The Way Life Should Be (34 page)

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 their care warm and dry and fed.

“I can’t go,” I say. “My mother will need me when she gets out of the hospital.” I know that my father and brothers are dead. I saw them in the hallway, covered with sheets. But Mam was taken away on a stretcher, and I saw Maisie moving, whimpering, as a man in a uniform carried her down the hall.

He shakes his head. “She won’t be coming back.”

“But Maisie, then—”

“Your sister, Margaret, didn’t make it,” he says, turning away.

My mother and father, two brothers, and a sister as dear to me as my own self—there is no language for my loss. And even if I find words to describe what I feel, there is no one to tell. Everyone I am attached to in the world—this new world—is dead or gone.

The night of the fire, the night they took me in, I could hear Mrs. Schatzman in her bedroom, fretting with her husband about what to do with me. “I didn’t ask for this,” she hissed, the words as distinct to my ears as if she’d been in the same room. “Those Irish! Too many children in too small a space. The only surprise is that this kind of thing doesn’t happen more.”

As I listened through the wall, a hollow space opened within me.
I didn’t ask for this.
Only hours earlier, my da had come in from his job at the bar and changed his clothes, as he always did after work, shedding rank smells with each layer. Mam mended a pile of clothes she’d taken in for money. Dominick peeled potatoes. James played in a corner. I drew on a piece of paper with Maisie, teaching her letters, the hot-water-bottle weight and warmth of her on my lap, her sticky fingers in my hair.

I try to forget the horror of what happened. Or—perhaps
forget
is the wrong word. How can I forget? And yet how can I move forward even a step without tamping down the despair I feel? When I close my eyes, I hear Maisie’s cries and Mam’s screams, smell the acrid smoke, feel the heat of the fire on my skin, and heave upright on my pallet in the Schatzmans’ parlor, soaked in a cold sweat.

My mother’s parents are dead, her brothers in Europe, one having followed the other to serve in the military, and I know nothing about how to find them. But it occurs to me, and I tell Mr. Schatzman, that someone might try to get in touch with my father’s mother and his sister back in Ireland, though we haven’t had contact with them since we came to this country. I never saw a letter from Gram, nor did I ever see my father writing one. Our life in New York was so bleak, and we clung to it with such an unsteady grip, that I doubt my da had much he would want to report. I don’t know much more than the name of our village and my father’s family name—though perhaps this information would be enough.

But Mr. Schatzman frowns and shakes his head, and it’s then that I realize just how alone I am. There is no adult on this side of the Atlantic who has reason to take any interest in me, no one to guide me onto a boat or pay for my passage. I am a burden to society, and nobody’s responsibility.

“YOU—THE IRISH GIRL. OVER HERE.” A THIN, SCOWLING MATRON in a white bonnet beckons with a bony finger. She must know I’m Irish from the papers Mr. Schatzman filled out when he brought me in to the Children’s Aid several weeks ago—or perhaps it is my accent, still as thick as peat. “Humph,” she says, pursing her lips, when I stand in front of her. “Red hair.”

“Unfortunate,” the plump woman beside her says, then sighs. “And those freckles. It’s hard enough to get placed out at her age.”

The bony one licks her thumb and pushes the hair off my face. “Don’t want to scare them away, now, do you? You must keep it pulled back. If you’re neat and well mannered, they might not be so quick to jump to conclusions.”

She buttons my sleeves, and when she leans down to retie each of my black shoes, a mildewy smell rises from her bonnet. “It is imperative that you look presentable. The kind of girl a woman would want around the house. Clean and well-spoken. But not too—” She shoots the other one a look.

“Too what?” I ask.

“Some women don’t take kindly to a comely girl sleeping under the same roof,” she says. “Not that you’re so. . . . But still.” She points at my necklace. “What is that?”

I reach up and touch the small pewter claddagh Celtic cross I have worn since I was six, tracking the grooved outline of the heart with my finger. “An Irish cross.”

“You’re not allowed to bring keepsakes with you on the train.”

My heart is pounding so hard I believe she can hear it. “It was my gram’s.”

The two women peer at the cross, and I can see them hesitating, trying to decide what to do.

“She gave it to me in Ireland, before we came over. It’s—It’s the only thing I have left.” This is true, but it’s also true that I say it because I think it will sway them. And it does.

WE HEAR THE TRAIN BEFORE WE CAN SEE IT. A LOW HUM, A RUMBLE UNDERFOOT, a deep-throated whistle, faint at first and then louder as the train gets close. We crane our necks to look down the track (even as one of our sponsors, Mrs. Scatcherd, shouts in her reedy voice, “Chil-dren! Places, chil-dren!”), and suddenly here it is: a black engine looming over us, shadowing the platform, letting out a hiss of steam like a massive panting animal.

I am with a group of twenty children, all ages. We are scrubbed and in our donated clothes, the girls in dresses with white pinafores and thick stockings, the boys in knickers that button below the knee, white dress shirts, neckties, thick wool suit coats. It is an unseasonably warm October day, Indian summer, Mrs. Scatcherd calls it, and we are sweltering on the platform. My hair is damp against my neck, the pinafore stiff and uncomfortable. In one hand I clutch a small brown suitcase that, excepting the cross, contains everything I have in the world, all newly acquired: a bible, two sets of clothes, a hat, a black coat several sizes too small, a pair of shoes. Inside the coat is my name, embroidered by a volunteer at the Children’s Aid Society: Niamh Power.

Yes, Niamh. Pronounced “Neev.” A common enough name in County Galway, and not so unusual in the Irish tenements in New York, but certainly not acceptable anywhere the train might take me. The lady who sewed those letters several days ago
tsk
ed over the task. “I hope you aren’t attached to that name, young miss, because I can promise if you’re lucky enough to be chosen, your new parents will change it in a second.”
My Niamh
, my da used to call me. But I’m not so attached to the name. I know it’s hard to pronounce, foreign, unlovely to those who don’t understand—a peculiar jumble of unmatched consonants.

No one feels sorry for me because I’ve lost my family. Each of us has a sad tale; we wouldn’t be here otherwise. The general feeling is that it’s best not to talk about the past, that the quickest relief will come in forgetting. The Children’s Aid treats us as if we were born the moment we were brought in, that like moths breaking out of their cocoons we’ve left our old lives behind and, God willing, will soon launch ourselves into new ones.

Mrs. Scatcherd and Mr. Curran, a milquetoast with a brown mustache, line us up by height, tallest to shortest, which generally means oldest to youngest, with the babies in the arms of the children over eight. Mrs. Scatcherd pushes a baby into my arms before I can object—an olive-skinned, cross-eyed fourteen-month-old named Carmine (who, I can already guess, will soon answer to another name). He clings to me like a terrified kitten. Brown suitcase in one hand, the other holding Carmine secure, I navigate the high steps into the train unsteadily before Mr. Curran scurries over to take my bag. “Use some common sense, girl,” he scolds. “If you fall, you’ll crack your skulls, and then we’ll have to leave the both of you behind.”

THE WOODEN SEATS IN THE TRAIN CAR ALL FACE FORWARD EXCEPT for two groups of seats opposite each other in the front, separated by a narrow aisle. I find a three-seater for Carmine and me, and Mr. Curran heaves my suitcase onto the rack above my head. Carmine soon wants to crawl off the seat, and I am so busy trying to distract him from escaping that I barely notice as the other kids come on board and the car fills.

Mrs. Scatcherd stands at the front of the car, holding on to two leather seat backs, the arms of her black cape draping like the wings of a crow. “They call this an orphan train, children, and you are lucky to be on it. You are leaving behind an evil place, full of ignorance, poverty, and vice, for the nobility of country life. While you are on this train you will follow some simple rules. You will be cooperative and listen to instructions. You will be respectful of your chaperones. You will treat the train car respectfully and will not damage it in any way. You will encourage your seatmates to behave appropriately. In short, you will make Mr. Curran and me proud of your behavior.” Her voice rises as we settle in our seats. “When you are allowed to step off the train, you will stay within the area we designate. You will not wander off alone at any time. And if your behavior proves to be a problem, if you cannot adhere to these simple rules of common decency, you will be sent straight back to where you came from and discharged on the street, left to fend for yourselves.”

The younger children appear bewildered by this litany, but those of us older than six or seven had already heard a version of it several times at the orphanage before we left. The words wash over me. Of more immediate concern is the fact that Carmine is hungry, as am I. We had only a dry piece of bread and a tin cup of milk for breakfast, hours ago, before it was light. Carmine is fussing and chewing on his hand, a habit that must be comforting to him. (Maisie sucked her thumb.) But I know not to ask when food is coming. It will come when the sponsors are ready to give it, and no entreaties will change that.

I tug Carmine onto my lap. At breakfast this morning, when I dropped sugar into my tea, I slipped two lumps into my pocket. Now I rub one between my fingers, crushing it to granules, then lick my index finger and stick it in the sugar before popping it in Carmine’s mouth. The look of wonder on his face, his delight as he realizes his good fortune, makes me smile. He clutches my hand with both of his chubby ones, holding on tight as he drifts off to sleep.

Eventually I, too, am lulled to sleep by the steady rumble of the clicking wheels. When I wake, with Carmine stirring and rubbing his eyes, Mrs. Scatcherd is standing over me. She is close enough that I can see the small pink veins, like seams on the back of a delicate leaf, spreading across her cheeks, the downy fur on her jawbone, her bristly black eyebrows.