ISBN 0-940895-39-0
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Orphan Girl: The Memoir of a Chicago Bag lady
by Marie James as told to Jane Hertenstein
I know as sure as I’m sitting on this chair that God had His hand on me before I was even born. There were eleven children in our family. I was my mother’s ninth child. One day my mother woke up, she smelled the coffee boiling and got sick to her stomach. She ran outside onto the back porch and vomited green. My father was gone; he was gone most of the time. My oldest sister, Chloe, who was about nineteen then, was making cornmeal mush in a big pan, stirring it with a wooden spoon. Mother said, “Chloe, I’m pregnant. I’m not going to have this baby. You know what I’m going to do? The woman down the road had a miscarriage. She fell down. I’m going to go upstairs and jump out of the window.” My sister dropped the spoon into the pan. “Mother, you’re going to kill yourself.”
“Well, so be it.”
Mother went upstairs, sat on the windowsill, and let herself fall to the ground. She got the wind knocked out of her, but was still all in one piece. She came into the house laughing, “I guess when I’m pregnant I’m pregnant clear up to my neck. I’m as pregnant now as when I jumped out the window. I don’t know how we are going to feed this baby, but we’re going to have to find a way.”
I was born on a Saturday, May 6, 1926. It was misting outside. All my life I’ve been shedding tears.
Smooth and artfully told. . . . Readers . . . are sure never to look at the poor, battered souls which wander the city streets in the same way again. —American Bookseller
Hertenstein . . . makes little attempt to find typologies or propose solutions; she simply allows a woman named Marie James to tell her resonant story. —Booklist
Harrowing inside view of homelessness. —Publishers Weekly
Above all, Orphan Girl is a narrative that speaks to the human condition and testifies about God-aided valor. —CBA Marketplace
Jane Hertenstein is an author living in Chicago. Her
previous work includes the children’s book Home Is Where
We Live: Life at a Shelter Through a Young Girl’s Eyes.
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