Forgetting Tabitha: An Orphan Train Rider (3 page)

Usually it was a drunkard or gambler that lay dead outside our door, but lately it was kids from our own block, getting involved in the gangs and fighting senselessly over territory, politics, or religion. The Dead Rabbits were the gang we were most afraid of. Gang members wore a red stripe on their pantaloons and carried a dead rabbit impaled on a spike with them into street fights. They fought the Roach Guards most of the time over territory and we lived at an intersection smack in the middle. We couldn’t afford to move just yet, but my mama decided if we rented two rooms in Mrs. Canter’s flat instead of our own apartment we could reside with her brood and save a few dollars each month. So we pared down our belongings in hopes of saving our pennies to get ahead, the promise of living further north spurring us on.

Mrs. Canter had six rotten smelling boys that always
slagged
around and no husband neither. All her lads shared a bed with each other and were directly across the hall from my mama and me; we could hear their snoring and farting all night long. Worse, we had to share a toilet basin with them and they always left crude pee stripes or sticky crap smears on the seat. One time I woke in the middle of the night to use the john and sat right in something sticky and thick. Sure enough it was crap from one of the vile boys and I was never so repulsed. I told my mama this the next day and she nodded in acknowledgment and scrubbed at the stains she was laundering even harder than normal. We had to wash our laundry in our kitchen basins and hang our clothing out to dry where they would soak in the stench from the filth filling the streets.

Several of Mrs. Canter’s lads were being recruited by the Gangs already. But it was Liam her five year old, the one that chewed on his toenails, that was caught for thievery and thrown into jail with a gang of ruffians. The thugs from the Dead Rabbits saved him from rape in the slammer and now he was indebted to them, bringing the threat and promise of gang life to our front door.

Many men from the gang approached my mama, dazed by her vitality and beauty even with short hair. She was fiercely protective of me and had a quick temper the men liked and admired her for. She was young and had more teeth than most women her age because she brushed regularly and ate her greens. She managed to push off most of the advances because the gang members were deeply involved in politicking and gambling.

Brian Kelley showed up at our door on numerous occasions after he had been into the drink, trying to tempt my mama towards a better life with him. Pulling at her slender hips with his grimy hands he tried kissing her right in front of me. He had dimples and a wide grin, but his eyes had lost their sparkle. He had seen death too many times and since he was a member of the Dead Rabbits Mama thought he had done his share of killing. When we found out he was murdered mama clutched her chest and sank to the ground. Until years later I didn’t understand mourning over someone she couldn’t possibly love like my Da.

After Da died, we naively moved from our spread out farming days in the country to the constraints of city, thinking it would be easier to manage our life where work, food, and medical care were right at our fingertips. We also had foolish hopes to find more of our kind, Irish immigrants. Mama had to go door to door in town asking for work as a laundress. We worked all day and night scrubbing and ironing to get our work done. One day shortly after we got settled my mama looked up at me and said, “Da and I made a promise to each other, any child of ours would get a proper education. We are set up well enough now that I can handle this laundry.” Just like everything else, when she made up her mind about something, it was done. She marched me to the schoolhouse the very next day and asked that I be registered.

One room in the schoolhouse was for elementary students like me and the other room was for the older children that already knew how to read and write and figure arithmetic. Most of the students were Irish immigrants like myself so we all had the same way of pronouncing our A’s. My teacher was called Miss Marianne and I adored her. She had patience for all the children in her classroom and was teaching me to read from my first primer.

Mama walked me to school in the mornings and picked me up in the afternoon. The city was bustling with people and it made her apprehensive. She worried I would get lost or caught in a scuffle, or worse, kidnapped and sold into prostitution. After she picked me up we delivered the day’s laundry and stopped by the grocers for supper. Usually we bought day old bread because it was cheaper and only a tad stale, cheese and whatever greens they had. I helped prepare our meager supper when we got home and read from my primer while my mama knit in the evenings, regaling me with faraway stories of Galway and my Da. I grew to associate the sound of her needles click clacking together, knit, purl, knit, and purl, with peaceful evenings. Together we would fall asleep to the harmonies of the city outside and to the sound of the Canters tooting along.

One dismal morning on our walk to school our routine was interrupted by the Sisters of Charity shuttling kids out from discarded boxes and in between doorways onto the sidewalks with offers of bread, sweet milk, and lollipops. Mama and I knew these children were orphans or had parents who had fallen on hard times, known as half orphans. I kept staring at the ratty clothing and bare feet on these poor souls, one of whom was a toddler.

“Mama, how can we help them?” I wanted to know.

“Uppy.” The wee toddler with the opaque eyes and green snotty nose held his arms up in the air for someone to pick him up.

“I am afraid we can’t, we are making just enough for ourselves at the moment, but you can put your penny in the collection for the Sisters of Charity at church service. That would be very generous and the Sisters will see that they are taken care of.” Mama was very matter of fact.

Orphans were all over the city, when I walked the short block to buy penny candy I saw a child looking in a garbage container and another chewing on moldy orange peels, another time I saw one sleeping on the sidewalk in mid-day. Wondering about these children occupied my mind day and night and made me feel guilty for my good fortune. I grew curious at how they survived the harshness of the city, what did they eat besides garbage and who told them what to do? It was already getting chilly in New York and it was only October, but surely the Sisters had rooms for them to rest at night. Was there not anyone else able to take pity on them?

My hair was starting to grow back in and I was teased mercilessly at school for looking like a boy. I wished I could wear my handkerchief in school but they were frowned upon so I suffered the abuse and just focused my energy on my letters. One day however, Owen Kenville teased me so badly that I stomped on his foot and made him cry. “That’s what you get,” I yelled at him, feeling zero remorse. He never teased me again.

Mama’s hair was growing in too but now she had some wiry grey strands around her ears and temples and it made her depressed. I thought she was the prettiest woman alive but the grey made her feel old. Her shoulders drooped a bit after a long day’s work and she lost a little of her steam.

“I am feeling a little sluggish today,” my mama declared one morning. “I‘m sure it’s just a virus and nothing to be concerned with, but Tabitha since you did such a fine job with the laundry a few weeks ago would you mind helping again?” she asked.

“Of course, Mama, I can help.” I said, determined as ever to do another good job, for she did look
shagged
.

However, by nighttime she was howling in pain. The tooth next to the one that was pulled several weeks earlier was hot to the touch. Her gums looked funny and there was a pimply pustule on them. I gave her a few of the leftover cloves and told her to hold them on her gums to help numb the pain and then I ran for Mrs. Canter. She fetched the dentist who came at once with his black satchel of endless tools, including what looked like a wrench. Mama’s fever spiked and we had no money left in the drawer for a second pull. Besides, my mama didn’t want to lose any more teeth and suffer with ill-fitting dentures. We brushed every day with baking soda on our cotton ramie cloths, and were careful to swish real well afterwards counting to ten before spitting. We even scrubbed our tongues.

But the dentist insisted this tooth was infected and the white pustule was an abscess. It needed to be pulled immediately and we could owe him the two dollar fee. Everyone agreed to the plan and the doctor filled my mama up with Jim Beam once more for the pain. He pulled this tooth with far more ease than the last one and didn’t need the two strongmen to hold her down. She was lethargic and tired the entire next day; not only was her cheek swollen but now subtle streaks of red ran down her neck, reminding me of the branches on our old willow tree the way they spread out like vines. Throughout the night my mama’s fever climbed making her eyes appear glassy, her breathing became shallower, and she looked iridescent. I offered her tepid ginger ale and wiped her brow to keep her cool, pleading with her to eat or drink to regain her strength. She had no appetite and passed away sometime during the night. The doctor said the infection poisoned her bloodstream, possibly from the tooth that was pulled weeks earlier.

I sat alone in my room with my mama dead beside me growing stiffer by the minute, her beautiful face swollen and bruised. It struck me as odd just then that we didn’t make time to pretty up the place. We had nothing on our walls, no framed pictures, samplers or artifacts. Time had double crossed us. Never would there be a moment belonging to my mama and me again.

Mrs. Canter poked her head in to our bedroom, “Tabitha, allow me to prepare your mother for her burial.”

“Okay,” I said, meekly.

“What do you suppose we should dress her in?” Mrs. Canter looked into my mama’s wardrobe and pulled out her Sunday outfit.

“She’d like that.” I said, and so Mrs. Canter dressed her in the emerald green ensemble she wore to worship, complete with thick cream stockings and matching shoes. She applied pink rouge to the cheeks on the corpse disguised as my mama, Mrs. Maura Salt, and covered her hair with the red handkerchief.

A few customers came to tell me how sorry they were for my loss and to collect their laundry; a few even tipped me shiny pennies. But none of them offered to take me in, not even Mrs. Canter.

“You’ll need your nourishment, Tabitha, eat this.” Mrs. Canter gave me a thick ham sandwich with extra mustard and a glass of frothy milk sweetened with sugar. She left me alone once the last of the visitors came by. I picked at my crusts and wondered what I would do. We had been living in the city for less than a year and we didn’t know many people outside our building. We didn’t have the time to make friends or find other Irish folk either.

I took the handkerchief off my mama’s
noggin
and rubbed at the stubble that felt velvety soft beneath my fingertips.

“Mama, Mama, why did you leave me?” I cried, noting the how the grey had spread from her temples to her crown and grew in straight where it used to be curly. I wiped off the rouge and lipstick and climbed onto the table draping her arm across my shoulders. We laid curled up together one last time until the men from the morgue came and took her away. I screamed and clawed at the men, kicking their shins and begging them not to take her, but they did anyway. The only memento I had now was her red handkerchief and it was the color of blood so I didn’t want it. The Canter boys had to help the men from the morgue get my mama down the small stair well, and they checked on me once or twice that evening but I told them to go away.

The following morning I woke alone for the first time in my life. I was numb. Waves of confusion and shock taunted and tugged at me from all sides, threatening to pull me under a thick hovering cloud. I began jingling the pennies in my pocket; the ones I had saved them for the Sisters of Charity. I had to go to them now because they were the only people I knew of that helped kids like me. I knew the way to the stoop where they were often seen gathering orphans. Now that I was an orphan I could give them the pennies and they could help me find a new home. While I looked boyish with my short hair I wasn’t ugly and maybe, God willing, someone would want me.

My legs didn’t want to work; I sat motionless on the floor, staring into space, unable to focus on anything. I was not hungry or mobile. I was alone and frightened. I was an orphan.

The word ‘orphan’ sat thick on my tongue like cotton. I couldn’t swallow it no matter how I tried. I feared becoming hysterical so I concentrated on breathing deeply in and out through my nose to calm myself. I needed a plan but my head was spinning and I could hardly think straight. First, I had to get my legs to work. I rubbed my shins and flexed my feet to get the blood pulsing. I stood up and tried walking; it was like being on air. I felt no pressure beneath the souls of my feet and I was aloof in my quest. I didn’t stumble or fall, just put one foot in front of the other and counted my steps out the door. I felt nothing and everything all at once.

Chapter 3 Alone

Sister Agnes was patrolling the streets for children when I stumbled upon her.

“Excuse me, Miss, can you help me?” I asked. I was frightened but the woman, who I knew to be a Sister of Charity based on her habit, looked at me with smiling eyes that put me at ease.

“Why sure, my child, what can I do for you?” the Sister asked.

“I have,….. I have nowhere to go.” I admitted, my courage no longer sustaining me, tears expelling themselves in torrents from my eyes.