Orphan Train

ribbon and strings
     of sparkling beads up from the storage room in the cellar. Mr. Nielsen has his two
     delivery boys, Adam and Thomas, drive to the outskirts of town to cut a tree for the
     window, and we spend an afternoon putting swags of greenery with red velveteen bows
     over the store entrance and decorating the tree, wrapping empty boxes in foil paper
     and tying them with flocked ribbon and silk cording.
    As we work together, Mrs. Nielsen tells me bits and pieces about her life. She is
     Swedish, though you wouldn’t know it—her people were dark-eyed gypsies who came to
     Gothamberg from central Europe. Her parents are dead, her siblings scattered. She
     and Mr. Nielsen have been married for eighteen years, since she was twenty-five and
     he was in his early thirties. They thought they couldn’t have children, but about
     eleven years ago she got pregnant. On July 7, 1920, their daughter, Vivian, was born.
    “What is your birth date again, Dorothy?” Mrs. Nielsen asks.
    “April twenty-first.”
    Carefully she threads silver ribbon through the tree branches in the back, ducking
     her head so I can’t see her face. Then she says, “You girls are almost the same age.”
    “What happened to her?” I venture. Mrs. Nielsen has never mentioned her daughter before
     and I sense that if I don’t ask now, I may not get the chance.
    Mrs. Nielsen ties the ribbon to a branch and bends down to find another. She attaches
     the end of the new ribbon to the same branch to make it look continuous, and begins
     the process of weaving it through.
    “When she was six, she developed a fever. We thought it was a cold. Put her to bed,
     called the doctor. He said we should let her rest, give her plenty of fluids, the
     usual advice. But she didn’t get better. And next thing we knew it was the middle
     of the night and she was delirious, out of her mind, really, and we called the doctor
     again and he looked down her throat and saw the telltale spots. We didn’t know what
     it was, but he did.
    “We took her to St. Mary’s Hospital in Rochester, and they quarantined her. When they
     told us there was nothing they could do, we didn’t believe them. But it was just a
     matter of time.” She shakes her head, as if to clear the thought.
    I think about how hard it must have been for her, losing a daughter. And I think of
     my brothers and Maisie. We have a lot of sadness inside us, Mrs. Nielsen and I. I
     feel sorry for the both of us.
    O N C HRISTMAS E VE , IN A SOFT SNOWFALL , THE THREE OF US WALK to church. We light candles on the twenty-foot tree to the right of the altar, all
     the fair-haired Lutheran children and parents and grandparents singing with songbooks
     open, the reverend preaching a sermon as elemental as a story in a child’s picture
     book, a lesson about charity and empathy. “People are in dire need,” he tells the
     congregation. “If you have something to give, give. Rise to your best selves.”
    He talks about some families in crisis: hog farmer John Slattery lost his right arm
     in a threshing accident; they need canned goods and any manpower you can spare while
     they try to salvage the farm . . . Mrs. Abel, eighty-seven years old, blind now in
     both eyes and all alone; if you can see it in your heart to spare a few hours a week
     it would be greatly appreciated . . . a family of seven, the Grotes, in dire straits;
     the father out of work, four young children and another born prematurely a month ago,
     now sickly, the mother unable to get out of bed . . .
    “How sad,” Mrs. Nielsen murmurs. “Let’s put together a package for that poor family.”
    She doesn’t know my history with them. They’re just another distant calamity.
    After the service we walk back through quiet streets. The snow has stopped and it’s
     a clear, cold night; the gas lamps cast circles of light. As the three of us approach
     the house I see it as if for the first time—the porch light shining, an evergreen
     wreath on the door, the black iron railing and neatly shoveled walkway. Inside, behind
     a curtain, a lamp in the living room glows. It’s a pleasant place to return to. A
     home.
    E VERY OTHER T HURSDAY AFTER SUPPER , M RS . N IELSEN AND I JOIN Mrs. Murphy and six other ladies at a quilting group. We meet in the spacious parlor
     room of the wealthiest lady in the group, who lives in a grand Victorian on the outskirts
     of town. I am the only child in a room full of women and am immediately