Orphan Train

apartment in New York.
    And now here I am on this train, wiping Carmine’s bottom while Mrs. Scatcherd hovers
     above us, shielding me with a blanket to hide the procedure from Mr. Curran, issuing
     instructions I don’t need. Once I have Carmine clean and dry, I sling him over my
     shoulder and make my way back to my seat while Mr. Curran distributes lunch pails
     filled with bread and cheese and fruit, and tin cups of milk. Feeding Carmine bread
     soaked in milk reminds me of the Irish dish called champ I often made for Maisie and
     the boys—a mash of potatoes, milk, green onions (on the rare occasion when we had
     them), and salt. On the nights when we went to bed hungry, all of us dreamed of that
     champ.
    After distributing the food and one wool blanket to each of us, Mr. Curran announces
     that there is a bucket and a dipper for water, and if we raise our hands we can come
     forward for a drink. There’s an indoor toilet, he informs us (though, as we soon find
     out, this “toilet” is a terrifying open hole above the tracks).
    Carmine, drunk on sweet milk and bread, splays in my lap, his dark head in the crook
     of my arm. I wrap the scratchy blanket around us. In the rhythmic clacking of the
     train and the stirring, peopled silence of the car, I feel cocooned. Carmine smells
     as lovely as a custard, the solid weight of him so comforting it makes me teary. His
     spongy skin, pliable limbs, dark fringed lashes—even his sighs make me think (how
     could they not?) of Maisie. The idea of her dying alone in the hospital, suffering
     painful burns, is too much to bear. Why am I alive, and she dead?
    In our tenement there were families who spilled in and out of each other’s apartments,
     sharing child care and stews. The men worked together in grocery stores and blacksmith
     shops. The women ran cottage industries, making lace and darning socks. When I passed
     by their apartments and saw them sitting together in a circle, hunched over their
     work, speaking a language I didn’t understand, I felt a sharp pang.
    My parents left Ireland in hopes of a brighter future, all of us believing we were
     on our way to a land of plenty. As it happened, they failed in this new land, failed
     in just about every way possible. It may have been that they were weak people, ill
     suited for the rigors of emigration, its humiliations and compromises, its competing
     demands of self-discipline and adventurousness. But I wonder how things might have
     been different if my father was part of a family business that gave him structure
     and a steady paycheck instead of working in a bar, the worst place for a man like
     him—or if my mother had been surrounded by women, sisters and nieces, perhaps, who
     could have provided relief from destitution and loneliness, a refuge from strangers.
    In Kinvara, poor as we were, and unstable, we at least had family nearby, people who
     knew us. We shared traditions and a way of looking at the world. We didn’t know until
     we left how much we took those things for granted.

New York Central Train, 1929
    As the hours pass I get used to the motion of the train, the heavy wheels clacking in their grooves, the industrial hum under my seat. Dusk softens the sharp
     points of trees outside my window; the sky slowly darkens, then blackens around an
     orb of moon. Hours later, a faint blue tinge yields to the soft pastels of dawn, and
     soon enough sun is streaming in, the stop-start rhythm of the train making it all
     feel like still photography, thousands of images that taken together create a scene
     in motion.
    We pass the time looking out at the evolving landscape, talking, playing games. Mrs.
     Scatcherd has a checkers set and a bible, and I thumb through it, looking for Psalm
     121, Mam’s favorite: I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. My help cometh
     from the Lord, which made heaven and earth . . .
    I’m one of few children on the train who can read. Mam taught me all my letters years
     ago, in Ireland, then taught me how to spell. When we got to New York, she’d make
     me read to her, anything with words on it—crates and bottles I found in the street.
    “Donner brand car-bonated bev—”
    “Beverage.”
    “Beverage. LemonKist soda. Artifickle—”
    “Artificial. The ‘c’ sounds like ‘s.’”
    “Artificial color. Kitric—citric acid added.”
    “Good.”
    When I became more proficient, Mam went into the shabby trunk beside her bed