The Year We Sailed the Sun Read online

  Who came walking out slowly now from behind a palm tree and a purple curtain, put her hand to her heart, and bowed.

  She was two or three times as big as Miss Downey, with the grandest bosom I ever did see, and red lips, and black hair, and her eyes sort of half-closed and dreamy-looking, so you knew she meant business. She just stood there for a minute, staring out over our heads, till I started to sweat a little. But finally she nodded at the hat lady, and waited for the music, and breathed in deep through her pinched-in nostrils . . . and when she opened her mouth—oh my—you never heard such a marvelous racket. I only wished Gran could have been there. She always cried her eyes out over that style of singing when we had it in church. Not that this was “Ave Maria,” exactly, but it was real loud and strong-sounding, and you couldn’t understand a word of it, with that same type of wobbling on the high notes that sort of made your teeth ache.

  And the crowd—why, they just loved it. They sat there clapping up a storm and hollering, “Brava!” when it was over, though they didn’t stomp their feet, like they would have done back home, and Agnes Crouse got so excited, she forgot herself and whistled, and the Sisters didn’t know who had done it and shook their heads at all of us, and Miss Downey peeked over her shoulder and gave us another wink, and Mrs. Merriweather smiled and bowed and held on to her bosom with both hands, and said, Thank-you-thank-you-so-much-oh-dear-me-you’re-too-kind.

  And then it was time for the second number.

  We all knew this one right away, of course. The whole world knew “America the Beautiful.” Sister Sebastian made us sing it every morning at breakfast, between the oatmeal and the Pledge of Allegiance. So when Miss Downey played the opening chords, we rolled our eyes at one another and sighed just a little, and sunk down an inch or two lower in our seats to wait it out.

  And then Mrs. Merriweather came in again with her fine big wobbly voice:

  O beautiful for spacious skies,

  For amber waves of grain,

  For purple ma—jes—steeeeeee . . . ste-steez . . .

  Above the fruited—

  What?

  Purple what?

  It was the pause that did it. The half a hiccup, when we all heard it sinking in on her. That tiny little crack in the middle of the wobbles, in the long, dying “steeeeeee . . . ste-steez . . .” when you knew she was thinking, Ah, hell, I’ve left out the mountain.

  America! America!

  Mrs. Merriweather was still up there singing away, but it was too late. There was no going back now. I tried not to look at anybody, I swear, but I couldn’t help it. Eyebrows were shooting up all around me, and then—oh Lord, there it was, a snort, a definite snort—I was staring at the carpet at the moment, so I couldn’t say for certain it was Geraldine, but by the time I looked up she had a hand over her mouth, like she was fit to bust, and a tear sliding down her left cheek. And then there was Agnes, wild-eyed, in the seat right next to her. She was trying her best to hold it in, but there were pitiful little bleating sounds coming out of her nose and that was all it took—one snort and a couple of bleats, and then I was gone, too, and all of us were gone, and the entire Brigade was done for. We were giggling like loons, like a gaggle of geese, and no way to stop us. It didn’t matter that Sister Bridget was shaking her head again, or that Sister Maclovius was fixing us with the eye of doom, or that Mr. Hanratty-Maguire and the Adam’s-apple man looked like they wanted to kill us. It didn’t matter that we were biting our lips and sticking our fingernails in the palms of our hands—at least, I was—till they were near bleeding. We’d get hold of ourselves for a second or two, and then Geraldine would wheeze out another “steeeee-ste-steez,” and that would set us off again—Betty too, of course, and even tiny Hannah, though neither of ’em seemed to understand the pain we were in and just thought we were all having a wonderful time.

  And it wasn’t only us, neither. You could hear it spreading through the rest of the audience now—a gasp here, a choking fit there—one stricken Optima Petamuser after another, and meanwhile Mrs. Horace Merriweather kept right on singing, verse after verse—I never dreamed there could be so many of ’em—and by the time she got back around to the second set of shining seas, even poor Miss Downey was going under. She was still pounding away on the piano keys, but her shoulders were heaving and her head was bobbing and her little black hat feathers were shaking, like mulberry leaves in the wind.

  Well.

  If you thought the applause was loud after the first number, you should have heard it after this one. There must have been nine or ten times as much clapping and carrying-on, and a good deal of eye-wiping and nose-blowing, what with all of us being so glad Mrs. Merriweather had got to the end, finally, and hoping we hadn’t hurt her feelings too much, and wondering if there might be even a whisker of a chance she hadn’t noticed our situation. You couldn’t tell for absolute sure and certain, because she was already back to bowing and heart-holding, only now there were little beads of sweat catching the light on her upper lip, and I suspicioned her smile had a clenched look to it.

  But there wasn’t time to be worrying about Mrs. Merriweather, because Sister Maclovius was standing up now. She was coming our way. She was bearing down on us like a steamboat with all the stacks smoking, and there wasn’t any question about whether or not she had noticed. She’d left her cane behind her so as to have both hands free, and now she was pulling me and Geraldine out of our seats by an elbow apiece and hauling us over to the podium, where the president was standing again, leading the last of the applause and thanking “our gracious (bob) and gifted guest for delighting us yet again (bob)—”

  But when he looked up and saw the two of us getting plunked down in front of him—still weak from fighting off the snorts, even while we were shaking in our shoes—he left off being delighted and peered squinty-eyed at us through his spectacles, while Sister spoke to him in a voice too low for even my good ear to catch.

  “Oh yes (bob),” he murmured, as if she’d reminded him of something. And then he reached under the top of the podium to the shelf beneath it and took out—what was it he was taking out?—a couple of plates, it looked like, a pair of silver plates, so shiny you could see your face in ’em, and handed one to Geraldine and the other to me.

  Were we having refreshments? I wondered.

  The president turned back to the audience. “And now (bob), once again,” he said, “let us re(bob)double our best (bob) efforts to help those who cannot help themselves. I give you the Mercy (bob) girls.”

  Still I stood there, staring at him, not understanding—

  Until he reached in his back pocket, took out a ten-dollar bill and a couple of quarters, and dropped the whole mess in my plate: clink, clank.

  Saint Chris on a crutch.

  He didn’t mean . . .

  They wanted us to pass the plates?

  I looked at Geraldine. She was froze up stiff as I was.

  The audience applauded. Sister Maclovius smiled.

  Well, let her smile.

  I wouldn’t do it.

  I just wouldn’t do it, that was all.

  I would stand there till my hair turned gray and my teeth fell out, but I would not go trotting around that room like a dog itself, begging for whatever scraps the millionaires felt like tossing my way. I would not, I would never, not if they dragged me kicking and screaming. . . .

  “There’s a letter that came this morning,” Sister Maclovius said quietly. She was leaning down between us now, so no one else could hear, her iron claws gripping the pair of us by our outside shoulders. “It was from a farmer’s wife in Jefferson County; a Mrs. Lenahan, poor woman. It seems she’s just given birth to her third set of twins in four years. And of course with help so hard to come by these days, and six small children to care for, she says she would be most grateful for the assistance of one of our girls.”

  Geraldine flashed me a look of stark terror—she was second from the top of eleven Mulroneys, after all—and then she wheeled around to f
ace her side of the crowd and went straight to work with her plate:

  Clink, clank . . . clank, clink . . .

  Still I didn’t move. I wouldn’t move. Go on, why don’t you, send me to the farm with all the babies, what’s so bad about babies? I ain’t passing this damn plate. I will not, I will never . . .

  “Presuming, of course,” Sister Maclovius whispered on, “that our laundry has a girl to spare, just now.”

  Our laundry?

  Oh, dear God in heaven.

  She was talking about Mary, wasn’t she? It wasn’t me she was threatening to send to the twins—

  Clank, clink . . . clink, clank . . .

  “ ‘For he maketh his sun to rise upon the good, and bad, and raineth upon the just and unjust. . . .’ ”

  And she was smiling worse than ever now, because she knew she had won and she knew I knew, and there wasn’t a thing in the world I could do about it but take the bleedin’ plate to the bleedin’ rich people on my side of the room and pass it among ’em with my mouth clamped tight, clink, clank, went the coins, clank, clink, clinkety clunk, another ten and change from the handsome man, four dimes from a fat lady on his left, a whole fistful from Mrs. Merriweather, who gave me a look of pure pity when she dropped ’em in, and I thought again of the five hundred silver dollars and how they’d jangle in my pockets like music itself, and how quick I’d be on that train if I ever had half a chance, and Mickey Doyle had better stay lost if he knew what was good for him.

  They gave us cake when the meeting was over. Miss Downey cut me a piece with her own hands. “It’s coconut, dear,” she said when I couldn’t eat it. “Don’t you care for coconut, Julia?” She looked worried about it for some reason, so I guess she had baked it herself, and I didn’t mean to make her feel bad, but I couldn’t help it; even the sight of it made me gag, so Betty ate it for me.

  And then we were rattling back to the Bad Lands in the orphan buggy, finally, all of us just as mum as the grave, and not a soul daring to look at me—well, except for Betty, who was watching me like a hawk, as usual, and holding fast to my hand again (I’d kept it in my pocket till she started to cry, so I had to give it to her). But nobody said a word. Dark was coming on already. There were jack-o’-lanterns glowing in the windows on Morgan Street, and ghouls and goblins lurking about in the shadows; they grinned at us from the corners with their burlap bags, waiting to be filled. But we paid ’em no mind. Sister Bridget kept her head down and held tight to the reins, and Hyacinth clopped along, same as ever. And as for Sister Maclovius, she was still so disgusted with the lot of us that she didn’t need to say a thing. You could feel it rolling out of her in waves, like coal smoke.

  So when we pulled up in front of the House of Mercy, and I saw the ghost in the sheet on the porch, waiting for us, half-hidden behind the hibiscus, I could have told him he was wasting his time. He could have stood there calling for apples and nuts till he was blue in the face, for all the good it would do him. But it was too late; there he was, though no one else seemed to have noticed him, till we were up the steps and nearly to the door—

  When he hopped out from his hiding place and hollered, “Julia Delaney!”

  And that was when I saw his crutch.

  Chapter 17

  “Jimmy? That’s you, ain’t it?”

  “Jimmy who?” said the ghost.

  “Ah, for crying out loud,” I groaned. “Jimmy Brannigan, that’s who! I know it’s you, ya numskull. What in the world—”

  But I didn’t get to finish, because Sister Maclovius had swung back around already and was coming right at him, shaking her cane: “Shoo!” she shouted. “Scat! Go ’way! Get off my porch, ye jackanapes! We’ll have none of your tricks and your treats at the House of Mercy!”

  “But Sister,” said Jimmy, “I wasn’t—I was only—”

  “Only what? What were you only? Putting the horse in the kitchen, like you did last year? Stealing the laundry off the line itself?”

  “But Sister, I didn’t—”

  “Don’t you but-Sister me, ye scoundrel! Off my porch before I pitch you off, or I’ll call the police! And that better not be my sheet you’re wearing!”

  She was poking him with her cane as she spoke, backing him down the stairs, one step at a time. But he was game; I’ll give him that much. No sooner had his boots hit the sidewalk than he came hopping right up after her again, waving a battered-looking envelope over his head and shouting as loud as his pipsqueak pipes would let him:

  “S’cuse me, Sister, beggin’ your pardon, I swear I wouldn’t touch your horse, he’s a grand horse, it’s only a message for two of your inmates—please, Sister, I promised—I have a letter from City Hospital!”

  Oh dear God.

  My heart came crowding so fast into my throat, I could scarcely get a sound around it. “Bill!” I croaked, trying to fight my way back to Jimmy, but Sister Maclovius was blocking my path, and I couldn’t say the rest: What is it? What’s wrong? Is he worse? It’s Bill, ain’t it? And now she was taking the envelope from Jimmy’s outstretched hand and there wasn’t a thing I could do but stand there and watch while the wind went out of my lungs and the earth stopped spinning, and I don’t know if my legs would have kept me up if Betty hadn’t got hold of me again. But she did, so they did, and Sister lifted up the envelope at arm’s length and squinted at it for a while, and then she took her spectacles out of some secret pocket in all those yards of black stuff and studied it some more—Oh, for the love of God, come on, will you?—and finally she turned it over and slid a fingernail under the flap and tore it open—slowly, oh so slowly—and stood there reading with her thin lips pursed, like she’d swallowed something sour.

  “Hmmph,” she said at last. It seemed like forever, but maybe it wasn’t; you couldn’t really tell with the world standing still. And then she took off her spectacles and took her sweet time folding them—one stem, two stems—and hid them away again, and looked me in the eye.

  “It’s for you,” she said, and handed me the letter.

  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

  Well then.

  All right, then.

  I choked back the tears. He wasn’t dying or anything; he hadn’t taken a turn for the worse. He was better. Bill was better. The doctor says I am much improved. . . . So it was good news, the best news. Well, sure it was. I ought to be setting off firecrackers. It was only relief making me feel a little—well, limp, that was all. Sort of hollow in the middle, as if I was—oh, not disappointed, oh no, of course not, not with a letter from Bill himself right here in my hand. How could I be disappointed? Just—limp. Like the letter itself. A little smudged around the edges, with splotches spattered all through it, as if Bill had been in a hurry, writing.

  Well I hear it might rain tonight no use going to the bonfire . . .

  After all this time, he was talking about the weather?

  Surely there was more. There must be more—

  “That ain’t all, is it, Jimmy?”

  But the ghost with the crutch was gone.

  The whole House seemed limp that night. Not like Halloween at all. Not on the inside, anyhow—never mind the wind keening at the windows, and the rain pattering against the panes, and the candles flickering outside in the dark, in the hands of passing strangers. Never mind the rabble-rousers carousing through the streets, not a stone’s throw
away from us. Limp, was what we were. Too limp to care. And still we mumbled our rosary at supper, like always, and chewed something greenish, with lumps, while the gangster boys and the floozy girls laughed and sang and smashed bottles on the sidewalk, and shouted out cheerful-sounding curses, and Sister Gabriel’s cheeks kept getting pinker, and Sister Sebastian’s eyes kept burning blacker, until Sister Maclovius broke off praying, finally “—And lead us not into temptation”—and thumped to the window and raised it—“Mind your tongues, ye pack o’ pagans, or I’ll tear ’em out by the roots!”—and slammed it down so hard, our teeth rattled, and thumped back to her place—“but deliver us from evil, amen.”

  I don’t know how long I lay awake that night, thinking about Bill’s letter. I didn’t have it with me to look at anymore. Sister Maclovius had slid it out of my hand on the porch before I half knew what she was doing. “I’ll see that your sister gets it,” she’d said. I might have fought her for it, if I hadn’t been so limp. But I didn’t. It was Mary’s letter too.

  Besides, I had it in my head already, splotches and all.

  Well hello and how are you, in good health I hope. . . .

  Had Mary read it yet? I wondered now, as I lay there staring at the ceiling. I hadn’t seen her since breakfast. Sister Bridget had told me they’d be working late in the laundry tonight, since they’d have tomorrow off, for the holy day. Even laundry girls weren’t allowed to work on the first of November. But I’d see her when I woke up, anyhow, once this rain was done spitting. She’d be walking to church with the rest of us, if it cleared up in time—

  . . . for the All Saints Mass in the morning . . .

  And then—

  Why, by then—

  Oh, sweet mercy.

  Sincerely your brother . . .