Maggie's Door

by Patricia Reilly Giff

  Directly across from him, the porthole was green with the froth of water, covered with it, and as the ship righted itself, the water disappeared, and a circle of sky appeared with a strange yellow color.

  “She could not have gone into the galley,” he said. “I would have seen her.”

  “Find her, please.”

  He nodded at the woman and ran down the passageway past the galley, thinking about being deep inside the ship when the next roll might turn it over. Still he kept going through the small maze where the passageway was so narrow there was room for only one person. And she wasn’t there. She might be anywhere.

  He felt dizzy from the motion of the ship, and when he went back again past the galley, the cabinets were banging open, cups and saucers were in dozens of pieces, bags of flour torn open and mixed with soup and water.

  And then he remembered that the girl had said how much she liked the look of the waves. He went toward the ladder and climbed as Garvey had done, feeling the railing tilt under his fingers, but smelling the difference in the air, the freshness of it, the cold of it.

  Rope had been slung across the deck and he held on as he inched his way across in the drenching rain. He could see sailors climbing the mast but Garvey was nowhere in sight. It took another moment to see the girl huddled against the railing, holding on to the rope, and he went toward her calling, “Elizabeth!”

  He led her back to her cabin, her mother reaching out to her as he backed away and went down the passageway to the galley.

  NINETEEN

  NORY

  At last it was quiet in the dark hold. Mrs. Casey’s pig squealed once and was still. They were past those terrible waves, and Nory pictured them crashing across the ocean to beat themselves out on the cliffs of Maidin Bay. Poor Samson had stopped that terrible groaning noise, but others around her made up for it: People all around her were crying.

  Mrs. Casey slid out of the bunk above her. “My poor piglet is gone,” she said. “He’s nothing now but a wee gray lump in his bag. He must have been caught beneath us in the berth and crushed.”

  Nory shook her head. She remembered her own pig, Muc, rubbing her sides against the pen, eyes turned up to her as if she were a thin old woman herself. Ah, Muc.

  “Isn’t it strange?” Mrs. Casey said. “I’ve lost almost everything I’ve loved. My house, the bed on a stand my father made for us, the sight of the mountain with its wreath of mist in the morning, and I never once cried. But now I can’t seem to stop.”

  Nory bit her lip. It was hard to know what to say. But before she could open her mouth, Mrs. Casey drew herself up. “I’ll go up on top and give my piglet a decent sea burial. At least the landlord never had him to himself.”

  “What is it?” Patch asked, his head popping up from under a coat on the bunk. “Who is going to be buried?”

  “It’s nothing,” Nory said, waiting until Mrs. Casey had climbed the stairway and disappeared in back of a knot of people. “Now, Patch. Would you like to go up to the far side of the deck? We will see the sunshine at last, and cook a wee cup of oats just for you.”

  Patch slid out of the bunk. She could see he was dizzy. She felt dizzy herself. It was strange to feel the deck under her, steady again.

  She raised her head. “Granda, come with us.”

  He didn’t answer, but she could hear him coughing. She called again.

  “I will just stay here for a while,” he said, “and sleep now that it’s calm.”

  Up on deck Nory waited in line for her chance at the stove. Eliza slept too, she told herself, rolled into the smallest ball in her berth with two other women. It didn’t mean anything that Granda was not up and about.

  Still she was uneasy, and during the day she kept calling up, “Are you all right, Granda?” She tried to tell herself that she had the cures if he needed them, bags of dried foxglove, packets of marigold; she would keep him alive no matter what.

  In the middle of the night Mrs. Casey plucked at Nory’s sleeve. “The old man is having trouble breathing.”

  Nory reached for her bag, fingers trembling, fumbling, searching for Anna’s packets of leaves and flowers, Anna’s weeds, spilling a few in her haste.

  What would Anna have done?

  She didn’t even know what was happening to Granda. Was it the spirits Eliza had spoken of?

  Mrs. Casey stood next to the bunk, the light of the flame from the lamp reflected in her eyes. She put her hand on Nory’s shoulder. “I think it may be his time,” she said slowly.

  “How can you say that?” Nory looked at her fiercely. “We have come so far. He must get to Maggie’s. We must be together again, all of us: Maggie, and Da, and Celia.” She could hardly get the words out. “Patch. And Granda.”

  Mrs. Casey reached out to her. “You are young, you will start over,” she said. “America will be your country. But for the old people, for your old granda, to leave the country he loved and begin again . . .” Her voice trailed off.

  Nory pulled away from Mrs. Casey. She had the cure for him right in her hands, those small cloth bags filled with seeds and leaves Anna had gathered for her for just this purpose.

  Mr. Casey came down from the top berth and stood with Mrs. Casey, running his hand over his sparse beard. “Go up to him,” he said.

  Nory climbed up to see Granda lying on his side. She could hear his breathing now, in and out, and then it stopped . . . and began again.

  She crouched over, feeling the bags with her fingers. Moss for wounds, bark of the barberry for stomach ailments; dandelion was there too, and dried garlic.

  And even more than the bags were the other things she had learned from Anna: ashes to cover chicken pox, the smoke from a hot coal to stop sneezing.

  She reached for his shoulder. “Tell me,” she whispered. “What hurts you?”

  He turned slightly. “Maggie?”

  “No, it’s Nory.”

  “Ah, Nory,” he said, and the words were nothing more than a breath.

  “What is it?” She put her hand on his forehead and could feel the heat. So fever, then. The only thing she could think of for that was food. And there wouldn’t be any until morning.

  Still she mixed leaves from one bag with dried flowers from another and added precious drops of water that Mrs. Casey gave her from a small bottle. She spooned the mixture into his mouth, drop by drop, during the rest of the night. Then, feeling her legs trembling underneath her, her eyes drooping, she went up on deck in the morning to beg hot water from Garvey.

  She slept in snatches that day and the next, trying first one of Anna’s cures and then another. Nothing helped. She’d drift off, her head jerking, holding Granda’s hand in hers, hardly paying attention to Patch as he told her about the farm they’d have: “Cows and hens, Nory. Tell that to Granda. Tell him not to forget. There will be a stream. It will have a great salmon that will swim up to see us.”

  And Eliza’s voice in her head: “Bad spirits that swirl around us.”

  Why, Nory wondered, had Anna’s cures worked when Eliza was sick, and why were they not working for Granda?

  Sometimes she’d doze off and Anna’s face would float in front of hers. Anna’s dear face. How had she ever thought she could cure the way Anna had?

  On the morning of the third day Granda turned his head slightly toward her. “I must go home.”

  It reminded her of Mrs. Mallon. Wasn’t that what she had said? Had Mrs. Mallon reached Maidin Bay? Was she with Anna or had she died on the road? How terrible, Mrs. Mallon dead. She thought about Sean and never seeing either of them again.

  “I must go home,” he whispered again.

  “We are on the ship,” she said carefully. “The Samson, remember?”

  His fingers plucked at the coat that covered his shoulders. “If I go too far, I will never go back,” he said.

  He was raving, she thought, not knowing what he was saying. “Take a little water,” she said. “I have put in leaves for your throat.”

  But
then with a slight movement of his head she could see his eyes. She saw that he knew her, but she had to lean close to hear him.

  “You have been a great girl always,” he said. “You will get Patch to New York.”

  “Oh, Granda.” She took his hand. It was cold, really cold. How could it be with the fever of his head? She had to have something to give him; she had to remember all the things Anna had told her. But it was hard to think. And he was speaking again.

  “You will think of me in Maidin Bay,” he said, giving her hand the slightest squeeze. “Will you do that?”

  It was the last thing he said. A few hours later, when Garvey pulled the hatch cover away, letting light beam down onto them, she saw that he had stopped breathing.

  She rocked back and forth on the edge of the bunk, hearing a strange sound coming from her own throat. Keening, Mrs. Casey called it, holding Nory to her.

  How could she ever tell Maggie? How could she tell any of them that she hadn’t saved him?

  At last they all helped, wrapping Granda in his coat, Mrs. Casey combing his soft white beard. He would be buried there in the sea, Nory told herself, but his soul would be on its way to Maidin Bay. He’d see the cliffs again, and their wee house. He’d find Bird, the grandmother she had never met.

  Later in the day she took the small cloth bags that held all of Anna’s cures and tossed them over the side of the ship. They bobbed on the water and then at last they were gone. She’d never think about cures again.

  TWENTY

  SEAN

  It took days to get the galley right again. In between chopping and cutting and stirring the soup Sean spent the time down on his hands and knees. He picked up broken cups and plates; he swept the piles of powdery flour and lumpy meal into a bin. The cook was raging: He sent more crockery across the galley to smash against the bulkhead, spoons and pieces of biscuit following. He dug his knife into the great wooden table and clenched his filthy apron with huge hands.

  Sean never raised his head. He had seen a turtle on the strand once, its head deep inside its shell for safety. He had knelt on the sand looking into the turtle’s eyes, then helped Francey turn it back to the sea. He felt the same way now as the turtle must have felt, wanting to bury his head in his neck. How had he ever come to be here on this ship, in this galley, when he should have been home working the lazy beds for potato planting, or standing on the misty cliff top with Nory, the wind whistling around them?

  He looked toward the place where he slept. It was a narrow spot under a shelf, and he wished he could curl up there under his old coat.

  At last the cleanup after the storm was finished. He mopped the galley as the cook sank down in his trundle bed, his eyes closed.

  Now Sean could leave the galley; he might even go up on deck. He had been there only twice during the whole journey, once during the storm and once at night when stars coated the sky all the way to the horizon.

  Where he wanted to go, he could not go. He wanted to walk along the passageway to that cabin and look at the girl’s book with its stories of wolves and lambs and foxes. He wanted to learn a word, learn a page.

  But the cook never slept for long. He’d take a few minutes here, a few there, like the cat they’d had once in Maidin Bay. And when Sean least expected it, those cruel eyes would be on him, that great mouth open to yell vile things.

  But now the cook gave him a pitcher of a foul-smelling drink. “Go up onto the deck,” he said. “Give this to Garvey. He forgot to take it with him for the captain.”

  Sean took a quick look. Was Garvey in trouble? If something set the cook off against one of them, the other would be in for trouble as well. But the cook turned away without saying anything more.

  Sean went past the man’s cabin quickly, but even so he could see the woman sitting on the edge of her bunk with a bit of sewing and Elizabeth bent over her book. Neither of them looked up and he hurried past.

  He stood on the deck at the top of the ladder. The sea was glass smooth and he remembered days when he had been home with all his brothers, Francey and Liam and Michael, out in the bay when they could see the bowl of it surrounded by the cliffs. He wondered where Liam and Michael were, fishing somewhere out on the ocean. Maybe someday they’d travel to the shore of America too, in one of their ships. He looked out at the water, able to see so far, it seemed he could look back to Ireland and forward to America.

  For that moment Sean was happy to see the light that played across the water, to glance up and see a sky so blue it hurt his eyes. The sun warmed his face so his skin and hair felt dry instead of wet and cold, and he could almost feel the dampness leaving his clothing.

  Brooklyn would be like this, he was sure of it, with a bright sun throwing shadows across the land or a soft rain that would green up the meadows.

  The man was on the deck. Sean saw him. Had Elizabeth told him about the book? He went quickly toward Garvey with the pitcher in his hand.

  Garvey was at the fireboxes with a line of people in front of him. “Oh, lad,” he said. “You’re up in the daylight.”

  “Only for this one thing,” Sean said. “You are to give this pitcher to the captain.”

  They stared at each other. “I’ve forgotten it today,” Garvey said, his eyes worried.

  Sean went back to the ladder, moving quickly now because the cook might be waiting, judging how long it took him.

  He felt the hand on his shoulder then, and jumped away, feeling his heart pound up into his throat.

  The book man.

  “I didn’t mean to frighten you,” he said.

  Sean could hardly look up at him.

  “You found Elizabeth,” the man said. “I thank you for that.”

  Only that. Not the book at all. Just bringing Elizabeth back to the cabin in the storm. He shrugged a little to let the man know he was glad to have done it.

  “She might have been swept away,” the man said.

  “It’s all right.” Sean took a breath, thinking of the cook in his trundle bed, asleep but not asleep, waiting to pounce on him.

  He went past the man and back toward the galley, and this time Elizabeth looked up as he passed and called to him.

  He wouldn’t have gone into the room, but the mother wasn’t there and the book was in Elizabeth’s hand, and so, just for a minute, he told himself, he’d go in and look at the book once more.

  It wasn’t until later, much later, that he was aware of how much time had gone by. He backed away from Elizabeth and put his hand on the cabin door, almost afraid to open it.

  TWENTY-ONE

  NORY

  She sat on the deck in a place out of the wind, her head back against the bulkhead.

  “Stay there,” Eliza had said. “I’ll take care of the little one.”

  Before she wouldn’t have trusted Patch with Eliza, but now all she wanted to do was to sleep or to sit somewhere doing nothing, thinking nothing.

  She glanced at the people around her. She made herself concentrate on them. So many of them. Some were leaning on the railing. One man had a long string. He had attached a shirt to it and dangled it far over the side of the ship. Washing his clothes, she told herself.

  Children were everywhere, chasing each other, running around knots of women who leaned together, talking.

  After a while she closed her eyes. On such a day, with the sun warm on her eyelids, it was hard to imagine the terrible storm they’d been through. It was hard to imagine that she would never see Granda again.

  How could that be?

  She’d never again walk along the strand at Maidin Bay holding his hand. His hand was hard, she remembered, with calluses on his palms from digging in the potato field. She’d never sit in their house listening to his stories while the fire threw shadows across the whitewashed walls. So many stories he had told: about being a young man and fighting with the French against the English, about meeting her grandmother Bird at the fair in Drumatoole.

  She thought of Sean then, and the ribbon he had
pulled from her hair when she was eight.

  Everyone was gone.

  And Anna’s cures, too.

  In her mind she saw Anna bent over her table, her head raised in her little white cap, telling her, “If you want to cure, you have to know what will help and what won’t.”

  She had knelt on Granda’s bunk, Anna’s seeds spilling on the coats, not knowing what would work, what wouldn’t work.

  She’d never try to cure anyone again. How terrible to think of a life without it, though. She had loved grinding the bits and pieces of flowers and leaves together; she had loved listening to Anna telling her about what to do, showing her how to soothe a cough, to bind a broken bone.

  But maybe she had given Granda the wrong cure, done the wrong thing. Maybe she knew nothing about cures that would help anyone.

  You’ve healed your foot, Anna said in her mind.

  It might have healed anyway.

  What about Eliza?

  Eliza was too tough to die.

  Nory couldn’t even cry. Her throat burned, and the back of her eyes. The wind had turned and she could feel her hair blowing against her face. If only she could sleep for a moment.

  She heard someone leaning over her. “Miss.”

  She opened her eyes. It was Garvey, the steward. His thin face was red and she could see his hand trembling just a bit.

  “I know you can heal,” he said.

  “That I cannot,” she said.

  “My friend is hurt,” he told her. “He has been burned.”

  It ran through her mind quickly. Buttermilk for sunburn. But for serious burns, one part beeswax to four parts mutton fat. Add camomile flowers. Keep the wound clean; keep it covered.

  But was it beeswax? Was it camomile? She didn’t know anymore.

  You do, Anna said.

  Where would she even find beeswax or mutton fat? And she had thrown the camomile over the side of the ship. “I’m sorry,” she told him. “It’s no use.”

  Garvey looked desperate. “Do you know anyone then who will help?”

  And then something else, something Anna had said that Nory hadn’t thought of since Granda died. “Sometimes my cures work, and sometimes they don’t. I wish I knew why.”