Sam Rivers Chapter One: A Wondering Angel
Alone, a small child wanders the streets in
tattered clothes. She was shivering from the wet, cold snow that lays on the
ground; her curly, brown hair was sticking out from beneath the collar of her
oversized coat. She sniffles as she wipes her runny nose on the ragged sleeve
of her coat; the little angel looks around as if she is lost. She stands on the
edge of the road, invisible to all who pass her. Her shoes are too small and have
cardboard inserts for soles. The snow seeps through the thick paper soaking her
feet. She begins to walk with a limp on her way to anywhere but the orphanage
she escaped from. As the snow begins to fall thicker and faster, she darts into
an alley looking for shelter. She has been walking the streets of the Bronx all
day with an empty stomach. It didn’t seem to bother her much; she was used to
it. There was little to eat at the dark, damp orphanage she has lived in all
her life. She was dropped on the doorstep of Sister Joleen’s Orphanage in the
poorest part of the Bronx when she was a baby. No one ever visited this
orphanage; only wayward and unwanted children often dotted the filthy
windows as they looked out at their small world. To these small waifs, it
appeared as if no one cared about them. They had been thrown away.
Sister Joleen wasn’t a sister, not in the
religious sense. The home for unwanted children was the dream of her older
brother, Joseph Cartwright, which was passed on to him by their parents. He was
a kind and gentle man who believed all children deserved a home filled with
love. As did his parents, Joseph kept immaculate records of all income that
came into the home. His parents had left him a small fortune to run the home,
but taxes took a large chunk of it. He worked hard to take care of the children
in his care and held special events to attract potential parents for the
children. He never gave up hope of all of them being adopted. Unfortunately, upon his death, Joleen inherited the home.
What mattered to her was the money that came with the place. She used it for
her own selfish needs while the children received the barest of necessities. She
changed the name of the home from Cartwright’s Home for Children to Sister
Joleen’s Orphanage. Under her care, the place had turned into ruins. She was disgusted
by the ‘small, good-for-nothing beggars’ as she often referred to them. She
grew up resenting the orphans for taking ‘Her’ place in her parents’ hearts.
She longed for all the attention the other kids received; she wanted all of her
parent’s attention. They tried to teach her to love those around her, and how
rewarding it was to help the less fortunate, but the lessons never took. She
had grown into a bitter woman. The only help that inhabited the orphanage are
those unwanted kids who turned 18 and had nowhere else to go. They worked for
room and board and were treated as badly as the children. They were all prisoners
trapped in a world, not of their making.
The small angel, known only by the name
Tina, took the chance to find a home for herself. She couldn’t take being shut
in the awful place she knew as home. The children were never allowed outside.
For all appearances, the people of that area had forgotten that children lived
there. They were fed only corn meal mush in small portions for breakfast and were
made to clean the floors, dust, and do kitchen duty throughout the day. They
didn’t have lunch. The children went to bed hungry; at night,
they received a slice of bread, a small portion of beans, and water. They hadn’t
seen fruit, much less decent food, since Joseph died. The birthday
parties and Christmas left with him, too. Tina missed the kind man who smiled
at her and called her ‘Pumpkin’.
Well, she was out now and vowed to never go
back. The snow was falling hard and steady, now; Tina saw a couple of cardboard
boxes beside a dumpster and created a child’s fort, tucked behind the dumpster,
to crawl into. She climbed up on wooden crates so she could dig in the dumpster
and found a half-eaten sandwich – ham and cheese. This was a meal fit for a princess, in her eyes. She ate it hungrily
then continued to dig in the dumpster for anything she could use as covers. Her
feet were freezing; she knew she had to do something to warm them, but what? She
tore off the bottom tab of one of the cardboard boxes to replace the wet
cardboard in the soles of her shoes. She found old towels someone threw out and
wrapped them around her feet. She dug deeper and found old clothes and a ragged
quilt. She greedily pulled them from the dumpster and took them to her new
fort. She took off her coat, put on the large clothes, and put her oversized
coat back on, then wrapped herself in the quilt before pulling the boxes together
to shut out the snow. For the first time in ages, her stomach was full, and she
fell asleep while the snow whipped around the air in a whirlwind.
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