He holds a hammer
in one broad hand,
and bangs back boards
that hang loose.
“Martin,” he mumbles,
around nails that bristle
in his mouth.
“Anna,” I say.
Later, a potato plant pokes
out of the muddy ground.
A miracle:
two praties have grown firm
under the ground.
And we’re still here,
Nuala and I.
Spring
OUTSIDE,
I squint at the sun
and listen.
Nuala puts her hand
in mine.
“What?” she asks.
It’s coming from
Martin’s barn:
a sheep bleating.
“Ah,” I say. “Spring.
The sheep are being
sheared.”
The barn door swings open.
A sheep bursts out.
“No clothes,” Nuala says.
I grin and watch,
Martin carries another
Sheep shearing
(This image is reproduced courtesy of the National Library of Ireland M56/43.)
into the barn.
I agree with Nuala.
Sheared sheep do look strange,
with their winter coats gone.
Wool
THE Aunt glances
toward Martin’s barn.
“At least
make yourself useful,”
she tells me.
I hold words back
behind my teeth.
Nuala loves her.
The Aunt flings out one hand.
“Martin needs help.”
She pats Nuala’s shoulder.
“You can go too, Pet.”
For once,
Nuala leaves the Aunt’s side
and we cross the field
together.
In the barn,
dust floats in the air.
Filthy swirls of fleece
litter the floor:
the winter coats of his sheep.
Nuala scoops up a wad,
tosses it into the air.
It’s oily,
and filled with seed,
brambles, and bits of hay,
I spot a few dried-up bugs.
“Wings gone,” Nuala says.
“Can’t fly?”
Martin grins at us.
“Before Ethna weaves,
there’s a way to go,”
he says.
He shows us
how to run our fingers
through the knots,
pick out the seeds
and twigs,
and dried-up insects.
Poor things.
“Not wool,” Nuala says.
“Not yet,” Martin agrees.
We spend hours washing
and rinsing over and over.
“And now we card,” Martin says,
a word I don’t know.
But it makes sense.
We run wire brushes
through the fleece,
then comb it into rolls.
“How did I ever do this alone?”
Martin says,
as he pulls an old blanket
off a spinning wheel
and spins…
Until we see yarn!
“Nice?” Nuala says.
“Perfect,” Martin agrees.
I rub my tired back.
But I’ve made myself useful,
I tell myself grimly,
then grin.
Resting
LATE afternoon.
The cow chews in the field.
The wash dries on the grass.
The Aunt runs her shuttle
through the lines of wool,
and Nuala leans against her knee.
We’ve been here,
how long?
It’s planting time again.
But the Aunt doesn’t sow.
Her field grows weeds
and nettles.
“I could start the garden,”
I say,
standing in front of her.
Did she hear?
She pays no attention.
This week, I’ll begin anyway.
Late in the day,
I walk to the lough.
Madra, the dog,
comes along.
The sun beams a path
across the water.
and take my book
from my waist.
I know most of it by heart now,
old friends.
I talk the book aloud.
The water ripples.
It reminds me of the stream
at home,
once our very own.
I think of fish
slipping into my apron.
Da smiling.
And, so long ago,
Mam cooking soup
for our supper.
Weaving
THAT night,
the Aunt sits at her loom,
but watches me.
“I will teach you,”
she says.
“You have time on your hands.”
She runs her hand
over the smooth wood,
dark with age.
“You won’t see a loom like this,”
she says.
“Built by a Rogers
before my time.”
I sink down on the floor
in front of the loom.
She puts the small piece of wood
in my hand.
“The shuttle.”
She guides my hand.
“No,” she says.
She shows me:
in and out.
Sheep’s wool,
the color of cream,
runs in even lines
along the loom.
I think of our work,
my back still aching.
“Martin does fine carding,” the Aunt says.
“And me,” Nuala adds.
“The two of you,”
the Aunt says.
I wind the shuttle through the wool.
I’m learning to keep my mouth
closed over angry words.
The weaving’s not hard,
not really.
Only my knees are up,
my feet hard against
the gritty floor.
Nuala watches.
She makes fishlike motions
with her hands.
I do the same,
and the fabric takes shape.
“It grows for the Englishman
in the Big House,”
the Aunt says.
I pull my hands away.
This is for one of them?
The Aunt frowns.
“For now,” she says.
“But someday…”
Her face is a mass of wrinkles.
“I cannot plow,
but I can do this.
It pays the rent indeed.”
She cuts off her words,
scolding.
“Your ends are too wide.
I see loops.
Uneven.”
What is she talking about?
For Nuala’s sake,
I don’t say a word.
Then I see.
The edges are a mess.
She shows me how to pull them
even.
“Better, yes?” she says.
I find the rhythm
after a while.
It’s not so different from reading.
Can’t miss a stitch.
Can’t miss a word.
I turn to the Aunt.
I catch her nodding.
I smile,
and she gives me an almost smile
back.
A loom inside a cottage in Donegal, County Galway
(This image is reproduced courtesy of the National Library of Ireland L_ROY_09179.)
Martin
HE works for the Englishman,
at the Big House too.
“It keeps me here,
my sheep grazing,”
he says in his quiet way.
He puts his own farm to bed
in the dimming light,
then comes to the Aunt’s field.
Together,
we plant a vegetable garden.
I picture rows of cabbage,
and potato blossoms
with lumpers hiding underneath.
He sweeps the walk,
repairs the shed door,
and the crumbling rock wall.
We are friends now,
Martin and I.
I help him as much as I can.
Hand him the hammer,
slide the rocks into their places.
“Why do you help Ethna?”
I ask.
I don’t say that she’s
a miserable old woman.
He grins at me,
“When my mam died,
I was three or four,
alone with Da, a grumpy man,
strict and angry.”
He leans against the side
of the house,
and I see something
in his eyes.
The beginning of tears?
“She was there,”
Martin says.
“Hugging me, loving me.
It has been that way,
all these years.”
Like Nuala, I think,
like resting her hand
on Madra’s head,
like the baby bird
she brought inside yesterday,
feeding it
drop by drop.
Still,
she’s a hard woman
to know.
Nuala
I sit on a rickety stool,
and milk the cow.
It’s a satisfying sound:
the milk spurting into
the can.
I lean my head against
her warm, broad back.
Nuala comes.
She tugs at my skirt.
I shake my head.
“I have to finish.”
She tugs again,
looking toward the house.
She pulls me along:
toward the Aunt
in the room above the hearth.
Still in bed,
her nightcap half covers
her face.
Madra whines on the floor,
nearby.
Nuala sits cross-legged
on the bottom of the bed,
crying.
I touch the Aunt’s shoulder,
and pat her cheeks.
They burn with fever.
“Come on, old woman,”
I say.
“Open your eyes.
Nuala needs you.
Nuala loves you.”
I put my hand up.
“Wait.”
Outside at the pump,
the water splashes
into the bucket.
I run back when it’s full
and heavy now,
and set it on the floor
next to the bed.
“Old rags in the kitchen,”
I tell Nuala urgently.
She doesn’t understand.
Of course she doesn’t.
Back in the kitchen,
I find the rag bag.
I bring back a soft cloth
and swipe it into
the freezing water.
I bend over the bed.
For the next hour,
I dip the cloth
into the water,
and pat her face,
her wrists,
her neck,
then fold it over
her forehead.
I find socks on a chair.
They don’t match
in color, or size,
but not important.
I soak them in water
and ease them over
her feet.
Mrs. Donnelly said once,
“It’s a way to draw heat
out of the body.”
There’s nothing more
I know how to do.
Her eyes stay closed,
her breathing loud
in this small, dark room.
Nuala shakes her hands
in front of her own face.
I want to say it will be all right.
But will it?
This is work
for someone who knows more
than I do,
someone who will help
bring her back.
Mam would have known.
But help is far away.
Help is impossible.
And so I begin again,
cooling her fever,
until the bucket water
has lost its own cool.
Nuala sleeps,
worn out from crying,
Madra, the dog, never moves.
He watches the old woman,
his dark eyes troubled.
It’s late in the day.
Her eyes flutter open.
She lies still,
as I rub her feet
in socks
that are almost dry now.
She opens her mouth,
but doesn’t speak.
She reaches out
slowly,
touches my hand.
Working
THAT night,
I rake the fire
and bury it in peat ash.
In the morning,
the Aunt and Nuala still sleep.
Madra has moved to the doorway.
I begin the day’s chores:
the cow to be milked,
and set out to graze.
I shoo the hens
to peck at the grass,
and carry their warm eggs
into the kitchen
in the Aunt’s apron.
I feed Nuala a cup of milk,
still warm
from the giving cow,
and an egg boiled
on the hearth.
Then I tiptoe
into the Aunt’s room.
She’s awake,
her eyes following,
as I sit on the edge
of the bed,
a cup in my hand.
I put my arm
under her head,
to raise her
so she can sip at the milk.
“Easy,” I say.
“A little at a time.”
She doesn’t answer.
I look at her face,
wanting to touch
her forehead,
to see if the fever’s
gone.
I don’t dare
with her eyes on me.
I work in the kitchen,
washing Nuala’s hands,
her feet.
She looks anxiously
at the Aunt’s room,
and then at me.
“It’s all right,”
I soothe.
“She’ll be fine.”
Do I tell the truth?
A New Day
A pale sun rises,
rolls over the sky,
toward the mountains
of Mourne.
I have no time
to long for Da
and Liam,
for the sight of my hill.
And oh, my house in Longford,
my own place.
I sweep out the room,
listening to Nuala.
She sings to the Aunt,
an old song,
the words mixed up,
but the sound is true.
I remember my promise
to keep her safe.
But suppose the Aunt doesn’t live?
What then?
The Big House
MARTIN stops on his way.
He gives me a small bundle
of chickweed.
“For tea,” he says.
I smile. “Yes!”
But I can’t help it.
I burst out,
“How can you work
for the Englishman?”
He answers almost fiercely.
“It pays the rent.
You know that.”
Then, almost silently,
“And I hear things.”
I tilt my head.
What does he mean?
“Change is coming,”
he says.
“People in the west
are banding together
against high rents.”
He shrugs.
“They gave me a book,”
he says.
“They’re beginning to fear us.”
I shake my head.
It’s hard to believe.
“They have a hundred books
anyway,” he says.
“On shelves in a great room,
near the kitchen.”
I think of my one book,
of the schoolmaster’s dozen.
I watch after Martin
as he goes down the boreen.
I hear a sound behind me.
It’s the Aunt
holding on to the wall.
“The shawl,” she says.
“We must finish.”
She sinks down on the chair.
“For the rent,” she manages.
I work with the shuttle
until she nods: “Enough.”
But I don’t know how to get the shawl