Cinders to Satin

by Fern Michaels

  Callie didn’t think it wonderful that half-starved people should be charged prices they could scarcely afford. Nine shillings for a pint of milk, she had heard, seven for a loaf of bread. More than a month’s salary for her labors at the mill in Dublin.

  A pilot boat putted toward the Yorkshire, several officious looking gentlemen with stern expressions on their faces standing in the stem—the doctor and the government health officials. As expected, a line was thrown to the pilot boat, and a Jacob’s ladder thrown over the side of the Yorkshire. Everyone watched dourly, silently; their futures depended upon these men.

  Within minutes word spread that the Yorkshire was to be held in quarantine. Loud curses and hopeless wails went up among the people. They had traveled thousands of miles and were within sight of their destination only to be held back and denied entrance. They were to complete an orderly disembarkation to the beach where they were to await further medical examination. Typhus was said to be aboard the Yorkshire..

  As ordered, pokes and baggage were brought from below. Patrick carried Paddy and steadied Beth through the crowd. Shouts and cries filled the air; defeat and havoc prevailed. “Don’t become separated!” Patrick shouted above the din, warning Callie.

  Even as Patrick warned her, rough hands seized Callie’s shoulders, propelling her toward the Yorkshire’s rail, wresting her baggage from her and tossing it to a boat below. “Over the side, girlie,” the shipmate growled. Callie was half-lifted, half-thrown over the rail to grab hold of one of the many rope ladders leading down to the skiffs that hugged the Yorkshire’s side. She hung there, like a spider in a web, too terrified to move, too muddled with confusion and the horror of the murky waters far below. “Go on with you! First your feet, then your hands!” the shipmate instructed, already tossing someone else’s poke down to the boat.

  The ladder swayed; the skiff seemed miles below her, but move she must, for a man was climbing down the same ladder as she. She felt first with one foot and then the other, holding on for dear life. Hands were reaching up for her, steadying her last few steps. Even when she sat in the bobbing skiff, Callie’s panic would not subside. All around her were shouts and terrified cries. Children and babies were lowered by ropes; many fell into the water to be picked up at the point of drowning by small boats that circled the area. Like rats chased from their hidey-holes, the passengers left ship. Callie worried for Beth in her bulky condition. Above, the seamen were shouting and pushing, forcing people over the side.

  It was only minutes, but to Callie it was a lifetime before the skiff in which she sat was filled to capacity and made its way to shore. She held tightly to her poke, clasping it to her. It was all she had in this world: a few changes of clothes, a small bit of food, and her letters to Peggy.

  There were piers built out into the water at the foot of the cliff where the large brick hospital building stood, but none of the skiffs docked there. Instead they pulled up on the beach, and their passengers had to step out into knee-deep water and wade to dry land.

  Callie collapsed on the hard-packed, rock-strewn beach. She sat like a broken puppet, repelled by the sights and sounds and the experience of climbing down the rope ladder into an unsteady boat. She was terrified to the core, weak and shaken.

  It was an eternity later when Patrick found her, huddled and shivering. “Callie! Callie! Beth sent me to find you . . .” Patrick sank down onto the beach, hard pebbles biting into his knees. He was astounded at finding Callie like this. Bright, tough little Callie James was stiff with fear, shaking and trembling as though the fires of hell had revealed themselves to her. The sight overwhelmed him.

  “Callie! Callie! Pull yourself together!” He gathered her into his arms, held her while she burrowed against his chest. “Callie, Beth needs you. You’ve been the strength for all of us.” He soothed her, patting her back, smoothing her long chestnut hair back from her whitened face.

  “That’s a girl,” he said when he felt the tremblings soften. “That’s our Callie. You’ll be fine, won’t you? You don’t want them to take you to the hospital, do you? There’s a shelter down the beach a ways where I’ve left Beth and the boy. Come along with me, Callie. Please?”

  Callie nodded her head. No, she didn’t want them to take her to the hospital. All she wanted was to see her mother, play with the children . . . but that was impossible. Patrick led her along the beach to find Beth. The light October breezes lifted the strands of hair that had escaped their braid and freshened her cheeks. She would be strong, she told herself over and over. She must be strong.

  People milled up and down the beach. Entire families seemed to have set up camp on the beaches and along the sloping cliff. Men, women, children, most of them dressed in little more than rags, littered the beach. The hospital sat high on the hill, various out buildings lining the road down to the water’s edge. Out in the bay more than twenty ships rested at anchor, their passengers within sight of New York City but prevented from going there.

  When Beth saw Callie, she threw her arms around her. “Oh, I thought we’d never find you! Someone said a woman drowned before a boat could fish her out of the water . . . Oh, Callie, I thought it might have been you!”

  “Hush, Beth,” Callie said, “I’m here now.”

  Beth was staring beyond Callie to a section of the cliff where families had pitched camp. Their meager cookfires smoked from the damp tinder they were burning along with rags and anything else that would feed the flames. Her body was rigid; her eyes wide and staring. “Beth, what is it?” Patrick asked alarmed. “We’re all here together and safe—”

  “No! We’re not safe!” Beth wailed, the terror in her voice sending chills up Callie’s spine. Little Paddy began to wail in sympathy. “Don’t you see?” Beth attacked Patrick in her distress. “Have you no eyes? These people are living out here in holes dug by their hands or in gullies and hovels someone else has left behind. Patrick! I don’t want to have this baby in a hole in the ground! Promise me! Promise me!” She collapsed into her husband’s arms, weeping with great heaving sobs against his chest.

  “Easy, darlin’, easy. I promise you, I swear. We’ll go to the hospital shelter; we’ll be safe there. Paddy can’t live outdoors with his chest. I promise you, Beth.” Patrick’s optimism was failing him. His beautiful, approving Beth was near the edge of madness, and he worried that even God could not save them from the ordeal they faced. Steeling his resolve, Patrick forced a smile. “Come now, love. We’ll walk up the hill to see what can be done.” Paddy stuck his thumb into his mouth, hanging onto his father’s pants legs, demanding to be picked up. “Here now, darlin’, look how you’re frightening the boy.”

  Beth looked down at her son. “There, there, sweet, Mummy’s just being silly.” She touched his wayward curls in a soothing caress.

  Callie looked away from the naked emotion displayed by her friends. The thought came out of nowhere: Where are you, Byrch Kenyon? This is something you should see so you can put it in your newspaper! Mr. Kenyon had warned her that it was no easy road for the emigrant, but did he know the inhumanity of it all?

  From long habit, Callie lifted her eyes heavenward. “Lord, I know these people are praying just as hard as I am, and You aren’t listening. How can You allow this? Sweet Jesus, it’s time to do something!”

  The walk up the hill to the Tompkinsville Hospital and its annexes was a long, hard trek, and Beth was near total exhaustion. Officials wearing red armbands imprinted with white crosses policed the crowd, herding Callie and Beth along with Paddy into a line. “Women and children for a preliminary examination,” the official repeated gruffly. “Men to the other side.”

  “If we can just find a place to rest,” Patrick said. “My wife is very near her time, and she’s dead out on her feet . . .”

  As though he hadn’t heard, or didn’t care, the official pushed Callie and Beth into line, repeating, “Women and children for a preliminary examination. Men to the other side.”

  “Perhaps you didn’t
hear me,” Patrick said, his tone polite and in direct contrast to the fierce grip he had taken on the man’s coat front. “My wife! She needs help!” There was desperation in Patrick’s voice, a white line of hatred circling his mouth.

  “Patrick! Patrick!” Beth screamed, tugging on her husband’s arms, attempting to break his deathlike grip on the official.

  Almost instantly two other men wearing armbands seized Patrick, throwing him roughly to the ground. “Behavior like that will get you a stint in jail,” the men warned. “Keep your hands to yourself, man, if you know what’s good for you. We don’t like troublemakers here.”

  Regaining control, Patrick shrugged off the men’s hands with a violent motion. Beth fell tearfully into his arms. “Patrick, please. We must do as they say.” Her voice was soft, a sobbing entreaty.

  “Yer little missus is right, man,” said one of the men. “Yer so close now, don’t ruin it for yourself. Go on over and get in line with the other men. We’ll look after your wife.”

  Patrick responded to the man’ suggestion, but when he left Beth’s side, his shoulders were slumped in weariness and defeat.

  Beth watched her husband, her heart breaking for him. This was supposed to be the most wonderful experience of his life! The great adventure! And because of her and Paddy it was draining the life right out of him. She’d known and loved Patrick Thatcher too long and too well not to know that his enthusiasm was fast on the wane, that worry and concern for his family were dragging him down. Patrick, her Patrick, so filled with life and eagerness for America, was beginning to realize the burden he carried. And Beth’s gentle heart cried for him.

  Nearly an hour later Beth and Callie were near the head of the line. Paddy slept with his head on Callie’s shoulder, his thumb pushed firmly into his mouth. Pressing her cheek against his forehead, she could feel the dry heat of a fever. She looked over at Beth who was sitting on a bedroll and wondered if she realized how ill her son was, or was she just too weary to notice? Surely this would not be an indifferent examination such as they’d had back in Liverpool. Would Paddy pass? Callie hugged the child protectively, assuring herself that this was why they’d built the hospital—to care for the sick and ailing. Paddy would be fine in the competent hands of the American doctors.

  When they were ushered into the low, flat, tin-roofed building, they realized why they hadn’t seen any of the hundreds of women leaving. At the far end of the stark interior was an exit door. There were the women, holding their children by the hands, crying, expressions of humiliation and utter defeat on their ravaged faces. It seemed to Callie that everywhere she looked, pain and suffering were the order of the day.

  Beth, along with Paddy and Callie, was hustled into a small side room by a man wearing a rubber apron. One window, grimy with dirt, shed the only light into the interior. Beth and Callie glanced around uneasily as the man was joined by a slattern of a woman carrying sharp-tipped scissors. “Sit down, girlie,” the woman commanded Callie, attempting a smile that revealed her toothless gums.

  “Why? Who are you? You aren’t a doctor!”

  “Sit!” It was an iron command. Hesitantly Callie gave Paddy over to his mother.

  “If the boy is too heavy for you, you can put him down there,” the woman indicated a pile of burlap sacks whose soft fullness made them appear to be stuffed with rags.

  “We’ll just take these pins from your hair,” the man said in false friendliness. “What do you say, Sally, shall we leave her hair in the braid?”

  “Aye, ’twill make it easier at that,” the woman answered.

  Callie anticipated their motives. “No! No, I won’t let you cut my hair! Why?”

  “Don’t give us any of yer lip, girlie. We’re told to cut your hair because it drains yer strength. And for reasons of hygiene,” she added as a last word of authority. “The lice in this place is terrible from you dirty Irish. Now shut your mouth and sit still.”

  “I’ll be damned to hell if I’ll let you lay one hand on me!” Eyes wide, face white, Callie leaped from the chair. “You aren’t cutting my hair! Never!” Warily she backed toward the door, her arms in front of her to ward off the expected attack.

  “You have lice! Bugs, lassie. We can’t be letting you mingle with the others when you’ve vermin crawlin’ through that lovely hair, now can we? Now, be a good girl and sit down. Don’t make Sally tie you up. We have to do that sometime, eh, Jake?” She winked at the burly man who seemed to be observing the scene with great amusement.

  “I don’t have lice and you know it!” She looked over to Beth for assistance only to see her fling her hands up before her face as though shutting out the scene would make it untrue. Paddy turned, awakened by the commotion, arms outstretched for his mother. With his movements, several of the burlap sacks fell over, revealing that they were stuffed with hanks of hair.

  Paddy began to wail. “Look what you’re doin’ to the child,” Sally said. “Now sit down and it’ll be over one, two, three.”

  The man, Jake, yanked Callie away from the door, forcing her into the chair, holding her arms behind her back. Sally wielded the scissors, hacking away at Callie’s long thick braid. Tears of humiliation stung her cheeks; her teeth bit into her full underlip. Quicker than two shakes of a lamb’s tail it was over, and Sally held up the mutilated braid to Jake who stuffed it into a sack.

  Beth was led without protest to the chair. Sally and Jake helped themselves to the tortoise-shell combs Beth wore in her hair and the long pins she used to fasten the gleaming, auburn tresses to the back of her head. “Put this one’s hair into that separate sack, Jake. It’ll bring a nice price, considering the color of it.”

  Callie heard the words and turned with a vengeance. “Price? What price?”

  “This is America, darlin’,” toothless Sally explained. “Waste not, want not, just like the Bible says.”

  Jake and Sally pushed Beth, Paddy, and Callie out of the small room. Pulling her shawl up over her head to hide the ugliness, Callie now understood the weeping women they had seen when they first entered the building. Women who had nothing before coming to Tompkinsville and who had even less now.

  Beth began to sob, touching the short, blunt ends of her hair. “Beth, it’ll grow back, you’ll see,” Callie tried to reason. “There’s nothing to do but live with it. Maybe we can fix it up a bit. Just to even it out . . .”

  “Patrick loved my hair. He said it was my glory.” Beth moaned. “Everything is wrong. Everything!”

  Paddy whimpered and wined. Callie picked him up and cradled him to her.

  “Pull your shawl up over your head, Beth,” Callie instructed. “We’ve got to find Patrick. Don’t let him see you crying like this, Beth. The worst has been done.”

  Lifting her head and looking her young friend directly in the eyes, Beth whispered, “Has it, Callie? Somehow, I don’t think it has.” The sound of Beth’s tone and the expression of complete hopelessness and resignation in her red-rimmed eyes made Callie shudder. As though a goose had walked on her grave, as Peggy used to say.

  Dear Mum,

  I have stepped my foot on these new shores of America. I wish with all my heart you had not sent your daughter to the gates of hell. We are not allowed to go into New York as yet, although I can see the city and its wharves from this place across the bay called Staten Island. Here the waterway is very narrow, and a man can row across the bay without working up a sweat.

  We are being held at a place called Tompkinsville, facing quarantine because Typhus was found aboard the Yorkshire. Like the doctors in Liverpool, this place too is a shame in the face of God. While they hold the poor back from their lives, the captain and his crew are free to enter the city. Were they not aboard the same ship as we? Do they have some magic against disease?

  I wrote you how Beth and me had our hair cut. It doesn’t look so bad now, since Beth had some little scissors and she evened it out. But it’s short, Mum, shorter than Bridget’s, and it’s all topsy-turvy curls about my hea
d. Mr. Thatcher tells me I look about twelve years old. If my haircut makes me look twelve, it makes Beth look about a hundred. Hers doesn’t curl like mine, and it’s unmercifully short and lopsided. When I told her I would try to fix hers like she did mine, she just pulled her shawl over her head and cried.

  They say it was a hair-cutting ring, Mum, and they just rowed out to the island and set up shop. They caught them, Mum. Policemen came and took them away because it’s a crime to cut someone’s hair and sell it for profit. Mr. Thatcher says whoever buys Beth’s hair and mine will make the finest wigs for some rich lady.

  We are all sleeping in a shelter just outside the hospital gates, and there must be over a hundred people in here with us. I used the last bit of my tea yesterday. I did what you told me and used the same tea leaves three times before tossing them away.

  I have still not seen or heard from cousin Owen.

  Your daughter in America,

  Callandre

  It was the twenty-seventh day of the Yorkshire’s quarantine. While the ship stood at anchor in the bay, her passengers mingled among the thousand or more who had sailed to America in her sister ships.

  The month of October had been dry, the last traces of summer warming the days until All Hallows’ Eve. Then November struck with vengeance. The waters of the bay were whipped by foul winds, the ground became hard and frozen during the cold nights, warming again beneath the day’s sun to become muddy trenches from the abuse of too many feet.

  A roll was called, and the passengers from the Yorkshire were told to climb the long hill to the hospital for the medical examination before receiving the stamped passes that would allow them access to the City of New York and beyond.

  Callie was dismayed to discover that she was expected to undress and submit to a thorough evaluation by a harried doctor and his even more harried nurse assistant. She was standing outside the hospital long before the Thatchers made their exit. One look at their faces told her something was terribly wrong. Beth was ashen, and Patrick’s usual bright gaze was dulled and pained. Only Paddy remained the same, whimpering and listless.