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Katie Reilly stood on the rough plank dock, gazing at the Boston harbor in dismay. The New World was nothing like what Mama had promised.
When Katie was small, Mama used to sing her dreams to make Katie feel safer. After Da died in the mine last year, it became harder and harder to heat their cramped Dublin room and put food on their table. Mama said they had no future in Ireland. And she started singing her dreams again, even though Katie was much too old for lullabies.
Hush little daughter, don't you cry.
Mama's gonna sing you a lullaby.
And if our Dublin home's gone cold,
The New World's streets are paved with gold.Maybe Mama hoped that the song would make them both feel safe. It would be a whole new land, Mama promised, not just the New World of the colonies. People in this new land talked about independence from the Old World. Mama said that meant new opportunities for everyone, including the Reilly family. All she and Katie had to do was find a way to get there.
"We're too poor to pay for the journey," Mama explained. "But there's always a way to make your dreams come true, Katie girl. They don't have enough workers for all the jobs that need doing in the New World... If we bind
ourselves by an indenture to an employer in the colonies, why, then he'll pay our passage on the ship! And once we work for the time in the indenture, he'll give us good clothing and our own land. We can start over as free people in the New World."
New possibilities, Mama promised. New dangers, Katie thought.
Now she looked at the streets that stretched away from the dock. There were no golden pavements, only sodden mud, with wooden boards over the worst puddles. She wished they could get on the ship and sail back home, back to the old world where she didn't feel so strange and out of place.
"The Reilly women," a ship's officer called.
Katie slowly followed Mama into the muddy street, where the ship's officer was handing half of their indenture contract to a strange man. After Mama and Katie had signed the indenture, the ship's captain had torn it in half and given one piece to Mama. He'd kept the other piece to turn over to their new employer.
The strange man looked at them, his thick brows drawn together in anger, and Katie looked right back at him, surprised at his outrage when she was the one who had reason to feel angry. The man complained, "I paid passage for two able-bodied servants in my contract. I don't want a child. I already have a baby daughter of my own."
Katie saw a young woman standing behind the man. Her fine skirts dragged in the mud, and she clutched a baby wrapped in a woolen blanket. The baby cried loudly, and the woman rocked it with nervous jerks.
Mama said, "My daughter can do her share of the work, Master Benton."
"She's only a child," he said. "You'll end up tending her instead of keeping my home. I must sell her contract to a larger family, to someone who can use an extra kitchen girl.
Katie gasped... Could this man really send her to a strange family without Mama?
Copyright ©2004 by Elaine Marie Alphin