My Notorious Life (4 page)

Miserable, but full of our dinner, me and Dutchie followed the mess of girls in a line up the stairs, then to a room of nothing but washbasins.

—You will scrub yourselves, girls, a matron said. She gave us a cloth for it and raved on about how we were dirty. —You are like one of the darker races.

More evidence she would soon try to sell us.

She handed us a gown to sleep in and took away our clothes, held them away with her nose wrinkled. —Infested, she said, and put them in the bin.

Next Mrs. R. sentenced us each to sleep in a cot alone.

—My sister sleeps with me, I cried, and wrangled with them again till they gave up in exhaustion. At last we two Muldoon girls clamped around each other in our narrow crib, and slept. We was each the only safe thing we knew now, in that dark Asylum.

*  *  *

In the morning, we and the orphans was all rousted up with Mrs. Rump banging a gong. There was nothing tender about it, not like our mother who sang low to us in her lilty voice. —Wake yourselfs, it’s a new day. Up with yiz all, ya Flibbertigibbets.

The matrons now gave us blue smocks with new itchy woolies, and nice charity boots used only a little. —Thank you very much, I said to Mrs. R. —Now please we will take our brother and go find our home in Cherry Street.

Mrs. Rump pressed her lips together in a hard string across her face, as if she was tying off the neck of a sack. —You will go about your chores and not a further word.

But I had many further words for her, like Hag, Knacker and BOGTROTTER.

—Miss Muldoon! said my tormentor. —You will stand in the corner, face to the wall, and count the bricks.

But instead of bricks I counted the hours till I was free to sit in my mother’s lap, her two hands braiding my hair. When I was done counting, I wrestled Mrs. R. again for Joe, and badgered her for our return to Cherry Street.

—You’re relentless, Rump said. —Child, you try my Christian soul.

Dutch did not try anyone’s soul. She clung to the matrons, and they stroked her head and said what pretty hair, what pretty eyes, so I was jealous and glad when she climbed into my bed in the dark with night terrors, and in the morning she attached like a whelk to the rock of me as we was hauled to church to sing hymns till we were blue in the face.
Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound
. The sound was sweet, I will admit.
I once was lost but now am found
. But we were not found. We was lost as sheep in a wilderness. You could shave us and make a wool coat.

O
ne late March day with old snow dirty over the grass, Mr. Brace showed up at the Asylum with a great surprise. His bulbous eyes was bright with excitement as he sat us down in the vestibule. —Good news, he said. —You Muldoons are chosen for our Western Emigration Program. He smiled expectantly.

We stared at him dumb as socks while he conned us.

—Good country families are waiting to take in friendless city children like yourselves, and give them lovely homes with a warm hearth and ample room to roam. Perhaps you might have a pony or a dog. Your jolly brother here will learn to fish and hunt, while you young ladies will learn to set a fine table, and cook a rich country meal.

Mister Brace was a ridiculous fancy talker and though we never seen a field, now we dreamed of pony-owning.

—To date, three hundred and twenty-seven orphans from this city have settled on farms out West, with new mothers and fathers, and all the trappings of a country life.

—But we don’t need no other mother, I informed him. —We already got one. So let’s go get her straightaways, and off we will be to the countryside.

Now his eyes got tragic and mournful. They were set deep in his head and ringed around with darkness. —There is something I must tell you, he said, very grave. —Your mother has had to have a serious operation. The nature of her injuries was so severe that the doctors were forced to remove her right arm.

—You cut her arm OFF? I roared.

Dutch shrieked. She put her hand over her mouth in horror.

—Hush now, hush, Brace said. —Had we not taken her to Bellevue when we did, she would surely have died of gangrene.

—It can’t be, I cried. In my mind I saw a bloody stump off her shoulder, and my mother’s chopped limb lost somewheres. The warm crook of her elbow, the freckles on the wrist, the fingers that soothed my fevers, tossed now, who knows where? It made the bone ache all along the marrow of my own wings. —You cut her arm off, I cried, —you bungstarter of a b*****d.

—Hush now, dear child, Mr. B. said, alarmed. —The doctors saved her.

Now, years later, I’ll admit they did save her, but then I said, —You are a wicked man.

—I hope I am not, poor child. I must tell you, your mother was so grateful that you three were chosen for the Westward Settlement, she gave her consent right away. She asked me to tell you, take care of each other, and remember to say your prayers.

I did not cry nor let the black tar of how I hated him come from my mouth.

—Take comfort in the knowledge that our Lord was poor and suffered terrible mortifications, said Mr. B. seeing our stricken faces. —When they crucified Him, nails went right through His flesh. Yet He rose to live among us and be our Savior.

Dutch was crying now louder than ever at the mention of those nails. She climbed into the Reverend’s lap and put her arms around his neck. He soothed her down and failed to notice the fury buckling the space between my eyebrows.

—Why shouldn’t we have you three young rascals on the next train to the country? he asked. —Would you like that?

—Oh yes, kind Gentleman! said Dutch, a traitor already. —I can’t wait to go on that train!

*  *  *

She did not have to wait long. They came for us not three weeks on. We were at lunch awaiting our applesauce, when here comes Mrs. Reardon trundling down the row of tables, tapping certain orphans on the shoulder.

TAP! —You’re going to Illinois, she said.

She comes to Mag, and Tap! —My dear, you’re on the train.

Tap! She touched Bulldog Charlie, and the boy next to him. She got to me and said the same. —You’re on the train for Illinois. And Tap! —So’s your sister.

—We WON’T, I cried. —We ain’t no orphans.

—No argument, said she.

—What about our brother? Dutch said.

—He’s going to Illinois same as you, said Mrs. Rump. Her backside continued down the line, moving as if she kept a separate animal under her skirts.

I sprang out of my seat to make my stand. —I will not go on no train without our mother. She ain’t dead.

—Sit down Miss Muldoon, this instant.

Mrs. Rump was done with me.

Out in the yard later, everybody was talking about Illinois. The big boys, especially, were all for it. —In Illinois they got great gobs of butter in your mouth, three meals a day, said Charlie Bulldog. —Mushmelons lying around just there for you to pick.

At sixteen he was the oldest of us, and when he climbed up on the rain barrel in a pose, one finger in the air, all the orphans gathered round to hear him talk. His dark eyes was restless as minnows, and as he started in speaking all silvertongued about the West, it was like Mr. Brace himself had hypnotized the words into his mouth.

—Alla youse orphans can stay here and be lowlifes and rowdies, but if yiz do stay here, you’ll be a beggar livin’ offa charity the rest of yer natural days, mark my words. But come West, boys and girls, and you’ll soon have servants to tend you, and a fella to open your mouth and put great slices of pumpkin pie right in it. Don’t know about you, but I want to be SOMEBODY, and somebody sure don’t live here in no Asylum. So come out to the prairie alla ya, for a happier day!

—Hip hip hooray, the orphans cheered, deluded by talk of the West.

That night the matrons gave us each a Bible and a cardboard suitcase. They handed around charity trousers for the boys, dresses for the girls. Dutch tried on her new skirt and twirled herself dizzy whilst I chewed my fingers down to the nerves.

—Sleep now, youngsters, said Mrs. R. —Tomorrow you’ll be away on the train.

But I did not sleep. In the shadows of the dormitory girls pulled pillows over their faces to muffle their sobs. Dutch crawled nervous under the covers beside me and flang her leg over my hip with her long hair tangled in mine so you could not tell whose was whose. Through the night worries crawled on our skin like silverfish along the floorboards.

*  *  *

—Girls! girls, Mrs. R. cried, and rang the morning bell. —Today is the big day!

We lined up and she presented us to a couple called the Dix. Mr. Dix had a face like a small ball of suet and his teeth ratted out over his bottom lip. Mrs. Dix was a fine lady, young and slender, with her brown hair in enormous loops at her ears like some variety of spaniel.

—Please give Mr. and Mrs. Dix a warm welcome, said Mrs. Reardon. —They are the agents from the Children’s Aid Society and will be traveling with you.

The little ones clapped and the older boys sniggered at the name Dix.

—Good morning, lads and lasses, said Mr. Dix. —We are in charge of finding you all happy new homes on the prairie, all the way beyond Chicago, Illinois.

I determined to run at the first opportunity, but swiftly in the half darkness they herded the twenty of us into wagons and sent us off, everybody waving, all of us jittery. As we neared the rail yards, motes of soot was thick in the April air, and soon we arrived at a tremendous shed of glass and steel. Beyond, the locomotives waited in the open yards. —Trains! the orphans shouted.

But to me they were not trains. They was fast snakes that swallowed up mice such as ourselves, and deposited only our bones somewheres else. The Dix marched us along into a maze of noise and baggage, all the proper people turning to stare, each one thinking, Oh look at them poor pitiful guttersnipes. It was a decent crowd to get lost in.

—Dutch, I whispered. —We will carry Joe now and run out that door to the street. We can find our way to Mam, they won’t never catch us.

—But Axie, she said. —I want to go on the train.

—Train! said Joe. He was keen for it, though at two years of age he had not a clue what the f*** was a train. You never saw a nipper sweet as him.
His hair was that dark red of our dad’s, the color of rusty blood. A pepper of freckles was across his nose and round cheeks, and his britches was half the time falling off his backside. He had a habit of tilting his head to the side to look at me. Axie? he said my name with his head tipped like that, and then he took my face in his two hands, the knuckles dented. He kissed my cheeks and pressed me nose to nose so the bones of his small forehead butted up against mine, like he was trying to enter into my skull. He did that now, pressing on me, and he cried, —TRAIN, with a wild look of joy on his face.

And so it was that the whims of my sister and brother prevented me from running out the door, brainwashed as they were about prairies and pie. And it must be confessed I was afraid to run, for I had heard too much now from the matrons about how we vagrant children was worse than the pagans of Golconda. If we was left alone on the streets, they said, our childish faces would soon have the long black story of shame and suffering written upon them, a future like hell before us.

They packed us at last onto a train car, me and Dutch together with Joe on our laps. —Goodbye New York, I whispered, and took Joe’s little hand to show him how to blow kisses. As the train moved out of the station all us three Muldoons’ kisses were feathers drifting out the window into the New York air, over the buildings to find Mam.

The train clanged and chugged, getting up steam. Everybody bounced in their seats, crowding the windows. They were boisterous and singing for an hour. Mr. Dix led us in rounds of Come Ye Sinners Poor and Needy. He loved that infernal song.
God’s free bounty glorify . . .

Soon the Dix passed out a free bounty of apples and gingerbread. We pressed the crumbs against the seat with our fingers and licked them off so as not to waste any. Dutch’s pinky curled as she did it for daintiness came natural to her.

—Axie, said she, —I do like this train.

The wonder in her eyes looking out the window was in every orphan’s also. At Spuyten Duyvil we crossed a trestle over the river, such a cold hard ribbon you could not believe it was wet. White sails of ships were moths drowning on the water below.

—What’s that! we said, peering out pointing. —What’s that? The scenery went by the windows so fast. For the first time we saw hills. We saw
streams. Milk cows and beef cows and horses roamed free without fetters. Acres of trees rolled by in green walls. We never knew so many trees was possible. We grew quiet, without vocabulary for the immensity of the land, or for the distance increasing away from the patch of it we knew. What small certainty we had was dusted down now, to just our names and the contents of the satchels we carried in our childish fists. Night fell. The vast blackness out the window erased our past. It was blank as our future. We chugged through a town where the houses and stores were all lit up warm. Was there a window like that somewhere lit for us? It seemed the answer was: fat chance.