The Walking People (26 page)

Johanna has an interview to work at Bloomingdale's, which is a famous store downtown. Shannon said it would be fabulous to be hired there and is lending her a suit and high heels which she tried on last night and looked like a million bucks. If she gets it she'll have to buy a
few nice things because they want their sales ladies to look presentable and they give their employees a discount for that reason. It pays good wages so say a prayer that her flu is gone by tomorrow and she won't have to run out of the room in search of a loo. By the time you get this she'll know either way, and God willing I'll have something of my own lined up soon.

Love,
Greta

 

P.S. Went to St. Patrick's Cathedral and lit a candle each for you, Tom, Jack, and Padraic. Forgot Jack's new bride but will remember next time.

 

November 22, 1963

Mr. Dermot Ward
c/o Post Master
Ballinasloe
Co. Galway
Ireland

 

Dear Da —

I didn't know whether to try you in Oughterard or Ballinasloe so I'm sending the same note to both. Greta Cahill is putting this on paper for me — you remember, the youngest girl of that house in Ballyroan—so I don't want to go on too long. I also don't want to give too much gossip to the Post Master who is surely reading this to you. I need to talk to you about something and I want to talk by telephone. As it is November I expect you are heading to Galway City shortly. There are shops around the fisherman's market that will let a person accept a call for a few P. If you could be in a shop in Galway or Salt Hill in a few weeks time I could call you there. Just let me know where and what day. Send a reply to the address on the front of this envelope.

Your son,
Michael Ward

 

December 5, 1963

Mrs. Lily Cahill and Mr. Tom Cahill
Ballyroan
Conch
Co. Galway
Ireland

 

Dear Mammy and Tom,

Sorry it's been a few weeks since you last heard from us. I should have wrote sooner to say Johanna is fine, just a piece of bad meat like I thought. That's me making a big production out of nothing. So don't worry! Johanna would have wrote herself but she's been busy and knows I'm a better letter writer than she is (she only means I can sit for longer without getting antsy). I hope you haven't been thinking of it ever since. Funny thing is she did have to miss that interview she had at Bloomingdale's so I went in her place. Johanna told me how to do it. When they called Johanna Cahill I stood up and told the secretary that Greta is my legal name, Johanna a nickname, and I'd like to go by Greta from now on. She just scratched out Johanna and put Greta and kept me at age seventeen. And guess what? I got the job. I put the price tags on the clothes that come in and hang up clothes after people leave them behind in the changing room and when the store is closed myself and two other girls fold everything displayed on the tables in our section and make sure everything is hung up in the right spot. They give us a wooden board to fold with and you should see how nice it makes the stacks. It's easy and the things they sell there are lovely though very dear. There's a popular navy blue skirt going for 60 USD. The lining is done very well, but the zipper and the button are as simple as could be and to my eye could be better. Then again as you know my eyes aren't so good. I get my first check on Friday and I'm supposed to spend some of it buying clothes to wear to work which Johanna thinks is damn rich that the money will go right back in their pockets. Shannon is going to bring me to a place that sells the leftover Bloomingdale's clothes from a year or two ago and are marked down to almost nothing so I'm going to go there instead. She said it will be easy for me to find things as I'm so slim which is a big thing
here—being slim. To think I always dreamed of putting meat on these bones! Johanna's looking around for something else, but she'll tell you all about that when she writes. Mammy, between the new clothes and the dollars I want to give to Shannon I don't know how much I'll have left to send but I'll send whatever I can.

The other delay was President Kennedy getting killed in Texas. I'd say it was big news at home, was it? I didn't know much about him but everyone says he was a great man, and his poor wife has been on the television news every minute. The new man who took over was on the television on Thanksgiving (that was last week—we went to a big parade) and he seems nice enough but not as nice as JFK. His name is Lyndon Johnson but you probably know that already. I know Tom is good about reading the papers. Give him my love and I miss you both very much.

Love,
Greta

 

P.S. If you do a novena include me and Johanna and Michael Ward. No special reason just because it's almost Christmas and we've been missing home.

 

December 6, 1963

Mr. Dermot Ward
c/o Post Master
Ballinasloe
Co. Galway
Ireland

 

Da —

If you've brought this back to camp for Bitty Ward to read for you, take it from her now and bring it into town to a stranger.

You can forget the letter of a few weeks ago and the plan to talk by telephone. Since I haven't heard from you yet I don't think it would have gone off anyway. Greta Cahill now knows all and so I can write what I need to talk to you about with her putting it on paper for me.

As I hope you know by now from the letter I sent before leaving for America, when I left camp I went to Ballyroan to visit my mother's grave. I stayed and found work there and enjoyed living in one place even if it ended up being only for a few months. I got to know the Cahill family. Remember how they took Mother in that time? They were very good to me. Most of all I got to know Johanna Cahill, the oldest of the two girls, the one you invited to sit at our fire late at night years ago.

Johanna Cahill is now expecting a baby. It must have happened on the ship, a ten day journey, because it hadn't happened before or since in that way. It is not the best thing to happen but I remembered how you said a
gasúr
is always a blessing, even if it's a blessing well disguised. Also, since her Mam was so good to me I must be good to her. And I want to be. And Greta will help in any way she can. That's Johanna's sister.

I know what you think about country people all having money to burn, but I saw with my own eyes that wasn't the case at the Cahills unless you count eggs and milk and hay as cash money. I'm sorry to say so as Greta Cahill is the one putting this letter on paper, but she knows it well herself. We're right now staying with a friend of the Cahill family whose mother was from Ballyroan, but we'd like to get out from under her feet and get our own place. Then the three of us can figure everything out in our own way, plus the child when he or she comes in late July. I wonder if you've anything at all to spare? We've considered going straight back to Ireland, but the truth is we don't have the fare and the girls don't want their mother to know yet. I don't think she's the type that would cast them off, but I'd say she's a worrier and they're barely hanging on out there as is. Johanna is determined to stay in the United States. I've gotten steady work since arriving, and I know I can get more. It wouldn't be long until I could pay you back. If there was anyone else to ask, I would. Please write back to the return address on the front of this envelope. Just have whoever puts the letter down for you to copy the address exactly and your reply will come straight back to me.

Your son,
Michael Ward

 

December 24, 1963

Mrs. Lily Cahill and Mr. Tom Cahill
Ballyroan
Conch
Co. Galway
Ireland

 

Mammy and Tom,

I can't believe I'm only writing this now and you won't get it until after the New Year. I'll say it anyway—Happy Christmas. Johanna was supposed to send a long one from both of us but just confessed that she hasn't gotten to it yet. We are disgusted with ourselves knowing you'll be expecting to hear from us. I hope Jack and Padraic sent long ones from Australia. We got your card yesterday morning and put it up around the door with Shannon's and it is by far the nicest. Did you get it at Mrs. Norton's? It was good of you to send a separate card to Michael as he's heard nothing from his family since the day he left them in the Burren. He says their ways are different from ours, but I can tell he would love to hear something from them and my heart breaks for him when he checks our box or asks did anything come for him. He wonders about his sister a lot lately. To tell the truth I'd almost forgotten he had a twin.

Bloomingdale's is mobbed before Christmas, and that's really the reason I haven't written. People stream in all day and leave all my neat stacks of sweaters and scarves topsy turvy. I have to swoop in the moment they turn away and make them neat again. We are not allowed to make the customer feel bad for making an unholy mess but it's a test not to cast hard looks. I'd never go into a shop and leave such a sight after me knowing someone else has to straighten it up. I won't even tell you how much people spend on stockings and belts and that kind of thing because it would make you cry (or laugh, I don't know). Once Christmas passes it will be back to normal and the funny thing is that everything being snatched up this week will be on sale for half off or more. If we're still in America next year I'm going to make a rule that we exchange gifts on the feast of the Epiphany instead of 25 Dec. No
one celebrates St. Stephen's Day here either. I'd say it would be hard to catch a wren in New York City.

So it looks like we'll be leaving Shannon the first week of January. We found a flat on 84th Street and 2nd Avenue in Manhattan where we can all live with room to spare. Johanna and I will be in one bedroom, Michael Ward in the other, and there's a sitting room and small kitchen as well. It's a nice part of the city, quieter than Shannon's part even though it's in Manhattan which you would expect to be busier. There are a lot of German people living there and it seems like that's the way it goes all over the city—people sticking together until the whole section is full of the same kind. They have a section for Chinese, Italians, Germans, Russians and others I don't know the names of. You can walk through and think you're in another country, then fifteen blocks later you're in another country again. A lot of the blacks and the people who speak Spanish live in awful bad neighborhoods, God love them. And then there's people who don't live anywhere at all not even in camps like the tinkers. They just live in the street or in the parks and Shannon says we're to walk right by them and pretend we don't hear them if they beg. The young ones who are men I don't mind so much but when they're a big age or women with babies wrapped up it's very hard especially when it's bitter cold like it is now. Shannon says there are places that would give them beds and something hot to eat, but I'd say most of them are not right in the head. I pass one woman every morning and sometimes see her fixing herself and arranging her coat on her shoulders when she's lying down on her side and the way she fixes the coat makes me think that's a woman who's used to sleeping in a bed. Michael saw one stuffing balled up newspapers under his clothes and said that's a trick the tinkers should learn.

I work with a girl from Trinidad and the way she talks about home sounds the same as any of us. I don't know how she could have left such a pretty place and her father and her sisters and she says the same about me leaving you and Tom and Ballyroan. We both have the same plan to save for a year or two and then go back. I told her to visit me in Ballyroan one day and she said she'd try.

I know it will surprise you that Michael will live with us even now that we're beginning to get our bearings, but we feel very much like a team here so far and it hasn't been very long. Also, we are only able to live in the apartment because Michael will be the handyman for the building—they call it being a superintendent which is a fancier word than the job really is. We will live there for free and only have to pay for the telephone, which we might not even hook up. Who do we call? Michael told the owner of the building that we are his sisters otherwise he wouldn't have let us live there with Michael. The man is a German Catholic in the old style and said he likes Irish because all Irish are good Catholics. We didn't tell him how long its been since we've seen the inside of a church, but Johanna pointed out that seeing the inside of a church has nothing to do with it when you consider how many miserable cranks never miss a Sunday. Take Lucy Sullivan for example how we've long said she wouldn't give a person the steam of her piss but is up there with her tongue out for communion every morning. The point is that once you start sending letters there, send them to Johanna and Greta Ward. In exchange for the free apartment, Michael will be in charge of repairs and problems for the nineteen other apartments in the building. He'll also take care of the building's rubbish and keeping the steps and entryway swept and clean. The floors of each hall and five flights of stairs have to be scrubbed twice a week. Officially he's the one in charge, but we've already divided up what we'll each do for him since he's absolutely in tatters when he comes home from work.

Johanna got a temporary job taking care of an old woman. She's a big age, close to ninety I'd say, and Johanna doesn't have to do much, just keep her company and push her through the park in her wheelchair. Sometimes the woman likes Johanna to chat just because she likes Johanna's brogue. That's another thing we discovered in America. Everyone seems to like an Irish brogue. In England we've heard of people trying to lose it fast or make it sound Scottish that's how much people hate it. But everyone in America has at least one Irish grandparent. Every single person, honest to God. There must have been an awful lot of people in Ireland once to make grandparents to this many
Americans. The woman Johanna minds is very wealthy and lives in a hotel all the time and has an entire floor to herself. Her son who hired Johanna comes in once every few days to check on things. During the week another girl comes in at night and takes over when Johanna goes home, but on weekends Johanna sleeps there, too. It's only for six weeks while the regular woman recovers from an operation of some kind, and she already has three of the six weeks behind her. The wages are very good though, far better than mine or Michael's. We're all hoping the woman will start to love Johanna so much that she won't want to let her go when the six weeks are up in mid January.