Galway Bay (41 page)

“Awful,” Máire said.

“God rest them,” I said.

Maggie nodded. “Tragic. After that, the company had to be more careful. They took fewer passengers. We’ve more space and better supplies because of those poor souls,” she said. “There now, our porridge is cooked.”

We picked up our pots and went below.

We ate in our bunks as well as slept there, and I kept thinking of those doomed people suffocating in a dark hole as I fed Stephen his porridge. Maggie had found us two spoons, so the children ate in turn or with their fingers.

“Excuse me.” The woman from the bunk below us was standing there. Like most of the women aboard, she traveled with her family. Though five young girls, one only twelve years old, they were going out on their own, hoping to find jobs as servants in the Big Houses of Amerikay. They were frightened but determined. Their people had borrowed money from some gombeen man for their fares, gambling that the wages the girls sent back would enable them to survive the winter and pay back the loan. A heavy burden. This woman had a husband, a quiet fellow, neither tall nor short, with sandy hair, as well as two sons, sixteen or seventeen, and an older daughter who favored the mother—both had brown hair, pulled tight back, brown eyes—shy. But Catholic? Protestant? I didn’t know. She handed me a covering made from pieces of fabric sewn together. “A quilt,” she said. “You’re welcome to use it.”

“Thank you,” I said. “That’s very kind.”

Stephen reached for the bright colors, took the quilt, and rubbed it against his cheek.

“I’d say he’s claimed it,” the woman said.

“For the journey,” I said. “I’ll be sure to return it.”

“My mother made it,” she said.

“Is she . . .”

“She’s living, but wouldn’t leave our home place, Ballymena.”

“My mam and da stayed, too, in Connemara.”

“Where’s that?” she asked.

“West of Galway City,” I said.

“Oh,” she said. “Can’t place it.”

Must be a Protestant if she doesn’t know Galway City, but then Maggie had never heard of Connemara and had only a vague notion of Galway City. And to me, Derry meant Doire Columcille—St. Columba’s Oak Grove—a holy place from ancient times that later became King Billy’s battleground. I’d no idea what it was like now, and as far as Ballymena . . .

“We’re near Belfast,” the woman offered.

“Oh,” I said. Protestant, surely. “I’m Honora Kelly.”

“Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Kelly.”

“Please call me Honora.”

“Honora,” she said. She hit the “H” hard, not breathing it out, saying “Ha-Nora,” not “Ah-Nora.”

“I’m Sarah Johnson.”

That confirmed it. “Thank you for the quilt, Mrs. Johnson.”

“Sarah,” she said. She told me her family was going to cousins in Amerikay who’d been there for generations and had fought in the American Revolution. “None in our family are fond of England,” she said.

“But aren’t you a Protestant?”

“We’re Presbyterians,” she said.

“Presbyterians,” I said. “And is that something different?”

That evening, Sarah brought Mr. Wilson, her pastor, over to our bunk. “We’re Protestants all right,” he told me, “but we protest the corruption of the Catholic Church
and
the Church of England.” A touch of Jackson here? Not really—a young man, thin and bookish-looking. “The rule of Rome gets between man and God. Every community should rule itself with the power shared out so that no one man has total control. No priests for us. The presbytery, laymen, choose a minister, and he’s answerable to them. Do you know the Constitution of the United States?”

“I’m sorry to say, sir, it’s not something I’ve come across,” I said.

“Well,” he said, “the principles in the Constitution of the United States come right from the Presbyterian Church. And you know”—he lowered his voice—“we’ve always been for an Ireland that would be free and independent.”

“The United Irishmen; I know them, sir—Wolfe Tone, and—”

“That’s right. And I believe someday the Harp will be new-strung.”

“I would agree with that, sir.”

Sarah was relieved after he left. “You never know what kind of prattle those ministers will come up with, but we keep them well in hand. And sure, isn’t it all the same God anyway?”

“It is, Sarah,” I said.

After that, Sarah joined Maggie, Máire, and me in the cooking line. One day I said, “Faraway hills are greener,” in Irish: Is glas ial no cnaic bhfad uihh. Maggie didn’t understand me at first, but when she put Donegal Irish on the phrase, didn’t Sarah get every word? Not very different from the Scots Gaelic she spoke, she told us.

For three weeks the sea behaved. A steady wind filled the sails, moving us along rightly. Then with no warning, the winds switched direction, tearing into the ship, swatting it around, bending us toward the sea while we huddled in our bunks, praying and pleading.

As the storm battered us, voices cried out, “God save us, God save us!”

Mr. Wilson prayed the loudest. “Lord Jesus,” he said, “you stilled the water. Calm the sea, we pray.”

“Amen,” from all of us. “Amen.”

When the sailors lashed the canvas across the opening to the upper decks, the Derry ones, who knew only too well the facts of the other tragedy, shouted out protests until the captain himself yelled through the covered hatch, “Would yese be flooded and drown? Stay quiet and don’t take so many breaths—ye’ll be fine!”

Don’t take so many breaths? With children crying all around us?

The ship pitched and wheeled and would have thrown us from our bunk but for the weight and length of the big boys crisscrossed over our legs, holding us down.

“Holy Saint Columcille,” said Maggie Doherty.

“Pray for us,” we answered.

“Blessed Saint Bridget,” I heard.

“Pray for us,” we said.

“Amen,” Sarah Johnson answered.

Family after family called out saints whose names I’d never heard of—local monks and nuns, holy men and women who’d lived in their area: Comgall and Colman, Fintan and Fergal, Davnet and Declan.

I gave them Mac Dara, St. Enda, and his sister Fanchea, then the Kellys’ Grellan.

The Presbyterians joined in, saying, “Pray for us,” after every name, even after Mr. Wilson reprimanded them: “Save your breath! Don’t call on pagans!”

No one paid him the least mind. Not enough breath to argue, only to murmur, “Pray for us, pray for us.” The sound comforted and quieted the children and calmed our fear.

After ten hours of this, even the hardiest were seasick beyond anything felt before. Vomit streamed down from the bunks onto the deck, mixing with the seawater flooding in through every crack and crevice.

“We’re going over!” someone shouted, and a few passengers jumped from their bunks, trying to climb up the steps, push back the canvas, get on the upper deck.

“Get back!” Charlie Doherty shouted.

A panicked rush could trample dozens.

Máire held Gracie at one end of the bunk. I cradled Stephen at the other. The children twined themselves around us—all sobbing, even Paddy.

Máire and I sang Mam’s lullaby to them.

Finally, the storm eased. The sailors raised the canvas sides. We sucked in the air.

“Thank God. Thank God,” from all sides.

The next day the sea calmed, the sun shone. The captain let us all on deck. We congratulated one another on surviving, praised God and all His saints, and agreed that we Irish were a wild, brave people altogether. No thought of Catholic and Protestant.

We’d left the North Atlantic, the captain told us. On the southern route now.

The good weather held, and two weeks after the storm, Maggie’s husband, Charlie, came to tell us he’d heard from the captain we’d arrive in four days.

Charlie, a small man with gingery hair, prided himself on being in the know. He referred often to his brother Peter in New Orleans, who had a job waiting for him. “Plenty of work in Amerikay,” he said.

We’d been at sea thirty-six days. It would be a forty-day crossing—that pleased Sarah Johnson. “We’re like Noah,” she said to Charlie, “and soon we’ll be seeing a bird with an olive branch. Land nearby.”

“We arrive tomorrow,” the captain announced. That night, all the passengers filled the top deck, as the sun pulled us west toward our new home. Birds flew through the sunset, soaring and swooping.

Both Patrick Donnelly, one of the Donegal boys, and Sam, Sarah Johnson’s oldest, brought out their fiddles and began to play a reel. It was impossible to
sit
and listen during a reel.

No one called out: “The Walls of Limerick,” “The Siege of Ennis.” Why give offense? Who knew what names they gave to their dances? Tonight, on the fortieth day of our voyage, with the deck steady and the night warm, I’d gladly dance “The Battle of the Boyne” reel.

“They can move, for all that they’re Protestants,” Máire said as we watched. “Tomorrow. Tomorrow we’ll be walking on the shores of Amerikay.” She got up and joined the dance.

I sat to the side, holding Stephen and Gracie until Bridget came to take their hands and bring them into the circle of children who were leaping and skipping—sea legs sturdy and land in sight.

The sets came together and bunched, and one of the Greencastle men called: “Swing your partner, take her home.”

Máire fit her foot against a sailor’s and whirled away.

The adults danced the patterns, but the children ducked and dived, not caring about steps. Paddy and Jamesy clasped their hands and made a bridge for the other children to run underneath.

Michael would have piped a glorious tune on such a night.

The bright stars and half-moon cast speckles of light onto the dark waves. October 31, 1848—Samhain Eve, the night this world and the next meet and mix. I looked up at the sky. Do you see us, Michael, crossing the last of the wide ocean, so far from our home? We’ve survived the passage that killed Dennis and so many others—buried at sea, the waters behind me a graveyard. Is it a lament you’d be playing, as well as a dance tune, if you were here, a stór? A lament, a dance tune, and then you’d strike up a marching song to give us courage. Faugh-a-Ballagh!

Soon after sunrise, the sailors’ shouts—“Land, land!”—woke us, and by midafternoon we were in the river, only hours from the port of New Orleans.

“Very lucky,” Charlie Doherty said, “to enter Amerikay on the Mississippi.”

Storms often drove ships bound for New York into the rocky shores of the North Atlantic. Here, the
Superior
followed the river’s curve into a crescent-shaped harbor. “Easy,” said Charlie as the sailors dropped anchor with all of us passengers on the deck, watching.

As soon as the ship stopped, a great blanket of heat dropped over us, as if the steam from a thousand boiling pots clogged the air.

“Hot,” said Máire.

“Hard to breathe,” I said.

“Humidity,” Charlie Doherty said. “It’s the humidity”—only he pronounced it “cue-midity.” “Tropical. New Orleans has the same climate as the Amazon Basin.”

Maggie Doherty nodded. “Charlie’s brother Peter wrote that we’d get used to it. Though the thought of summer . . .”

The first of November today, the new year—a good omen, that. No sickness on board, no quarantine. We’d be off the ship that very day, Charlie told us.

I returned Sarah Johnson’s quilt and said good-bye to her as the family departed.

Finally, our turn came. I carried Stephen, took Bridget’s hand. Máire held Gracie in her arms. We followed Johnny Og, Paddy, Jamesy, Daniel, and Thomas down the gangplank and boarded a wooden boat about the size of a curragh. Two sailors would row us to the dock.

“You’re red as anything,” Máire said to me as we settled into the boat. “Are you sick?”

“The heat,” I said. “Very warm.”

The sailors, young Derry fellows, moved us through the harbor with quick strokes of their oars. The movement of the boat stirred the air, but my skin had turned slick and clammy.

“Mam,” said Jamesy, “look.” He held up his arm to show me the water dripping down. “Am I melting away altogether, Mam?”

“Sweat, lad,” said the older sailor. “You’ll sweat plenty in Amerikay.”

“Jesus, Honora! Look at the size of this harbor,” Máire said. “There must be fifty sailing ships!”

Massive vessels, most taller than the
Superior
, crowded together, one hull almost scraping against the next, topsails near touching. The two sailors edged the dinghy into the narrow spaces between these monsters.

Johnny Og and Paddy tried to stand up to look around.

“Sit down, sit down!” I said.

But the younger sailor said, “No harm. Let them greet America on their feet—toe-to-toe. A tough enough place, and it smells out fear and worry. Look it in the eye, boys.”

Máire held Gracie, and Daniel stayed close to her. I had Stephen with me and Jamesy and Bridget. Thomas sat alone on the seat, looking backward, staring at the
Superior
. He’d enjoyed himself on the ship, no question. Thomas had refused to stay belowdecks. Máire had found him one afternoon in the captain’s cabin, entertaining the captain’s wife with tales of balls and hunts and all the goings-on of the Scoundrel Pykes, shocking her to the core of her Presbyterian heart, avid though she was for every detail.

“Sodom and Gomorrah,” she kept saying, “Sodom and Gomorrah.”

Didn’t he take the hand of the captain’s wife—at seven years old—“Thank you for your hospitality.”

“Where does he get it?” Máire kept asking. “Where? There was no gallantry at the Scoundrel Pykes, I can tell you that,” she said.

I touched the package of sovereigns under my skirt. Safe. We were closer now to the crowds of people on the docks.

“What are those smells?” Máire asked the young sailor.

Not ocean smells, not fish . . . Something else pushing at us through the hot, heavy air.

Máire breathed in. “Nice.”

“Coffee and cinnamon,” the sailor said, rowing us right up to the wharf. “See those heaps of yellow fruit? Bananas, ma’am.”

“Bananas?”

“Loads of cargo from Mexico, Cuba, Costa Rica, Puerto Rico, all the Spanish places,” said the sailor. “Spain and France fought over New Orleans for years and years. Old Napoleon won it, then turned around, sold it to the Americans, but it’s still French—though different from France.”