My heart was racing, and my legs were stiff and terribly painful as I crouched in the dead-end corner of the alleyway. The men approached. I shrank back as small as I could, but the shadows were light, for it was early afternoon, and I wasn't hidden at all. They easily found me. For a moment we just stared at each other. Then the blond man roughly pulled me to my feet.
"Young man, where do you belong right now?" he asked me. Whoa - what a question. I thought. You can't really make up any answers for that one that don't sound awfully stupid.
"Ummm..." I thought fast, "at home, I s'pose." This was true, however I had no intention of actually returning home.
"So where is this home?" the other man, with brown hair and a short beard, asked me sarcastically. I didn't answer him quick enough, so he pressed on. "Where do you live, kid?"
"Uh... at my house?" I attempted.
"Who are your parents?" the blond man demanded. I wondered what I should say.
"None 'a yoa' business." I stated, and tried to look menacing. It didn't work.
"Look here, boy. We need names. No playing around, either." he demanded.
"Uhh... Bob and Mary." I pulled the names randomly out of my head.
"Kid..." the man sighed, sounding exasperated.
"You know, we did see you get off that train." the bearded man said.
"Yeah, so?" I said, cheekily.
"So - look, you got family here?" he asked.
"What if I do, huh?" I said, determined to give out no information.
"What's your name?" the other man asked.
"Pokey," I said.
"Your, ah, real name," he said, gritting his teeth.
"None 'a yoa' business." I said again.
"If you don't tell us anything we can't decide what to do about you. We can't just have kids running around in the streets, you know." The brown haired man informed me, looking at his watch. Good, if they can't decide what to do with me, and they have somewhere to get to, maybe they'll leave me alone.
"If you don't have any family here, then it is our, um, civil duty to bring you to the orphan asylum." The orphanage?
"No!" I said loudly, "I's s'posed ta be hea'. I wanna, uh, be a newsie." I said offhandedly.
"C'mon kid, if you don't tell us anything about yourself, we can't figure anything out. So we have to take you." He grabbed my arm and started to walk me away.
"I can walk you know." I grumbled, "why don't people seem to realize that about me?" I spoke louder, "I don't wanna go to the orphanage." I said, "so why can't 'cha jus' leave me alone?"
"Who are your parents? Where do you live? If you can't give us this information, we can't believe you about anything," came the reply.
"But I ain't an orphan, I swea'!" I said.
"There's several kids in the orphanage who have a parent, or so they claim. C'mon now, we don't have all day." He said sternly. What choice did I have? I resignedly followed the two men away from the alley and the train station.
"Name?" the headmistress asked politely.
"Pokey," I answered.
"I mean your real name." She said, sounding rather exasperated.
"Call me Pokey." I demanded.
"Child!!!" she exclaimed.
"What?" I asked sullenly.
"Tell me your name." She spoke slowly, as if she was speaking to someone stupid who couldn't understand.
"I know ya said dat. I ain't an idiot. I told ya ta call me Pokey." I said, equally as slowly.
"In order to enroll-"
"I don't wanna be enrolled! Who said dat I wanna be hea'? Not me..." I said forcefully.
"It doesn't really matter if you want to be enrolled, dear." She explained, "we have to enroll you for the city. They need to know who is here."
"Den don't keep me 'ere." I said flatly, knowing I was fighting a losing battle.
"Ok, let's start a little less personally," she sighed. "How old are you?"
"Twelve," I said. I'd decided to answer all her stupid questions. Who cares if people here knew my name? No one would ever come to the orphanage, uh, here, looking for me.
"Are you a native of Minnesota?" Well, at least I know where I am.
"What kind 'a stupid question is dat?" I demanded.
"It's for the city records. I didn't invent the questions." she said, but she marked down 'yes'. Hmm... either she's half-deaf and doesn't notice my accent or maybe I'm the only one who thinks it's so thick... "What's your first name?" she asked, looking at me expectantly.
"Jamie," I consented.
"Thank you," she said. "Eye color?" Eye color? Maybe I was wrong - she's blind, not deaf...
"Um...couldn't ya jus' look at me an' answer dat?" I asked, confused.
"Yes, but it goes faster if you answer me instead." Faster... do I want faster? Oh, who cares. Just answer the stupid questions.
"Brown," I said halfheartedly.
"We only have a few more questions, James. Is it James?" she said.
"No." I said forcefully. "Jamie."
"All right. Well we only have a few more questions, Jamie." Good. This was getting really annoying.
"What are dey?" I asked. She went on questioning me for quite a long time. Then she started telling me about the 'home for orphaned children' as she called it.
"You're lucky, Jamie. We never take children over twelve in, because it is so difficult for them to be adopted, you know?" Adopted!? No... bad... I can't be adopted, I have a family! They aren't here, and I'm not going to tell you about them... but no one is adopting me.
"Uh huh..." I nodded absently.
"And also this is a home for both boys and girls. You will not see the girls except for during mealtimes and also during your free time Sunday afternoons. You will have classes every day. I will assign a boy to make sure you get to all of your classes on time, and you will go to your classes with him." She paused and studied me for a second. "Jamie, are you listening?"
"'A course I's listenin'." I said, although really I hadn't been listening all that attentively. I know what she'd been saying, generally.
"Um, just one thing, Jamie. Your speech is... different. Where did you learn to talk like, ah, that?" she asked, trying to make an awkward question seem tactful.
"Home." I said, and put a stony face on so she would question me no further.
"Yes, and Jamie?"
"What." I said. "When you address me or other instructors, the address is 'yes, ma'am' or 'yes, sir'."
"All right."
"All right, what?"
"All right, ma'am." I said, exaggerating the formal address.
"That's better," is all she said.
"You may stay in this room until Religion," the lady - Miss Perkins, I think her name was - said. "And you will go to all of your classes with Brian. He will show you around as well."
"All right." I said.
"All right, what?" she said crisply.
"All right, ma'am." This sounded so stupid. After I get out of here, I will never, ever address anyone by 'sir' or 'ma'am' for as long as I live, I decided. "Wait - who's Brian?" I asked.
"He will introduce himself to you when he comes in. The headmistress is going to speak with him about showing you around." With that, Miss Perkins left, her black skirt swirling around her.
Everyone had to wear the same clothes. I found that out quite soon enough. As soon as a group of three boys came into the room, all dressed in navy pants and creamy-white collared shirts. They stared at me. Actually, if I'd been in there, I would have stared at myself. I must have looked like a fool sitting there in my rumpled clothes from New York.
"Who..." began a boy with longish sandy blond hair, "are you?" I raised my eyebrows and looked down at my clothes again.
"Well," I began, "I's new hea'..." My accent sounded funny to me. I knew I could probably make it a little bit less noticeable, but somehow, I didn't want to. I thought about when Flash and I had sat around perfecting it again. Flash hadn't been very good at it - I'd laughed at him a lot.
"We noticed," laughed a different boy with short brown hair.
"What I meant was, what's your name?" the boy with the sandy hair explained, smiling.
"My name? It's Jamie. But all 'a my friends called me Pokey." I said, hoping they'd use my nickname.
"Pokey, huh?" The third boy said. He had very short, very light blond hair, and light blue eyes. "Well, I'm Tague."
"Tag!?" Do the people here have nicknames like all the newsies? Tague didn't look at all surprised by my outburst.
"It's T-A-G-U-E." He explained, "and the only reason the stupid people here would believe it was my name was because of my old dumb aunt who had to tell them about fifty times." He shrugged, "but what could we expect from ole' Harkins, huh?" The other boys laughed.
The first boy spoke, "well, ole' Harkins told me that I was supposed to watch out for you, Jamie." I nodded, "my name's Brian, and this is my friend Eric." He pointed to the brown-haired boy, "and you've met Tague." I nodded again.
"You can call me Pokey," I explained again.
"Yeah, but if any of the teachers or ole' Harkins the Headmistress hear us calling you anything like Pokey, they'll have our heads." Brian explained, "I'm supposed to take you to my classes. We have Religion this afternoon. I'll show you where it is. Hey, where are you from, anyway?"
6:00 was suppertime. Brian showed me where we ate and we sat down at one of the long tables. Eric and Tague came and sat down, as well as a few other boys. "Hey guys," Brian said, getting their attention, "this is Jamie. He's new here." As if that were necessary. I was the only person in the entire room who wasn't wearing navy and white. The girls had long navy skirts and white blouses, some with navy ribbons in their hair. I was still wearing brown and light blue.
"Hi," I said. I hate having people's attention on me. I found myself blushing under their gazes.
"Jamie, this is Tom, Mark, and that's Derek," Brian introduced.
"Hi," I said again.
"Hey, Jamie. So, you like the place?" Derek asked me. I looked around.
"Well, I mean... it's... I'd ratha' be at home," I stuttered. Would I really rather be at home? Did I really run away for this? Of course not... when I left home I wanted to hang out with Flash and sell newspapers, not find myself hundreds of miles away in an orphanage where people think my parents are dead and I have no relations.
"Wouldn't we all..." Eric said, rolling his eyes. "Where are you from? You talk kind of funny." I smiled at the tactless comment.
"New Yawk." I said, "My friend an' I picked up da accents after we ra-" Wait!!! You're an orphan!!! You didn't run away!!! I thought frantically.
"You ra-... what?" Tom prompted.
"Nothin'... neva' mind..." I said sullenly. They looked a little confused for a moment, but dropped the subject when some girls walked over to the table.
"Hey Tague," a girl with short, very light blond hair and glasses said, sitting down next to Mark.
"Hi, Sonia," Tague said, "how's life been treating ya?"
Sonia shrugged, "not bad. Who's the new kid?" Everyone stared at me again. I blushed.
"This is Jamie. Jamie, this is Sonia, Rosy, Sarah, Lizzi-Anne, and Louisa." Brian told me, gesturing to each of the girls as they sat down at the other end of the table.
"Yeah, and Brian thinks Rosy's the best of 'em all." Tague joked, elbowing Brian. Brian looked a little sheepish. I looked over at Rosy. She had long blond pigtails that were tied with navy ribbons, and she constantly was tossing her head to flip them over her shoulders. She had a high-pitched voice that was a little hard on one's ears, and would occasionally look over at the boys and bat her eyelashes slightly. I laughed quietly to myself. "Sonia's my little sister," Tague added, rolling his eyes.
"Yeah, she looks 'zactly like ya..." I observed. They did look almost exactly the same. Tague was taller and bigger, and his hair was shorter, but they looked really similar.
"Thanks!" Tague exclaimed sarcastically, "I do not," he declared indignantly. Sonia ignored him. The girls were all talking to each other quietly, and looking at me. I felt really uncomfortable, because I was pretty sure they were talking about me. I shifted uneasily in my chair and slowly ate the slop they called our supper. It was a sickly white color and resembled overdone oatmeal, except it tasted like dirty water. It was utterly disgusting. I ate a couple bites and looked at it skeptically.
"Yeah, no one likes this stuff at first." Brian noted, digging his spoon into the stuff and letting it fall with a 'plop' back into his bowl. "But you'll get used to it. Here, let it cool off a little. It gets, um, thicker..." I didn't want to think about it getting any thicker. It was the consistency of mashed potatoes already. I wouldn't have been surprised if it had crawled out of the bowl and attacked me. I managed to eat some more of it, but there never seemed to be any less.
"You better eat it, Jamie... 'cause they'll make you eat it anyway afterwards. And besides, you don't want to be hungry." Eric said, spooning some of the pasty white glop into his mouth. I closed my eyes and ate some more. It sort of helped if you couldn't the way it looked. It took me easily the entire mealtime to eat enough of it to satisfy my friends that the monitors wouldn't make me stay after and eat extra. The girls kept talking in their hushed voices.
"Why do dey talk like dat?" I asked, looking at them strangely.
"They're girls. Girls gossip." Tague rolled his eyes, "besides, why does it matter to you?" I shook my head in answer.
I got my 'uniform' the next day, and I didn't like it much. It was uncomfortable and somehow just not the right fit. I didn't care though, and spent my time getting to know the other people in the orphanage. It didn't take me long to find out what sort of people the other kids really were. It was sort of interesting how people with such different attitudes happened to be friends with each other. The guys were much better to hang around with than the girls, and I considered myself lucky to only have to see the girls sometimes.
Sonia had the same light blond hair and light blue eyes as Tague. She was loud, but shy when she was alone with just her girl friends. The guys liked to talk to her, and the girls sort of regarded her as a strange person, but nevertheless, she remained their friend.
Rosy was a real flirt. It was unbelievable. She would constantly stop people - usually Brian, and almost as often me - and just babble about stupid things to them, or ask them to come help her with something. She would always put her hand on Brian's shoulder or his arm, and she'd prattle about nothing, and flip her long, blond pigtails over her shoulders with a toss of her head. Brian liked her, too. The boy must not see that he isn't the only one she flirts with. At least she noticed that he gives the most positive responses to her coquettish behavior, and she heckled him most often. Although she'd started to flirt with me on a fairly regular basis. I tried to discourage her the best I could.
Sarah was pretty. She was medium height, with long, curly ash-blond hair, and silvery gray eyes. She wasn't a flirt like Rosy, but she was very dull. She went along with pretty much whatever Rosy or any other girl said, and didn't talk much on her own. She had about the personality of a dishrag, so the only thing she really had going for her was her looks. Now maybe there are people out there who don't care one bit about personality, but I'm not one of them. My friends all have to have personality of their own, so Sarah wasn't one of my favorite people.
Lizzi-Anne now there's a strange girl. She was constantly prying Rosy off of me. Either she could see the annoyance in my face, or she was just generally trying to save me from her friend. Lizzi-Anne had medium length brown hair, and greenish-brown eyes. She was plain looking, but seemed to be one of the nicer people in the bunch of girls, and I wouldn't have minded getting to know her better. She always wore her hair pulled back from her face, and it sort of puffed out behind her head. I gave her a grateful smile each time she told Rosy to leave me alone. She hadn't smiled back yet.
Louisa wanted to be Rosy very badly, but she lacked the ability to flirt like her friend. Mostly she hung around the guys, watching Rosy traipse around, batting her eyelashes, and tried to do the same. We just sort of brushed Louisa off. She didn't even notice. The girl was really strange that way. She had curly blond hair that she seemed to try and make even fluffier. She looked rather like a poodle. Her eyes were light brown, and her cheeks were always pink. Sometimes Rosy and Louisa would figure out some way to smuggle makeup into the orphanage. You could always tell, because they looked generally very weird, their cheeks looked extremely odd, and their eyes suddenly appeared to be very deep-set. Not to mention the secretive little grins plastered across their faces.
I avoided the girls as much as possible. Girls were annoying, and being teased about liking girls had always been something that drove me crazy. Don't get me wrong, I was very civil towards them and all, I just didn't search them out and say, 'hey girls, let's chat'. I was fairly certain I knew them all very well, but I guess people are wrong a lot.
I sat down on the steps and looked at my hands. They were small, and my skin was that just-a-shade-darker-than-a-suntan brown that caused a lot of people to look at me twice when they saw me. It was Sunday afternoon, and I'd spent the entire morning bored out of my mind in church and Sunday school classes. Now for the rest of the afternoon until supper, we had free time, and I was sitting on the stairs alone, just thinking about my situation.
I had no idea how I was going to get back to New York. I couldn't think of any way to get the orphanage to let me go, and even if I managed to get away, how would I get to New York? I have no money. I have no way of earning money while I sit here in this orphanage, being treated rather like dirt. I suppose that we are 'wards of the city', but I think I was better off on the streets, being a newsie with my friends.
My friends. I missed them. I wanted to write to them, but figured that all letters going into or out of the orphanage were probably screened or read by the management. Maybe I should ask someone about that. But writing to people is probably forbidden, anyway. If you have someone to write to, maybe you should be staying with them, instead of gobbling up the city's funds in this dump.
Potentially I could explain to them that I am not an orphan. Some mistake was made, and my parents are really in New York City. I could probably persuade them to get me on a train headed home. But they would inform my parents of my arrival at the train station or something, and I'd be in big trouble. I put my face in my hands and thought about what on earth I should do. I heard the door swing open behind me. I turned around and saw Sonia standing there. We both jumped, not expecting to see each other.
"I didn't expect anyone to be out here," Sonia explained, closing the door behind her and sitting down next to me.
"I didn't 'spect anyone ta come out hea'." I mumbled, wondering if I should go back inside.
"You're accent, Jamie... it's really funny how you seem to like it so much." Sonia observed, tipping her head sideways and looking out across the road.
"What do ya mean by dat?" I asked defensively.
"Just that, well, you've been here for about a week now, and you haven't changed your accent at all. It seems like you don't want to lose it or tone it down." She stated, picking a piece of long grass out of the ground and playing with it in her hands.
"Well, I... I do like it, it, uh, reminds me 'a whea' I used ta be, an' my friends an' stuff." I did like my accent. I thought again about the days Flash and I sat on the cobblestoned street corners, trying to master the New York street slang we were surrounded by. All my friends, the newsies, had talked that way as well.
"And your family, right?" Sonia asked, quietly. I studied her but didn't answer, because my family hadn't talked that way at all. Sonia continued, "we all have stuff like that. Objects or phrases, or a memory - or in your case, a way of talking - that reminds us of our parents, our homes, what we had to leave behind when we had to come here. No one likes it here, Jamie. We all want to go back to our parents, or who we were living with before we came. Maybe sometimes it wasn't the greatest, and maybe we all want to forget about what happened to our family and friends, but we want to remember anyway. We want to hold on to a piece of those times before... before all of this." She motioned to the orphanage. She didn't seem to be talking to me; she was talking to the air, or the grass she was still holding, but not me. I wasn't sure what to say. I mean, I wasn't an orphan. She was. Everyone here was. It hadn't really hit me that I was probably better off, luckier, than everyone here. I had parents, and I'd run away from them. I'd had friends, and I'd run away from them as well.
"Jamie, do you remember your parents?" She asked me, and then she stopped suddenly, "I forgot you were new... I'm sorry... you don't have to talk to me if you don't want to." She looked down at her shoes. I sighed.
"Yeah, I rememba' my parents." I said softly, "I wasn't very nice to 'em... I feel real bad about it right now, too." I added.
"I know. Everyone regrets something." Sonia said, her eyes looking far away. "Do you want to hear about what I did?" She looked pained.
"Ya don't gotta tell me if ya don't wanna." I explained.
"No, I do want to tell you. If you want to hear it." She said, looking at me hopefully.
"Well, 'a course ya can tell me." I said, giving her a wan smile. She returned it.
"My full name is Sonia Melinda Johannson," she began. "The Melinda was to honor my grandmother who died just days before I was born. The Sonia? My brother, Tague, named me that. It was my mother's name. She died after my birth. She'd really been too frail to have another child but she didn't have any choice. My father wanted another son very badly, and I turned out all wrong for him." She sighed, "my entire name is named after dead people." She took off her glasses and stared at them in her hands.
"My dad was too upset with his wife's death, and his mother's death just before it, to bother about me. Tague wasn't sure what to do, so he took me with him and went to stay at my aunt Melissa's house until dad cooled off. He left me there when he returned to our house. I stayed there until I was three, and then Tague came and got me and brought me back home. That was when I found out my mother had died." She paused and looked straight at me. "And then I killed my father." What!? My heart skipped a beat.
"What?" I asked softly, "what do ya mean?"
"It's not as if I took a gun and shot him. I didn't mean to!" The image of Sonia brandishing a rifle popped into my head unbidden. If I hadn't been so misgiving at the moment I probably would have laughed at the concept.
"What did ya - I mean..." I trailed off.
"When I was ten years old I ran away for a while. My father had been drinking and my brother was busy with the animals. My father got scared when he found I was gone. He hitched up the horse and he and Tague came looking for me." She stopped talking and put her face in her hands.
"Ya know, ya don't gotta keep on talkin' 'bout dis?" I said, putting my hand on her back.
"No, I want to tell you. Anyhow, there was some accident. The next thing I knew my dad was dead and Tague was afraid I was gone too. Finally I came home and I found Tague sitting there looking so distressed I knew something terrible had happened. He explained everything to me. I refused to go to the funeral. Tague and I tried to make ends meet, but there were huge debts we hadn't known about. It seemed like we owed money to everyone in the whole country. We sold everything, in the end we even sold the house and the land. Still we owed money, and we couldn't pay it.
"They said if we went to work for them, and took no pay, that they'd consider the debt paid. We refused, unwilling to bind ourselves to these people as servants for our whole lives. My aunt called the orphanage and told the people about me. She didn't say anything about Tague. She was going to take him, and keep him as her own child. That's what she tried to tell me. I knew she only wanted him to help her husband work on the farm. They lived quite a ways away, and her husband wasn't a very hard worker. They had five daughters and no sons. They couldn't afford me, she explained, but Tague would work his way for them.
"So I told the orphanage people about Tague myself." Sonia breathed deeply, "I didn't want to get separated from him. I wouldn't let myself be sent away alone. When the orphanage worker came out to the farm my aunt came and got me out of my room, where I was sulking. 'This is the girl, Sonia', she said. The person from here explained that there was supposed to be a boy, named Tague, here as well. If looks could kill, my aunt would be a murderer, and I'd be dead. But she went and got her youngest daughter, Tillea. 'I'm afraid there must be some mistake, Madame,' she said, 'for this girl has no brother, only this younger sister. I didn't want to send her to the orphanage because one so young is easy to care for, and I could keep her as my own.' I was ready to kill my aunt. I felt terribly betrayed.
"'No.' I said, 'that's Tillea, and she's your daughter, aunt Melissa.' I hollered for Tague as loudly as I could. He came over and said, 'Sonia, what is it?' but he saw what was going on in a second. So did the orphanage lady. She asked my aunt how many children she had. My aunt said, 'five daughters', without even thinking. The orphanage person pounced on her and took Tague and I away. I will never speak to Aunt Melissa again." She looked at me, "Jamie, I wish I'd never run away that day. I hated it when father would drink but I wasn't trying to get him killed." She looked like she was going to cry.
"Sonia, you didn't do nothin'... it wasn't yoa' fault dat ya dad wan'ed ta go afta' you when ya wasn't gone for a very long time at all." I pushed my hair back, "look, if ya wanna know somethin' real interestin'..." I took a deep breath. Someone had to help me, and Sonia seemed like a very good person to ask for help, "I ain't an orphan at all." Sonia's eyes widened and she sucked in her breath.
"You mean, you'se got parents?" she asked breathlessly.
"Yeah, an' I could tell ya da whole story, but ya can't tell anyone, Sonia." I pleaded, "'cause I don't know what I's gonna do yet, but if anyone knows dis stuff dey's gonna be so mad at me."
"I wouldn't tell. Oh, Jamie, are you going to run away? Take me with you,
please! Ever since you've come here I knew you were the nicest person I ever met, and
it's like having a best friend to talk with you!" Her words shocked me. I can't take you
with me... I can't hurt you, though. Why do I hurt people everywhere I go? I can't do
this! I have to face my problems... but I have to go back to New York, and what will I
do? Leave this girl here, angry with me, upset with the world and her horrible lot in life,
and just make myself miserable. my life is full of decisions, and instead of making them, I
run away from both of my options. All it does is bring me deeper into trouble. And now I
have several decisions to make, and because of what I've done, I'm going to hurt a lot of
people.
To part 2!