The Year We Sailed the Sun

by Theresa Nelson

  And I sat straight up in my bed then and I wasn’t limp anymore. My heart was pumping and my head was exploding because I understood—ah, sure, all at once I understood—well of course, of course anyone could see it blindfolded, and how could I have been so thick? And thank God the other girls were dead to the world already and didn’t hear my bare feet hitting the floor by my bed and run padding past them in the slant-walled room, out the dormitory door and down the stairs—I was quiet as a creeping cat, quick as a flea—and in less than a minute I was down, down, all the way down and tiptoeing past Sister Maclovius’s office, where a line of yellow light still showed under the door, but I held my breath and she never heard me, and then I was creaking open that old creaky door in the kitchen and scurrying down to the cellar, down and down through the dark again, past the tubs and the tables and the red-glowing furnace, all the way to the alcove where Sister Bridget and the laundry girls were snoring away, same as ever. And I knew Mary right off, from her Mary-shape lying there, with one arm flung over her head, and the good warm Mary-smell of her, and thank God she didn’t yell bloody murder when I shook her by the shoulder, but only opened her eyes and sighed. “Ah, for pity’s sake, Julia, what now? Are you sick?”

  “The letter,” I whispered. “Get the letter.”

  And she got it—oh, thank heaven—it was under her pillow, right next to her ribbon and her rosary—and then she slid out of bed herself and followed me from the alcove and across the laundry and back to the Sin Room, which was luckily empty of sinners that night, at least until we got there. And in that dusty half-light from the streetlamp out the window, she turned around to me and folded her arms. “You’d better be dying of something,” she whispered, “because if you’re not, they’ll kill us.”

  “Just look,” I whispered back, snatching the envelope out of her fist and the letter out of the envelope. “Look again, Mary! Look what he’s saying—” And I shook it at her, and pointed, and read along with her:

  Tuesday Morning Halloween

  Dear Mary and Julia,

  Well hello and how are you, in good health I hope, I am sorry for not writing sooner. Sometimes its a puzzle finding a stamp around here but Jimmy’s a good man. Anyhow never mind, no need to worry, everything will be O.K. just like I told you, the doctor says I am much improved so you see that’s a good sign. Well I hear it might rain tonight no use going to the bonfire but by tomorrow we’ll be saying well that’s water under the bridge and if we’re lucky it will be clear in time for the All Saints Mass in the morning, I bet by ten or eleven at the latest.

  Sincerely your brother,

  William Joseph Delaney

  “You see?” I whispered. “I knew it! The sign—” I could hardly breathe. “He promised to send it, and he’s sent it!”

  “What sign?” Mary’s eyebrows puckered. “You’re seeing things, Julia. It’s just a letter, that’s all. There’s nothing there but words.”

  “But it’s not only the words that matter! It’s what’s hidden inside ’em, don’t you see? Look there—all those perfect round Os—”

  “You mean the splotches?”

  “They ain’t splotches. They’re moonstones!”

  “Moonstones?”

  “You remember—my birthday present—the one Bill gave me . . .” I reached in my pocket and pulled out my lucky marble. The magic was in it again. It was cold to the touch, as smooth and white and comforting as a good front tooth. “Just look—he even says it: Sometimes it’s a puzzle . . . so that’s a good sign. . . . A sign! Ah, come on, Mary, don’t you understand? When did Bill ever give a hoot if it cleared up for Mass? Why, anybody might’ve read that letter! He couldn’t just spell it out plain in a place like this, with nuns galore poking their noses in.”

  Mary’s eyes were round as Bill’s little ink moons. “But what on earth does he mean by it? What’s he trying to say?”

  “He’s waiting for us, that’s what! Well not yet, not tonight—no use going to the bonfire—but in the morning, that’s what he’s telling us, at the meeting place, just like always: that’s water under the bridge . . . ten or eleven at the latest . . . Oh, Mary, just look—he’s got it all in there—it has to be the sign!”

  Mary didn’t answer right away. She took her sweet time, thinking it over, reading the letter again, syllable by syllable, squinting so hard at it that there were two deep furrows between her eyebrows, exactly like Gran’s.

  And meanwhile Halloween wasn’t even half-gone yet; it was only just getting warmed up. I could still hear the rowdies howling away out there in the streets above us, hollering and laughing, cursing the sun and the moon and themselves and one another and the pavement under their feet for pitching so. . . .

  “Ah, for the love of Mike, Mary, say something!”

  At last she sighed, and folded the letter, and put it back in the wilted envelope. “I guess we’d better start packing,” she said.

  November

  Chapter 18

  But we had to get through the night first.

  There was no use packing in the pitch-black, I told her—no use packing at all, for that matter. We couldn’t just walk out the front door in broad daylight, lugging our boxes. And we had to wait till daylight. We didn’t have a ghost of a chance of getting out till then. The whole House was locked tight after dark now; even the coal chute had a latch on it.

  “But we can’t wait till morning, Julia. If they see us running, you know they’ll stop us.”

  “Only we won’t be running! It’s All Saints’, remember? We’ll be walking to church with the rest of ’em. That’s closer to the bridge, anyhow; it’s practically on our way. We just march in the same as ever, you see, and wait for communion, when the line splits. And then we mix in with the crowd, and slide over to the side door—”

  “—and slip out while they’re all still praying?”

  “Easy as pie.”

  Even Mary had to admit that it wasn’t such a bad plan, really, seeing as how it was the only plan we could think of. Still, it was hours till sunup; we’d better try to get some sleep, she said. So she tiptoed back to her bed in the alcove, and I tiptoed upstairs to mine, though I knew it was purely useless. I was sure I could no more sleep than fly to the moon.

  But I was wrong. I must have been wrong. I didn’t think I was sleeping, but maybe I was, because all the wrong people kept walking in and out of my head. . . . The scissors grinder took a coconut from behind my ear, and Mrs. Merriweather sang a song about a shortstop, and then there was a loud bang! like a firecracker going off—What was that? What was that noise? And I thought I woke up then but maybe I didn’t—

  Oh God, it’s them, it’s the bloodthirsty Tartars. . . .

  Ah, pipe down, Your Majesty, you’re dreaming again. . . .

  But I heard ’em!

  Quiet, ladies. . . .

  Why are the nuns here?

  They’re counting us, that’s all. . . .

  They always count us when the police come. . . .

  Did Jimmy put Hyacinth in the kitchen?

  Jimmy who?

  Go back to sleep now, Julia. . . .

  And then it was morning. Real morning, with sunshine pouring in the window, and all the bad dreams over and done with—not just for now, neither, but forevermore and always—and me so full of what was coming that I thought the whole world would see it in my face. But no one noticed a thing—except Betty, maybe, who couldn’t know what was up, of course; she hadn’t heard a word of any of it and wouldn’t have understood even if she had, would she? And yet when I fumbled my buttons, getting dressed for church, and made a hopeless tangle of my bootlaces, there she was with her brown eyes, watching me, her head cocked to one side, as if a little bird was singing in her ear.

  “Don’t stare so, Betty. You’re making me nervous. I can’t do a thing with you staring at me like that.”

  But then her grin faltered and her eyes filled, and my throat went thick because it only that second came to me: Ah, crikey, I’
d never see her again, would I? Not after this morning. And I hadn’t expected it, but my whole chest ached all of a sudden, so I gave her a hard hug and said, “Ah, no, now, Betty, don’t cry; I didn’t mean it. I didn’t mean a thing by it. It’s just these—these laces, that’s all; they’re nothing but knots. How’d you ever get yours so neat? Come on, now, what’s your secret?” And then she was all smiles again. She brightened right up and showed me. She undid her own lumpy laces and tied them from start to finish, though it took her quite a while, and I followed along, step by step. And finally we were both ready.

  So of course by the time we got downstairs, everyone else was there before us, though they weren’t lining up by the front door like I expected, or getting their coats and hats from the cloakroom. They were standing in a great clump in the hall, whispering among themselves and waiting for—for what? For something or other. Not their morning mush, I told myself; we always fasted before Mass. So then—

  What?

  I caught Mary’s eye and she shook her head at me, but I didn’t know what she was trying to tell me. She was away on the other side of the crowd, too far for me to take her meaning.

  “What’s up?” I whispered to Marcella, who was leaning against the banister across from me, next to Hazel and Winnie, and looking bored to death, as usual. “Ain’t we going to church?”

  Marcella shrugged her shoulders and studied a hangnail on her left pinkie. “Not unless they catch the murderer first.”

  Winnie burst into tears.

  “That ain’t funny, Marcella,” I said, glaring at her to ward off the cold feeling in the pit of my stomach. “You shouldn’t tease about a thing like that.”

  Marcella arched an eyebrow. “And who says I’m teasing? Did I say I was teasing?”

  “She ain’t teasing,” said Hazel, leaning in darkly.

  “You heard it yourself, Your Majesty. That racket in the middle of the night, remember? That wasn’t just kids playing pop guns in the alley. That was some mug from the Nixie Fighters getting himself shot.”

  “Shot dead?”

  “Dead as a hammer.”

  “A h-h-hammer,” sobbed Winnie.

  Marcella heaved a sigh and handed Winnie a handkerchief. “So of course the nuns are all up in arms, and the cops are all over the place, and now we’ll never get out. We’ll be stuck in here till we rot, holy day or no. Look there—d’jya ever see such a boatload of sourpusses?”

  She pointed across the hall to the door of Sister Maclovius’s office, which had just opened to let out another crowd: the nuns and Father Dunne and three policemen—though not Officer Doyle, for once—and all of ’em looking fit to spit nails.

  Thump! Thump! Thump! went the cane. “Silence!” Sister Maclovius thundered, and there was silence, quick as that. “All right, then,” she began. “As some of you no doubt will have heard by now”—she let her scowl fall on each of us, eyeball by eyeball—“there was a disturbance last night, outside this house—a shooting, the police have informed me—resulting in the unfortunate, if unsurprising, demise of one our local criminals. Should his friends, if he has any, still wish the pleasure of his company, they can find him in the city morgue.”

  “What did I tell you?” Marcella muttered.

  Thump! Thump! went the cane. “SILENCE!” said Sister Maclovius, pointing it directly at the two of us. “ ‘Whoso diggeth a pit, shall fall therein.’ ”

  And why would she be looking at me, when I hadn’t done a thing yet?

  “Be that as it may,” she went on, her eyes still narrowed, “though I have assured these good officers that at the time of the crime in question, all residing within these walls were safely abed; still we at the House of Mercy will be delighted, of course, as always, to assist the police department howsoever we can. If there should be those amongst you, then, who noticed anything—in anywise—last night, of a light-shedding nature, you are to report to my office immediately after Mass, which our kind friend Father Dunne has offered to celebrate here in the chapel, due to the inadvisability of leaving the House, at present.”

  Marcella cocked her other eyebrow at me. I was white as Jimmy’s sheet, most likely. It felt as if every drop of blood in my head had gone crashing to my boots. Could we have worse luck?

  “What’s the matter?” she whispered.

  I paid her no mind. I was searching out Mary again. What now? I tried to ask her with my eyes, but she was still too far away to talk to and it was too late anyhow; the Sisters were already herding the lot of us down the hall to the chapel door and I was swept along with all the others and there was nothing to do but pray, so I prayed, Dear God in heaven, Bill’s waiting at the bridge, you know he’s waiting, you’ve got to get us out of this, just get us out of here and get us there please, God, and I’ll never bother you about anything else, I swear, I’ll go to Mass three times next Sunday but not now, dear Lord, I can’t go in there now. . . .

  That was when I felt the big hand on my shoulder.

  “Julia,” said Father Dunne.

  So I turned and there he was, and he had Mary with him too, and now he was taking us aside, to the right of the door, while the crowd parted again and trooped around us into the chapel. And even the cops tipped their hats as they passed us by. Even the nuns—even Sister Maclovius—left us alone. They gave one another sideways glances and nodded respectfully at Father, but they all kept moving and went inside without a word.

  And now my heart was pounding again, and Mary had me by the hand and was squeezing the life out of it, but I didn’t mind, and neither one of us made a peep but only stood there, waiting for whatever it was Father Dunne was about to tell us—

  But all he said was, “Right after Mass, girls, will the two of you come to the office? I’ll need just a bit of your time. No, now, don’t look so worried; it’s not as bad as that. Just a bit of your time, that’s all.”

  And then he was gone too. He was through the door and in the chapel with the rest of ’em, and for one second, two seconds, three and change, Mary and I were alone in the hall, staring at each other.

  “What do we do now?” I asked her.

  “Run,” she whispered.

  And then we were running, we were flying, we were tearing down the front hall where we’d first come in, like a story reel playing backward, past the empty classrooms and the beanstalk roses and the sad-eyed pictures with the fiery hearts. We were out the front door, which God himself must have unlocked for us, or maybe it was all the policemen going in and out but we didn’t stop to ask. We only held on tight to each other’s hands and took out like hell’s blazes down Morgan Street, right past another clump of cops milling about by their cop wagon and a lady with a little dog in a shopping basket and a boy on a bicycle and another one on stilts—stilts, for Pete’s sake—and a feller in an apron sweeping up broken glass in front of Kelly’s Entertainment Parlor—“Watch it, there! What’s your hurry?” he hollered when I half-tripped over his broom—but we didn’t answer. We just kept running and running all the way to the trolley stop at Twenty-First, where a car was pulling away in front of us, just that minute. “Now!” I shouted—“One, two, three, jump!” and we jumped, both of us jumped—the trolley clattered on the tracks below and the blue sparks showered from the line above and we held hands and jumped and we made it, we made it, we were out, we were free, and even Mary was smiling.

  And we crouched low on the platform, panting for breath, and hanging on to each other for dear life, and only when we were safely under way did we turn around to look back—

  And there was Betty, running after us, too far behind to ever have a hope of catching up, getting smaller and smaller in the distance.

  Chapter 19

  Ah, no, Betty . . . Ah, hell . . .

  Go back! I tried to tell her. I stood up on the platform and waved my arms at her: Go back! You have to go back! But Mary pulled me down again, before the motorman saw me.

  “She’ll be all right, Julia. She’s not two minutes from the
House. Sister Bridget will be looking out for her, like she always does.”

  I gritted my teeth, trying to believe it. “I know,” I said. “I know she will.”

  But the ache was there again, just under my rib cage, and I was shivering, all of a sudden. “Ah, crikey,” I muttered. “We forgot our coats, didn’t we?”

  “Are you cold?” Mary asked.

  “Aren’t you?”

  She shook her head. “I put on all my old things under my orphan clothes, you see?” She pulled back on her collar, to show three more layers of collars beneath it. “Since we couldn’t pack, remember? I’ll give you half, first chance we get.”

  And I looked at her again then, really looked at her, and saw—good Lord—she was twice her normal size, wasn’t she? Plump as a partridge under the old brown plaid, with a bit of mashed-in lace sticking out at her throat. She must’ve been wearing every last thing Aunt Gert had put in her box, and her Sunday best, to boot. Her arms felt thick when I poked ’em, stuffed in her sleeves like sausages, and her pinafore—tied tight over the whole kit and caboodle—looked fit to bust at the seams. And now there were little beads of sweat popping out in a fine mist all over her face, and little damp curls plastered down at her temples, as if it was July, not November.

  No wonder she hadn’t missed her coat.

  “It doesn’t show too much, does it?” She tugged at her collars again, trying to get a bit of breathing room. “I know I look big as a house, but there’s no one but Bill to see, and I don’t care if he teases. It’s only for a little while, till he takes us wherever he’s taking us. He’ll have enough to do, I figured, just feeding us all, without having to worry about our clothes, besides.”

  She seemed so anxious about it that I didn’t say what I was thinking: that she looked like a mattress with the tick about to split. I told her it was a fine idea, and I wished I’d thought of it myself, and no one would ever even notice. (Which maybe a blind man wouldn’t, so it wasn’t all a lie.)