by Lisa Carey
“How will I go on without him?” she croaks.
“Emer,” Rose says, all semblance of optimism gone. “He was never yours to begin with.”
Emer keens then, cries into the damp cushion of ground, into the yielding body of her twin. She wants to cry her life out. She won’t even come close.
“I hate you, Rose,” Emer says. And that’s when Rose says something so manipulative and cruel that Emer knows they are related after all. And it works.
“If you take your own life, you’ll go straight to hell. How will you ever see him then?”
Chapter 29
Birth
April 1960
One night, when the days have gotten so long it is nine o’clock before the purple leaves the sky, Emer, waiting by the fire, doesn’t turn or start when she hears the door creak open behind her. It is not Niall but Brigid who steps into the light of the hearth. Emer has spent so much time sleeping, her dreams bleed into waking life with ease. She thinks this is another dream.
Brigid is in labor. She is pacing the room, grunting, one hand below her massive belly, the other pressing her lower back, stopping to squat and moan. Her movements and noises are crude, feral, like an animal, a cow giving birth in a field rather than a woman in a house.
“Emer,” she pants between pains, and to Emer it is a breath of memory, Brigid lying beneath her and crying her name. “Emer, help me.”
And though if she came to Emer in the daytime, in the world, Emer might scratch her eyes out, right now she does the only thing she can. Brigid holds her hand out and Emer takes it.
She leads her out the back door, not into the dark island night, but into a corridor. They walk on cold floors and enter a room full of women laboring, separated by linen partitions, so they each have a hell of their own. Nuns move back and forth in white habits, their faces pinched and void of emotion. The collective moan is deafening. It is the hospital on the mainland where she had Niall.
“In here,” Brigid says, and she pulls Emer through a door into a white chamber with round brick walls, a spiral metal staircase in the middle leading up to a revolving light. A small oval window looks out on a violent sea.
“Where are we?” Emer asks.
There is a single bed with a metal frame and Brigid grabs hold of it and squats again. This time she screams. She is so drenched with sweat it looks as though she has gone swimming in her nightgown. Her features are distorted with fear and pain.
“Emer,” she pants, when she can. “You’ll need to catch the baby.”
“I’ll get a nun,” Emer says.
“No,” Brigid says. “They want to gie me the gas. I need you to do it.”
“You can’t have your baby in a lighthouse,” Emer says. She almost laughs at how ridiculous this sounds.
“Please, Emer.” Her breath is quickening again, her short break is over, another pain rising in her like a lethal wave.
“I can’t! My hands. I’ll hurt the baby.”
Brigid roars this time, head back, hair dark and tangled, she howls toward the sky. She looks like some old druid warrior, queens who birthed babies standing in their castle bedrooms and then ran downstairs with their swords to join the fight.
“Now, Emer!” she thunders, and Emer darts forward. Brigid is lying half on the bed, her feet on the floor, her legs spread, thighs trembling from the effort. Emer lifts her nightgown and crouches in front of that dark, deep cavern between her legs and as Brigid screams again, screams like she’s being murdered, a glistening wet mound slides out into Emer’s waiting hands.
“It’s in the caul,” Emer whispers, and Brigid slumps onto the mattress, gulping for breath and sobbing and reaching out all at once. Emer lifts the silver sac, warm, jiggling like a jellyfish she has picked up from the sand, and hands it to Brigid. Brigid tears it open with her finger, liquid gushes out, and she peels the veil away from the tranquil face of a sleeping baby.
Not Niall. Not a monster or a saint or a changeling. Just a newborn baby, like any other. Except to Brigid, who looks at it as if it is a marvel.
Brigid lies back on the bed, wiping at the baby’s face with her nightgown, pulling its arms and legs out of the pouch where it has grown. It’s a girl. Brigid is crying and laughing at the same time. The baby breathes, opens its eyes, looks intently at her mother, then to Emer, as if waiting for instructions.
“Thank you,” Brigid whispers, and Emer, who has no rage left, only regret, leans over and kisses her lover gently on her full, smiling mouth. She puts her hand out and cups the warm little head, so warm it is like she is made of soft skin and fire. She can hardly believe that Niall’s head was once this size, that it fit so delicately in the palm of her cursed hand. That he was, however briefly, hers.
“Isn’t she beautiful?” Brigid whispers.
Just before she wakes, sweaty and panting from the strange and vivid dream, Brigid wraps the silver mantle, the womb that was lent to her, in a piece of blue flannel, and gives it to Emer like a gift.
“There’s no one left to save,” Emer says.
“There’s you,” Brigid whispers. And then she is gone.
Emer wakes in bed, realizing she fell asleep before ever getting up to go to the fire at all. She peels back the blankets and looks around, but there is nothing, only damp sheets left from her thrashing, and a fierce hunger like she hasn’t had in weeks. She eats the dinner Rose left for her and boils and eats six eggs, one after the other, spooning them hot and runny straight into her ravenous mouth. When her mother and Rose wake up, they find that Emer has made the tea and a loaf and already gone to the hens to replace the eggs she stole in the nighttime.
“You’re up, so you are,” their mother slurs.
“For all it’s worth,” Emer counters.
“You were always a keen little thing,” her mother says.
This is not how Emer thinks of herself, not at all.
Rose has told Emer how their mother broke down at Niall’s burial, how she wept as if it were her precious child laid to rest all over again. Emer doesn’t know what to do with this. It is too late, for a lot of things.
She pulls a chair out for the woman as she always does, and sits with them, her mother, her sister, her nieces, and they pour the tea.
After that she is upright, anyway. Not agreeable, not overly useful, but upright. She does some household chores, stays hidden from the sun. On a close day she might walk down to the quay and back, a look of concentrated bearing on her face, as if she is walking off a cramp. There is nothing left of her that is fearsome. Her hands are as mild and scarred with life as the next woman’s. Any power she once had over people’s minds has gone inward. She keeps her hands close, wrapped around her waist under a shawl, and her one eye looking down. She is far from pleasant. But there’s always Rose, by her side at every instant, for the smiling.
In April, the weather continues its desperate course, barely a breath between storms, battering the island with swells and wind. The sea rages, pummeling the rock, great chunks of green earth slide into the waves as it retreats. As though the island itself is trying to strip away generations of anger and remorse, holding them hostage at the same time that it laments their leaving.
Chapter 30
Evacuation
May 1960
On the first of May, on the feast of Bealtaine that marks the beginning of summer, one beautiful day is blown across the island as if from heaven. The sun shines high and bright, the water that has been rushing off the houses and stone walls into dikes dug by nuns long ago slows to a steady drip. The sea is as calm as glass. Islanders emerge, squinty as moles in the sunlight. The children run barefoot down to the water to greet the procession of boats.
All morning, while they empty their homes, they talk of the council houses that await them. With running water, toilets, electricity, gas cookers instead of a fire. Each family will be given a bicycle to go to the shops and pub only three miles up the road. The land is poor but they won’t be as dependent on it. The
ir animals will have to learn to get out of the way of cars on the road.
The children squirm with excitement while they trap their pets in covered pots. The women tear up at every pause. The one old man lights his pipe and turns his face to the sea. They all wipe at their eyes and continue packing.
The children tell their mothers what they heard from the teacher: There will be dances, every Saturday at the hall in Cois Cuain.
Sure, they say, sounding like old immigrants already, haven’t island people always been great ones for the dancing.
They wonder now if they ever truly had a say in it, whether they were let to stay or made to go. It may not have been the fairies or the saints, but the island itself that was in charge all along.
Before they go, most women take water from Saint Brigid’s well. This has been done for generations, anyone leaving for work or war or marriage takes some of the holy water with them. Should they crave the blessings of home, they only need to pour a little out. If they have their babies far away, they can be sprinkled in it, just as they would be dipped on the island. Before Brigid came with her hands, the water had been the only one to ease things. It has flowed in the driest weather for as long as anyone can remember. They each take a swallow of it with them to ease their way into the world. Even the women who don’t believe in it fill a bottle with this promise and seal it with wax. With superstition, it is better to stick to the thing than to stray. Better it doesn’t work than you lose your chance at saving yourself altogether.
When Rose finishes cleaning and almost everything is gone from the house, she ties up the mattress on Emer’s bed into a roll for the men to bring down. It is made of the feathers of seabirds and would be expensive to replace. Under the mattress, wedged beneath the corner of the bed frame, she finds a small scrap of blue flannel, wrapped up and tied with butcher’s string. She goes to open it, then decides not to. It isn’t hers, it must belong to Emer. She’ll bring it down to her at the boats, and let Emer decide what to do with it.
As she closes the door for the last time, she whispers their names: Austin, Niall, Brigid. She believes she is saying good-bye.
She walks down in the direction of the quay, where chaos reigns. Men are still carrying bedsteads and bureaus, transferring them to currachs that bring them to bigger boats waiting in the sea. She has never in her life seen so many boats in their water at once. They say one time when the fish were plenty, boats came from all over Europe, but most of them went to the harbor of Inis Muruch. There wasn’t anything here for them. Brigid was the only tourist they’d ever had. It’s like a regatta or a fair, all the excitement. There is far too much happiness surrounding their leaving. She’d like to smack the smiles off the faces of her children. As this is not a usual turn of her mind, she shakes it away and tries to lift her chin high and walk as if she knows which way she’s going in the sunshine.
In the boat, ignoring the photographer feverishly snapping pictures of all the twins, she hands the flannel pouch to her sister. Emer stiffens, the little bit of color she has managed to gain drains instantly from her face. Like the worst moment of her life has just seared across her vision again.
“What is it?” Rose asks.
“Brigid gave this to me,” Emer says. “I thought it was a dream.”
Emer hands Rose the baby. Then she stands so quickly the boat threatens to tip. A man shouts at her to sit her bloody self down.
“Let me out,” Emer says. “I’ve left something.”
Rose tries to pull her back, the babies start crying, a sudden swell pitches the currach, one of the toddlers almost tumbles out of the boat. Finally, a man plucks Emer up by her armpits and plops her impatiently on the quay. She runs away from them all, up the green road and beyond. Rose has to negotiate and distribute children before she can be lifted out as well, her polite approach is not as immediately effective. By the time she’s out, Emer has disappeared over the hill that leads to the cliffs. Rose follows after her.
Emer stumbles down the cliff path with no regard for the sheer drop. She ducks into the shrine and kneels at the opening to the well, her heart rising like it might leap out her throat any moment. She unwraps the flannel and finds a shriveled, vile, gorgeous thing, dried and brown and empty, a pouch knit out of blood and seaweed. It’s bigger than a partial veil, it’s the entire container, an enormous version of the mermaids’ purses they collected from the coves as girls. Abandoned sacs where basking sharks grow before they break out one end and swim away.
She holds Brigid’s caul just where the water flows thickest, until the sides of it soften and bellow out, until the sac where Brigid’s child was formed is full again. Then she places it like a holy relic on top of the flannel and sets the offering in the cushion of grass and blue flowers. Flowers so tiny they’ve never, in all her life, seemed to belong to the human world. Fairy flowers, they called them as girls. A gift the good people presented to the blue-cloaked saint who came to their island. Emer lets go and holds her breath.
Inside the pouch, something moves. Thrashes and stretches, like a fish caught in a net. Then it swells and the whole thing grows, expands beyond its proportions, and Rose is there, her sister is beside her and Emer hasn’t breathed yet, she mustn’t breath yet though her lungs are crying for it, and finally, when she thinks her chest might burst holding it in, a hand tears at the membrane and tries to pull itself, slow and sticky and human, out of the place where it has grown.
Images rush at her, swarming, merciless. All those hands. The turnip stump and the curled-up, lichen remains of a miniature hand, her sister’s fingers dripping with dangerous honey, her child swiping regret from her forehead, Brigid pulling her clothes away and dropping them, heavy as armor, to the ground. Her own hands and their insertion of misery, like a blade hidden in her palm.
The hand claws at the sides of the sac, and she can see the panic, the body behind it trapped in something so thick it cannot be pulled away. Emer has to go for her knife and slice it right down the middle, allowing what is within to straighten itself, and the husk of the membrane to fall away.
He is there, naked and fish-white and smeared with afterbirth, hot blue eyes opening to look at his mother whom he will, after this, always remember as smiling.
“Will you look at him,” Rose hisses, and she crosses herself. “Saints alive.”
Emer grabs hold of Niall, the whole slimy length of him, folding him almost in half to fit inside her arms. She wipes at his face and his eyes with her shawl, cleaning the clots off, kissing his skin and inhaling, he smells of salt and blood and milk and underneath it all, his glorious self.
“I didn’t drink, Mammy. Not a drop.”
“Good lad.” She barely trusts herself to speak.
“It was Brigid,” he says. “She told them to let me go.”
“I know,” Emer shushes him. “She gave me the caul.”
“Not that Brigid.”
Another hand returns to her, the first one, that woman, all those years ago, who peeled the curtain back to show her the world. Who held a scrap of blue fabric out to her like a gift, or a warning. Emer had thought she was something else altogether.
He is ice cold from the water, so she wraps him in her shawl and they climb, stumbling up again into the sun, to warm him.
“Mammy,” he says, blinking in the unaccustomed brightness. He is looking beyond her toward the site of the evacuation.
“Look at all the boats in our sea.”
She holds him for ages, murmuring the same way she did the day he was born the first time, my boy, my boy, my boy. He doesn’t mind it, he lets her hold him for as long as she needs to, before they must rise and meet the boats and their new life on the other side. Where this day will fade in Niall’s memory until all he recalls is a fevered dream. He won’t even remember the woman who saved him, after first allowing him to die. Perhaps they will go farther than they planned, take their new bicycles and ride until they reach a place they have never seen, safe from the fairies, and themsel
ves, where Emer’s hands will be mild and forgettable, away from the opinions of the women who would rather she be punished than forgiven.
Go on, Emer’s heart whispers, go on. Find out where she has gone.
Emer knows it as well as any of them. She doesn’t deserve this. She who murdered their husbands and drove off the closest thing they had to a saint, who used her hands to insert hopelessness into any soul that seemed the slightest bit happier than she was. She who took their island away from them with the same vicious disregard as a fairy who steals a child right out of its mother’s arms.
She doesn’t deserve it—doesn’t deserve a saint’s absolution or a fairy’s surrender, or the forgiveness of a woman scorned—and she will not be allowed to keep him, he will grow up and away from her, already on that walk down she can imagine his small hand letting go, but still she gets him back, her son, her bones, her soul, her pulse.
Mercy. He is given back to her, all the same.
Acknowledgments
I suspect that no one aside from writers and people who hope to be mentioned by writers read the acknowledgments. But I always do, so I will try to make these as long and boring as possible. If I forget to thank you, please forgive me. It took five years to write this book, so chalk it up to age-related memory loss rather than ingratitude.
I am indebted to my fabulous agents, Grainne Fox and Christy Fletcher, for believing in me even when everyone else in the publishing world had forgotten me, as well as my editors, Arzu Tahsin and Jillian Verrillo, who saw my book for what it was and helped make it even more so.
I am profoundly grateful to the entire population of Inishbofin, Ireland, many of whom have housed me, fed me, shuttled me back and forth, answered my ignorant questions, and always greeted me and my son with love. For housing and feeding us: the Doonmore Hotel, the Beach Bar, the Dolphin Hotel, the Hostel, Caroline Coyne and Lorraine MacLean. Ann Prendergast for slagging my boy until he understood it, and, along with Claire, Veronica and countless babysitters, for making him feel safe when his mother had to work. Cliodhna Hallissey for pirate stories under the picnic table, Michael Joe and Robbie for the bodhran lessons, Orla, Bernie and Lalage for all that wine, Padraic and Lisa McIntyre and their children for the craic, Tommy Burke for tours and history on Shark and Bofin, Tara, Audrey and the staff at the Community Centre for everything else. Thanks most of all to my dearest, oldest friends on the island: Susan and Joanne Elliott, who helped edit the final draft for inappropriate American phrases and ignorant farming details, and Desmond O’Halloran, who was always available for emergency lattes.