The Orphan Collector

by Ellen Marie Wiseman

  “My husband has job, but it pays very little.”

  “I understand,” Bernice said. “And I know that can make things challenging. Would it make a difference if I could get you some extra food?”

  Yasemin gave her an embarrassed nod, her eyes glassy.

  “All right. I’m happy to help. Let me take your boys back to our Red Cross center, and I can get them a hot meal and some new clothes. After that I’ll send them home with additional food, which has been donated by the city.”

  Yasemin chewed on her thumbnail and glanced over her shoulder.

  Sensing her hesitation, Bernice gave her a reassuring smile. “If you’d rather not,” she said, “I understand. You don’t know me and I’m asking to take your children. But just so you know, I’m not sure how much longer the city will be helping in response to the aftermath of the epidemic. I’d bring some food back to you myself, but I have too many other families to visit before the day is over.”

  Yasemin stopped chewing her thumbnail and sighed, her shoulders dropping in submission. “I send my oldest with you,” she said. “His name is Hasan.”

  “Very good,” Bernice said. “But if you send both boys, they can carry twice as much food back home.”

  Yasemin shook her head. “No, the other is too young. Too little.”

  “I understand.”

  Yasemin called over her shoulder for Hasan, then looked back at Bernice. “How long he will be gone?”

  “He’ll be home by suppertime,” Bernice said. “You have my word.”

  * * *

  Standing in the well-appointed foyer of the Orphan Society of Philadelphia on Market Street, Bernice grew impatient waiting for someone in charge to take the Ukrainian boy off her hands. She had never waited this long at any of the other orphanages, and she was beginning to worry there was some kind of problem. There weren’t any nuns here, which made her think she should come here more often, but not if it was going to take forever.

  A child’s muffled voice, soft and crying, and the firm voice of a woman floated down from upstairs. Bernice moved toward the staircase, straining to hear, but couldn’t make out any words. She went back to where the Ukrainian boy sat on the floor playing jacks, oblivious to the fact that this might be his new home. His name was Sava and he was seven years old. His mother was back in their cramped rooms on Tasker Street, waiting for him to return with food and extra clothing. He looked up at her and smiled.

  “Would you like to play?” he said.

  She shook her head.

  “Are you certain?” he said. “It is a new game to me and I like it very much. Maybe you will too.”

  She shook her head again and turned toward the window. Despite his dark hair, Sava’s deep-set eyes, his masculine nose, even his dimpled chin reminded her of her late husband, and what she imagined Wallis might have looked like at that age. It was uncanny and more than a little unsettling. The sooner she was free of him the better. Otherwise she might change her mind and take him home. And how would she explain that?

  Outside the window, a horse-drawn wagon full of children—girls and boys of all ages—pulled over to the side of the road and stopped. A boy wearing a newsboy cap stood in the wagon bed and looked up at the orphanage. An older girl held a toddler in her lap. Another boy had his arm around a little girl who looked like his sister. While the driver waited, a man climbed down from the passenger seat, motioned for the boy in the cap to sit down, and started up the sidewalk. He took off his hat and hurried through the door into the foyer, bringing with him the smell of burning wood and rank cigars. A door slammed upstairs, and footsteps clicked along the hall and started down the staircase. Bernice, Sava, and the man looked up the steps at the same time, waiting. A thin woman in a gray dress came down the steps with a boy of about ten wearing a starched white shirt, brown jacket, and pressed trousers. He gripped a small, tattered suitcase with both hands, holding it in front of him like a shield. Tears glazed his red eyes and dampened his freshly scrubbed face. When they reached the bottom, the woman rested her hand on his trembling shoulder.

  “Good morning, Mr. Kent,” she said to the man.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Cromwell,” Mr. Kent said. “Are we ready?”

  “Yes,” Mrs. Cromwell said. “I’ve explained to Barry that a new family is waiting for him and he needs to be on his best behavior. Isn’t that right, Barry?”

  Barry bit his lip and nodded.

  “Good,” Mr. Kent said. “Let’s be off then, shall we? The train leaves in thirty minutes.” He put his hat back on and headed toward the door. Mrs. Cromwell gave Barry a gentle shove and he followed Mr. Kent across the foyer.

  “Don’t forget to mind your manners!” Mrs. Cromwell called after him.

  After they were gone, Mrs. Cromwell approached Bernice with a warm smile. “May I help you?”

  “Yes, please,” Bernice said. She glanced over her shoulder at Sava. “But first, may we speak privately?”

  “Of course,” Mrs. Cromwell said, and led her to one corner of the room.

  Bernice lowered her voice. “His mother asked me to bring him here because she no longer has the means to care for him. He’s not aware he’s staying.”

  Mrs. Cromwell nodded. “I understand.”

  “Do you have room for him?”

  “Yes,” Mrs. Cromwell said. “Your timing is perfect. As you just saw, one of our beds was recently vacated.”

  Bernice nodded. “If you don’t mind me asking, where were the children in the wagon going?”

  Mrs. Cromwell beamed proudly. “I’d be happy to tell you,” she said. “A number of years ago, the Children’s Aid Society started a wonderful program to help homeless, abandoned, and orphaned children by transporting them out of the big cities and placing them with rural farm families. The children in that wagon have families waiting for them out in Michigan. They’ll be treated as natural-born children in the matter of schooling, clothing, and training, and given one hundred dollars when they turn twenty-one.”

  Bernice raised her eyebrows. “They have families waiting? How is that possible?”

  Mrs. Cromwell clasped her hands at her waist. “Well, not all of them. Some arrangements were made ahead of time, of course, but posters have been put up to let the townspeople know the trains are arriving. Then an open house will be held, where families can choose from the rest of the children.”

  Bernice couldn’t believe what she was hearing. It was one thing to put children in orphanages in an effort to get them away from the bad influences of their immigrant parents. Sending them away by train to rural farm families would be even better. “Babies too?” she said.

  Mrs. Cromwell nodded. “Sometimes, yes.”

  Bernice glanced at Sava. “What about him?” she said. “Is there time to take him to the station before the train leaves?”

  Mrs. Cromwell furrowed her brow. “No, not this time,” she said. “But in the future, perhaps. Does he speak English?”

  “Yes,” Bernice said.

  “That’s helpful,” Mrs. Cromwell said. “We only send white, English-speaking children on the trains. The less desirables are too hard to place.”

  Bernice tried to hide her disappointment. “I see,” she said. Of course foreign children were hard to place, especially those who didn’t look American. It made perfect sense, but she was hoping she’d stumbled upon an easier way to get immigrants away from their parents. She went over to Sava, who was still playing jacks. Mrs. Cromwell followed.

  “Sava,” Bernice said. “Say hello to Mrs. Cromwell.”

  Sava stopped playing and looked up. “Hello.”

  Mrs. Cromwell squatted beside him. “That’s one of my son’s favorite games,” she said.

  Sava grinned at her, his chestnut eyes dancing. “How old is he?”

  “Ten.”

  “Maybe we can play together sometime,” Sava said. “If I come to visit again?”

  “Maybe,” Mrs. Cromwell said. “But right now, I have a question for you.�
��

  “Yes?”

  “Are you hungry?”

  Sava nodded eagerly.

  Mrs. Cromwell straightened. “Then come with me,” she said. “We’ll see what we have cooking in the kitchen today. I think it might be bean loaf. Do you like bean loaf?”

  Sava shrugged, picked up his jacks, and pushed them into his pocket.

  Mrs. Cromwell gave Bernice a quick wink, then headed toward a door at the back of the foyer.

  Sava started after her, then stopped and looked back at Bernice. “You come too?” he said.

  Bernice shook her head. “No, I’ll wait here,” she said.

  Sava shrugged again and followed Mrs. Cromwell. Suddenly he stopped, ran back to Bernice, and held out his hand, offering his prized jacks. “You want to play with these until I come back?”

  A thick lump formed in Bernice’s throat. She tried to say “no thank you,” but couldn’t find her voice. Instead, she smiled and took the jacks. Sava grinned up at her, then hurried after Mrs. Cromwell, who was holding the kitchen door open for him. He waved at Bernice, then disappeared into the orphanage. When they were gone, Bernice set the jacks on a chair and ran out of the building.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  BERNICE

  Climbing the porch steps of the two-story brick house in the upper-class neighborhood of North Philadelphia, her third house of the morning, Bernice couldn’t stop thinking about the problem she’d had with a Hungarian Jewish boy the previous day. Thanks to her uniform, sending immigrant children away by train had turned out to be easier than she thought. The conductors never questioned her story about the children being sent out for adoption, and for the most part, the children seemed excited about the adventure. If they were homeless, she told them they were being adopted and someone would be waiting for them on the other end. If they thought they were picking up food for their families and returning home, she told them their parents would be at the station when they got back. Doubling her efforts to collect donations to pay for the tickets had been the biggest problem so far, until yesterday, when she picked up a pair of Hungarian brothers, one ten and one six.

  After a long walk through a cold, driving rain, she led the boys into the train station, looking forward to going home afterward, to dry clothes, the twins, and a hot cup of tea. She might even splurge and pay a hansom cab to take her there. Having memorized the departure schedule of any train that went to the same out-of-state towns that accepted the other orphan trains, she bought two tickets for train number six, leaving for Ohio in twenty minutes. As expected, the locomotive waited on the tracks, billows of steam hissing from the iron pistons. A wave of leaden smoke churned from the stack and collided with the low sky, cloaking the crowded platform in a sooty, damp haze.

  “Why did we come to this place?” the older boy said. “Where is the food to take home to our parents?”

  “It’s at a farm outside the city,” Bernice said, holding out their tickets. “They will have fresh milk, eggs, bread, and cold-storage potatoes, but you have to pick it up and bring it back.”

  The younger boy took the tickets and started toward the train, but the older one grabbed him by the shoulder, yanked the tickets from his grasp, and handed them back to her. “We will go nowhere,” he said. “You told my anya we would be returning home right away.”

  Bernice clenched her jaw. It was the first time any of the children had questioned her, and she was in no mood to argue. “You will be,” she said. “As soon as you get back from the farm.”

  The boy shook his head. “No,” he said. “You said nothing to my anya about a train.” He grabbed his brother by the hand and turned to leave, pushing his way through the crowd.

  Caught between anger and panic, Bernice didn’t know what to do. If the boy told someone she had picked them up and was trying to put them on a train, they might call the police. Plus, she’d already bought the tickets. “Wait!” she called after them. “Let me explain.”

  The boy stopped and glared back at her, anger darkening his features.

  She caught up to them and made a sad face, feigning sympathy. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I wasn’t supposed to tell you this, but you need to get on the train if you want to see your family again. They’re packing to move to Pittsburgh as we speak, and they’ll pick you up at the station there.”

  The older boy’s face fell, his anger replaced by fear and confusion. His little brother stared up at him with worried eyes.

  “Someone is taking your parents by car,” she continued. “They knew how much you boys would have wanted to ride in the automobile, but there wasn’t enough room for both of you and their belongings too. And they didn’t want to disappoint either of you, so they—”

  “But the tickets,” the older boy said. “We have no money to pay...”

  “A donation from the Red Cross,” she said.

  He looked doubtful.

  “If I were you,” she said, trying to sound friendly. “I’d much rather ride the train anyway. Haven’t you heard the saying, ‘Keep away from the fellow who owns an automobile, he’ll take you far in his motor car, too darn far from your pa and ma, if his forty horsepower goes sixty miles per hour, say goodbye forever, goodbye forever’?”

  The boy shook his head, his mouth set in a stubborn line.

  Her patience was growing thin. “If you don’t get on this train,” she said, “I’ll have no choice but to take you to an orphanage until your parents can come get you. Do you think they’ll have enough money to travel back here anytime soon?”

  The boy’s eyes grew glassy and he shook his head again.

  “Then you’d better get on the train. You don’t want to take the chance that you’ll never see your mother and father again, do you?”

  He gazed down at his little brother with concern, thinking and uncertain, then reluctantly took the tickets. Misery clouded his face. He glanced at Bernice one more time, then, without another word, led his brother over to a passenger car and climbed on.

  Thinking about it now, Bernice wondered what the boy thought when the train kept going, past the Pittsburgh station, out of the state of Pennsylvania, and beyond. She pictured him watching out the window, his chest filling with panic, at the same time trying to act like nothing was wrong to protect his younger brother. It made her think about Daniel putting her in a box, how frightened she was about being sent away, how devastated to think her parents wanted to get rid of her. A twinge of quilt tightened in her chest when she thought about causing the same kind of pain. Then she reminded herself that the boys would be better off away from their immigrant parents. And surely one of the rural farm families would be happy to have two boys instead of one.

  She shook her head to clear it and realized she’d been standing on the porch of the two-story brick house in a daze. How long had she been standing there? Had she knocked on the door yet? She looked around, trying to remember. A white porch swing hung from the rafters, swaying slightly in the cold breeze. Stone pots sat on each side of the door, filled with dirt and the dried remnants of flower stems. The name on the mailbox read: WINSTON. Bernice took a deep breath, reminded herself why she was there, and knocked on the door. Part of her hoped no one was home. Her feet hurt and she was already thinking about taking the rest of the day off. She’d certainly earned it.

  Then the door handle turned and the door opened. A young couple stood looking at her, their red-rimmed eyes and pasty complexions suggesting they might be suffering from the flu. She hoped they weren’t going to ask her to come in and take care of them.

  “You’re too late,” the man said. “He’s gone.”

  “I’m sorry,” Bernice said. “But I’m not sure what you’re talking—”

  “What took you so long?” the woman wailed, her face contorting in agony. She leaned against her husband, one trembling hand over her mouth.

  He wrapped an arm around her to hold her up. “It’s not her fault, darling,” he said in a gentle voice. “He was too sick. There was nothing
anyone could have done.”

  “I’m very sorry, Mr. and Mrs. Winston,” Bernice said. “But I have to ask, who was sick?”

  “My baby boy,” Mrs. Winston cried. “Our son. He’s dead.” She buried her face in her hands and started to collapse.

  Bernice went rigid, the memory of losing Wallis slamming into her like a runaway train. The world went gray and she reached for the doorframe to steady herself. She had come to this middle-class neighborhood looking for money and had found death instead. More than anything she wanted to run. But nurses didn’t run.

  Mr. Winston half carried, half dragged his sobbing wife to a cushioned bench in the foyer, propped her up with a ruffled pillow, and knelt beside her. “I’m sorry you’ve come all this way for nothing,” he said to Bernice. “No one can help us now.”

  Bernice swallowed, trying to find her voice. “My sincerest sympathy for your loss,” she managed. “I know how hard it is to lose a child. I lost my son too.”

  Mrs. Winston lifted her head to look at Bernice, her eyes like bleeding holes in her skull. “We tried everything,” she said in a weak voice. “We gave him Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup, onion syrup, chloride of lime, kerosene, whiskey. Nothing helped.”

  Bernice took a deep breath and, on wobbly legs, went over to the bench and knelt in front of the distraught mother. “Is there anything I can do for you?” she said. “Someone I can get? A family member, perhaps? Or a priest?”

  Mrs. Winston shook her head frantically, her chin quivering.

  “Not yet,” Mr. Winston said. “It’s too soon. He only just left us, not ten minutes ago.”

  Mrs. Winston scraped the heels of her hands across her eyes, leaving red marks on her cheeks. “He was so beautiful,” she said, beaming through her tears. “So perfect.”

  Bernice nodded, forcing a sympathetic smile. “How old?”

  “Only three months,” Mr. Winston said.