Orphan Train

from her collection of rose-patterned china in
     the glass-front, along with matching saucers and small plates, and sets each piece
     carefully on a starched linen placemat. Irish lace, hanging in the windows, filters
     the afternoon light, softening the lines on her face.
    From my perch on the cushioned chair I see the wooden footrest with its floral needlepoint
     cover in front of her rocker, the small shelf of books—prayer books and poetry, mainly—by
     the stairs. I see Gram singing and humming as she pours the tea. Her strong hands
     and kind smile. Her love for me.
    Now, tossing and turning on this damp, sour-smelling mattress, I try to focus on my
     perfect day, but these memories lead to other, darker thoughts. Mrs. Grote, back there
     moaning in her bedroom, isn’t so different from my own mam. Both of them overburdened
     and ill-equipped, weak by nature or circumstance, married to strong-willed, selfish
     men, addicted to the opiate of sleep. Mam expected me to cook and clean and take care
     of Maisie and the boys, relied on me to hear her troubles, called me naive when I
     insisted things would get better, that we would be all right. “You don’t know,” she’d
     say. “You don’t know the half of it.” One time, not long before the fire, she was
     curled on her bed in the dark and I heard her crying and went in to comfort her. When
     I put my arms around her, she sprang up, flinging me away. “You don’t care about me,”
     she snapped. “Don’t pretend you do. You only want your supper.”
    I shrank back, my face flaming as if I’d been struck. And in that moment something
     changed. I didn’t trust her anymore. When she cried, I felt numb. After that, she
     called me heartless, unfeeling. And maybe I was.
    A T THE BEGINNING OF J UNE , WE ALL COME DOWN WITH LICE , EVERY last one of us, even Nettie, who has barely four hairs on her head. I remember lice
     from the boat—Mam was terrified of us kids getting it, and she checked our heads every
     day, quarantining us when we heard about outbreaks in other cabins. “Worst thing in
     the world to get rid of,” she said, and told us about the epidemic at the girls’ school
     in Kinvara when she was a boarder. They shaved every head. Mam was vain about her
     thick, dark hair and refused to cut it ever again. We got it on the boat, just the
     same.
    Gerald won’t stop scratching, and when I inspect his scalp I find it’s teeming. I
     check the other two and find bugs on them as well. Every surface in the house probably
     has lice on it, the couch and chairs and Mrs. Grote. I know what an ordeal this will
     be: no more school, my hair gone, hours of labor, washing the bedsheets . . .
    I feel an overwhelming urge to flee.
    Mrs. Grote is lying in bed with the baby. Propped on two soiled pillows, the blanket
     pulled up to her chin, she just stares at me when I come in. Her eyes are sunk in
     their sockets.
    “The children have lice.”
    She purses her lips. “Do you?”
    “Probably, since they do.”
    She seems to think about this for a moment. Then she says, “You brung the parasite
     into this house.”
    My face colors. “No, ma’am, I don’t think so.”
    “They came from somewhere,” she says.
    “I think . . .” I start, but it’s hard to get the words out. “I think you might need
     to check the bed. And your hair.”
    “You brung it!” she says, flinging back the covers. “Come in here, acting all high
     and mighty, like you’re better than us . . .”
    Her nightgown is bunched up around her belly. I see a dark triangle of fur between
     her legs and turn away, embarrassed.
    “Don’t you dare leave!” she shrieks. She snatches baby Nettie, wailing, off the bed
     and tucks her under one arm, pointing at the bed with the other. “Sheets need to be
     boiled. Then you can start going through the kids’ hair with a comb. I told Gerald
     it was too much, bringing a vagrant in this house when Lord knows where she’s been.”
    The next five hours are even more miserable than I imagined—boiling pots of water
     and emptying it into a big tub without scalding any of the children, pulling every
     blanket and sheet and piece of clothing I can find into the water and scrubbing them
     with lye soap, then pushing the sheets through the hand wringer. I’m barely strong
     enough to load and turn the crank, and my arms ache with the effort.
    When Mr. Grote comes home he talks to his wife, who’s camped on the living room