Orphan Train

“And the other question—?”
    “The other question?” I’m barely keeping up.
    “Do you go to church, dear?” Mrs. Murphy prompts.
    “Oh, right. The family I lived with were not churchgoing people,” I answer honestly,
     though in truth I have not been to church since the chapel at the Children’s Aid Society,
     and before that only with Gram. I remember clasping her hand as we walked to St. Joseph’s,
     right in the center of Kinvara, a small church made of stone with jewel-toned stained-glass
     windows and dark oak pews. The smell of incense and lilies, the candles lit for loved
     ones passed away, the throaty intonations of the priest, and the majestic trumpeting
     of the organ. My da said he was allergic to religion, it never did anybody any good;
     and when Mam got grief from the neighbors on Elizabeth Street about not going to services,
     she’d say, “You try packing up a swarm of kids on a Sunday morning when one has a
     fever, one has the colic, and your husband’s passed out in the bed.” I remember watching
     other Catholics, girls in their Communion dresses and boys in their spitshined shoes,
     walking down the street below our apartment, their mothers pushing prams and fathers
     strolling along beside.
    “She’s an Irish girl, Viola, so I suspect she’s a Catholic,” Mr. Nielsen says to his
     wife.
    I nod.
    “You may be a Catholic, child,” Mr. Nielsen says—the first thing he has said to me
     directly—“but we are Protestant. And we will expect you to go to Lutheran services
     with us on Sundays.”
    It’s been years since I’ve attended services of any kind, so what does it matter?
     “Yes, of course.”
    “And you should know that we will send you to school in town here, a short walk from
     our home—so you won’t attend Miss Larsen’s classes any longer.”
    Miss Larsen says, “I believe Dorothy was about to outgrow the school-house, anyway,
     she’s such a smart girl.”
    “And after school,” Mr. Nielsen says, “you will be expected to help in the store.
     We’ll pay you an hourly wage, of course. You know about the store, Dorothy, do you
     not?”
    “It’s sort of a general-interest, all-purpose place,” Mrs. Nielsen says.
    I nod and nod and nod. So far they’ve said nothing that raises an alarm. But I don’t
     feel the spark of connection with them, either. They don’t seem eager to learn about
     me, but then again, few people are. I get the sense that my abandonment, and the circumstances
     that brought me to them, matter little to them, compared to the need I might fill
     in their lives.
    The following morning, at 9:00 A.M ., Mr. Nielsen pulls up in a blue-and-white Studebaker with silver trim and raps on
     the front door. Mrs. Murphy has been so generous that I now have two suitcases and
     a satchel filled with clothes and books and shoes. As I’m closing my bags Miss Larsen
     comes to my room and presses Anne of Green Gables into my hands. “It’s my own book, not the school’s, and I want you to have it,” she
     says, hugging me good-bye.
    And then, for the fourth time since I first set foot in Minnesota over a year ago,
     everything I possess is loaded into a vehicle and I am on my way to somewhere new.

Hemingford, Minnesota, 1930–1931
    The Nielsens’ home is a two-story colonial painted yellow with black shutters and a long slate walkway leading to the front door. It sits on a quiet street several
     blocks from the center of town. Inside, the floor plan is a circle: a sunny living
     room on the right leads into the kitchen in the back, which connects to a dining room
     and back to the foyer.
    Upstairs I have my own large room, painted pink, with a window overlooking the street,
     and even my own bathroom, with a large porcelain sink and pink tiles and a cheerful
     white curtain with pink piping.
    Mr. and Mrs. Nielsen take things for granted that I’ve never dared to dream of. All
     the rooms have steel air vents with black-painted scrollwork. Even when no one is
     home, the water heater is on, so that when they come home after work, they don’t have
     to wait for the water to heat up. A woman named Bess cleans the house and does the
     washing once a week. The refrigerator is stocked with milk and eggs and cheese and
     juice, and Mrs. Nielsen notices what I like to eat and buys more of it—oats for breakfast,
     for instance, and fruits, even exotic ones like oranges and bananas. I find aspirin
     and store-bought toothpaste in the