“You had to stay in this terrible place all day, Mom?” Mae was the oldest and most sensitive of the three.
“Some had to stay here much longer and they didn’t let them in. I was lucky.”
They studied the photographs which hung from the stark walls.
“These poor people . . . how terrible! Are you in any of the pictures?”
“I don’t think so. I was hardly worth noticing. You can see why so many Americans were worried. How could people like these ever become good Americans?”
Then they went to the Statue of Liberty. From memory Angela recited the ending of Emma Lazarus’s sonnet:
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
“Are we these huddled masses, these wretched refuse, these tired poor, these tempest-tost?” Mae asked.
“No, dear, you’re a Yank. I’m the wretched refuse.”
Mae hugged her protectively.
“Here your mom is, Mae. This is the fourteen-year-old we picked up at the Central Depot the next day.”
“Mom,” Patrick exclaimed, “look at the light in your eyes!”
“All of us fell in love with her when we saw that glow,” Tim said proudly. “We never got over it.”
“How could you . . .” Mae said softly.
Irish Tweed Page 23
