Chapter 27
“What’s that heathen child doin’ here?”
“My God, it’s an Injun! Right here in the front room!”
Maggie’s hand tightened on the little girl’s as she stood in the doorway of the boarding house. A miner sitting at one of the tables gave her a surly look as she started forward. She held her chin high as she walked past, determined not to respond to any of the unfriendly questions.
On the walk from the Indian village to the boarding house, she’d considered her options—return to the hospital?
Ask Sister Mary Zeno if they could let the girl sleep with the nuns at the mission?
She thought it likely that the nun might agree, at least for one night, and then the little girl would be close to her mother.
And so, she’d headed back there, only to have the nursing sister greet the suggestion with dismay.
“My dear, we simply do not have the ability to care for a child here,” she’d told her. “Maybe one day,” she’d allowed. “I have great hopes to expand the hospital, the school, maybe even start an orphanage. But now?” She’d shaken her head. “There must be another place.”
“There isn’t,” Maggie had replied a little desperately. “They won’t have her back at the Indian village. They said she was a nit—a nitch?—”
“A nitckakaku?” Sister Mary Zeno had filled in.
“That’s the Tlingit word for someone who is in their lowest social class.
” At Maggie’s look of confusion, she’d continued, “The Tlingit have a very stratified culture. Their social classes are even more delineated than ours! The nitckakaku are the lowest—they would have the humblest jobs, the most modest housing, and they would not be treated with respect.”
Maggie had tightened her grip on the girl’s hand. “He also said that the child’s father is white.”
“Ah.” Sister Mary had nodded. “In that case, I can sadly understand why they would have rejected her. She would have left the tribe first, to go with the white man. They would see it as a betrayal. Add to that her low social class, and I’m not surprised they won’t have her.”
“What about the father?” Maggie had asked. “Maybe he?—”
But Sister Mary Zeno was already shaking her head.
“My dear, it would be impossible to find out who he is,” she’d said.
“There are, I’m sorry to say, far too many miners and prospectors here who take up with a native woman.
And they rarely acknowledge the offspring produced from those illicit unions.
Truth be told, they rarely acknowledge the women themselves.
It’s likely he kept her tucked away somewhere miserable and cold, which is why she’s come to us in this desperate condition. ”
Maggie had stared at her hopelessly. “But if he can’t be found… then what am I to do with this poor child?”
Sister Mary Zeno had looked torn. “I would let her stay, at least for a little while,” she’d allowed, “but we are not well equipped for that, and also I would not want to encourage others to bring their children here in a like manner. We cannot start an orphanage without the necessary space and resources.” She’d sighed, seeming regretful.
“I suggest she stay with you for the night, and then you take her back to the Indian village. The clan leader might have rejected her at the outset, but he might change his mind upon your return. The Tlingit do take care of their own, and they like to see native children raised to know and respect their ways.”
And so Maggie had done as the nun had said, and brought the girl back to the boarding house, and just a few minutes in, judging by the grumbled whispers and murmurs racing around the room, she might live to regret it.
“What on earth…?” Mrs. Compton, in the middle of frying bear steaks for supper, came bustling toward Maggie, a look of incredulity on her face. “Why do you have that native child with you, Miss O’Halloran?”
“She was left at the hospital, and she has nowhere to go,” Maggie told her, trying not to sound as apprehensive as she felt.
“Straight back to the Indian village, I should say!” the landlady declared. “There’s no call to bring her in here.”
“They wouldn’t take her,” Maggie told her in a low voice. She hated to think of the little girl overhearing these conversations and understanding that nobody wanted her. By now it must have become obvious, whether she understood English or not.
“They wouldn’t, huh? And yet here you are, expectin’ me to!”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Compton, but I couldn’t just leave her in the street. It will only be for one night.”
Mrs. Compton’s expression was grim, and Maggie suspected the landlady believed she could have left the little girl in the street—and should have.
“Please,” she whispered. “She’s so small.”
Mrs. Compton glanced down at the girl, her expression softening only a fraction, before she sighed.
“For the one night,” she relented. “But you gotta understand, Miss O’Halloran.
I run a boarding house and I gotta keep my boarders happy.
And I can tell you sure as sure they ain’t going to be happy with an Indian kid hangin’ around.
” She held up one callused finger in warning. “One night. That’s it.”
“Thank you,” Maggie whispered.
“And you’ll take your supper upstairs,” Mrs. Compton continued. “I can’t have that girl eatin’ with these God-fearin’ men, all right?”
“Yes.” Maggie nodded, although privately she wondered just how God-fearing the miners who resided at Mrs. Compton’s boarding house truly were. “One night.”
Upstairs, she washed the girl’s face, surprised she had no difficulty, until, after she’d dried her off, the little girl curled up on the bed, her knees tucked up right to her chin and fell asleep.
She’d been exhausted, Maggie realized, and understandably so.
She would have to save her some supper for later.
When Danny and her da came home a short while later, dirty and tired from a day in the mines, they were surprised, to say the least, to see the girl curled up on Maggie’s bed.
“Whaddya thinkin’, bringin’ an Indian kid here?” Danny exclaimed, as incredulous as Mrs. Compton had been. “People ain’t going to like it.”
“I know,” Maggie replied, “but I didn’t have any other choice.”
“Poor little mite,” her father said, his weathered face creasing into a smile as he gazed down at the girl. Maggie had already told him and Danny what had happened to the girl’s mother, as well as down in the Indian village. “The little thing’s got no one in the world.”
“I hope her mother will recover in a few days,” Maggie told them. “But after that…” Where had the Tlingit woman been living, if not with her people? Where, she wondered, was the white father?
They were questions she could not answer, at least not tonight, but tomorrow Maggie vowed she’d return to St. Ann’s and get some answers, for both the mother and child’s sake.
She ate supper up in her room, leaving some for the girl for when she woke up, and when Danny and her da returned, they were full of the gossip that had been swirling around the boarding house’s dining room about her.
“Some said it’s your kid,” Danny told her with a laugh, and Maggie rolled her eyes, determined not to let such talk get to her.
“I don’t know how that would be possible, since I arrived in Alaska a mere two months ago,” she replied tartly. “It appears some of the residents here don’t have a basic grasp of biology.”
“I think they’d rather the girl was your bastard baby than an Indian,” Danny replied frankly and Maggie glared at him.
“Hush your mouth, Danny O’Halloran,” she snapped. “I hear plenty of that language downstairs, but I don’t need to hear it up here in our private quarters.”
“That’s right,” someone from the room next to theirs called out and then burst into cackles of laughter.
Maggie sighed. Sometimes she forgot how thin the walls were—just boards and cotton. No one’s business was ever private, and certainly not this.
“Now, now,” their father said placatingly. “It’s only the one night.” He raised his voice a little so those far and wide could hear. “The girl will be gone tomorrow.” He winked at Maggie, and she pretended not to see as she got ready for bed.
A few minutes later, she slid beneath the sheets next to the girl, who hadn’t stirred all evening, so deeply had she been asleep.
Gently, Maggie brushed a strand of dark hair away from the girl’s face, her rosebud lips pursed in a sleepy pout.
What, she wondered sadly, would happen to her and her mother?
Would the Indian village accept them, when the mother recovered?
Tomorrow, Maggie reminded herself, she would find those answers. She would do something to help them both, even if she couldn’t imagine what it might be yet.
Danny and Da settled into their beds, and through the thin walls of the boarding house, Maggie heard the creaks and squeaks, sighs, groans and snores of the other residents all heading to their own beds.
She glanced out the window; even though it was now past ten o’clock, the sun had barely set, the world cast in a twilit, dusky light.
It had been strange, to get used to these long summer days when the sun still shone brightly in the sky well past suppertime.
She settled back down into bed, and the movement disturbed the little girl, who rolled over, and then, to Maggie’s surprise, snuggled in against her, one skinny arm thrown about her waist. Maggie stiffened instinctively and then relaxed, drawing the girl even closer, so her chin was resting on top of her head, her warm little body curled into hers.
The girl let out a soft sigh and her body relaxed against Maggie’s in total trust. Maggie closed her eyes.
Lying there snuggled up, it felt as if something hard and brittle that had encased her heart had cracked, like a shell breaking open and exposing the tender, vulnerable softness within.
The girl let out another sigh, and, her whole body relaxing with a peace she hadn’t felt in a long, long while, Maggie slept.