The Girl Who Came Home(17)

Her demeanour over the past weeks had been one of prudent efficiency and a resolute impatience to get going. Now she enjoyed the opportunity to lie still, glad of the silence. As she watched her niece settle under her eiderdown and glanced around the room at the sleeping forms of the other young girls sharing the room, Kathleen was reminded of her own emigration journey as a nineteen-year-old girl. Far from all the tears and worry she’d witnessed that day, she’d considered it all a prodigious adventure.

Painfully aware that she was an unremarkable girl in many respects, ordinary enough to look at with her square set jaw, rugged complexion and deep set eyes which made her look older than her years, it was only her determination and resolve to improve her situation in life which made her stand out from the other girls of her age. With two of her sisters already settled in America, Kathleen had sat for years in the bedroom she shared with her two brothers, consuming every word of the letters her sisters wrote about their alluring American lives; the employment prospects, the gaily coloured clothes, the opportunities to get away from the social constraints of Irish life. Their words, transported on the steam liners which would remove another batch of emigrants from Ireland’s shores, offered enticing prospects for a farmer’s daughter whose domestic duties were drearily predictable, whose clothes were drab and whose social position in life was defined from the moment she was born. Undaunted by the fact that she was leaving with little money, Kathleen had revelled in the prospects America held for her and had departed without much emotion.

Like many before her, she’d settled easily into the rhythms of metropolitan life in Chicago. So many of the neighbours were of Irish descent that she often found it hard to believe she was in America at all, catching the unmistakable Irish brogue in exchanges on the street or in the local grocery store: Offaly, Mayo, Donegal, Kerry; she was certain all the counties would be represented if you listened hard enough.

She wrote often to her niece Maggie, and to her friend Maura Byrne who had recently returned to Ireland to marry her childhood sweetheart John Brennan. In her letters Kathleen described the buildings reaching up into the clouds, the grand homes, carriages and motor cars of the wealthy, the well-paid opportunities for women in domestic employment, the impressive avenues and the majestic department store at Randolph and Washington Street where you could buy anything and everything. She knew that the recipients of her letters enjoyed hearing about this ‘new world’, so far removed as it was in both distance and experience from their own.

But, no matter how settled and involved she became with the American way of life, a letter with news from home was always a welcome sight to Kathleen’s eyes and caused her heart to beat a little more rapidly than usual. It was such a letter which had prompted her recent return to Ireland; a letter which she realised, as she lay in the uncomfortable boarding house bed, had in many ways led to the fourteen of them being in Queenstown that night.

The letter had arrived on a crisp fall day, the leaves on the trees which lined the sidewalk outside the Chicago home she shared with her sister Mary glistening in the bright sunshine. It was a modest, but perfectly pleasant home on North Ashland Avenue, close to the boarding house she owned on Lincoln Street. Her sister had made a comfortable home, her choice of furnishing befitting two women who were doing well in life.

As she picked up the letter from the doormat, she immediately recognised Maggie’s familiar handwriting and the distinctive Castlebar postmark. Walking into the front room, she settled herself on the chair at the writing table and carefully opened the envelope.





22nd October, 1911

Ballysheen

Co. Mayo

Eire





My dear Aunt Kathleen,

Just a few lines from home to let you know that we are all well. I’m sorry for not writing in a while; Esther was sick with the flu and needed me by her bedside. She is well again now, thanks be to God. Apart from the usual coughs and colds everyone else is in good health.

Maura and Jack Brennan were thinking of coming to America after Christmas, but now Maura is suffering with the morning sickness, so they’ll delay until the spring. Imagine, a baby for them! It’s grand news altogether.

Will we be seeing you at Christmas time? It would be lovely to have you among us again. If you’re not planning to travel, I wonder will I come to visit you in America for the Christmas, it being a good while since we have been together? You might write to let me know your thoughts. Kitty sends her love.

Good bye

Yours faithfully,

Maggie





Relieved that there was no bad news, but surprised to hear of Maggie’s suggestion that she travel to America alone, Kathleen placed the letter on the table. She stood up, smoothing her skirt and turned to her sister.