by Tom Murphy
That they did. The hallway seemed to go on forever, and the crucifix at the end of it got bigger and bigger as they followed the tall young priest down the gleaming expanse of oak. At the end of the hallway a nun glided past them, smiling, her pale benevolent face framed in starched white, trailing a wimple and gown of some sheer black material, looking not at all mournful despite the severe black-against-white of her attire. Somehow the grace of the woman and her expression cheered Lily. In a world filled with Fat Bessies and coughing old Mrs. Flannagans, serenity of any kind counted for a lot. Lily decided that she, too, would be serene. She would find contentment in the fields of the Lord. Lily smiled benevolently as Father Gregory turned a corner and led them down another, even longer hallway.
Then Fergus pinched her.
“Ow! That hurt, Fergus. Why did you do that?”
“You dropped something.”
Lily looked behind her. Hortense lay crumpled on the polished floor, martyr to her owner’s newfound spirituality. Blushing, Lily ran back and retrieved her doll. Then she gave Fergus a swift clout in the belly. He was about to escalate the battle when Father Gregory grabbed his arm.
“Now, then, that will be enough of that, Fergus Malone. And on your mother’s burial day, too. Get on with you, lad—here’s Sister Cathleen’s office now.”
He knocked and was bid to enter.
Sister Cathleen’s office was a small room paneled in oak up to the height of a chair back, and painted a cheerful pale yellow above that. One big window looked out on the back garden, which was a fair picture of fresh green lawns and new-leaved trees, with here and there great clumps of red and white and pink roses in full and fragrant bloom. The window was half-opened in the warmth of the afternoon, and Lily could smell the sweetness of the huge blossoms over the inside smells of furniture oil and dry paper and chalk. The walls of the room were bare except for one small black-and-white engraving of St. Christopher wading a swift-flowing river with the Christ Child on his back. St. Christopher gazed hopefully at something just beyond the frame of the picture. The Christ Child waved cheerfully, confident in his mount Lily felt better and better about St. Patrick’s orphanage, but she still wondered why Fergus had pinched her in the hall.
Sister Cathleen was a tiny woman, one of the smallest grown-ups Lily had ever seen, but somehow she gave the impression of being very strong. She was slender and well-proportioned, as much as Lily could see of her under the wimple and robes, and she had the face of an inquisitive bird. Sister Cathleen’s most prominent feature was her eyes. They were large and so dark brown they might have been black. The size and the darkness of her eyes, and the quick way they moved in her tiny face, all accentuated the impression that here was a very intelligent, not unkindly bird, but a bird nevertheless.
She sat at a specially built tall stool which compensated admirably for her shortness, while having the unfortunate side effect of looking exactly like a bird’s perch.
Sister Cathleen looked up as Father Gregory opened the door, and smiled, a quick, intense, birdlike smile.
“Well, Father G.,” she said brightly, speaking rather fast, “so you have brought me some new fledglings!”
He smiled. “That I have, Sister, and a fine pair they are, too: may I be presenting Miss Lillian Malone, and Mr. Fergus Malone, recently of Mulberry Street, in our very parish, and a true hero their father was, Big Fergus, who died fighting the Great Fire of Forty-two.”
Sister Cathleen nodded agreeably through this rather long speech. Then she put her small, slender hands together on top of the papers she had been reading, making a small cathedral of her fingers.
“Well, children, we have a few more than two hundred young people here at St. Paddy’s, and ’tis fair to say that more of them are happy than are not. We do have rules, not, mind you, because we love rules, but rather because ’tis the only way we’ll ever get the lot of you fed and washed and educated.”
She paused then, and stepped down from her stool, and walked around the desk. Lily watched, fascinated. Sister Cathleen was no taller standing than she was sitting on the curious stool! And yet, this tiny creature with the kind face had got to be matron of the best and biggest Catholic orphanage in New York. Sister Cathleen paused in front of Lily, reached down and touched her under the chin, and raised Lily’s face to look into her own face, which in truth was not all that far above it. And she spoke:
“Lillian…Lily, is it that they call you?”
“Yes, Sister. Lily.”
“And your doll? What is her name?”
“Hortense.”
“Ah. French, she is, then?”
“She’s French,” Lily said quietly, and then suddenly added: “…and she is a princess.”
“A very beautiful princess, at that. Well, Lily, and Fergus, we must be getting you settled in time for the evening meal. Now, St. Patrick’s is really two orphanages, one for girls and one for boys. You’ll not be far away, for the boys are just over there, in that wing, and the girls here in this one. But the times when you can be together must be limited. As little limited as we can manage.”
Lily looked at Fergus. The dreaded moment had come. She was going to be sold into slavery! She’d never see Fergus again. Lily clutched Hortense closer to her thin chest, and took one step closer to her brother.
Sister Cathleen went on: “On Saturday afternoons, after lunch, you can play together. You can visit after Mass on Sunday. And, of course, you may write letters as often as you like. We encourage that.”
Sister Cathleen smiled brightly, but to Lily it still sounded like exile of the darkest most remote order. She took another step closer to Fergus, and silently reached out for his hand. She caught his hand and squeezed it. Sister Cathleen continued, but now her voice seemed far away to Lily, and she only half-heard what the matron was saying.
“We have three dormitories for girls, and they’re divided by ages, thirty girls to the dormitory. It is the same for the boys, except that we have four boys’ dormitories. And a great new luxury has come to us since the Croton Reservoir opened five years ago: indoor plumbing! You’ll have classes every day but Sunday, and fine classes they are, too: Father Gregory here teaches some of them, and other fine priests and nuns. Last year five of our boys went on to university: what do you think of that, Fergus?”
Fergus looked at the floor, still in the death grip of Lily’s small hand.
“It’s a fine thing, Sister.”
“This world is filled with hope, children, even though it may not seem so today. You can make your own way, by your own efforts, and prayers, and the grace of God Almighty. Even as Father Gregory has done, who once was an orphan boy just like Fergus here. Always remember that, Lily and Fergus: the future is what you make of it. Now. Let me take Lily to her new home, and, Father G., perhaps you’ll see Fergus to the boys’ wing?”
Lily stood transfixed. One more parting. She knew, somewhere deep inside her, that this was not a parting like death. But it was a parting from the last fragment of family love that the little girl knew, and it stung worse than knives, loomed darker than death, had the chill and finality of permanent exile. Together, with Fergus, things would somehow be all right. Alone, Lily had no idea how she could survive even for an hour, let alone the rest of her life. And she had similar doubts about Fergus, older as he was, and bigger and physically stronger. She read his fears in his silence, and she felt her own fear welling up in her, starting at the shivering tips of her toes and mounting like a fever, like a brushfire, first burning and then threatening to turn to tears. “Save your tears, child, for one day you may truly need them.” Lily looked at the bright room and the garden beyond, and at the two fine smiling faces of Sister Cathleen and Father Gregory, smiling now over their obvious anxiety about the scene they feared was coming on them: Lily gulped and decided that this was no time for tears. All the sadness, all the fear, was from within. These people meant her no harm, nor Fergus either. The orphanage of St. Patrick’s was the best they could do
, and grateful they must be for the fact that it was opening up to them.
Still clutching her brother’s hand, Lily stood up on tiptoe and kissed his cheek.
“God be with you, Fergus.”
He looked at her then, and his ruddy face had turned pale. His eyes started to fill with tears, but no tear fell. He tried to smile at her, but the smile melted into quivering sadness.
“It won’t be long, Lil, I promise it won’t.”
“We can write.”
She said this without believing it: Fergus’ struggles with the written word had been the despair of his teachers on those few days he deigned not to play hooky. And Lily herself was barely beginning to learn. Well, all the more reason to get on with it, then! They might try to keep her from Fergus, and Fergus from her, but Lily knew she’d find a way around their wicked rule. If writing must be part of it, well, then, she would learn to write. Fired with determination, Lily looked at Sister Cathleen. She was ready.
“Don’t despair, children,” said Sister Cathleen softly. “It may seem like you’re apart, but in truth, you’ll not be farther away than the length of this building.”
Then she took Lily’s hand and led her out of the small office and down the hall. Fergus and Father Gregory started off in the other direction, in silence.
On the way down the halls and up the stairs and around the bend, Sister Cathleen kept up a busy stream of talk. Lily learned that she would be in the middle level of the three girls’ dormitories, containing thirty girls from ages seven to eleven. There was a nursery for infants of both sexes, and then the youngest dorm, ages three through seven. The older girls, who had decided to stay on in the orphanage and help with the young ones, or to stay on and consider their vocation as nuns, had a third dormitory of their own. It was these girls who helped supervise the younger ones, who acted as monitors in class and in study hall, who helped keep order in the sleeping quarters, and who also supervised the children’s work programs.
“What sort of work will I be doing?”
Like all poor children in New York, Lily had grown up on frightening stories of the public workhouses, where charity wards of the city were worked sometimes literally to death in conditions of unspeakable filth, on almost nothing to eat.
“That,” said Sister Cathleen, “depends on what you’d most like to learn. We help in the kitchen, where you could learn to cook. We have a great deal of sewing to do, and a wonderfully clever nun is in charge of all that, Sister Mary Agnes. We make our own uniforms, Lily, and mend all our own linen, and sometimes we even make altar cloths for St. Patrick’s, costumes for the pageants, that sort of thing. And even fine linen to sell, when there’s a spare moment, although I fear we have few enough of those these days. In any event, the work isn’t that hard, nor the work time so long. Three hours per day per child is the rule, and often ’tis less. What we try to do here, Lily, is teach our children useful things, things that will let them go on to better jobs, should they decide to leave us.”
“What sort of jobs might that be?”
“For girls, perhaps being a serving maid in some fine household. That’s not at all a bad life, let me tell you. Or, if you were of an academic inclination, you might go for a governess, or nursemaid. Many of our brighter girls do that. Then, there are always positions opening up in the shops, although that seems less appealing to me than being truly well-looked-after in a rich home. As for the lads, some of them, with luck, go on to college. Few, in truth, are so inclined, but it does happen, and we are proud when it does. More of our lads go into trade, as apprentices of one sort or another. And, of course, some of them get the calling and become priests. Even as Father Gregory himself did. And by the same token, some of our best girls become nuns, and stay with us always.”
Lily had been so absorbed in what the matron was saying, she hadn’t noticed where they were walking. They had climbed two flights of stairs, turned several corners, walked down one very long hallway and another, shorter one. Everything gleamed. The windowpanes themselves sparkled. The green grass outside seemed to be sparkling too, in the bright clear sunlight of the summer afternoon. The idea of staying here forever seemed not at all unattractive to Lily. One day, perhaps, she might be the matron, escorting some poor little orphan down this same hallway, giving her hope for a future that, just minutes ago, had seemed hopelessly dark and fraught with hidden perils.
They paused at a big oak door.
“Well, now,” said Sister Cathleen brightly, “here we are.”
She opened the door. Lily’s eyes widened as she saw the size of the room that was to be her new home. It was one of the biggest rooms she had ever been in, outside of church, or the big hallway downstairs. The room was long and airy and sparkling clean, like everything else in St. Patrick’s orphanage. It was up under the dormered roof, and the walls were truly vertical only up to a height of about five feet. Like Sister Cathleen’s office, the walls were paneled to chair-back height. Above that they were painted gleaming white. On both sides of a wide aisle, pairs of white-painted iron cots marched the length of the room, fifteen to the side. Next to each cot was a small wooden table, and on each table, a small pitcher and basin to wash in. There were hooks on the wall, four to each cot. Under the beds Lily could see woven wicker hampers that she imagined, must contain the girls’ extra clothing. It all looked neat and cheerful.
The big room had only two occupants: at the far end of the central aisle a broad-shouldered, sullen-looking girl with a very low forehead was lazily pushing a broom. Halfway down the row of beds, on the left, and facing away from them, a thin girl sat busily sewing something blue. Both girls wore what Lily soon learned was the summer weekday uniform of indigo-blue cotton twill jumper, with skirts to the floor, over a thin cotton shirt in a paler shade of blue.
“Bertha, Frances, come here.”
The girls walked quickly to Sister Cathleen.
“Good afternoon, Sister Cathleen,” they said in unison, at the same time bobbing in half-curtsy.
“Good afternoon, girls. I’d like you to meet our newest guest, Lillian Malone, called Lily.”
“How do you do, Lily?”
“Fine, thank you,” said Lily in a small voice, wishing it were true. Bertha was the sullen broom-pusher. The sewing girl was Frances. Lily wondered how the matron ever learned to remember all their names. Sister Cathleen walked away from them, seemed to be looking for something, then found it.
“Here we are! Lily, your bed will be this one. Right next to Frances. Frances, please help Lily get settled in, show her the water closet, where to get her uniform, how to store her things away, and introduce her to the others when they get back. Can you do all that dear?”
Frances smiled. Lily decided she had a nice face, thin though it was. Frances looked as though she worried a lot. That is all right thought Lily, so do I.
“Sure, and gladly, Sister Cathleen.”
“Then I’ll be off, Lily, my dear, but we’ll have a chance to get better acquainted later on, won’t we?”
It was the kind of question that didn’t seem to need an answer. Lily simply nodded and stood by her new bed. The matron smiled benevolently and left them.
No sooner had the door closed behind her than the girl called Bertha was up and mincing down the hallway, squealing in a comic falsetto: “We’ll have a chance, la-di-da, to get better acquainted later on, la-di-da, won’t we?” Then she dissolved in giggles and sat on one of the beds. “You’d think”—Bertha snickered—“that this rat hole was bloody Delmonico’s, and this little guttersnipe the Princess of Wales, la-di-da.” And she laughed again, a deep, unhumorous laugh.
The girl named Frances came to Lily, put one arm around her protectively, and said quietly: “Hush, now, Dolan! If you were capable of feelings, you’d know how it feels on your first day. Pick on someone your own size, if you can locate ’em with a microscope. I’m sorry, Lily, but Bertha Dolan has spent so much time groveling with the pigs, she comes by that kind of behavior natur
ally. We aren’t all like that, thanks be to God.”
Bertha Dolan got up again, her face purple. She stood in the aisle with her hands on her hips and hissed like a mongoose: “Thanks be to God, is it, Miss la-di-da Frances O’Farrelley? Grovel with piggies, do I? Let me tell you, fair lady, we are all lower than pigshit in this place. We’re Irish, aren’t we, we’re orphans, aren’t we? Lower than low, that’s what we are. Lower than low.”
“And so determined to stay that way, Bertha, darlin’? And you not even an orphan, but masquerading as one?” Frances turned away from the purple-faced Bertha and said very distinctly, “Think of it, Lily, her parents are alive and well and want nothing more to do with the sad creature. I can’t imagine why, lovable thing that she is, can you?”
Lily said nothing, but bowed her head, trying to imagine parents so heartless they’d turn a child out on the streets.
“Ah,” said Bertha, “to hell with ye all.”
She stomped down the aisle and took up her broom and punished invisible specks of dust as if she were flailing all her enemies.
“Now, then,” said Frances with a smile, “this is your bed, Lily, and your stuff that you’ve brought goes under it, in the wicker chest. Your uniforms and nightgown get hung from these hooks, you fetch your own washwater from the faucet down in the W.C., which I’ll be showing you in a minute, and that’s about that except for learning your way around, which won’t take all that long. Now. Let me run and see if we can still get you a uniform before ’tis time for supper.”
Frances O’Farrelley walked briskly down the aisle and out of the door. Lily sat on her bed for the first time. It was a better bed than any she could remember from Mulberry Street. Then she got up and walked to the window nearest her bed. Sunk into its dormer, it made a small box just big enough for one little girl. She stood on tiptoe to see out: there across Prince Street was St. Patrick’s in all its glory! Lily could see over the churchyard wall into the filled-up graveyard, with its white scallop-topped stones, its crosses and marble benches and willow trees rippling in the breeze like strands of seaweed under the ocean. Then she walked across the dormitory and looked out the other window. Here were the gardens, the playing field of the boys’ orphanage, and all the back gardens of the row houses between Mott Street and Mulberry. Lily could see flowers and tomato plants twining, and chickens and pigs and an occasional goat. She opened the window. Here were the familiar noises of her old neighborhood, but more distant now, comforting and remote at the same time. She remembered her lonely walk up Mulberry Street to light the candle in St. Patrick’s, and wondered when, if ever, she would be allowed to take such a walk again.
