Water Street (5 page)

The door to the apartment was half open. It smelled as if no one ever opened a window in there. There must be a pot of day-old cabbage on the stove. The shades were down, and she stumbled over someone's coat bunched up on the floor.

“The bedroom,” he said. “In the bedroom.”

“Go back out, Bird,” Mama said. “Sit on the steps in the hall.”

So what did you do?
Annie might have said later.
Sit outside in the hall?

She gritted her teeth so she wouldn't gag over the smell. She thought of the baby, Mary Bridget. “I can help, Mama.” She tried to keep her face smooth. “Really.”

Mama didn't bother to answer but went straight into the bedroom, where there was no window and almost no light. It felt as if it were the middle of the night—worse than that, because at home Mama always left a candle burning in a bowl in the kitchen.

“I can't see.” Mama's voice was sharp. “Get a lamp or a candle quickly.”

“Wait.” The milkman scurried out of the room. Bird could hear him rustling around somewhere.

A nest of old clothes was piled on the bed, but she couldn't see the corners of the room, and only the shadow
of a woman kneeling next to the bed. Bird could hear her own breathing now, almost as if she were deep under water.

The man came back with the lamp flickering in his hand, holding it so they could see the bed. Bird's hand went to her mouth. How could there be so much blood?

The boy's eyes were closed, dark lashes curved over his cheeks. His face was the color of old milk. She drew in her breath. She had seen that boy on the street dozens of times, playing ring-o-levio or lined up at the boys' entrance at school: dark hair and eyes, much younger than she was.

Mama leaned over him so Bird couldn't see his face anymore, but just one hand, the fingers curved, blood under the nails and on the knuckles.

Bird backed up against the wall. Even though she'd told Mama she could help, she had no idea of what to do. She didn't want to go near him, didn't want to touch him.

“What happened?” Mama asked. But even as she spoke she was running her hands over his torso, his arms. And to herself: “Where is it? Where is it?”

“I don't know,” the man said. “I don't—”

Mama turned the boy over, moving his face so he could breathe. “Ah, there.”

In spite of herself Bird leaned closer to see a great flap of skin open across his scalp.

The woman drew in her breath, sobbing. “Your fault,” she said to the man. “Raging and smashing that bottle, leaving it for him to fall over.”

“All right,” Mama said as if she were talking to herself, but stopping the woman from saying what she might have said next. “I want whiskey. Do you have—”

The man scuttled away and brought it back as Mama rummaged in her bag. She dumped everything out on the floor, small jars of herbs rolling, clean cloths and pieces of rubber tumbling, and metal clinking. She picked up a scissors, a bottle that held needles, some of them curved, and thick black thread.

“The light,” she told the milkman. “Hold it closer.” She took the whiskey bottle from him, unstopping it, and poured the liquid over the boy's scalp.

Red washed into pink, and now there was white bone deep inside that flap of skin. She kept pouring until the smell of the whiskey blocked out the other smells in the room, pouring, then leaning over to look inside the wound, and pouring again until there was almost nothing left in the bottle.

She clipped at the boy's hair, then edged the skin together with her fingers, and Bird felt queasy, acid coming into her throat; she swallowed, biting her lip so she wouldn't be sick.

How many times had she seen Annie sew in a sleeve, easing both sides so they wouldn't pucker, taking a stitch, and smoothing out the fabric again? And now Mama was doing the same thing to someone's head. Someone's skin.

All Bird wanted to do was to get out of that apartment and run back home where they'd been celebrating her thirteenth birthday, all of them laughing at Aunt Celia's story, but she wouldn't let herself step back.

“He's waking now,” Mama said to the woman. “Hold his head.”

The woman scrambled away. “I can't, I can't.” She said what Bird was feeling.

Can't.

“Bird, come here.”

She hesitated.
Just this time
, she told herself, listening to the woman's sobs,
but never again. Never.

This was nothing like washing a new baby, having a baby named for her, nothing like braiding Mrs. Cunningham's silver hair into smooth plaits. Nothing like anything she'd ever seen.

Bird moved slowly around the man.

“Hold his chin with one hand, his forehead with the other,” Mama said, intent on the boy and barely glancing at her. “Don't be afraid to hold him tight. He's going to feel this. He's going to—” She shook her head, and Bird could see the pity in her eyes.

She put her hands where Mama told her, fingers sliding over the blood, sliding, then gripping as he began to move, trying to get away from them, beginning to scream, thrashing, his legs kicking out.

Bird held his head, her fingers in his ears to hold him fast, in his hair, getting up to kneel on the bed next to him, staying out of Mama's light. She heard someone moaning, and realized it was her own voice.

She clamped her lips together and looked up at the ceiling. A thick crack ran across the plaster like a black river. She told the boy, “Lie still, just lie still, it's almost over.”

But Mama kept stitching, knotting, cutting, the needle in and out, until a thick line was there instead of that flap; it was almost like the crack in the ceiling.

Bird began to notice a strange feeling; she felt almost feverish. She was dizzy and there was a buzzing sound deep
in her head. She knew she had to take her hands away from the boy and steady herself, otherwise she'd fall against the iron railing of the bed.

She let go of the boy and scrambled back against the wall. She realized Mama was talking to her, but she didn't know what she was saying.

Bird closed her eyes, seeing colors in back of her eyelids, reds and greens. She was going to be sick.

She crawled across the floor, skirt in her way, yanking at it, reaching the door, pulling herself up, then stumbling out onto the landing. She was sick in the hall and down the stairs. Then she was out in the street to take deep breaths until the pounding in her head had stopped.

Thomas was back in his apartment, sitting on the couch. He was thinking about the afternoon, wondering if the fighter had recognized him from that first night at Gallagher's, wondering about the milkman's boy.

He saw that Pop was up and on his way out. Thomas was sorry he'd come upstairs. The rest of them had still been there, sitting in the kitchen, waiting for Bird and Mrs. Mallon, and he could have stayed. But somehow it seemed not right.

It was getting dark now. He'd light the lamp, he thought, and write a little, but then he heard Mrs. Mallon calling from the landing.

He opened the door quickly and looked down at her. There was as much blood on her skirt as there had been on the milkman. “Have you seen Bird?” she asked.

He shook his head and reached back to pull his jacket off the hook. “I'll look for her.”

“She's had a hard time this afternoon, that girl of mine,” Mrs. Mallon said, shaking her head.

“She'll be somewhere along Water Street near the bridge,” he said, surprised he knew that, but sure about it. “I'll find her.”

“I'd be grateful,” Mrs. Mallon said. “I'll change my clothes, and if you're not back we'll all—”

“You don't have to do that,” he said. “I'll find her. I know I will.”

He flew down the stairs and out the door, crossing to the bridge side of the street. The tower loomed in front of him, a gigantic shadow against the sky.

She was leaning against the railing at the water. Her shirtwaist was covered in blood, her skirt torn. “Bird,” he called, but it was as if she didn't see him.

He went toward her, seeing her hair out of its clips, down her back in thick curls. He caught up to her and reached out, holding her arms, realizing she was as tall as he was, maybe even a little taller. Her face was swollen, her eyes filled with tears.

She shook her head, so he leaned against the railing next to her, watching the water lap against the wooden pilings. Across the river he could see the unfinished tower with its jagged top, almost like a huge broken tooth.

And at last he said, “Was it the milkman's boy? Was that it?”

She wiped her face on her sleeve. “I used to cut up bits
of leaves and stems with Mama, and mix them with honey for the neighbors' sore throats.” Her hands were clenched on the railing. She turned her head to face him. “The first time I went with Mama I read a story to a little girl sick in bed.”

He wanted to tell her she was beautiful. He wanted to tell her he'd started to write a story about her. He had even called her Eldrida to make her smile. But he wasn't sure she'd want to hear any of that.

“I thought it would be babies, you know?” She reached for a handkerchief in her sleeve. “And helping people. But not like this. Not anything like this. I thought it would be so different.”

She straightened her shoulders, and neither of them said anything after that.

They stayed there for a while watching the boats, and the water, and the bridge that might never be finished.

Everything was impossible: Bird and her taking care of people, and even Pop's drinking. And what about what Thomas wanted? That was the most impossible of all.

It was Wednesday morning, the first day of eighth grade, and her last year of school. Mama and Annie were at the kitchen table with her. Hughie was still a huge lump under the covers in his bed in the corner, and Da wouldn't come off the night shift for another hour.

Annie slopped a great spoonful of oatmeal into Bird's bowl.

Bird examined it carefully. “Lumps.”

“Didn't I just do you the favor of rolling up your hair?” Annie asked, bumping the back of Bird's head with her elbow.

“Didn't I give you half of the money Mrs. Daley paid me for sweeping down the stairs for it?”

Mama leaned over, a loop of her hair over her forehead. “In the Old Country we'd have been grateful for lumps.”

Bird and Annie exchanged a look. They all knew. In Ireland they'd eaten limpets and grass when Mama and Da
were young and the potatoes had gone bad. If Bird had food to eat, she wanted to say, it might as well be decent, but she didn't, of course. She didn't have the chance, anyway.

“Where's Thomas?” Mama asked.

Thomas, who had breakfast there now more often than in his own apartment.

“I thought you went for him, Bird,” Annie said.

“Not yet.” Bird looked out the window at the bridge tower, rosy as the sun caught the edge of the stone. She wondered if seagulls flying by would stop for a rest.

“Bird,” Annie said.

“Just go to the stairs,” Mama told her. “Give him a call.”

Bird raised the spoon to her mouth, closing her teeth to filter the oatmeal like a sieve, then went out into the hall to lean against the banister. “Thomas,” she shouted up.

“You're enough to wake the dead,” Annie said after her.

There was no sign of him. She knew he was there; he just didn't want her to know he was waiting for someone to ask him to eat with them.

“This is the last time I'm going to call you, Thomas. Then I'm going to march right back into my apartment, slam the door, and you won't even have a taste of this delicious oatmeal that Annie made.”

That brought him out. The string from his knickers was missing so the legs were falling down, and his white shirt had never seen the underside of an iron in its whole miserable life.

A fine thing for the first day of the last year of school.

Bird went back to her seat at the table and grabbed her spoon as he slid onto a chair next to her.

Hughie sat up and stretched, his hair tousled. There was a new bruise on his chin. He'd been fighting somewhere again. Bird glanced at Mama, hoping she didn't see it.

“I need an ice pick to eat this oatmeal,” Bird said, trying to distract everyone, trying to make Hughie smile.

“We're lucky to have oatmeal, cold or hot,” Annie said, echoing Mama.

Bird crossed her eyes at Annie and saw Hughie's eyes dance. She sat back satisfied as Annie spooned cereal into Thomas's bowl.

“Someday your eyes will stay like that, Bird. You'll have to follow your nose everywhere you go,” Annie said.

Bird took a few more lumps of oatmeal, digging deep. Annie always put a raisin or two at the bottom. She found four.

“Not bad this morning,” she said as Annie slid away from the table. Annie reached for her shawl on the hook and put on her hat, ready to go to work at the box factory.

Bird took a quick look at her plain face, her hands bruised from working on the boxes, and stood up. “Wait a minute, Annie.”

She went into the bedroom for the pink paper flower Mrs. Cunningham had given her, and tucked it into Annie's hat brim.

“You're not half bad sometimes,” Annie said.