Patricia Falvey

by The Yellow House (v5)

  “Aye, a pauper’s grave,” spat P.J. He leaned back and lit his pipe, puffing furiously on it until he was ringed in a cloud of smoke. “Buried down there without as much as a by-your-leave from her family. Sure the poor have no rights at all, none at all.” He looked at Da, whose eyes were swimming with tears. “No matter, Tom, we’ll find her and bring her home, I swear we will.”

  Da only nodded.

  A chill settled on the house, and I shivered. My teeth chattered and my hands shook. Cuchulainn put his head on Great-Grandda Hugh’s empty chair and whimpered. I swore I heard Lizzie’s laughter somewhere outside. I jumped and ran to the window, but all I saw was the frozen fields and leafless trees and Slieve Gullion barren and stark. A noise behind me startled me. Ma had risen from her chair and come over to the table. I swung around. She looked like a madwoman. Her hair floated around her white face like a banshee. Her eyes were red and smoldering. She pointed a bony finger in Da’s face and screamed.

  It was hard to make sense of the words. I heard “pauper’s grave” and “money,” and I knew she was blaming Da for Lizzie’s death. Da stood up and tried to take her into his arms, but she shoved him away and ran up the stairs. There was silence.

  “Give her time,” whispered P.J. “Give her time.”

  MY BROTHER PADDY was born on Christmas Day 1908, a few weeks after Lizzie’s death. I thought it would bring the change in Ma we had been waiting for. A baby in her arms was all she would need, or so I thought. But Ma looked down at the baby as if he were a stranger. She would not even touch him. I had to warm milk for him and feed him from a bottle. P.J. brought his wife up to see if she could help. Mrs. Mullen said that women often go a bit mad after they give birth, but they get over it in time. We just had to talk to her, Mrs. Mullen said, and let her know everything was all right. But all the talking in the world seemed to make little impression on Ma. She had gone away from us, a faraway look in her eyes as if she were seeing another world entirely. Her thin fingers ground at her rosary beads, and she muttered words I could not understand. I wanted to shove the baby at her and make her take him. I wanted to shake her and scream at her to come back to us, but it would have done no good, either. She could not even be coaxed downstairs. Da went up and sat beside her and sang to her in the evenings, but she would turn her head away from him. Privately, I cursed her for hurting him that way. Then I prayed for forgiveness.

  MONTHS WENT BY, and then one morning in late August 1909, just after my twelfth birthday, I looked up from the chair by the kitchen fire where I sat feeding Paddy to see Ma standing staring at me. I jumped up. She had not been downstairs in months. And now here she was, dressed in her best coat and gloves and carrying a small suitcase. I was overjoyed, and then as quick as the joy came, it left me. Her eyes were blazing fire.

  “Ma?” I cried. “Ma, what’s wrong?”

  “Nothing’s wrong,” she said in a voice I did not recognize.

  Da came in the back door at that moment, kicking the soil off his boots. When he saw Ma, his face broke into a grin.

  “Och, Mary,” he said. “Och, Mary.” And he went over to her, his arms outstretched.

  But Ma backed away. “Get the cart, Tom,” she said. “We’re leaving. Where’s Frank?”

  Da dropped his hands. “And where are we going, love?” he said.

  “I’ll be leaving now, Tom,” she said, her voice cool and steady.

  Da gaped at her.

  “And I’ll be taking Frank with me.”

  Frankie, who had just come down the stairs, jumped as if he had been slapped.

  “Why, Ma?” he said. “Where are we going?”

  “I’m taking you home.”

  “But I am home,” he said, “and so are you, Ma.”

  I pitied Frankie for the puzzlement I saw in his face.

  “This is not your home, Frank,” Ma said. “It never was. And he is not your da.”

  The words hung in the room heavy as a dying man’s last utterance. They struck us as roughly as if we had been punched by an invisible fist. I doubled over from the pain of it. Then I looked at Frankie’s face and all thought of myself disappeared. I will never forget the look of hurt and confusion and anger that settled on him. Tears filled his eyes, and then fury raged.

  “Whose son am I, then?” he cried. “Whose?”

  He swung around from Ma to Da. “Who’s my da?” he cried. “Tell me!”

  Ma remained calm. “It doesn’t matter,” she replied. “You are not his. You are my sin, and that is why God punished me by taking away Lizzie. They told me so.”

  “Who told you, love?” Da whispered gently.

  “The voices,” she said.

  I had a sudden awful feeling. I stood on the edge of a world about to crumble.

  “Is Da my da?” I cried.

  Ma nodded. “Yours and Paddy’s and Lizzie’s.” Then she sighed. “You can come with me, too, Eileen,” she whispered. “I love you. But I can’t bring Paddy. God is waiting to punish me again. God will take him, too.”

  I looked at my parents, studying them as if I had never set eyes on them before. What choice was this I was being given? Leave my poor da alone? Let my ma go away without me?

  Da came over and put his arms around me. “Sure she doesn’t know what she’s saying, love. She’s astray in the head with grief. She’ll come to in time and we’ll forget all this.”

  I knew even as he said it that we would never forget it.

  “I’ll stay with Da,” I whispered.

  “Fetch the cart, Tom,” said Ma. “Take me home.”

  “But this is your home, Mary,” whispered Da.

  Ma looked at Da. Her eyes were flat and empty. “I’m sorry, Tom,” she said, “but I had no right to be here. It’s time I went back where I came from. Come on, Frank.”

  She picked up her bag and led Frankie out to the cart. Da followed, looking over his shoulder and nodding at me. “Just give her a wee bit of time,” he said again.

  I watched from the door as Da hooked Rosie up to the cart and started down the road toward the gate. Neither Ma nor Frankie looked back. Frankie’s slight frame was stiff as a board, but I could see by the way Ma’s shoulders moved that she was crying. Something didn’t look right about her. Then I realized she was bareheaded. I looked up and saw it still hanging on the peg by the door.

  “She left her hat,” I cried out—but there was no one to hear me.

  THAT NIGHT, I thought back to Frankie’s worms. When you split them in two they grow themselves back, he had said. Would the O’Neills grow themselves back? I wondered.

  THE WINTER OF that year was unremarkable. I had expected the skies to open and floods to wash away the land, or snow to come and freeze the whole world in place so that nothing moved. I had expected the birds to stop singing, the foxes to bury themselves in their holes, and the sun to refuse to rise. But none of this happened. Life and its rhythms went on as usual. Farmers tended their land, shops and pubs opened and closed, and the Music Men still came to the Yellow House. At first I was resentful. How could everything go on the same when Lizzie was dead and Ma and Frankie had gone away? Then I was angry. Why didn’t anyone else seem to care what had happened to us? Why were other people allowed to laugh and dance and carry on while Da and I cried in our silent house?

  In time I managed to separate my own grief from the outside world, and in time I allowed the world in again. When I turned thirteen, I stopped going to school. This small rebellion gave me the illusion of control over my life. I argued with Da that I had too much to do around the house and farm, and besides, I was not learning anything new at school. Da hadn’t the strength to argue much.

  “Your ma wouldn’t hear of it,” was all he said.

  “Well, she’s not here, is she?” I snapped.

  IN THE FIRST DAYS after Ma and Frankie left, Da and I took turns standing at the window or door, listening for the sound of the cart that would bring them back. But no one came, and in time we stopped listening. P.J.
had gone to visit them at Ma’s daddy’s house, but she refused to leave. Although I was angry with Ma for leaving us, part of me yearned to go and see her. I pestered P.J. to take me with him, but all he did was shake his head.

  “She’s in a bad way still, darlin’,” was all he would say. Eventually, I gave up and stopped asking him. Surely she would be back with us before long.

  Da and I did not speak to each other of what had happened for a long time. Paddy was a convenient diversion for us, as were the requirements of the farm. “Are the cows milked?” “The hens are slow laying the eggs this year.” “The child is after spilling the food on himself.”

  One morning, about a year after Ma and Frankie left, I fought my way to the surface of a dream. The devil had me in his grip and turned the vise so tight that the pain burned like a welding torch deep into the core of my being. I awoke. The dream vanished, but the pain remained. The curse had begun. I recognized it right away. Ma had warned me about it when I was younger. Back then it had seemed like a vague thing, a thing to be borne in the future when I grew up, a thing that Ma would ease with her gentle voice and touch. But Ma was not here. Every month, she had said. Every month! I got out of bed and found a stray piece of paper and pencil and marked down the date. I passed the rest of the day in a trance, staying as far away from Da as I could. Anger and fear mixed in my mind, and I cursed Ma for leaving me alone. The child I had known was leaving. I did not know who I would become. I trembled on the threshold of the rest of my life. I allowed the child her final farewell that night, as she pulled the covers over her head and wept for her ma.

  I GREW TALLER and stronger. I became nearly as tall as Ma, and I had her build—long legs and a strong back. My red hair fell in a thick braid to my waist. Unloosed from Ma’s constant watch, I felt myself grow reckless. I became willful, refusing Da’s orders and pleasing myself. I stopped going to mass. I began to swear, enjoying the guilty pleasure of the ripe words rolling on my tongue and the sour looks of the old biddies who heard me. I delved into the excesses of my nature with robust curiosity: I found I was quick to anger, quick to judgment, intolerant of stupidity and arrogance, and impious. I was also playful, quick to laugh, and ravenous for life.

  P.J. was the first to remark on the changes in me. “She’s growing up, Tom,” I heard him say. “She’ll need a strong hand to keep her in line.”

  “Aye,” Da said, “maybe when Mary comes home…”

  Like me, Da still held out hope that Ma and Frankie would one day come home.

  The Music Men provided diversion, and they all put up a good show when they came. But something had changed that I couldn’t put my finger on. Terrence spoke less than usual. Fergus smiled a secret smile, as if to say now we knew what trouble was like. Billy Craig was the only one to show his true colors. He scowled at Da, his red face bloated with anger. He believed that Da had sent Ma away, and no one could tell him any different. He banged around the room and grunted so much that the boys told him to control himself or stop coming altogether. He did not come back.

  One night after a music session, I sat down by the fire and looked at Da.

  “Tell me about Frankie,” I said.

  Da looked up at me, surprised. He started to wave his hand to dismiss the question, and then he thought better of it. “What do you want to know, Eileen?”

  “Who is his da?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Rage roared up in me. “Don’t lie to me, Da.”

  He gazed at me. “I’m not lying, darlin’. I don’t know who his da was. All I know is that I was in love with Mary, and when she came to me and said she was in trouble and would I marry her, I never thought twice.”

  He paused and lit his pipe, stoking the tobacco with a gnarled finger.

  “I knew there was a baby coming, but it was no matter to me. In fact, I loved that baby for bringing Mary to me.” He leaned toward me. “I loved Frankie,” he whispered. “I could not have loved him more if he was my own flesh and blood. He was part of Mary, and he was the reason Mary came to me.”

  Tears welled in his eyes and he blinked them away.

  “But did you never ask her?” I whispered. “You know, about his daddy?”

  “Ah, sure it made no difference to me,” said Da. “If Mary had a mind to tell me, all well and good, and if she didn’t, it was no matter.” He sighed deeply. “Och, Eileen, we were so happy. You know, child, there’s always one in the pair who loves more than the other, and that makes it enough for two. And anyway, I think your ma loved me just a little bit.”

  I was crying now. I sniffed back the tears. “She loved you a whole lot, Daddy,” I whispered. “I saw it in her eyes every day.”

  “Aye, until the last day.”

  “She was astray in the head the last day. You said so. And I could see it for myself.” I leaned forward and took his hands in my own. “She loves you still, Daddy,” I said. “I’m sure of it.”

  I looked at Da now as if seeing him for the first time. His lovely red hair had turned white. In the months since Ma left, I had not noticed my da turning into an old man.

  WE NEVER FOUND Lizzie’s grave, so P.J. and the boys arranged to have a headstone put in the field next to the house where Da’s da and grandda were buried. Two angels were carved on the stone, and it faced out toward Slieve Gullion. I knelt there often in those days, talking to Lizzie, telling her not to be afraid.

  While the days coming up to Christmas of 1912, and Paddy’s fourth birthday, passed quietly and slowly at the Yellow House, the thunder of trouble rolled across the Irish landscape. P.J., Terrence, and Fergus talked of nothing else. The promise of Home Rule was fading under the growing threat of a world war. The English hadn’t time for Ireland and her problems, Terrence said they were too worried about their own skins. Meanwhile the Ulster Unionist Covenant had been passed, declaring its fierce opposition to any kind of Irish rule in the North of Ireland. The growing rebellion down in the South was spilling over into the North, and the Ulster Volunteer Force, a quasi-military organization known as the UVF, was formed to oppose any rebellion in the North. There were stories of them throwing Catholics out of their houses and businesses and burning property. P.J.’s predictions were coming true—the violence was not just around Belfast anymore, but was drawing closer—Newry, Camlough, and Rostrevor.

  “It’s heating up,” P.J. warned. “It’s only a matter of time now.”

  “Until what?” I ventured.

  P.J. bent and tapped out his pipe on the hearth. “Until the flames of war are all around us,” he said.

  “Och, don’t be scaring the girl,” Terrence said.

  “I’m not scared,” I said.

  But I was. That night, the faceless ghosts came again to haunt my dreams. This time they carried torches of fire. I put my head under the sheets, but I could not blot them out.

  THEY CAME IN the early hours of the morning of March 17, 1913, the feast of St. Patrick and a Holy Day of Obligation. St. Patrick’s Day was a solemn day marked by mass and a closing of the pubs. To wear a shamrock or carry the Irish tricolor flag in Ulster was to invite trouble, even though the Protestants were free to bang their drums as loud as they wanted on their own day of celebration, the twelfth of July. So St. Patrick’s Day usually passed quietly like any other religious feast day. But the one in 1913 was an exception.

  I lay in bed, restless as always, waiting for the sun to rise over Slieve Gullion so I could get up and distract myself with work. At first I heard voices in the distance and the dull thud of feet on the road. I thought maybe I was still dreaming and sat up just to be sure. I looked over at Paddy in his bed beside mine, but he slept peacefully. Da must have heard the noise. The bedsprings creaked in the next room as he got up, and I heard the shuffle of his feet on the floor as he pulled on his trousers. I tiptoed to the door of my room and opened it. Da felt his way along the landing in the dim light.

  “Who is it, Da?” I whispered.

  He swung around and put his finge
r to his lips. “Och, probably just some young fellows home after a night on the drink,” he said, “making up for the pubs being closed tomorrow. Go back to bed now, darlin’, and watch Paddy.”

  But I did not believe him, and I knew he did not believe it himself. I waited until he was down the stairs, and I crept out onto the landing. The dying embers still glowed in the hearth and cast shadows on the walls. Cuchulainn roused himself from his place beside the fire and padded to the front door behind Da. I held my breath and waited.

  A loud thud broke the silence as a stone hit the front door. Da jumped back.

  “Who’s out there?” he shouted.

  Voices grew louder, male voices, shouting and cursing.

  “Open the door, Tom O’Neill,” a voice called. “It’s your friend Billy come to visit you.”

  “Jesus,” Da muttered, “what’s that eejit doing at this time of night?”

  I relaxed. It was only simple Billy Craig come to play a trick on us. He had not come back to the house at all after the other Music Men told him to stay away from the music sessions. I supposed he was still angry with us over Ma’s leaving. He had never been right in the head. He’d probably been out drinking and was egged on by some blackguards to come up and scare the daylights out of us.

  Da opened the door. “What in God’s name do you think you’re doing at this hour, Billy,” he began. “It’s home in your bed you should be—”

  Thud! Another stone hit the front door as Da spoke. Billy jumped back and looked around.

  “We’ve come to teach you a lesson, Tom,” he said, his voice high with excitement, “a lesson for sending Mary away. Haven’t we, boys?”