I didn’t mind.
We’d been celebrating for hours when the keening began. I laid myself out on the sofa, looked up at them, all the people from my girlhood, who knew me too well. They had come over to me, one by one, to kiss me on the forehead and lips, tell me that I’d be missed, that they hoped to see me again, that I was already a little bit dead for having to leave them behind.
My face was covered in their wet salt, how we cried, and when it was Mammy’s turn to love me and say goodbye, she let out the banshee wail, lay her hands on my body and howled in my ear. She sounded like a killing wind, moaned low and deep, and then my sisters joined her, then Nanna, then the women, a circle of grief thundering towards me. I was frightened. On they went, like cats, like foxes, heating in the night.
Then Daddy sang ‘Blow the Candles Out’, got his voice singing beer-sweet, and just like harbour waves, everyone joined in, was accompanied by Uilleann pipes, that sorrow sound washing over me, made me cry, made me realise I had no idea what to expect in America.
I went to my nanna, who sat small in her chair, and I got on my knees, wrapped myself around her, touched her empty, old cheeks, and cuddled her onto her feet. The butter smell of her hair. She was yellow, skin tight to bone. Yellow her face, yellow her arms, yellow her half-finger. Her eyes were wrinkled half-moons, still deep brown like mine, still watching me with love, and I held right on to her for our last hold. I was able to reach my arms all the way around her, could feel her ribs struggle against me. Hold tighter, I thought. Bridget, hold tighter. But I was afraid I’d break her. Nanna breathed in my ear, short and tired and her heart beat into mine. What a sound.
‘I love ya, Nanna,’ I said.
‘I love ya too.’
I lost it then, started keening over her, let nineteen years of love wail at her. I’d never heard myself like that before. It made Nanna’s body shake and I held tighter to her and she said, ‘Will I ever see ya again?’ I didn’t answer.
The next day I was on the ship, was with dozens of others leaving. The ship’s horn bellowed and I threw up over the railing. Thought America better be worth it.
As things calmed, Mr Borden left the house for work and I went about my morning, found it hard to shake off the slap. Hard to shake off that Borden fever.
Mrs Borden came looking for me. ‘Are you alright?’ she asked. She held her stomach, looked in pain.
‘Just continuin’ along, marm.’
‘I have something to cheer us up,’ she said. In her hand was a telegram. ‘Look what I got yesterday. Did I tell you? I’ll be having guests this Saturday.’
She had not. ‘Who’s it, marm?’
‘Some old friends.’ The way her face became bright. It made me smile. ‘I knew them from school. Fancy that. After all this time.’
‘It’ll be nice for ya.’
‘Yes.’ She read the telegram to herself again, said, ‘You and I have a lot to do in two days. You’ll need to begin cleaning and thinking about what you’ll cook for meals. I don’t want to disappoint them.’
I didn’t see how cleaning for visitors would cheer me up. She told me to start with the parlour rug. ‘Take it out and beat it clean.’ That old heavy wool thing with its ragged yellow and white iris and violet flower pattern, green stem arches that went round and round. She’d be better off buying a new one. But I went and got the wicker slapper from the basement and threw it in the middle of the rug, rolled the whole thing into a long tube.
I dragged the rug through the parlour to the sitting room, worried that I would knock over the small tables with Mrs Borden’s porcelain ornaments on top, those ugly glazed cats and shy dogs, tails between their legs, paws begging for food. The rug rubbed against the floor like a saw, cutting up weeks of foot traffic. My underthings stuck to my lower back. I dragged it some more and there was a thwack and a drop. I put down the rug. ‘Pshaw,’ I said.
It was enough to bring Lizzie downstairs. ‘You’re disturbing me.’ There was a little red Father mark on her cheek from breakfast time. Oh, I’d seen that all before.
‘Sorry about it, miss.’
She scrunched her nose. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Mrs Borden wants this cleaned. She’s havin’ guests Saturday.’
‘Who exactly?’
‘Don’t know.’
‘Father didn’t tell me.’ Her hands went to her hips. ‘What’s going on?’
‘I’ve knocked the table.’ I pointed.
She glanced, a smile across her face. ‘Look at what you did.’ She held a porcelain dog, his ears pricked and tail raised. In her other hand, the dog’s leg. Lizzie laughed, forced the pieces together, forced them apart, teased me like that, and I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, felt it against my lips like an earth tremor.
‘It’s the second one I’ve broke.’ My voice came out of me, a mewing.
‘She needn’t know.’ She closed her hand over the pieces, held tight.
‘She will. She loves that one.’
Lizzie stuck the leg against the dog. ‘Stop being so dramatic. If I were you I’d throw it out.’ She handed it to me.
The pieces stabbed the inside of my hand, cut a little. How had she been able to hold it without hurting herself? ‘Maybe it can be fixed?’
She smiled, all crooked. ‘Or you could say someone took it.’
‘She’d not believe me.’
Lizzie shrugged. I put the dog in my apron pocket. I’d think about what to do with it later. ‘I gotta get this rug done.’
‘As long as you don’t destroy anything else.’
I’d not thought her funny, wanted her to make it up to me. I pointed to the rug. ‘I shouldn’t ask ya, but could ya help me drag it outside?’
‘No. I don’t do that.’
‘Sorry, miss.’
‘I’m heading out now anyway. Don’t ever ask me to do your work again.’
‘Yes, miss.’
She came near me, right up close so that I could feel her breath. ‘Aren’t you going to ask what I’ll be doing?’
‘If ya like.’
She stared at me. ‘Never mind. I don’t want to tell you anyway.’
‘I’m sorry, miss.’
Lizzie kicked the rug, went to the entrance cupboard and took her summer coat. ‘You’re all rotten,’ she said, walked out, slamming the front door. I couldn’t wait to leave the house, this family. I took the rug in my hands. The stupid, heavy old thing.
My hands and wrists were aching to snap by the time I got outside. I dragged the rug through long grass and I thought of the early days coming to Second Street, how Mr Borden didn’t believe I was worth his money. I’d been polishing the front stairs banister, Mr and Mrs Borden were in the parlour. She’d said, ‘The girl is very efficient.’ So I polished some more, shined it up so good I could see my teeth reflected, a prize at a show.
‘She’s not strong enough. Why keep her on when we have you and the girls?’ he said.