Nettie and Nellie Crook

by E. F. Abbott

  They are weak but He is strong.”

  A man and a woman stepped close, listening. The lady tilted her head and rested it gently on the man’s shoulder. When the song was over, she clapped.

  Nettie held Nellie’s hand, and they sat very still. Be good as gold, Matron had said. The lady and the man looked nice. They held hands the way Mama and Father used to, sometimes. What would happen now?

  The lady spoke to Miss Hill. Miss Hill glanced at them and bit her lip. Then she shook her head no. The man leaned in and said something, and again Miss Hill shook her head. The people walked away.

  “Didn’t they like our singing?” Nellie asked Miss Hill.

  “They liked your singing very much, Nellie,” said Miss Hill. “But they only want one child.”

  Nettie looked at poor Joe Wilson. He had stopped sobbing, but his shoulders still shook from it, and his breaths came in short gasps, the way Sissy’s used to after a bad fit.

  “You told them no?” said Nettie.

  Miss Hill glanced at Joe, and nodded. “I told them no,” she said.

  CHAPTER 9

  Nellie and Nettie were not chosen that day. Joe Wilson, too, was still on the orphan train as it pulled out of Kansas City, and so was Brenda O’Hare.

  “Nobody wants a red-haired girl,” Brenda said as the train rolled on. She stared out the window at the flat landscape. “And I’m older than they like, too,” she said. “I wonder what’s going to happen to me if I don’t get picked. If I have to go back.” Brenda’s chin trembled, and she looked up at the luggage rack to keep the tears in her eyes from falling. She knew very well what often became of girls who were too old for the orphanages and had nowhere to go.

  Nettie stared out the window and thought about what they’d left behind, and what they might find out here, out west. Miss Hill moved around here and there on the railcar to keep company with the children. Then she sat beside Brenda, across from Nettie and Nellie, pulled yarn and needles from her bag, and began to knit. The knitting needles quietly clicked, as if whispering to the clacking train.

  “I’d sure like to see a buffalo out the window,” Nettie said.

  “Buffalo?” Miss Hill dropped her knitting in her lap.

  Nellie nodded. “Like the song goes.”

  “Ah,” said Miss Hill, nodding and picking up a dropped stitch. “I see. No, I’m afraid all the buffalo are gone.”

  Nettie looked out the window again and sighed. Then she heard a pretty sound. It was Miss Hill, and she was humming. Soon the humming turned to singing, a soft voice that made Nettie think of Mama.

  “Oh give me a home, where the buffalo roam, where the deer and the antelope play,” sang Miss Hill. She smiled and then went on, and Brenda wiped her cheeks and joined her song.

  “Where seldom is heard, a discouraging word, and the skies are not cloudy all day.”

  Nettie leaned her head back against the hard seat and closed her eyes, listening to Miss Hill’s song. She must have snoozed, because she woke to the sound of the train conductor’s voice.

  “Apples!” he sang out. “Apples for you.” He walked down the aisle through the railcar, pausing at every seat so each rider could choose an apple.

  Nettie dug eagerly through the crate to find a good one. “But they’re all crawling with worms!” she wailed.

  “Right you are, little lady!” said the conductor. “Throw ’em out the windows, kids,” he said. “Throw ’em all out there. We’ll have apple trees blooming all along the tracks someday. Everybody will know you were here.”

  Nettie threw apple after apple out the window and watched each one bounce and roll. It felt good to throw the apples, as if she was throwing her sad, scared feelings out the window and watching them roll away. But as soon as the apples were gone, her bad feelings rolled right back in.

  Nettie slept deeply that night, lulled by the endless clacking rhythm of the train. She dreamed she and Nellie were in a place with apple trees all around, apple trees as far as she could see. There was a ladder leaned up against a tree, and Nettie began to climb. Up and up among the branches she went, till she could no longer see the ground. Nellie was gone now. She was alone, high in the tree. Twigs scratched her face, and there was scurrying and scrabbling around her, but no matter how quickly she turned her head, she couldn’t see whatever was up in the tree with her. It wasn’t Nellie. Nellie was no longer there. A sudden blaring noise startled her. She clung to a branch as the tree began to sway and lurch. She held on with all her might, but the shaking and swaying became more violent. The tree shook so hard she couldn’t hold on. She lost her grip and fell down, down. Many voices called out as she fell: Nobody will know you were here, nobody will know you were here, nobody will know you.…

  Nettie woke with a start, chilled and breathing hard. There was Nellie, beside her on the bench seat in the pitch-black night. Carefully, so as not to wake Nellie, she sat up and pulled the blanket up under her chin. She wondered what time it was, and how much night was left. She looked out the window and watched the darkness for a sign the dawn was coming.

  * * *

  Their next stop was in a town the conductor told them was McPherson, in Kansas. They stepped out onto the platform, as they had done in Kansas City, Missouri. This depot was even busier and more crowded with people coming and going. Everyone seemed to have important business.

  The business of finding a forever home was important, too.

  The September air felt heavy that day as Miss Hill led the children straight up to the big doors of a great brick building.

  “This place—it makes me think of the day we went to the orphanage,” Nellie said to Nettie, and took her hand. It had been a different season then. Now it was hot and sticky. Their dresses clung to the backs of their legs. Their collars grabbed at their throats.

  Nettie followed Nellie inside. The great sloped hall was lined with rows of seats, and at the front, there was a stage. It was the opera house, Miss Hill told them. She lined up the orphans on the stage, where everyone could see them.

  One couple looked closely at Nellie and Nettie. The woman stood square and squat, and even though it was hot, she wore a dark-colored sweater across her round shoulders. Her face was flat and her eyes drooped. Nettie thought she looked just like a bulldog. She knew she shouldn’t think such a mean thing, and so she smiled as nicely as she could, to make up for her unkind thoughts. Good as gold, she thought, good as gold.

  The man stood a few paces behind his wife. He was a portly fellow with cheeks reddened—Nettie hoped by a jolly nature. But he couldn’t be very jolly, she thought, for his eyes were watery, and his chin dropped away under his mouth, and he twisted his hat in his hands.

  The bulldog lady adjusted her eyeglasses and looked again at the twins, up and down, as if inspecting them for bugs or dirt. Nettie knew they were clean. Miss Hill made sure of that.

  Nellie and Nettie held hands, even though Miss Hill told them not to. Nettie remembered how poor Joe cried when they took his big brother away, and she held on tight to Nellie.

  “We’ll take ’em,” said the woman.

  Nettie looked anxiously at Nellie, and then at Miss Hill.

  “Both,” said the man. He gave the girls a quick smile and glanced at his wife. “We’ll take them both.”

  Nellie and Nettie said a quick good-bye to Joe Wilson and Brenda O’Hare. They hadn’t known Joe for long, but Nettie was sad to say good-bye, and she hoped he’d be reunited with Robert someday. It was hard to leave Brenda—red-haired, bighearted Brenda—after so many months together at the orphanage.

  “Good-bye, Brenda,” Nettie said.

  “We hope you find a nice family,” said Nellie.

  “Don’t worry about me,” she told them. “A street rat always finds a way to get by.” She smiled and gave a cheerful little wave, but her chin trembled and she turned away.

  They were sad, too, to leave Miss Hill. She had seemed to care.

  * * *

  The bulldog lady was
named Gertie Chapin. The portly, red-cheeked man was her husband, L. F. Chapin. Mr. Chapin owned a grocery store in a small town called Canton. They were a childless couple, and Mrs. Chapin said she needed help around the house.

  “Dainty little things, aren’t you,” she said to the girls. Her voice sounded mean, as if she thought the twins weren’t good for much. Nettie swallowed hard. She wanted Mrs. Chapin to like them.

  “We’re six,” said Nettie, “and we know how to scrub floors, and dust the tabletops, and change the sheets, and beat the rugs.”

  “We’re strong as an oxen team,” Nellie piped up. She did not say mooooo.

  Mrs. Chapin turned to them, her bulldog face as blank as a pie pan. “We’ll see,” she said.

  It took all day long in the horse-and-buggy to get to Canton, Kansas. Mostly, they were quiet and watched the scenery go by. They had never seen so many cows. And the clouds! The land was so flat and the sky was so big and blue that the clouds had plenty of room to make themselves into interesting shapes.

  “Elephant,” Nellie whispered, pointing.

  “Fancy hat with a feather,” said Nettie. A vision of the mysterious aunt came into her mind, and she pushed it away.

  Finally, Mr. Chapin drove into a town and down a wide, straight street lined with one- and two-story buildings.

  “That there’s my grocery store,” Mr. Chapin said, pointing to a corner building with an awning over the window. He turned to the girls and smiled. Nettie thought of the kind grocer, Mr. DiSopo, who had cried at the side of Sissy’s coffin.

  Mr. Chapin drove the buggy through the short stretch of buildings that was the town center and out the other side, then farther along to a white clapboard house with a gabled porch, the posts and ornamented trim painted gray like a pigeon.

  “This is it,” said Mrs. Chapin.

  “Home, sweet home,” said Mr. Chapin. “Welcome, Nellie,” he said. “Welcome, Nettie.” His watery eyes looked straight at each twin when he said her name, and he didn’t mix them up, even though they looked almost exactly alike! “Gertie and I”—he glanced at his wife’s back as she stomped up the walk—“well, we’re mighty glad to have you.” He winked.

  Nettie gave him a quick smile. Mrs. Chapin didn’t seem very friendly, but maybe Mr. Chapin would make up for it.

  CHAPTER 10

  Mrs. Chapin showed the girls upstairs to their room, which was small and tidy, wallpapered in a delicate repeating floral. A wardrobe stood along one wall, and against another was a set of twin beds with matching white bedspreads. Between the beds was a window that faced west into the setting sun and overlooked the backyard, and beneath the window stood a small table.

  Mrs. Chapin tugged the curtain closed. “We’ll have a cold supper shortly. Settle in.” She looked them up and down, as she had done back on that stage in McPherson, before choosing them like a couple of kittens from a cardboard box. “Wash your hands and faces,” she said. “I can’t abide dirt.” Then she turned and left them in their room.

  Their room! Mrs. Chapin’s manner was rough, and Nettie didn’t like her. But she liked their room so much she threw her arms around Nellie and burst into tears she had long held back. No more dormitory room. No more orphan train.

  “We’ll be happy here, won’t we?” Nellie said.

  “Sure thing,” Nettie said. “They didn’t split us up, like poor old Joe and Robert Wilson. We’ll be happy, all right.”

  They both took out Min and Dolly and propped them on their pillows. Then they washed up and went downstairs for supper.

  * * *

  That first night in their new home, Nettie didn’t mind that supper had been a mostly silent meal. They ate. How they ate! There were cooked carrots and canned green beans in a divided dish with two bowls. There was a plate of cold sliced beef. There was a loaf of sliced white bread, and nobody stopped them from spreading each slice thick with sweet butter. When they finished one glass of cold milk, they were allowed another, filled almost to the brim.

  “I don’t know how they fed you in that orphanage, but here in a civilized home, we don’t eat with our elbows on the table like that,” said Mrs. Chapin.

  The girls were used to protecting their supper from reaching arms by hunching over their food. Nellie flushed red and put her hands in her lap.

  Mrs. Chapin continued to do the talking while Mr. Chapin slowly chewed, and what she talked about was rules.

  “‘There’s a right way of doing things, and a wrong way,’” Nellie quoted Mrs. Chapin as the girls lay in their beds that night, the window open above the little table between them to welcome some cooler night air.

  “I bet there’s lots more than one wrong way,” Nettie said, “and I hope old Gertie Chapin won’t point out every single one.” She rested her hands on her full belly. They had already found out that the wrong way to clear the dinner dishes was to stack the plates at the table. They were to carry plates one by one to the sink so they wouldn’t break anything.

  Nellie burped. “Excuse me,” she said, and they both giggled.

  “No belching at the table, idiot girl!” said Nettie, wagging a finger like Mrs. Chapin.

  Mrs. Chapin had explained how she liked the cleaning done, and the wash, and the gardening. It sounded like hard work. But she would see that they were hard workers. They would show her she’d picked the right girls for her family.

  “Tell me a story,” said Nellie. She climbed out of her bed and into Nettie’s.

  Nettie heaved a great yawn, but she nodded. “Once upon a time,” Nettie said, “there were two little twin princesses, as fair as fairies, as gentle as lambs, more or less, and as strong and true as an oxen team.” Nettie yawned again. “And the twin princesses always took care of each other, and all that.”

  Nellie nodded.

  “We already know they got away from the witch’s castle on the back of a dragon. Well, next thing you know, the dragon lifted up off the ground! The princesses held on for dear life, and it wasn’t too bad. It was nice to look at the world from far away, where nobody could get their hands on them. But then the dragon flew down and started breathing fire, so the princesses had to think fast. They slid off the dragon’s back, quick as they could.”

  “Did they fall far?” Nellie asked sleepily.

  “Not too far,” said Nettie. “And they landed in a big pile of hay.”

  “That was lucky,” said Nellie.

  A knock came at the door. “Quiet down, now,” came Mrs. Chapin’s voice. “Morning comes early around here!” Nettie was glad she didn’t open the door. She might have made them get in their own beds, like the matron had always tried to do at the orphanage.

  * * *

  The very next minute, it seemed, there was another knock at the door. Coming abruptly out of sleep, Nettie thought it was the man with the papers, coming again to take them away from Mama.

  “I don’t know how late they let you sleep in at the orphanage,” Mrs. Chapin scolded, her bulldog cheeks rippling with agitation, “and heaven only knows what behavior your neglectful parents taught you, but from here on out, you’ll be up early.”

  Nettie yawned and rubbed her eyes. “We got up at five every day,” she said.

  “Don’t you talk back to me,” said Mrs. Chapin.

  “I was only saying we’re early ris—”

  Mrs. Chapin’s glare shut Nettie up.

  Nettie and Nellie scrambled into their clothes and down the stairs. It was too bad that Mr. Chapin had gone to the store for the day and left them alone with Mrs. Chapin. They sat at the table and tucked into the bowls of gluey oatmeal she’d put out.

  “Are we going to school today?” Nellie asked. “Miss Hill said we’d be going to school.”

  “You’ll go to school when I say so, but we’ve got other plans for today.”

  Mrs. Chapin’s plan, it soon became clear, was for the girls to do the washing. Mr. Chapin’s shirts and collars were sent out to the commercial laundry in town. “But linens and personals we
do here,” she told them. Washing was a two-person job that took all day and required the help of a washerwoman. “Now I’ve got the pair of you, I got no need of her,” said Mrs. Chapin. “I never trusted that woman. I know she stole my pewter bud vase.”

  Breakfast over, Mrs. Chapin set the girls to work. First, they lugged buckets of water from the well behind the house. Full buckets were too heavy, so they quickly learned to fill them halfway.

  “I’ll race you!” said Nettie. Even half full, the buckets were heavy. By the fourth trip, the race wasn’t any fun. Nettie’s arms felt stretched thin like rubber bands already, and they hadn’t even begun to do the washing. They’d worked on washing day plenty of times back at the orphanage, but there had been many hands to help, some of them older and bigger girls like Bucky and Brenda. Here, it was just the two of them.

  Mrs. Chapin heated the water while the girls carried more and more buckets from the well. They put the wash in the water and began to stir the clothes with a long stick. Then they scrubbed against a washboard every item of clothing, every inch of every sheet and heavy towel. The coarse lye soap burned their hands. Hours ticked by.

  Once the scrubbing was done, it was time to boil the clothes. Nettie’s arm still bore a scar from the time she’d burned it on the radiator, and so she was careful to keep clear of the boiling-hot water. She took turns with Nellie, stirring the clothes in the tub to make sure they didn’t catch on the bottom and scorch. Once the laundry was fully boiled, they had to drag the heavy items out of the hot water with a wash stick. Nettie thought her rubber-band arms would snap, and her back, too.

  “Now you need a tub of clear water for the rinsing,” Mrs. Chapin said.

  Nettie and Nellie dragged their feet out to the pump.

  “It’s like starting all over again,” Nellie said, working the pump handle up and down. “I want to lie down right here on the ground.”

  The squeak of the pump handle grated on Nettie’s nerves like the constant wail of baby Sissy, right before Mama would lose her temper and start to yell. She gritted her teeth.