A Slip of a Girl Read online

He holds a hammer

  in one broad hand,

  and bangs back boards

  that hang loose.

  “Martin,” he mumbles,

  around nails that bristle

  in his mouth.

  “Anna,” I say.

  Later, a potato plant pokes

  out of the muddy ground.

  A miracle:

  two praties have grown firm

  under the ground.

  And we’re still here,

  Nuala and I.

  Spring

  OUTSIDE,

  I squint at the sun

  and listen.

  Nuala puts her hand

  in mine.

  “What?” she asks.

  It’s coming from

  Martin’s barn:

  a sheep bleating.

  “Ah,” I say. “Spring.

  The sheep are being

  sheared.”

  The barn door swings open.

  A sheep bursts out.

  “No clothes,” Nuala says.

  I grin and watch,

  Martin carries another

  Sheep shearing

  (This image is reproduced courtesy of the National Library of Ireland M56/43.)

  into the barn.

  I agree with Nuala.

  Sheared sheep do look strange,

  with their winter coats gone.

  Wool

  THE Aunt glances

  toward Martin’s barn.

  “At least

  make yourself useful,”

  she tells me.

  I hold words back

  behind my teeth.

  Nuala loves her.

  The Aunt flings out one hand.

  “Martin needs help.”

  She pats Nuala’s shoulder.

  “You can go too, Pet.”

  For once,

  Nuala leaves the Aunt’s side

  and we cross the field

  together.

  In the barn,

  dust floats in the air.

  Filthy swirls of fleece

  litter the floor:

  the winter coats of his sheep.

  Nuala scoops up a wad,

  tosses it into the air.

  It’s oily,

  and filled with seed,

  brambles, and bits of hay,

  I spot a few dried-up bugs.

  “Wings gone,” Nuala says.

  “Can’t fly?”

  Martin grins at us.

  “Before Ethna weaves,

  there’s a way to go,”

  he says.

  He shows us

  how to run our fingers

  through the knots,

  pick out the seeds

  and twigs,

  and dried-up insects.

  Poor things.

  “Not wool,” Nuala says.

  “Not yet,” Martin agrees.

  We spend hours washing

  and rinsing over and over.

  “And now we card,” Martin says,

  a word I don’t know.

  But it makes sense.

  We run wire brushes

  through the fleece,

  then comb it into rolls.

  “How did I ever do this alone?”

  Martin says,

  as he pulls an old blanket

  off a spinning wheel

  and spins…

  Until we see yarn!

  “Nice?” Nuala says.

  “Perfect,” Martin agrees.

  I rub my tired back.

  But I’ve made myself useful,

  I tell myself grimly,

  then grin.

  Resting

  LATE afternoon.

  The cow chews in the field.

  The wash dries on the grass.

  The Aunt runs her shuttle

  through the lines of wool,

  and Nuala leans against her knee.

  We’ve been here,

  how long?

  It’s planting time again.

  But the Aunt doesn’t sow.

  Her field grows weeds

  and nettles.

  “I could start the garden,”

  I say,

  standing in front of her.

  Did she hear?

  She pays no attention.

  This week, I’ll begin anyway.

  Late in the day,

  I walk to the lough.

  Madra, the dog,

  comes along.

  The sun beams a path

  across the water.

  I find a place to sit,

  and take my book

  from my waist.

  I know most of it by heart now,

  old friends.

  I talk the book aloud.

  The water ripples.

  It reminds me of the stream

  at home,

  once our very own.

  I think of fish

  slipping into my apron.

  Da smiling.

  And, so long ago,

  Mam cooking soup

  for our supper.

  Weaving

  THAT night,

  the Aunt sits at her loom,

  but watches me.

  “I will teach you,”

  she says.

  “You have time on your hands.”

  She runs her hand

  over the smooth wood,

  dark with age.

  “You won’t see a loom like this,”

  she says.

  “Built by a Rogers

  before my time.”

  I sink down on the floor

  in front of the loom.

  She puts the small piece of wood

  in my hand.

  “The shuttle.”

  She guides my hand.

  “No,” she says.

  She shows me:

  in and out.

  Sheep’s wool,

  the color of cream,

  runs in even lines

  along the loom.

  I think of our work,

  my back still aching.

  “Martin does fine carding,” the Aunt says.

  “And me,” Nuala adds.

  “The two of you,”

  the Aunt says.

  I wind the shuttle through the wool.

  I’m learning to keep my mouth

  closed over angry words.

  The weaving’s not hard,

  not really.

  Only my knees are up,

  my feet hard against

  the gritty floor.

  Nuala watches.

  She makes fishlike motions

  with her hands.

  I do the same,

  and the fabric takes shape.

  “It grows for the Englishman

  in the Big House,”

  the Aunt says.

  I pull my hands away.

  This is for one of them?

  The Aunt frowns.

  “For now,” she says.

  “But someday…”

  Her face is a mass of wrinkles.

  “I cannot plow,

  but I can do this.

  It pays the rent indeed.”

  She cuts off her words,

  scolding.

  “Your ends are too wide.

  I see loops.

  Uneven.”

  What is she talking about?

  For Nuala’s sake,

  I don’t say a word.

 
Then I see.

  The edges are a mess.

  She shows me how to pull them

  even.

  “Better, yes?” she says.

  I find the rhythm

  after a while.

  It’s not so different from reading.

  Can’t miss a stitch.

  Can’t miss a word.

  I turn to the Aunt.

  I catch her nodding.

  I smile,

  and she gives me an almost smile

  back.

  A loom inside a cottage in Donegal, County Galway

  (This image is reproduced courtesy of the National Library of Ireland L_ROY_09179.)

  Martin

  HE works for the Englishman,

  at the Big House too.

  “It keeps me here,

  my sheep grazing,”

  he says in his quiet way.

  He puts his own farm to bed

  in the dimming light,

  then comes to the Aunt’s field.

  Together,

  we plant a vegetable garden.

  I picture rows of cabbage,

  and potato blossoms

  with lumpers hiding underneath.

  He sweeps the walk,

  repairs the shed door,

  and the crumbling rock wall.

  We are friends now,

  Martin and I.

  I help him as much as I can.

  Hand him the hammer,

  slide the rocks into their places.

  “Why do you help Ethna?”

  I ask.

  I don’t say that she’s

  a miserable old woman.

  He grins at me,

  knowing what I’m thinking.

  “When my mam died,

  I was three or four,

  alone with Da, a grumpy man,

  strict and angry.”

  He leans against the side

  of the house,

  and I see something

  in his eyes.

  The beginning of tears?

  “She was there,”

  Martin says.

  “Hugging me, loving me.

  It has been that way,

  all these years.”

  Like Nuala, I think,

  like resting her hand

  on Madra’s head,

  like the baby bird

  she brought inside yesterday,

  feeding it

  drop by drop.

  Still,

  she’s a hard woman

  to know.

  Nuala

  I sit on a rickety stool,

  and milk the cow.

  It’s a satisfying sound:

  the milk spurting into

  the can.

  I lean my head against

  her warm, broad back.

  Nuala comes.

  She tugs at my skirt.

  I shake my head.

  “I have to finish.”

  She tugs again,

  looking toward the house.

  She pulls me along:

  toward the Aunt

  in the room above the hearth.

  Still in bed,

  her nightcap half covers

  her face.

  Madra whines on the floor,

  nearby.

  Nuala sits cross-legged

  on the bottom of the bed,

  crying.

  I touch the Aunt’s shoulder,

  and pat her cheeks.

  They burn with fever.

  “Come on, old woman,”

  I say.

  “Open your eyes.

  Nuala needs you.

  Nuala loves you.”

  I put my hand up.

  “Wait.”

  Outside at the pump,

  the water splashes

  into the bucket.

  I run back when it’s full

  and heavy now,

  and set it on the floor

  next to the bed.

  “Old rags in the kitchen,”

  I tell Nuala urgently.

  She doesn’t understand.

  Of course she doesn’t.

  Back in the kitchen,

  I find the rag bag.

  I bring back a soft cloth

  and swipe it into

  the freezing water.

  I bend over the bed.

  For the next hour,

  I dip the cloth

  into the water,

  and pat her face,

  her wrists,

  her neck,

  then fold it over

  her forehead.

  I find socks on a chair.

  They don’t match

  in color, or size,

  but not important.

  I soak them in water

  and ease them over

  her feet.

  Mrs. Donnelly said once,

  “It’s a way to draw heat

  out of the body.”

  There’s nothing more

  I know how to do.

  Her eyes stay closed,

  her breathing loud

  in this small, dark room.

  Nuala shakes her hands

  in front of her own face.

  I want to say it will be all right.

  But will it?

  This is work

  for someone who knows more

  than I do,

  someone who will help

  bring her back.

  Mam would have known.

  But help is far away.

  Help is impossible.

  And so I begin again,

  cooling her fever,

  until the bucket water

  has lost its own cool.

  Nuala sleeps,

  worn out from crying,

  Madra, the dog, never moves.

  He watches the old woman,

  his dark eyes troubled.

  It’s late in the day.

  Her eyes flutter open.

  She lies still,

  as I rub her feet

  in socks

  that are almost dry now.

  She opens her mouth,

  but doesn’t speak.

  She reaches out

  slowly,

  touches my hand.

  Working

  THAT night,

  I rake the fire

  and bury it in peat ash.

  In the morning,

  the Aunt and Nuala still sleep.

  Madra has moved to the doorway.

  I begin the day’s chores:

  the cow to be milked,

  and set out to graze.

  I shoo the hens

  to peck at the grass,

  and carry their warm eggs

  into the kitchen

  in the Aunt’s apron.

  I feed Nuala a cup of milk,

  still warm

  from the giving cow,

  and an egg boiled

  on the hearth.

  Then I tiptoe

  into the Aunt’s room.

  She’s awake,

  her eyes following,

  as I sit on the edge

  of the bed,

  a cup in my hand.

  I put my arm

  under her head,

  to raise her

  so she can sip at the milk.

  “Easy,” I say.

  “A little at a time.”

  She doesn’t answer.

  I look at her face, />
  wanting to touch

  her forehead,

  to see if the fever’s

  gone.

  I don’t dare

  with her eyes on me.

  I work in the kitchen,

  washing Nuala’s hands,

  her feet.

  She looks anxiously

  at the Aunt’s room,

  and then at me.

  “It’s all right,”

  I soothe.

  “She’ll be fine.”

  Do I tell the truth?

  A New Day

  A pale sun rises,

  rolls over the sky,

  toward the mountains

  of Mourne.

  I have no time

  to long for Da

  and Liam,

  for the sight of my hill.

  And oh, my house in Longford,

  my own place.

  I sweep out the room,

  listening to Nuala.

  She sings to the Aunt,

  an old song,

  the words mixed up,

  but the sound is true.

  I remember my promise

  to keep her safe.

  But suppose the Aunt doesn’t live?

  What then?

  The Big House

  MARTIN stops on his way.

  He gives me a small bundle

  of chickweed.

  “For tea,” he says.

  I smile. “Yes!”

  But I can’t help it.

  I burst out,

  “How can you work

  for the Englishman?”

  He answers almost fiercely.

  “It pays the rent.

  You know that.”

  Then, almost silently,

  “And I hear things.”

  I tilt my head.

  What does he mean?

  “Change is coming,”

  he says.

  “People in the west

  are banding together

  against high rents.”

  He shrugs.

  “They gave me a book,”

  he says.

  “They’re beginning to fear us.”

  I shake my head.

  It’s hard to believe.

  “They have a hundred books

  anyway,” he says.

  “On shelves in a great room,

  near the kitchen.”

  I think of my one book,

  of the schoolmaster’s dozen.

  I watch after Martin

  as he goes down the boreen.

  I hear a sound behind me.

  It’s the Aunt

  holding on to the wall.

  “The shawl,” she says.

  “We must finish.”

  She sinks down on the chair.

  “For the rent,” she manages.

  I work with the shuttle

  until she nods: “Enough.”

  But I don’t know how to get the shawl