began to wail. “Look what you’re doin’ to the child,” Sally said. “Now sit down and it’ll be over one, two, three.”
The man, Jake, yanked Callie away from the door, forcing her into the chair, holding her arms behind her back. Sally wielded the scissors, hacking away at Callie’s long thick braid. Tears of humiliation stung her cheeks; her teeth bit into her full underlip. Quicker than two shakes of a lamb’s tail it was over, and Sally held up the mutilated braid to Jake who stuffed it into a sack.
Beth was led without protest to the chair. Sally and Jake helped themselves to the tortoise-shell combs Beth wore in her hair and the long pins she used to fasten the gleaming, auburn tresses to the back of her head. “Put this one’s hair into that separate sack, Jake. It’ll bring a nice price, considering the color of it.”
Callie heard the words and turned with a vengeance. “Price? What price?”
“This is America, darlin’,” toothless Sally explained. “Waste not, want not, just like the Bible says.”
Jake and Sally pushed Beth, Paddy, and Callie out of the small room. Pulling her shawl up over her head to hide the ugliness, Callie now understood the weeping women they had seen when they first entered the building. Women who had nothing before coming to Tompkinsville and who had even less now.
Beth began to sob, touching the short, blunt ends of her hair. “Beth, it’ll grow back, you’ll see,” Callie tried to reason. “There’s nothing to do but live with it. Maybe we can fix it up a bit. Just to even it out . . .”
“Patrick loved my hair. He said it was my glory.” Beth moaned. “Everything is wrong. Everything!”
Paddy whimpered and wined. Callie picked him up and cradled him to her.
“Pull your shawl up over your head, Beth,” Callie instructed. “We’ve got to find Patrick. Don’t let him see you crying like this, Beth. The worst has been done.”
Lifting her head and looking her young friend directly in the eyes, Beth whispered, “Has it, Callie? Somehow, I don’t think it has.” The sound of Beth’s tone and the expression of complete hopelessness and resignation in her red-rimmed eyes made Callie shudder. As though a goose had walked on her grave, as Peggy used to say.
Dear Mum,
I have stepped my foot on these new shores of America. I wish with all my heart you had not sent your daughter to the gates of hell. We are not allowed to go into New York as yet, although I can see the city and its wharves from this place across the bay called Staten Island. Here the waterway is very narrow, and a man can row across the bay without working up a sweat.
We are being held at a place called Tompkinsville, facing quarantine because Typhus was found aboard the Yorkshire. Like the doctors in Liverpool, this place too is a shame in the face of God. While they hold the poor back from their lives, the captain and his crew are free to enter the city. Were they not aboard the same ship as we? Do they have some magic against disease?
I wrote you how Beth and me had our hair cut. It doesn’t look so bad now, since Beth had some little scissors and she evened it out. But it’s short, Mum, shorter than Bridget’s, and it’s all topsy-turvy curls about my head. Mr. Thatcher tells me I look about twelve years old. If my haircut makes me look twelve, it makes Beth look about a hundred. Hers doesn’t curl like mine, and it’s unmercifully short and lopsided. When I told her I would try to fix hers like she did mine, she just pulled her shawl over her head and cried.
They say it was a hair-cutting ring, Mum, and they just rowed out to the island and set up shop. They caught them, Mum. Policemen came and took them away because it’s a crime to cut someone’s hair and sell it for profit. Mr. Thatcher says whoever buys Beth’s hair and mine will make the finest wigs for some rich lady.
We are all sleeping in a shelter just outside the hospital gates, and there must be over a hundred people in here with us. I used the last bit of my tea yesterday. I did what you told me and used the same tea leaves three times before tossing them away.
I have still not seen or heard from cousin Owen.
Your daughter in America,
Callandre
It was the twenty-seventh day of the Yorkshire’s quarantine. While the ship stood at anchor in the bay, her passengers mingled among the thousand or more who had sailed to America in her sister ships.
The month of October had been dry, the last traces of summer warming the days until All Hallows’ Eve. Then November struck with vengeance. The waters of the bay were whipped by foul winds, the ground became hard and frozen during the cold nights, warming again beneath the day’s sun to become muddy trenches from the abuse of too many feet.
A roll was called, and the passengers from the Yorkshire were told to climb the long hill to the hospital for the medical examination before receiving the stamped passes that would allow them access to the City of New York and beyond.
Callie was dismayed to discover that she was expected to undress and submit to a thorough evaluation by a harried doctor and his even more harried nurse assistant. She was standing outside the hospital long before the Thatchers made their exit. One look at their faces told her something was terribly wrong. Beth was ashen, and Patrick’s usual bright gaze was dulled and pained. Only Paddy remained the same, whimpering and listless.
Jostled by the incoming and outgoing patients, Patrick quickly led them to the bottom of the hill. For just an instant Callie saw him looking out over the river toward New York City, squinting past the sun, a yearning and longing in his face, a searching in his eyes. He looked like a man lost, without home or family, a man whose dreams must be abandoned. It wasn’t until they had made the long walk down the hill to the shelter where they’d spent the last month that Beth turned to her. “It’s Paddy,” she said, a pitiful sob caught in her voice. “He has consumption. Tuberculosis they call it here. He won’t be allowed to come into the country.” This last was said in defeat.
“Beth tells you truth, Callie,” Patrick said tonelessly. “They want us to send him back to Ireland. Beth and I have had our passes stamped. It’s the boy.”
Callie thought Beth would crumble from the pain and sorrow on Patrick’s face. Tears of frustration and humiliation coursed in rivulets down her cheeks. “We can’t send him back! There’s no one there to take care of him!” Hysteria was rising in her voice, making it shrill, so different from her usual modulated tones.
“Hush, Beth. Paddy will always have us to care for him. Don’t worry so. We’ll go back to Ireland. All of us,” Patrick said, stroking Beth’s back. But over the top of her head, his eyes again reached across the river to the city beyond, the place where his dreams told him his future began. He fell silent, locked in his misery.
Late that night, tucked in between Paddy and their assorted baggage, Callie lay awake pondering the dilemma that faced the Thatchers. She was angry, inflamed by the injustice of it all. Back in Ireland and Liverpool the only thing that mattered was selling packet tickets to America. The physical examination there had been a farce. Even she had known that Paddy was a very sick little boy. The Thatchers should never have been allowed to board ship, to undergo the hardships only to be refused entry on the other side after thirty days of living in subhuman conditions.
Callie blessed herself, raised her eyes to heaven, and called on her God. The bad is outnumbering the good, she complained. And Lord help me, but I’m about to give up on You. I was taught You’re our Savior, and I’d
