35
DEARBORN STATION, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
SUNDAY, JUNE 4, 1944
Leah clutched sleeping Helen to her chest as she fought to keep up with Mama Paxton’s brisk pace down the train platform.
The station lights illuminated the Dixie Flagler’s sleek aluminum sides. What a sumptuous journey, with reclining seats and an elegant dinner. The ladies’ lounge and restroom had even been roomy enough for her to nurse and change the baby.
Since the train left Nashville at one thirty, Leah had spent her time playing with the baby and watching the Midwest roll by.
A year had passed since she’d taken the train south from Des Moines. The year before, she’d worn that dumpy gray dress with a long braid down her back, wide-eyed and innocent.
Now she was a mother in a chic grassy green suit with her hair rolled up under her sweet summer hat. She was no longer innocent, but she felt stronger and wiser.
At the baggage car, Mama gave the porter their claim ticket, and the man stacked their bags onto a trolley.
Three stylishly dressed black women stepped out of the baggage car, and Leah’s heart lurched. How unjust that segregation in the South required them to ride back there just because of the color of their skin. No reclining seats. No elegant meals.
Leah gave them a nod and a small smile as they passed. She would acknowledge their worth, even if no one else did.
The porter wheeled the trolley into the station, and Leah followed with Mama.
Although it was ten o’clock at night, hundreds of people filled Dearborn Station. So many sailors in bright white tunics and bell-bottom trousers, their “Dixie cup” caps at rakish angles.
Three soldiers passed in olive drab service uniforms, like Clay had worn at their wedding. She’d received a letter from him yesterday, each letter a treasure. The invasion hadn’t occurred, but the nation crackled with tension as summer rose on the horizon.
By the ticket windows, a poster showed a crowd of soldiers boarding a train. The caption read “Is your trip necessary?”
Leah winced and did a double step to catch up to Mama. Should she have taken a seat in wartime for a personal errand?
“Daddy!” Three school-age children darted through the crowd and slammed into a sailor. He lifted the youngest high, laughing and grinning.
Leah’s shoulders relaxed. Yes, her trip was necessary. If she had even the slightest possibility of reuniting her fractured little family, she had to take it.
The porter led them outside and hailed a taxi.
Behind Leah, a tall square clock tower soared above the red brick station building.
The scent of the city was gently familiar, reaching into her mind and whispering to sleeping memories, urging them to awaken and step into the light.
A yellow taxi pulled up. The porter loaded the luggage into the trunk, the driver held open the back door, and Mama motioned Leah inside and tipped the porter.
Leah settled in. Helen made a face and turned toward Leah’s chest. “A little longer, sweetheart,” Leah cooed.
Mama sat and gave the address to the driver, and the cab pulled away from the curb.
“I’m so excited.” Mama folded gloved hands over her purse. “Tomorrow morning we’ll sit down with Juanita and a map and the list of orphanages, and we’ll plan your trip.”
“Tomorrow morning.” Leah gazed out at the darkened city and smiled. Somewhere out there were the answers she longed for. Somewhere out there her sisters might even be sleeping.
They’d be fifteen years old now. What did they look like? Sound like? Did they love school as she had? Books? Poetry? Or did they love jitterbugging and movie stars and baseball? She couldn’t wait to find out.
Please, Lord, let me have the chance.
CHICAGO
MONDAY, JUNE 5, 1944
The massive gray stone building didn’t look familiar from the outside, nor when Leah stepped inside.
But how long had she been in an orphanage before the Joneses adopted her? All she remembered was struggling as Mr. Jones carried her over his shoulder—crying for her sisters.
Leah shuddered. A horrible day, but today she had a chance to reverse it.
“May I help you, ma’am?” the nun behind the desk asked, her young face round and smiley under her habit.
“Yes, ma’am—sister.” Since Leah didn’t see any Greek Orthodox orphanages on the list, she’d try all the homes—Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish. “I’m looking for my little sisters. My parents died when I was four, and my sisters and I were placed in an orphanage, but I don’t know which one. I was adopted, but without my sisters.”
The nun folded her hands on the desk. “Your adoption papers should list the orphanage.”
“I don’t have them. The family who adopted me—they abandoned me at an orphanage in Des Moines without my birth certificate or adoption records.”
“Oh dear.” The nun clapped her hand over her mouth. “What an awful thing to do.”
“It was, but I’ve forgiven them.” Leah wound her fingers around her purse strap. “I know you must be busy, but could you search your records for my sisters and me?”
The nun pulled out a sheet of paper. “Your names, please?”
“My name is Thalia, and my sisters are Callie and Polly—possibly short for Calliope and Polyhymnia. I think we were all named after Greek muses.”
“Oh my.” Thin dark eyebrows rose. “Last name?”
“I don’t know. I was only four, and I couldn’t pronounce it.”
“Oh dear.” The nun nodded toward an office in the back. “Our records are filed alphabetically by last name.”
Leah’s chest contracted around her shrinking heart. “It sounded like Ka-wa-los.”
“I’m so sorry, ma’am.” Her light brown eyes went round. “Our records go back to the 1890s, and we had up to eight hundred children at a time during the Depression. You can imagine how many files we have.”
Tall cabinets lined the wall in the office. If only Leah could search them, but of course, they wouldn’t let her.
“Thank you anyway.” It wasn’t the nun’s fault, so Leah worked up a smile. On the paper she wrote down all the information she had and her contact information in Chicago and Tullahoma. “If you should happen to find something . . . but I understand. I do.”
“Thank you, ma’am.” The nun’s smile looked thin but sympathetic.
Leah headed outside into the balmy afternoon, and she leaned back against the rough stone façade.
What now? She was supposed to visit two more homes before she returned to Juanita’s house to nurse Helen, but she’d have the same problem at every orphanage.
Was it even worth it? Had she come all this way for nothing?
Leah pressed her fingers to her temples. The familiar ache of longing for her family deepened, here in this city where she’d lost them.