Ophelia's Fan

by Christine Balint

  Harriet moved around the nursery, waving her hands in the air because she was sure this was what Irishmen did in Naples and this was what her father was doing in the theater on the night she was born. Harriet had climbed down the stairs and was on her way out the back door when Bridie caught sight of her in braces and still wearing the hat, which had fallen down over her eyes. Bridie gasped and grabbed her arm.

  “Just you come with me, young missy. You’re never again to dress up in men’s clothes as long as you’re in this house. Father Barrett is not to find out you ever had a mustache,” Bridie ordered, scrubbing Harriet’s stinging face with surgical spirit down in the kitchen.

  Her mustache faded a little every day. Father Barrett did not seem to notice the black lines or the raw redness of Harriet’s face.

  HARRIET NEVER MISSED the Thursday market. She would be woken before sunrise by the regular rhythm of horses’ hoofs pulling carts of produce and the occasional rude sled being dragged bumpily along the cobblestones. Bleating sheep and groaning cattle beneath her window would always remind her of staying with her friend Molly on the farm. After breakfast she would tell Bridie she was going out into Chapel Lane to play. She knew Bridie would never allow her to be seen at the market on her own, but going with Bridie in the afternoon did not offer the same pleasures: Harriet was overlooked when she was with Bridie. On Thursdays there was a great deal of foot traffic in Chapel Lane, and she would meet many women from the congregation and their servants carrying baskets on their way to the market. The women would pat her head and ask after Father Barrett, so Harriet would walk with them a little. She would find herself in Market Square, filled with the vivid tints of vegetables and flowers, the sounds of bleating and clucking farm animals, and the rank smell of meat. Harriet rarely had a penny to spend, but this did not stop her from looking. Most of the sellers knew her by name. Mary O’Conner would ask after Father Barrett and hand her an apple or a pear. Farmer Donald would let her hand-feed the calves and lambs. Once he even let her borrow a small yellow chicken for the morning. Harriet cupped it gently in her left hand and carried it around the market, showing it the coarse fabrics to hide under, and the turf stall where there were always seeds sprinkled in the dirt.

  On the days when Molly came to play later in the afternoon, Harriet would beg her to return to the market as the sellers were packing up their wares. There was always a good chance of some slightly wilting flowers or hardened sweets that a tired seller did not wish to carry home again. But Molly disliked the market intensely.

  “When you come to my house you can see all the animals you like,” she said. But they both knew it was a long time since the reverend had taken Harriet to visit.

  “Oh, Harriet, couldn’t we please look at the town shops? At the dresses we will wear when we are grown up?”

  IF PEOPLE WERE really in trouble, Father Barrett would invite them to dine. Harriet remembered sitting at the dining table while Father Barrett and Mrs. Irons forgot she was there and Mrs. Irons sobbed into her soup that her husband had committed adultery. Harriet had wanted, very badly, to ask what that meant. She knew it was in one of the Ten Commandments, but Father Barrett’s eyes grew misty whenever she recited them and he merely nodded and said, “Yes, yes, keep going, can you remember the rest?”

  From time to time, Harriet was allowed to go with Father Barrett to visit families. On these evenings Harriet would spend many hours staring at her feet or at the tablecloth. She was always seated with the children, and they wanted to know what it was like to live with Father Barrett.

  “Do you have to pray all the time?” Tommy Kiley asked her.

  “No.”

  “Does Father Barrett snore?” Tommy and his brother laughed so hard at this that their mother asked them to leave the table.

  Harriet knew what it meant when Father Barrett lifted his hat, revealed his yellow teeth, and said he was going to do his duty by Mrs. Baird. Bridie would nod, clamp her jaw together, and blot the corners of her eyes with her cotton handkerchief. Duty was a strange word, Harriet thought.

  The first time Father Barrett took Harriet with him, he began to tell her about Mrs. Baird’s Irish stew as soon as they left the house.

  “Thick,” he muttered. “Hot, salty, full of onions.” Harriet learned that when Father Barrett went to do his duty by Mrs. Baird, he was really going to eat a hearty helping of Irish stew. She wondered whether there might be a secret reason for Mrs. Baird wishing to feed Father Barrett. She wondered whether Mrs. Baird might be a witch trying to poison him.

  “Watch where you step, Harriet.” Father Barrett said, clutching his parcel of salted mutton. “This is no time for you to trip on stones.”

  Harriet imagined Father Barrett had been a soldier before he was a father because he was good at marching. The rhythm of their feet on the uneven stones helped her to think. She had learned that while Father Barrett quoted the New Testament she only needed to say “Yes” every few minutes and she could still play pretend inside her head.

  IT WAS ONLY a few weeks since the last visit from Harriet’s mother and father. Bridie spoke of them as though they were very important. But Harriet did not really know why. The Woman Who Was Her Mother was thin with a long face. She limped slightly, and her hair drifted in wisps around her face. Her teeth were thick like horses’ teeth and twisted around each other. She was quiet and liked to peer at Harriet and grip her arms, so that Harriet wanted to run away and hide under her bed. But just as she knew that Father Barrett’s duty was to eat Mrs. Baird’s stew, Harriet knew that her own duty was to let the Woman Who Was Her Mother leave large bruises like fingerprints in the smooth skin of her arms. The woman’s eyebrows were thick caterpillars that, whenever she spoke, crawled across her forehead. Harriet liked it when she spoke because at those times she needed her arms to wave around like ribbons in front of her, and this would force her to set Harriet’s own arms free.

  The Man Who Was Her Father spoke a language of laughter with Father Barrett. Harriet thought that even the Woman Who Was Her Mother did not understand the meanings exchanged between Father Barrett and the Man Who Was Her Father. The man entered Father Barrett’s library, and Father Barrett would offer him one of his lime sherbet sweets. He would wink and greet Father Barrett with the words “If music be the food of love,” and Father Barrett would show his flecked and crumbling teeth which meant he was trying to be polite, stretch out his right hand, palm upward, and say, “Play on.”

  Then the two men would collapse into long stretches of laughter, nodding their heads up and down and clutching their bellies. Harriet only ever saw Father Barrett lose his composure like this when the Man Who Was Her Father came to visit with his theater troupe.

  For some years now, these visits had been decreasing in regularity. Three years ago, Harriet’s father had begun hiring out his beloved theater building, claiming the population of Ennis could not support many theatrical performances in a year.

  IT WAS A LONG WALK to the dairy farming district outside Ennis. Mrs. Baird, when they arrived, balanced one twin on her right hip while the other clutched her knee.

  “Much obliged,” she muttered, feeling the weight of Father Barrett’s parcel and blushing. “There seem so many more of them since Francis passed on,” she told Father Barrett. “But we are lucky the McKinleys have allowed us to stay on the farm.”

  Harriet slipped out the back door to find Molly.

  Molly’s clothes flowed in shreds around her body in a way that reminded Harriet of the Erin in folk songs or one of the Marys in the Bible.

  “I’ve been waiting for you, Harriet,” she said, taking her hand. Harriet knew from the brightness of the sunshine that there would be magic in this day. They ran up the hillock behind the house, ignoring the cries of small William who could not keep up.

  “I’ll play with you later, Billy,” Molly called. He stopped running, stared after them, and began to sob.

  Harriet squinted and the daisies studding the grass became a thick
golden carpet.

  “We can make crowns,” Molly said, sitting in a patch of gold. They picked so many daisies that they left a circle of grass among the gold at the top of the hill. She showed Harriet how to split the end of a stem and thread another stem through. The tips of their thumbs and forefingers became green and sticky. In the sunshine on top of the hill, the two children crowned each other.

  The butterfly’s wings were large blue irises. Harriet pushed her nose into the grass as she had watched sheep do and blinked in time with the wings. She said, “I wonder what grass tastes like?” She closed her eyes and smelled sunshine. She heard Molly laugh and say grass tastes like horses’ hoofs and dandelion seeds.

  “It can’t be very pleasant, Harriet. I wouldn’t try it!”

  “What else,” Harriet wanted to know. “What else does grass taste like?”

  “Frogs’ gizzards and the golden dust of fairies’ wings. It tastes like Mikey’s tears when he needs a wash. And cow’s breath. And Father’s toenails.”

  “Oh.” Harriet lay on her belly. Moisture from the grass crept through to her skin like invisible ants. Once she had flattened the tufts, the ground was hard. She smelled earth. It smelled like darkness, a deep heavy scent different from the lightness of sunshine.

  “Harriet? Harriet, what are you doing?”

  “Watching the ants.” She should never have lied. But as soon as she uttered the words, Harriet saw lines of tiny ants; red, purple, and yellow, marching across the horizon of her eyelids.

  “Molly, if grass is so dirty, then why is milk so white?”

  “Come and see the chickens!” She heard Molly’s small voice from the chicken shed farther down the hill.

  “Holy Mary, mother of God,” Harriet whispered, just in case the grass was poisonous, “pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen.” She got up on all fours and gripped tufts of grass between her teeth. Harriet closed her eyes and chewed. She could not taste horses’ hoofs or dandelion seeds. Nor could she taste frogs’ gizzards or the golden dust of fairies’ wings. Harriet could taste nothing but green. It was the green of satin ribbons. The green of lime sherbet sweets.

  With green buzzing in her belly, Harriet skipped down the hill to the chickens next to the vegetable patch. Molly was sitting in a dirty corner of the chicken coop, hunched over with her arms outstretched. One dusty gray chicken sat on each hand while another huddled in her lap.

  “Let’s teach the chickens to fly!”

  Harriet creased her brow. “But how are we going to do that?”

  Molly tried to stand, hitting her head on the roof of the chicken coop and causing a flurry of chicken feathers. She crawled out of the cage and stood next to her friend.

  She tugged at the ribbon holding Harriet’s hair. “Shake your head.”

  They ran, laughing, to the top of the hill, holding hands. At the top, Molly caught her breath. “Ready?”

  Harriet nodded. They stood apart and held their arms horizontally from their bodies. They ran slowly at first, flapping their arms up and down like wings. When Harriet’s legs were stretching as far as they could, and the wind rushed past her ears, she leapt into the air just in time to land in a muddy puddle at the bottom of the hill. Her dress and the fringes of fabric around Molly’s legs were patched brown. They laughed so hard that it was some time before they could stand. As they made their way slowly up the hill, Molly said, “Our boots are slowing us down.” She sat and began tugging at the laces. “Come on, take your shoes off.”

  Harriet did not move. There was something improper about bare feet, Bridie had said. “Never let Father Barrett see you in your nakedness,” she had told her once, as Harriet ran up the stairs in her nightdress after a bath.

  “Look at those toes. Little grubs. See how ugly they are when they wriggle!”

  Harriet had nodded and wondered how any part of her could be ugly when it had been made, Father Barrett assured her, in the image of our Father. But perhaps Bridie did not know this, Harriet thought. Or perhaps her toes were more ugly and grub-like than Bridie’s own. Bridie liked to make sure that every part of Harriet was either hidden or fastened into place. The reason Harriet liked wriggling her toes so much was that most of the time she was unable to do so. And not everyone had their toes so tightly bound, Harriet knew that. When the Man Who Was Her Father came to visit, she noted with great satisfaction that his shoes were not only loose and floppy around his feet, but they even had holes. Harriet wondered whether perhaps this was why Bridie seemed to dislike him so much. While the Man Who Was Her Father laughed and shook hands with Father Barrett, Harriet could see his toes wriggling through the holes in his shoes. She noted with delight that even his stockings had holes in them. His feet were wide and flat as though he were not used to wearing shoes at all. When Harriet chanced to look up from the feet of the Man Who Was Her Father into the face of the Woman Who Was Her Mother, she noticed that the face looked uncomfortable and that its jaw was as tight as her own feet in their boots.

  Molly tugged at Harriet’s bootlaces. Harriet looked down at her friend sitting in the grass at her feet, one bent leg on either side of her right foot, tugging at the lace. She bent to help her.

  “We’ll have to pray hard tonight,” Harriet informed Molly. “For letting God see our nakedness.”

  “Our nakedness!” Molly scoffed. “God sees our nakedness whenever he likes. He can see right through our clothes, you know. That’s why we have to wash. Because he can see the dirt on our skin.”

  “Oh.”

  Harriet followed her friend into the chicken coop and squealed as her hair caught in the wire. Molly kicked up dust and straw which rose like steam and stuck to their skin.

  “Here,” Molly held out a chicken, clasping its wings. “You take Josephine.” Harriet was not at all sure about the good intentions of Josephine who struggled in Molly’s arms and wagged her head about as though waiting for soft flesh to sink her beak into. Not to mention the clawed feet. They were exactly as Harriet imagined crocodile feet to look.

  “Don’t be scared, Harriet. It’s just a chicken. It makes nice eggs and drumsticks. Josephine won’t bite you, she only eats grains.”

  Harriet climbed out of the chicken coop with Josephine. She had collected a spiderweb in her hair as well as chicken dust under her fingernails, and she thought that, like Molly’s, her face must also be dirty. Her belly still buzzed with green, and the smell of sunshine grew stronger. Harriet knew that she would be able to fly. She imagined Father Barrett’s face as he and Mrs. Baird stood outside the back door shielding their faces from the sun with their arms, their mouths wide open in surprise. Harriet felt the lightness of her body and saw birds flying around her in the sky. She and Molly would fly together away from Ennis, away from Ireland and all the way to Paris.

  She could not run as fast with Josephine in her arms. It was hard to balance while running down a hill clutching a chicken, and Harriet was worried she would fall and land on the bird. Mrs. Baird would be upset if Harriet killed one of her chickens. And Harriet knew that Father Barrett would think she had committed a dreadful sin. Perhaps even more than one. Was Harriet stealing Josephine? No, she decided, just borrowing. But if Harriet killed Josephine, even by accident, that was definitely murder.

  Harriet could no longer see Molly as she began to run. The hills around Ennis blurred. Just as she thought she was going to fall, she threw squawking Josephine into the air and shouted, “Fly!” But Harriet could not stop running. Her legs stretched more and more as she moved faster and faster. She leapt into the air and waited for the wind to carry her up into the sky. But before she managed to fly, Harriet landed heavily, and with great disappointment, in Mrs. Baird’s cabbages. She sat still for a few moments and caught her breath. All of a sudden she heard a scream and Molly came soaring down from above to land next to her.

  “I flew, I flew!” Molly said breathlessly. “Harriet, did you fly?”

  “A little.” She realized, sadly, that betwee
n them they had murdered Mrs. Baird’s cabbages.

  “And I taught my chicken to fly too! She’ll be able to leave now if she wants to. But she doesn’t. See, she’s landed over there.”

  The ruffled chicken pecked indifferently at the grass.

  “Harriet?” Molly peered accusingly at Harriet’s face. “Where’s Josephine?”

  Harriet noticed in alarm that the cabbages were carpeted in feathers. She wondered whether the lump she could feel underneath her was a chicken.

  “Harriet?”

  “I don’t know.” She sniffed.

  “What have you done with my chicken?”

  Trembling, Harriet stood. She turned around slowly and looked at the flattened cabbage leaves she had been sitting on. She turned to Molly.

  “Perhaps I taught Josephine to fly,” she said.

  “I don’t think so.” Molly climbed out of the vegetable patch. “I think you lost her. Come on. If we don’t find her, there’ll be trouble.”

  Harriet could no longer smell sunshine. The sky was darkening with gray clouds, and the trees around the house were buffeted violently by the wind. She turned in a slow, wobbly circle and peered as far as she could along the horizon. Molly was already making her way toward the house.

  “Maybe you scared her,” Molly said, bobbing under the window so her mother would not see her. She wondered if she wished hard enough whether Josephine would reappear. She wished she had helped Father Barrett do his duty, and eaten Mrs. Baird’s Irish stew even if it was poisonous.

  Molly pulled open a tattered wooden door. “She might be in there. You have to go and have a look.”

  Harriet smelled stale dust and damp air. She saw spiderwebs and blackness. She turned to Molly. “How could Josephine have opened the door?”

  “It’s always open. Someone must have come along and shut it after she went in.”