Authors: Lynn Austin
“Look, that’s Father O’Duggan,” I said, pointing to one of them. “But he isn’t wearing black.”
“Aye, the picture was taken five years ago before he became a priest. He’s my son, you see. I’m his mam. These are his sisters and brothers. Six children in all, Lord bless them. And this is his daddy, God rest his soul.”
I studied each picture, and when I found one of myself, clinging to Mam’s skirts with my wild mop of curly hair all in tangles, I knew that I would be safe here, that I belonged in this house because they had a picture of me. I fell asleep in her spare room all by myself without even crying for my mother.
When I awoke the next morning, the first thing I did was go into the front room to look at the pictures again. I found the one of Father O’Duggan in his white shirt, but the one of me was gone.
“Where’s my picture?” I asked as Mam shuffled in from the kitchen in her robe and slippers. She lifted me into her arms.
“I don’t have any pictures of you, little luv. But I’ll get my daughter Agnes to take one when she comes over, and we’ll put it here by the lamp with all the others. Would you like that?”
She set me down at the kitchen table in front of a steaming bowl of porridge, sprinkled with raisins. I might have been dreaming about the picture, but at least the food had been real.
As I was finishing my second bowl, Father O’Duggan came through the back door. “Well, aren’t you up and about early this morning,” Mam said. “Will you eat something?”
“No, thanks. I’m having breakfast with the bishop in half an hour. Then I’ll be tied up in meetings all day. That’s why I needed an early start . . . to take care of . . .” He glanced at me and cleared his throat. “I’m going to talk to the Murphys this morning and see if they’ll take her.”
“Maggie Murphy and her clan, do you mean?”
“Maggie’s oldest son, Keith, and his family.”
Mam scooped me off the chair and into her soft arms as if she needed to protect me from something. I loved being held by her. It was like being surrounded by a mountain of lavender-scented pillows. “Now why would you be wanting to send the poor wee thing to that house?”
“Well, they’re the only ones who can afford another mouth to feed.”
“Aye, not that they’d willingly spend a cent on a stranger’s child!”
“I don’t know where else—”
“That Maggie Murphy is a bitter old woman, and such a miser with her money it would give you indigestion just to eat a tea biscuit with her!”
For a long time, neither of them spoke. Mam seemed to be turning something around in her mind.
“Let her stay here with me,” she finally said. It was what I had wished for with all my heart. “You’ll need to bring me her clothes and things, though.”
“There is nothing to bring, Mam.” Father O’Duggan’s voice was tight, his face angry. I was afraid he was mad at me for some reason, and I burrowed deeper into Mam’s bosom. “I went to their apartment this morning,” he said, “looking to find some extra clothes, a favorite toy . . . What I found would fit in my pocket.”
Mam’s arms tightened around me. “Poor little luv. Leave her with me, then.”
“It may be several weeks, you understand.” His voice was quiet again. “I stopped by the hospital this morning—”
“Never mind about that right now.” Mam set me down and began scrubbing the porridge off my face and hands with a wet cloth. “Go on with you then, or you’ll be late for your breakfast with His Excellency.”
“All right,” he said, kissing her cheek. “And thanks, Mam. You’ve got a grand big heart, you know.”
“Aye, go on with you,” she said, waving him away with a frown. “Save the blarney for all the Maggie Murphys in your parish!”
Even with me underfoot, Mam kept to her daily routine. On Monday she did the washing in her basement tubs, scrubbing linens and dress shirts for the rich people who were her customers. Her cavelike cellar was cold, and the steam from the hot water fogged the air with the scent of starch and blueing. Mam let me turn the crank on the wringer. When everything was clean and wrung, Mam gave me a pair of mittens to wear, and I played in the snow in her tiny backyard while she hung the wash on the line to dry. In the unspoken race against the neighboring housewives, Mam’s laundry was unfurled on the clothesline first.
On Tuesday she did the ironing and mending. Mam didn’t own a modern electric iron, and watching her juggle three irons on the coal stove as she pressed shirts and pillowcases and bed sheets was like watching a circus act. I loved the smell of freshly ironed linen and quickly learned the words to all
the Irish ballads she sang as she worked.
Early Wednesday morning, Mam piled the careftilly folded washing in a cart made from an old baby carriage, and we pushed it up the hill to the rich people’s house. The huge mansion had tall columns in front and a wrought-iron fence all around it, but I never saw what it looked like inside. We weren’t allowed. A housekeeper in a gray-and-white uniform met us at the service entrance in back.
“Is this one of your grandchildren, Mrs. O’Duggan?” she asked.
“Grade’s mam is in the hospital,” she explained. “My son Thomas asked me to look after her. He’s a priest over in St. Michael’s parish, you see.”
The woman counted out Mam’s wages, and we walked to the grocery store to do the weekly shopping. On the way home she let me push the carriage full of groceries. Again and again, I heard Mam explain who I was to the people we met, and I saw the pride in her eyes when she mentioned her son Thomas, the priest. From everyone’s reaction, I learned that having a priest in the family was a truly wonderful thing.
On Thursday Mam turned the cottage upside down, dusting and waxing and scrubbing the floors. The best way to help her, she said, was to keep out from underfoot. But the next day was Friday, the best day of all. Mam did her baking on Friday. Wonderful smells filled the kitchen as cookies and pies and loaf after loaf of Irish soda bread emerged from the oven. Mam tied an apron around me and let me kneel on a chair to lick the spoons and mixing bowls. I ate fistfuls of sweet, gooey dough.
At first I wondered who would eat all these marvelous baked goods, but I soon found out. Every afternoon swarms of Mam’s relations filed in and out, staying only long enough for a cup of tea and a bit of gossip. Everyone who came brought her something to eat—a bit of black pudding, a plate of leftover corned beef—and when they left they took something Mam had baked with them. This dizzying exchange of food and serving plates mystified me. I eventually met all six of Mam’s children as well as her eighteen grandchildren, who adopted me into their midst like one of their own cousins.
As word spread that I needed clothes, hand-me-downs began to arrive along with the visitors. Every evening Mam sat in her chair in the front room and mended things for me to wear, sewing on buttons, letting seams in and out, darning woolen stockings. Within days I had more clothes than I’d ever owned in my life, including three extra pairs of bloomers and a nightgown to wear to bed. Best of all, Mam made me a rag doll to sleep with so I wouldn’t miss my mother so much. I named the doll Nellie.
Once my wardrobe was taken care of, Mam resumed her usual evening task of making vestments for Father O’Duggan. She put such loving care into each stitch that I didn’t have the heart to tell her I’d never once seen Father O’Duggan wear any of them. I loved to feel the luxurious fabrics—soft, warm velvet; smooth, cool satin; nubby white brocade. When she saw how much I admired them, Mam gave me the scraps and a needle and thread and taught me to sew.
Toward the end of that first week, I became the object of much discussion as Mam sat at the kitchen table with one of her daughters and sipped tea. “What ever will I do with the poor wee thing while I’m in church?” she wondered.
“She’ll have to go to mass with you.”
“But her people are Protestant.”
“The woman needs our prayers, doesn’t she, Mam?”
“Aye, that she does.”
“Then I shouldn’t think she’d mind who’s doing the praying, or where it’s being done.”
In the end, Mam decided that I would accompany her to church on Sunday, as well as to confession on Saturday afternoon. She pinned a huge white bow to the top of my head for both occasions and covered her own head with a swath of Irish lace.
Confession was a mysterious ritual. Mam waited in a long somber line of people to go inside one of two little booths and talk to the priest. She said he was sitting in the middle booth, but I never saw him. “Is Father O’Duggan in there?” I asked.
“Nay,” she whispered. “He hears confession at a different church in a different parish.”
Some of the people stayed inside the booth a long time; others were in and out in moments. Some came out smiling, others wiping their tears. And once, everyone in line had to back up a few steps when the priest began to shout. The man who emerged afterward was very red in the face.
Mam’s turn in the secret booth turned out to be a short visit. I waited outside the door where I could hear the mumble of voices but not their words. Then we sat quietly in one of the pews for a while as Mam fingered her rosary beads. On the way home I learned that the huge shopping bag she had hauled along with us contained more food, which she delivered along the way.
Sunday Mass the next day made a deep impression on me. The wash of stained-glass color and light, the gentle winking of candles, the chant of the priests echoing through the nave seemed like a glimpse of a heavenly world.
But I stared the longest at the crucifix on the wall above the priest’s head and never forgot the patient suffering I saw on Christ’s face. The gilded paintings and statues scattered throughout the sanctuary were the most beautiful things I’d ever seen, but none held such magnetic power over me as the man on the wooden cross.
When mass ended, Mam took me into a little alcove on one side of the church where there was a statue of a beautiful woman with her hands outstretched. “It’s the Blessed Virgin,” Mam said. “You may light a candle and say a prayer for your mother.” I put the coin she gave me into a special box, and she showed me how to light one of the small candles in front of the statue. Then I folded my hands like Mam did and touched my chin to my chest and closed my eyes.
Father O’Duggan came to visit us early the next day. Mam abandoned her washing, and we climbed the steep cellar steps to fix him some tea. I stood close beside his chair in the kitchen, inhaling his spicy scent and wishing I could touch him, when he suddenly pulled me onto his lap.
“I just visited your mother in the hospital,” he said. “She asked me to give you a big hug. She’s much better than she was, but it will still be some time before she can come home again.”
“I lit a candle and prayed to the Blessed Virgin for her,” I said.
He looked up at his mother and frowned. “Mam, you didn’t!”
“Aye, I did.” She folded her arms across her chest and stuck out her chin. “What was I supposed to do with her, then? You tell me.”
“I guess you’re right. . . .” he said with a sigh. “I offered to take Grace up to her grandparents in Bremenville, but Emma wouldn’t let me.”
That was the first time I ever heard of Bremenville or the fact that I had grandparents there. It was also the last time anyone mentioned them for many years.
ΤWENTY
Mother was very weak after she came home from Sisters of Mercy Hospital. She looked gray and ghostly, like old Mrs. Mulligan downstairs had looked before she died. “Are you going to die, Mommy?” I asked one night as she tucked me into bed.
“Of course not. Only the good die young,” she said, laughing. “That means I’ll live a long, long time.”
Even if she had been strong enough to work, the Great Depression had begun and she no longer had a job at the diner. A few pieces of coal magically appeared in our box whenever the weather turned cold, and Booty Higgins became a good friend to us, allowing Mother and me to take groceries home from his store on credit. But the day soon arrived when we didn’t have enough rent money to pay the Mulligan sisters. The whole neighborhood had witnessed the shame and humiliation of the Sullivan family down the block—their landlord had thrown them and all their possessions out into the street for not paying their rent, then boarded the door closed behind them. Mother didn’t want the same thing to happen to us.
On a warm spring day in 1930, Mother got out her prettiest dress from the back of the closet, spruced herself all up with lipstick and rouge, then walked hand in hand with me down the street to Booty’s store. The bell jangled as Mother yanked open the sagging screen door. Through the bluish haze of cigarette smoke and drifting dust motes, we saw Booty manning the cash register beneath the Camel cigarette clock. Mother looked around carefully for Mrs. Booty Higgins. I was scared of her, and I think Mother was too. Whenever Mrs. Booty stood at the register, we would just leave again because she didn’t allow anyone to charge groceries.
But this day Mother hadn’t come for groceries. She waited until the other customers left, then walked up to the counter. “We’ve known each other a long time, Booty,” she said in a low voice. “I need a favor.”
“Sure, Emma. Wha . . . what kind of a favor?” I’d noticed that men sometimes
acted silly and tongue-tied around my mother, but I didn’t understand the reason for it yet. Booty was one of the silliest-acting. He would stand up a little straighter and tuck in his shirttails whenever Mother walked into the store, then comb his dark hair back with his fingers, and gaze at her the way a puppy stares out of a pet store window. I had heard other people say that Booty was too Irish-handsome for his own good, but Mother never seemed to take notice of him or any other man.
“I’m laid off work and all out of money,” she said quietly. “I need you to tell me where O’Brien’s speakeasy is.”
He raked his hands through his hair again and shook his head. “I . . . I can’t tell you that, Emma. I promised Father O’Duggan—”
“How’s he going to find out, Booty? I don’t go to confession. I’m not going to tell him. But I just might decide to have a word with your wife about—”
“No, no! Don’t do that!” he said, glancing over his shoulder.