Rodzina (16 page)

We wound through forests of pine and fir, up, up, and up. Everywhere there were trees, green and vigorous, branches sprinkled with snow, some taller than the tallest Chicago buildings. There were more trees in California, I'd say, than poppy-seeds in Mama's Christmas cake.

Every so often we passed through long, tall wooden tunnels, constructed, the conductor said, to keep the snow off the tracks so the trains could run. People lived and worked in these tunnels, which covered houses, stores, turntables, depots, sidings, everything. It was a fantastical underground world, one like fairies might live in or those prairie dogs I saw in Wyoming. Was that in this lifetime? It seemed so long ago.

At Summit station Miss Doctor and some of the others got out, but I did not. Only 7042 feet—that didn't seem so high to me, who had stood at 8235 at Sherman.

Then down we chugged to Sacramento, seven thousand feet in one hundred miles of twists and turns. The train rattled and swung on the sudden curves and narrow ledges of the mountain. The wheels on the cars ahead glowed red-hot like disks of flame.

In the pale light from the gas lamps I could see only shadows in the car. It was easier to talk about some things when you knew you were only a shadow. "Thank you for waiting for me," I whispered to Miss Doctor. "I was happy to see you."

"And I you."

"Really? Happy to see me?"

"Don't sound so surprised. I do have feelings. It's just that I keep them to myself. I tend to be private ... and, yes, sometimes, I suppose somewhat—what was that you called me a while back—cold and frosty." She laughed a tiny laugh, the first I ever heard from her. "You should meet my mother. She could grow icicles in Hell."

So she wasn't an orphan. "Your mother is still alive?"

"I assume so. I have not seen or heard from her since I announced my intention to study medicine." Miss Doctor leaned back, her eyes closed and head against the seat back. "I've often imagined going home with my doctor bag, and my mother waiting on the porch, calling, 'I am so proud of you, daughter. Let's celebrate with white cake and lemonade.' But that will never happen. My mother never changes her mind."

How strange it seemed to me that the starchy Miss Doctor pretended just the way I did. "The notion that a woman should not practice medicine because she is a woman," she said softly, "is intolerable, absurd, and outdated. Yet it may defeat me."

"But you worked so hard to be a doctor." "And doctoring is my only skill. What else could I do?"

"You could be a prigger or a hoister or a dip." I smiled at the thought.

She looked at me as if my head had fallen off. "What do you know of priggers and dips and such?"

"After Mama died, I spent some nights on the streets. There were lots of kids sleeping out there. I was with them for a while before I was grabbed and sent to the orphanage. And that's what they were: priggers and hoisters and dips. Melvin was a hoister. You know, a buzzer. File. Whiz. Wire."

She shook her head but said nothing.

"It was Melvin who told me orphanages ship orphans on trains to the west and sell them to families that want slaves."

"I never imagined you sleeping on the street or begging for food," she said. "I never knew. And you really expected to be sold?" She shook her head again. "How frightened you must have been."

"I was, but I should have known Melvin wasn't someone to believe. You can't trust hoisters. And after a while I could see for myself that not all the people who wanted orphans were just in the market for cheap servants." There was silence. "I know you tried your best for me. It's not your fault nobody wants me."

There was more silence then. I thought Miss Doctor had fallen asleep, but she said, "I had a telegram from Mr. Szprot. Herman has run away from his new home already." Hermy the Knife. He'd be back with the Plug Uglies in no time. There's no telling what is a family to some people.

Miss Doctor slept then. I sat for a long time watching out the window, though I could see nothing but the reflection of my own face. We were getting closer and closer to San Francisco. I imagined myself walking up to the training school door, leaving Miss Doctor behind. I could see that door in my mind, plain as day, but I could not imagine what lay on the other side.

We raced through the Sacramento Valley late in the afternoon. Mountain cliffs and towering trees disappeared as the valley opened up wide and green, with plowed fields and a wonderland of flowers and blossoming trees. Could this be the same season I'd left in Chicago? The same country? I felt like Sleeping Beauty or Rip Van Winkle—I had fallen asleep in the Chicago winter and woke to a bright California spring.

The sun danced and sparkled on the windows of the train as we rode along.
Mama would like it here,
I thought.
She wouldn't be cold anymore. "Sit in the sun, Rodzina," she would say. "It will put roses in your cheeks."

And Papa? I could hear Papa saying, "This new land, so big. I think there could be a place here for a Polish poet."

California was large and empty. Surely if there was a place here for a Polish poet, there would be a place for a lady doctor. Miss Doctor would find work here, I just knew it. And I would spend my days scrubbing someone's pots and ironing someone else's starched collars, and no one would ever want me. Miss Merlene had found a way out of the laundry room, but it appeared I could not.

The train stopped for supper at Sacramento station. It was dark, but the air was soft and mild. The town smelled of flowers and the river.

We ate at a restaurant for only twenty-five cents each. There was a blue mug of daffodils on each table. Our waiters were quick and polite, but strange, with narrow eyes, long shirts, and loose trousers. Miss Doctor said they were from China. China! That was even farther away than Chicago. Or Poland.

A woman at another table called loudly, "Doctor!" Miss Doctor turned around, but the woman was waving to a portly gentleman in a straw hat. "How odd it is," I said to Miss Doctor, "to hear a man called doctor." She smiled at me.

After dinner she collected a telegram that was waiting for her at the station office, read it quickly, and put it in the pocket of her dusty suit. Back on the train we settled down for the night.

"Good night, Rodzina," said Miss Doctor, making that sound between a D and a G and a Z that I thought only Polish mouths could make. She looked at my stunned face and smiled again. "I have been practicing."

We rattled and swayed our way toward San Francisco. My thoughts were tumbling around inside me, and I tried to catch some of them. For nearly an hour I considered and wondered and, finally, swallowed twice, mentally hitched up my stockings, and spoke. "Miss Doctor, I want to say something. I want to stay with you and not go to the training school."

She opened her mouth to speak, but I kept talking. "Just listen, Miss Doctor. I have been thinking and thinking about this. It's a good idea. We are becoming used to each other, and—"

"Rodzina, I cannot—"

I was desperate enough to contradict her. "Don't say you cannot! You
can.
I do not want to go to the training school. I want to stay with you."

Miss Doctor said nothing, and my heart and my hopes began to shrivel. "Miss Doctor?" I said after a moment. "What do you think?"

She shook her head. "I would have to think very seriously about the responsibility of taking on a child, raising and supporting her by myself. And I would need to consult the placing-out agent in Chicago. It would take time."

"We don't
have
time." My voice grew sharp and whiny as I began to fear I was failing to convince her. "Tomorrow we will be in San Francisco, and the training school will swallow me like a chicken swallows a bug."

"I do not know if it would work. We have not always gotten along so well. And at times you have disliked me fiercely."

"That's because you and me, Miss Doctor, we're so different. But that could be a good thing. And in lots of ways we're alike. Maybe you don't know, but I do." I rubbed the beginnings of tears from my eyes with my fists. "We could be a family, Miss Doctor, you and me." I waited for her to say something.

Miss Doctor looked straight at me. "It's true I would miss you if you were not here. And I have been having serious doubts about leaving you in a training school." She was silent for a long while then, and I held my breath. "Perhaps we might make a success of it," she said, and my breath came out in a whoosh. "It will not be easy, Rodzina. We are both of us difficult and ornery."

Difficult and ornery? Right then I felt as easy and obedient as chocolate pudding. Still, I knew what she meant. "But we can try?"

"Yes, we can try, both of us, very hard."

I smiled and she smiled back. Her gray eyes behind the spectacle lenses were as soft as kitten fur or the mist on the hilltops.

"Miss Doctor?"

"If we are to be a family, perhaps you should call me by my real name."

I didn't know her name. I had never troubled to find out. Hanging my head a little, I said, "I don't know what it is."

"Catriona Anabel Wellington. Not nearly as long or as elegant as yours."

"It will do. May I call you Doctor Cat?"

"You may."

"Well, then, Doctor Cat, what will you do in California? What will
we
do? Perhaps I could work at—"

She reached over and took my hand. I didn't know whether I was more surprised or happy. "The message waiting for me in Sacramento was a response to the hundreds of telegrams I have been sending throughout California. Finally. Professor Meyers at the new college in Berkeley tells me a small community is growing up around the school, and they are in need of a doctor. Even a lady doctor. We might make a home in Berkeley." She looked closely at me. "We may have to struggle some, but we will struggle together. And they have a high school there."

I smiled so big my lips hurt. I leaned up against Doctor Cat's shoulder, but I could not sleep. I was so happy, it was like music in my head.

"Edgar Allan Poe," I heard her say.

Puzzled, I looked up at her in the dim gaslight.

"Poe," she said again. "He was an orphan and a successful poet. Also the novelist Leo Tolstoy. He was an orphan too. I'm sure I can think of others if I put my mind to it."

"That won't be necessary, Doctor Cat," I said. "Two examples will do." Two orphans, two writers, and one of them a poet. And I had a family and was going to high school. Perhaps not all orphans turn out badly after all.

Early in the morning, the conductor woke us. "We're almost to Oakland station, pretty miss," he said to me.

Pretty? I turned to look at my reflection in the window of the train. No, I wasn't really pretty. I was better than pretty. I looked like my papa.

It was raining. "Just wait," the conductor said. "A California rain is like an old woman's dance. It doesn't last very long."

And he was right. By the time we arrived at the Oakland station, the rain had stopped. And we stepped off the train into blazing California sunshine.

This is roughly how these Polish words in the story are pronounced and what they mean:

T
HERE REALLY WERE
orphan trains. Between 1850 and 1929, nearly 250,000 poor urban children were sent west from the slums of the east and, toward the end of the century, from the midwest. The children had been living on the streets or in overcrowded orphanages. Most of them were orphans; the rest were abandoned, neglected, or sent away by desperate parents. It was thought that hard work in the clean air of the west would offer children a better chance to lead happy and productive lives.

The most famous of the "placing-out" agencies was New York's Children's Aid Society, established in 1853 by a young minister named Charles Loring Brace. He was dissatisfied with the existing options for homeless children. Children could be bound over, or indentured, to local families in exchange for their labor, a system that led to many abuses. Orphanages, a fairly recent idea, were few. Some were strict but fair, demanding much of the children but offering them food, beds, and sometimes work training. Many were unhappy places where children were lonely, frightened, and abused. Workhouses offered lodging and food to children and adults in return for work in factories or laundries. There were not enough of these institutions to house all the homeless children, and young people were put in jails merely for the crime of being homeless.

Brace developed a plan that would provide self-sufficiency and a home life to homeless children. A published summary of the work of the Children's Aid Society written in 1853 stated that "homeless waifs [found] themselves in comfortable homes, with all the boundless advantages and opportunities of the Western farmer's life about them." This was true, perhaps, for some children. Not all were so fortunate.