The Best American Short Stories® 2011 (23 page)

When the woman comes out, she pays no heed to the men. She is even taller than my mother, with the same black hair, but hers is cut tight like a helmet. She's wearing a printed blouse and brown, flared trousers. The car door is opened and I am taken out, and kissed.

"The last time I saw you, you were in the pram," she says, and stands back, expecting an answer.

"The pram's broken."

"What happened at all?"

"My brother used it for a wheelbarrow and the wheel fell off."

She laughs and licks her thumb and wipes something off my face. I can feel her thumb, softer than my mother's, wiping whatever it is away. When she looks at my clothes, I see my thin cotton dress, my dusty sandals through her eyes. Neither one of us knows what to say. A queer, ripe breeze is crossing the yard.

"Come on in,
a leanbh.
"

She leads me into the house. There's a moment of darkness in the hallway; when I hesitate, she hesitates with me. We walk through into the heat of the kitchen, where I am told to sit down, to make myself at home. Under the smell of baking, there's some disinfectant, some bleach. She lifts a rhubarb tart out of the oven and puts it on the bench. Pale yellow roses are still as the jar of water they are standing in.

"So how is your mammy keeping?"

"She won a tenner on the prize bonds."

"She did not."

"She did," I say. "We all had jelly and ice cream and she bought a new tube for the bicycle."

I feel, again, the steel teeth of the comb against my scalp earlier that morning, the strength of my mother's hands as she wove my plaits tight, her belly at my back, hard with the next baby. I think of the clean pants she packed in the suitcase, the letter, and what she must have written. Words had passed between my mother and father:

"
How long should they keep her?
"

"
Can't they keep her as long as they like?
"

"
Is that what I'll say?
"

"
Say what you like. Isn't it what you always do.
"

Now the woman fills an enamel jug with milk.

"Your mother must be busy."

"She's waiting for them to come and cut the hay."

"Have ye not the hay cut?" she says. "Aren't ye late?"

As the men come in from the yard, it grows momentarily dark, then brightens once again when they sit down.

"Well, missus," Da says, pulling out a chair.

"Dan," she says, in a different voice.

"There's a scorcher of a day."

"'Tis hot, surely." She turns her back to watch the kettle, waiting.

" Wasn't it a great year for the hay all the same. Never saw the like of it," Da says. "The loft is full to capacity. I nearly split my head on the rafters pitching it in."

I wonder why my father lies about the hay. He is given to lying about things that would be nice, if they were true. Somewhere farther off, someone has started up a chain saw, and it drones on like a big, stinging wasp for a while. I wish I was out there, working. I am unused to sitting still and do not know what to do with my hands. Part of me wants my father to leave me here while another wants him to take me back, to what I know. I am in a spot where I can neither be what I always am nor turn into what I could be.

The kettle rumbles up to the boiling point, its steel lid clapping. Kinsella gets a stack of plates from the cupboard, opens a drawer and takes out knives and forks, teaspoons. He opens a jar of beetroot and puts it on a saucer with a little serving fork, leaves out sandwich spread and salad cream. Already there's a bowl of tomatoes and onions chopped fine, a fresh loaf, ham, a block of red cheddar.

"And what way is Mary?" the woman says.

"Mary? She's coming near her time."

"I suppose the last babby is getting hardy?"

"Aye," Da says. "He's crawling. It's feeding them that's the trouble. There's no appetite like a child's, and believe you me, this one is no different."

"Ah, don't we all eat in spurts, the same as we grow," the woman says, as though this is something he should know.

"She'll ate but you can work her."

Kinsella looks up at his wife. "There'll be no need for any of that," he says. "The child will have no more to do than help Edna around the house."

"We'll keep the child gladly," the woman echoes. "She's welcome here."

When we sit in at the table, Da tastes the ham and reaches for the beetroot. He doesn't use the serving fork but pitches it onto the plate with his own. It stains the pink ham, bleeds. Tea is poured. There's a patchy silence as we eat, our knives and forks breaking up what's on our plates. After some little scraps of speech, the tart is cut. Cream falls over the hot pastry, into warm pools.

Now that my father has delivered me and eaten his fill, he is anxious to light his fag and get away. Always, it's the same: he never stays in any place long after he's eaten, not like my mother, who would talk until it grew dark and light again. This, at least, is what my father says but I have never known it to happen. With my mother it is all work: us, the butter-making, the dinners, the washing up and getting up and getting ready for mass and school, weaning calves, and hiring men to plow and harrow the fields, stretching the money and setting the alarm for a time before the sun rises. But this is a different type of house. Here there is room to think. There may even be money to spare.

"I'd better hit the road," Da says.

"What hurry is on you?" Kinsella says.

"The daylight is burning, and I've yet the spuds to spray."

"There's no fear of blight these evenings," the woman says, but she gets up anyway, and goes out the back door with a sharp knife. A silence climbs between the men while she is gone.

"Give this to Mary," she says, coming in. "I'm snowed under with rhubarb, whatever kind of year it is."

My father takes the rhubarb from her, but it is as awkward as the baby in his arms. A stalk falls to the floor and then another. He waits for her to pick them up, to hand them to him. She waits for him to do it himself. In the end, it's Kinsella who stoops. "There now," he says.

Out in the yard, my father throws the rhubarb onto the back seat, gets in behind the wheel, and starts the engine. "Good luck to ye," he says. "I hope this girl will give no trouble." He turns to me. "Try not to fall into the fire, you."

I watch him reverse, turn into the lane, and drive away. Why did he leave without so much as a goodbye or ever mentioning when he would come back for me?

"What's ailing you, child?" the woman says.

I look at my feet, dirty in my sandals.

Kinsella stands in close. "Whatever it is, tell us. We won't mind."

"Lord God Almighty, didn't he go and forget all about your wee bits and bobs!" the woman says. "No wonder you're in a state. Well, hasn't he a head like a sieve, the same man."

"Not a word about it," Kinsella says. "We'll have you togged out in no time."

When I follow the woman back inside, I want her to say something, to put me at ease. Instead she clears the table, picks up the sharp knife, and stands at the window, washing the blade under the running tap. She stares at me as she wipes it clean and puts it away.

"Now, girleen," she says. "I think it's nearly time you had a bath."

She takes me upstairs to a bathroom, plugs the drain, and turns the taps on full. "Hands up," she says, and pulls my dress off.

She tests the water and I step in, trusting her, but the water is too hot, and I step back out.

"Get in," she says.

"It's too hot."

"You'll get used to it."

I put one foot through the steam and feel, again, the same rough scald. I keep my foot in the water, and then, when I think I can't stand it any longer, my thinking changes, and I can. The water is deeper than any I have ever bathed in. Our mother bathes us in what little she can, and makes us share. After a while, I lie back and through the steam watch the woman as she scrubs my feet. The dirt under my nails she scrapes out with tweezers. She squeezes shampoo from a plastic bottle, lathers my hair, and rinses the lather off. Then she makes me stand and soaps me all over with a cloth. Her hands are like my mother's hands but there is something else in them too, something I have never felt before and have no name for. This is a new place, and new words are needed.

"Now your clothes," she says.

"I don't have any clothes."

"Of course you don't." She pauses. "Would some of our old things do you for now?"

"I don't mind."

"Good girl."

She takes me to a bedroom, at the other side of the stairs, and looks through a chest of drawers.

"Maybe these will fit you."

She is holding a pair of old-fashioned trousers and a new plaid shirt. The sleeves and legs are a bit too long but the waist tightens with a canvas belt, to fit me.

"There now," she says.

"Mammy says I have to change my pants every day."

"And what else does your mammy say?"

"She says you can keep me for as long as you like."

She laughs at this and brushes the knots out of my hair, and turns quiet. The windows are open and I see a stretch of lawn, a vegetable garden, edible things growing in rows, spiky yellow dahlias, a crow with something in his beak which he slowly breaks in two and eats.

"Come down to the well with me," she says.

"Now?"

"Does now not suit you?"

Something about the way she says this makes me wonder if it's something that we are not supposed to do.

"Is this a secret?"

"What?"

"I mean, am I not supposed to tell?"

She turns me around, to face her. I have not really looked into her eyes until now. Her eyes are dark blue, pebbled with other blues. In this light she has a mustache.

"There are no secrets in this house, do you hear?"

I don't want to answer back but feel she wants an answer.

"Do you hear me?"

"Yeah."

"It's not 'yeah.' It's 'yes.' What is it?"

"It's yes."

"Yes, what?"

"Yes, there are no secrets in this house."

"Where there's a secret," she says, "there's shame, and shame is something we can do without."

"Okay." I take big breaths so I won't cry.

She puts her arm around me. "You're just too young to understand."

As she says this, I realize that she is just like everyone else, and I wish I was back at home so that the things I do not understand could be the same as they always are.

Downstairs, she fetches a zinc bucket from the scullery. At first I feel uneasy in the strange clothes, but walking along, I forget. Kinsella's fields are broad and level, divided with electric fences that she says I must not touch, unless I want a shock. When the wind blows, sections of the longer grass bend over, turning silver. On one strip of land, bony Friesian cows stand all around us, grazing. They have huge bags of milk and long teats. I can hear them pulling the grass up from the roots. Neither one of us talks, the way people sometimes don't, when they are happy. As soon as I have this thought, I realize that its opposite is also true. We climb over a stile and follow a dry path through the grass to a small iron gate, where stone steps run down to a well. The woman leaves the bucket on the grass and comes down with me.

"Look," she says. "There's not a finer well in the parish. Who'd ever know there wasn't so much as a shower since the first of the month?"

I go down steps until I reach the water.

"Taste it," she says.

Hanging above us is a big ladle, a shadow cupped in the steel. I reach up and take it from the nail. She holds the belt of my trousers so I won't fall in.

"It's deep," she says. "Be careful."

I dip the ladle and bring it to my lips. This water is as cool and clean as anything I have ever tasted. I dip it again and lift it level with the sunlight. I drink six measures of water and wish, for now, that this place without shame or secrets could be my home. She takes me back up the steps, then goes down alone. I hear the bucket floating on its side for a moment before it sinks and swallows, making a grateful sound, a glug, before it's pulled out and lifted.

That night, I expect her to make me kneel down, but instead she tucks me in and tells me that I can say a few little prayers in my bed, if that is what I ordinarily do. The light of the day is still bright and strong. She is just about to hang a blanket over the curtain rail, to block it out, when she pauses. "Would you rather I left it?"

"Yeah," I say. "Yes."

"Are you afraid of the dark?"

I want to say that I am afraid but am too afraid to say so.

"Never mind," she says. "It doesn't matter. You can use the toilet past our room, but there's a chamber pot here too, if you'd prefer."

"I'll be all right," I say.

"Is your mammy all right?"

"What do you mean?"

"Your mammy. Is she all right?"

"She used to get sick in the mornings but now she doesn't."

"Why isn't the hay in?"

"She hasn't enough to pay the man. She only just paid him for last year."

"God help her." She smooths the sheet across me, sighs. "Do you think she'd be offended if I sent her a few bob?"

"Offended?"

"Would she mind?"

I think about this for a while. "She wouldn't, but Da would."

"Ah, yes," she says. "Your father."

She kisses me, a plain kiss, then says good night. I sit up when she is gone and look around the room. Trains of every color race across the wallpaper. There are no tracks for these trains, but here and there a small boy stands off in the distance, waving. He looks happy, but some part of me feels sorry for every version of him. I roll onto my side and, though I know that she wants neither, wonder if my mother will have a girl or a boy this time. I think of my sisters, who will not yet be in bed. I stay awake for as long as I can, then make myself get up and use the chamber pot, but only a dribble comes out. I go back to bed, more than half afraid, and fall asleep. At some point later in the night—it feels much later—the woman comes in. I grow still and breathe as though I have not wakened. I feel the mattress sinking, the weight of her on the bed. Quietly, she leans over me. "God help you, child. If you were mine, I'd never leave you alone with strangers."