November 4, 1863
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
I shouldn’t be here. Cecelia or Eliza could have been swaying on this stinking vessel instead of me. It was their right—Eliza’s duty anyway, as the eldest daughter—to make the voyage and take the chance on a new land. But Mum and Dad offered a litany of excuses for my sisters—the twenty-one-year-old Eliza was on the brink of a marriage that would allow the family to keep our farm tenancy intact, a status that had eluded me due to my overcleverness, Dad said, and Cecelia was too young for the voyage at fifteen and too weak-spirited in any event—and so, knowing my parents were right, I boarded the Envoy in their place. Forty-two days later, I regretted the preening and arrogance to which I subjected my sisters when I’d learned of my parents’ decision. I knew now that being considered my parents’ síofra—their changeling capable of transmuting into whatever America required—was no prize. And I desperately missed my sisters.
Light snuck through the hatch into the steerage cabin, blinding me for a moment. My eyes closed spontaneously. Even as the light faded a bit, I chose to keep my eyes shut, surrendering to the remnants of the sun’s heat. I wanted the fading rays to burn me clean. I wanted them to burn away the sour smell of the long Atlantic passage and the recurrent tears of leave-taking.
The steward clanged the ship’s bell to signal our disembarking. I opened my eyes and reluctantly glanced around the cabin. Mothers with listless infants in their arms pushed themselves to standing, while their older, hollow-eyed children clung to their skirts, scared by the relentless ringing of the bell. Fathers and old men struggled to smooth their filthy, rumpled suits into some sad approximation of dignity. Only the few young men, the fir òga, were strong enough—and eager enough—to readily form a queue.
The journey had been rough, taking its toll on even the fir òga. Nearly three weeks prior, after an already tumultuous crossing, a storm hit the Envoy, tumbling those of us in steerage out of our beds into a hold with two feet of water. As the crew and my fellow passengers began working the pump in the pitch-dark of the moonless night, the ship began rolling from side to side like the heavy log it was, causing one Dublin girl of about sixteen, traveling alone like myself, to crash into one of the wooden posts keeping the ceiling firm above our heads. Moaning as she fell with a splash onto the still-flooded floor, she never regained consciousness. When she died the next morning, the captain sent the first mate and a sailor to steerage to sew her up in a sheet, with some rocks at her feet to weigh her down, and throw her overboard without a single word or prayer. This loss and her treatment bore heavily upon me, upon all of us really, as it seemed a portent of the treatment we might expect in the new land.
Footsteps clapped on the wooden deck above our heads, followed by the thud and drag of trunks. My cabinmates rushed to assemble their meager belongings: rucksacks, wicker baskets, tools, treasured pictures, and Bibles, even the odd battered trunk. But I knew we needn’t hurry. We would bide our time until all the other classes had left the ship. Steerage always waited: for the dry biscuits, putrid water, and rancid oatmeal that serve as sustenance; for sleep uninterrupted by hacking coughs and crying babies; for air uncontaminated with the stink of vomit and full chamber pots; for storms to break and the hatch to be unlocked to grant us a few blissful moments above deck; for privacy that never came.
I was tired of waiting, but we had no choice but to stand in the queue, immobile but for the rocking of the ship in the harbor. I glanced at the young mother beside me, her tattered brown dress stained with the evidence of her baby’s constant seasickness. At seventeen or so, she was a couple of years younger than my nineteen years, but her eyes looked older. There, lines had given way to furrows. All alone throughout this terrible voyage, she bore the weight not only of her own worries and suffering, but also those of her child. I felt ashamed at wallowing in my own discomfort and longing for home.
“Ádh mór,” I said, having nothing to offer her and her baby but luck. No worries here that we’d receive tallies on our bata scóir for speaking Irish instead of English and then receive the corresponding punishment, as teachers at the hedge schools for the Irish were instructed to do. Not that this poor mother had ever been beaten for speaking Irish in school, as it wasn’t likely that she’d attended school of any sort.
She looked surprised at my words. I’d maintained my distance from fellow passengers, at Mum’s request, and this young mother and I had never spoken. This separation kept me healthy if unpopular among my gregarious countrymen, who resented my standoffishness. Too weary to speak, she nodded her thanks.
The hatch flew open, and crisp, salty air filled the cabin. I inhaled deeply, and for a long minute, the fresh breeze was enough. The air smelled of home, and I gulped it down hungrily.
“Line up, people!” The steward yelled at us. His pinched, sallow face had terrorized steerage for forty-two days, withholding food, water, and deck time if he deemed us not compliant enough. If he didn’t hold the power to deny us admission to our new land, I would have shared with him my thoughts on his cruelty. I’d refuse to still my tongue as Mum and Dad often chided me to do.
We tidied the queue and waited again. Some silent signal finally reached the steward, and he motioned for us to climb the stairs and mount the deck. Single file, we left the stinking pit of steerage for the last time and walked into the muted light of the Philadelphia harbor.
The gangway leading to shore felt unsteady underfoot, as did the rocky ground once I reached land. It felt almost as if the earth was rocking rather than the ship. My legs seemed to have grown more accustomed to the swaying of sea than the constancy of land.
Black-uniformed officials guided us into a building labeled Lazaretto. In the long, dark nights, my shipmates had spoken with fear of Lazaretto, a quarantine station. From relatives’ earlier crossings, they had learned that any sign of illness in the ship’s passengers could mean weeks or months at Lazaretto, a place where people often entered well and left sick. Or worse.
I didn’t worry that I harbored some disease. Mum’s instructions kept me safe. Even so, I’d heard too much coughing to think the rest of the passengers were brimming with health, and our fates rose and fell with one another. If the inspector found one contagion in one steerage passenger, it was in his discretion to hold all of us at Lazaretto until every last person in steerage recovered.
One by one, we moved up in line toward the health inspectors. I winced as the officials inspected my cabinmates like they were Dad’s farm animals, lifting up their gums and eyelids for signs of disease, sifting through their hair for evidence of lice or other vermin, examining their skin and fingernails for yellow fever or cholera, and pawing through their belongings. Any infraction could be enough to condemn us all to Lazaretto, and I said a silent Hail Mary that the toddler prone to coughing all night managed to keep quiet.
The line shifted forward, and it was my turn. I took off my crumpled bonnet and heather-gray outer coat, extended my arms, and submitted my body for examination.
“You look well enough,” a heavily bearded inspector said in my ear as he unpinned my heavy, dark-red hair. The gesture and the whisper felt strangely intimate and wholly inappropriate. But I couldn’t object. It could ruin everything for which Mum and Dad sent me here. It could render useless all the sacrifices made to pay for my ticket.
I nodded in acknowledgment, as if his remark were perfectly fine. Just a simple statement on my health. But my hands shook as I repinned my hair, and he continued his review of my skin. Only when he turned his attention to my rucksack did my shallow, fast breathing slow.
With the shadow of a smile, he waved me forward. It seemed I’d passed the test, but what of my shipmates?
With the rest of steerage, I was herded into a large, dingy waiting room that reeked of unwashed bodies and urine. Once again, we waited. I promised myself that, if I ever made it through Lazaretto and onto American soil, I would not wait anymore.
After another long hour, during which passengers trickled in and anxiety mounted, a bell rang. Old men and tired mothers and young children looked at one another quizzically. Should we know what it meant?
Finally, a door slammed open, and a thick shaft of light entered the room. “Welcome to America,” a bespectacled official announced.
Even though no one spoke, the relief in the room was audible, like a collective exhalation. We assembled into the last line we would ever form together and walked outside into the American daylight.
I breathed in hope.
All around me, I heard cries of reunion as my fellow passengers fell into the arms of their waiting relatives. But I walked on. No one was waiting for me.
