Rodzina

by Karen Cushman

  The night was quiet after that, except for the rackety-rack of the wheels and an occasional whistle, but I could not go back to sleep. I could see Mama's face there outside the window. And Papa's. And the boys, and Auntie Manya, and Hulda. Lacey reminded me a little of Hulda—she had the same thick braid of hair and rosy cheeks—but Hulda's hair was black as night and she wasn't feeble-minded. Hulda and I sat next to each other in school and took turns with a roller skate we found in the street until it broke in two. She swore we would be friends forever, but when her new stepmother began beating on her, Hulda ran away and I never saw her again. I had to leave school when I turned nine to help Mama with the little boys and the house and the sewing, and I never had another friend.

  I felt a wave of loneliness, like I was all alone on this train. Just me and the dark night outside. I looked around. Everyone else was asleep. Everyone but grouchy old Miss Don't Touch in the back, who was watching out the window again. Was she better than no one? I sighed. I supposed she was. I walked back to her seat.

  "Miss Don't—er, Doctor," I said, catching myself just in time.

  "Go to sleep, Rodzina."

  "I can't sleep. I thought I could talk to you."

  "I am busy."

  "You aren't doing anything but looking out the window."

  She looked at me. "And that is enough. You can wait until morning."

  "It's now I can't sleep, Miss Doctor. Let me talk with you awhile, and then I will leave you to your looking."

  She moved over and I sat down. "I been wondering," I said. "Do you go back and forth, back and forth, on this here train with orphans like Mr. Szprot does?"

  "This is what could not wait until morning?"

  "Miss Doctor, I am just trying to ease into a conversation." I scratched my knee and sighed.

  She sighed too, and said, "Miss Brodski, I am not your mother or your friend. And having conversations with orphans in the middle of the night is not among my duties."

  I could feel my face grow hot, but before I could respond, she continued, "I am employed by the Orphan Asylum to look after you orphans only as far as Wyoming Territory. Then I am free."

  "And then?"

  "Then I will join a circus and ride bareback. Or pilot a balloon around the world. Or marry a Vanderbilt. I have not yet decided. Now are you ready to sleep?"

  Miss Doctor joking? Strange. But then strange things happened in the middle of the night. Maybe she would really listen to me. It was worth a try. "Miss Doctor, I didn't want to come on this old train. I don't want to go live with strangers. Couldn't I just go back with Mr. Szprot to the orphanage and—"

  "It is our job to find you a place to live."

  "But I don't want—"

  "It does not matter what you want. Do you think I want to be here? I am a doctor, not a nursemaid. But here I am. And here you are. Now go back to your seat."

  Jeepers, she was no better at listening than a fruitcake. Why had I thought she would help me anyway? She was probably in cahoots with all those folks out there who took orphans to be slaves and beat them and starved them because no one cared whether they lived or died.

  And where was Gertie? She was not with Miss Doctor, where I had left her before Omaha. So where was she? The stiff and starchy doctor lady had probably stuffed poor Gertie into a suitcase and left her by the tracks.

  I slumped into my seat. Lacey was awake, looking at me with her big eyes glowing in the light from the gas lamps. "Where were you? I was plumb scared, and I don't like to be scared." Snuffling, she leaned up against my side.

  Radishes! I pulled away. "Why are you bothering me? I don't want to be your friend or anything, but still you're always hanging on me."

  Lacey pushed herself against me again. "I feel safer when you're here. You're so big and sturdy, like a beautiful tree I can lean on and not knock over."

  A tree? What an odd thing to say. I figured she couldn't help it, being feebleminded, and I let her lean for a minute.

  A beautiful tree. Was that a good thing or a bad thing? I wondered.

  I pressed my face against the glass. Clouds hurried across the sky, and suddenly there was the moon, flooding the passing prairie with silver light, like the landscape in a fairy tale. My mama told me Moses found a man once gathering sticks on the Sabbath and banished him to the moon. And it is his shadow we see up there and call the man in the moon. I sighed. I miss you, Mama. I wish you didn't leave me. I knew Mama couldn't hear me. If there was such a place as Heaven, Mama was there already, telling God what to do and scolding the Virgin Mary for being too thin, she should eat something. And I was alone. I miss you, Mama.

  I watched out the window for a long while. It was growing light, but I could see no buildings, no trees, no bushes. It appeared Nebraska was all dead grass and endless sky, as far ahead as I could see, as far ahead as I could imagine.

  At midday we passed a wagon train of emigrants going west. Plodding mules pulled great canvas-covered wagons packed with bedding and household stuff. The children waved to us with their ragged straw hats, while women in calico gowns and sunbonnets just stood, watching us speed past.

  The afternoon erupted into noisy restlessness. "Come over here, you sprouts," I said finally to Lacey and Joe and Sammy and Horton, Chester, Spud, and Mickey Dooley. And Gertie. No Gertie. Where was Gertie? I'd go look for her in a minute. "I will teach you to play Intery Mintery Cuttery Corn."

  "Can Nellie and Kitty play too?" Lacey asked.

  "Who?"

  "Nellie and Kitty. They was at the Infant Hospital too. Nellie got brung because her ma's new husband didn't want her around. And Kitty's mama drinks."

  I nodded. While Lacey went back to fetch Nellie and Kitty from Miss Doctor, I thought about how awful it would be to be on this train and not be an orphan. To be part of a family that didn't want you. No matter how poor we were or what trouble there was, I never felt that my mama and papa didn't want me. Why, they carried me all the way from Poland to Chicago with them so we could be together.

  In Poland Papa had been a bookstore clerk, a poet, and a writer of angry letters to the editor of the newspaper, urging Poles to rise up against their German rulers. One night he clouted our German landlord right on the nose. I do not doubt the landlord deserved a clouting, but still Mama and Papa and I left Poland that night, with only a few hundred złotys, a featherbed, and a plaster statue of Panna Maria, the Virgin Mary. I heard of this from my papa. I do not remember it myself, for I was only two at the time, occupied with learning to walk and talk and not at all interested in politics.

  While they lived, I was never unwanted. I never cried myself to sleep. I never went to bed hungry, although sometimes my stomach was full of nothing but potatoes. We may have slept three to a bed—five when the boys were alive—but there was always a bed. And arms to hug me and someone to spit on a thumb and wipe the dirt from my chin. If only they had not died....If only I could ... If only...

  Someone pulled my sleeve. "Come on, Ro. You said you'd teach us the corn game." So I did, and that was the end of remembering for a while.

  When the train stopped for supper, those passengers in the other cars lucky enough to have coins in their pockets got off to eat. The eating station glowed with cheerful lights in the gathering darkness. Smells of frying meat and baking pies escaped from the kitchen and made their way to the orphan car. We orphans crowded into the seats on the station side, stuck our noses out the window, and sniffed.

  "If I was eating there," said Spud from the seat in front of me, "I would have boiled pike with horseradish sauce and carrot soup."

  "Roast beef for me," said Sammy, jumping up and down in his seat.

  "No, pork sausage," said Joe.

  "Hot white bread with butter," Chester added, "and roast chicken."

  "Pie," Lacey whispered to me. "A lot of pie."

  Mr. Szprot came then with our supper. Jelly sandwiches, of course, and cold potatoes, from those big baskets that seemed likely never to run out.

 
Mickey Dooley looked at his sandwich and said, "If we had ham, we could have ham and eggs..."

  "Shut yer Irish mug, Dooley!" one of the big boys yelled.

  "...if we had eggs," Mickey finished, and laughed.

  "Quiet, you thugs," said Mr. Szprot. "The doctor and I must step off the train for a moment. The babies are asleep, and I will send the bigger boys outside. You, Polish girl, watch over this crowd here and keep them on the train and quiet."

  I had the suspicion Miss Doctor and the Szprot were going to the eating station for steak and beer. "Seems they don't have to live on jelly sandwiches," I said after they left.

  "I bet they have corned beef and cabbage," Spud said.

  "And chocolate cake," said Chester.

  "And ice cream!" said Joe, jumping up.

  I thought I'd better get their attention before there was a rebellion, with orphans rushing the eating place and grabbing all the food. "In Poland no one ever had to eat jelly sandwiches," I said as I chewed. "My mama always used to say, 'In Poland we had every meal cheese, butter, eggs, honey, carrots, and beer.'"

  "What's Poland?" Lacey asked.

  "It's another country, where I was born."

  "Far away?"

  "Very far."

  "Did you have to take a train like this?"

  "A train and a wagon and a ship with no light and no air and people packed close as beans in a can."

  "Why did you leave Poland if it was so good there?" asked Sammy. "Not enough potatoes for you?" He snorted through his nose.

  "We left because Papa said poor freedom was better than rich slavery."

  I shook my head. Poor Papa. He found little freedom in Chicago, rich or poor. And little contentment. I think his happiest days were those Saturday afternoons when he did not work, when he and I would walk to the shops on Ashland Avenue. There we would buy supper: the spicy sausages called kiełbasy, freshly ground horseradish, cherries maybe, and a round rye bread. Papa would bargain to get the best prices, speaking German to the baker, Yiddish to the pickle man, even a little Italian to the greengrocer. He'd pay the Polish butcher whatever he asked, and then they would argue happily about Poland and politics until I'd pull on his sleeve, impatient to get home.

  "All sorrows are bearable if there is bread," Mama said to me once as I handed her our supper.

  "Papa says freedom is better than bread," I told her.

  She narrowed her eyes. "The egg does not teach the hen. Go and get water for soup." So I trudged down three flights of stairs to the pump in the yard, filled the bucket, and carried it back three flights up. I did not argue with Mama again until my arms were not so sore.

  Spud's sharp elbow poked into my side. "I asked you, can you talk Polish?"

  "I can call for klops and kapusta to eat. And I can understand a little. That's about all." We always spoke English at home so Mama could learn, although until the day she died, her English sounded like Polish. "Oh, and I can say your names. Świnia," I said to Spud, "Osioł" to Joe, and "Łajdak" to Sammy.

  I looked on, pleased, as the boys shoved and wrestled in their seat, calling each other Pig, Donkey, and Villain in Polish. And the names were too good for them.

  Suddenly I remembered Gertie. "Anyone seen Gertie?" I hadn't seen her since taking her to Miss Doctor before we even got to Omaha.

  "I ain't seen her," said Sammy. And Joe. And Chester and Lacey.

  I searched the car. No Gertie sleeping on a bench, warming by the stove, whining out a window. Was she not on the train anymore?

  Mickey Dooley came out from visiting the toilet in back. "Have you seen Gertie lately?" I asked him, getting mighty worried about losing her.

  "I seen her with the doctor lady when we changed trains," said Mickey. "But not since. I don't think Gertie's on this train."

  "Could Miss Doctor have just left her in Omaha?" We orphans all shook our heads. Was it her punishment for whining and soiling the lady's skirt? Poor Gertie. I hoped she was put in an orphanage and not just left on the railroad platform, but with Miss Doctor and the Szprot, one could never tell. I would have to watch my step for sure.

  "I didn't want to come on this here train," I said, "but I sure wouldn't want to be dumped off just anywhere in the middle of the night."

  "You didn't want to come?" asked Chester. "I sure did. They said I could grow mushmillions. I love mushmillions." Who didn't, I thought—all that sweet and juicy fruit. But I doubted Chester would ever even see a melon once he became a slave.

  "They promised me a nice home," said Spud, "where I could drive horses and oxen and have as many apples and pears as I want to eat."

  "The fellow from the Little Wanderers' Refuge said they'd give me a farm!" Horton added.

  Mickey Dooley said, "They gave me my first pair of shoes in three winters, so here I am."

  Boy, would those boys be disappointed when they saw who was taking them and for what awful purpose. I shook my head again.

  Chester swallowed his last bite of sandwich and asked me, "If you didn't want to come on this train, why are you here?"

  "What do you think, they paid me a hundred dollars? I'm here because I had nowhere else to go and was made to come." I was starting to regret being too friendly when I just wanted to be left alone. I turned and stared out the window as they talked on about shoes and farms and mushmillions.

  Out the window in light from the moon I could see some of the big boys fooling around on the station platform, pushing each other and laughing and carrying on the way they did, the cigarettes they got who-knows-where glowing like little lanterns in the darkness. Hermy yelled, "All aboard!" and there came running everyone from the dining room, still with napkins tucked in their shirts, some with forks in their hands. The conductor came out and grabbed a couple of the boys by their ears. "Just a little prank, folks!" he shouted. "Ten more minutes. Go back and eat. We have ten more minutes." Most people went back in to finish their suppers, but not everybody, so anxious were they not to miss the train and be stuck in this place with nothing but an eating station and the moon.

  4. Grand Island

  THE MORNING HAS GOLD in its mouth, Papa used to say. I understood as I woke to a flash of new-risen sun across the plains. All that day the country flew by in a blur of yellows and browns. I had not known the United States was so big, and the west so far away. Never had I been so far from home. Well, Poland was farther, I knew, but it was not my home, really, in that we left when I was too young to remember. Home was that room on the third floor on Honore Street, and it was miles and miles and miles behind me as we traveled into the unknown.

  That evening as we sped toward Grand Island, farther into the great state of Nebraska, Mr. Szprot called us all together. "You ragamuffins, sit and be quiet." He waited, cigar wobbling up and down, four-inch piece of ash dangling off the end, until all twenty of us (well, twenty-one with all of us) were in our seats with our mouths closed before he went on. "Grand Island, as you know, will be your first opportunity to meet the ladies and gentlemen of the west who will be your new families." More accurately, the first time we would be paraded like cattle, sold as slaves, disposed of like old meat, I thought.

  "I want to assist you all in landing good homes. You big boys," he said to Hermy the Knife and some others, "will be much in demand to help with farm work." Slaves. I knew it. "The rest of you must be at your most appealing." He grinned, cigar stuck between his yellow teeth. "Leastwise those of you who can be appealing. Now, watch me." He got down on his knees and crawled over to Sammy. "Please, sir, I want to go home with you," he said, a high, babyish voice coming from behind the cigar. "Please, could I go with you? I'm a good little boy." How could even folks as unfeeling as Szprot and the lady doctor send these little kids to be slaves to strangers? I turned away, disgusted.

  While Mr. Szprot and the younger orphans practiced, Hermy the Knife flopped himself onto the seat next to me. "First stop, I'm cuttin' out of here, back home to Slabtown," he muttered. "I ain't goin' to work on no farm with no yellow-h
aired hayseed from Nowhere Town. No sir, not me." He turned and saw me next to him. "What you lookin' at, clumsy Polish girl? Immigrant. Greenhorn. Why don't you go back to wherever it is you come from?"

  "I come from Chicago, just like you, lunkhead," I said.

  He stood up, fire in his eyes and, I guessed, in his fists. He was awful big but stupid, whereas I was big, strong as an ox, and smart. I was not afraid of him. I stood up too.

  There we were, near eye to eye, rocking and bouncing in that train, getting closer and closer to Grand Island. Finally Hermy said, "Greenhorn," spat on the floor, and shoved his way to the back of the car through the crowd of orphans pulling on each other and saying, "Please, could I go home with you and be your little boy?"

  I sat down again. I would not practice. I would not beg to be taken by strangers and mistreated. I wanted to be left alone.

  After more rocking and swaying and pleading, the rehearsal ended. Those few orphans who had a change of clothes put on their best duds. Most were like me; our old clothes had been discarded as worthless at the orphan home, and we stood, sat, and slept in what we had been given: plaid dresses and pinafores for the girls, knickers and jackets and ties for the boys—except for Sammy and Joe, who had come straight from the street in their dirty knickers and ragged shirts. After our days and nights on the train, the rest of us didn't look much better than they did.

  I took off my pinafore, which appeared to have been the battlefield for a fight between a jelly sandwich and an ash can. The dress beneath was wrinkled and travel stained but would have to do.

  Miss Doctor and I helped the little ones straighten their clothes. "Come here, Joe," I said. "Let me neaten you up a bit."