PORTLAND – For two weeks last summer, Justine Tarrat, 10, got to leave her rat-infested apartment in a Bronx ghetto for a home surrounded by trees in Boothbay Harbor.

After her bus, chartered by the New York-based Fresh Air Fund, crossed into Maine, Justine awoke from a nap to the sight of green trees and ocean.

“It looked so colorful and beautiful,” she said, recalling her first sight of Maine last July. “I thought to myself, ‘Wow, would I like to live here someday.”‘

Justine’s wish was destined to come true. Christmas finds her living in a small Maine town with her brother and mom.

The Fresh Air Fund is a charitable agency that matches inner-city children with host families that give the kids two weeks in the country. Justine stayed with John and Susan Nelson, parents of three. Her brother, Joshua, 9, was placed simultaneously with a Fresh Air family in New Hampshire.

From the time she stepped off the bus, Justine made a good impression on the Nelsons.

“From the beginning, it was always please and thank you,” said Susan Nelson, 42. “She was such a well-behaved little girl that I found myself thinking about her mother, who we didn’t know then. I imagined that anyone who could raise a child like that must have a lot of good in her.”

As the two weeks sped by with happy times swimming, going to barbecues and riding bikes, Justine frequently called her mom, Yolanda Tirado, to whom Susan Nelson also spoke.

“Yolanda isn’t a complainer,” she said. “But I began to see how awful it was down there.”

Nelson learned of the struggle the family faced in a neighborhood where gunfire sounded so often that residents called it “OK Corral.”

Tirado, 45, had one overriding goal in life: protecting her kids from the ghetto.

Fluent in English and Spanish, she grew up in the Bronx, the second child in a family of eight. Though stricken by polio at age 4, she attended elementary school and vocational high school.

During her 20s, she supported herself doing clerical work in New York’s garment district.

Tirado’s first husband, and father of her two adult sons, died at 33. She remarried, and quit work after Justine and Joshua were born.

According to Tirado, her second husband walked out six years ago, when the children were 3 and 4.

Out of the job market and dependent for the first time on public assistance, she was evicted from two apartments. Her last stop was a one-bedroom, rent-subsidized apartment in the ghetto; the place Justine and Joshua called home.

When the children returned from Maine and New Hampshire, phone conversations between the Nelsons and Tirado didn’t end.

“I told Susan I couldn’t focus any more,” Tirado said, recalling her talks with Nelson. “For the first time I didn’t know how to get on my feet again. I wanted to run, but I didn’t know where to run.”

Susan Nelson remembers telling Tirado, “If you’re going to run, you run here.”

At night, John and Susan Nelson discussed possibilities.

“We talked about getting her out of the ghetto,” recalls John Nelson. “We thought we could help. But it would be up to Yolanda to get a job and start over.”

Nothing further happened until late August. Then, according to Tirado, a stranger was shot to death outside her front door. Tirado, who had been grocery shopping with the kids, said she returned to the crime scene minutes after the shooting.

“I shielded them from seeing the body,” she said. “But they saw the yellow line. They saw the police. They put two and two together.”

Two weeks later, after Tirado told of gunshots ringing out near the apartment, Susan Nelson calmly told her to sit tight. Her husband would pick them up in a few hours.

“I put down the phone and burst out crying,” said Tirado. “I couldn’t believe it. I felt like God was looking down on my children.”

With borrowed vehicles and help from friends, John Nelson moved Tirado’s family to Boothbay Harbor. Tirado and her two children lived in the Nelson home for a month and a half.

She landed a job as a receptionist at Sisco Associates, owners of Printing Plus in Boothbay Harbor. She also worked nights as a waitress.

By the end of October, she had money saved to rent a small in-town apartment, a half-mile from her work and near a school bus stop.

Adjustment has been different for each member of the family.

For Justine, an excellent student and good mixer, fifth grade has been one joyful experience after another.

Joshua, 9, a more serious child, has also made strides.

“He used to be angry,” said Tirado. “But look at him smiling now.”

For Tirado, going from the Bronx to Boothbay Harbor has been a hard adjustment. Without public transportation, with no car or even a driver’s license, she often feels marooned. Her salary covers necessities, but little else.

She misses ethnic foods, Hispanic music, New York attitude and Christmas celebrations that sometimes lasted Christmas Eve to dawn.

“I cry sometimes because I miss my culture,” Tirado said. “But I’m 45 years old. I’m done with half my life. I’m staying here because I want my children to have a good life. I want my children to have an education, because education is the key.”