The Year We Sailed the Sun

by Theresa Nelson

  Blessed art thou amongst women . . . tap-tap . . .

  “And our mother was there?”

  “She was.” . . . tap-tap . . . “The beautiful Kitty Jordan. She’d come to the funeral with her brother William, who’d promised her a good feed. ‘I’ve always loved that tune,’ she said. ‘Then marry me,’ said your father. ‘And if our daughter’s eyes are as blue as yours, we’ll call her Julia.’

  “And she laughed and said, ‘Go on with ye,’ and waved him goodbye, but he didn’t give up so easy. When he got to St. Louis, he wrote her every day: ‘Dear Kitty, lovely Kitty, sweet Kitty, please come. I’m standing on the Eads Bridge, waiting for you.’ And a whole year passed, and still he was waiting, till he wore her down, finally. He worked every day and night and saved every penny, and then he bought a silver ring and sent it to her. ‘Dear Kitty,’ he wrote. ‘It’s getting cold out here. Oh, my darling girl, won’t you come?’ ”

  “And seven weeks later she came sailing up the river.”

  Glory be to the Father . . . tap-tap . . . and to the son . . .

  But I wasn’t their first child, after all. That was Bill, named in honor of our good-luck uncle. And the next year there was Mary—Mary Patricia—with her green eyes, exactly like Gran’s. Then the twins, Helen and Larry, born brown-eyed, just eleven months before me, both killed by the fever that muddled my left ear when I was four.

  As it was in the beginning . . . tap-tap . . . and ever shall be . . .

  And our mother sat on their single grave in the raw black mud and prayed that they would haunt her. “Their ghosts would be better than naught at all,” she said. She had a rag doll and a bowl of custard in her lap. “For bait,” she kept saying. “They’ll be wanting their supper.” But the little ghosts stayed put. And two weeks later we were back in the graveyard, burying her beside ’em.

  The Second Joyful Mystery . . . tap-tap . . . the Visitation . . .

  “Whoa, Hyacinth, there’s a good boy,” said Sister Bridget, pulling back on the reins with her unbandaged hand.

  Hyacinth, for Pete’s sake.

  Not that the poor old bag of bones gave a fiddler’s fig what they called him. He’d had a whole new spring in his step ever since we’d turned on Morgan Street, where the Bad Lands breeze started blowing. Now he left off his clop-clopping, sighed a shuddering sort of horse sigh, and had his head drooping over the hitching post practically before the words were out of the half-a-nun’s mouth.

  The buggy came to rest with one last rumble and squeak.

  “Here we are!” piped the pigeon, fluttering a hand toward the tall brick building that faced us.

  THE HOUSE OF MERCY, announced the square black letters over the door. And under the knocker, in smaller print: INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL AND GIRLS’ HOME.

  My chest felt crowded, as if something was stuck there.

  Mary squeezed my clenched fist. “It won’t be so bad,” she whispered.

  Sister Maclovius heaved herself to her feet, her veil flapping in the wind like a crow’s wing. She looked down at us and smiled that smile again, fair set my teeth a-chatter. “Even the sparrow hath found a home,” she said, “and the swallow a nest for herself.”

  Directly behind her, a white face flattened itself against a window and crossed its eyes.

  Chapter 4

  The big door swung to with a whispering sound—shhhusshhhttt—though I never saw the hand that opened it. I was half-blind as we walked in out of the daylight, going from sun to gloom. Not a thing to see at first but a glimmer of movement in the corner of my left eye; naught to hear but a kind of low chuckling, close to my good ear.

  And then the creak of a floorboard and the soft pad of footsteps, running away.

  And the door opened wide, and Beauty entered the great dark castle, and her hat went flyin’ off her head, and all about her there was sighin’ and stirrin’, though she never saw a soul. . . .

  “Never mind, it’s only Betty Brickey,” said Sister Bridget, clumping past us in her big black boots.

  “Betty who?” Mary quavered.

  The half-a-nun didn’t hear. She was busy with our boxes, hauling both at once, like there was nothing to it. Like they were stuffed with feathers—or soap bubbles—which they might have been, for all I knew. Were my marbles in there? Had Aunt Gert thought to pack ’em? Or were they still scattered in the dirt by the back stoop, just waiting for Otto to pounce? Ah, the great slobberin’ sneak-thief! He’d cry uncle the next time I saw him. I’d give him a good swift kick in the rear, I would—

  If there ever was a next time.

  And how was it that the pleasure of not seeing him felt like such a cheat, all of a sudden?

  “Sister Bridget will get you settled,” said the president. “Go with her now, and mind what she says.”

  “Yes, Sister,” said Mary.

  But the old nun wasn’t looking at Mary. She leaned in close, till her face was an inch from mine. Her breath smelled like mothballs. I found myself staring at a lone white hair sprouting out of her left cheek. “Don’t think that I won’t be watching you, Julia Delaney. Don’t imagine I’ll be tolerating your shenanigans. If there’s one thing that’ll never be tolerated in the House of Mercy, it’s shenanigans.”

  With that she lifted several of her chins and sailed off down a corridor to the right. “Come along, Sister Gabriel!” she hissed as she passed. “Your tea will be cold.” And the pigeon nodded and blinked, and patted Mary’s head, and would have patted mine if I hadn’t jerked away in the nick of time. And then she sighed softly and went trotting off after the boss nun, puffing a little.

  My eyes were getting used to the dim now as we followed the freckled giantess down the main hall. Mary was pulling me with her at a fast clip toward a steep, curving staircase, directly ahead. Tall, papered walls loomed over us, speckled with ugly brown roses, climbing up and up like Jack’s own beanstalk. A sad-eyed Jesus and his mother stared down from heavy wood frames, pointing fingers to their flaming hearts. On either wall past the pair of ’em was a row of doors—shut tight, for the most part, as dark and serious-looking as doors could be.

  But the last on the left was cracked just a smidgeon, and through the crack came a thin wedge of yellow light. It seemed to have a sound, too, this light—a kind of singsong humming. And as we got closer, the humming became a chorus of girls’ voices:

  Full fathom five thy father lies;

  Of his bones are coral made. . . .

  “Ah, great gobs, Sister Sebastian,” Sister Bridget grumbled to the door, stopping for a moment to get a better grip on the boxes, “not the bones again! Would it kill you entirely to give ’em a nice cheerful poem that wouldn’t scare ’em out their wits?”

  Those are pearls that were his eyes. . . .

  I peeped through the crack and saw yet another nun—about as big as a peanut, this one, hardly taller than I was (and Bill called me the Runt). I couldn’t see her students from where I stood, only this tiny teacher, beating time with a ruler on the palm of her own hand. She had a little pointed face and the blackest eyebrows I ever saw, and spectacles resting low down on her sharp little nose, and a pair of squinty black eyes peering through ’em, bright as two hot coals.

  Nothing of him that doth fade

  But doth suffer a sea change . . .

  Sister Bridget looked back at us and shook her head. “Ah, well. At least it’s not Macbeth. Winnie O’Rourke woke the whole house after that one, hollering about witches.” The half-a-nun craned her neck and peered into the shadows under the stairs, just ahead. “Didn’t she, Betty?”

  Into something rich and strange. . . .

  “Ah, now, Betty, I know you hear me. You don’t fool us for a second. Come out from back there and meet the new girls.”

  It was only her foot we saw at first. Not the whole foot, really—just a bit of shoe: a dirty pink dancing slipper, inching out from the stairwell, dragging its ribbons behind it.

  “There she is!” said Sister Bridget. “That’s rig
ht; come on out, Betty; be a good girl, now. There’s not a soul here that would hurt you.” She gave us a warning wink, as if the kid was some wild creature, like that old stray cat Bill was always coaxing out of the alley with a scrap of sausage. “That’s right. . . . That’s the way. . . .”

  Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell. . . .

  So we kept quiet and waited, and little by little, the rest of the girl appeared: the corner of an apron, the back of a grubby hand, the tail end of a scraggly brown braid . . .

  And the very same moonface that had crossed its eyes in the window, not five minutes before.

  “Mary and Julia Delaney,” said Sister Bridget, “meet Betty Brickey.”

  Ding-dong.

  Hark! Now I hear them. . . .

  As if she’d been under some spell till this moment, and the words of the chant had smashed it all to pieces, Betty grinned a crooked grin and brought out her left hand from behind her back.

  She was holding a bell.

  Ding-dong, bell.

  “No, Betty!” cried Sister Bridget. “School’s not over; it’s another twenty minutes yet—”

  But it was too late. Betty was already ringing the thing, holding it by its long handle and swinging it in great, curving arcs.

  “Ah, sweet Mary and Joseph,” the half-a-nun muttered, dropping our boxes and trying to grab her. “How’d you get it this time? Stop that, Betty! Sister Maclovius will have your hide again; you know it!”

  But Betty ducked and twirled and ran away, laughing out loud now, swinging that bell so hard, the clamor could have waked the dead. And before the half-a-nun could do a thing about it, all the dark doors had opened wide, and suddenly the hall was teeming with girls—dozens and dozens of ’em—and no two alike, though they all wore the same hideous plaid pinafores. Big girls and little girls, tall and short, fat and skinny, tucked in to their toenails or rumpled as unmade beds; spotless, ink-stained, smooth-haired, frowzy-headed girls, making such a noise even my bad ear could hear it.

  Sounded like a crowd of dock birds screaming when the fishermen cleaned their nets.

  “Back!” Sister Bridget shouted. “Back to your classrooms or we’re done for!”

  But nobody paid her the slightest bit of attention.

  Chapter 5

  Now the sea of brown plaid was dotted with black, as more nuns joined the hubbub in the hall: the peanut with the eyebrows (Sister Sebastian?) and the other teachers, shouting, “Quiet!” and “Order, young ladies!” But still the girls pushed and giggled and shrieked, and covered their ears with their hands, and Betty Brickey’s bell rang on and on—

  And then it stopped.

  Just like that.

  A hush traveled through the crowd in a trail of whispers: “Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh,” it breathed, till the hall was still as a tomb.

  “Who rang that bell?” demanded Sister Maclovius.

  I never saw her coming, but there she was. Not a hairsbreadth from my left elbow. Standing there like doom itself, brushing crumbs from her wimple. I swear, you could all but hear ’em hitting the floor.

  “I’ll ask you once more, ladies. Though you know how I dislike—” Sister broke off and turned her steely gaze on the pigeon, who was just now bustling in breathlessly, still clutching a napkin. “—how I dislike repeating myself.” The head nun’s voice was deadly quiet. “Who rang that bell?”

  Every eye went to the stairway—up and up, halfway to the landing—where Betty had perched in midflight. She had her bell-hand behind her back again and was watching the rest of us with interest, the grin still stuck on her moonface in a crooked slash.

  “Mary Elizabeth Brickey,” said the president, “what’s that you’re hiding?”

  The grin got wider.

  “It was my mistake, Sister,” the half-a-nun began, all in a rush, stepping over our boxes where she’d dropped them and pushing through the mob. “You know how she loves it; I meant to put it on top of the bookshelf, so she wouldn’t be tempted again, but then you called for the buggy and the bell went out of my head entirely; I must have left it on the table by the door, of all places, where of course she was bound to—”

  “That will do, Sister Bridget.” Sister Maclovius held up a hand, and the flood of words stopped cold. Her eyes never left crazy Betty. “I’m waiting, Mary Elizabeth.”

  Little by little, tooth by tooth, the grin shrank, until it disappeared altogether. Slowly, slowly, Betty brought out the bell. . . .

  And gave it one last clang.

  “Half-wit,” someone muttered, a couple of orphans to my right—a long-necked, hard-eyed girl who sneered when I looked at her.

  A smothered titter ran through the crowd.

  “Silence!” said Sister Maclovius, and the hall went dead again. She turned back to Betty, calm as cream. “Bring me the bell, Miss Brickey.”

  Miss Brickey didn’t budge.

  “Unless you’d rather I came up there for it?”

  Terror darted across the moonface.

  Run! I wanted to shout. Just look at the size of her; she couldn’t catch you in a million years!

  But it was too late. Betty was coming down the stairs already, dragging her feet in those dirty old dance shoes; she was tripping over the ribbons while the plaid girls smirked. And weren’t they having themselves a fine time? A little fat kid was crying, but the rest only nudged one another and pushed in closer, jostling for a better view, craning their necks like they were at the circus—like Otto, the big lily-liver, that time he tricked Bill’s cat out of the alley with a piece of spinach, and cut off its whiskers, and laughed when it walked so crooked. I hated him then and I hated them now but dear God in heaven if the loon herself wasn’t grinning again, grinning back at the whole sniggerin’ lot of ’em, and handing the bell to the head nun, and the head nun was handing it to the pigeon, and now Sister Maclovius had Betty by the ear; she was saying, “Teachers, take charge of your students,” and leading Betty off who knows where, and I couldn’t stand it, that’s all. Mary was tugging on my arm to keep me still but my heart was pounding and the bile rose up in my throat—no, no, no, no—

  “NO!”

  I didn’t realize, at first, that I’d said it out loud.

  “No?” Sister Maclovius stopped in her tracks, still holding tight to Betty—stopped so suddenly that the pigeon (hard on their heels) barreled into both of them. “Did someone say no, Sister Gabriel?”

  All around me there were little gasping noises, like dry leaves rustling in the wind: Huh huh huh huh huh huh—

  “Now you’ve done it,” Mary muttered.

  Sister Gabriel stepped back, flustered, unaware that her headpiece had slipped slightly cattywampus. “Why . . . ah . . . I . . . I don’t think so, Sister. . . .” Her little brown bird eyes flickered in my direction, then flickered away again. “My . . . my hearing isn’t what it used to be, I’m afraid, but—”

  “Never mind, Sister Gabriel.” Sister Maclovius held up the hand that wasn’t latched on to Betty’s ear. “Fortunately my own hearing is still quite sufficient.”

  She was looking me smack in the face.

  “Were you addressing me, Julia Delaney?”

  Orphan by orphan, the plaid sea shrank back, leaving Mary and me stranded on our own private island.

  “Speak up, Julia. Come, now. You have our undivided attention. Was there or was there not something you wanted to say?”

  I tried to open my mouth, but it was no use. That god-awful smile of hers had iced it up solid.

  “She didn’t mean to say anything, Sister. . . .” Mary took a step forward, dragging me with her. “It was an accident, wasn’t it, Julia?” Her hand clamped even tighter on my arm. “Go on,” she whispered, giving me a shake. “Tell Sister you’re sorry.”

  I might have done it, if my tongue had thawed in time.

  But then I looked at crazy Betty, watching me wide-eyed, her head cocked at an awkward angle under the president’s thumb.

  Sorry for what, exactly?

 
And why should I say it, when I wasn’t?

  “Ah, for pity’s sake, Julia!” Mary’s grip was like a vise now. I could feel her palm sweating clear through my sleeve. “Just say it, for once in your life!”

  “No.” I gritted my teeth.

  “Dear God,” Mary breathed. “She’ll eat us alive.”

  But aside from a slight tic in the middle of her left eyelid, the old battle-ax smiled on. “No again, is it? Well, now. Will you listen to that, Sister Gabriel? If it isn’t the Queen of the Kerry Patch, come to tell us her pleasure!”

  “The—the Queen?” asked the pigeon, looking confused.

  Sister Maclovius gave Betty’s ear a jerk, forcing the moonface bolt-upright again, and tugged her over to where I was standing. The kid’s eyes—glued to mine—were big as dinner plates now. “Tell us, Your Majesty, what would you suggest I do with this child?”

  The nun loomed over me, swaying a little, her beads click-clacking like Aunt Gert’s teeth.

  “Or did you imagine that I’d let her off scot-free? Was that it? With bells ringing and pandemonium in the hallway?” And suddenly the smiling was done and she was leaning down, all splotchy-cheeked and sputtering, shaking a gnarly finger in my face. “Shenanigans, Julia Delaney! What did I tell you about shenanigans?”

  I just stood there, dumb as a post.

  She wiped the spit off her chin. “We’ll not be having them; that’s the beginning and end of it. Do I make myself clear?”

  She straightened her spine then, and got a fresh lock on Betty’s ear, and started hauling her off once more. But before she’d taken two steps, she whipped back around, spinning the kid with her. “As for the rest of you gigglers and squealers, there’ll be no more recreation until further notice. Report to the refectory with your rosaries at six o’clock sharp.”

  There was a chorus of groans.

  “Silence!” Sister Maclovius thundered yet again, and the hall went still.

  Her eyelid twitched. “If you don’t like it, take it up with the Queen.”