Orphan Eleven

by Gennifer Choldenko

  Lucy ran closer to the train.

  “All aboard,” the conductor called. She watched the last three passengers board.

  Then the whistle blew. A minute later the train began to move. Chickety-chickety-chickety along the tracks.

  Lucy’s feet were heavy in her shoes. Her heart heavier still.

  Then she took a deep breath and tried to think what to do.

  She’d go back to Saachi’s. Nico, Eugene, Jabo, Grace, Bunk, Nitty-Bitty, Baby, Jenny, even Bald Doris were family now. She’d look for Dilly when they performed in Chicago, as she had planned before.

  Nico had gotten her chances back. Grace had given her an apprenticeship. Jabo would know what had gone wrong with Diavolo and how she could make things right.

  All she needed was money for the train ticket to New Brownsville, where Saachi’s would be going tonight. She went to talk to the man behind the counter. But the mean voice in her head came back.

  Dilly doesn’t care about you. Nobody does.

  Lucy knew this was Miss Holland and Matron Mackinac in her head. But they weren’t here. The voice was hers now.

  There was a line behind her. No time to write. She took a wobbly breath but could force no words out.

  A shadow passed over the ticket man’s face.

  He sees how stupid you are.

  Lucy dug her nails into her leg. She could ride an elephant. She’d made Grace proud of her and she was Bunk’s favorite OOFO. “How…how much…to take the tr-train to New Brownsville?” she asked.

  “I thought you were going to Chicago?” the ticket man said.

  “I was j-just…curious.”

  The ticket man nodded. “$1.20. It leaves at six.”

  “Thank you.” The words pounded out strong and clear.

  * * *

  —

  In the train station in Chicago, there had been people who sang or played music for money. They had placed an upside-down hat in front of them and passersby had dropped coins inside.

  Lucy didn’t have a hat, but she took off the apron the cook had given her, folded it into a square in front of her, and wrote, Need money to go home.

  Then she began to sing. She sang the songs Dilly liked from the radio at the Sokoloffs and coins began to drop noiselessly into the apron.

  The coins came faster as she found her rhythm. And faster still when she began to dance. All the while, she kept one eye out for Dilly just in case, and another for Mackinac.

  It was five-fifteen.

  Then five-thirty. Now the nickels were clinking against each other.

  She counted the money. Just ten cents to go. She kept singing, watching the people walking by. But no more coins dropped in.

  April 24, 1939

  Home for Friendless Children

  Riverport, Iowa

  Dear Mrs. Mackinac,

  I am all broken into pieces. I had every hope of finding my Lucy. At least now I know she passed away peacefully.

  But if there is another girl who is searching for her sister, please tell her the truth from the start. It isn’t right to get a girl’s hopes up so she believes with everything inside her that she will see her sister again.

  Thank you for giving me the doll I made for my sister. It is the only thing I have from her. Mrs. Three Eyes and I will get on the train to Chicago more brokenhearted than you can ever know.

  Yours truly,

  Dilly Sauvé

  April 24, 1939

  Dear Lucy,

  Mrs. Sokoloff would say I’m crazy, meshugga, for writing to a person who has passed away. But there are so many things I wanted to say to you & this is the only way I can do it now.

  You were the best sister & I am sorry I bossed you around and fought with you about who got the good chair. When we lived together I didn’t appreciate how special it is to have a sister.

  I have been thinking on what I loved best about you & I think it was how excited you got about every little thing & how you would read out loud to me & how you skipped everywhere. Mama would tell you to settle down and you would for a little while and then before we knew it you would be skipping and hopping again.

  I don’t know what makes a person matter to another person. But there have never been people who matter to me like you and Mama. I’m terribly wretched to be without you both. This life is cold as stone. I can’t believe I didn’t find you until it was too late.

  Love,

  Dilly

  April 25, 1939

  Dear Mrs. Mackinac,

  I am sitting here on a bench outside the train station, because I heard a beggar girl singing inside. Her voice made me feel so broke up, I couldn’t set one foot in there.

  I’m early for my train. It goes roundabout to Chicago. The ticket was cheaper that way. By the time the train is here, I’m hoping the beggar girl will be gone. It causes me terrible pain to hear a girl sing who sounds so much like my Lucy did.

  But this is not why I am writing. I went to the cemetery after I saw you. I wanted to say goodbye to my Lucy, but I couldn’t find where she was buried. I met a man tending the flowers. I asked him if he knew where Lucy’s grave was. He did not.

  I walked all over reading tombstones. I found gravestone markers that read UNKNOWN ORPHAN, but no headstone said Lucy Sauvé.

  My Lucy was not an UNKNOWN ORPHAN. She was Lucy Simone Sauvé, and I want her to have a proper marker that says her name so all the world will know my Lucy was here.

  I have checked with an engraver and he has let me know how much $$ this will cost. I will go home & earn the $$ to send to him. But I will need your help to know which is Lucy’s grave. Please could you send me her exact grave location as soon as possible.

  Yours truly,

  Dilly Sauvé

  It was ten minutes to six when a man in a gray suit tossed in the last dime.

  “Th-thank you!” Lucy cried. Then she rolled the money inside the apron and took off for the ticket line. The ticket-counter man winked at her when she gave him the money with her note that said New Brownsville.

  “You got a lovely voice. My brother’s the postman. He told me about an orphan sang so beautiful he bought her stamps out of his own pocket. ‘Voice like an angel,’ he said. That wouldn’t be you, would it?”

  Lucy grinned.

  “Well, aren’t you the one. Thanks for making my afternoon, little missy. Platform seven. Better hurry. Leaves in eight minutes.”

  Lucy raced to platform seven and got in line behind a lady carrying two large suitcases and a man with a big trunk. She was waiting patiently for them to get on when she spotted Mackinac and Grundy in their gray hats and gray sweaters.

  Lucy ducked behind the train. When she peeked out, she saw that the passengers with all the luggage had filed up the stairs. Then she ran around the train and scrambled aboard.

  Inside, Lucy found a seat in the back and slid down low, her heart beating loud as Nitty-Bitty’s supper gong. Had Mackinac or Grundy seen her? Would they come on board and drag her off?

  If only the train would leave now, then she’d be safe.

  Lucy peeked out the window.

  No Mackinac or Grundy. But there was a woman in a red coat walking from the platform. She was tall and slender like Dilly, and she had the Sauvés’ red hair!

  Lucy’s heart swelled. She rushed down the aisle and through the vestibule and leapt onto the platform.

  “Dilly!” She chased after the woman in red. “D-Dilly!” Her legs pumped, blood rushing through her.

  Dilly was inside the lobby by the time Lucy caught her and grabbed her arm.

  Dilly spun around.

  But the lady had blue eyes and glasses and a large nose.

  She wasn’t Dilly.

  “Excuse m-me. S-s-sorry,”
Lucy mumbled. “I thought you w-were someone else.”

  The train!

  Lucy sprinted back to platform seven, slamming past the ticket man, who was out of his ticket cage. “Be careful—those orphanage ladies are looking for you,” he called after her.

  At the platform, her train was moving.

  “Wait! Wait! I h-have a ticket!” Lucy ran after the train, waving her ticket in the air.

  Lucy’s fingers grazed the metal side of the train, but she couldn’t get a grip. The train picked up speed. She ran faster.

  Down the tracks the train flew.

  Lucy could not keep up. All she could do was watch it go.

  Lucy ran back to the lobby looking for the nice ticket seller to explain what happened. Maybe she could exchange her ticket for a ticket on a later train. But coming out of the ladies’ room was Mackinac.

  Lucy careened around a pole and leapt over a folded-up newspaper, her feet pounding the floor. She was bolting toward the front entrance, when she saw the suitcase.

  It was old and brown and held together by a belt because one brass clasp was missing. The corner was dented, and there was a gash on the side where an iron had fallen on it.

  Lucy’s heart caught in her throat.

  The suitcase looked like the one that had been in the Sokoloffs’ apartment. It had held their precious phonograph records. She and Dilly had been allowed to look through them and pick one to play.

  It was only a suitcase. There were lots of suitcases like this. Lucy tried to make herself run, but her breath caught and her legs froze.

  An old man in a rumpled suit stood in the ticket line, then a businessman with a briefcase, then a woman in a worn brown coat. The woman’s hair was tucked under a hat, but something about her rounded shoulders was achingly familiar. Lucy tried to call out, but her throat had closed up.

  She swallowed hard. “D-Dilly.”

  The woman didn’t turn around.

  But now Mackinac had seen Lucy. She charged toward her from one direction, Grundy from another.

  Lucy’s feet were planted. She grabbed the lady’s coat sleeve.

  The lady wheeled around.

  Lucy gasped.

  “Mama!”

  Mama with deep circles under her eyes.

  Then she recognized Dilly’s blue eyes and slender nose. Dilly had grown up to look like Mama.

  Dilly jumped from the window, the ticket still on the counter. She wrapped her long bony arms around Lucy, her shoulders trembling.

  “Excuse me,” Matron Mackinac barked, pushing her big chest forward. “But that orphan is a ward of the state.”

  Dilly’s eyes nearly popped out of her face.

  “You! You told me she was dead, Mrs. Mackinac!” Dilly roared. “How dare you!”

  “Evidently we were mistaken,” Mrs. Mackinac said. “But that doesn’t mean we can allow—”

  “She’s not an orphan. She’s my sister, and no one is going to take her from me! Stay away. Do you hear me?”

  “Well,” Matron Mackinac huffed. “You don’t have the proper paperwork to take her.”

  “You’ve lied to me. You’ve tricked me. You’ve sent me on one wild-goose chase after another. You’ve given me nothing but tsuris.”

  “I beg your pardon,” Matron Mackinac said.

  “You got too many children to feed at that orphanage. Those girls are thin as matchsticks. Why would you want to keep my sister from me?” Dilly stood between Lucy and Mackinac.

  “Excuse me. We’ve done nothing of the kind. We do the best we can with our meager resources.”

  “No—no you don’t!” Lucy shouted. “You spend all the money on the matrons’ food.”

  “Lucy. Children are to be seen and not heard,” Mackinac hissed. “See”—she pointed an accusing finger at Dilly—“we try to raise our children to be respectful, but people like you come along allowing back talk and bad manners.”

  “You are nothing b-but mean,” Lucy said.

  Mackinac’s small gray eyes turned dark. She sidestepped Dilly to slap Lucy.

  But Lucy ducked and Mackinac missed.

  Matron Grundy stepped up, her spine straight and her gray bun pulled tight. “Miss Sauvé,” she said, “we don’t have any proof you are who you say you are. We can’t let our girls go with just any person—”

  “She’s…D-Dilly! My sister!” Lucy cried.

  “Did you think she wouldn’t know her own sister?” Dilly asked.

  The ticket seller joined the small crowd around them. “These are nice girls, Mrs. Mackinac. You let them be.”

  “Go on back and take care of the ones who need you,” a man with a gray mustache and thick glasses said.

  “Anybody can see by looking at them they’re sisters,” the ticket seller said.

  “They’ve got each other. The older one can take care of the two of them. Can’t you, dear?” a lady in a blue hat asked Dilly.

  “Yes, ma’am. I make enough money to take good care of the both of us,” Dilly said proudly.

  “There now, Hannah Mackinac. Your work here is done,” the lady with the blue hat said. “You go on back to the orphans who need you.”

  Matrons Mackinac and Grundy stood rooted to the ground. “I’m afraid you don’t understand the full extent of the problem—” Mackinac began.

  “I tell you one thing,” the man in the business suit interrupted, “taxpayers pay for that orphanage. No sense in having a girl there who doesn’t need to be.”

  “It’s a blessing these sisters have each other, dearie. I don’t see what else there is to know,” the lady with the blue hat said.

  Mackinac crossed her arms, her neck set.

  “Hannah,” Matron Grundy whispered, trying to catch Mackinac’s eye.

  Mackinac ignored her.

  Matron Grundy offered a mealy smile to the townspeople and walked outside. Mackinac stood firm, but the people in the station had formed a ring around Lucy and Dilly. They were not about to back down.

  “This isn’t the proper way to handle this,” Mackinac insisted, wiping beads of sweat off her forehead.

  Nobody paid any attention to her, and soon she stomped out the door.

  When she was gone, the ticket seller smiled from one large red ear to the other and the little crowd cheered.

  “I can’t wait to tell my brother about the excitement we had here today,” the ticket seller said.

  “Oh, how I love a happy ending,” the lady with the blue hat sighed.

  Dilly wrapped her arms around Lucy and didn’t let go. Lucy hadn’t been hugged like this in such a long time, but the memory was vivid, the years together more powerful than the years apart.

  Dilly had come.

  Every time Lucy blinked she worried Dilly would disappear. But she didn’t disappear. It wasn’t a dream. Dilly was really here.

  Lucy took Dilly’s hand and held it tightly.

  Their bond was blood and bone and breath and something deeper than that. Sisters can be separated, but they can’t be torn apart.

  They sat on the bench outside the train station, too overcome to move. Lucy had imagined seeing Dilly a million times, but in her mind’s eye Dilly was the old Dilly, not this new grown-up person. Seeing her made the ache of missing Mama deeper.

  Together they watched the night falling and the lights begin to flicker on.

  At last, Lucy ran her hands over the old suitcase. “What…happened to the S-Sokoloffs?”

  “Nothing. They’re fine. I live with them. After you left, we moved in with their daughter. I went to school and then last year I got a job. I’m a seamstress now.”

  “Like Mama.”

  Dilly’s eyes filled up again.

  “Do you ever wonder what would have happened…if she hadn’t ever met Th-Thomas Slater?�
�� Lucy asked.

  “We would have stayed together and been happy,” Dilly said.

  “Remember how Mama was sure he had a closet full of—of f-fancy suits.”

  Dilly nodded.

  “He only had one suit…the blue one,” Lucy said.

  “What was his house like?”

  “A r-room…in a broken-down hotel.”

  Dilly sighed. “I knew he wasn’t rich. I told Mama.”

  Lucy nodded.

  “I wrote Thomas Slater letter after letter asking where you were. Never heard back.” Dilly’s voice was tight. “Finally this year I got a letter Mama wrote five years ago. Mama’s letter said you were at the Home for Friendless Children. I’ll show you when we get home. But Mackinac said you weren’t there.”

  “They d-didn’t want you to find me.”

  “I know, but why?”

  “They n-needed me. I was in a study…at the university. They wanted to see if they could turn me into a st-stutterer. The university paid them.”

  “What? Why would anyone do a study like that?”

  “To understand how kids become stutterers. I st-stopped talking because—because every time I opened my mouth they t-told me how badly I stuttered. I didn’t stutter…before the study. You remember?”

  Dilly nodded, her eyes bulging with anger. Her fists clenched.

  “I was wondering what happened. You were always such a chatterbox. You never stumbled over your words.”

  Lucy nodded.

  Dilly sighed, her eyes focused on a faraway porch light. A train whistle blew. The wind rustled the leaves of a nearby tree. “I don’t even know how to think about that, it’s so wrong.”

  Lucy knew this, but it felt good to have Dilly say it. To have it matter so much to her. Lucy wasn’t alone in the world anymore.

  Dilly rubbed the goose bumps on Lucy’s arms. “You’re getting cold. Let’s go back to the boardinghouse where I stayed last night.”

  Dilly got the Sokoloffs’ suitcase and they made their way down the tree-lined street to town.