Mothers and Daughters (27 page)

She would never know that, a few months after she left on the train, Lilibeth had gone back to the Aid Society to try to get her back but was told there was no record of any child with that name and birth date. Or that she had married a man, an eccentric old railroad executive, and moved uptown, or that she had died at the age of forty-three, her body riddled with cancer, asleep on a woven straw mat at Madam Tang's. But with the long view of her life, Violet wondered sometimes about her girlhood migration, what she had gained—clean clothes, good food, her own bed, stability, and the kindness of Dr. Marlowe; a fair chance, really—and what she had lost—her mother. The lack Violet felt had never gone away. All the comforts of her life in Wisconsin had only changed its shape.

*   *   *

“Miss Moody?”

“Yes, Violet.”

“Do I go to work now?”

“Oh, no. Not today.”

“What should I do then?”

“Why don't you rest. You must be tired from your travels. The kitchen can wait. We'll start fresh tomorrow.”

Violet sat on the bed, her feet not quite touching the floor, and placed her dusty Bible on the bedside table.

“Supper at five-thirty.” Miss Moody pulled the door closed behind her.

Violet swung her feet and then jumped off the bed to look out the window. She saw a young woman sitting down by the water, rocking back and forth, as if there were a baby in her arms. Violet sat back on the bed and fell to the side, her head landing on the pillow. What an extraordinary thing that I am here, she thought. It was so very quiet. She wished again for the photograph of her mother. She was already forgetting the details of it, her mother's expression, her borrowed dress. She missed her mother as if it had been years already, a memory faint and bittersweet. But she was drifting now, sleep tugging her into a dream of a sun-hazy Kentucky morning, flies buzzing against the door. She awakened and moved her feet up onto the bed, too tired to take off her dirty boots.

 

AUTHOR'S NOTE

In the mid-nineteenth century, tens of thousands of children—orphaned, homeless, poverty-stricken, neglected, or delinquent—roamed the streets of New York City. Charles Loring Brace, a young minister, founded the Children's Aid Society to help this teeming underclass. He decided to enact a controversial social experiment: remove these children from their circumstances, put them on trains, and send them west to new Christian homes in rural America.

Children of all ages boarded trains without knowing their destinations, and efforts were made to ensure that families would not be able to track them down. Upon arrival, children were cleaned up and paraded before prospective parents on makeshift stages. There were successes. But there were many failures. With no oversight of the adopters and scant follow-up of children placed, orphan train riders were vulnerable to abuse and indenture, often treated as free farmhands in labor-starved agricultural areas.

The Orphan Train Movement operated from 1854 to 1929, relocating 150,000 to 200,000 children. It is considered the forerunner of foster care in the United States.

 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My love and gratitude go to my dear Meadows and Darrow families for their unwavering support, encouragement, and inspiration. Special thanks to Susannah Meadows for her terrific suggestions, Jessica Darrow for her unbridled enthusiasm, and Jane Meadows for first telling me about the orphan trains.

An enormous thank-you to my editor, Helen Atsma, for her wise direction and generous vision and for taking on this book. Thank you also to Marjorie Braman, for graciously seeing this book to its completion, and to the whole wonderful team at Henry Holt.

I'm so incredibly grateful for my friend, advocate, and agent, Elisabeth Weed, for her perseverance and faith in me. Thank you as well to Jenny Meyer for believing in this book and running with it.

I owe so much to my first and most trusted reader, Alex Darrow. Thanks also to Michelle Wildgen for her invaluable insight, and to Jesse Lee Kercheval, Susanna Daniel, and Judy Mitchell for their close reads and guidance.

My sincere appreciation goes to Cathy Stephens, for generously sharing her Madison history research, and to the Wisconsin Historical Society.

Thank you to the friends near and far who have steadfastly supported my writing over the years: Jennifer Sey, Mark Sundeen, Lewis Buzbee, Lynn Kilpatrick, Jean Johnson, Meredith and Jennifer Bell, Carolyn Frazier, Lance McDaniel, Melissa Kantor, Emma Straub, April Saks, Doe Yamashiro, Kristin Farr Costello, Jody Maxmin, Amy Sweigert, Christopher Sey, Andrew Wilcox, Katie Gerdes, Denise Wood Hahn, and, always, my friends from the Creative Writing Program at the University of Utah.

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

R
AE
M
EADOWS
is the author of
No One Tells Everything
, a Poets & Writers Notable Novel, and
Calling Out
, which received the 2006 Utah Book Award for fiction and was named one of the best books of the year by the
Chicago Tribune
. She lives with her husband and two daughters in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

 

ALSO BY RAE MEADOWS

Calling Out

No One Tells Everything

 

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This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

Copyright © 2011 by Rae Meadows

All rights reserved.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Meadows, Rae.

Mothers and daughters: a novel / Rae Meadows.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-0-8050-9383-4

  1.  Mothers and daughters—Fiction.   2.  Motherhood—Fiction.   3.  Family secrets—Fiction.   4.  Domestic fiction.   5.  Psychological fiction.   I.  Title.

PS3613.E15M67 2011

813'.6—dc22                                                     2010028956

eISBN 978-1-4299-7239-0

First Henry Holt eBook Edition: March 2011