The Chaperone

by Laura Moriarty

  On Sundays, they got to go out to the backyard, as long as they were careful of the garden. There was a tree, Cora remembered. They were not allowed to climb it. The older girls would sit under it and talk, or braid one another’s hair. They all jumped rope, using a clothesline with a knot in the middle to weight it down. Some girls played blindman’s bluff. When it snowed they played fox and geese.

  Inside, there was a sleeping room, Cora’s bed one in a row of many. In the winter, you got a sweater, and you slept in it, not just because it was cold but because if you lost your sweater, woe to you. They ate downstairs in a big room with long tables and cross-barred windows. They were not to speak unless spoken to. Some of the nuns were kind, and patient, but some were not, and they all wore habits, making it difficult to distinguish one from another until one was close and looking right at you. Sister Josephine might turn and become Sister Mary, or Sister Delores, who was young and pretty, but who also carried a wooden paddle. It was best to always follow the rules, and show respect at all times.

  It was the New York Home for Friendless Girls. Mary Jane, who knew how to read, said the words were painted on a sign out front. This name made no sense to Cora. She wasn’t Friendless. Mary Jane was her friend, and so was Little Rose, and Patricia, and Betsy, all of the younger girls and even Imogene if Cora didn’t bother her too much. It means no parents, Mary Jane said. Orphans. But that didn’t make sense, either. Rose’s father came by almost every Sunday. Rose said he would be coming for her and her older sister soon. He would take them home. And Patricia’s mother was in the hospital, sick with tuberculosis, but alive.

  Cora herself did not have parents, none that she knew. She had only a flash of a memory, or a memory of a memory, or maybe just a dream: a woman with dark hair, curly like her own, and wearing a red knit shawl. It was her voice Cora remembered, or imagined, most clearly, saying unknown words in a strange language, and also, clearly, Cora’s name.

  “Am I an orphan?” Cora asked.

  “You are,” said Mary Jane. The older girls called Mary Jane Irish, because of the way she talked. “We all are. That’s why we’re here.”

  The nuns said grace before every meal. Because you rescued the poor who cried for help, and the fatherless who had none to assist them. The girls only had to wait and then cross themselves and say, In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit and amen. They ate oatmeal for every breakfast and every dinner. The nuns ate oatmeal, too. They put raisins in when they had them, and when they did, Cora ate with an elbow on each side of her plate, because some of the older girls had long fingers. For supper, there was bean soup with vegetables, and if anyone was stupid enough to complain, what they got was a lecture about gratitude, and about how many thousands of children on the very streets of New York would give anything to get three meals a day, not to mention a roof over their heads. If the complainer wasn’t happy, a nun would suggest, she might leave, and make room for a truly hungry child who would be glad to take her bed and her place at the table. She could be sure there were plenty waiting in line.

  That seemed to be true. Whenever a new girl came in, she was almost always bonier and far dirtier than Cora and the other girls. The nuns had to shave new girls’ hair off because so many of them came right from the slums or even the streets and lice were always a concern. New girls ate their oatmeal fast, spoons scraping the bowls, and the nuns would give them seconds and even thirds until they caught up and lost the dead look in their eyes, their hair finally starting to grow back. Only Patricia had come in plump, her pretty blond hair never shaved, and she was the one who sulked about the food, who made faces when the nuns weren’t looking. Patricia told Cora that even when she was awake, she dreamed of pie and cheese and smoked meat. Cora knew about smoked meat, because sometimes the air on the roof smelled so good she wanted to bite at it, and another girl said this was the smell of meat cooking on a stove. But she’d never tasted the other things Patricia said she dreamed of, at least not that she could remember, and so she, unlike Patricia, wasn’t tormented by their loss.

  Cora didn’t remember being anywhere but the home. Big Bess, who was almost thirteen, said she remembered when Cora arrived, and that she hadn’t been a baby but a toddler, chubby, and already walking and looking up when she heard her name. But that was all she knew. Cora once asked Sister Josephine who had brought her, and where she had been before, and even Sister Josephine, who was the nicest nun by far, her missing teeth plain to see when she smiled, the only one who never even threatened to use the paddle, even she had told Cora firmly that such questions were impertinent, and that she should consider herself a child of God, and a fortunate one at that.

  One day, not long after she had lost her first tooth, Cora became even more fortunate. At least that was what she was told at the time. Sister Delores would be taking her on a little trip, along with six of the other younger girls. They would need to be on their best behavior, leaving quietly while the other girls were in the laundry. They would need to leave right away. They would need to button their sweaters, as there was a chill in the air.

  Cora, holding Mary Jane’s hand, assumed she would be back in time for supper. She felt only excitement, a thrilling break from the routine, as she and Mary Jane followed Patricia and Little Rose and the other lucky girls, who followed Sister Delores, down the steps and through the big front door, and finally, out the front gate onto the street, which Cora had only seen from the upstairs window. Even Mary Jane, who’d already lost all her baby teeth and grown new ones back, who could do a perfect backbend, seemed afraid. They followed Sister Delores around a corner, and all at once, there were people everywhere, some walking, some in carriages, the horses going clip clop clip clop, everyone moving quickly. They had to take big steps to avoid piles of filth that came from the horses. Cora pulled the collar of her sweater against her nose, breathing through the wool. Sister Delores had to lift her habit from time to time, and Cora saw her black stockings. They were torn above each heel, the white of her skin showing through.

  At the next corner, Sister Delores stopped walking, and told them they would wait there for an omnibus. None of them knew what an omnibus was, but they were all too afraid of Sister Delores to ask. On the omnibus, she said, they were to sit quietly, as close to her as possible. They were not to talk with any strangers or try to make any friends. She wanted them to know that there would be a rope stretching the length of the omnibus, and that it was attached to the ankle of the driver. She knew they would be curious about the rope, and so she would tell them now it was to let the driver know when to stop. If someone wanted to get off at a certain location, he or she pulled the rope, and the driver would stop the horses. Sister Delores hoped all the girls understood that she would be the only one in their group who would touch the rope, as she was the only one who knew where they were going. If one of the girls thought it would be clever to pull the rope and make the driver stop with no reason, that was fine. But the clever girl should understand that when the omnibus stopped, the clever girl would, in fact, be getting off, and getting off alone.

  On the omnibus, which turned out to be a covered cart with benches, pulled by a sad brown horse, the girls were very quiet, their hands clasped in their laps. No one touched, or even looked at, the rope.

  Their destination was a redbrick building with high windows and a cod-liver smell. As they walked in, Sister Delores said hello to a woman in spectacles who was not a nun and told her she and her girls would need a private moment. The woman with spectacles smiled and showed them into a room with a cross and a painting of Jesus and a flag of the United States. There were wooden chairs, most of them sized for children. When the woman who was not a nun left, Sister Delores asked the girls to sit, and then she sat in a bigger chair, and smiled at them with her pretty face, and told them they were not on a little trip at all. In fact, she said, still smiling, they were about to be sent on a great adventure, courtesy of the Children’s Aid Society, which had raised great sums of mone
y to help girls just like them.

  “You’re being placed out,” she told them, looking kinder and happier than she ever had, her blue eyes large and, for the first and only time Cora could remember, twinkling. “In just a few hours, you’re going for a train ride. You’re going to go very, very far away, because there are good people in the Middle West, in places like Ohio and Missouri and Nebraska, who want to bring a child into their home.” Still smiling, she pressed her palms together. “You’re each going to find a family.”

  Cora, sitting in her little wooden chair, felt her blood go still. She looked at Mary Jane, who appeared too stunned to move, but with a strange smile on her face. Cora shook her head. She was afraid of Sister Delores, but she was more afraid of the train. She didn’t want to go to Ohio. And Betsy. Betsy wasn’t with them.

  “I have a family,” Patricia said. She already had the panicked voice of someone about to cry. “My mother’s in the hospital. She won’t know where I am.”

  Rose said that she couldn’t leave New York, either. Her father was coming to get her any day. Her and her older sister.

  “This has all been decided,” Sister Delores said quietly. Her hard look, the one they knew better, had already returned. “If you were placed with us, it’s because you’ve got no one else. Some of your parents may have made you promises that they can’t keep. You can’t rely on them.”

  “My father’s coming for me,” said Rose.

  “Your father’s a drunk.” Sister Delores looked at her without blinking. “If he would stay sober through the week, he could keep a job, and he could come get you as he says he will. But he hasn’t done that, has he? Has he? No. And he won’t. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be unkind, but you are too gullible. It’s been a year now, Rose. We can’t throw away a chance like this so you can wait around on an empty promise.”

  Rose started to cry, her whimpers louder and higher-pitched than Patricia’s. She took the tips of her brown braids and held them against her eyes. Cora felt heat behind her own eyes, her bottom lip starting to tremble. This train, this horrible train, was leaving in a few hours. They wouldn’t be able to go back to the home. She wouldn’t see Sister Josephine again. Or Imogene. Or Betsy. They would give her bed away to a skinny girl with a shaved head. Perhaps they already had.

  “Stop that. Stop that crying. You don’t understand what good fortune this is.” Sister Delores looked at them and shook her head. “I wasn’t going to tell you this. But before you even get on the train, you’ll each get a new dress.”

  Mary Jane turned to Cora, her eyes bright with excitement. She reached over and squeezed Cora’s hand. She thought Cora was like her. Neither of them had a mother in the hospital, or a father with good intentions, or an older sister to leave behind. Not as far as they knew. But Cora shook her head again. She didn’t care if Sister saw her. She didn’t know if her mother was in the hospital or if she had a father coming to get her. But she might. The train would take her away from all she knew, from who she was.

  “I won’t go,” Patricia said. Now she was crying full on. “I won’t go. I don’t want a new family. I have a mother.”

  Sister Delores stood quickly. There was no telling if she had the paddle. Patricia shrank from her reach.

  Cora looked up at a high window, at the sliver of gray sky beyond. Even if she could reach the window, and somehow fly through it, where would she go? They’d had breakfast before they left, and already she was hungry again.

  “How very selfish,” Sister Delores said, still looking at Patricia. She shook her head, her veil brushing her shoulders. “That you would deny another child a place to sleep and enough to eat because you refuse to take advantage of an opportunity.”

  “Let someone else go in my place,” Patricia said. “They can go to the Middle West.”

  “Stupid girl.” Sister Delores frowned. “These are good homes. They can’t place someone right off the street.”

  From the other side of the door, an infant cried. They heard a young voice, different from theirs. A boy’s.

  “Why just us?” Mary Jane asked. “Why not the other girls?”

  Sister Delores nodded, as if to thank someone, finally, for asking a logical question. “They only had seven spots for us,” she said. “Out of a hundred and fifty. And they told us the younger ones do better. We’ve been sending our babies out for a while.”

  “Betsy’s younger than I am,” Cora said. She was not defending her young friend. She was hoping Sister would realize her mistake, take her back to the home, and make Betsy get on the train.

  Sister Delores shook her head. “Betsy’s slow in the head. You can see it, looking in her eyes. They said no one would want her.” She gazed up at the picture of Jesus. The girls understood that they should not speak. Even in profile, the veil obscuring half her face, Sister Delores’s weariness was clear.

  “We love all of God’s children.” She continued to look at the picture. “But only some can get on the train.”

  She took a deep breath and pulled her shoulders back. She didn’t raise her voice. She didn’t need to. Her quiet voice, her hard blue stare, was enough.

  “I’m going to tell you once more, and once more only. If you’re sitting here now, you are a very lucky girl. And for your own good, I guarantee you are each getting on that train.”

  They didn’t know they were part of an exodus, a mass migration that spanned over seventy years. They didn’t know that the Children’s Aid Society had already filled, and would continue to fill, train after train with the Great City’s destitute children, sending, before the end of the program, almost two hundred thousand of them off to what was usually an easier life among the farm families of the Middle West, with its abundant fields and fresher air, its clean Main Streets and church picnics, its earnest young couples who wanted a child.

  Or a field hand. A young slave. An indentured servant who could be made to work long hours in the cold and the heat, who wouldn’t need much food. A prisoner whom no one would miss, who could be beaten, starved, tormented, undressed and violated, all within the privacy of one’s home.

  The routine was almost always the same. Flyers would be mailed a few weeks before a train went out: Homes for Children Wanted. Various Ages. Both Sexes. Well-Disciplined. Caucasian went without saying. The address, time, and place of distribution would be announced at a later date.

  The trains didn’t go to the same towns every year. The Society kept them in rotation, thinking the chances would be better if a community wasn’t already thick with orphans, if the orphans they had were anomalies, not a real threat to the demographic. And there were so many little towns to choose from, their little downtowns snug against the tracks. The agents, the women with the rosters who rode the trains as well, told the children not to worry if they weren’t selected at the first few stops. People always went for the babies first. Once they were all spoken for, the agents promised, the older ones would have a chance.

  Still, they were coached. They were taught to smile when smiled at, and to sing “Jesus Loves Me” on command. The girls were told that if potential parents asked them to lift their skirts, they should, to show that their legs were straight. People had the right to know what they were taking on. Two red-haired boys had the seat in front of Cora. They held hands even when asleep. The older boy told the agent they were brothers, and that they couldn’t be separated. She told them she would do her best.

  When the train arrived at a new town, the children were cleaned up, their faces and hands washed, their hair combed, their clothes changed. Before they even left New York, they had each been given a bath, and not just one nice set of clothes, but two: one set for travel, and a nicer set for the selections. They had warm coats and new shoes that actually fit, caps for the boys, hair ribbons for the girls. The agents were experts at braiding hair and tying shoelaces and erasing evidence of tears or interrupted naps. When the children were clean and presentable, they were led onto some kind of stage, usually at a church or a t
heater or an opera house. There was always a crowd. People would come out just to watch.

  Even at the time, Cora understood the danger she was in, standing on stage after stage, staying quiet as adults milled about, looking her and the other children over, telling some to open their mouths and show their teeth. She was glad not to be a boy. Men and women squeezed boys’ skinny arms to feel for muscle, and pressed hands against their knees and slim hips. Some were clear about their needs. Have you ever milked a cow? Have you ever shucked corn? Are you sickly? Were your parents sickly? Do you know what it means to work? But it wasn’t so good to be a girl, either. At one stop, Cora listened as a man with a long beard told an older girl with thick black braids how pretty she was, and how he had lost his wife a few years back, and how it was just him in the house, alone, but that it was a big house, and did she like babies? Instead of answering, the girl had started to cough, hard and purposeful, not even putting her hand to her mouth, her face red as if she were choking, until the man stepped away. When he walked past Cora, his face grim, she started coughing, too.

  Rose was the first of her group to go. Cora didn’t see who chose her. She’d been so nervous, standing on the stage, that she didn’t even notice Rose was gone until they were back on the train, and she had the seat to herself. Mary Jane was picked at the next stop, practically jumping into the arms of a young man with a black coat and a cane who asked her if she would like her own pony. His wife was pretty, with a long green skirt and a matching, smart-looking jacket, her blond hair in coils under her hat. Walking out between them, Mary Jane had turned back and waved at Cora, a flash of loss in her eyes before she looked up at the man, smiled again, and disappeared through the door.