Orphan #8 (13 page)

Eventually the taxi turned off Amsterdam Avenue. A brick
building big as a castle seemed to turn the corner with them, its south wing extending halfway down the block, window after window after window. The wrought-iron fence rose in height as the street sank toward Broadway. By the time they pulled over, the stone foundations of the fence were level with the taxi’s roof, and Rachel had to tilt her head to see the pointy tops of the iron bars.

“Wait for me here,” the nurse told the driver. “I won’t be long.” She stood Rachel on the curb, pulled out the other two, then opened the back door and herded those children out as well. “Come along, now, and stay together.” The nurse led them up some stone steps to an iron gate. It swung open on hinges that made a lonely sound.

They emerged into a vast empty space. No grass or trees. No swings or balls or scattered bats. Just gravel and sun and, on the far side, the fence again with a matching gate onto the next street. Rachel’s legs wanted to run across the open space, to see how long it would take to reach that far fence.

“Come along to Reception.” Rachel turned toward the big building, then felt a hand on her shoulder. “No, this way.” The nurse pointed to a squat structure nearby. As they entered, Rachel heard ringing coming from across the gravel yard, loud as a fire alarm. She turned to see, but the door swung shut, smothering the sound.

The children huddled together in a small lobby. The nurse talked to a woman who said, “I’ll go get Mrs. Berger, wait here.”

Rachel tugged on the nurse’s skirt. “Where are we?”

“This is the Reception House. You’ll have to live here for a while before going into the
Orphaned Hebrews Home.”

Orphaned Hebrews Home. The words resonated in Rachel’s memory. They reminded her of the dream in which she had a brother with brown hair and light eyes who taught her the alphabet. But if she was awake and this place was real, maybe the dream was real, too. Rachel was suddenly certain she really did have a brother. Maybe this was his home. She looked for someone to ask when another woman waddled into the lobby.

“Oh, the darlings!”

“Mrs. Berger? I’m from the Hebrew Infant Home.”

“Yes, of course, Mr. Grossman told me to expect you.” Fannie Berger seemed made of ovals, the circles of her chest and the roundness of her hips separated by a thin belt around the waist of her dress. A couple of years ago, widowed and impoverished, she’d come to the Orphaned Hebrews Home to give up her son. By a miracle, Mr. Grossman, the superintendent, was, that very day, interviewing candidates for a position. Even as she signed away her son to the Home, Mr. Grossman hired Fannie Berger as Reception House counselor. Though they shared the same address, her boy lived in the Castle while she was confined to Reception, their time together limited to stolen minutes after school and Sunday afternoon visits. Fannie Berger was left to lavish the affections of a frustrated mother on all of her charges.

Mrs. Berger knelt down and opened her arms, the flesh hanging like a soft hammock from armpit to elbow. “Come here, children, and welcome.” She gathered them all, somehow, into the circle of her embrace. When she stood, each of the eight still held some piece of her, her fingers distributed among four of them, a fifth pinching her wrist, the rest with fists full of her skirt. “I’ll take them from here.”

“And their records?”

“You can leave them with Mable, thank you very much.” Fannie surveyed the children clinging to her. “All completely bald?” Rachel looked up. Like the others, she’d been given a knit cap to wear, even though the day was warm. She reached up and pulled it off. A chill passed over her scalp, a little damp with sweat, and Rachel shivered. Fannie stared at her face. “Even the eyebrows?”

“That’s what the X-rays did to them, yes. But Dr. Solomon thinks the hair might grow back. For some of them, at least.”

“Poor things,” Fannie said, shaking her head. “Well, my kittens, at least I don’t have to shave your heads, now do I?” It was the task that bothered her most. And these eight, coming from the Infant Home, would be easier in every other respect as well—apparently, they wouldn’t even need their tonsils removed. Transfers often went directly up to the Castle, but quarantine in Reception was being required for this group to see which, if any, would recover from their alopecia. Mr. Grossman had already decided to foster out the children whose hair didn’t start to grow. All new admissions to the Home were made fun of for their baldy haircuts, but a perpetually bald child would be mercilessly teased.

Fannie Berger brought the children to the second floor of the Reception House. “This is where the girls will sleep,” she said, stopping in front of a cozy dormitory. Rachel saw a dozen metal-framed beds and a wall of washstands in a room that was bright from open windows and comfortable from the breeze passing between them. “The boys are just across the hall. The bathroom is here. And this way . . .” Fannie walked awkwardly with the eight children clutching her, but still she didn’t shake them off. “This way is our dining room. Come, sit, it’s almost lunchtime. Anyone
need the bathroom first?” Some of the children did, so she left the rest of them seated on a bench at a long table. Rachel, at the end, was nearest the window. It faced the open gravel space, which was now full of children, the sound of their voices rising up on the dusty air. Rachel watched them running, skipping, shouting. There seemed to be hundreds of them. One hundred
and
one hundred
and
one.

Maybe one of the boys was her brother.

When Fannie returned, Rachel asked, “Mrs. Berger, does Sam live here?”

“There’s a lot of boys named Sam here. Sit down,” Fannie said, intent on getting lunch ready and served. Mable was now in the kitchen, filling pitchers with water, dumping stewed prunes into bowls, making sandwiches from what was left of last night’s dinner.

“My brother, Sam. When I went to the Infant Home, he went someplace else. Is he here?”

“What’s your name again, dear?”

“Rachel. Rachel Rabinowitz.”

“Sam Rabinowitz?” Fannie stopped and stared at her. She could see no trace of the boy she knew by that name. “How old is your brother, kitten?”

Rachel didn’t know how to answer. The last time she’d said her age, she was still four, her brother six. “Nobody told me if I had a birthday. When is my birthday?”

“Never mind, dear, I’ll find out. Now eat.” The new children were joined for lunch by those already in Reception. Rachel compared those who had come with her to the other boys and girls crowded around the table. Their heads had recently been shaved for lice, so all were bald to some degree, from smooth scalps to
transparent stubble to thicker growth that begged for the touch of a palm. It made her feel at home.

Fannie made sure each child got an equal serving from the plates and platters on the table. Mable had poured half-glasses of water, which Fannie topped off and even refilled. She didn’t believe in the Home’s policy of restricting water. Intended to prevent bed-wetting, she knew it didn’t work. Anxiety, loneliness, fear—these were the reasons children woke in wet blankets.

After lunch, the new children were supposed to join the others downstairs in the schoolroom, but Fannie knew that transfer day was exhausting, especially for such little ones. She took them to the dormitories, assigned them beds, and told them to rest. When she looked in on them after her own lunch, eaten with Mable in the Reception House kitchen, they were all asleep.

Fannie got their files and opened Rabinowitz, Rachel. She read a summary of the police report and shook her head. “Poor dear,” she muttered. “Such a thing to see.” She read the litany of infections at the Infant Home: measles, conjunctivitis, pertussis. There wasn’t much detail about the X-rays, just
Enrolled as material in medical research by Dr. Solomon
. Then Fannie saw what she was looking for:
Brother, Samuel Rabinowitz, assigned to Orphaned Hebrews Home
.

“So, it is Vic’s friend, Sam.” Like every other child, Sam had come through Reception. Fannie wouldn’t have remembered him so clearly except he’d become fast friends with her own son. Once Sam finished his quarantine, he’d joined Vic and all the other six- and seven-year-old boys in the M1 dorm. Vic had brought Sam into his circle of friends, sparing him much of the hazing other
new admissions suffered. In turn, Sam was quick to raise his fists in Vic’s defense.

Fannie shook her head, thinking of Sam and his temper. It was one thing to stand up for yourself—she knew the boys, especially, had to show they were strong—but Sam still hadn’t learned to accept the authority of the monitors. Fannie saw how often his cheeks were streaked red from their slaps. “At least now he’ll have some family of his own,” Fannie said aloud, closing the file and hoping his sister’s presence would calm the boy.

Fannie woke the new children from their naps and sent them downstairs with Mable to be seen by the dentist, but Rachel she held back. “Your brother, Sam, he does live here. He comes over after school with my boy, Victor.” Fannie lifted her watch from where it was pinned to her chest. “They’ll be here after three. That’s in one more hour. When you come back from the dentist, your brother, Sam, will be here to meet you.”

It was like being told she’d have a circus as a birthday present: impossible to believe but gorgeous to imagine. Memories exploded in Rachel’s mind, like the time a photographer took pictures of the children in the Scurvy Ward—pop and flash and the smell of burning. A kitchen table. Cups of tea and a jar of jelly. Piles of buttons. A stripe of sunlight across patterned linoleum. A man’s stubbled chin against her cheek. Rachel shuffled through the images for a picture of her brother, but she couldn’t remember his face. This worried her more than the scraping of the dentist’s tool and the taste of blood in her mouth.

While Rachel waited for the other children to finish with the dentist, she looked around the examination room. There was a
chart on the wall made of letters from the alphabet. She got closer to see the tiny letters at the bottom. Beside the chart was a mirror. At first she thought it was someone else’s picture, but the image moved with her. She stared for a long time before accepting that the pale, smooth thing reflected there was herself. Rachel knew she was like the other children who’d gotten X-rays, had felt her hairless scalp with her own hand, but it hadn’t changed the picture of herself she carried in her mind’s eye. From looking in the little mirror that hung above the sink for Papa to shave in, she remembered herself with long hair framing dark eyes. Rachel had been worried she couldn’t remember what Sam looked like; now she worried he wouldn’t recognize her.

After the dentist, Mable led Rachel upstairs to the dining room. With a hand on Rachel’s shoulder, she pushed the child through the doorway. “Here she is, Fannie.”

Two boys sat beside each other on the long bench. Fannie was standing, having just set cups of milk and a sandwich in front of each of them. Both boys looked at her, one with bright blue eyes, the other with gray eyes fierce as storm clouds. The storm-cloud eyes swept over Rachel, lingering on her scalp, then slid away. The bright blue eyes looked right at her, lifting at the corners with a smile. Rachel slunk along the wall, gradually drawing closer, trying to decide which boy was her brother.

“Hello, Rachel,” said the bright blue boy. She shivered at the sound of his voice. She ran and circled her arms around him, squeezing him tight.

“Oh, Sam, she’s a strong one!” the blue-eyed boy said. Rachel looked up at Mrs. Berger, confused.

Her hand on the other boy’s shoulder, Fannie said, “This is your
brother, Sam.” Two years in the orphanage had hardened his eyes from the lightness Rachel remembered. Sam held his little sister’s gaze now, his jaw tight, as if it hurt him to look at her. Vic unwrapped Rachel’s arms and handed her over to her brother. She slid down the bench and pressed against Sam.

“Come, Vic,” Fannie said. Her son followed her into the kitchen. The door swung out after them, then back in, out, in.

Sam lifted his hand to stroke the girl curled up against him, but he couldn’t bear to touch her naked scalp. Mrs. Berger had explained how his sister lost her hair from the X-ray treatments, but the sight of her so bald and pale, like a hatchling fallen to the sidewalk, rebuked him. Unlike Rachel, he remembered perfectly the last day they were together. He’d known as he made it that his promise to come for her was an empty one. As weeks, then months, disappeared without anyone reuniting them, he worried for her, knowing no one could calm her the way he could. Even as he learned to negotiate the rules and regulations of the Home, his nights were disturbed by dreams of his mother, his days consumed by anger at his father. The thread connecting him to his sister chafed until he came to resent its persistent burn.

It took all his courage for Sam to put his arms around Rachel and draw her onto his lap. He braced himself for her crying, but it never came, only the scratching of her nails as she clutched at his arms.

“It’s okay now, Rachel. I’ll watch out for you from now on.” He didn’t want it to be another empty promise. He frowned, puzzling out how to protect her when she’d be on the girls’ side of the Home, in a different class at school, at another table in the dining hall. He imagined her in the play yard, at the mercy of a thousand
children who, Sam knew, sniffed out weakness like sharks scenting blood. As orphanage kids rose in rank from inmate to monitor to counselor, each promotion intensified their bullying as they gained the authority to subject others to what they had once endured. His fists clenched at the thought of his sister in their midst.

Sam kissed Rachel’s head, ashamed at the way his lip curled back from her clammy scalp. He pushed her off his lap, held her at arm’s length, looked her in the eye. “I’ll make sure no one ever hurts you again.” It was a promise that left no room for softness.

Rachel nodded, but something in his tone scared her. “Who’s going to hurt me?” she asked, lower lip trembling.

“No one, Rachel, don’t start that now. Here, eat Vic’s sandwich.” Rachel bit into the soft bread spread with mashed potato. “Listen, Mrs. Berger’s the nicest lady in this whole place. And me and Vic, we come by every day on the way back from school. We can’t stay long, just one bell. By Study Bell we gotta be back in the Castle or the monitor’ll give us standing lessons.” Sam finished his milk. “I’ll come by after school tomorrow, okay?”