by Kate Hewitt
With their pooled savings, they were able to buy two third class tickets on the RMS Carpathia, departing Glasgow on the third of July, 1904 and arriving at Pier 54 in New York City on the tenth.
And now they were here, their new lives, their real lives, about to begin. Ellen lifted her face to the air, letting the salty sea breeze cool her cheeks, and felt her soul buoy with a hope she’d been afraid she’d lost forever.
The blank, staring face of the Statue of Liberty gazed across the harbor as the ship passed, and Ellen found something chilling about that impersonal face with its patrician features, a face that had coolly watched thousands—hundreds of thousands—of hopeful immigrants pass this way.
Shrugging aside such thoughts, she closed her eyes and pictured her room in Vermont as she imagined and hoped it to be, a patchwork quilt on the bed, a window looking out to fields of flowers. She could almost feel the crisp pages of new books, hear the shared laughter of new friends. She hadn’t had any friends in Springburn after she’d left school, unless she counted the harried chats with Mrs. MacDougall over the washing line.
As for girls her own age... there had been no time, and she’d felt so different from the children who could still go to school, dirty their knees and pull each other’s plaits. Most of them would stay in school until fourteen, if their families were fortunate. And while they were playing games in the schoolyard, she was bartering over a vegetable barrow, or counting her pennies to make the coal last.
Yet surely in Vermont, when she was in school, that would change. There would be no bartering, no counting pennies. Ellen didn’t want to be a child again; that was impossible. But she wanted to feel hope, and maybe even happiness.
The steamer was cutting quickly through the harbor to its destination for third class passengers, the immigrant station at Ellis Island. First and second class passengers could walk straight down the gangplank as free as you please. Steerage would be subject to physical examinations and more, sometimes taking a day or longer. Ellen had heard whispers of the immigration station on the ship, heard the tales of flinty-eyed customs officers who barked questions, turning back anyone whose accent was funny, whose English was too broken, who simply didn’t look or sound right.
And then there were the doctors, who poked and prodded and even lifted your eyelids with button hooks, all to make sure you were fit enough to enter this fabled land of dreams.
“And if you aren’t?” Ellen asked once, and a woman with a nursing baby had regarded her with both fear and pity.
“Pray you are,” she said grimly. “Pray you are.”
Ellen didn’t answer. She hadn’t prayed much since her mother’s illness. When her mother had been well they’d gone to kirk every Sunday, same as everyone else. Ellen had sat in the pew between her parents and listened to the sonorous organ, let the words of the hymns wash over her. She’d liked Praise My Soul The King of Heaven—would sing the pretty words, praise Him for His grace and favor, to His people in distress—but when her mother fell so ill and her bed had to be moved into the kitchen next to the stove Ellen didn’t like that hymn or kirk anymore. She didn’t see much grace and favor then, just the distress. And her father had never been much of one for kirk, so they stopped going, except when Mrs. MacDougall insisted she come along because no Christian child should be raised like a heathen. Her father would always shrug sheepishly and tell Ellen to go on, then. Just the once.
Now, standing on board the RMS Carpathia and knowing her whole future lay in an unknown officer’s hands, she wondered if she ought to try praying again. Despite the years of her mother’s sorry health and the bitterness that had taken root in Ellen’s soul, she thought she’d prefer her fate to be in God’s hands than those of an immigrant officer on Ellis Island.
Ellen’s father dismissed anyone’s concerns over ‘the Hall of Tears’ with a jaunty laugh. “That’s not for us, Ellen. We’re both fit and strong, and we’ve family waiting for us. That’s not for us.”
Ellen wanted to believe him, but at almost thirteen she well understood that her father wasn’t always the most sensible man. He held onto dreams, even impractical ones, for far too long. He’d always assured her the latest tonic or elixir would set her mam to rights. Ann Copley would smile weakly and take her dose for her husband’s sake, although privately, in a thready voice, she told Ellen she didn’t think they helped.
“Your father needs to believe in something,” she’d once said, her face gray and haggard with pain. “I only wish it were God.” Even in her most agonizing moments, when the coughing racked her mother’s thin frame and blood spattered the old blanket, she believed. She’d asked Ellen to fetch her old Bible and slept with it clasped between her bony hands. Her last words, with Ellen sitting by her side with a cup of beef tea, had been about God.
“He’s been good to me, Ellen. Don’t doubt it.”
Ellen did. When her mother had slipped from this life, her poor, thin body barely making a lump under the blanket and Ellen sat alone in the sudden, eerie silence of the flat, the rattling rasp of her mother’s labored breaths forever silent, she doubted it very much indeed.
The RMS Carpathia was soon moored, bobbing amidst many others, and the passengers were being herded from its decks like a flock of muddled sheep.
“Women to the right, men to the left,” a man barked, and when Ellen made to follow her father, he pushed her none too gently in the back, to the other side. “Women to the right,” he snapped, and Ellen stared at him, fear turning her speechless.
“It’s all right, lass,” Da called with a cheery wave. “I’ll see you on the other side, after you’re through.” He called to a young woman they’d befriended on the ship. “Annie McCready, see to my girl, won’t you?”
“Aye, I will,” Annie promised, and hustled Ellen along with her four other children. Her oldest girl clutched Ellen’s hand and gave her a reassuring smile, but Ellen didn’t feel much better.
She barely had time to register the huge hall filled with a dense, heaving mass of humanity. Huge, grimy windows streaked the dusty floor with sunlight.
Ellen looked for her father, but she couldn’t see him anywhere. Around her a dozen different languages were being spoken, shrill voices raised in anger or fear or just plain impatience. People clutched bundles and children, guarding against the worst: deportation. For some, who would face war or poverty, it was a fate as good as death. Although Springburn held neither for Ellen, she could not contemplate returning to their dark little flat, the life of solitary drudgery that she’d endured for the last few years.
Annie McCready threw her a quick, harried smile. “It will be all right, lass. You’re little, but you’re strong enough, aren’t you?”
Ellen didn’t know how strong she was. She’d hefted iron wash tubs and sacks of potatoes, wound wet sheets through the mangle in the courtyard back in Springburn and climbed flights of narrows with a basket balanced on her hip, but in that moment she felt like a little child, lost and afraid. Then she recalled Da’s cheerful optimism on board the ship and she squared her small shoulders. Da had said deportation wasn’t for them. Her future was here, and a customs officer couldn’t change that.
Even so her heart beat fiercely as she clutched the tatty carpet bag that held her most dear possessions, her old rag doll, a silver-plated brush and her mother’s Bible. The one trunk she and her father had between them would be unloaded from the ship once they’d passed through.
“Come along, lass,” Annie said, jiggling her baby on her hip. “Stay with us, now. Though I imagine it will be a while.”
They waited four hours standing in that hot, crowded hall, before it was finally their turn in front of the customs officers. By that time, it was nearly noon and the immigration hall was stifling. Ellen felt sweat trickle down her back, and she knew her face was flushed with heat. Her legs ached from standing so long, and she swiped at a damp tendril of hair.
“You!” A surly man in a blue serge suit pointed at her. “Come up,
then.”
Ellen glanced at Annie, but the older woman just gave her a little push in the back. “Go on, then. Families go separate. Your da’s on the other side, remember.”
Ellen walked up to the officer. He eyed her in an unfriendly way. “You alone?” he demanded and she shook her head, her throat suddenly too dry and tight to speak. His mouth curled in contempt. “Do you speak English?”
Ellen prickled at that. “I’m Scottish,” she said proudly, but her burr must have been too much for him to understand, for he rolled his eyes.
“Someone waiting for you, then?”
“My father.”
He understood this much, for he made a mark on her card. He jerked a thumb and a doctor scuttled up to her. Ellen flinched in surprise as he flourished a buttonhook to pull her eyelids up and check for trachoma. He slapped at her cheeks. “Flushed, isn’t she? Feverish, I’d say. Was there illness on the ship?”
“Not so as I heard,” the customs officer said in a bored voice, and the doctor pursed his lips.
“Still, she’s a scrawny little thing. I don’t like that brightness in her eye at all.”
The customs officer shrugged. The doctor took a piece of chalk out of his pocket, and Ellen grabbed his arm.
“Please, sir, it’s just the heat. I’m perfectly well—”
He shrugged her off as he marked a large ‘x’ on the shoulder of her worn dress. “Go to the desk there, girl. They’ll see to you.” There was the merest flicker of pity in his eyes before he moved on.
Ellen tasted fear, cold and metallic, on her tongue. She swallowed, watching as streams of people flowed by her, people who did not have chalk ‘x’s on their shoulders, people who were heading towards the large double doors that led to the outside, to freedom and sunshine and the rest of their lives.
She didn’t know what the ‘x’ meant, but it could be nothing good. At best, a delay while she suffered through another physical exam. At worst, passage back to Scotland and her da’s dreams lost again.
Ellen took a deep breath and looked around. The McCreadys were gone, prodded onwards by the officers, no doubt assuming Ellen was already on the other side, reunited with her father.
No one was watching her. And no one, she thought, was going to keep her from joining Da on the other side of this wretched hall. Quickly, her fingers trembling, she licked her hand and rubbed at that awful chalk mark. After a moment the ‘x’ was no longer visible. Her heart thudding so fast and hard she felt dizzy, she moved towards the double doors. A customs officer squinted at her suspiciously, but Ellen lifted her chin and gazed evenly back, the blood pounding in her ears, and he looked away.
She walked with her shoulders stiff, her whole body quivering with tension, expecting at any moment the meaty hand of a customs officer to grab her, turn her around, and demand for her to return. What was the punishment for what she’d done, she wondered sickly. Deportation? Prison?
Still she kept one foot in front of the other, oblivious to the sweaty, heaving crowd around her, everyone desperate to be released from this place, to the promise of freedom and hope.
The doors loomed closer, and closer still, and no one stopped her. Then she was through, jostled on either side, and she stood outside, breathing the salty sea air once again and blinking in the bright sunlight, weak-kneed with relief. All around her the water shimmered, as brilliant as diamonds.
Someone grabbed her arm, and she nearly screamed.
“It’s me, lass!” Da laughed and hugged her. “I told you it’d be all right, didn’t I?”
Ellen looked at her father’s light, happy face, his smile like a crease in old cloth, and she swallowed her fear. She would never tell her father about the ‘x’.
“You did, Da,” she said with a little smile, and he chuckled.
“That tug there, it’s a transfer boat. It’ll take us to Manhattan. Look at the buildings, from here even! They’re taller than smoke stacks. By this time tomorrow we’ll be in Vermont, Ellen, in the country air, with family again.”
Ellen nodded. Vermont. She repeated it silently to herself, like a promise. Vermont, with her own room in the house they would build. She was going to name the kittens Silk and Satin. She could already see their dear, little velvety faces.
Vermont, where their lives would begin and their dreams would, if not come true, then at least be more real and possible than they ever had before. New York City might not have streets of gold, but as far as Ellen was concerned, Vermont would.
The next few hours passed in a blur, as Ellen and her father moved from tender to dock to streetcar, tramping wearily around this alien city until they were directed to the train station. Ellen was amazed at the noise, louder even than Springburn with all of its rail works. And the buildings were so high! It hurt her neck just to look up for a tiny glimpse of sky between the endless soot-stained brick and stone.
In the train station a newsboy shouted the day’s headlines. “Twenty die in factory fire! Women and children perish in the flames!” He spoke with relish and Ellen turned away with a shudder.
Da put his arm around her shoulders. “Never mind, lass. It’s to Vermont we’re going, not here. It’s different there.”
“It had better be,” Ellen replied smartly, and Da grinned. Ellen knew he was always pleased when she showed some spirit. She grinned back, determined to stay cocky for his sake, as well as her own. She wouldn’t let this strange place scare her.
By the time they’d purchased their tickets to Seaton, boarded the train, and eaten greasy sandwiches Da had purchased from a pushcart, Ellen was exhausted in both body and spirit. Everything felt so new. She leaned her head against her father’s arm, his coat still smelling faintly of tobacco and the engine grease from the rail yards, making her feel strangely homesick. The feeling swept over her, pulling her under, and within minutes, lulled by the rhythmic chugging of the train, she’d fallen asleep.
It was nearly dark when she awoke, stiff and disoriented. For a moment the movement of the train made her think she was on the ship again, lying on her bunk. Then she sat up and looked outside. Dusk was falling softly on open fields, farmhouses and fences speeding by in a green blur.
“We’ve been traveling all afternoon,” her father said with a chuckle. “It’s evening now.”
Ellen blinked the sleep out of her eyes. “How much longer?” she asked.
“We change at Troy. I think we should be there in an hour. We’ll spend the night there, get the first train in the morning. Should be with Hamish and Ruth by dinnertime tomorrow.” He settled back in his seat. “It’s grand, this, isn’t it? Traveling in trains, instead of working under them!”
“Grand,” Ellen repeated. She’d never stayed in a hotel before, but just the word conjured images of chandeliers and velvet seat cushions, fancy meals eaten with silver forks, even though she knew they would never be staying in a place like that.
The reality was far more ordinary, but Ellen was no less pleased with the simple, spare room in a boarding house she shared with her father. She ate her sausages and fried potatoes with relish, and fell deeply asleep in her little bed, too tired even to dream.
It felt only moments before Da was waking her again for the morning train.
It was a hot, sluggish sort of day, and Ellen wished she had a prettier summer dress as they waited on the platform for the train to Seaton. She wanted to give a good impression to her Uncle Hamish and Aunt Ruth. She knew they’d had no children of their own, for Da had said so. Somewhere in her deepest, most private imaginings she saw herself fulfilling some need in them that she couldn’t even name. And perhaps Aunt Ruth would be soft and smiling as her own mam had once been, smelling of rosewater and giving her hugs.
The thought brought her a little twinge of shame. She was far too old for hugs, but she knew she wanted them all the same. But would Aunt Ruth find her pleasing? Ellen looked down at her plain dress of yellow wincey with a troubled frown. It was serviceable, if a little tight across the shoulder
s and a few inches short in the skirt, but it wasn’t pretty. She’d like a dress in sprig cotton, something with flowers. She’d seen a girl her own age in the city with a dress covered in little blue forget-me-nots and a straw boater with a matching ribbon. She’d like something like that. She thought about asking Da, but he’d promise her the moon in the mood he was in, and what did he know about dresses?
Ellen chuckled to herself, and her father raised an eyebrow. “What’s that funny, then?”
“I’m just happy,” she admitted, surprised at herself. It had been a long time since she’d felt anything close to the lightness of hope that buoyed her now. She didn’t care what she was wearing, not really, not when they were finally in the fresh air, about to board the train to Seaton and start their lives.
She leaned into his arm as she had when she’d been small, felt the comforting weight of his shoulder, that easy affection starting to return after so many years. They’d survived the ocean crossing, passed through the Hall of Tears, and surely now only good was ahead. Only happiness.
TWO
The sun was hot as Hamish Copley waited in his buckboard for the noon train from Troy. Sweat gleamed on his balding head and he slapped his hat against his thigh. A few bees buzzed lazily around the wild raspberry bushes that sprang up in a thorny tangle against the station wall.
“Any sign of her yet?” Hamish called to Orvis Fairley, the stationmaster. Orvis looked down at the watch gleaming heavily against his large stomach.
“She’s not due for another eleven minutes. The Central New York Railway always comes on time.” Hamish nodded, and Orvis glanced at him in curiosity. “Who are you waiting for, then? You’re not one to leave the store at midday.”