Orphan Train

The Nielsens’ home is large, neat, and well maintained. To Niamh, it seems luxurious. Niamh has her own bedroom and bathroom. Mrs. Nielsen observes Niamh’s eating habits and buys things she likes. They attend church every Sunday, and Niamh “find[s] the rituals comforting.” She likes how the community’s “approval” for the Nielsens spreads to her, something she has never experienced before. The Nielsens have an orderly daily routine: Mr. Nielsen manages the general store, while Mrs. Nielsen manages the home. At her new school, Niamh works hard to erase her accent and fit in with the other children, who seem healthy and cared for. Every afternoon, she works for a few hours at the store. She pities the hungry children she sometimes sees lingering over the candy, and Mr. Nielsen lets her give them free candy at her “discretion.” At dinner, they discuss “the weather, [Niamh’s] homework and the store.”

As Christmas approaches, Niamh helps to decorate at the store. While she and Mrs. Nielsen prepare the display trees, Mrs. Nielsen tells her about her life. She is Swedish, and her dark eyes and hair are from her “Gypsy” (Romani) roots. She and Mr. Nielsen thought they were infertile until their daughter, Vivian Nielsen, was born – the same year as “Dorothy.” Niamh asks about the girl’s death, and Mrs. Nielsen tells her the story of how she died of diphtheria. Niamh contemplates Mrs. Nielsen’s painful loss and thinks about losing her own family members. She “feels sorry” for the inner “sadness” that she and Mrs. Nielsen both share.

At church on Christmas Eve, the pastor gives a sermon “as elemental as a story in a child’s picture book” about “charity and empathy.” He lists the situations of several misfortunate local families. He includes the Grotes, described them as a poor family with four children and a baby just born prematurely. Mrs. Nielsen tells Niamh they will prepare a basket for them. Niamh knows Mrs. Nielsen doesn’t know her “history with them” and that to her, “they’re just another distant calamity.” Coming home that night, Niamh observes that their house is “a pleasant place to return to. A home.”

Every other week, Niamh joins Mrs. Nielsen in a women’s quilting circle. Surrounded by women, Niamh feels “at ease.” Mrs. Nielsen begins saving fabric remainders so that Niamh can design and make her own quilt with the help of the circle. One Sunday, while polishing the silver together, Mrs. Nielsen offers to help Niamh polish her claddagh cross. Niamh tells her it was from her Gram, but Mrs. Nielsen smiles and asks no questions. Niamh knows that helping her clean the necklace is Mrs. Nielsen’s “way of acknowledging that she knows it holds meaning for [Niamh].”

One evening, Mr. Nielsen and Mrs. Nielsen tell Niamh that they have come to see her as their daughter, and they hope she is “beginning” to consider them her parents. They ask her to consider taking the name of their daughter, Vivian Nielsen, who they loved dearly. They give her time to decide, and assure her it won’t alter their love either way. Niamh feels “gratitude, respect [and] appreciation” for them, but she doesn’t feel “a child’s love” or the sense that they will ever be “her people.” Further, taking Vivian’s name seems like a heavy “burden.”

One day at the store, Niamh hears a familiar voice bartering with Mr. Nielsen. Niamh realizes the man is Mr. Byrne. He appears tired and possibly drunk. When he sees her, he expresses interest in Niamh’s wellbeing. He tells her that after the business busted, Fanny left to live with her daughter. Mrs. Byrne wandered into the snow one day and froze to death miles from their home. Niamh “feels sorry” for Mr. Byrne’s “tattered life” but feels no pity for Mrs. Byrne. She remembers only how she exploited and deprived her. That night Niamh agrees to take Vivian’s name, dawning the beginning of her “new life.” She is “under no illusions” about the life she has “left behind.” A few years later, the Nielsens officially adopt her. She never refers to them as Father and Mother, but she trusts them to “take care of [her]” and knows she “belongs to them.”

As the years go by, Niamh’s memories of her birth family start to fade. Still, she always wears the claddagh cross. When she is older, she realizes her only token of her birth family is from someone “who pushed her only son and his family out to sea on a boat, knowing full well she’d probably never see them again.”