Orphan Train

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.
    “D OROTHY , WE NEED TO TALK ,” M RS . B YRNE 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