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“And ready for a change.”
    She turns toward the front of the car, gesturing back at me over her shoulder. “Come
     on, then.”
    Holding the baby against my chest, I rise unsteadily from my seat and sway behind
     her up the aisle. Children sitting in twos and threes look up with doleful eyes as
     I pass. None of us knows where we are headed, and I think that except for the very
     youngest, each of us is apprehensive and fearful. Our sponsors have told us little;
     we know only that we are going to a land where apples grow in abundance on low-hanging
     branches and cows and pigs and sheep roam freely in the fresh country air. A land
     where good people—families—are eager to take us in. I haven’t seen a cow, or any animal,
     for that matter, except a stray dog and the occasional hardy bird, since leaving County
     Galway, and I look forward to seeing them again. But I am skeptical. I know all too
     well how it is when the beautiful visions you’ve been fed don’t match up with reality.
    Many of the children on this train have been at the Children’s Aid for so long that
     they have no memories of their mothers. They can start anew, welcomed into the arms
     of the only families they’ll ever know. I remember too much: my gram’s ample bosom,
     her small dry hands, the dark cottage with a crumbling stone wall flanking its narrow
     garden. The heavy mist that settled over the bay early in the morning and late in
     the afternoon, the mutton and potatoes Gram would bring to the house when Mam was
     too tired to cook or we didn’t have money for ingredients. Buying milk and bread at
     the corner shop on Phantom Street—Sraid a’ Phuca, my da called it in Gaelic—so called
     because the stone houses in that section of town were built on cemetery grounds. My
     mam’s chapped lips and fleeting smile, the melancholy that filled our home in Kinvara
     and traveled with us across the ocean to take up permanent residence in the dim corners
     of our tenement apartment in New York.
    And now here I am on this train, wiping Carmine’s bottom while Mrs. Scatcherd hovers
     above us, shielding me with a blanket to hide the procedure from Mr. Curran, issuing
     instructions I don’t need. Once I have Carmine clean and dry, I sling him over my
     shoulder and make my way back to my seat while Mr. Curran distributes lunch pails
     filled with bread and cheese and fruit, and tin cups of milk. Feeding Carmine bread
     soaked in milk reminds me of the Irish dish called champ I often made for Maisie and
     the boys—a mash of potatoes, milk, green onions (on the rare occasion when we had
     them), and salt. On the nights when we went to bed hungry, all of us dreamed of that
     champ.
    After distributing the food and one wool blanket to each of us, Mr. Curran announces
     that there is a bucket and a dipper for water, and if we raise our hands we can come
     forward for a drink. There’s an indoor toilet, he informs us (though, as we soon find
     out, this “toilet” is a terrifying open hole above the tracks).
    Carmine, drunk on sweet milk and bread, splays in my lap, his dark head in the crook
     of my arm. I wrap the scratchy blanket around us. In the rhythmic clacking of the
     train and the stirring, peopled silence of the car, I feel cocooned. Carmine smells
     as lovely as a custard, the solid weight of him so comforting it makes me teary. His
     spongy skin, pliable limbs, dark fringed lashes—even his sighs make me think (how
     could they not?) of Maisie. The idea of her dying alone in the hospital, suffering
     painful burns, is too much to bear. Why am I alive, and she dead?
    In our tenement there were families who spilled in and out of each other’s apartments,
     sharing child care and stews. The men worked together in grocery stores and blacksmith
     shops. The women ran cottage industries, making lace and darning socks. When I passed
     by their apartments and saw them sitting together in a circle, hunched over their
     work,