Fever
Michael came in and dropped three measly black potatoes on the table.
Mam crossed herself and began to mutter “Hail Mary” as fast as she could. Kath burst into tears.
Dad followed Michael in, wringing his cap in his hands.
“How’re we going to feed Johnny?” Mam asked. None of us had thought of that. In the corner, Johnny was in the cradle Dad carved for Michael. He was white and shivery all the time, and the fever clung to him like a mad dog.
“We’ve still got some of last year’s stock,” Dad said, trying to be bright. “That’ll last. It should pass.”
But we all knew he was lying.
That was the beginning of it.
*
Johnny died a little over two months later. We buried him ourselves at the bottom of the garden, and Michael carved a cross out for him. I plaited my coppery hair up under a black shawl and recited a poem for him. Kath placed the last of her stash of blackberries by the cross. Dad began to make a cairn for him. All Mam did was let salty tears make wet patches on the newly turned soil
Mam was teary for weeks, and we could hear her sobbing from the room she shared with Dad. Kath would snuggle closer to me. “Will we die too?” she asked me once.
“No,” I said. “Well, yes. But not for years and years.”
“You promise?” she asked me. “You promise me?”
I put my arms around her. She was trembling: each sob of Mam’s sent a new wave of shivering through her. “I can’t promise anything like that. But I do promise I’ll do everything to keep you safe.”
Kath calmed down a little. “That’s fine,” she said. “I’ll be safe then. You and Michael, you can do anything.”
She sounded so hopeful that I just nodded. In minutes she was asleep. I watched the moonlight’s progression over the halo of yellow hair that hung on her head. She looked so calm. I cursed myself thrice over for letting her believe such a lie. I could hear Father Sullivan’s words:
“You should never lie Bridie. You should never let anybody believe a lie when you know the truth.”
He was very into truth, Father Sullivan. I liked him a lot. He was an old man with white hair, a crooked nose and a creaking voice. He was frail and leant on his stick to reach the altar, but we loved him all the same.
But of course, he had died a week before Johnny had. The fever along with the famine was claiming the weakest among us.
I held Kath tighter to me. I wouldn’t let them take her away, or anybody else.
*
When Kath caught the fever, Michael flat refused to go to work.
He and I sat by her bedside, doing everything we could to save her. Mam still wasn’t right. She had lost Johnny, I think she was afraid of losing Kath too. We all were though. Seven years was far too short a time to have her with us.
So we took care of her. We would take turns with Dad to sit up all night with her and hold her hand. She took our bed, I shared with Michael like we had done when we were little. Of course, now that I had bled, and Michael was a man, it wasn’t strictly right, but I couldn’t share with Kath for fear of catching it.
“Do you think she’ll die?” I asked him once.
He bit his lip and looked at me from under auburn hair flopping over his eyes.
“Michael, please say she’ll be alright,” I begged him.
He nodded.
Lord knew we couldn’t afford to lose her. Some people might argue she was one less mouth to feed, but she didn’t eat much, and losing another child might just push Mam over the edge.
Meanwhile our potato stock was down to fifteen…
*
Dad had earned enough working at the big house to buy sacks of oats that he hoped would last us through the rest of the winter. But with Kath still sick, we weren’t sure if it was going to be enough.
Mam still wasn’t right. She moped around the house. Sometimes she didn’t get out of bed. I made her porridge, or if we were lucky and Michael had hit a bird down, some stew from the pot.
Kath began to get better, but she was still very weak. We couldn’t afford to keep Michael at home, so he went with Dad to the big house. I stayed with Kath and Mam and did what little I could with the oats. It took a lot of imagination, but as Father Sullivan once remarked, I didn’t lack that. The others pretended to enjoy it, but though I was a good enough cook, I knew that porridge day after day with no salt began to leave a sour taste in the mind, if not the mouth.
The snows came, and Christmas with them. There was no priest in the church, so we had our own prayers. Michael gave me a carving on a piece of bark of a snowdrop, and I recited a poem I had made up for him. He made a little wooden doll for Kath and I used the hem of one of my old skirts to make clothes for it. Neither of us knew what to give our parents though. In the end, I surrendered my darning needle, the one that used to belong to grandmother when she had taught me how to sew, to Mam. We made Dad rest for the week. He was tired and worried. All three of us were. But Michael and I could afford to make him sit back and be mollycoddled, for this week anyway. There were enough boys hanging at the gate begging for jobs for the big house to manage without him.
But though Kath could now sit up in bed, and it looked as if she’d be fine in a few weeks, Mam seemed to be getting worse…
*
On the first of February, God gave me the best birthday gift that I could have wished for. Kath was up around the house, singing and dancing like she always had been before. The fever had taken its toll on her, she wasn’t rosy cheeked anymore and very pale, but she’d be back to her proper self in no time at all. With Kath, our Kath back, everything seemed so much sweeter, the smell of the earth, the feel of the oats under my hands, the sound of the rooks cawing outside.
Dad came back from the big house with a bunch of snowdrops for me. “Happy birthday Bridie.” he said and gave me a hug.
It used to be that he would always gather snowdrops for me, everybody would. Dad even used to call me his snowdrop, because of my birthday. Mam used to laugh and say all she was expecting to come out on Saint Brigid's Day were the snowdrops, and Dad would laugh that "Bridie came out instead".
I thanked him and placed them on the table, except for three which I left on the wall at the bottom of the garden as an offering to my namesake.
“Thank you,” I told her, touching the rough stone of Johnny's cairn, then looking up to the ice blue sky. “Thanks for looking after Kath.”
Michael came rushing into the house and placed a parcel in front of me. I opened it. “Michael, you’re amazing!” I said, throwing my arms around my brother.
“Oy,” he said. “Use it carefully. I got it from the teacher in the town. Says he still remembers you.”
I smiled at that, taking the smooth paper in my hands. The teacher at our little school always used to say I would be a writer when I’m older. I had left when I was eleven, four years ago now, but I remembered every single thing.
“Who knows?” Michael said to Dad. “Maybe Bridie will get published and make us all rich.” They laughed when I blushed.
Mam gave me an odd look when I said it was my birthday and said “Birth… caused me so much pain.”
My spirits fell. Here was me, thinking that after the long winter, on the first day of spring it would be alright, but Mam’s face, her hollow cheeks and ghostly white papery skin made me think otherwise. She wasn't the same woman she used to be, the woman who would sing silly bawdy songs while she worked, the woman who would spend a fortune on salt because she wouldn't eat potatoes without it.
She was a stranger.
*
Since Kath was better, Michael was more inclined to dawdle after work, and we all knew where. He had been with Sarah O’Connell for more than a year. I liked Sarah, she was bright and plump and rosy. She was eighteen, the same as him and out of all the girls in the village, I liked her best. If there was any girl good enough for my beloved big brother, it was Sarah.
In the middle of February, while I was making porridge again, Michael came into the house with a loaf of bread.
“Where did you get that?” I asked him.
“Mary O’Connell. I was over seeing Sarah.”
I breathed in the glorious aroma of the loaf, something I hadn't smelt in so long. “I’ll tell you something, you need to marry that girl quick. I hear they have chickens too.”
He grinned. “Her dad’s master groom up at the big house, that’s why.” He paused. “I’ve been thinking about asking her. What would Dad say?”
“He’d say that he’d take any girl if she comes with a dowry of chickens and bread,” I said, taking out a knife and cutting off five thin slices.
“The feast of Saint Valentine is soon,” he said. “Do you reckon maybe then?”
“Michael, I’m happy if you are. I like Sarah. She’s be a great sister,” I said.
He grinned. “Then maybe I’ll ask her.”
I smiled. “Good for you, Michael.”
He went to take the bowls out. “When are you going to find a boy then Bridie?” he asked.
Kath came running in muddied up her ankles. “Bridie can’t have a boy,” she said.
“Why not?” asked Michael picking her up and twirling her round.
“Because boys are disgusting!” Kath said, struggling to get down and running away again.
“Go wash your feet!” I called after her.
“Well, if you’re marrying Sarah, then perhaps I’ll find a boy,” I said.
*
I guess I was tempting fate when I said that, dangling my family’s livelihood and telling destiny to come and get us.
Because by some cruel coincidence, the next day, Joe O’Connell, the master groom at the big house, was trampled underfoot by the lord’s favourite stallion.
Of course, Michael decided it was only right to hold off the proposal until he was better.
But he was dead within the week. We mourned, the whole village did. Joe O’Connell had helped everyone out at some point. We mourned but secretly, I think, we hoped that Dad would be made master groom.
He wasn’t. Fergus from the other side of the hill was. We were happy for his family, but it meant that now Sarah had no dowry left save chickens, who would need feeding, and Michael had no means of supporting her. The work he and Dad did barely fed the five of us and kept the rent. Michael was more than upset. I knew that he and Sarah were serious, it wasn’t some fling in a hayfield. I could tell by looking at my brother he wanted to marry her and make her happy. But now we were all as poor as each other, and until the blight passed that wasn’t going to change.
*
Our landlord, however, was not kind. Once a number of weeks of mourning were over, he sent a message down to the O’Connells. Their rent was due, and if they could not pay it, he would evict them.
Sarah came up to our house, crying. “I don’t know what to do,” she said. “They want to evict us.”
Michael took both her hands in his. “Marry me Sarah,” he said. “Marry me and we’ll get away from all of this. We’ll go to Dublin, maybe further. One of the lads up at the big house, his sister’s gone to Liverpool. Or Boston, or New York or London, or anywhere.”
Sarah squeezed his hands. “Michael, you know I would but Mam’s a wreck, I can’t leave her with the wee ones.”
She was doing the right thing, I thought. She had four little siblings and her mother still wasn’t over her husband’s death. Were I her, I couldn’t have ran away with Michael either.
Michael swallowed. “What are you going to do?” he asked.
She shrugged. “You know I’d marry you. But neither of us have any money and I need to stay by my family.”
“Come and stay with us,” he said. “All of you!”
She let out a laugh. “We’d be fit to burst. Don’t worry Michael, I’ll work something out.”
She sounded so certain. How could rosy cheeked bright Sarah be wrong?
I hoped she had something up her sleeve though. Michael had never mentioned migrating before, and now I couldn’t come to terms with it. If Michael left, I would be looking after our family by myself. He couldn’t leave me by myself here, he just couldn’t.
*
Michael cried the next day. “He pulled off their roof,” he said.
I hugged him and we stood there for five minutes, not moving, save for our sobs.
Mam was sitting in the corner and looked up. “Life is cruel,” she said. “They’ll have to deal with it.”
I couldn’t take it anymore. I went over and slapped her -my own mother- across the face. My hand stung and a patch of red appeared on her snow coloured skin.
“How can you be so unkind?” I screamed. “How can you be so self-pitying and not care one ounce for other people? All you’ve done since Johnny died is mope around the house feeling sorry for yourself. You’re supposed to be our mother! You’re supposed to care for us and love us. But instead Dad’s worked off his feet at the big house trying to keep us alive and Michael and I are the only parents Kath has. And we haven’t got anybody. At least Sarah had the courage to stay by her family. But now I don’t even think you’d do that for us!”
Mam stared at me for a few moments, then ran outside.
“What have you done now?” Michael shouted at me. “You’ve driven her off!”
“I’ve gotten her out of the house for the first time in months, that’s what I’ve done!” I cried. “She can’t go on like this.”
“Why do you always have to make things a thousand times worse?”
“Michael, I’m just as upset about Sarah as you are, do you think-”
“No you’re not. You’re a liar, that’s what you are,” he said. He shot a look of venom at me, then followed Mam out the door.
*
I sat up in the dark waiting for them all night. Dad had gone to bed, exhausted. He had wanted to stay up with me, but I persuaded him to sleep. I had Kath settled and took the blanket off Michael’s bed to wrap myself in. It was cold, but I didn't light the fire. Instead I sat, curling my toes in the earth below my feet and rubbing the coarse material of the blanket as if it were rosary beads.
Finally, Michael came in with Mam in his arms. Without a word, he went into Mam and Dad’s room and placed her on the bed.
He came back into the main room. “Mam’s all shivery. I found her by the river. I think she might be sick.”
I didn’t answer. He came to stand next to me and put his hands on my shoulders, crouching down.
“I’m sorry, Bridie,” he said.
I didn’t look up at him. “Do I really make things worse?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “If anything, you make things better, Bridie. I was just being stupid.”
“You said I was a liar,” I said closing my eyes, thinking back to that night when Kath was so afraid.
“You’re not though. I’m sorry Bridie, it’s just,” he shook his head.
“No I get it. I’d be exactly the same.”
He sat on the little stool beside my chair. I took his hand. “Is Mam really sick?” I asked.
He nodded.
I bowed my head. “I never should have given out to her. I should go see her.”
“Dad’s up tending to her.”
“He shouldn’t be, he needs to sleep,” I said. “This is all my fault, Michael.”
“It’s not,” he said. “It’s the potato’s fault. It’s this bloody famine’s fault. All of it.”
He let go of my hand and clenched his fists hard. “We have to do something,” he said. “I don’t know what, but we can’t let it go on destroying our lives.”
I got out of my chair and hugged him. Tears fell from both of our eyes. And when he unclenched his fists, I could feel the warm blood where his fingernails had pierced his palms seeping into the back of my dress.
Set in the Irish Potato Famine, or the Great Hunger, in the 1840s. Part Two: Workhouse coming soon. Please be cruel with your crits.
. I've done most of what you said, at least, attempted to. Um, I haven't done the accents however because:
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