Orphan Train

help you in return.”
    She focuses on my face, but her eyes are flat. “What’s her age?”
    “Nine years old.”
    “I have enough kids. What I need is somebody who can help me out.”
    “It’s all part of the deal,” Mr. Sorenson says. “You feed and clothe Dorothy and make
     sure she gets to school, and she will earn her keep by doing chores around the house.”
     He pulls his glasses and the sheet of paper out of his various pockets, then puts
     his glasses on and tilts his head back to read it. “I see there’s a school four miles
     down. And there’s a ride she can catch at the post road, three-quarter mile from here.”
     He takes his glasses off. “It’s required that Dorothy attend school, Mrs. Grote. Do
     you agree to abide by that?”
    She crosses her arms, and for a moment it looks as if she’s going to refuse. Maybe
     I won’t have to stay here, after all!
    Then the front door creaks open. We turn to see a tall, thin, dark-haired man wearing
     a plaid shirt with rolled-up sleeves and grungy overalls. “The girl will go to school,
     whether she wants to or not,” he says. “I’ll make sure of it.”
    Mr. Sorenson strides over and extends his hand. “You must be Gerald Grote. I’m Chester
     Sorenson. And this is Dorothy.”
    “Nice to meet you.” Mr. Grote clasps his hand, nods over toward me. “She’ll do just
     fine.”
    “All right, then,” Mr. Sorenson says, clearly relieved. “Let’s make it official.”
    There’s paperwork, but not a lot. It’s only a few minutes before Mr. Sorenson has
     retrieved my bag from the truck and is driving away. I watch him through the cracked
     front window with the baby, Nettie, whimpering on my hip.

Hemingford County, Minnesota, 1930
    “Where will I sleep?” I ask Mr. Grote when it gets dark.
    He looks at me, hands on his hips, as if he hasn’t considered this question. He gestures
     toward the hallway. “There’s a bedroom yonder,” he says. “If you don’t want to sleep
     with the others, I guess you can sleep out here on the couch. We don’t stand on ceremony.
     I been known to doze off on it myself.”
    In the bedroom, three old mattresses without sheets are laid across the floor, a carpet
     of bony springs. Mabel, Gerald Jr., and Harold sprawl across them, tugging a tattered
     wool blanket and three old quilts from each other. I don’t want to sleep here, but
     it’s better than sharing the couch with Mr. Grote. In the middle of the night one
     kid or another ends up under the crook of my arm or spooned against my back. They
     smell earthy and sour, like wild animals.
    D ESPAIR INHABITS THIS HOUSE . M RS . G ROTE DOESN ’ T WANT ALL these kids, and neither she nor Mr. Grote really takes care of them. She sleeps all
     the time, and the children come and go from her bed. There’s brown paper tacked over
     the open window in that room, so it’s as dark as a hole in the ground. The children
     burrow in next to her, craving warmth. Sometimes she lets them crawl in and sometimes
     she pushes them out. When they’re denied a spot, their wails penetrate my skin like
     tiny needles.
    There’s no running water, and no electricity or indoor plumbing here. The Grotes use
     gas lights and candles, and there’s a pump and an outhouse in the backyard, wood stacked
     on the porch. The damp logs in the fireplace make the house smoky and give off a tepid
     heat.
    Mrs. Grote barely looks at me. She sends a child out to be fed or calls me to fix
     her a cup of coffee. She makes me nervous. I do what I’m told and make an effort to
     avoid her. The children sniff around, trying to get used to me, all except for two-year-old
     Gerald Jr., who takes to me right away, follows me like a puppy.
    I ask Mr. Grote how they found me. He says he saw a flyer in town—homeless children
     for distribution. Wilma wouldn’t get out of bed, and he didn’t know what else to do.
    I feel abandoned and forgotten, dropped into misery worse than my own.
    M R . G ROTE SAYS HE ’ LL NEVER GET ANOTHER JOB IF HE CAN MANAGE it. He plans to live off the land. He was born and raised in the woods; it’s the
     only life he knows or cares to know. He built this house with his own two hands, he
     says, and his goal is to be entirely self-sufficient. He has an old goat in the backyard
     and a mule and half a dozen chickens; he can feed his family on what he can hunt and
     find in the woods and on a handful of seeds, along with the goat’s milk and eggs from
     the