by Kathy McKeon
Bobby and Madam had similar flip sides. Both had magnetic personalities, but then you would come to find out they were actually shy by nature. They were big on being outdoors and loved their sports, especially the ones that called for self-discipline or personal strength. Bobby and Madam were the Kennedys you were most likely to spot swimming farthest out in the ocean, no matter how cold the water was or how strong the tide. They were probably the biggest bookworms, too. Bobby was famous for being able to quote classic verse off the top of his head, and it was Madam who knew the perfect line for him to cite from Romeo and Juliet when Bobby paid tribute to Jack as he accepted the nomination for senator that summer:
“When he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he shall make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night,
And pay no worship to the garish sun.”
There was no denying that Madam and her brother-in-law were close. Loss is a terrible love. No matter how much sympathy you have, it’s a kind of pain that can only be felt, not imagined. And when it happens in a swift, horrific instant, there is no such thing as healing. Tragedy leaves you with an open wound, not a scar. I never told Madam that I understood these things, or how, but I could see plain as day that this awful shared knowledge was what made the president’s widow and younger brother care for each other the way they did.
Six months into my new job, the suitcases came down from Madam’s closet shelf again. She and the children were going to summer at the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port, on Cape Cod. The whole clan was gathering there. Madam told me to pack my things as well.
“You’re part of the family now,” she said, beaming.
I smiled and thanked her, proud to have such a stamp of approval but torn between my growing fondness for Madam and a restlessness that was taking root deep inside me. I knew I should feel grateful to be accepted and perhaps, on some level, even loved. But I was twenty years old, and security wasn’t what I yearned for. The Kennedys were special people—brave and brilliant, loyal and kind—I knew that firsthand. Much as I genuinely enjoyed being with them and even serving them, though, I didn’t want to belong to them. What I wanted was to know what it was like, someday, to belong to myself. I would never have that if I gave myself fully to them. Their embrace was too strong to break.
When Madam told me I was part of the family, I felt the first stirrings of quiet rebellion, and I heard a small inner voice issue a firm warning: No, you’re not.
This was all only temporary, never intended as more than a brief and colorful detour from the road I was meant to travel. Being a round-the-clock servant was my livelihood, not my life. Once my wages were no longer needed to help back home, I could return to my beloved Ireland, where I pictured myself raising a family of my own and someday telling my grandchildren the story of this enchanted bubble that held me, for a spell, right in the heart of Camelot.
FOUR
Coming to America
Declaring the chicken was my first mistake as a new immigrant.
In a city full of foreigners, the Irish probably had it the easiest in New York. Maybe it was because so many Americans have Irish roots, or because Ireland is generally regarded through rose-colored glasses. People tend to light up when you say you’re from Ireland, then put on their best imitation of a brogue to say something the real Irish never do, like “top of the mornin’ to ye.”
That wasn’t the case with the Customs agent.
We weren’t even through the arrival doors at the newly renamed John F. Kennedy International Airport, and already I was in trouble. One look at my paperwork, and uniformed officials had ushered me out of the passport inspection line and off to a separate room to be frisked and questioned.
It had been Dad’s idea to kill a chicken and wrap it up to carry in my suitcase as a gift for Uncle Pat and Aunt Rose, and without a second thought, I had dutifully listed it on the Customs form the stewardess had given us to fill out before we landed in New York City. Now I found myself trying hard not to stare at the gold front tooth of the Customs agent demanding to know more about my international chicken-smuggling operation.
I had never seen such a tooth! He was also the first black man I had ever seen, and his accent—Caribbean, as I would later come to recognize—was a strange new music I found as enchanting as it was unintelligible. I felt my cheeks flush with embarrassment as I struggled to pluck and decipher the words from the melody of his voice. I knew I must look like the village idiot, fresh off the proverbial boat, with a befuddled look on my face and a chicken in my suitcase. It didn’t help matters that I was half deaf from the plane’s landing; my ears hadn’t popped and everything came through muffled and distant, like I was trapped beneath the sea in a submarine.
“Is this a live chicken you’re bringing in?” the gold-toothed man wanted to know.
I tried not to laugh out loud at the thought of a clucking hen sitting beside Briege and me all the way from Dublin, though it might have been more bearable than the nonstop sobbing of our neighbor, Madge, an Inniskeen girl who coincidentally happened to be leaving home to join relatives in New York the same day we were.
The chicken, I assured the official, was most definitely deceased. “And plucked,” I added helpfully.
“Have the insides been removed?” he pressed.
“No,” I admitted. I wasn’t sure I liked the direction this was headed.
“If you can put the insides on the outside, you can have it,” he decreed.
Gutting chickens had never been my job on the farm in Ireland, and I wasn’t going to make it my job in the middle of the airport in America, either. Were they truly expecting me to just jam my hand up the raw chicken and yank out a fistful of giblets? No, thank you very much. So now what? Whenever trouble was afoot, my tried-and-true response was to flatly deny any culpability whatsoever and walk away as quickly as possible. That clearly wasn’t an option now, and I was getting nervous. I had never traveled to a foreign country before and had no idea what all the rules were, or what repercussions there might be for would-be immigrants who broke them, regardless of whether it was on purpose or not.
Did this misunderstanding mean both the chicken and I would be turned around and sent straight back to Ireland? Briege, stuck waiting outside the room with the weepy neighbor girl, was shooting daggers at me for being such a bumpkin right off the bat. (“I wouldn’t have listed the chicken in the first place” was the advice she loftily offered long after it might have done me any good.) My jet-lagged brain groped for a solution. Maybe I could sidestep an international incident by turning the chicken into a goodwill gesture.
“Would you like to have it?” I asked the gold-toothed man hopefully. Surely his wife would appreciate a delicious chicken to cook for supper. Some soup or a stew, maybe.
“No,” the Customs agent said, staring at the offending bundle with distaste. “I do not want the chicken.”
“I’ll just leave it, then,” I said. He shrugged and put the packet aside, destined, no doubt, for the trash bin. I was only too glad to surrender the troublesome bird and get on with my new life in America. Aunt Rose and Uncle Pat would surely be wondering what was taking us so long to get cleared, possibly fearing we had been found to be tubercular after all. Finally, Briege and I made it through the last set of doors to the arrivals area, where our cousin John stood with a sign reading SMITH GIRLS.
John wasn’t all that much older than we were, but he had his own car—so it was true that everyone in America was rich—and I watched from my backseat window as New York City flicked by like the jerky frames of an old silent movie as we drove from Queens to the Bronx.
I couldn’t wait to see Aunt Rose and Uncle Pat’s home. Even the name of the street where they lived—The Grand Concourse—summoned visions of stately brick houses with long, tree-lined driveways along a picturesque promenade. So far, though, all I was seeing on the way from the airport were streets
with numbers for names, and endless blocks of ugly buildings jammed up shoulder to shoulder like grimy dominoes. There were cars everywhere, weaving in and out far too fast and much too close. Horns blared, trucks wheezed, and shopkeepers, deliverymen, and even pedestrians shouted on the street without a lick of self-consciousness—Buy this! Hey watch where you’re going! and cries of Taxi! Taxi! Taxi! on every corner. I had expected New York to be elegant, a sleek and shimmering metropolis, not this rude, barrel-chested behemoth of a city. New York was the very definition of mind-boggling.
It sucked me right in.
“Here we are,” John said at last, slowing to a stop. My heart sank, and I tried to hide my disappointment. Our successful American relatives lived in just another ugly apartment building. There were no trees or driveways. There wasn’t even an elevator. We hiked up five floors to Uncle Pat and Aunt Rose’s place, where Aunt Rose had a nice dinner and welcome cake waiting for us. “Take off your shoes and leave them at the door,” she told us, handing Briege and me little cloth slippers from Chinatown to wear whenever we were inside. What a strange custom, I thought. In Ireland, we’d never dream of taking off our shoes to come inside, unless we wanted our feet to freeze on the concrete floor. Aunt Rose’s floors were covered with pretty Oriental rugs, soft even through my new Chinese slippers. I immediately confessed to Uncle Pat that the gift my father had sent him didn’t make it through Customs.
“Why’d he send me a chicken?” Uncle Pat wondered aloud. “You can get them cheaper here.”
“Well, it was all he had to offer,” I explained with an apologetic shrug. I never did have the heart to tell Dad his gift was neither given nor missed.
Even though he was grown and had a good job as a New York City policeman, cousin John still lived at home, as did his sister Babbsie, who was a year older than I was and attending college. The two other sisters, Patsy and Bea, were married. Briege and I would be sleeping on the pullout sofa in the living room until we landed jobs as live-ins for rich families. “It won’t take long at all,” Aunt Rose promised us. There was a high demand for Irish farm girls among Manhattan’s society ladies: We spoke English, had a reputation for being hard workers, and, as devout Catholics, were generally considered “good” girls unlikely to steal the silver or get knocked up by the grocery boy.
After sleeping off our jet lag, Briege and I were eager to explore our new city. I was itching to go look at the famous stores, like Macy’s. I only had about ten dollars to my name—enough for a skirt or dress, and maybe a pair of stockings—but the list of things I’d need to Americanize myself was longer than that and would have to wait until after I got my first paycheck. The young American women my age all looked so smart walking along the sidewalk in their pencil skirts and high heels, with purses to match. I felt like a dowdy overgrown schoolgirl by comparison. I wanted to wear cute new clothes and sit at the lunch counter in F. W. Woolworth, eating a triple-stack bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich, careful not to smear my frosted peach lipstick. First, of course, I’d have to pay back Uncle Pat for my $200 airfare, but there was no pressure, and I knew he would patiently wait as long as it took for me to whittle my debt away bit by bit.
Uncle Pat was my dad’s brother, but he was a softer and jollier version. When Briege and I got up from the table to help with the dishes, Uncle Pat shooed us away. “No, no, this is my job,” he cheerfully explained as he scraped off our plates and filled the kitchen sink with soapy water. His wife cooked, so he cleaned. Like Aunt Rose, Uncle Pat was affectionate and warm, instantly folding us into his close-knit family. Nieces and nephews always got the gentler side of Irish men, I knew. Dad was the same way: If any of our young cousins were out playing with us in the fields, Dad’s usual gruffness would melt away and he would offer his nieces and nephews praise, attention, and extra pieces of bread we rarely if ever got as sons and daughters. I guess it had to do with having no expectations when the children aren’t your own, which frees you of worries and disappointments as well. Uncle Pat and Aunt Rose’s children had all done well for themselves, and I was eager to show my benefactors that they had been right to invest in me, too.
Before Briege and I buckled down to workaday life, Uncle Pat urged us to take a day off to go visit the Bronx Zoo. My sister and I honestly would have much preferred to go window-shopping, or to go into Manhattan to visit Times Square and the Empire State Building, but Uncle Pat was absolutely hell-bent on us going to the zoo. In his mind, it was the ultimate American experience, and we shouldn’t waste another minute without enjoying it.
“It’s the most famous zoo in the world! You won’t believe it!” he boasted, ticking off the wild animals in the collection with enough pride that you would have thought he had captured all three thousand of them himself. Admission was free, but for twenty cents, you could ride a camel. Didn’t we want to ride a camel? It was January, and bitterly cold outside. I did not, in fact, harbor any desire to ride a camel. I would much rather have tried on camel hair coats at Alexander’s department store, but there was no refusing Uncle Pat. Briege and I obediently boarded the bus he instructed us to take, and off we went to the zoo. We’d never been to a zoo before, but it struck me as more of a fair-weather thing to do. Clearly everyone else in New York City thought so, too, because Briege and I pretty much had the sprawling place to ourselves. We shivered our way as quickly as possible from animal to animal. The ones with caves or dens were wisely taking shelter from the cold—or even hibernating—but the monkeys were out and about in their big cage, and we paused to watch them play on the ledges and tree branches. I noticed a large male sitting close to the bars, literally just a few feet away from me, carefully peeling a banana. I observed him, fascinated.
“Briege, look, he’s opening that banana just like a human!” I exclaimed. The monkey scampered up a nearby branch and resumed working on the banana. I took a step closer, gaping up at the monkey as he began eating. He noticed me watching him, and our eyes locked. I couldn’t believe how humanlike his expression was; it was as if we were having a silent conversation. Banana still in one hand, eyes still trained on me, the monkey then reached down, grabbed his penis, and sprayed me with urine. I jumped back in horror while Briege wrinkled her nose and guffawed. I declared our day at the zoo over, and we headed back home. Luckily, the noses of New Yorkers are bombarded by so many city smells every day that no one on the bus seemed to notice the wafts of monkey pee coming off me. When we recounted our zoo misadventure to Uncle Pat, he immediately took the monkey’s side.
“You threatened his territory,” he informed me. Our eye-lock didn’t signal the creature kinship I thought it had—it warned the hungry monkey that not only was I bigger but I was aggressive, too, and was intending to snatch his banana away unless he took defensive action immediately.
At least you didn’t piss off the ape, I consoled myself.
Sightseeing accomplished, Aunt Rose took Briege and me into Manhattan the next morning to sign up at the employment agency. A steep stairway led us from the sidewalk to the subway station below, and Aunt Rose showed us how to use our fifteen-cent tokens to get to the platform, where throngs of people already were waiting for the next train to pull in. “Always stand behind the yellow line,” Aunt Rose cautioned, pointing to the stripe painted inches from the edge of the platform, “and try to get a car that’s not too crowded. Be sure your pocketbook is always closed and hold it tight against you.” Death, molestation, and robbery were not options I was used to considering daily when I needed to get from point A to point B, but the giddy excitement of being in New York was enough to tamp down the sheer terror of it.
A long train rattled up, the swaying bodies and bored faces inside jerking to a sudden stop before the doors opened and people poured out. We nudged our way to some empty seats and took off. The train was scary fast, but my ears still hadn’t fully recovered from the plane, so at least I was spared the full-volume noise of the subway system. Being underground, with the world’s biggest city above me, was
unsettling, like I’d been swallowed by Jonah’s biblical whale. We were spit out on Lexington Avenue, where Aunt Rose marched us to Johnson’s Employment Agency, which specialized in placing domestics with wealthy clients. The girl at the front desk had us fill out a questionnaire before conducting a brief, friendly interview.
“Do you have any references?” she wanted to know.
“No,” I admitted. I had checked the box on the questionnaire saying I was interested in taking care of children. Briege was looking for a position as a waitress, figuring that serving a family’s meals and helping at dinner parties would give her more free time.
“Most people like Irish girls, especially for taking care of kids,” the interviewer assured me. Not having references was unlikely to be an issue. Proving her point, she picked up the telephone and dialed a number.
“I have a nice Irish girl for you,” I heard her tell the person on the other end. “Can you see her in half an hour?”
She hung up and gave me an address on Park Avenue, then made a similar call on behalf of Briege and produced a second address. They were only a few blocks apart, she told us. Aunt Rose got us there in no time and came inside with me to meet my prospective employer.
Mrs. C was an attractive divorcée who wore her jet-black hair teased high and shellacked into a fashionable flip that was so stiff I couldn’t help but wonder if her head ever actually touched the pillow when she slept. She smiled at me sweetly and explained that her two little boys would be home soon. Paul was in the third grade, and Scotty was in the first. Taking care of them six days a week would be my main job, but when they weren’t around, I would be expected to help out around the house, doing some laundry, making the beds, and running errands for Mrs. C. “You’ll be very happy here,” she promised. I would earn sixty-five dollars a week, with every Thursday off.
