Orphan Train

Lori, Molly’s social worker, reminds her that she needs to start thinking about a plan for when she ages out of the system in nine months. Molly’s grades are good, and she has removed her nose ring. She reports that she enjoys spending time with Vivian, and she’s 28 hours through her 50 hours of community service. Lori encourages Molly to think about going to college.

At dinner, Dina learns that Terry, Vivian’s housekeeper and Jack’s mother, is a high school acquaintance. She jeers at Terry for falling so far in life, because Terry was popular and a Homecoming Queen in high school. Dina laughs at Terry for “’getting knocked up by some Mexican scrub—and now look at her, she’s a maid’” (130). It takes all of Molly’s self-control not to argue with Dina.

In American history class, Molly is studying the Wabanaki Indians—a confederacy of five Algonquian-speaking tribes, including Molly’s father’s tribe, the Penobscot tribe. The Wabanaki carried all of their possessions with them in their canoes, and when they had to move across land from one body of water to another—called a portage—they carried the weight of their canoes and all of their belongings. Because of this, they had to choose which belongings to take with them and what to leave behind.