Forgetting Tabitha: An Orphan Train Rider Read Online Free PDF

for me since my parents were both dead.
    “Would you like that?” Sister Agnes asked me, breaking my concentration. I was purely confused by all the big words she used, never heard of Reverend Brace or his schools for boys, what about girls? Why weren’t there schools for us? Terror filled my veins, the thought of boarding a train heading someplace unknown, while all alone did not sit well with me.
    After meeting Sister Agnes and hearing about the trains I ran up the familiar stairwell into to Mrs. Canter’s apartment to ask her opinion, she already knew about them and had asked the Sisters of Charity to kindly consider taking me along on their next departure. It would be charitable she said considering my age, most families only wanted babies to adopt and kids much older than me were used for work. Perhaps because of my laundry skills I could be useful to someone even though I was ten and my cuteness potential was lost with my curls.
    I didn’t have time to let the shock of losing my mother settle in. I couldn’t allow myself one tear or it would turn into an unstoppable fountain of self-pity and body numbing grief. Furthermore the city was my home now.
    I pleaded with Mrs. Canter to let me stay with her, “Please, Mrs. Canter, I won’t be a bother and I can help you with the laundry, I don’t even have to go to school anymore!” I cried. I didn’t want to go on no orphan train with the juveniles, but she already had too many mouths to feed and no husband neither.
    “No, no that won’t do, I have enough on my plate already I am sorry child.” Reluctantly she sent me away with cookies and told me to gather my belongings because our room was going to a new renter on the morrow. I grabbed a laundry bag and filled it with my primer and the only two dresses I owned. I only had two pairs of underwear and stockings and even though they were riddled with holes we had yet to mend, I put them in also along with a needle and thread. I reached under our clothing hamper and found the one thing I would treasure. Mama kept the picture taken of us under the hamper where it was dark, she never wanted it to fade or crumple. “Someday we can have it framed and even take another photo to go beside it,” she used to say, her voice nothing but a memory now. I looked at the picture of us; it was taken when we first got to the big city. We were giddy and apprehensive at the same time. Neither of us was smiling so that our teeth showed but we had sparkle in our eyes and were full of ambition. That’s how I will remember my mama always, with sparkles in her eyes and ambition in her heart.
    Miss Marianne, my teacher, heard the news of my mother’s passing and tried her best to soothe my worries and concerns about the orphan train. She said I could keep coming to school but that I needed to be kempt and clean. She didn’t ask where I would be staying so I didn’t tell, and on my first night alone in the city that’s where I went. I was the first orphan under the stoop that night but by midnight there were three more. Tommy was the oldest scoundrel and his nose was crooked and misshapen from being broken so many times.
    “You just gotta learn how to steal food, or sneak into houses at night to get warm.” Tommy said like breaking the law was no big deal.
    “There are other ways a girl could get warm in the big city.” Karen said with a dirty laugh, as she slid her skirt up with a wink of her eye. That one would lie down in a bed of nettles for certain.
    She had dirt under her fingernails and violet hollows under her sad eyes. Tommy leaned in closer to Karen and they cuddled up together and away from me and Scotty. Scotty was slightly older than me but had been on the streets a long time. He smelled like something from the sewers and slept with one eye open threatening to beat up anyone that bothered us at night.
    “I’ve been in a home for boys once already, and I aint’ going back there.”
    “Why not?” I asked.
    “Cuz