From the bedroom came the sound of coughing. And then more coughing. It was amazing how quickly her cough had fallen from the coveted melody it was last night to its usual rank of plain old sickness. As I scrubbed my hands, I made a silent vow to be the very first to her bedside after school . . . before Ethel could wiggle in her skinny little caboose.
Spotting me near the sink, Mary smiled. “Wonderful, Maggie,” she said. “Thank you. Once you’re finished with the dishes, you should hurry or you’ll be late to school.”
“But it’s not my turn . . . ,” I started to argue, but she was clearly gone, and so I began the darned dishes.
Thomas dropped his oatmeal bowl in the sink with a smirk.
“I hate you,” I whispered.
He popped me one on the top of my head.
I went after him, soapy hands and all, but my father came between us. “Enough playtime. There is work to be done,” he bellowed in his jolly way as he dropped his dirty bowl into what had sadly become my sink full of dirty dishes. “Now let me feel that head.” His big hands massaged where Thomas had bruised me through my thick auburn hair.
“This,” he said, “is the head of a fine surgeon.”
He always said this.
My father was a practiced phrenologist: someone who believed the shape and size of our skulls revealed our character, our skills, and our abilities. By trade, he was a sculptor, chipping away at blocks of marble until a beautiful angel emerged, destined to decorate the headstone of a rich Roman Catholic or Protestant of Corning. But to chisel each individual cherub’s likeness, he studied the skull, or phrenology.
Father believed the head was the sculptured expression of the soul. How wide-set the eyes, the shape of the ridge between them, a turned-up nose, how full or thin the lips, bulges in front of or behind the ears—all had meaning. A researcher had to be inquisitive, with curiosity bumps along the back of his cranium; a musician needed to have order and time over his eyebrows; and a brilliant doctor must possess the proper protuberances around the ears, which I had, as Father always said proudly. So, I would be a doctor. Because of my large protuberances. And the first thing I’d do was cure my mother.
* * *
Mary was right, I was late heading out for school. Not that Miss Hayes would mind. Girls were often late, and it seemed the older we got the later we became. Although this might make leaving school early to keep my vow a bit trickier this afternoon. I would have to catch up, and stay caught up, which I could surely do. I was good at school. I worked hard. Working hard at school was a requirement of a future doctor. Dr. McMichael had told me this much the day I splinted John McGill’s arm using the branch that cracked off the tree when he fell from it. When I’d asked about other requirements, the doctor had laughed and said I’d get over my desire to be a doctor by that time. Out of respect, I didn’t point out what a ratbag he was.
I hurried down the hill, not because I was late, but because, as usual, I was cold. The town of Corning hugged a steep hill rising up from the Chemung River. Along the river flats lived the factory workers who blew and cut the glass at Corning Glass Works. Their slouching houses were held together by laundry lines flapping with wash under which children scampered about like squirrels. The flats sat inside the black smoke belching from the furnace stacks of the factories. The hill sat above the smoke. On the hill lived the people who owned and managed the factory. Their giant houses loomed over two or three children so bundled against the cold they could barely waddle from their grand front entryways to their waiting carriage doors.
My family lived beyond the hill—in the woods alongside the Erie Railroad tracks. We weren’t a part of the flats. But we also weren’t a part of the hill. We were just ourselves, and a few scattered neighbors who called the woods their home.
I passed over West Fourth, my best friend Emma’s street. I’m sure she was already bent over her mathematics. Protestants were never late to school. And Emma was a Protestant, her father a manager of finance at the factory. Her house on the hill was a marvel of rooms, each larger even than our attic, with ceilings twice as high and store-bought furniture everywhere. So many chairs. There was only Emma and her older brother, James, and her mother and father. Four people and a glut of places to sit. In our house, my father had made every stick of furniture, and there were considerably fewer chairs than there were Higginses. To win one, a Higgins had to arrive early and be ready to defend it, as any Higgins with a heartier punch could swiftly remove you. Thomas always sat comfortably.
I slid into school and took my seat next to Nan. The coal stove was chugging, and I felt as though my frozen body was melting as Nan explained where we were in the mathematics lesson.
I finished my figures in a dreamy state, but still long before Nan finished hers. Nan was a writer, not a mathematician. She even won a prize for a story she wrote for a children’s magazine, The Youth’s Companion, this past Christmas. Mother kept a copy of it in the drawer with her Bible, a place where I had so wanted my wildflower report to find its way. There it would have nestled next to the single pressed chicory bloom she and I had collected on a long-ago sunny spring morning. I can’t remember why it had just been the two of us. I only remember that it had . . . along with the memory of the moment we came upon them. A field of bright blue, as if pieces of the sky had sprinkled down upon the greening earth. She turned to me with such joy that I instantly felt every last blossom had sprung straight from my heart.
“Let’s pick them all,” I’d suggested.
She had laughed, the sound of it swirling through the flowers. “No, Margaret Louise. You can’t pick chicory. It won’t keep. The blooms will fade to white by this afternoon,” she explained. “We need to enjoy them right now.”
She looked off over the field and breathed in deeply, and then she reached out and plucked a single stem. For me.
When we arrived home, she placed it gently between the pages of the Bible where it quickly turned white, just as she said it would. But I didn’t listen to her advice. The sun, the flowers, her smile—I’d enjoyed them every day since.
Glancing over at Nan’s work, I noticed she had passed by some of her problems. I leaned across the desk and began to help. Later, she’d do the same for my composition, correcting my grammar. Mary usually sat with us, but she didn’t need any help in her subjects. She was a master of them all. If my father ever played around with Mary’s head, he’d find plenty of meaningful bumps.
Over lunch I plotted my early exit from school, daydreaming about the warm position Ethel had occupied this morning. Emma was munching on hazelnuts and chatting about a new porcelain doll her mother had brought over for her from Germany. Thank goodness Nan was listening because I wasn’t. Emma never grew tired of those glass-eyed demons. I found them all a bit terrifying. I blinked at her as she expounded in detail on the doll’s corset, but my thoughts sailed off to my newly forming plan.
The class would end with a reading. We always did. It would be Milton’s Paradise Lost. It always was. I despised this poem. One woman destroys the world and sticks the rest of us with a lifetime of the bloody and painful birthing of babies? Really, that first man on Earth could have just not eaten the darned apple. However much I hated this poem, I planned to be the first volunteer to declaim it. And when Miss Hayes called up the next reader, I would return to my seat, swipe up my books, and act as though I was heading for the necessary. Miss Hayes wouldn’t stop the reading to ask questions, and I’d be out the door before Ethel could squeeze out her first whine. It was Friday. A long way from Monday and consequences. If Miss Hayes even remembered by then. My only regret was leaving the heat of the schoolhouse early because it was also a long way from Monday and a coal stove full of coal.
Every subject brought us closer to my plan. History came and went. French . . . le même. And just as I suspected, Milton was called forth from the shelf and I raised my hand high. Miss Hayes smiled at my enthusiasm, causing me a bit of momentary shame at my scheming. But it passed a
s soon as she called on me, and my plan was kicked into action.
I positioned my books, ignoring Nan’s questioning glance, and trotted to the front of the class. But then Miss Hayes placed Milton back on the shelf.
“I know how much you love plays, Margaret,” she said. “How about we begin The Lady of Lyons?”
I was thrilled to have Milton’s truly blank verse replaced with such a drama! I had to admit, I was quite the orator. Even Mary agreed. She said I was versatile. And Mary should know, she adored plays, and understood more about the theater than Mr. William Shakespeare. Which was by no means an exaggeration.
I threw myself into the reading.
“This is thy palace, where the perfumed light
steals through the mist of alabaster lamps,
and every air is heavy with the sighs
of orange groves, and music from sweet lutes
and murmurs of low fountains, that gush forth
I’ the midst of roses!”
When I took a breath, I heard a few snorts from the McGill brothers sitting closest to me. Thomas heard them too. My heart curled into a smile as I thought of how they would pay for those piggy noises. Thomas and I might be at each other’s throats every day of our lives, but my throat was a Higgins throat. And Thomas Higgins didn’t like pig noises.
I read on, lost in the love story of Princess Pauline and Claude Melnotte, the handsome son of the gardener, forgetting all about my plan until Miss Hayes stood and applauded. It was then that I realized I’d read straight through the entire first act and she was dismissing us.
First, I gave a quick bow—because it’s customary to do so when receiving such thunderous applause—then I tossed the play onto her desk and dove for my books.
Everyone was scrambling into the aisles between the desks, forcing me to elbow my way through to the door, with a special jab for the closest McGill. I was almost free when there in my path stood Ethel Higgins.
“Maggie,” she moaned. “Will you carry . . .”
I shoved past her, determined to let nothing get in the way of my plan. Grabbing my overcoat, I leaped down the steps, and . . . bumped right into Mary standing in Father’s old kip boots, and bundled against the cold by a large scarf made of thrown-off trousers. Mary wasn’t Ethel. She couldn’t be shoved past.
Croup
“There’s croup at the O’Donnell’s,” Mary reported.
“But, Mother,” I said.
Mary sighed. “It’s bad, Maggie.”
As we headed toward our closest neighbors I formed a new plan. Because I was versatile. Once we hit the split in the road between our house and the O’Donnell’s, I’d ask Mary’s permission to turn for home to start the potatoes for dinner. Mary would grant it, given that I wasn’t often excited about cooking. All was not lost.
But then it was.
Right before we hit the fork in the road, Mary asked Nan to head home and begin the potatoes. I wanted to argue but didn’t. I was the future doctor, so I should be tending the sick. Not Nan. Nan was the writer. And she always said she did her best writing while she mended and peeled. I watched my sister head for home, my heart warm with self-sacrifice for allowing her to go without argument. Although within ten paces, I was freezing again and my heart was as cold as the rest of me.
When we turned onto the rutted track that led to the O’Donnell’s, Mary made another awful announcement. “Father said to bring any healthy children home with us.”
“But there are a hundred of them,” I blurted.
“There are eleven, Maggie,” Mary said.
I knew very well how many O’Donnells there were. This wasn’t the point. But the point didn’t matter. Now all my cold heart could muster was not wishing illness on a herd of O’Donnell children while trying even harder not to envision my dinner plate with a solitary spoonful of Nan’s boiled cabbage and potatoes.
My stomach rumbled.
Our dinners were spread pretty thin across Father’s marble-topped table, even if you weren’t rounding up a dozen O’Donnells to squeeze around it, and tomorrow’s breakfast was a long way off.
“Are they staying the night?” I asked, not hiding my gloom.
“Children need to be looked after and fed, and we can’t expect Mrs. O’Donnell to do it when she’s tending to her sick ones, can we, Margaret Louise?”
It’s what my mother called me. Mary used it to remind me of my duty, but all it did was vex me. If it were Ethel, I’d tell her to shut her saucebox, but you didn’t say that kind of thing to Mary. Instead I asked as sweetly as I could, “What about expecting ugly Mr. O’Donnell to do it?”
Mary didn’t answer. Instead, she walked faster, leaving me to think about my words. I sped up and kept pace, leaving my words to think about themselves.
* * *
The O’Donnell’s yard was littered with wash buckets, laundry baskets, garbage, pigs, and little O’Donnells, who dashed about between the pigs while the laundry laid wrinkled and wet in its baskets.
“Laundry’s not hung,” I said before I could stop myself, and then cringed in the moment of silence that followed, hoping upon hope Mary didn’t suggest I hang it.
“I’ll hang it,” Ethel said, turning toward the laundry without even throwing me a sour look for not offering to help, which really peeved me. What a lickfinger. Mother wasn’t even here to see her doing the right thing. And Mary seeing it didn’t count. Although Mary did throw me a puckered look, which I pretended I didn’t see. It was bad enough I was forced to pin Thomas’s underwear to the line every day of my life; not even the croup would get me pinning up O’Donnell underwear. And when Mary headed for the house, I was right on her boots.
It was dark inside, as the late afternoon sun seemed unable to cram itself through the only window next to the cookstove. Mr. O’Donnell rocked a toddler in his lap inside the door. His red-rimmed, glassy eyes landed on us like a nervous fly. At first it looked like he might be corned, but I realized he was sick. Real sick. His neck was thick and his breath a rasp. Now my words caught up to me, and though it was truthful he was ugly, I felt terrible about him being so ill.
Mary reached out and eased the sleeping heap of rags from his lap. He allowed her to take the little one, dropping his empty arms with a sigh.
Like our own house, there was only one other room besides the kitchen. This door was open, and Mrs. O’Donnell shuffled out. Although I could tell right away she didn’t have the croup, she looked worse than Mr. O’Donnell. Exhausted and pregnant.
“I won’t hug you, Mary,” she said, her arms hanging limply at her side. “But know I’d like to.”
“No need, Mrs. O’Donnell,” my sister responded. “Go lie down and rest. We’ll get things in order here before we take the little ones.” This was a hint for me to get to work.
I knew exactly where to begin, as croup was as common as fleas in fall. I searched out a water bucket and headed out to the well. The hoarse barking of croup dried out the throat. Cool water soothed it. This, and a wet cloth to the forehead, would bring down the fever. I’d let Mary comfort. She was an expert at it. Like my father, I was better at treatment. Although my curative measures left out whiskey, but only because I wasn’t allowed to carry a flask around with me as he did.
Once I’d watered the sick and helped Mary set up and light the croup kettles, the only things left were the dirty dishes and the diaper bucket brimming with a dark mess of diapers. I chose the dishes, even though I knew I’d eventually have to plunge my hands into that diaper bucket. I picked my way back to the sink with fresh water, stepping over rags, boots, coats, shoes, and whatnot. Peering down into the pile of dishes, I didn’t bother to wait for my eyes to adjust to the dark. Best to just start scrubbing. Which I did, for a very long time, while I listened to Mary continue to stem the misery that was croup. Lastly, I tackled the diapers. But even if my heart had finally found its way to the right place, nothing could stop the smell of those diapers from tossing my stomach around.
; I was out pinning the clean diapers to the line when Mary and Ethel stumbled onto the front porch. Mary began the collection of healthy O’Donnells. She and Ethel would then start for home. Not only was I being left to finish hanging laundry, but I’d also be the very last to enter our house tonight, breaking my vow to be the first to my mother’s bedside. Served me and my slow-moving cold heart right.
“Edwin,” I heard Mary say to the O’Donnell’s oldest. “Why don’t you stay back to help your mother.”
Edwin was almost fourteen, and he gave Mary a sour frown for instructing him. If it had been Thomas, I’d have knocked him one for that look. Mary didn’t seem to notice.
My sisters headed down the dusky road with their charges. I tried not to stare too longingly after them. Although a few steps later, Mary called back over her shoulder. “Maggie, come along. Edwin can finish the hanging.”
I quickly caught up to the crowd in the growing dark. Happy. Even if my heart was mostly cold as ice and the only thing waiting at home was a herd of dirty little O’Donnell feet to wash before bed.
March 1, 1899
The wagon hits a rut and I accidentally whack my brother in the head with the umbrella. Thomas throws me a black look.
“Whoops.” I shrug.
I swear he’s purposely steering our old horse into every rut in the street.
“You know I was here yesterday,” he grumps.
“I know.”
“And the day before.”
“I know,” I say more forcefully.
I expected my brother to be angry. And I probably deserve more grief than he’s giving me, but I’m annoyed anyway, and I can’t keep it out of my tone.
“You’re not right in the head, Maggie Higgins. Do you know that?”
I tighten my grip on the umbrella. I’m not right in the head, and I do know it. But it’s not from lack of trying. Why doesn’t life ever give you anything for trying?
I can’t help envisioning my mother lying in her sick bed. What has life given her? And she’s done a heap more than try.
What Every Girl Should Know Page 2