Chapter One

Our Lady's Children's Home

My father died young, thirty years old, and too suddenly to bother about leaving a will. It was during a time later named "the Great Depression" and he had just been told that his comfortable job at the bank no longer existed. My distraught mother, whom he lovingly called "Margaret Rose Dear," could do nothing in her grief but spend money; on toys, on furniture for the house, on knick-knacks and an assortment of lace and linen she would never use, for she was a mediocre seamstress at best. I don't remember the day my father died, or the funeral; I only remember when he was alive, and used to sit with me and my dolls and tell me stories. He seemed happy when he was with me, and my childish mind never did understand why a happy man would jump from a building. Perhaps he thought it would be fun, and didn't think that he would get hurt until it was too late? My mother, in her flurry of trying to make things right in her own world, never tried to make things right in my little world – and for a long time I held that as the first mistake she made in a long line of messy blunders.

When it became known that my father hadn't left a will and that there was no more money for my troubled mother to spend, she picked herself up from her downward spiral and began searching for jobs. An uneducated woman of twenty-eight with a child, she scurried around fruitlessly, learning to use a typewriter and watching the other neighborhood children for money. There were no jobs - for anyone - much less unhappy Margaret Rose.

We drove past Our Lady's Children's Home in my father's automobile once, when I was very young, and I remembered my mother's voice as she explained that "those children have no parents" and that the orphanage kept them from making mischief in the streets, and we should pray for them. In my mind, orphans became creatures prone to bad deeds and must have done something horrible that they weren't allowed to have parents. The day that my mother walked me up to the front entrance of the orphanage, I didn't remember this first impression – I recall instead the panic that overtook me, and my own form of grief as Sister Ethel - the nun in charge - pulled me away from my mother, and Margaret Rose's feeble promises to come back for me once times were better.

Later, in my bed at night, I would remember that first impression I had as a young child, and the feeling of hopelessness that I had no parents, that I must have been such a bad little girl that they were taken from me. I learned quickly in the orphanage that, as an only child, I had been spoilt and used to too much attention. I sank into myself and didn't play with the other little girls, in case I was so bad that their parents wouldn't come back for them. I hoped that my mother would come back for me, like she promised, but it was a thin, frail sort of hope.

I didn't listen during mass every week; instead I would sit and pray for my mother to come back, or pray that I would be adopted by a lovely lady who would give me presents and treats and would smell of oranges and take me to California. I promised God that I would be good, but the years passed and my mother – real or imaginary - never came for me.

I was ten years old when Sister Ethel called me into her office; I had been here for four years. I didn't dare expect that Margaret Rose had come back – I would have been called into the front company room instead. I only hoped that whatever I had done didn't merit too severe of a punishment.

"2352." The definitive sound of those numbers rang across the crowded dorm room, and my head snapped up. I was used to responding to my number now, though the other girls and boys in my class called me "Curly;" my hair was a wild mop of black frizzy curls that would never braid neatly like it was supposed to, never tamed the way Margaret Rose had kept it. Sister Hazel, an aging woman who was in charge of our class, would always say that I looked like a little devil that had been running in the wind. My given name, Mildred – my father called me "Little Millie" – felt foreign on my tongue and sounded awkward the few times I heard it. I didn't look like a Mildred, I looked like a scrawny Curly.

I had followed the young nun to Sister Ethel's office and waited for her pronouncement. This was a dark room with only a single lamp on the square desk, and the walls were white and the floor was made of wood and was cold under my bare feet. I didn't have time to find my shoes. I wondered idly if this was what it would feel like waiting at Heaven's gates for St. Peter to tell us if we were allowed in or not.

"You are ten years old now," she began in her deep, almost masculine tone. It would have been comical, had she not been such a fearsome creature with an unsympathetic face constantly set into a scowl. My mind jumped ahead – had I been in some way irresponsible? I couldn't recall any particular instances – I was too nervous.

She continued, "You are old enough now to begin working with us in our services to the Lord. Starting tomorrow, after your morning classes, you will help Sister Mary in the nursery."

Sister Mary, the young nun who led me to the room, now emerged from her hiding place in the shadow of a coat rack, to take me back to my dorm.

I had been working two days in the nursery when I was witness to my first tragedy; the arrival of an abandoned newborn girl. Sister Mary was supposed to call her by an assigned number – 2907 – but the young woman had a soft streak to her, and named the infant Molly. Sister Mary was the tallest of the nuns that ran the orphanage, but excessively skinny, with sunken eyes and pale skin. I had heard the whispers around the home that she was ill, that she wouldn't eat anything. This shocked me; who would refuse food, when at any time they could be tossed away from the orphanage and have no food at all? Regardless, for every inch she was taller and thinner than the other nuns, she was also that much kinder. When we were tending to the youngest children in the nursery – the ones we were responsible for – she would talk to me, even though I was too afraid to reply. She would tell stories of her youth, and tales of the tricks the little boys had played on Father Scott.

Sister Mary told me, one day, that if she had not become a nun, she would have loved to be a mother. She would have a daughter, and she would name her Molly, she said. I held my tongue from telling her that I wouldn't like for her to be a mother – mothers made promises they couldn't keep, and fathers killed themselves, and why would anyone want to be a mother if it was sure to bring such bad luck? I much preferred Sister Mary as a nun, who would talk to me and laugh as she told stories.

Baby Molly, for arriving so starved and abused, had a sweet disposition. She had big blue eyes that darted around as if searching for something until she was picked up, when she would give her holder her full attention. When she smiled, it was tentative, only a slight curving of the lips as if she was afraid to be too cheerful, lest she get hit.

The first time I met Molly was the first time I remember feeling sad for another one of the orphans at Our Lady's. It had never occurred to me before, that having barely entered the world she didn't get a family or love or toys and friends and a daddy to tell stories to her and her dolls. Why did I – spoiled and stupid and scared – deserve to have all of that for so many years, if she didn't?

At mass the next morning, I prayed the hardest I ever had that God would send a family to adopt this baby girl.

During my first years at the orphanage each hour seemed to meld into another, and I didn't remember specific events or days. I spent much more time remembering the times when I was happy and loved. I didn't like sitting through classes at school when I could be drawing pictures and sketches, and so I didn't listen much of the time, daydreaming instead. Sister Hazel believed I must be dim, and told me so often, eventually just leaving me to my own devices as long as I was quiet. The other children would sometimes laugh at "Stupid Curly" and ask me to draw a picture of a "smart person" for them.

It was a relief when I was asked to work in the nursery, with children who saw me as one of the "big girls" and didn't care about the shape of my hair or whether I could do my sums. I enjoyed the work, where I didn't have to think if I didn't want to. I liked Sister Mary talking to me, even if I was still unwilling to respond.

I was twelve when Sister Mary died. Her anorexia had finally destroyed her life and the other nuns and Father Scott used it as an object lesson to the children in their care – we had to eat our dinner and be quiet at meals and be grateful for food, or we too would die like skinny Sister Mary. I wasn't as sad over the loss of a companion as I was for poor Molly, who was now two and quite attached to the kindly nun. At her funeral mass, I promised God that if Sister Mary got into heaven despite her eating disorder, I would take care of Molly.

Molly was four and I was fourteen, and she was playing with the pages of a picture book. I was busy cleaning up after a particularly messy six-month-old named Noah, and not really paying attention.

"Curly?" I had never summed up the courage to have the little children I worked with call me Mildred.

"Yes?" The tiny boy had retched in a corner of the carpet, and I was focused on the stain.

"Why do I not have a Mommy and Daddy?"

"Pardon?" I turned quickly, almost dropping my hand in some of the sticky yellow puke.

"Jesus and the Birjin Mary and Joseph," she continued, "In this story the little boy has a Mommy and Daddy. Why do I not get one?"

I stalled. "It's 'Virgin Mary' Molly, with a 'V.'"

"Why?"

"Because that's how it's spelled." I began scrubbing the floor with much more force than it needed.

"No, why do I not have a Mommy?"

I tried to continue scrubbing the floor, and ignore the little girl's question, but I knew the searching look in her eyes, the sadness etched at the corners of her mouth. I prayed in that moment that I did have an answer.

"And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to his purpose." I quoted, a little irked that my Catholic upbringing would rear its taunting head when I least wanted it.

"What does that mean?"

"It means that God knows what he is doing." I had tried to make sense of this verse more than once myself. "Some way, it will all be good."

"But what if it isn't?"

"Is not," I corrected. "And it will be," I promised, immediately regretting it. Sometimes I questioned if anyone but God could make those type of promises.

"Okay," she surrendered and returned to her book, more interested now in the pictures than the presence of parents.

I once wondered that if I had truly believed in what I told little Molly, it would have become true. Two Decembers later, in the coldest winter I could remember, Molly died of pneumonia.

If I had ever believed in God, I trusted him no longer. I ran away from the children's home.

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