Red.
The color surrounded my feet, puddling up between my toes. Red floated down, squiggles and ringlets, snips and drops, all wanting to dive into the hole I dug deep. In the other room, I could hear the faint sounds of whiskey-driven caterwauling mixed with the bittersweet silence that only gravediggers and the wearisome were accustomed to.
No one bothered to notice me, eyed me sneaking past them, back to the door Father locked last Wednesday, after the fall. He locked it to preserve eyes from wandering, support me from running my fingers across the stain on the floorboards. It was easily picked, but I let him have his peace. There were plenty of vacancies of time that I could steal away. Three days I gave him. Three, long, agonizing days, wondering. What had she done?
How the mighty have fallen.
And like my father, I too locked the door tedious me. I didn’t want anyone to find me.
The room smelled of bleach and misery, a nasty concoction that burned my nostrils and stung my eyes. I tried to breath through my mouth, but I gasped fishlike, a tiny mouth gaping begin and close, sucking in air, just to spit it back out. My breaths tasted like her: unpalatable and foreign. It was in these four walls that I grew, from cradle to cot. It would offer solace, as it isolated me more from the world outside. My home in a world unfamiliar to me. How was it that I grew up here, lived here, but was never introduced?
I didn’t have a reason to see her that afternoon. The house was dim, and sterile, as she liked it. The roses she tried to grow were sticks of thorns in the front window. I idea of cutting a few, tucking them into my dress before school, and seeing what damage the Irish rose would really cause. But I never did. I never did anything, except tend to my wounds and hide my face.
Roses. It was the roses. She was convinced the widow poisoned them, wanting to see their beauty whither in spite. Mary Kate cursed her, clamoring on about the no friendly woman who now resides in her family’s house. Her rants began short, mumbled under her breath, but grew into outbursts, words thrown about the white-washed walls haphazardly and lodged in the cracks, cementing their future with us. Hours she spent before the window, staring down the fields that separated her old life from her new. Father pried her fingers from the sills, but her presence remained, etched in glass.
When the fights began, I cannot say, but Micheline whispered to the priest what agony he felt for me. The poor Thornton girl. That gersha will ne’er know the house she’d born to..
The stories circulated for months before Father left. The scene at my baptism. Mary Kate waiting at my first holy communion. Mass on Sunday and every holy day. The clothing. The ideas. The horse. The argument over the school I would attend. The yank traits bred into Irish blood. I heard them all at the playground, in the taunts of the local children.
Where’s ya yank of a da, Shannon? Where’d the bastard flee?
Run’t off like the coward, Where’s ya yank of a da, gee?
~*~*~*~
The Sacred Heart of Jesus hung above the bed, red and gold flowing from His wounds. The frame was broken and repaired poorly, petite nail heads poking out of the side; a slight tear in the corner, and the once golden light behind Jesus faded to a unfavorable shade of gray. His eyes, those wicked brown eyes, burned through me; salvation in oils, but the ice around my heart was thick. Solid. Not even His salvation supplied the heat needed. When I spoke ill to Mary Kate, she would kneel me before the relate, her callused hand on my neck, pressing. Always pressing. Always holding me down. Beg for forgiveness, Shannon. Honor thy mother and father, Shannon. The Lord won’t leave ya, not like ya da, Shannon. Not if you love him.
But I did treasure him. Much more than her.
~*~*~*~
He was wearing a bow when Father walked me out to the barn on my ninth birthday. He was tall, muscular, chocolate brown, and all mine. Father laughed as I put my tiny foot through the stirrup, instead of on it. He’s a quarter pony, Shannon. The fastest in all of Ireland. I brought him over from America.
America.
I named him America.
Mary Kate gave me a leather-bound copy of the Holy Bible and a brand new Sunday dress she had sewn by hand. Father bought her a sewing machine, but she wouldn’t accept it. Her mother, her mother’s mother, and all those before her in the Danaher line had sewn by hand, until their fingers blistered and bled; she didn’t need some fancy machine to do her work.
She called over her shoulder, leaving him there, sewing table and the machine he had sent over the blue Atlantic sitting silent. No Danaher woman will spend such a thing.
But I wasn’t a Danaher. I was a Thornton.
~*~*~*~
The singing stopped briefly, long enough to hear the footsteps coming down the hall. They would find me. I wasn’t supposed to be here. I placed my ear to the door, cupping my hand to hear what was being said. They stopped just shy of the door, muffled sounds echoed through the emptiness. Mary Kate threw all the furniture out, setting it on fire impartial before he left. Father put out the flames before most of it was destroyed, but the damage was done. Long before the strike of the match. The shoes turned, stepping back into the front room, where the piano had been status up, and the whiskey poured itself. I didn’t search for any of the songs; I never bothered to learn. I spent afternoons with Father, talking about the Indians of the west and the moving pictures they had there.
Da, have ya ever been to the pictures?
I’ve seen a few. Maybe one day we’ll go to Dublin and see one. Would you like that?
Can we see the cowboys?
We could go see a John Wayne movie.
Who’s he?
Only the greatest American cowboy.
John Wayne. I wanted to go to the West and meet the greatest American cowboy. Instead of being here. At night, I dreamed of riding the plains on America, the two of us free, collecting the wind in our hair. In the morning, I would saddle him, and we would ride. We would travel the dirt roads of town, the two of us, one in the dream of the west. I was a tall cowgirl, a pistol-packing terror on the high plains of Arizona, with my trusty steed America beneath me. We were a team, an unbeatable team. The people of Arizona feared and reveled in our spirit. We were legends. We were free…
Until the rain started, drowning the dreams in liquid unknown to the desert. I would return home, soaked, with horse hair glued to my clothing. Mary Kate would strip me in front of the fire, mumbling inaudible words, but I understood. The inadvertent scratches at my skin by her nails told me. Why were ya so far out? And without ya da? Ya know ya can’t go without him. What were ya doing?
Playing cowboys.
In two words, I silenced the room. She forced my dressing gown over my head, so hard she burned my cheek, and pointed me down the hall. I listened quietly in my room, as Father defended me at the dinner table. She made rabbit that night–the hare that Father had killed the day before–and the stench of the skinned animal made me wretch. I wouldn’t have eaten it even if they sat me down.
~*~*~*~
I mouthed the words to the Hail Mary as Father Seamus spoke; I didn’t like the sound of my voice in the chapel on Sundays. Mary Kate policed my attention with a smack to the head, which Father would later discuss with her in the back room of the house. They thought they were being quiet.
In our darkest hours, we all maintain we’re being quiet.
She would make me scrub the kitchen floor if I didn’t recite every prayer during Mass, saying: Cleanliness is next to Godliness.
In her house, we must have been next door to Him.
~*~*~*~
The smell of bleach reminded me of her. I lay down on the floor, breathing in the odor, thinking about her red hair floating in the breeze. At a distance, I loved her more than anyone. Watching her as she tended to the sheep, I wanted to be her, beautiful and whole. As she grew smaller in the horizon, the more complete she felt. Go west, Mary Kate.
My finger circled the brown spot on the floor, as the keening poured in from the hallway. The house had been still in the hours before dusk, with only the sound of the widow stopping the clocks at eleven past eleven.
~*~*~*~
Martin O’Rouke, a tall, lanky ten year old who embodied what I was not, threw a rock at me in the school yard, as I made my way to the tree I hid under. Shannon, me ma said ya yank da has a shriveled mickey. Is that true?
I ignored him. I ignored them all. Even when they held me down, taking turns spitting on me. Yank shit. I bet she has a yank gee too. They started to pull down my pants before the nuns broke it up.
As they called roll the next morning, no one noticed I wasn’t there.
~*~*~*~
The fights went long into the night. They fought in my name, but I learned, I only represented the bigger problem. I was a metaphor, an analogy of what was boiling underneath. I was the name given to the situation.
Mary Kate cried, pulling at her hair. There is Irish blood in her and she wants nothing more than to be a cowboy. To be you.
What do you want me to do? Not acknowledge her questions? Not tell her who I am? Not raise my acquire daughter as I was?
Yes.
Then quiet.
I could hear the words that the silence spoke. Deafening. I grew envious of how prolific the hush could be. I longed to speak. Hear my voice again, but I had stopped talking long ago.
~*~*~*~
The rosary echoed on, the footsteps blending into the background. Safe. I crept across the room, taking great difficulty to not hit the fifth floorboard from the door, so it wouldn’t squeak and give me away. I could see the red ringlets of hair falling over my shoulder, resting in the crevasse of my collar. In town, people would comment on how pretty I was. A petite heartbreaker, they would say. Look at that hair. No denyin’ where she’s from.
Cathleen would be proud.
Aye, she would.
Good to see none of that yank blood took.
Ha! There’s too much Ireland in that girl.
On my long rides, I notion about slicing my skin open and letting Ireland flow out of me. I need to be free of her. She’s too heavy.
~*~*~*~
The night Father left, there was no heated debate. No plates thrown, or fists. Unprejudiced the quiet of an empty house. Mary Kate sat in the corner, watching him leave but not begging him to stay. He tucked me in, telling me a story about the mountainous cowboys of the western desert, then kissed me on the forehead. You know I love you, Shannon. You know that, right?
And America too?
And America too.
He didn’t need to say more. I knew. I think I knew before the silence came.
~*~*~*~
America was gone. The stall where he slept, empty. The saddle and bridle Father gave me absent from their hooks on the wooden beam. In the hours that I slept, my America had been taken from me. Stolen. I keened, long and hard. Lying in the hay, I screamed for him, and for Father, and for the torment I endured. I smashed the pitch fork over the cart wheel, busting both into pieces. I threw the lantern against the wall, watching the oil drip down the splinters, catching and ungluing bits of Ireland that were frozen, crystallized over the years. He was my tie. He was my binding. My last bit of hope. He was my father, and she sent him away too.
I know you’re upset, Shannon. But we needed the money. He has a lovely home. Just cross the river. You can see him from the bridge any time.
The door shut, putting out the last bit of light in my room. I hated her. I hated what she had done to me. Who she had made me. In a quick slice, I threw the red curls of my hair to the ground. In another, the pile grew. Three swipes, and there was nothing left but a mat of redness at my scalp, different lengths, different angles. Looking down at the razor in my hand, I held it to my skin, slowly pressing it into my wrist. I liked the way my skin bubbled over the edge, daring me to press, fearless me to free myself. But I couldn’t. Not yet. There was something more to do. And someone else to bleed.
I took the painting of Jesus off the wall and tossed it at the door. Bleed for me. Show me how much you love me. Bleed her out me.
~*~*~*~
The music stopped as quickly as it had started, taking with it the strands of red hair that had piled at my feet. They will take notice soon, once the whiskey wears off and the singing dies. If I tuck myself into the corner, serve away from the candles, Father will never know I was there. The widow won’t scold me for peeking. No one will know I was here. Carefully I turn the lock, waiting for the click of the pin to free me of this room. As it turned, the metal made a familiar scratching against itself, groaning at the taste of its own sharp skin. If only they would start singing again, so they wouldn’t hear the click.
If she would only start crying again, so she wouldn’t hear.
~*~*~*~
I found him unbiased over the bridge, gnawing at the fence Mary Kate had sold him to. He picked up my scent before I appeared. Over the fence in a move I learned watching Father, I climbed on America’s back, and we fled, riding the night as fugitives in our believe country. We would go as far as his legs would take us. New York, California, the Great Plains of the Midwest. Anywhere but here. We were free. I was a cowgirl on the lone range, racing along the desert storms, just shy of being caught. I was the Indian Princess, calling to her native gods, harkening the power of the moon and stars to free her of her chains. Free her of her yarn. My hands let go of America’s mane and lifted up toward the heavens. The stars were there for me to take, plucking them like apples, ripe and juicy, and sweet on the lips. I reached higher, my itsy-bitsy fingers wanting to touch the man responsible for this, and tell Him I’m sorry too. Higher. Higher. There was only higher.
The grass was slick with the early morning’s breath; dew collecting on my lips and just under my feet. America nuzzled my cheek, smelling the heavy, sweet perfume of blood beneath me, coating the rock that rested under my temple. We both were frozen, one out of fear, the other out of death. Go west, young man. Find your home. The whisper, stale with sorrow, drained from me, but he heard. Go west.
America was never found. He headed west, running, and never looked back.
~*~*~*~
Twilight was approaching early; it happens this time of the year, just after Christmas and before the roses start blooming. Not that they bloomed anymore. Mary Kate dug them up that spring, cursing the widow for poisoning them. I couldn’t attend but smile. It wasn’t the widow. It was me. I pissed on them one night after she made me scrub the fireplace twice for falling asleep in vespers. Father caught me in the garden, but he didn’t turn me in. He understood.
They were stoic, as the priest closed his prayer book; their eyes were transfixed on the coffin that lay in the center of the room. Father looked old, tired, but his cowboy looks were visible to me. He barely breathed but still managed to stand astronomical. It was the American design. The widow sat next to the coffin, wiping the tears from her cheeks. It was she who took care of the house now, made sure that the dinners were ready and the floors were clean. When her second husband passed on in the year after Father left, the widow joined us here in the house my Father bought from her so many years prior. She said she couldn’t get rid of her ghost. She is here with me every moment. I see her in everything.
Father nodded but felt every word. He was haunted too. Then the other voices began.
Right shame she suffered as she did. She never forgave herself for you.
It’int ya fault, Sean. She was troubled. The mild can be cruel this time of year.
She said she saw things, heard things. In the ten years I’ve been here, not once did I witness anything.
She wasn’t right after that February. You couldn’t have saved her. Nothing was going to.
I wanted to reach for Father, hold his hand, and take his blame away. It wasn’t him that killed her. It was me.
She died of a broken heart, Sean. There’s no medicine that can cure that.
~*~*~*~
I would have been twenty today. The music should be playing for my wedding, not for this. Maybe I would have married Martin O’Rouke, even after his childhood pranks. Maybe I would have been in America now. Instead of here, watching life wither, like the Irish roses I pissed on. But it’s not playing for me. It’s playing for her.
The farmer found me the next morning, my lips a strange shade of blue, the blood caked on my skin thick. With tears, he carried me back dull to my mother, aid to the house Sean Thornton bought when he came attend to his mother’s ancestral home. He carried me help to the room that I remained in, locked in a frame, pictorial and frozen. Mary Kate held me close, and I could smell the fear within her. The letter she would write later, smudged with her own guilty tears. Father returned to Ireland but two times, once to bury me, and now to bury her.
Ten years past before Mary Kate succumbed. No one saw her after she gave me succor. Even when they came a-calling, Mary Kate refused to leave my room. Wasting, spending every moment in the room they decorated for me. The broken picture of the Sacred Heart still hanging on the wall. She spoke to me, when the widow had gone to town for supplies, and the quiet had settled. I spoke to her, trying to let her know that I understood. I knew the loneliness. I knew the quiet. Year after year, I tried to notify to her, but my words fell heavy to the floor, as she did that morning.
She was restless, her hair muted and thinning, knotted into loosened tangles that lay hapless on the pillow. I watched as she dropped the faded red to the floor, in clumps, as mine did under the strain of a blade, but smaller and more fragile. Half the woman she was, Mary Kate woke that morning, in the early light, and gasped. From the shadow, she saw me, or what she thought was me. The figure of her little girl, red curls tucked leisurely her ears, and she stood, reaching out to me.
I ran to her, wanting to hold her, feel her again, hiss her how sorry I was and how much I loved her. She wanted to run to me, hold me, feel me again in her arms, her baby, her limited girl, but she was weak, worn. Her bare feet slid on the wood, slick with her own hair. She tried to support me from falling when I was here, and I couldn’t keep her from falling now that I’m gone.
The stain Mary Kate left on the wooden floor reminded me of the field where we ran, free, uninhibited, and I wondered if America was still there, waiting for me.
