram would bring to the house when Mam was
     too tired to cook or we didn’t have money for ingredients. Buying milk and bread at
     the corner shop on Phantom Street—Sraid a’ Phuca, my da called it in Gaelic—so called
     because the stone houses in that section of town were built on cemetery grounds. My
     mam’s chapped lips and fleeting smile, the melancholy that filled our home in Kinvara
     and traveled with us across the ocean to take up permanent residence in the dim corners
     of our tenement