Nobody's Child

by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch

  Anna was about to say something, but the Vartabed held up his hand. “Marta and Mariam and Onnig are welcome too. If they would like to go.”

  “But they have family here,” said Anna. “Many of the children at the orphanage have some family living,” replied the priest. “And they can visit on Sundays. But in the meantime, the children will be given an education, and food and lodging.”

  Anna was silent as she considered the idea. “You will have no expenses, and yet Miss Younger will pay you a small weekly fee.”

  Anna could tell by the way he said it that this was an arrangement he had gone to great lengths to make.

  “It is not much money, but it will help the ones who stay in this house.”

  Vartabed Garabed was silent as he waited for Anna to say something. She had completely forgotten about the boiling pot of water, and it would have boiled dry, except Ovsanna had slipped in quietly. She sat down beside Anna and wordlessly made the coffee, handing a demitasse to the priest and another to Anna. She was about to get up and leave, but Anna reached out and placed her hand on Ovsanna’s forearm.

  “Stay,” she said.

  So Ovsanna sat back down.

  After a minute or more of silence, Anna asked, “Did Miss Younger say what she would be hiring me to do?”

  “She wants to meet you before making a firm decision.”

  “Will the children be able to stay together?” Anna asked.

  “The girls will be together at Bethel and the boys will be at Beitshalom.”

  “How soon are we to leave?”

  “As soon as you wish,” said the Vartabed Garabed. “The children will need time to adjust to the idea,” said Anna.

  “Of course,” said the priest. “A few days will not make a difference.” He blew on his coffee, then drained it in a single gulp. “This will be the best for all,” he said. Then he handed the empty demitasse to Ovsanna and stood up.

  Anna and Ovsanna stood up too and walked him to the door, then through the courtyard to the gate.

  When the gate clicked shut behind him, Ovsanna turned to Anna, angry tears in her eyes. “What are you thinking?” she asked. “The children cannot go to an orphanage.”

  “We need to talk about it, all of us,” said Anna. “This may be the only way for us to survive.”

  That evening, once dinner had been eaten and cleared away, and the bed had been pulled back down from behind the wall carpet, the family cuddled together in the dim light of the fireplace to talk about the day’s events.

  Ovsanna sat on a cushion leaning against the foot of the bed, with Onnig tucked in the crook of one arm, Gadar on her lap, and Aram in the crook of her other arm. “I think it is a good opportunity for you, Anna,” she said, holding her children close.

  Anna sat on the bed, her feet curled under her, directly behind Ovsanna. Kevork sat next to her, cross-legged and rigid, waiting to hear what his future would be.

  In the middle of the bed sat Anahid Baji, her back propped up with pillows, and her granddaughters, Mariam and Marta, on either side.

  “It could be a good opportunity for us all,” said Anahid Baji.

  Ovsanna tightened her embrace on the three children in her arms and replied, “What do you mean?”

  “Did you know that the orphanage provides an education to their charges?” said Anahid Baji.

  “I can teach my own children to read and write,” said Ovsanna.

  “But you can’t teach them a trade,” said Anahid Baji. “How will these children support themselves as they grow older?”

  Ovsanna stayed silent in the darkness.

  Anna cleared her throat, then said, “There is a more immediate problem, Mairig.”

  “What is that, child?” answered Anahid Baji.

  “We have no source of income for the household,” said Anna. “All of the coins, both yours and Mariam’s, are nearly gone.”

  Anahid Baji was silent for a moment. What Anna said was true, but she didn’t know the other woman realized it. “And how will your working at the orphanage resolve that problem?” she asked.

  “Kevork and I are eating your food, but not contributing to the pot,” said Anna. “My salary at the orphanage could be given to you as repayment for your kindness.”

  “You and Kevork are family now,” said Anahid Baji. “What is mine is yours.”

  “And what is mine is yours,” returned Anna. “There will be fewer mouths to feed, and the children will be educated.”

  “My children will not go to an orphanage,” said Ovsanna fiercely.

  “Your children are still young,” said Anna.

  “Onnig is also too young,” said Ovsanna.

  “Let us not argue,” said Anahid Baji. “This is the way it shall be. Onnig and Aram and Gadar shall stay in this house. They are too young to go to school, and so there is no advantage for them at the orphanage.”

  Ovsanna let out a huge sigh of relief. “You are right, Mairig,” she said. “They are too young.”

  “Mariam needs an education,” said Anahid Baji, “and her sister should stay with her.”

  Mariam swallowed back a sob in the darkness. She knew her grandmother was right, but the prospect of living at an orphanage was terrifying. She felt her grandmother’s hand grasp hers in the darkness and give it a reassuring squeeze. “You and Marta can always come back here if it doesn’t work out,” she said.

  “We will give it a try,” said Mariam in her bravest voice.

  “What about me?” asked Kevork.

  “You will be coming with me to the orphanage,” said Anna firmly. “You need a trade, and I need you near me.”

  The family settled into silence after that, pondering their newly minted future. Mariam tried to hold back her sobs, but the thought of leaving her grandmother’s house and all she held dear was too much for her. She bit the edge of her pillow and silently wept. Even more terrifying than leaving this home was the prospect of being separated from her baby brother. In her head, she knew that he was much better off staying with Ovsanna and her children, but her heart was breaking. One more part of her family was being torn away.

  Mariam pasted a brave smile on her face as she and her sister walked towards the stone gate that circled the huge orphanage complex. Kevork and Anna were mere steps behind them, but everyone was silent in their own thoughts.

  They stepped up to the street door, and then Mariam reached up and pulled a rope hanging from a bell at the top of the door. The bell rang once, and then the door opened just a crack.

  Mariam’s heart pounded wildly in her chest. Who would answer? And what did this place have in store for them?

  “Who is it?” a small voice from the other side of the door asked.

  Mariam peered through the crack, but didn’t see anyone, but then her sister said, “Hello!”

  Mariam looked down and saw one mischievous brown eye. Anna stepped forward. Crouching down so she could look into the eye, she said, “Miss Younger is expecting us. I am Anna Adomian.”

  The door opened wide. A little girl, perhaps five years old, with unkempt hair and a broad smile stood there. “My name is Paris. Mother Younger told me you’d be coming!”

  Mariam’s eyes widened as they stepped inside of the complex. It was huge. A city within a city. Directly in front of her was the kind of street Mariam had heard about in England and France. It was straight and broad and paved with bricks. The buildings on either side of the road were made of the same kind of uniformly sized bricks as the road, and they were several storeys high. They had hundreds of windows of plain rectangular glass that reflected the sunlight. As far as Mariam’s eyes could see, there was huge square building after huge square building. They looked cold and foreign, as far as she was concerned.

  Paris gestured with her hand for them to follow her, and then she scampered down the street.

  As the little group followed Paris down the street, Mariam was greeted with a number of sensations. She could hear voices floating from the buildings as s
he passed. She caught snippets of an arithmetic lesson, and then a flash of German grammar. Her nose wrinkled at a brief scent of chalk, and then of bread baking, and then of laundry soap. So much activity, yet no one in the street.

  Paris walked up to one of the buildings and knocked on the door. It was opened by a foreign woman with yellow hair parted in the middle and pulled into a tight bun at the nape of her neck. She wore a Western-style long-sleeved white blouse and a plain black skirt.

  “Thank you, Paris,” the woman said, then patted the girl affectionately on the head. Paris scampered away. The woman turned towards them. “Welcome.”

  She regarded each of them individually with a smile, and then her eyes rested on Anna. “I’ve heard many good things about you, Miss Adomian.”

  Mariam was impressed by the fact that the missionary didn’t react to Anna’s unusual appearance.

  “My name is Josefine Younger,” said the woman, extending her hand to Anna. “Let us get these children settled, and then you and I shall talk over a cup of tea and we can decide what your role at the orphanage will be.”

  Mariam and Marta were given a place together in a long room with sleeping cots for a dozen or more girls. Kevork’s place was in a building on the boys’ side of the orphanage complex.

  As the days and the weeks and the years flew by, Mariam came to cherish the comforting routine at the orphanage. In the beginning, she was a student, but as time rolled by, she stepped more and more into the role of a teacher. There seemed to be a never-ending trickle of Armenian orphans arriving each week, but nothing prepared her for 1915.

  BOOK TWO

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  April 1915

  In the shadowy darkness of the early morning, Mariam turned her head on her pillow and looked over at her sister, who was still fast asleep in the cot beside her. Marta’s profile still had the softness of childhood, and her brow was untroubled. How Mariam would have loved to be able to keep that brow untroubled, but the rumours she’d been hearing lately let her know that Marta would be growing up all too soon.

  Mariam sat up and rubbed the sleep out of her eyes, then threw off the bedcovers. She had to get up earlier than the others in her dorm room today, because it was her turn to prepare the bread-baking pit. It was too dark for her to see the row of cots, but the regular breathing and occasional mid-dream murmur told her that everyone else was still asleep. Not wanting to wake them, she didn’t light a lantern. Instead, she got up and felt her way to the pitcher of water and basin that sat on a table at the far end of the room. She splashed her face with water, more to wake herself than for hygiene, then felt her way back to her cot. She straightened out the bedding, then slipped off her thin cotton nightgown and stuffed it under her pillow. Standing naked in the room of sleeping girls, Mariam looked down at her body, her eyes adjusting to the dim light. Unlike Marta, Mariam was no longer a child. Her breasts were full and her waist was slim. She had seen how men looked at her when she walked by and it embarrassed her.

  Better to be childlike. Especially in these uncertain times.

  She sighed.

  Mariam opened up the wooden chest at the foot of her bed and took out her clothing. She quickly stepped into her orphanage-issue knee-length underwear, and then she took a long piece of thin cotton and wrapped it tightly around her breasts to minimize their curves. Then she pulled an undershirt over her head and drew on her long-sleeved white shirt. Before putting on her ankle-length grey skirt, she grabbed a pair of socks from the chest. These socks had been knitted by her aunt Ovsanna at the widows’ charity. Shortly after she, Marta, Kevork, and Anna had come to live at the orphanage, the Vartabed had arranged for Ovsanna to earn some money by working for a few hours a day at a knitting mill making socks. The enterprise was run by the Armenian churches in Marash, and the socks were donated to the orphanage, but also sold in the bazaar.

  Once she was fully dressed, Mariam reached underneath her bed and pulled out boots. Hers were in much better repair than her sister’s, whose latest growth spurt had caused her toes to split the seams. Mariam had stopped growing two years earlier when she was fourteen, and so her boots were not too terribly abused.

  She gave one last look at her sleeping sister, then headed out. The sun was just peeking over the mountain in the distance when Mariam stepped out onto the street. The air was fresh and cool, and she could hear the creaking of oxcarts and the howling of dogs beyond the orphanage walls. Marash was just starting to wake up.

  Mariam pushed open the door to the kitchen and grabbed matches from the shelf, then stepped through the back door to where the covered baking pit was. The pit was enclosed in a little wooden shed with a tin roof. Mariam reached into the kindling bin at the side of the shed and drew out some dried grapevines. She stepped inside, then breathed in deeply the sweet smell of smoke and yeast that was a constant in the shed, even in the cold stillness of the morning.

  The pit itself was about three feet deep and had a stone bottom and smooth stone sides. She threw the dried grapevines into the bottom of the pit and then lit them with a match. Once there was a good blaze, she threw on some thin sticks of wood, waited until they were burning steadily, and then added some sturdier ones. Her face got red with the heat, and she smiled with satisfaction as the flames settled into a lower, steadier glow. Now she had about an hour to wait until the wood turned to glowing embers.

  She stepped back into the kitchen.

  “Good morning, Mariam.”

  She caught her breath in surprise. Standing in the doorway was Rustem Bey, a full head taller than she was, but not much older. He wore a cream-coloured silk turban on his head, but was dressed in a European-style brown suit. He had burlap sacks of raisins and flour on the floor in front of him.

  “Since when have you taken to being a delivery boy?” she asked.

  “How else would I get to see you?” He smiled.

  Mariam felt her face go hot with embarrassment. Rustem Bey was born to wealth, and unlike the rest of his family, he was known for his tolerant views about Armenians. He had personally ensured that his father continue to supply food to the orphanage even after others had refused to do so. But Mariam found it confusing that he paid so much attention to her.

  “Thank you for bringing the supplies,” she said. And then she hurried out to check on the tonir.

  Kevork was still fast asleep in his dormitory at Beitshalom, the boys’ orphanage at the other end of the missionary compound. He didn’t even begin to waken until the Mairig rang the morning bell. He had tossed and turned most of the night, trying to get to sleep, and then he finally drifted off just as the first rays of dawn lit the room.

  He turned his face, then felt the cold dampness of his pillow. In a flash, the sadness of the evening before came back to him.

  Kevork was the most senior shoemaking apprentice, and so Mr. Karellian had taken to leaving him alone in the workshop once lessons were over. In addition to a personal project Kevork had been working on, he was responsible for putting away all the supplies and turning off the lights at the end of the day. Kevork enjoyed his hour or so of solitude in the workshop each day, but last night his solitude had been disturbed by a knock on the door.

  It was Josefine Younger, looking just a bit greyer around the temples than she had six years earlier when Kevork had arrived. Today, instead of her usual pleasant smile, her brow was creased with worry.

  Classes were over, but Kevork had stayed late in order to assist the first-year apprentice with the re-soling of an old shoe. The shoe in question was covering a wooden last, or shoe form, on a stand, and the apprentice had already partially loosened the original lacing with rubbing alcohol.

  When Kevork saw Miss Younger’s expression, he turned to the boy and said, “You can go now. When you come in tomorrow, start back at this shoe, but be careful with the lacing.”

  The boy nodded, then scampered out.

  Kevork stood up to greet her.

  “Please,” he said. “Come in.” He pul
led out a work stool from under the wooden bench and set it in front of her. “Please sit down.”

  Miss Younger stayed standing. “A letter came for you,” she said. “Perhaps you should sit.” She reached into her pocket and drew out a yellowed envelope of cheap paper.

  Kevork reached out and took it with apprehension. From time to time, others at the orphanage had received letters, too, but he could not remember a single time when a letter bore happy news.

  It felt heavier than just paper. He looked at the handwriting and frowned. It wasn’t familiar. The back was sealed with red wax. He broke the seal and reached inside.

  There was a handful of gold coins and two sheets of paper. He unfolded the first one and read:

  Dear Kevork,

  I have thought of you often in these last years, and every time I was in your village, I would stop by your old house to see if your father had come back so I could tell him where you were. I found out that he did come back briefly several months ago. He left these gold coins for you in care of the people who now live in your home. They entrusted them to me to give to you.

  Apparently, he had been arrested and jailed as a revolutionary by the Turkish government. No sooner did he get back to his home village than he was taken again. This time, he was drafted into the Turkish army.

  The enclosed letter arrived at your old house recently, and the people who now live there had it sent to me.

  I am sorry to be the bearer of this bad news, but I realize that you need to know the fate of your father.

  Your friend in Allah,

  Abdul Hassan

  Kevork opened the second sheet of paper with trembling hands. It was an official-looking letter from the Turkish army. It was dated March 2, 1915, and stated that his father had died of “heart failure” while on duty. He crumpled the paper up and threw it on the ground with anger and sadness.

  Josefine Younger reached down and picked up the paper. She folded it smooth and then read for herself. “Heart failure,” she said. “Yet another.”