Orphan Train

blooming crocus in a green plastic pot covered with foil that was silver on one
     side, bright yellow on the other. Every Easter she and her mother planted those crocuses
     near the fence beside the driveway, and soon enough a whole cluster of them, white
     and purple and pink, sprang annually like magic from the bald April earth.
    She remembers third grade at the Indian Island School, where she learned that the
     name Penobscot is from Panawahpskek, meaning “the place where the rocks spread out”
     at the head of the tribal river, right where they were. That Wabanaki means “Dawnland,”
     because the tribes live in the region where the first light of dawn touches the American
     continent. That the Penobscot people have lived in the territory that became Maine
     for eleven thousand years, moving around season to season, following food. They trapped
     and hunted moose, caribou, otters, and beavers; they speared fish and clams and mussels.
     Indian Island, just above a waterfall, became their gathering place.
    She learned about Indian words that have been incorporated into American English,
     like moose and pecan and squash, and Penobscot words like kwai kwai, a friendly greeting, and woliwoni, thank you. She learned that they lived in wigwams, not teepees, and that they made
     canoes from the bark of a single white birch tree, removed in one piece so as not
     to kill it. She learned about the baskets the Penobscots still make out of birch bark,
     sweet grass, and brown ash, all of which grow in Maine wetlands, and, guided by her
     teacher, even made a small one herself.
    She knows that she was named for Molly Molasses, a famous Penobscot Indian born the
     year before America declared its independence from England. Molly Molasses lived into
     her nineties, coming and going from Indian Island, and was said to possess m’teoulin, power given by the Great Spirit to a few for the good of the whole. Those who possess
     this power, her dad said, could interpret dreams, repel disease or death, inform hunters
     where to find game, and send a spirit helper to harm their enemies.
    But she didn’t learn until this year, in Mr. Reed’s class, that there were over thirty
     thousand Wabanakis living on the East Coast in 1600 and that 90 percent of them had
     died by 1620, almost entirely a result of contact with settlers, who brought foreign
     diseases and alcohol, drained resources, and fought with the tribes for control of
     the land. She didn’t know that Indian women had more power and authority than white
     women, a fact detailed in captivity stories. That Indian farmers had greater skill
     and bounty, and more successful yields, than most Europeans who worked the same land.
     No, they weren’t “primitive”—their social networks were highly advanced. And though
     they were called savages, even a prominent English general, Philip Sheridan, had to
     admit, “We took away their country and their means of support. It was for this and
     against this that they made war. Could anyone expect less?”
    Molly had always thought the Indians rebelled like guerrillas, scalping and pillaging.
     Learning that they attempted to negotiate with the settlers, wearing European-style
     suits and addressing Congress in the assumption of good faith—and were repeatedly
     lied to and betrayed—enrages her.
    In Mr. Reed’s classroom there’s a photo of Molly Molasses taken near the end of her
     life. In it she sits ramrod straight, wearing a beaded, peaked headdress and two large
     silver brooches around her neck. Her face is dark and wrinkled and her expression
     is fierce. Sitting in the empty classroom after school one day, Molly stares at that
     face for a long time, looking for answers to questions she doesn’t know how to ask.
    O N THE NIGHT OF HER EIGHTH BIRTHDAY , AFTER ICE - CREAM SANDWICHES and a Sara Lee cake her mother brought home from the Mini-Mart, after making a fervent
     wish, eyes squeezed shut as she blew out the tiny pink-striped birthday candles (for
     a bicycle, she remembers, pink with white and pink streamers like the one the girl
     across the street got for her birthday several months earlier), Molly sat on the couch
     waiting for her dad to come home. Her mom paced back and forth, punching redial on
     the handset, muttering under her breath, how could you forget your only daughter’s birthday? But he didn’t pick up. After a while they gave up and went to bed.
    An hour or so later she was woken by a