The Ship of Doom

"Mummy!  I'm cold!" Patricia wails, seeking comfort from our mother.

"Hush child. it will be morning soon," she replies, stroking my sister's greasy, brown hair which was spread in long ringlets over the grubby blanket. I sigh deeply as I hear my sister let out another cough. Her cold is getting much, much worse. It's at the point where she has to stay in bed all day, coughing and spluttering, forever using her handkerchief. It'll be a miracle if she survives the rest of this journey which is over a week. No. I must not think like that. I must be strong. For everyone.

Morning comes and mother and I tidy the area we occupy in the dorm, which isn't a whole lot of space. We're responsible for one bunk of five cramped into the tight room. Though it's nearly noon, the dorm is barely lit as the only oval-shaped window allows very little light to squeeze through.

The dorm is deserted apart from mother, Patricia and I, because everyone else is breathing the sacred, fresh air up on deck. We would have joined them, for it would do my sister the world of good, but she's too sick to even attempt to rouse from bed.

I study her now. She looks so angelic asleep. Her young, pale face is soft, and, her brown curls, though in desperate need of a wash, look princess-like as they surround her face.

"She'll survive this, Theresa," my mother says, scrubbing manky clothes in a dirty bucket of water. "No God will ever take her from us."

I bite my lip and take a filthy bed sheet from the Murphy's bed, and begin to wash it, stopping myself from screaming. How could she still believe in the Lord? Even if He's real, He hasn't exactly been pleasant to us, has He? Didn't He allow our potato crop to fail, causing my father to go to the roads for work, where he faced his death? Resulting in us having to board this deathly ship, where Patricia caught her nearly incurable cold? Yes, I don't think "God" has been very concerned lately.

A sad sob disturbs me from my mental rant. I turn to find my mother, head bent, holding onto my sister for dear life. it only takes a second for the truth to sink in.

I feel like I did a month ago, when Murray's eldest son came to tell us that my father had died of the fever. His father, who had traveled in search of work with mine, stayed with him until the last minute, risking catching the fever himself. Only this feels ten times worse. Not because I loved father any less, but because when he first set off in search of work, with his face a ghostly white and his bare feet barely supporting his body, I figured it would be the last time I ever saw him. But this. I'm not prepared for this. Though I've pictured it happening many times. there was always hope. I may have wept and screamed in my nightly nightmares of Patricia suddenly stopping breathing, but I never dared believe them. But now, the unthinkable has happened. I am sister-less.

                                                                                                                     ***

"Come on lads! Get it in there! It'll spread bleedin' infection!" The heartless captain screams at the sailors. They pick up the plain, wooden box that myself and mother have been grieving beside. Everyone on board is up here on deck, paying their respects to the little girl they barely knew. The captain doesn't approve of their presence. He keeps glaring at the crowd. He knows better then the object, though.

The sailors, four young men in white uniforms, literally toss my sister's coffin into the violent green sea. It's a squeeze from my placid mother's hand that stops me from yelling every foul name under the sun at them, for treating Patricia's body with such carelessness. Instead, I bite my swollen lip. It floats for a while, and then it slowly disappears, defeated, just another part of the evil Atlantic ocean. Gone forever.

A pang of longing flares in my chest. People begin to file back downstairs. I look up at mother, who's dark blue eyes are swarmed with tears. An old lady pats her back and trying to be comforting says, "No one can hurt the child now. She's an angel up in God's kingdom." But I know she's wrong. No God would put me through this pain.