by Kathy McKeon
Briege had always been good with a needle and thread, and after we left school, she quickly landed a good job at a coat factory in a town not far from Inniskeen. She also did some light housekeeping at the parish rectory house. When Briege fell off her bike and got sidelined with a broken wrist, I was sent to the rectory in her place. The fussy old priest came to me with a strange rubber bag and told me to fill it with hot water before I left and place it between the sheets to warm his bed. I had never seen, much less used, a hot-water bottle before, but it seemed simple enough, and I dutifully followed Father’s instructions so he could settle into his nice toasty covers that cold winter’s night. What happened next came to me secondhand, since the priest himself had no wish to ever see or speak to me again, but from what I gathered, Father tucked himself in and quickly sprang back out again, bellowing first in shock, then fury. Far from the cozy nest he had expected to snuggle down into, he had discovered himself swaddled in a freezing wet wad of sheets: I hadn’t screwed the cap of the water bottle on straight, and the priest’s bed had been flooded, soaked through to the mattress, which, of course, took ages to dry in Ireland’s perpetual damp. Briege with one arm was deemed more competent than I was with two, and that ended my first job outside my own home.
Good thing for me, word of my shortcomings as a domestic didn’t spread, and soon I was hired by a well-to-do family to help out around the house. Their home was the grandest one in Innis-keen, a mansion by local standards; Mr. O’Rourke owned the mill where all the farmers sent their grain to be processed. The O’Rourkes enjoyed all the modern amenities within reach of the Irish upper classes at the time—indoor plumbing, lights that turned on with a flick of the switch, an actual kitchen with a refrigerator and range, and a heating system that kept every room warm even in freezing weather. There were matching linens when I made the beds, and the windows were all dressed up like debutantes with their fancy drapes. I helped Mrs. O’Rourke and her daughter, Rose, with all the chores. Rose’s mother was quite bossy, but Rose never openly challenged her mum and went about her work without complaint. She was responsible for doing the laundry, among other things, and we would spend long hours ironing all the clothes, first dipping the collars and cuffs of her father’s shirts in the starch we made from potato water. When we washed the windows, Rose would perch on the sill and I would lower the window on her legs to hold her down while she hung out to clean the outside panes as I did the inside.
My duties included picking berries in the garden for pies and jam—Mam always used me for this, too, since I preferred apples and wasn’t likely to gobble up half a bushel before I got home, the way the boys would. That I was now getting paid to do what I normally did for nothing was exciting for me. I earned ten shillings a week, the equivalent of $2.80, which seemed like a fortune. Sometimes I would stop at the butcher shop on my way home to buy bacon, sausages, and maybe a scrap of meat to surprise my family for dinner. I would mix it all together with some vegetables to cook over the fire for a fry. What a treat that was! Putting together the occasional fry for everyone made me feel important and grown-up, and everyone, even Dad, would be in the happiest of moods. He even promised to help me shop for the bike I was saving up to buy. A cherry red one with skinny wheels, that’s what I wanted.
The closest I’d ever come to having a bike was one my brothers and sisters and I had pulled from a heap of junk in the farm’s storage shed. It had no pedals, no brakes, and no tires on the rims, but we would haul it to the top of a steep hill, start running, and jump on. Since there was no stopping the thing, you had to crash-land it in tall grass at the bottom of the hill. We had just as much fun with an old baby carriage we found. It only had two wheels, but that was all we needed to turn it into a wheelbarrow and push each other around. With no television to watch and just a crackly radio whose battery had to be charged in town once a week (it took three days, and Dad insisted on saving the battery life for his football matches the rest of the time), we had no choice but to make our own entertainment.
My favorite pastime of all, though, was playing camogie. Camogie was the most popular female sport in Ireland, a Gaelic game akin to hurling or field hockey. Both Briege and I were avid players—I was center-halfback—and it was a bright spot in our week to spend time laughing and just hanging out with other young girls, enjoying our game and even traveling to different towns for matches. If we went far enough away, the team would get a free dinner thrown in. Rose O’Rourke played, too. At twenty-four, Rose was by far the oldest one on our team, and not such a great player, truth be told, but her family’s status in the county had cinched her the title of team captain. It was the only time I saw Rose act the least bit uppity. The camogie team was getting new uniforms, and Mrs. O’Rourke was making them for all fifteen players in the huge drawing room where she had her sewing machine set up. I stole a sneak peek at the yards of material she was cutting from her patterns—our skirts were a beautiful pale lavender with white sashes to match our blouses. I could hardly wait as the first game of our season approached. Rose began handing out the new uniforms but fell four short. Briege and I were among those left empty-handed. I would have shrugged it off and waited—I knew Mrs. O’Rourke was still working on the last of the uniforms—but Briege angrily confronted Rose.
“I don’t understand,” Briege railed. “My sister works for you, and you left us out?”
“You’ll get your uniforms,” Rose tried to assure her, but Briege was in high dander by then, suspecting Rose was engaged in some sabotage so we would be forced to sit on the bench—Rose’s customary spot—in the opening game, leaving the coach no choice but to start with her. The rules stipulated that you couldn’t play unless you were in uniform. We had never been substitutes before, and Briege was so indignant she likely would’ve rather played naked than be one now. Finally the coach stepped in, instructing two girls of similar size to give Briege and me their uniforms so we could be played in the match. They obliged, but for weeks after, Briege kept pestering me every day when I came home from work, demanding to know if “our” uniforms were done yet. It drove a bit of a wedge between Rose and me at first, but we quickly moved past it and let my older sister stew in her own juices.
Despite her family’s prosperity, Rose really didn’t put on airs, and I enjoyed working with her. She was lighthearted and funny, and her good company made my day fly by. She even taught me how to make fresh cinnamon-and-sugar doughnuts from scratch, which I eagerly demonstrated back at home for my own family, turning into a one-person doughnut factory as my ravenous brothers devoured plate after plate for two hours straight. When we were left on our own in the O’Rourkes’ kitchen, Rose would turn on the radio and we’d dance like crazy to the likes of Elvis, Chubby Checker, and Buddy Holly. Rock ’n’ roll still felt new and exciting, such a far cry from the traditional Irish folk music we’d grown up hearing. As much fun as we had, it was obvious that Rose longed for something more meaningful than me pretending to be Connie Francis in her kitchen. She wanted someone to slow-dance with. Most of the other girls her age were courting, engaged, or already married, as were her four sisters, but Mrs. O’Rourke had all but sealed poor Rose’s fate as an old maid, strictly forbidding her pretty daughter to see the one man she truly loved, a strapping young farmhand named Peter who worked for the O’Rourkes.
For a while, I was cast in the role of messenger in Rose’s secret romance with Peter. Peter seemed like a great catch—hardworking, good-natured, and handsome—but character was not as important to Mrs. O’Rourke as breeding, and she put her foot down, telling Rose in no uncertain terms that a common laborer was “not good enough” for any daughter of hers. Rose and Peter were not so easily put off each other, though, and simply shifted gears to covert mode. They managed to exchange a few words each day when Mrs. O’Rourke was out of sight, sewing in her drawing room or baking bread back in the kitchen. Peter would casually happen through the yard on some fake errand while Rose was hanging out the window or if we were outside beating
the rugs or hanging clothes on the line. Recruiting me as a go-between, Rose would later send word to Peter about where and when to meet her for a longer rendezvous.
I was an eager accomplice, but at fourteen, not a terribly reliable one. As far as I know, the only lovers’ quarrel Peter and Rose ever had was my doing, though I never did confess. The drama unfolded when Rose sent me out one afternoon to tell Peter to meet her at seven o’clock under the bridge along the train tracks, a message I did, in fact, convey. What I neglected to do, however, was specify which bridge and which tracks, and Peter assumed quite naturally that Rose meant the ones running closest to the O’Rourke property. So Peter went and waited, but Rose never showed. Rose likewise went and waited, but not in the same spot, and she came home fuming. How dare Peter leave her there like that? The next day, Peter sauntered into the yard while Rose was hanging out the window, but she kept her back to him and uttered not a word. He attempted a couple more walk-bys later in the afternoon, but she refused to talk to him that whole day. This was an interesting new twist to the soap opera, and of course, I wanted to know what was going on.
“Rose, how come you didn’t say hello to Peter?” I asked after the first snub.
“I’m mad at him,” she declared. “I waited for him last night under the bridge at the tracks going into Carrickmacross, and he stood me up!”
“Aw, that’s too bad,” I commiserated, hoping my face didn’t betray the pang of guilt I felt that my carelessness had botched things up. How had the bridge and Carrickmacross slipped my mind? I felt so important having someone already grown regard me as a friend. If I told Rose the truth, I feared, she would see me for the silly little girl I was and never speak to me again. Peter would just have to be nudged in the right direction to get things back to normal.
On my way home that evening, he anxiously waylaid me.
“Kathy,” he implored, “what did Rose say today?”
“That you let her down,” I answered gravely. Peter furrowed his brow, hurt and puzzled. I told him I had to hurry home, then skedaddled before he could start interrogating me in earnest. They patched things up soon enough, but then one of Rose’s older brothers apparently caught sight of the lovebirds together one day, and tattled to Mr. O’Rourke, who promptly fired Peter. He went to work for a neighboring farmer, and he and Rose carried on their secret romance as best they could.
My own teenaged flirtations played out at the Friday-night mixers held across the county. Just getting to the dance required some fancy footwork for Briege and me and our girlfriends if we were venturing beyond our own nearby village. Our cousin Mary Kirk would be used as bait out on the road, hips, chest, and thumb all thrust out in what we collectively decided was the most fetching pose. Guys always told Mary she had fabulous legs, which puzzled me, since they were frankly on the chunky side. But Mary drank up the compliments, and her hemlines crept ever higher. She was a good sport about giving her waistbands still another roll if that’s what it took to get us a ride, so with Mary in place, the rest of us would retreat behind some bushes to wait like anxious stage managers backstage on opening night. Inevitably some boy on his way to the same dance would drive by. As soon as one stopped to offer Mary a lift, the rest of us would scurry out from our hiding place and just pile into the car with her. We never had an ambushed driver order us to get back out: Picking up one girl and being carjacked by four or five more probably wasn’t the worst thing that could happen to a teenaged boy. Actually, that was yet to come, at the dance itself.
Inside the shabby clubhouse, all the girls would line up along one wall and wait for the lads lined up on the opposite side to cross the wide floor and ask for a dance. I always said yes, but some of the girls were mean about it and would refuse a boy if he wasn’t popular or good-looking enough, or they were pointedly waiting for a better prospect to approach. The poor rejected fellow would then have to turn around and make the humiliating walk through the dancing couples back to the boys’ wall.
I wasn’t pretty enough or a good enough dancer to get asked very often, but it was still fun to go to the dances just to socialize. I’d go on a date or two with different boys throughout my teen years, but no one really lit my fire, and in my eighteenth year, I started to wonder exactly when my Prince Charming was going to materialize. I’d been working at the O’Rourkes’ for four years and was eager to get on with what I envisioned my “real” life would be: marrying a decent, preferably handsome man with the skills to be a good provider, then settling down in County Monaghan to raise children of our own under circumstances less challenging than I had known growing up. Mothering would be my life’s work. I saw myself happily serving bacon and eggs for breakfast and roasts for dinner, buying clothes new from the shop, maybe even hiring—instead of being—a good local girl eager to earn a few shillings by helping out around the house. When my fantasies took flight, they always landed quickly and safely at that station marked “Pleasant.”
“Grand” was not even in the realm of my imagination.
The letter from America came on its own, with an extraordinary offer beyond the yearly boxes we anticipated so much: a ticket. Uncle Pat and Aunt Rose were inviting Packy to come live with them in the Bronx and make a good life for himself in the United States. They would loan him the one-way airfare, and he could pay them back over time. Packy seemed more nervous than excited; he was living with Aunt Bridge and Uncle Teddy, running their farm for them, and he liked it just fine. Briege was beside herself with envy, but I understood Packy’s uncertainty. Ireland was harsh, to be sure, but I loved it deeply and was proud to be Irish. Our generation was the least likely to emigrate since The Great Hunger of 1845 to 1852, when blight destroyed Ireland’s potato crops and forced the mass exodus of one and a half million people trying to escape starvation and disease. It wasn’t long before there were more people of Irish heritage living in New York City than in Dublin. But in 1962, there was no natural disaster to flee, no hell to escape.
Aunt Bridge lobbied hard for Packy to stay in Inniskeen: There was no way she could manage without Packy’s help, and she loved him like the son she never had. “I’ll never see you again!” she cried when he told her the news. If Packy stayed, she promised, the farm would be all his someday. She and Uncle Teddy may have been bank poor, but they were land rich, and Packy took the deal. Dad was furious at his sister for meddling, and at his son for changing his mind. This was an embarrassment to him, and an insult to Uncle Pat.
“How can I tell my brother you’re not going?” he thundered. Packy wouldn’t budge, though, and Dad had no choice but to tell Uncle Pat he’d gotten cold feet. Mick didn’t want to go to America, either: He had plans of his own to look for construction work in England.
“Send one of the girls, then, instead,” Uncle Pat suggested.
“Only if you’ll take them both,” Dad countered.
“You’re not taking my girls away from me!” Mam cried, but Dad would hear none of it. If Briege went by herself, he argued, then I would just end up marrying some farmer one field over and living this same life forever. It was the closest Dad ever came to saying he wanted us to have something better than he could provide, or a chance, at least, of finding it. Sending the both of us, he knew, would lessen our homesickness, since we were so close, and we could watch out for each other in such a big city so far from home. Uncle Pat generously agreed to front both of our airfares. Briege screamed for joy when we were given the news. I was quiet, not sure whether the butterflies in my stomach were from excitement or fear. We took the train to Dublin to start the paperwork. We would need passports, visas, health certificates. If everything went through without problem, we would be on our way to America sometime after the New Year. Mam was still distraught about us leaving, and deep down in a place that all of us knew and none of us ever acknowledged, I understood that the pain at Mam’s very core wasn’t about letting go of two daughters.
Because it was three of us that would be lost now.
Mary had been
the youngest of us girls, and the prettiest. It was obvious to everyone, though only Aunt Bridge was blunt enough to say so out loud. It was probably because Mary most resembled her, with her dainty features and beautiful hair. Bridge’s was blond, worn in a braid she kept wound atop her head and never let us comb. Mary’s tumbled in red waves down her back. Not a dark rusty red, or carroty orange, either. Strawberry blond, like red sunlight. Mary had the personality to go with it, too, always dancing about like a fairy. She was a year and a half younger than I was, left behind with Jim and John when I went off to the school with the older bunch. Owney wasn’t born yet.
One December day a week before my sixth birthday, Mam was fussing over a sick turkey. It had the pip, a disease named for the hiccupping sound the sick bird made. They died if it wasn’t caught in time, and the only way farmers knew to cure it was to cut dandelion very fine and put it in their feed. Jim, the baby, was sleeping, and Mam had left Mary and John playing in the house for a few minutes to go out to the yard and try to get some of the dandelion mixture down the dying bird’s gullet.
We’d just gotten one of our big care packages from America, and Mary went rooting around for a new dress to try on. There were never any small enough for her, but the ones intended for Briege and me were loose enough to billow out like Cinderella’s ball gown when she twirled. That was most likely what she was doing in the kitchen that morning. We guessed but never knew for sure that three-year-old John started turning the hand crank on the wheel that would blow air through an attached bellows onto the kitchen fire. It was easy to spin, and he would have seen his big brothers doing it. It was their job to keep the fire going. Whatever it was that happened, the flame got too high, and Mary, too close. The oversized gown caught fire. Mary ran out of the house screaming, but she had already reached the hay shed by the time Mam got to her.
