Hannie rose. “We’ll leave you now. I must get these girls home and put some broth in them. We’ll be back.”
“We meant for you to have that punt, Hannie,” Thomas said. “You and Hugh. It wasn’t much, but it was a fine one. Of course, I’ll take our girls over a boat any day.” He mussed Gisela’s hair in the way her father had.
“Still. What a pity!” Jean said.
“I’m sorry I let it go,” Elisabeth said.
“Oh, child! I meant to cast no blame! A bunch of wood is all, not worth a single life, not a one, don’t you worry,” Thomas said. “We have what matters.”
Gisela dropped the blanket and threw her arms around the man’s waist, pushed her face against his muddied shirt. For one moment, she was a small child and her Vati was alive and there was no war, no Hitler, no bombs, no Ireland. Only a father’s heart beating in her ear. How she longed for it!
Jean put her arms out and surveyed the room as if some great snake were taking the very soul from her husband. “What’s this about now?”
Bewildered, Thomas tapped Gisela awkwardly. “There, now. It’s fine. We’re fine, you hear? We’re fine. America can wait if it must.”
Before dusk, and already Gisela was on the pallet in the attic, Hannie’s quilt wrapped around her, the other blanket folded on the bench by the door. Her body still rode the waves when her eyes drifted closed, like it was seawater and not blood that flowed through her veins. Elisabethwas down the ladder with Hannie. Birds were singing the last songs of the day when the door banged open. Gisela sat up when she heard Jean’s voice.
“She’s dead. My child is dead.”
Keening fogged the room as if the space below Gisela filled with white ghosts. She climbed out of bed, perched herself on the top ladder rung to peer down.
“What? No!” Hannie set a stove pot on the table and opened her arms. Jean went to her, allowed herself to be engulfed.
“The doctor told us to watch her. And we did! He said this could happen.” Jean wailed to the rafters. Gisela pulled her feet into the shadow. “What will I do? What will I do? I can’t leave her here, Hannie. But I can’t stay. This place has taken every one of my children. It will take me next, and I’m about for it.”
“I know. You simply can’t. No, it isn’t fair,” Hannie said, patting Jean’s arm.
“This is it, I tell you. I cannot bury another child. I told Thomas. We’re leaving tomorrow. You’ll see to her burial, won’t you? You’ll do that for me.”
“You’re being . . .”
“Batty? Am I batty for not wanting to put another child in the ground?”
Gisela had asked Hannie about the nickname the O’Kane boys taunted Fiadh with, and Hannie said that following the deaths of twin sons—one from influenza, the other from a mule kick to the head—only weeks apart, Jean had laid up for months, leaving Thomas to care for Fiadh, who was only a toddler. “‘Poor Batty Jean!’ they said, like her name was in a drinking song! Then one day, she rose up, got dressed. ‘We’ll speak no more of it,’ she said and never did, though I suppose the name still has a certain ring to it.”
“Jean,” Hannie said. “Where’s Thomas?”
“He’s with her. Your Hugh has gone for the priest.”
Elisabeth looked up, tapped her finger on her lips to tell Gisela not to speak. She backed slowly to the open door and ran out without Hannie or Jean noticing.
Jean marched around the room. “Curse God. Curse him! Theresa O’Kane and those beautiful boys of hers. You and your sons, and now these German girls are yours too! God gives and gives to everyone and takes and takes from me. God leaves me with nothing!”
“Let’s not do that,” Hannie said, as if God was in the room taking notes. “You have Thomas. You have me and Hugh. The wee girls need us, especially now. Stay. You must.”
“I wish one of those girls had died instead of mine,” Jean said.
“You don’t mean that.”
“I do. I really do. If God wanted a child so bad, take one that no one else wants. Take one who doesn’t have a mother who loves her. Don’t take mine. It is not too late! Switch them out! I dare you, God. Switch them out!” She raised her fist as if she were throwing lightning to heaven.
Those words that nourished Gisela came together now, what the women were saying about her and her sister. They were castaways. Orphans. Below her, the room turned into the sea. Jean was right. It should have been her. She was to blame. Clumsy fool.
“Friend,” Hannie said. “Listen to me. Listen. Stay. Take one of these shamrock girls into your house. They both need a mother.” Her voice dropped but, from the shadows, Gisela could still hear every word. “Take Elisabeth. She’s easier. She goes along.”
“I’ll never have peace here. Let me leave!” Jean wailed. “Fiadh. Fiadh!”
Suddenly, the prospect of Fiadh in America didn’t seem so bad to Gisela. What had been the fuss? In America, Fiadh would be alive. In America, Fiadh could write letters, maybe someday return. Or maybe someday Gisela and Elisabeth would have gone to visit. Forget the ship. They could have flown in an airplane and visited this New England that Jean and Thomas waxed on about. Gisela closed her eyes and pictured Fiadh alive, living a different life after all. “You are in America,” shesaid out loud. She repeated it. An incantation. “Fiadh is in America.” She opened her eyes.
