Orphan Train

pervasive as sea-sickness), our feet blistering in the new shoes Gram
     had bought before we left but Mam didn’t let us wear until we walked on American soil—and
     wondered what we had gotten ourselves into. Except for this sorry reproduction of
     an Irish pub before us, nothing in this new land bore the slightest resemblance to
     the world we knew.
    Mark Flannery had received a letter from his sister and was expecting us. He hired
     our da as a dishwasher and took us to a neighborhood like no place I’d ever seen—tall
     brick buildings packed together on narrow streets teeming with people. He knew of
     an apartment for rent, ten dollars a month, on the third floor of a five-story tenement
     on Elizabeth Street. After he left us at the door, we followed the Polish landlord,
     Mr. Kaminski, down the tiled hallway and up the stairs, struggling in the heat and
     the dark with our bags while he lectured us on the virtues of cleanliness and civility
     and industriousness, all of which he clearly suspected we lacked. “I have no trouble
     with the Irish, as long as you stay out of trouble,” he told us in his booming voice.
     Glancing at Da’s face, I saw an expression I’d never seen before, but instantly understood:
     the shock of realization that here, in this foreign place, he’d be judged harshly
     as soon as he opened his mouth.
    The landlord called our new home a railroad apartment: each room leading to the next,
     like railway cars. My parents’ tiny bedroom, with a window facing the back of another
     building, was at one end; the room I shared with the boys and Maisie was next, then
     the kitchen, and then the front parlor, with two windows overlooking the busy street.
     Mr. Kaminski pulled a chain hanging from the pressed-metal kitchen ceiling, and light
     seeped from a bulb, casting a wan glow over a scarred wooden table, a small stained
     sink with a faucet that ran cold water, a gas stove. In the hall, outside the apartment
     door, was a lavatory we shared with our neighbors—a childless German couple called
     the Schatzmans, the landlord told us. “They keep quiet, and will expect you to do
     the same,” he said, frowning as my brothers, restless and fidgety, made a game of
     shoving each other.
    Despite the landlord’s disapproval, the sweltering heat, the gloomy rooms, and the
     cacophony of strange noises, so unfamiliar to my country ears, I felt another swell
     of hope. As I looked around our four rooms, it did seem that we were off to a fresh
     start, having left behind the many hardships of life in Kinvara: the damp that sank
     into our bones, the miserable, cramped hut, our father’s drinking—did I mention that?—that
     threw every small gain into peril. Here, our da had the promise of a job. We could
     pull a chain for light; the twist of a knob brought running water. Just outside the
     door, in a dry hallway, a toilet and bathtub. However modest, this was a chance for
     a new beginning.
    I don’t know how much of my memory of this time is affected by my age now and how
     much is a result of the age I was then—seven when we left Kinvara, nine on that night
     when Maisie wouldn’t stop crying, that night that, even more than leaving Ireland,
     changed the course of my life forever. Eighty-two years later, the sound of her crying
     still haunts me. If only I had paid closer attention to why she was crying instead
     of simply trying to quiet her. If only I had paid closer attention.
    I was so afraid that our lives would fall apart again that I tried to ignore the things
     that frightened me most: our da’s continued love affair with drink, which a change
     in country did not change; Mam’s black moods and rages; the incessant fighting between
     them. I wanted everything to be all right. I held Maisie to my chest and whispered
     in her ear— there’s none of them can sing so sweet, my singing bird, as you —trying to silence her. When she finally stopped, I was only relieved, not understanding
     that Maisie was like a canary in a mine, warning us of danger, but it was too late.

New York City, 1929
    Three days after the fire, Mr. Schatzman wakes me from sleep to tell me that he and Mrs. Schatzman have figured out a perfect solution (yes, he says “perfect,” parr-fec, in his German accent; I learn, in this instant, the terrible power of superlatives).
     They will take me to the Children’s Aid Society, a place staffed by friendly social
     workers who keep the children in