Brooklyn (7 page)

"Do I look terrible?"

"Oh, yes, and so does every person on this boat."

As she spoke, a loud knocking came from the other cabin. Georgina went into the bathroom.

"Fuck off!" she shouted. "Can you hear me? Good! Now, fuck off!"

Eilis stood behind her in her nightdress and her bare feet. She was laughing.

"I need to go to the toilet now," she said. "I hope you don't mind."

Later in the day they came with buckets of water filled with disinfectant and they washed the floors of the corridors and the rooms. They took away the sheets and blankets that had been soiled and brought new ones and fresh towels. Georgina, who had been watching out for them, pushed the trunk back to its place inside the door. When the neighbours, two elderly American ladies, whom Eilis now saw for the first time, complained to the cleaners that the bathroom had been locked, the cleaners shrugged and carried on working. The second they had gone, Georgina and Eilis edged the trunk back into the bathroom before their neighbours got a chance to block the door from the other side. When they banged on both the bathroom door and the door of the cabin, Eilis and Georgina laughed.

"They missed their chance. That will teach them now!" Georgina said.

She went to the dining room and came back with two jugs of water.

"They have only one waiter," she said, "so you can take what you like. This is your ration for tonight. Eat nothing and drink plenty, that's the key. It won't stop you being sick, but it won't be as bad."

"It feels as if the boat is being pushed back all the time," Eilis said.

"From down here it always feels like that," Georgina replied. "But stay still and save your breath and vomit to your heart's content when you feel like it and you'll be a new woman tomorrow."

"You sound like you have been on this boat thousands of times."

"I have," Georgina said. "I go home once a year to see my mam. It's a lot of suffering for a week. By the time I've recovered I have to go back. But I love seeing them all. We're not getting any younger, any of us, so it's nice to spend a week together."

After another night of constant retching, Eilis was exhausted; the liner seemed to hammer against the water. But then the sea became calm. Georgina, who moved regularly up and down the corridor, met the couple in the adjoining cabin and made an agreement with them that neither side would prevent the other from using the bathroom, but they would instead attempt to share it in a spirit of harmony now that the storms were over. She moved her trunk out of the bathroom and warned Eilis, who admitted to being hungry, not to eat anything at all, no matter how hungry she was, but to drink plenty of water and try not to fall asleep during the day, despite the overwhelming temptation to do so. If she could sleep a full night, Georgina said, she would feel much better.

Eilis could not believe she had four more nights to spend in this cramped space, with stale air and weak light. It was only when she went into the bathroom to wash herself that she found moments of relief from the vague nausea mixed with terrible hunger that stayed with her and the claustrophobia that seemed to become more intense whenever Georgina left her in the cabin.

Since they had only a bath in her mother's house, she had never had a shower before, and it took her a while to work out how to get the water at the right temperature without turning it off altogether. As she soaped herself and put shampoo on her wet hair, she wondered if this could be heated sea water and, if not, then how the ship managed to carry so much fresh water. In tanks, maybe, she thought, or perhaps it was rainwater. Whatever it was, standing under it brought her ease for the first time since the ship had left Liverpool.

On the night before they were due to dock, she went to the dining room with Georgina, who told her that she looked wretched and that if she did not take care she would be stopped at Ellis Island and put in quarantine, or at least given a thorough medical examination. Back in the cabin, Eilis showed Georgina her passport and papers to prove to her that she would not have a problem entering the United States. She told her that she would be met by Father Flood. Georgina was surprised, she said, that Eilis had a full, rather than a temporary, work permit. She did not think it was easy to get such a document any more, even with the help of a priest. She made Eilis open her suitcase and show her what clothes she had brought so that she could select suitable attire for her when she was disem-barking and make sure that nothing she wore was too wrinkled.

"Nothing fancy," she said. "We don't want you looking like a tart."

She chose a white dress with a red floral pattern that Rose had given Eilis and a plain cardigan and a plain-coloured scarf. She looked at the three pairs of shoes that Eilis had packed and selected the plainest, insisting that the shoes would have to be polished.

"And wear your coat over your arm and look as though you know where you're going and don't wash your hair again, the water on this boat has made it stand out like a ball of steel wool. You'll need to spend a few hours brushing it to get it into any shape at all."

In the morning, between arranging to have her trunk carried on deck, Georgina began to put make-up on, getting Eilis to comb her hair out even straighter now that the brushing was done so that it could be tied back into a bun.

"Don't look too innocent," she said. "When I put some eye-liner on you and some rouge and mascara, they'll be afraid to stop you. Your suitcase is all wrong, but there's nothing we can do about that."

"What's wrong with it?"

"It's too Irish and they stop the Irish."

"Really?"

"Try not to look so frightened."

"I'm hungry."

"We're all hungry. But, darling, you don't need to look hungry. Pretend you are full."

"And I almost never wear make-up at home."

"Well, you're about to enter the land of the free and the brave. And I don't know how you got that stamp on your passport. The priest must know someone. The only thing they can stop you for is if they think you have TB, so don't cough whatever you do, or if they think you have some funny eye disease, I can't remember the name of it. So keep your eyes open. Sometimes, they don't stop you at all, except to look at your papers."

Georgina made Eilis sit on the bottom bunk and turn her face towards the light and close her eyes. For twenty minutes she worked slowly, applying a thin cake of make-up and then some rouge, with eye-liner and mascara. She backcombed her hair. When she finished, she sent Eilis into the bathroom with some lipstick and told her to put it on very gently and make sure that she did not spread it all over her face. When Eilis looked at herself in the mirror she was surprised. She seemed older and, she thought, almost good-looking. She thought that she would love to know how to put make-up on properly herself in the way that Rose knew and Georgina knew. It would be much easier, she imagined, to go out among people she did not know, maybe people she would never see again, if she could look like this. It would make her less nervous in one way, she thought, but maybe more so in another, because she knew that people would look at her and might have a view on her that was wrong if she were dressed up like this every day in Brooklyn.

Eilis woke in the night and pushed the blanket onto the floor and tried to go back to sleep with just a sheet covering her, but it was still too hot. She was bathed in sweat. This was, they told her, probably the last week of the heat; soon, the temperature would drop and she would need blankets, but for the moment it would remain muggy and humid and everyone would move slowly and wearily in the streets.

Her room was at the back of the house and the bathroom was across the corridor. The floorboards creaked and the door, she thought, was made of light material and the plumbing was loud so she could hear the other boarders if they went to the bathroom in the night or came back home late at the weekends. She did not mind being woken as long as it was still dark outside and she could curl up in her own bed knowing there was time to doze. She could manage then to keep all thoughts of the day ahead out of her mind. But if she woke when it was bright, then she knew she had only an hour or two at most before the alarm clock would sound and the day would begin.

Mrs. Kehoe, who owned the house, was from Wexford town and loved to talk to her about home, about Sunday trips to Curracloe and Rosslare Strand, or hurling matches, or the shops along the Main Street in Wexford town, or characters she remembered. Eilis had presumed at the beginning that Mrs. Kehoe was a widow and had asked about Mr. Kehoe and where he had come from, to be met with a sad smile as Mrs. Kehoe informed her that he came from Kilmore Quay and said nothing more. Later, when Eilis had mentioned this to Father Flood, he had told her that it was best not to say too much about Mr. Kehoe, who had gone out west with all of their money, leaving his wife with debts, the house on Clinton Street and no income at all. This was why, Father Flood said, Mrs. Kehoe was letting out the rooms in the house and had five other girls as lodgers besides Eilis.

Mrs. Kehoe had her own sitting room and bedroom and bathroom on the ground floor. She had her own telephone, but would not, she made clear to Eilis, take phone messages under any circumstances for any of the lodgers. There were two girls in the basement and four on the upper floors; between them they had the use of the large kitchen on the ground floor, where Mrs. Kehoe served them their evening meal. They could make tea or coffee there at any time, Eilis was told, as long as they used their own cups and saucers, which they were to wash and dry themselves and put away.

On Sundays, Mrs. Kehoe had a rule that she did not appear and it was up to the girls to cook, making sure to leave no mess behind them. Mrs. Kehoe went to early mass on Sundays, she told Eilis, and then had friends around in the evening for an old-fashioned and serious poker game. She made the poker game, Eilis noted in a letter home, sound as though it was another form of Sunday duty that she performed only because it was in the rules.

Before dinner each evening they stood up solemnly and joined their hands and Mrs. Kehoe led them in saying grace. As they sat at the table, she did not like the girls talking among themselves, or discussing matters she knew nothing about, and she did not encourage any mention of boyfriends. She was mainly interested in clothes and shoes, and where they could be bought and at what price and at what time of the year. Changing fashions and new trends were her daily topic, although she herself, as she often pointed out, was too old for some of the new colours and styles. Yet, Eilis saw, she dressed impeccably and noticed every item each of her lodgers was wearing. She also loved discussing skin care and different types of skin and problems. Mrs. Kehoe had her hair done once a week, on a Saturday, using the same hairdresser each time, spending several hours with her so that her hair would be perfect for the rest of the week.

On Eilis's own floor, in the front bedroom, was Miss McAdam from Belfast, who worked as a secretary and had least to say at the table about fashions, unless the subject of rising prices came up. She was very prim, Eilis wrote in a letter home, and had asked Eilis as a special favour not to leave all her toilet things around the bathroom as the other girls did. The other girls, on the floor above them, were younger than Miss McAdam, Eilis wrote in her letter, and had to be regularly corrected by both Mrs. Kehoe and Miss McAdam. One of them, Patty McGuire, had been born in upstate New York, she told Eilis, and was now working as Eilis was in one of the large department stores in Brooklyn. She was manmad, Eilis noted. Patty's best friend was in the basement; she was called Diana Montini, but her mother was Irish and she had red hair. Like Patty, she spoke with an American accent.

Diana complained constantly about the food that Mrs. Kehoe cooked, insisting that it was too Irish. She and Patty dressed up, taking hours to do so, every Friday and Saturday night and went out to amusements or movies or dances, any place where there were men, as Miss McAdam sourly said. There was always trouble between Patty and Sheila Heffernan, who shared the top floor, over noise at night. Sheila, who was also older than Patty and Diana, came from Skerries and worked as a secretary. When the reason for the trouble between Sheila and Patty was explained to Eilis by Mrs. Kehoe, Miss McAdam, who was in the room, interrupted to say that she saw no difference between them and the mess they made and the way they used her soap and her shampoo and even her toothpaste when she was foolish enough to leave them in the bathroom.

She complained all the time, to Patty and Sheila themselves, and to Mrs. Kehoe, about the noise their shoes made on the stairs and the floor above.

In the basement with Diana was Miss Keegan from Galway, who never said much, unless the talk turned to Fianna Fáil and De Valera, or the American political system, which it seldom did, as Mrs. Kehoe had, she said, a complete revulsion of political discussion of any sort.

The first two weekends Patty and Diana asked Eilis if she would like to come out with them, but Eilis, who had not yet been paid, preferred to stay in the kitchen until bedtime even on the Saturday nights. And on her second Sunday she had gone for a walk on her own in the afternoon, having made the mistake the previous week of going with Miss McAdam, who had nothing good to say about anyone and had sniffed her nose disapprovingly if anyone passed by them who she thought was Italian or Jewish.

"I didn't come all the way to America, thank you, to hear people talking Italian on the street or see them wearing funny hats," she said.

In another letter home Eilis described the system they had at Mrs. Kehoe's for washing clothes. Mrs. Kehoe did not have many rules, Eilis told her mother and Rose, but they included no visitors, no dirty cutlery or cups and saucers left lying around and no washing of clothes of any sort on the premises. Once a week, on a Monday, an Italian woman and her daughter from a nearby street came to collect the washing. Every boarder had a bag, and a list had to be attached of what was in the bag, which would then be returned with the washing on Wednesdays with a price at the bottom that Mrs. Kehoe would pay, to be reimbursed by each boarder when she came home from work. They would then find their clean clothes hanging in their closets or folded and placed in the chest of drawers. There would also be clean sheets on the beds and fresh towels. The Italian women, Eilis wrote, ironed everything beautifully and put starch into her dresses and blouses, which she loved.