Orphan Train

“I believe in ghosts. They are the ones who haunt us, the ones who have left us behind” 

Vivian speaks the first words in the novel. With most of her loved ones dead, or so she believes, Vivian begins her story of love and loss.

“Sometimes these spirits have been more real to me than people, more real than God. They fill silence with their weight, dense and warm, like bread dough rising under cloth” 

  Again, Vivian explains that the people she has loved are spirits, who remain more real to her than the people she encounters in her present-day life. They have a real presence, occupying space. Throughout the novel, Vivian lives almost exclusively in the past. She certainly does not look to the future in any way.

“I’ve come to think that’s what heaven is—a place in the memory of others where our best selves live on” 

 Vivian seems to live in heaven already, since she only seems to exist in her own memory, and only sees her life in terms of people who are already dead. This point of view reveals Vivian’s beliefs about life, beliefs that she developed at an early age. Her traumatic experiences leave her emotionally “stuck” and all she can do is try to remember the best self of those she has loved and lost. 

“Maybe I am lucky—that at the age of nine I was given the ghosts of my parents’ best selves, and at twenty-three the ghost of my true love’s best self. And my sister, Maisie, ever-present, an angel on my shoulder … No substitute for living, perhaps, but I wasn’t given a choice. I could take solace in their presence or I could fall down in a heap, lamenting what I’d lost … The ghosts whispered to me, telling me to go on” 

Vivian’s story of loss begins in the Prologue, where she reveals that she lost her parents and siblings when she was 9, and her true love when she was 23. Now aged 91, the reader wonders what her life was like in all those intervening decades. Her perspective, formed by loss and looking only to the past, seems warped by her trauma. Though a survivor, she is far from a happy one. Her voice, practical, sad, and a bit sarcastic, is established here in the Prologue and continues in this vein throughout the novel. The reader eventually discovers how she came to be this way and this beginning sets the reader’s expectation for a very hard, very sad story.

“Much as she wants to care for him, and as good as she is at letting him believe that she does, she has never really let herself. It isn’t that she’s faking it, exactly, but part of her is always holding back. She has learned that she can control her emotions be thinking of her chest cavity as an enormous box with a chain lock. She opens the box and stuffs in any stray unmanageable feelings, any wayward sadness or regret, and clamps it shut”

Molly describes the ways in which she manages her feelings to avoid the pain of loss and rejection, both of which she is familiar with as an orphan caught up in the foster-care system. It is better not to care than to be hurt. This is one way in which she and Vivian are alike.

“Molly learned long ago that a lot of the heartbreak and betrayal that other people fear their entire lives, she has already faced. Father dead. Mother off the deep end. Shuttled around and rejected time and time again … So when she says it’s okay, what she means is that she knows she can survive just about anything” 

1.     Molly explains that she knows that she is strong, a survivor, but there has been a tremendous emotional cost. Vivian and Dutchy use similar words to express the tremendous price that they pay for knowing that they can survive anything life throws at them. All of these survivors of childhood trauma bear severe emotional scars.

“‛I think if you don’t have parents who look after you, then you can call yourself whatever you want’” 

Molly explains why she considers herself an orphan, though technically her mother is still alive. This is a prime example of Molly’s plain-spoken character. Even though she has just met Vivian, who is technically her employer, she does not hold herself back or defer to Vivian in any way. Just as her clothing, hair, and makeup make her stand out, her speech and straightforward behavior also distinguish her. However, Vivian refuses to act like a typical adult or reprimand her for her behavior. She treats her more like an equal and refuses to rise to Molly’s verbal baiting, like other adults in Molly’s life do, namely her foster mother Dina.

“In Kinvara, poor as we were, and unstable, we at least had family nearby, people who knew us. We shared traditions and a way of looking at the world. We didn’t know until we left how much we took those things for granted” 

Vivian describes her life as Niamh Power, a child immigrant in New York City. Only as an adult retelling her own story can Vivian see that in some ways, she and her family were better off in Ireland, poor but near family. In addition, Irish immigrants faced prejudice in the United States. People frequently refused to hire, serve, or rent to the Irish. All of these cultural and social changes make the Powers’ lives more difficult in New York City.

“Thank you for taking me in and feeding me. But if you think you can quash my ideals, force me to eat meat when I told you I don’t, expect me to care about your aching back when you don’t seem the slightest bit interested in my life, you can forget it. I’ll play your fucking game. But I don’t have to play by your rules”

 As Molly eats dinner with her foster parents, she responds, in her head, to the behavior of her foster mother, Dina. She is constantly fighting the impulses that would get her thrown out of her foster homes. Here, she acknowledges that she will play the game expected of her, up to a point. She is learning how to turn the politics of her foster family to her advantage. She is growing up.

“As with Dutchy and Carmine on the train, this little cluster of women has become a kind of family to me. Like an abandoned foal that nestles against cows in the barnyard, maybe I just need to feel the warmth of belonging. And if I’m not going to find that with the Byrnes, I will find it, however partial and illusory, with the women in the sewing room” 

Vivian describes the very human desire to seek comfort and belonging, no matter the circumstances. She is a child, and she cannot help but try to connect with the people around her. The Byrnes’ avoid her, so that they do not get to know her and feel connected to her. The women in the sewing room are kind, except for the fearful and jealous Mary, and they each try to make Dorothy’s life a little less miserable. Dorothy’s predicament, cut off from the friendships and education made possible through school and forced to work for no pay, is truly pitiful. Still, Dorothy does not become bitter or hateful; she still tries to connect with others and do the right things so that she will be loved and accepted.

“It is a pitiful kind of childhood, to know that no one loves you or is taking care of you, to always be on the outside looking in. I feel a decade older than my years. I know too much; I have seen people at their worst, at their most desperate and selfish, and this knowledge makes me wary. So I am learning to pretend, to smile and nod, to display empathy I do not feel. I am learning to pass, to look like everyone else, even though I feel broken inside”

Vivian reports her feelings as a 9 year-old child, being passed from the Byrnes’ to the Grotes’, unwanted and unloved. She was only valued at the Byrnes’ for the free labor she provided. Her experiences have damaged and marked her psyche. She remembers enough about her own past to know the difference, to remember that she once had people, a family, and love.

“She knows that she was named for Molly Molasses, a famous Penobscot Indian born the year before America declared its independence from England. Molly Molasses lived into her nineties, coming and going from Indian Island, and was said to possess m’teoulin, power given by the Great Spirit to a few for the good of the whole. Those who possess this power, her dad said, could interpret dreams, repel disease or death, inform hunters where to find game, and send a spirit helper to harm their enemies”

Molly gains insight into her personal cultural history and ancestors in history class. Through her studies, she reclaims a sense of belonging and history missing from her life up to this point. She connects her father’s stories with this factual history and learns to appreciate a side to her father, and her heritage, that she had not known before.

“Vivian says, ‘Yes, I do. I believe in ghosts.’

‘Do you think they’re … present in our lives?’

Vivian fixes her hazel eyes on Molly and nods. ‘They’re the ones who haunt us,’ she says. ‘The ones who have left us behind’”

Molly begins interviewing Vivian for her school history project. This question foreshadows their discovery of other similarities between them. Both are haunted by the loved ones they have lost. Both have lost their parents; Vivian also lost her siblings. Both women’s lives are defined and shadowed by those losses. Ghosts, the metaphor for those deaths, surround them from an early age. Vivian answers Molly’s question honestly, because of that shared history.

Molly gains insight into her personal cultural history and ancestors in history class. Through her studies, she reclaims a sense of belonging and history missing from her life up to this point. She connects her father’s stories with this factual history and learns to appreciate a side to her father, and her heritage, that she had not known before

As Vivian opens up to Molly and decides to share her real life story, Molly immediately relates to her experiences. Their shared understanding of loss and rejection forms an emotional bond between them. Vivian has known about Molly’s history from the beginning of their acquaintance, but Molly didn’t know Vivian’s. Now some of her prejudices and assumptions about Vivian are crumbling.

“And so your personality is shaped. You know too much, and this knowledge makes you wary. You grow fearful and mistrustful. The expression of emotion does not come naturally, so you learn to fake it. To pretend. To display an empathy you don’t actually feel. And so it is that you learn how to pass, if you’re lucky, to look like everyone else, even though you’re broken inside” 

As Vivian shares her life story with Molly, the two women discover that they have very similar ways of looking at and relating to the world. Their childhoods have marked them in particular ways. Though over 70 years separate them, Vivian’s experience echoes Molly’s in significant respects. The safety net of the twenty-first century foster care system is an improvement on what the Christian Aid Society could provide, but it does not prevent the emotional damage done to orphan children. That essential emotional abandonment is the same, no matter the era.

“Time constricts and flattens, you know. It’s not evenly weighted. Certain moments linger in the mind and other disappears. The first twenty-three years of my life are the ones that shaped me, and the fact that I’ve lived almost seven decades since then is irrelevant” 

 Molly listens to one of Vivian’s recorded stories. She learns valuable life lessons from Vivian, including the power of the past to shape the future. Loss certainly marks a person, but Molly is learning that, although a person may be shaped by the past, she cannot let the past determine her future. She is learning what to discard and what to keep from among her life experiences. Molly is learning to travel light.

“She has never tried to find out what happened to her family—her mother or her relatives in Ireland. But over and over, Molly begins to understand as she listens to the tapes, Vivian has come back to the idea that the people who matter in our lives stay with us, haunting our most ordinary moments. They’re with us in the grocery store, as we turn a corner, chat with a friend. They rise up through the pavement; we absorb them through our soles” 

 Because Vivian is haunted by her past, Molly wants to help her find peace. Though Vivian’s ghosts have kept her company and prevented her from being sad and lonely, Molly recognizes that her friend’s ghosts have also prevented her from healing. Vivian is still trapped in her past. Molly wants her to be able to move on, even if she cannot let go of the belongings in the attic.

“You can’t find peace until you find all the pieces”

Molly recounts a saying that rings true for her. She wants to help Vivian, so she starts looking for the pieces of Vivian’s past. She finds Vivian’s sister, Maisie, who lived a long and happy life, when Vivian believed she was dead. This saying foreshadows the search that Molly encourages Vivian to embark on, to find the connections to her past in the present, to find some peace, before she dies.

“I like the assumption that everyone is trying his best, and we should all just be kind to each other” 

Vivian recalls what she likes about the Lutherans in Hemingford. They are decent, if boring, people. Vivian likes them because they are calm and orderly and they provide an extremely stable life for her. She feels safe. The Nielsens’ religion mirrors their characters perfectly.

“What I feel for the Nielsens—gratitude, respect, appreciation—it isn’t the same as a child’s love for her parents, not quite; though what that love is, I’m not sure I can say. I am glad to be living with this kind couple, whose quiet, self-effacing manner I am coming to understand. I am grateful that they took me in. But I am also aware every day of how different I am from them. They are not my people, and never will be”

Vivian outlines the complicated feelings she has for the Nielsens. These feelings mirror, almost exactly, the feelings that Molly reports having for the Thibodeaus. The damaged orphan wants to find a home and trust, but she finds it difficult to figure out how she feels or even what she should feel.

“She’s a turtle carrying its shell. Jane Eyre, staggering across the heath. A Penobscot under the weight of a canoe … The things that matter stay with you, seep into your skin” 

Molly struggles up the road carrying all of her belongings, after being thrown out of her foster home. She realizes, as she struggles under the burden of her belongings, that the things that she really needs are etched into her being; she doesn’t really need anything else. She remembers her past; she knows who she is. That is she really needs.

“My entire life has felt like chance. Random moments of loss and connection. This is the first one that feels, instead, like fate” 

Vivian describes her chance reunion with Dutchy. Their reconnection is the best thing that has happened to both of them; their shared experience on the orphan train remains a permanent bond between them.

“I learned long ago that loss is not only probable but inevitable. I know what it means to lose everything, to let go of one life and find another. And now I feel, with a strange, deep certainty, that it must be my lot in life to be taught that lesson over and over again” 

Vivian explains the darkness that overcomes her when Dutchy is killed. She is unable to cope, and though it seems, on the surface, that she keeps on functioning, she is never truly the same again. She uses this reasoning to justify the next seventy years of her life, where she makes sure that she never again experiences such a devastating loss.