Patricia Falvey (7 page)

MONTHS WENT BY
, and then one morning in late August 1909, just after my twelfth birthday, I looked up from the chair by the kitchen fire where I sat feeding Paddy to see Ma standing staring at me. I jumped up. She had not been downstairs in months. And now here she was, dressed in her best coat and gloves and carrying a small suitcase. I was overjoyed, and then as quick as the joy came, it left me. Her eyes were blazing fire.

“Ma?” I cried. “Ma, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” she said in a voice I did not recognize.

Da came in the back door at that moment, kicking the soil off his boots. When he saw Ma, his face broke into a grin.

“Och, Mary,” he said. “Och, Mary.” And he went over to her, his arms outstretched.

But Ma backed away. “Get the cart, Tom,” she said. “We’re leaving. Where’s Frank?”

Da dropped his hands. “And where are we going, love?” he said.

“I’ll be leaving now, Tom,” she said, her voice cool and steady.

Da gaped at her.

“And I’ll be taking Frank with me.”

Frankie, who had just come down the stairs, jumped as if he had been slapped.

“Why, Ma?” he said. “Where are we going?”

“I’m taking you home.”

“But I am home,” he said, “and so are you, Ma.”

I pitied Frankie for the puzzlement I saw in his face.

“This is not your home, Frank,” Ma said. “It never was. And he is not your da.”

The words hung in the room heavy as a dying man’s last utterance. They struck us as roughly as if we had been punched by an invisible fist. I doubled over from the pain of it. Then I looked at Frankie’s face and all thought of myself disappeared. I will never forget the look of hurt and confusion and anger that settled on him. Tears filled his eyes, and then fury raged.

“Whose son am I, then?” he cried. “Whose?”

He swung around from Ma to Da. “Who’s my da?” he cried. “Tell me!”

Ma remained calm. “It doesn’t matter,” she replied. “You are not his. You are my sin, and that is why God punished me by taking away Lizzie. They told me so.”

“Who told you, love?” Da whispered gently.

“The voices,” she said.

I had a sudden awful feeling. I stood on the edge of a world about to crumble.

“Is Da my da?” I cried.

Ma nodded. “Yours and Paddy’s and Lizzie’s.” Then she sighed. “You can come with me, too, Eileen,” she whispered. “I love you. But I can’t bring Paddy. God is waiting to punish me again. God will take him, too.”

I looked at my parents, studying them as if I had never set eyes on them before. What choice was this I was being given? Leave my poor da alone? Let my ma go away without me?

Da came over and put his arms around me. “Sure she doesn’t know what she’s saying, love. She’s astray in the head with grief. She’ll come to in time and we’ll forget all this.”

I knew even as he said it that we would never forget it.

“I’ll stay with Da,” I whispered.

“Fetch the cart, Tom,” said Ma. “Take me home.”

“But this is your home, Mary,” whispered Da.

Ma looked at Da. Her eyes were flat and empty. “I’m sorry, Tom,” she said, “but I had no right to be here. It’s time I went back where I came from. Come on, Frank.”

She picked up her bag and led Frankie out to the cart. Da followed, looking over his shoulder and nodding at me. “Just give her a wee bit of time,” he said again.

I watched from the door as Da hooked Rosie up to the cart and started down the road toward the gate. Neither Ma nor Frankie looked back. Frankie’s slight frame was stiff as a board, but I could see by the way Ma’s shoulders moved that she was crying. Something didn’t look right about her. Then I realized she was bareheaded. I looked up and saw it still hanging on the peg by the door.

“She left her hat,” I cried out—but there was no one to hear me.

THAT NIGHT, I
thought back to Frankie’s worms. When you split them in two they grow themselves back, he had said. Would the O’Neills grow themselves back? I wondered.

THE WINTER OF
that year was unremarkable. I had expected the skies to open and floods to wash away the land, or snow to come and freeze the whole world in place so that nothing moved. I had expected the birds to stop singing, the foxes to bury themselves in their holes, and the sun to refuse to rise. But none of this happened. Life and its rhythms went on as usual. Farmers tended their land, shops and pubs opened and closed, and the Music Men still came to the Yellow House. At first I was resentful. How could everything go on the same when Lizzie was dead and Ma and Frankie had gone away? Then I was angry. Why didn’t anyone else seem to care what had happened to us? Why were other people allowed to laugh and dance and carry on while Da and I cried in our silent house?

In time I managed to separate my own grief from the outside world, and in time I allowed the world in again. When I turned thirteen, I stopped going to school. This small rebellion gave me the illusion of control over my life. I argued with Da that I had too much to do around the house and farm, and besides, I was not learning anything new at school. Da hadn’t the strength to argue much.

“Your ma wouldn’t hear of it,” was all he said.

“Well, she’s not here, is she?” I snapped.

IN THE FIRST DAYS
after Ma and Frankie left, Da and I took turns standing at the window or door, listening for the sound of the cart that would bring them back. But no one came, and in time we stopped listening. P.J. had gone to visit them at Ma’s daddy’s house, but she refused to leave. Although I was angry with Ma for leaving us, part of me yearned to go and see her. I pestered P.J. to take me with him, but all he did was shake his head.

“She’s in a bad way still, darlin’,” was all he would say. Eventually, I gave up and stopped asking him. Surely she would be back with us before long.

Da and I did not speak to each other of what had happened for a long time. Paddy was a convenient diversion for us, as were the requirements of the farm. “Are the cows milked?” “The hens are slow laying the eggs this year.” “The child is after spilling the food on himself.”

One morning, about a year after Ma and Frankie left, I fought my way to the surface of a dream. The devil had me in his grip and turned the vise so tight that the pain burned like a welding torch deep into the core of my being. I awoke. The dream vanished, but the pain remained. The curse had begun. I recognized it right away. Ma had warned me about it when I was younger. Back then it had seemed like a vague thing, a thing to be borne in the future when I grew up, a thing that Ma would ease with her gentle voice and touch. But Ma was not here. Every month, she had said. Every month! I got out of bed and found a stray piece of paper and pencil and marked down the date. I passed the rest of the day in a trance, staying as far away from Da as I could. Anger and fear mixed in my mind, and I cursed Ma for leaving me alone. The child I had known was leaving. I did not know who I would become. I trembled on the threshold of the rest of my life. I allowed the child her final farewell that night, as she pulled the covers over her head and wept for her ma.

I GREW TALLER
and stronger. I became nearly as tall as Ma, and I had her build—long legs and a strong back. My red hair fell in a thick braid to my waist. Unloosed from Ma’s constant watch, I felt myself grow reckless. I became willful, refusing Da’s orders and pleasing myself. I stopped going to mass. I began to swear, enjoying the guilty pleasure of the ripe words rolling on my tongue and the sour looks of the old biddies who heard me. I delved into the excesses of my nature with robust curiosity: I found I was quick to anger, quick to judgment, intolerant of stupidity and arrogance, and impious. I was also playful, quick to laugh, and ravenous for life.

P.J. was the first to remark on the changes in me. “She’s growing up, Tom,” I heard him say. “She’ll need a strong hand to keep her in line.”

“Aye,” Da said, “maybe when Mary comes home…”

Like me, Da still held out hope that Ma and Frankie would one day come home.

The Music Men provided diversion, and they all put up a good show when they came. But something had changed that I couldn’t put my finger on. Terrence spoke less than usual. Fergus smiled a secret smile, as if to say now we knew what trouble was like. Billy Craig was the only one to show his true colors. He scowled at Da, his red face bloated with anger. He believed that Da had sent Ma away, and no one could tell him any different. He banged around the room and grunted so much that the boys told him to control himself or stop coming altogether. He did not come back.

One night after a music session, I sat down by the fire and looked at Da.

“Tell me about Frankie,” I said.

Da looked up at me, surprised. He started to wave his hand to dismiss the question, and then he thought better of it. “What do you want to know, Eileen?”

“Who is his da?”

“I don’t know.”

Rage roared up in me. “Don’t lie to me, Da.”

He gazed at me. “I’m not lying, darlin’. I don’t know who his da was. All I know is that I was in love with Mary, and when she came to me and said she was in trouble and would I marry her, I never thought twice.”

He paused and lit his pipe, stoking the tobacco with a gnarled finger.