A Family Apart (4 page)

F
RANCES AWOKE WITH
the pale sunlight that filtered through the room’s one small window. There was no time to lie in bed, clinging to dreams. Too much had to be done.

As Frances sat on the edge of the bed, blinking sleep from her eyes, Megan smiled at her. Gentle Megan, as usual, was first up, already dressed and tending to breakfast. Frances smiled back, thinking how peacefully reassuring it was that every morning repeated itself over and over.

As soon as they had eaten—either slabs of heavy Irish soda bread or a porridge that simmered on the stove until it was thick—Megan would carry her basket to the green-grocer’s to buy potatoes and cabbage, which would be boiled for the noon meal.

Danny and Mike, with their shoeshining kits, would head uptown to the streets of office buildings, where
well-dressed businessmen, on their way to work, might take time to let one of the “shiners” polish their shoes.

Ma would open the box of shirts to be sewn, and she and Frances would pull their straight, wooden chairs to the window to catch the light in order to sew the tiny stitches demanded by the tailor who paid them to work on this piecework. Frances liked to sew with her mother, enjoying the closeness, the stories Ma would sometimes tell, and especially the songs she’d sing in a voice as soft and comforting as a newly knit shawl.

Even the little ones, Peg and Petey, had their chores, tidying, dusting, drying the tin plates and utensils. Ma demanded cleanliness in and about the room and of all who lived in it. Each week the children carried buckets of water from the trough in the hall, and Ma would heat it by the kettleful to fill the large round tub that stood on end in the corner behind the stove, until everyone had bathed.

Frances held up her dress. Would it need an extra washing with the lye soap Ma had made? It had dried, and she rubbed the skirt briskly, dusting away the streaks of mud. When she was satisfied that the stains from her drenching the day before no longer showed, she hurried into a corner of the room, dressed quickly, and brushed her long dark hair, loving the soft heaviness of it as it spilled over her hands. Frances was proud of her hair, because Ma loved it. “So dark and fine, like my own mother’s hair,” Ma had said.

As she came to the table, Mike was reading a tattered copy of a dime novel,
Seth Jones, Or Captive of the Frontier.
He looked up at Frances and said, “Now this is an exciting story! If you want to read it again, you’ll have to wait.”

Frances laughed. “I’ve read it and I told you, I don’t
like the story much. I don’t want to read about the frontier.” She dropped into the nearest chair. Petey immediately crawled on her lap, and Frances nuzzled his cropped blond curls.

“I don’t understand you,” Mike said. “The frontier’s exciting! I’ve heard the tales about wide open spaces filled with herds of deer and buffalo! Think of this—each man has his own horse and can ride for miles and miles without seeing a single building! And there are Indians who ride wild horses and gallop down from the hills, whooping and hollering! I’d like that, I would!”

Frances sniffed. “Huh! If all that is true, then the West, with all its wild ways, is a place where I’m never going to be, and you can bet on that!”

Mike plopped his empty bowl onto the table and picked up his shine kit. “Off to meet the swells!” he said. “Let’s hope the dust from yesterday’s wind dirtied a lot of boots.”

Ma smiled. Mike, whose infectious grin was as bright as his tousled red hair, could always make her smile.

“Wait for me,” Danny cried through a mouthful of gruel.

“Hurry up, then,” Mike said. He pulled on his jacket and cap as he walked toward the door. Although Danny was an inch taller than Mike, who was small for his age, Mike, as older brother, had no trouble keeping Danny in line.

Now was Frances’s chance. She slipped up behind Mike and pushed him into the hallway, quietly shutting the door behind her. “I have to talk to you, Mike,” she said. “I want to ask you a question.”

He grinned. “If you’re lucky, I’ll give you an answer.”

“It’s about last night. You got home just before Ma and me. She didn’t see you, but I did.”

“When you came in, I was sleeping soundly.”

“I saw you open one eye.”

Mike pretended to look surprised. “One eye, was it? Then tell me, what was the other eye doing all this while?”

Frances couldn’t keep from giggling. “Mike,” she said, “be serious.”

Danny rushed into the hallway so fast he almost collided with Frances. “I’m ready, Mike!” he shouted. Danny was barefoot, as Mike was, and he had no jacket to wear over his shirt and knickers, having grown so fast during the summer he couldn’t fit into the only one he owned. Danny looked from Mike to Frances. “What are you two talking about?”

“Nothing,” Mike said.

But Frances was not going to be put off. “Danny,” she said, “do you know where Mike was last night?”

The guilt on Danny’s face was as thick as jam as he answered, “Wasn’t he home in bed?”

Frances sighed. She’d get nowhere with Danny. After Da had died, Danny had clung to Mike as though he were a father. “In bed is where Mike should have been,” Frances said.

“And isn’t that where you found me?” Mike looked at her with wide-eyed innocence.

Frances pretended to scowl, but she couldn’t keep the smile from her lips. She was much too fond of Mike ever to be angry with him. “You think you can talk yourself out of anything!” she called after Mike, as she watched her brothers run down the hallway and out the front door of the building, but she wondered with a shivering doubt about his ability to talk his way out of
everything.

Frances hesitated a moment outside the room where
Mara lived. People were up and about, as she knew they would be. Mara’s Uncle Gerik opened the door to Frances’s knock. He was a ragpicker by trade, who searched through scraps and gutters for rags, then washed and sold them. By this time he should have been out on the streets with his cart.

“How is Mara? Please don’t tell me that she’s worse!” Frances stammered.

As Uncle Gerik’s eyes shifted to avoid Frances’s gaze, she frantically squirmed past him and into the room. The Robis had even less furniture than the Kellys, and the bare wooden floor of their room was dusty with lint from the piles of rags in every corner.

Mara, who lay on a small pallet, was covered with a thin, dirty blanket. Her dark hair was so damp it was plastered to her skull as though it had been painted there, and her cheeks were red and flushed. Frances gasped. The smell of illness, so strong in spite of the thick stench of garlic in the air, carried her back to the terror and pain of when Da had been so ill. She hurried to Mara’s side, kneeling beside her. “Do you have medicine for her?” Frances asked.

“Good soup make better,” Aunt Annuska said. She tried for more words, but her English was not very good. She held up some piecework she had laid across Mara’s pallet. “Better soon. Then she can sew. Much work to do.” She glanced at Mara as though the girl were lazy and taking an unearned rest.

“Soup is not enough,” Frances said firmly. She could see the watery brown liquid that was simmering in an iron pot on the Robis’ stove. She took Mara’s hand, but it was damp and limp, as Da’s hand had been. Suddenly terrified, Frances jumped to her feet and shouted, “She should go to the hospital where a doctor could care for her!”

Mara’s aunt and uncle began to speak rapidly in a language Frances couldn’t understand. It was easy to tell, however, that they were frightened of the hospital—where so many sick people were taken, never to return—and of doctors—who would demand money in exchange for medicine. How could she make them understand that Mara needed more help than they could give her?

Next to Megan, Mara was Frances’s best friend. The day the Kellys moved into this building, Mara had approached Frances with a shy smile and a knotted string and invited her to share a game of cat’s cradle. Since then they had talked and walked and played together whenever they could leave work behind long enough.

Fiercely determined that she would not lose Mara, Frances ignored the Robis and bent over her friend. “Do you want to go to the hospital where the doctor will help you?” she asked.

Mara was barely able to nod her head.

Ignoring the excited chatter of Uncle Gerik and Aunt Annuska, Frances rushed from the room. As she ran into her own home, her heart was beating so hard it pounded in her ears, but she managed to stammer, “Mara’s very sick, Ma! I’m afraid! Please help her!”

Ma nodded. Without a word she stood, pulled on her shawl, and left the room.

While Ma was gone, Frances tried to work on the shirt she was sewing, but her fingers trembled, and she had to rip out many stitches. Megan hushed the little ones and tried to comfort Frances, saying, “You know Ma. She’ll find someone who will help.”

Frances somehow had finished stitching in both sleeves and had almost completed the tightly rolled hem by the time she again heard voices and footsteps in the hall. The door to the Robis’ room opened and shut, Aunt
Annuska’s wails burst through the wall, and voices rumbled in anger. Soon the door opened and shut again, and footsteps hurried down the hall. Frances and Megan waited, desperate to know what had taken place, yet fearful to find out.

Ma calmly came through the door and hung up her shawl. “Mara is very ill,” she said, “but the doctor said the illness has not reached her lungs, and with care and good food she’ll get better soon.” She paused. “He had her carried to the hospital.”

Frances felt her legs wobble, and she sat on the nearest chair. “Will she be back home soon?”

Ma put an arm around Frances’s shoulder. After a while she spoke quietly and slowly, as though many words were laid out before her and she was choosing among them carefully. “A man came with the doctor. He’s a minister. His name is Charles Loring Brace, and he has set up something called the Children’s Aid Society, which cares for needy children. The doctor and Reverend Brace think that Mara will do better if she stays for a while at the home the Society has set up for orphaned children.” Frances’s mother glanced at her and quickly added, “Just till she’s well again.”

“Is that why Aunt Annuska was yelling so loudly?” Megan asked.

Ma nodded. “It took a little while to convince Annuska and Gerik that this was for the best.” She was silent for a moment, then added thoughtfully, “I’ve seen Reverend Brace in this neighborhood before, and I’ve heard only good about the orphaned children he places out in new homes in the West, where there’s plenty of fresh food and clean air and warm clothing to be had.”

Frances was sorry for the poor, parentless children Reverend Brace had sent to the West—and desperately
thankful that she wasn’t one of them. How awful to be taken away from friends—maybe even other family members—to the wild, terrifying frontier that Mike had described. She gasped as she realized that Mara
was
an orphan! And now she was in Reverend Brace’s care. Frances shivered against a cold, creeping guilt. What had she done to her friend? “Ma,” she asked, “was Mara frightened about being taken away from her aunt and uncle?”

“Mara will be all right,” Ma said. She crossed to her chair, sat down, and picked up the shirtsleeve on which she had been working. As she bent over it and began again a row of tiny stitches, she added, “Mara needed to be cared for, love, and that’s the all of it.”

“I would have helped care for her, Ma,” Frances insisted.

“She needed more care than you or I could give,” Ma said.

Frances picked up her piecework and bent over it, trying to see the stitches through a blur of tears. “I didn’t get to say good-bye,” she whispered.

She worked steadily, unaware that Megan had begun to cook the noon meal until Mike and Danny burst through the door, dropping their shine kits and stirring like a whirlwind the fragrance of potatoes and cabbage that filled the room.

“I’m hungry, Ma!” Danny called.

“You’re always hungry!” Mike shoved him, laughing and diving over the bed as Danny chased him.

Smoothing her skirt, Ma stood up. “Pull the chairs to the table,” she said. “I’ll help Megan dish up.”

Danny fished into his pocket, pulled out a few coins, and dropped them onto the table. “Mike was right,” he said with a grin. “Lots of dusty boots this morning.”

Mike emptied his own pockets, and, along with the coins he’d earned, a shining, pearl-handled pocketknife fell onto the table.

“Ohhh!” Peg said, grabbing for the knife. “Where did you get this?”

Mike was quicker than Peg, and the knife disappeared into his pocket. “Found it,” he said. “Some swell must have dropped it, and I was lucky.”

“You were
indeed
lucky,” Ma said as she ladled food onto the plates, but Frances had seen the wary look in Danny’s eyes and knew Mike hadn’t found that knife.

She sat down slowly, trying to think. Surely Mike wouldn’t have stolen it. Da had taught all the children, over and over, that thievery was a crime. Mike had said he had found the knife. Frances wanted to believe him, but she couldn’t help doubting his word. As she ate, she sneaked a sideways glance at Mike now and then, until he finally turned toward her and stuck out his tongue.

The promise she made to herself was just as solemn as if she’d spoken it aloud:
All right, Michael Patrick Kelly, that does it! Whether you like it or not, I’ll find out just what it is you’re up to!

After their meal, Ma folded two of the shirts carefully and wrapped them in the brown paper in which they’d arrived. “Will you take these to Mr. Totts, Frances? It will give you a little rest from the sewing. Just come home before four so we can be at work on time.”

Mike immediately declared that he had to get back to shining, and Danny scurried through the door on Mike’s heels.

This is my chance
, Frances thought. She was the eldest in the family. If Mike were doing something that might get him into trouble, then she should find out and
put a stop to it. Giving her brothers just enough time to leave the building, she raced down the hall and out to the street, so that she could follow them at a safe distance.