Chapter 12 #2
And so my child was buried in a cillín, an unconsecrated burial site for unbaptized and illegitimate children, while I was recovering, before I had mind enough to ask the location of my babe’s resting place so I might visit and pray.
So I might lay a crown of daisies over the tiny mound of earth and tell him how very much Mammy loved him and loves him still.
Lady Grace had left for Kilrush House while grief gripped me, instructing that I should convalesce for a time, for she had found a new place for me with a family of her acquaintance so I might forget these terrible memories.
I’d railed at that, explaining that we had a wedding to plan, that Teddy hadn’t forsaken me, that ours was a love born of childhood and devotion and we would try again … but Lady Grace hadn’t said a word.
And still the titled dandies promenaded.
And still Teddy did not visit.
And still he did not write.
For three months I convalesced, and waited, staring out that window, at the hope and blossom of new love. The possibility of a future worth living.
But that future was no longer mine.
My heart echoed with a keening wail that would not quieten, a knell so hollow I thought it would consume me whole.
Babes died. Often. And God forgive me in my misery, but so consumed with heartache was I that not once did I consider those worse off. Those who lost wife and child during the war of labor. Those who lost children they’d raised and nurtured.
The weight of circumstance settled heavy on my chest, an undeniable tug of disbelief and grief as I journeyed home, three months later.
As I disembarked in Kilrush town.
As I put one foot before the other.
As I slowly made my way down the Ennis Road, following the high, impenetrable walls of the estate. They taunted me. Mocked me. As if to say, “You reached too far, and God has taken all ye dearly love.”
Anyone who passed doffed their caps or called their hellos, but I paid them no mind.
Home. I needed to be surrounded by those I loved, those who loved me.
I needed Michael’s poking humor, and Da’s muted chuckle, and Mam’s bright smile.
Until Teddy and I could meet, so we could talk and heal and plan.
Until I could ask him why he had abandoned me in that gilded cage and rally him against whatever obstacles had surely popped up.
In the meantime, I needed the reassurance of a warm home filled with laughter.
But as I turned the corner, the one that straightened toward the fields, where tenant houses stood squat and proud, it hit me.
The smell.
And suddenly a warm home filled with laughter had leapt out of reach.
For the woes of 1845 were no longer a distant memory, because the blight had returned and destroyed whatever sliver of hope any of us had left.
Smoke billowed from the chimney of my house, and I was reminded of the fog that brought the devastation this time last year. How could this happen again?
Da had written of all the work they had done—turning the soil, removing all tubers and roots, to be certain the old could not contaminate the new.
Effort and expense were put into the endeavor, driving most of the tenants to exhaustion—toiling by day for his lordship, toiling by night for the survival of their families.
Da had even sold all our luxuries to distribute coin to the tenants so none would starve in the coming months, sure the new harvest would be fine—how could it not be?
I sighed, then spied a figure standing in the open doorway of my home, a gray shawl wrapped around thin shoulders, sweeping the dirt pile from the main room to the ground outside.
“Mam!” I called, waving as I jogged. Though the physical pain of birth had eased, my joints were stiff from eight months of lolling around, and with each thud of my feet against hardened earth, a judder ran from knee to hip.
“Maggie?” Mam froze as she caught sight of me, but within a breath, she abandoned the broom, picked up her skirt, and ran to meet me.
We collided, knocking the wind from my lungs as her stick-thin arms engulfed my waist.
“Oh, my darlin’ girl,” she exclaimed, shifting to cup my face in her hands and shower me with kisses, as if I were naught but a child in need of comfort. “Sweet girl.”
Tears pricked behind my eyes as her own glistened, a contagion of sorrow and joy, felt wholly betwixt mother and daughter.
“Thank God, yer home,” Mam whispered, glancing back at the house, where a curious babe crawled through the open door, drowning in linen, for the child was far too thin, with none of the cherub-like softness I would expect.
Come to think of it, Mam was too thin. Shadows haunted the hollows beneath her eyes; her cheekbones protruded. She was naught but skin and bone from eating just enough to quiet the hunger, and the guilt of having plenty these last eight months tightened my chest.
“Inside, Crofton!” she called, but the babe remained on the threshold, staring out at us with large eyes, sunken and weary.
“Crofton?” I repeated, brows furrowing as I stared at the child. Mam and Da hadn’t chosen a name for my youngest brother when I’d left. It was bad luck, lest the babe perish before a month old.
Wrapped up in selfishness, I never thought to ask what they’d named him in any of my letters home.
“For his lordship, for his good favor,” Mam said quietly. “Come. There’s broth in the pot. Ye must tell me of yer travels, and all the wonders ye saw.”
“Mam,” I began, voice cracking. But she pulled me back into her embrace.
“We grieve with ye,” she whispered near my ear. “Let’s talk it all through tomorrow. After ye’ve rested. After everyone’s met ye. With today’s disaster, yer da will be so very glad yer home.”
There was no sign of Da, or Michael, as the afternoon stretched to evening, and evening to night. Mam and I did our best to plug any drafts so the stench of rot might spare us, but still it found its way into the house.
There was little for it to permeate, for the house was almost stripped bare of its furnishings. Rugs and blankets gone, sold off.
“We’re lucky to have more land than the others,” Mam said, making the sign of the cross.
As land agents, our house sat on one acre, a bounty four times that of our neighbors.
“Thanks be to God. Yer da put half to cabbage and half to carrot. Neither yield as much as the spud, so we’ve been struggling.
At least we had the luxury of having items worth selling. ”
“Everyone else replanted spuds?” I asked, knowing full well the answer.
“Aye. Sure, what else could they do?”
Nothing. Only the potato could sustain them. Failure or success; feast or famine.
After putting the younger ones to bed, Mam, Síofra, and I all sat before the fire, mending clothes as we waited. And waited.
I embellished my Dublin experience for Síofra’s sake, detailing lovely walks around Merrion Square Park—as I’d seen the fine ladies do from my window, my cage. And, now I realized, my prison.
But conversation soon turned to the kind of food I’d eaten, and my stomach growled at the thought, guilt-ridden and hungry.
I’d never gone without and had plenty of meat—a luxury at home. But after a single serving of the watered-down cabbage broth my mother had so excitedly placed before me earlier, I chose to keep all of that to myself and instead spoke of boiled vegetables served once a day.
Mam asked about the countryside and what towns I’d passed through, so I regaled them of all I could remember.
Anything to avoid mention of my loss. Anything but that.
Until, finally, the door opened, and Da and Michael stepped through, the stench of decay wafting into the main room.
“Gack!” Síofra exclaimed, covering her mouth with her arm.
But I hardly noticed, for there was Da, eyes bloodshot—from tears or noxious gases, I knew not—with the weight of the world etched into the lines of his face, hair freshly washed, and skin scrubbed raw, glowing red against the stark white of a freshly laundered nightshirt.
They’d obviously rinsed away the lingering rot in the washhouse before entering.
“Maggie,” Da breathed, thin face crumpling as he swiped a hand over it. “Oh Jesus, God, and all the saints. I thought—yer not supposed to be here.”
I rose from my chair and rushed to greet him.
“I’m home,” I breathed, burying my face in the hollow of his collarbone. Da’s arms came around me and, for the first time in a long while, safety engulfed my soul, and the weight of grief lessened.
A third hand patted my head, and I pulled back to glance over my left shoulder. Michael—also far too thin. I reached for him and pulled him into Da’s safety net.
For nothing else concerned me in that moment. We were all together again, and it didn’t matter what was happening out in the fields or up at the Big House.
With my family, I knew I could get through this, because where Teddy drew strength from me, I drew my strength from them.