My name is Hattie. When I was six years old,my mother and father and little brother,Georgie,died in a New York City tenement fire. It was 1920. There were many orphans in the city. They had places for children like us. "Thank God," said the woman who brought me to the orphanage. She was plump, and she smiled as she took my burned and broken doll from me.
"God doesn't even know I'm alive," I told her plainly as I cast a past look at my treasured Molly.
"Child you must not say such a thing," the woman said, stripping off my scorched pink dress and handing me a dull white one made from old sheets, which was to be my uniform at the home. "You are an orphan now. You must be grateful to those who are kind-hearted enough to take you in. You must be grateful to god for sparing you."
That was the first time I was told to feel grateful. There would be many others. I did not feel grateful. I did not feel anything at all.
I stayed at the orphanage for three years. They taught me to read and write,to sew and do fine needlework. But they did not teach me how to feel again. When they asked me if I wanted to go on a train to find a better life, I said yes. I don't know what I expected to find at the end of the ride. But what I did find was Nebraska.
After four long days on the train, I stood with twenty-four other orphans at a train station outside of Omaha and sang a song-about gratitude. People came from towns all around to watch, some to pick an orphan of their own to take home with them, some just out of curiosity.
I wore an old white,cotton dress, with blue flowers embroidered around the coller, and a thin grey coat. I carried a small bag, which held a change of underclothes. That was all I had to call my own.
When I finished singing, the towns people walked around us, eyeing us up and down as if they were picking draft horses. They poked and prodded us, feeling our muscles checking our teeth. Would anyone want me ? I wondered. Or would I be put back on the train till the next stop? I was surprised to find that I half wished to get back on the train. At least by now the train was familiar. Not like this great emptiness of Nebraska, and these strange prodding farmers.
"Can you read?"
The voice startled me.
I looked up, way up, into the pale blue eyes of the man standing next to me, and nodded. He put a big, heavy hand on my Armand took me over to Mr.Bell, the chaperon from the home.
"This one'll do, he said.
"How do you feel about that, Hattie?" Mr.Bell asked. "Do you want to go with this man?"
I did not know how to decide. One farmer looked the same as another to me, though some had children with them. He doesn't have children, I thought. Perhaps there will be enough to eat.
I nodded to Mr.Bell
"That's fine , then," he said. "You're a lucky girl." "God bless you," he said to Henry Janson when they had finished signing me over. "Let us know if there are any problems." To me he added, write us now and then, Hattie. Let us know how you are adjusting."
I went with Henry from the train station, leaving behind the twenty-four other orphans who had been on the train and heading to a new home miles away, which people told me I should be grateful to have.
It was a long ride by wagon to the house. The dirt road stretched ahead as far as the eye could see. Dust blew up from the dry brown fields on either side. Sometimes there were windmills. There were buildings, tall and close. And people. Most of them drove automobiles, although there were horses.
We did not talk on the long ride to the farm. The September wind numbed my nose and ears. Henry looked straight ahead. From time to time he gave the reigns a flick. I did not know until we arrived that Henry was bald under his brown farm hat. I saw only his thick red beard and the blonde hair sticking out from under the hat, like straw.
It had been four days since I slept in a bed. Four days since I bathed. I was tired and dirty.
