Annie's Stories (21 page)

26

“T
HAT’S WHY
I
BROUGHT
you home to live with me, love. So nothing ill like this Kirsten business would befall you.”

“I don’t understand, Mrs. Hawkins. I was in a Magdalene Laundry, and I tell you what befell me there was at least as bad as what Kirsten is going through.”

The Hawk took a deep breath, and for a brief moment Annie dreaded whatever she might say. What if it were something ugly? Annie’s teeth hit her lip as she pondered this. People had been talking about her without her knowledge. She rubbed her suddenly chilly arms. Was this the way good people dealt with the worst of God’s children, the ones taken away to Magdalene Laundries? Did they feel driven to hide the truth from the discarded lasses? Trust them with nothing? Could people know where she’d been, what she’d endured, even without her telling them? Or was it something about her? Something so unpleasant that she reeked of it? Even before she’d been taken away, when her father was still living, he hadn’t told her the truth of his publishing ventures, as she was now beginning to realize. Mr. Davis, the publisher, believed her father was the author Redmond, and he presumably knew about such things. Her father had written under that pen name and chosen to keep it from her. And now Stephen hadn’t thought to ask her if she wanted her stories
published before he carted them away. Even Mrs. Hawkins was hiding something. Annie sat straighter, gathering her courage. It should not be this way. The truth, no matter how horrible, must be faced.

Mrs. Hawkins smacked her lips, ready to begin. “You have wondered about my connection with my brother in Ireland, Annie.”

“I have. Shall we start there?”

“Indeed. And I think you should understand why girls like Kirsten, like you, tug at my heartstrings. I, too, was a victim when I was a young girl.”

“You mean someone did to you what Mr. Watson did to Kirsten? Oh, Mrs. Hawkins.”

“A long time ago, love. My family was living in Ireland at the time. My father was in the British navy and was away quite a bit. He had visited many places, and he thought the Irish countryside would be a healthy choice for us. He thought a boarding school would benefit me, the only girl in the family.”

“Why did you not tell me you lived in Ireland? I had just supposed the church sent your brother over, but then those Irish phrases and the like. It seemed you had been there.”

“I . . . I was unsure how to tell you. I should have known better than to keep it from you. The truth, no matter how terrible, must be faced sooner or later.”

Annie shook her head. She’d just told herself as much, hadn’t she? Or had she? Bits from her father’s tales kept popping up in her mind, and she’d been thinking about wise phrases and sayings. Out of thin air, it seemed. Now this.

Concentrate.

Mrs. Hawkins’s face began to blur. Annie blinked hard, then shifted in her seat. She would not give in to her mind’s betrayal.

Listen.

“My brother, love? He stayed on in Ireland after his schooling, hoping to find me.”

“Find you?”

“You see, in Ireland if a man shows too much interest in you, or if you are deemed too pretty, or
 
—God forbid
 
—the temptations of the flesh overtook you and you committed some kind of indiscretion, folks put you away.”

Annie began to perspire and her head grew light and foggy. She bit the inside of her cheek to draw her attention back to what the woman was saying, which was more unpleasant for Annie than Mrs. Hawkins probably realized.

“For some, like me, these indiscretions came against our will. But we were blamed all the same and sent off.” She dabbed at her eyes with a napkin. “My parents, God rest their souls, thought they were doing the best for me. They didn’t know anything was amiss until they came for me and I was not where they had left me. I had been moved and my name changed.”

“You don’t mean . . . Mrs. Hawkins, were you in the Magdalene Laundry?”

“I was, for twelve long years. Magdalene was everyone’s name, which meant you had no identity any longer. I suppose it was the same for you. Not much has changed.”

“Oh, Mrs. Hawkins.” Suddenly Annie needed to talk about it. Finally someone understood. “I remember a poor old lady we said prayers over before she died. They ordered us to a room where the woman lay on a bed. Her skin was wrinkled and bluish, her breathing shallow.” Annie’s heart ached as she thought about how Mrs. Hawkins, who had been there so long, might have once thought she would die in the laundry too.

“I know, love. We buried many unfortunate women.” Tears dripped down her face.

Annie would never forget the smell of that room
 
—mildew and human waste.

“On your knees,” the nuns had ordered all the girls.

They prayed for the old lady’s soul. She had been given the name Magdalene Ruth, although that was not her birth name. When she died, she was buried not in the churchyard but in a patch of ground next to the laundry.

As they stood around her grave, admonished to continue praying for the woman’s soul, a girl next to Annie whispered, “She was brought here when she was eleven years old. Was raped, I heard. Spent the next fifty years here.”

Annie remembered what she’d whispered then:
Help me, God.

But God didn’t answer.

The same could have happened to Mrs. Hawkins. Twelve years!

She leaned over the woman and embraced her. They cried softly for all the women who had not been freed. After a moment Annie breathed in deeply and poured them both more tea. “You . . . you must have felt . . . as though no one wanted you? You had no home, just a penal nightmare, ’twas.” Annie could barely choke out the words.

“There was no forgiveness of your sins, love. Not from those people. You worked them off, along with the skin on your knuckles, and I expect it was the same for you, poor Kathleen’s child.”

“You knew my mother, so. How did you meet her if you were in such a place for so long?”

The sound of laughter came from the kitchen. Jules was still in there with Aileen.

Mrs. Hawkins blew her nose. “You can understand, I suppose, why it was so hard for me to tell you this, Annie.”

“I do. I have more questions, though.”

“Ah yes. Your mother, Kathleen.” She took Annie’s hand.
“Let’s sit together on the sofa.” The woman stared into Annie’s eyes. “Your coming here was no coincidence, as you supposed. Your father confided in my brother, and when he told him the circumstances of your birth, Joseph knew you had to be the girl I had hoped to find for two decades.”

“I don’t understand. You were looking for me? Why?”

Mrs. Hawkins reached out and patted Annie’s shoulder. “You’re a good girl, Annie Gallagher. And so was your mother, despite what the Magdalene nuns told her. I was always telling her she was good, myself as well. We had to counteract the bad messages spoken to us over and over.”

“Us? You must be confused, Mrs. Hawkins. I was the one in the laundry, not my mother.”

The woman shook her head and reached for the handkerchief stuffed in her sleeve. “I wish it were not so, but the truth is your mother and I were in there together.”

“That’s not right. My father would have . . .” Ah, well, now Annie could no longer assume her father had told her everything.

“He did not want you burdened by the fact that you were born in such a place, love.”

“Born there?” She rubbed her forehead. She’d been born on the road, her father said, while he and her mother traveled. He’d always been evasive about the location. Between here and there, he’d said. It had all been mistruth.

“He only found you after Kate had died.”

Annie thought about what he’d told her. Her mother’s family had not approved. They had run away to get married. They found an Anglican minister in Dublin willing to officiate. But was that true? “Were they in fact married, Mrs. Hawkins? You must tell me.”

“Your mother came from a Catholic family, Marty a Protestant one. You know how that has divided people in Ireland for
centuries. It was just the way things were, still are, even more than here in America. They ran away to Dublin, where they found a minister willing to perform the ceremony. They were married, and very much in love.” She shook her head. “The pity is your mother’s family came after her and brought her back to the west. Your father spent the better part of a summer looking for Kate. You know how it is, love. The secrecy. No one wanted to talk. He found it difficult to uncover . . . the truth of it. The sad truth.” She began to cry.

“Please. Try to continue, Mrs. Hawkins. I must know. My father never said my mother was in the laundry.”

“He finally did meet some folks willing to tell him what had happened to Kate, and he did discover where she’d been taken, but he was too late.”

Annie shook her head. “Are you sure? You might be mistaking me for some other poor lass.”

“Your father was Marty Gallagher. I remember him well. Medium build, dark-brown hair, blue eyes. He was quite the singer, Kate told me. And a storyteller as well. Kate said he knew everything from Shakespeare to ‘The Children of Lir.’ That was your father, now wasn’t it, love?”

Annie nodded.

“I don’t suppose there were two Marty Gallaghers who were both storytellers and looked just the same.”

“I don’t suppose so. But all this does not make sense, Mrs. Hawkins.”

“I know, love, but I imagine he never felt attached to any place after that, and that’s why he took you all over.”

Annie gasped as the full weight of what Mrs. Hawkins was saying sank in. “You knew my mother, and not just as a child. What was my mother like? My father told me she had a lilting lightness to her voice, like doves, he said.”

“True enough. It was the hope of the life she would give birth to that kept her going. She never doubted her love would come for her, although some days were easier than others, you know.”

“I wish you had known her before the laundry.”

“I wish I had too. I do know she loved you even before you were born.”

“‘Thou hast covered me in my mother’s womb.’” Annie could not recall where those words came from, but she found them comforting somehow.

“I helped her deliver her baby . . . you, love. The nuns allowed her to keep you, to nurse, but something went wrong after that, as so often happens to new mothers.” The Hawk gulped and reached for her handkerchief.

“Please, Mrs. Hawkins. You have to tell me.”

She pursed her lips together, drew in a breath, and continued. “A doctor visited, but that did not help. As she grew worse and it was clear she was not long for this world . . .” She sucked in a sob, swallowed hard, and then went on. “The priest visited, but afterward a large delivery of laundry came from an estate and everyone was too busy to notice at first that your mother had passed on. I kept your mother’s death from the nuns for several hours, hoping they would not take you away before I came up with a plan for your escape. Somehow I had to keep my promise to Kate and make sure you were fine. I even thought of smuggling you out in a load of sheets, but I realized that would not help. You needed someone on the outside to care for you. I prayed as hard then as ever I have in my life, and by a miracle, it was just then your father traced your mother to the laundry. He pretended to be a government inspector and planned to whisk Kate away with him. When I heard him asking the other girls about your mother, I snuck him in long enough to get you. You were a good baby, didn’t make a whimper.”

“How did a man posing as a government worker walk out of there with a baby? I cannot imagine such a thing.”

“Oh, what’s hard for man God can do easily. Your father tucked the quiet child
 
—you, Annie
 
—into a crate, said he had to repair some equipment, and took you away. Then I wrapped up a bundle of sheets and told the nuns I was going to bury a dead baby. They never questioned me.”

Annie had been rescued from a Magdalene Laundry twice. She could scarcely believe what she was hearing.

“And my father thought it best I did not know this?”

“I suppose so, love. He made my brother promise not to tell you after he died, but God arranges these things so that you will question and search and find the truth.”

“I don’t know about that. It just hurts so much that my father didn’t care to tell me this.”

Mrs. Hawkins put an arm around Annie’s shoulders. “I do not think he meant it the way you are perceiving things. Think for a moment. This was a horrible occurrence in the man’s life. He wanted to move on and make your childhood happy. He did not want you to be scarred from the experience.”

Annie sniffed. “And he achieved his goal. I was a happy child.”
Put the old behind.
“Thank you for telling me.” She stared into the woman’s eyes, eyes that had gazed on Annie’s own mother long ago.

“You deserved to know this.” Mrs. Hawkins stood. “I promised Kate Gallagher I would look out for her child, and she gave me the only thing the nuns had allowed her to keep, her Bible. Praise the good Lord he’s finally allowed me to do what your mother wanted. I should have told you sooner. I am so sorry, Annie. But God is good, and you are here now.” The Hawk rose and crossed the room. “Here. This is rightfully yours.” She handed Annie her mother’s Bible like an award.

It truly was a treasure. Annie rubbed her thumbs over the initials on the cover. “I have a Bible, Mrs. Hawkins. The one my father used. This one . . .” She held it out toward the woman. “This one is yours. You truly knew my mother and loved her, and she wanted you to have it.”

Just as she thought would happen, Agnes Hawkins dabbed at her moist eyes as she cradled the Bible.

After they sat in silence a moment, Annie thought it best to focus on her future. “Maybe ’tis time I moved on, the way my father wanted.”

Agnes Hawkins looked as though she might cry again. “Your library. I understand. And we will help you, love, to honor your father that way.”

“I’m not sure that can happen, not the way I hoped.”

“Now don’t be hasty. I can . . . I mean, we don’t yet know how this publishing venture will turn out, Annie.”