October 1927
Chicago
“An’ then,” Cecily whispered to her friends, “he asked me if I’d ever ridden a horse, then he told Mrs. H. that he had to ask his partner and he’d let her know, but he still thought the price was too high.”
“What the blazes?” said Flip. They were outside in the barren fenced yard under a pure blue sky, huddled together against the cold wind. Brown and orange leaves skittered past.
“You’re gettin’ adopted, I guess,” said Dolores sadly.
“But the guy didn’t have a wife!” Flip said. He and Dolores had gotten a look at the man when he’d come in, before they’d been sent outside. “How could he adopt anybody?”
“Shh!” Cecily said, and the other two cocked their heads, then looked around to see who might be listening, but the older kids were playing Kick the Can, and the little ones wouldn’t understand, anyway.
After they’d all turned seven—Flip was first, Dolores last—the three of them had made a blood oath to stick together forever, because everybody knew: Once you turned seven, your chances of getting adopted were slim to none, at best. There were always new babies coming in, at least one every month, and they were what grown-ups wanted to take home. (The twenty-nine kids in the orphanage who were nine years old now, babies during the flu pandemic, hadn’t had a prayer.)
Cecily, though, had a secret card up her sleeve: her mother was still alive, and intending to come back for her. Flip had scorned it when Cecily’d shown him the little box checked on the form, but Flip scorned everything except the Chicago Cubs. Cecily had decided privately that, when her mother came back, she’d just make her mother take Flip and Dolores home, too. It was the least Madeline could do, for making Cecily wait two whole extra years. Cecily hadn’t told her friends, because she didn’t want them always pestering her about when. But Cecily had put a lot of facts together. One: the form had also said, Reason for surrender: Financial. Mother (distraught) cannot earn enough to support the child and care for the child at the same time.
Two: Cecily had asked Miss Oversham what financial and distraught meant. “Money-related” and “very, very upset,” Miss Oversham had explained.
Three: Cecily had a vague memory of Madeline taking her to Marshall Field’s downtown once—how happy her mother had been, just walking in through the big doors, seeing the glittering merchandise laid out in the glass-topped counters, though she’d told Cecily, Don’t touch, we can’t afford one thing!
Putting all of these facts together, Cecily had decided that Madeline worked at Marshall Field’s now and was saving up so she could afford to come get Cecily. Cecily didn’t know how long it would take, though she did think three years ought to have been enough. But what did she know? (Even Miss Oversham didn’t know how much a saleslady working at Marshall Field’s would make.)
Cecily imagined Madeline taking the ‘L’ train downtown every morning and home every night. She imagined her helping ladies try on shoes. Maybe hats. Or lipstick. Madeline was gentle and kind, and everyone wanted to buy from her, because she was beautiful. She barely even had to ask.
“I don’t know what he was after,” Cecily told her friends, about the man. She swallowed. What if her mother came and Cecily wasn’t here? Would Madeline think that Cecily had given up on her? “Look, I’ll just tell Mrs. H. I won’t go with him. And that’ll be that.”
Flip scoffed—justifiably, in this case; everyone knew you couldn’t say no to Mrs. H.—and Dolores just looked at Cecily with big, sad eyes.
That night, after prayers and lights-out, Cecily felt a poke to her shoulder.
“What?” she whispered, without opening her eyes. Dolores had a way of creeping out of her own cot and over to Cecily’s without making a sound. She always had something more she wanted to tell or ask before she could sleep; things she maybe hadn’t wanted to say in front of Flip, who, this time of night, was stuck over on the boys’ side, unless they’d made a plan to sneak out to the roof to meet. Tonight was too cold to bother with that. Anyway, Cecily wasn’t in the mood to press her luck about getting caught.
Dolores also had a way of knowing things that were going to happen before they actually happened, which Cecily had chalked up to strange coincidence at first, but now largely found useful. It wasn’t as if you could ask her anything you wanted to know, though; more like she’d just get a feeling about things, sometimes. Two weeks ago, for example, she’d suddenly fixed her eyes on Harriet across the yard and said, “She’s gonna get adopted.”
It seemed ridiculous. Harriet had been at the Home for two years and was six years old. What was more—as Mrs. H. put it whenever Miss Oversham had to call Mrs. H. into the classroom on account of Harriet pitching a fit—her disposition was not attractive.
A week after Dolores’s pronouncement, though, Cecily and her friends watched out the front window as a tall man in a gray coat and fedora and a stout, pretty woman in a purple coat and cloche led Harriet out to a waiting Model A, each holding one of her hands and talking to her solicitously. They helped her up into the car, and the man walked around to the driver’s side while the woman climbed in after Harriet. Doors slammed, and away the shiny black car went, with Harriet smack in between her new parents in the front seat. “Told ya,” Dolores said.
Cecily kept waiting for Dolores to say that Cecily’s mother was coming for her, but, so far, nothing.
It wasn’t like Dolores knew everything, though.
“Something bad’s gonna happen,” Dolores whispered urgently now. “I don’t know just what.”
“Oh, hush up,” Cecily whispered back. What good did that kind of prediction do? “Go back to bed. You’re gonna get us in trouble.” For once, Cecily was plain tired of being in trouble. She guessed if she hadn’t been such a firecracker, the way Mrs. H. had said, that man wouldn’t have looked at her the way he had.
“I don’t want you to leave me, Ceccy,” Dolores said.
“I’m not leaving you.” Cecily hoped this was true. But what choice would she have, if Mrs. H. said she had to go?
She recognized then that she wasn’t actually fearless. She was afraid of all kinds of things! She was afraid of leaving the Home, because she didn’t know what all was out there in the world. She was afraid of being without Dolores and Flip.
Most of all, she was afraid of missing her mother’s return.
God, I’ll be good, I promise, she prayed. If only you don’t make me leave here, I’ll be so good you won’t even recognize me.
Dolores tugged the blanket. “Scoot over.” Cecily did, and Dolores crawled under the covers next to her. Cecily was glad for the warmth. She’d just have to make sure Dolores woke up in time to get back to her own cot in the morning. She heard Dolores’s stomach growl; after a moment, her own echoed it. They only ever got thin potato soup for lunch and supper, thin Cream of Wheat for breakfast.
For a second, Cecily wondered if, wherever that man wanted to take her, there would be more and better food. Bedtime snacks, even.
She caught herself. Please, God. I don’t want to leave this place.
“That man is a bad man, Ceccy,” Dolores whispered. She was staring at the ceiling, still caught up in her own dreams. “Deep down bad.”
“Oh, hush!”
Dolores clutched Cecily’s hand.