Chapter 4: Moving

4.

In 1927, when Marion turned 10, Grace finally decided that she could no longer make enough money in Steelville for her and Marion to have any kind of life. Grace also despaired of her daughter ever "getting out" of the small town that had trapped her when she was wooed there by Cyrus Snow so many years before. Grace's parents, Dora & Samuel Whitney, had never liked Cyrus, and had, in a manner, disowned their daughter when she married the man, but they always told their daughter that their door was open to her if she left him.

Grace was inordinately proud and bullheaded. Also very intelligent, she was, unfortunately at times, very aware of it. That, coupled with her pride and tenacity, led her into marriage with Cyrus. She ran off with the slick-tongued bastard, and then found herself mired in a situation beyond her worst imaginings. Still, however, only reaching the brink of disaster would bring any admission of error or request for aid.

Maggie Snow worried long about Grace & Marion and had long conferences with sister-in-law regarding their situation. Maggie had tried to get Grace to write to her parents in St. Louis since Cyrus' final departure, but she would possibly have had more luck arguing with a rock. However, once her sister-in-law saw how desperate the situation had really become, she wrote to Dora & Samuel for the first time in more years than she could remember.

The return missive from the Whitneys arrived promptly for 1927, full of welcome and anticipation for Grace and Marion's impending arrival. The most important item in the envelope, apart from $20, was a pair of train tickets from Cuba, MO to St. Louis Union Station, dated for Monday, May 3rd, just weeks after Marion's 10th birthday. The train left mid-morning, so they'd had to leave Steelville in the grey spring dawn to load up in Aunt Maggie's horsedrawn wagon.

Only having made the 8 mile journey to Cuba a few times in her short life, Marion's sense of adventure heightened somewhat, despite the wagon jouncing her brain around for nearly 2 1/2 hours. She experienced growing apprehension as the familiar slipped away behind her Aunt's wagon... every bird and tree and stream were dear to her, as were the cousins and grandparents she had grown up with. Too soon, all she had known was out of sight, but would never be out of her heart.

Vaguely trying to picture what was going to happen today and in the very near future, Marion knew a whirlwind of change was hers, to be sure. Travelling on a train, meeting grandparents of whom she had barely been aware, leaving behind her painting and dreaming in the library, as well as her wild wanderings in the woods and closed up houses around Steelville. Her whole body shook as she thought of closed up spaces, too many people, and feelings of suffocation and darkness swirling sickeningly around her. Marion let her mother and aunt think that the shaking was from the cool morning air while she tried to focus her mind on the adventure instead of her fear.