A Slip of a Girl Read online

  I pray for sun,

  or even a cloudy day.

  If the rain doesn’t give over,

  the land will be soaked

  and the crop ruined.

  No lumpers to eat.

  No vegetables to sell.

  How will we pay the rent?

  Please…

  I look toward Liam’s,

  the empty house,

  the bare field.

  I try to swallow the ache

  in my throat.

  That night,

  Da takes the pitcher

  from the shelf.

  He spreads the few coins

  on the table.

  He counts, whispers:

  “Not enough.

  Not nearly enough.”

  We’re not all right.

  But didn’t we know that

  all along?

  Da’s face is like granite,

  his mouth grim.

  I see his fear.

  I feel it too.

  Da was just a boy in ’forty-seven,

  when the potato plants oozed black.

  People tottered down the road,

  carrying their babies,

  their mouths stained green

  from eating grass.

  And last year, almost as bad.

  Will we be for the road?

  “The crop will hold,”

  I manage,

  and reach for Da’s hand.

  He sighs. “Ah, Anna.

  You’re the heart of this family.”

  Nuala looks up at me.

  “Heart,” she says.

  Jane nods, smiling.

  A family in front of their home near Clonbrock House Estate, Ahascragh, eastern County Galway

  (This image is reproduced courtesy of the National Library of Ireland CLON618.)

  Awake

  I don’t believe

  the rain will stop,

  or the crop will grow.

  I sit at the hearth

  and say letter sounds

  to comfort myself.

  MMM.

  RRR.

  SSS.

  The schoolmaster is more patient

  than I am.

  I want more than shapes,

  more than sounds.

  I want words!

  But he says,

  “It will all come,

  words, sentences,

  stories.”

  When?

  Then on this night,

  with rain

  covering the field

  with mud,

  it happens.

  I put letters together

  with their sounds.

  Da.

  Mam.

  I reach for my book.

  Words jump out at me:

  Hay, oat, run.

  Can I read?

  Maybe.

  Yes.

  I spring up,

  twirl around the chair,

  dance in front of the hearth.

  Oh, Mam,

  I can read.

  The Stranger

  IN the morning, someone walks

  around the house.

  and peers through the crack

  in the door.

  He wears a bowler hat

  and a black suit tinged green

  with age.

  I tiptoe to the door and wait.

  I don’t open it

  until his footsteps move away.

  He stands at the corner

  of our field,

  with the potato plants

  bent in the rain.

  I know what he’s doing.

  He’s imagining

  the Englishman will put us out,

  and him in.

  And something else.

  Was he the man who tried

  to steal the hens?

  “Ours,” I yell.

  He glances back, tips his hat,

  then goes toward the road,

  but slowly,

  his back telling me it’s ours

  only if the rain stops.

  The Letter

  MR. Connell from the post office

  trudges up the path.

  He brings us an envelope

  written over

  and marked with colored paper.

  It comes all the way

  from America.

  I see our Mallon name

  written on front.

  Da opens it carefully.

  Dollar bills fan out.

  Enough to pay the rent!

  Mr. Connell smiles.

  Da and I hold hands

  with joy.

  The house will be ours

  for another year,

  and maybe longer.

  We lean over the letter.

  Someone has printed it

  for my brothers.

  Words jump out at me:

  work, bridge, Brooklyn.

  I run my fingers

  over the page.

  “Jane can come,” I read aloud.

  She scoops up the letter,

  holds it to her face.

  “America,” she breathes.

  “At last.”

  Da and I stare at each other.

  I bite my lip.

  I want to cry, to scream.

  The money that would have saved us

  will pay for Jane’s passage.

  Da pats my hand,

  trying to make me feel better.

  We both know Jane needs to leave.

  In America, she has a chance

  to eat, to heal,

  to live.

  We can’t say no to that.

  At last she takes the road

  my brothers have taken,

  traveling with a woman

  from the town.

  We wave goodbye,

  Nuala’s small arms out.

  “Come back, Jane,”

  she cries.

  In our house,

  I close my eyes,

  only three of us are left.

  The Little People

  I learn about the horse

  from my book:

  where he grazes,

  what he eats,

  how fast he runs.

  “It’s all true,

  not a made-up story,”

  the schoolmaster says,

  “We call that nonfiction.”

  My life,

  as well as the horse’s,

  is non fiction.

  We turn to the horse’s last page.

  “It’s time for another book,”

  the schoolmaster says.

  “I will lend you mine.”

  He hesitates.

  “The old potato you carry,”

  he begins.

  “It’s for the little people,”

  I say.

  “I’ll throw it

  and run

  while they eat.”

  He reaches for a book

  on the shelf.

  Fairy Tales.

  He leans forward.

  “They’re not real,

  fairies and elves,

  and little people.”

  I shiver,

  glance at the door.

  No one is there.

  Could the schoolmaster

  be right?

  I stay up reading,

  most of the night.

  I finish the book.

  All of it.
/>   Something else about

  books.

  They teach:

  Fairy tales and little people

  aren’t real.

  I wish I could tell you,

  Liam.

  Fall

  AT night,

  rain thrums against the earth.

  During the day,

  mud oozes up between our toes.

  Da and I harvest the poor crop.

  Nuala toddles back and forth,

  her hands full of wet soil

  and a small misshapen lumper.

  “I eat, Anna?” she asks.

  My voice is choked.

  “I’ll cook it for you.”

  Da looks across the wheelbarrow

  at me.

  This small crop won’t get us through

  the winter.

  And winter is coming.

  I see it in the gray sky

  with its ragged clouds.

  I feel it in the air,

  smell the cold.

  Days later,

  huge snowflakes fall,

  like the feathers Mam used

  to stuff our pillows.

  I feel her warm hands on mine,

  as I helped fill them too.

  Nuala loves the white

  that covers the field.

  She takes my hand.

  “Out, Anna,” she says.

  “Now!”

  We fly outside,

  hands up to catch the flakes,

  our feet bare and freezing.

  I see our few chickens,

  still, unmoving,

  mounded under the snow.

  My hand goes to my mouth.

  Nuala reaches for one.

  “No!” I say.

  “Chickens sleep,” Nuala says.

  I nod.

  Gone from cholera!

  The eggs!

  The food!

  I sink down

  on the wet, snowy ground.

  It’s too much.

  What can I do?

  How will I keep going?

  I’m a Mallon.

  But Da is right.

  I’m only a slip of a girl.

  How can I help us survive?

  Nuala watches me,

  mouth open,

  crying.

  I drag myself up,

  Somehow,

  I have to go on.

  The River

  DA has gone to the village.

  Nuala and I are alone.

  She cries with hunger.

  What would Mam do?

  What can I do?

  I listen to Nuala’s sobbing.

  “We’ll catch fish,” I tell her,

  and wrap her small feet

  in old cloths.

  “We’ll be quiet as mice

  inside a barn.”

  At the river,

  a skim of ice covers the water.

  I raise a rock

  and throw it hard.

  Droplets splash up,

  as cold as the ice.

  I step in,

  numbing my feet.

  I raise my apron,

  a bowl for the fish

  to swim in.

  Nuala circles a tree.

  She stops,

  stares over her shoulder.

  Is someone coming?

  Birds startle up.

  I hear footsteps.

  I splash out of the water,

  grab Nuala’s hand

  and run.

  The footsteps come after us.

  Nuala is slow, too slow.

  I swing her up,

  over my shoulder

  and dash through bushes,

  over stones,

  heart pounding

  as we reach the lane.

  But we’re not safe yet.

  I skitter inside our house.

  shut the door!

  Lean against it!

  I peer through the crack

  at the Englishman’s agent.

  He stands in the boreen,

  staring about

  with his bulging eyes,

  not sure of who we are,

  or where we went.

  He turns back.

  I sink down on the floor,

  shivering,

  with Nuala still in my arms.

  She runs her hands

  over my hair.

  “Ah, Anna, ah,” she says.

  “No fish.”

  Liam’s House

  FROM my hill,

  I see a curl of smoke

  from Liam’s chimney.

  The man with the bowler hat,

  stands in the doorway.

  My hand covers my mouth.

  Liam’s hearth!

  The rooms above

  and below!

  I’m filled with anger.

  Later, when I pass the house,

  the man waves.

  I turn my back.

  Let him see that anger.

  Counting

  I treat the lumpers like babies,

  watching over them.

  Da needs five every day,

  Nuala one or two.

  I try to make do

  with three.

  Not enough.

  Not nearly enough.

  The oats are gone.

  And now the fish are lost

  to us.

  I read the schoolmaster’s books,

  one after another.

  They make me forget

  the hole in my stomach.

  But then,

  someone bangs at the door:

  the agent,

  He wants the rent this week.

  The earl’s sheep are waiting

  for us to leave.

  Sheep grazing on the Clonbrock House Estate, Ahascragh, eastern County Galway

  (This image is reproduced courtesy of the National Library of Ireland CLON1646.)

  The Big House

  ONCE I saw the earl,

  sitting high on his gray horse,

  an ordinary man,

  shorter than Da,

  with small hands and feet.

  Yes, ordinary.

  Suppose I went to him,

  and begged for more time?

  I’m afraid,

  but it’s what I have to do.

  I wait for Da to go to town,

  then rush Nuala

  down the boreen.

  “Please,” I ask Mae,

  “will you keep her

  for an hour or so?”

  She nods

  and hugs Nuala to her.

  Back at our house,

  I shake out my skirt

  and comb my hair with my fingers.

  Wearing Willie’s torn jacket

  and John’s stiff shoes,

  I take the road to the big house

  and push open

  the great iron gates.

  I know I can’t knock

  on the massive doors.

  I go around to the back,

  and even there,

  the door is twice as wide

  as ours.

  I take a breath, and rap,

  head down against the biting cold.

  The cook peers out at me,

  I know her from the village.

  She must eat three pounds of potatoes

  a day.

  Mae Donnelly said once,

  “That plump soul is sweet on the agent.”
>
  The cook laughs when I say,

  “I want to see the master,”

  and turns me away from the step.

  “Wait,” I say.

  Too loud.

  I say it again,

  softer.

  Better?

  She doesn’t answer.

  I listen to the clatter of plates,

  the smell of roasting lamb.

  Anger fills my chest.

  “Mallon land,” I yell.

  A girl sits at a window.

  She glances at me,

  as if I’m an insect

  that crawls along the path.

  What does she care

  if we lose our house,

  our land?

  I pick up a rock,

  raise my arm.

  A manor house in Edgeworthstown, County Longford

  (This image is reproduced courtesy of the National Library of Ireland L_CAB_09217.)

  I’ll hit the side of her house.

  Let her see I’m not an insect.

  I aim.

  Throw.

  Glass shatters.

  I run.

  Waiting…

  THE cook knows who I am.

  Wouldn’t she guess

  I’d broken the window?

  Wouldn’t she tell?

  Will I be taken away

  from Da and Nuala?

  I watch the the boreen,

  stay close to the house.

  A day passes,

  then a second.

  I’ve read three

  of the schoolmaster’s books.

  But my horse book is still

  my favorite.

  I turn the pages,

  look toward the boreen.

  No one comes.

  Am I all right?

  The Agent

  I stir up the fire

  on this cold morning,

  the start of winter,

  and wrap Mam’s wool shawl

  around Nuala.

  Da is outside.

  Nuala stares up at me

  with her huge gray eyes.

  “He yells. Not happy?”

  I open the half door,

  to see…

  Da waving his arms

  at the English agent

  and his men.

  My heart almost stops.

  I hear him say window.

  I hear him say glass.

  Nuala darts outside,

  shawl dragging.

  “Go,” she says,

  waving them away.

  One of the men tosses her aside,

  as if she’s a hen or a cat.

  It’s too much for me,

  too much for Da.

  We throw ourselves at the men,

  hitting, shoving.

  I yell, using words

  I’ve never said before.