Miners died all the time. I’d long understood this. Every shift was a gamble with fickle explosives, slippery rocks, and rickety shafts. Papa survived each of those and more, only to have his coughs prove symptoms of pneumonia. Quick as a blink, he too was stolen from my life, due to what started as a measly cold.

His funeral was simple. No fancy procession or choir or hordes of ironworkers from other towns. Just a few local miners and Father Lawrence, at least according to my memory. For me, it all passed in an emotionless blur, same as my subsequent trip to Grand Rapids.

Obeying the chaperone from the Children’s Aid Society, I clutched my valise and followed her on and off buses and a train. I sat where instructed, rose when told, unwrapped the sandwich she had packed.

“Food will keep you strong, my dear,” she said, overly chipper in her navy dress suit, while I forced down pastrami on rye. “Help to shake off your blues.”

Yet there was no mood to shake off. I was numb. If not, I would have crumpled into a blubbering heap or exploded in rage over the unfairness of it all. Rather, I trailed my escort into a charmless city building, all concrete, windows, and brick. An orphanage for girls.

When she patted my shoulder to bid goodbye, I remained lost within myself, stuck in a well. Even if I’d wanted to climb out, I wouldn’t have known how. In this respect, I wasn’t alone. Of the hundred or so girls in a home meant for two-thirds that, with ages running the gamut, many bore an insipid air. Particularly among those as old as me.

No longer babies or toddlers even, we weren’t considered malleable enough to most couples who strolled through on Saturdays as if perusing a gallery. We were sculptures already formed by some blundering artist’s hand. Our flaws and cracks, if not yet evident, were bound to surface over time. Nevertheless, every Friday evening, we were lined up at the washtubs, where we cowered and shivered, dripping with shame. Swift and systematic, the staff ladies scrubbed our thin bodies raw, checked heads for lice, rinsed hair with squirts of lemon. The responsibility was ours to keep the sting from our eyes.

The orphanage director, to her credit, persisted with this rigamarole to push even her second-rate goods. We were in excessive supply thanks to the Depression; meanwhile demand for all ages slumped. This presumably had been the impetus for Mrs. Atwood’s inventive showcase—that or she’d been inspired by a livestock exhibition, where swine were never trotted out in mud and grub.