Orphan Train

several miles, the truck makes a turn, brakes squealing, and climbs up a steep
     driveway before grinding to a stop. We jump out of the truck bed and line up, then
     walk to the schoolhouse, a small clapboard building with a bell in front. A young
     woman in a cornflower-blue dress, a lavender scarf wrapped around her neck, is standing
     at the front door. Her face is pretty and lively: big brown eyes and a wide smile.
     Her shiny brown hair is pulled back with a white ribbon.
    “Welcome, children. Proceed in an orderly fashion, as always.” Her voice is high and
     clear. “Good morning, Michael . . . Bertha . . . Darlene,” she says, greeting each
     child by name. When I reach her, she says, “Now—I haven’t met you yet, but I heard
     you were coming. I’m Miss Larsen. And you must be—”
    I say “Niamh” at the same time that she says “Dorothy.” Seeing the expression on my
     face, she says, “Did I get that wrong? Or do you have a nickname?”
    “No, ma’am. It’s just . . .” I feel my cheeks redden.
    “What is it?”
    “I used to be Niamh. Sometimes I forget what my name is. Nobody really calls me anything
     at my new home.”
    “Well, I can call you Niamh if you like.”
    “It’s all right. Dorothy is fine.”
    She smiles, studying my face. “As you wish. Lucy Green?” she says, turning to the
     girl behind me. “Would you mind showing Dorothy to her desk?”
    I follow Lucy into an area lined with hooks, where we hang up our coats. Then we enter
     a large, sunny room smelling of wood smoke and chalk that contains an oil stove, a
     desk for the teacher, rows of benches and work spaces, and slate blackboards along
     the east and south walls, with posters of the alphabet and multiplication tables above.
     The other walls are made up of large windows. Electric lights shine overhead, and
     low shelves are filled with books.
    When everyone is seated, Miss Larsen pulls a loop on a string and a colorful map of
     the world unfurls on the wall. At her request I go up to the map and identify Ireland.
     Looking at it closely, I can find County Galway and even the city center. The village
     of Kinvara isn’t named, but I rub the place where it belongs, right under Galway on
     the jagged line of the west coast. There is New York—and here’s Chicago. And here’s
     Minneapolis. Hemingford County isn’t on the map, either.
    Including me, there are twenty-three of us between the ages of six and sixteen. Most
     of the kids are from farms themselves and other rural homes and are learning to read
     and write at all ages. We smell unwashed—and it’s worse with the older ones who have
     hit puberty. There’s a heap of rags, a few bars of soap, and a carton of baking soda
     in the indoor lavatory, Miss Larsen tells me, in case you want to freshen up.
    When Miss Larsen talks to me, she bends down and looks me in the eye. When she asks
     questions, she waits for my answer. She smells of lemons and vanilla. And she treats
     me like I’m smart. After I take a test to determine my reading level, she hands me
     a book from the shelf by her desk, a hardcover filled with small black type called Anne of Green Gables, without pictures, and tells me she will ask what I think of it when I’m done.
    You’d think with all these kids it would be chaotic, but Miss Larsen rarely raises
     her voice. The driver, Mr. Post, chops wood, tends the stove, sweeps the leaves from
     the front walkway, and does mechanical repairs on the truck. He also teaches mathematics
     up to geometry, which he says he never learned because that year was locusts and he
     was needed on the farm.
    At recess Lucy invites me to play games with a group of them—Annie Annie Over; Pump,
     Pump, Pull Away; Ring Around the Rosie.
    When I get out of the truck at four thirty and have to walk the long route back to
     the cabin, my footsteps are slow.
    T HE FOOD THIS FAMILY SUBSISTS ON IS LIKE NOTHING I’ VE EVER eaten before. Mr. Grote leaves at dawn with his rifle and rod and brings home squirrels
     and wild turkeys, whiskery fish, now and then a white-tailed deer. He returns in the
     late afternoon covered in pine-tree gum. He brings home red squirrels most of all,
     but they aren’t as good as the larger fox and gray squirrels, which he calls bushy
     tails. The fox squirrels are so big that some of them look like orange cats. They
     chirp and whistle, and he tricks them into showing themselves by clicking two coins
     together, which