The Passions of Emma (33 page)
The physicians thumped people’s chests and listened to their lungs with instruments that had small metal ear trumpets and rubber tubes. They made the women open their shawls and dresses. Though some women were shy and others mortified, still they made them do it.
The line was an eternity long. They would all stand, shuffle forward a few feet, and stand again. Noreen held Bria’s hand, gripping it so hard it hurt down to the bone. Merry wrapped her fist up tightly in Bria’s skirt. She hummed constantly, a high-pitched, worried buzz.
Eventually they got close enough to the front of the line to see better what was happening. The physicians were examining a family someone said was from Russia. The women were wrapped in large fringed shawls and had kerchiefs tied over their heads. The men wore vests decorated with braids and big frog buttons. One of the women had the letter
E
chalked on her shoulder. She seemed to have drawn one doctor’s particular attention.
E
chalked on her shoulder. She seemed to have drawn one doctor’s particular attention.
Suddenly the woman let out a loud wail and began to weep, wringing her hands and pulling at her clothes. Horrified whispers skittered up and down the line in a swirl of languages.
She’s being rejected. . . . She’s blind. . . . She’s an undesirable. . . .
Fear clutched at Bria’s belly so strongly she nearly vomited. They would listen to her chest and hear the swamp that lived inside her lungs, and she would be declared rejected, an undesirable. Her
children would be wrenched from her arms, and she would be put on a boat back to Ireland, she and Shay would be parted forever, and she would die alone.
children would be wrenched from her arms, and she would be put on a boat back to Ireland, she and Shay would be parted forever, and she would die alone.
She was dizzy and nearly blind herself with fear by the time it became her turn. When one of the physicians checked her eyes for some disease by turning her eyelids inside out—a thing that hurt terribly—Bria was sure he would say,
Rejected, rejected, rejected. . . .
And then he picked up his chest-listening instrument.
Rejected, rejected, rejected. . . .
And then he picked up his chest-listening instrument.
“Unfasten your bodice. Shirtwaist and shift, and your corset if you’re wearing one,” he said in the coldest voice she’d ever heard. They hadn’t asked the other women to open their underthings, which meant, she thought, that they probably already suspected her of having the wasting disease. The way they had suspected that old Russian woman of being blind.
Bria’s hands shook so, she could barely manage the hooks and laces. But the man didn’t put his instrument to her chest, he put his hand. He rubbed the backs of his knuckles under the round sloping moons of her breasts, following their shape.
Bria looked up and met his eyes and saw what he wanted, even before he spoke.
“Is it true what they say about you Irish lasses?” he said. The chest-listening instrument dangled from his other hand, the little ear trumpet swinging like a pendulum, back and forth, back and forth. “Have you a fire in your belly to match the fire on your head?”
Bria could hear her own breath rattling wet and thick in her throat. A cough tore out of her chest, loud and racking, sounding horrible even to her own ears.
The metal ear trumpet swung again, back and forth. “Do you have consumption?” He said it as a question, but it was meant as an accusation.
Bria undid another button on her shirtwaist. She turned slightly so that her breast filled the whole of his palm. But when her
nipple tightened and hardened against his fingers, she shuddered and jerked away from him.
nipple tightened and hardened against his fingers, she shuddered and jerked away from him.
He sighed and let his hand fall to his side. “Consumption is a contagious disease,” he said. “I’m supposed to report all cases of contagious diseases to the Department of Health. Likely you will be deported.”
“But what—” Her voice cracked roughly as she picked up his hand and put it back on her breast. “But what if you don’t report it?”
“Come with me,” he said then, simply that and no more. But then it was all he needed to say.
“My girls,” she did manage to whisper back to him, so choked with fear and shame now that she could barely breathe.
The physician turned to a woman who stood beside a desk, writing things in a big black leather registry. Bria, looking down at the floor, saw only the woman’s black button shoes and the hem of her navy serge skirt. “Miss Spencer,” he said, “this woman warrants a more thorough examination. Give her two little Irish lasses a peppermint stick and see to it that they don’t wander off.”
Bria followed him into a small room that was crowded with desks and wooden crates, but empty of people. She turned around and faced the open door, wanting to run back through it and knowing she would not.
She looked out on the line where they combed your hair, checking for head lice. One woman, her hair newly cropped close to her pink scalp, her face raw with shame, stood quivering with her eyes squeezed shut, and as Bria watched, a man lifted a bucket of sulfur water and poured it over the woman’s head.
A hand touched the back of Bria’s neck.
“I hope you catch it from me,” she said to him. “I hope you rot from it.”
He laughed. “Lassie, the only thing I can catch from the part of you I’ll be fucking is the pox.” He laughed again and pushed the door shut with a soft click, and the immigrant woman’s face
was replaced with that of a smiling, white-lipped clown on a vaudeville calendar.
was replaced with that of a smiling, white-lipped clown on a vaudeville calendar.
When Bria walked back through that door again, she knew that she would never speak of what had been done to her, of what she had allowed to be done. Not to Shay, who was staggering already from the burden of shame he felt for all he’d put her through. And not to God, whose commandment she had broken.
For a woman to lie with a man not her husband, whether for money or an immigrant document—in the eyes of Mother Church it was all the same. Bria McKenna had played the part of a whore.
Bria had that document clutched tightly in her hand when she and the girls walked through the big columned entrance of Castle Garden and out into streets swarming with shouting people, pushcarts, and wagons. She didn’t see how she would ever find Shay in such a crush of humanity, and suddenly she was sure that it had all been for nothing—her sin and her shame. That God’s terrible and swift sword of retribution would keep them forever apart by not letting her find him in this America that she had given up so much to enter.
She turned around and around in a circle, making herself dizzy, wanting to scream. She kept thinking she heard someone shout her name, but every time she whirled in that direction, all she saw were strangers’ faces. Then she spotted Donagh, his black priest’s cassock standing out in the colorful crowd. And suddenly Shay was there, and she was in his arms, and she heard him say her name, just her name, but he didn’t sound like himself. The hanging rope had stolen away his beautiful voice.
His mouth came down hard on hers, and for one fierce and terrible moment she thought she would be sick. But then she was clinging to him, clinging desperately, and she clung to him all through their first night together after so long apart, as if she would never let him go.
The doctor’s touch had been crude and rough and taking, where
Shay’s was all tender and giving. But the ending had been the same, both men had spilled their seed inside her.
Shay’s was all tender and giving. But the ending had been the same, both men had spilled their seed inside her.
And she had conceived a child her first day in America.
A child that would soon be drawing its first breath, here in this America.
Bria sucked in a sharp breath of her own as another pain wrapped around her back and belly, squeezing hard. But the pains weren’t as strong as they would be later and they hadn’t shown a close pattern as yet. He would be a while in coming, their son.
Still, the hurting was fierce enough that she had to stop her pacing and lean against a pier piling. She closed her eyes, rubbing the small of her back.
When she opened her eyes again, she was looking into her husband’s white face.
“Shay,” she said, gasping a little. “The baby’s coming.”
“Aye, I can see that.” He smiled and there was only the weeist bit of a tremble to it. “Were you thinking, maybe, of telling me soon?”
“
Och.
It’s hours off yet.”
Och.
It’s hours off yet.”
He slid his arm around her waist, taking her weight, and began to lead her back to the house. “That’s as may be, but my heart would be beating some easier if you were inside and tucked up safe in our bed. A fisherman’s babe it might be, but dropping the little darlin’ here on the beach is carrying things a wee bit too far, surely?”
A fisherman’s babe.
“Shay.” She grasped his arm, pulling him hard around to face her. “Promise me you’ll love this babe no matter what happens.”
“Bria . . .” Her name came out almost as a sob, but he caught it. He cupped her face with his big hand, brushing his mouth across hers, sweetly, tenderly.
She leaned in to him, nestling her face into the curve of his neck. She breathed against his warm skin, smelling sea salt and that male smell that was uniquely his. “Promise me,” she said.
His hand came up, his fingers tangling in her hair, pulling her head back so that she could see his promise in his eyes. “I’ll love the babe. I love it already.”
“And will you do something else for me, then?”
He dipped his head to lean his forehead against hers, rubbing noses. “You’re a fine one, you are, for hoarding all your requests and then spending them so freely just when I would sprout wings like an angel and fly to the heavens to bring you back the moon should you be asking for it.”
“You’d look a sight odd in angel’s wings, Seamus McKenna—you’ve too much of the devil about you. And whatever would I want with the moon?”
He laughed again and kissed her hard on the mouth. “I love you, wife.”
He began to walk with her again, arm and arm, slowly, for she was so big and clumsy now, and the shingled sand, wet from the tide, slid slick beneath their feet. She felt another pain coming, spiraling out from someplace deep, deep inside her.
“Then will you go and fetch Miss Tremayne,” she said, “and bring her here to be with me for the birthing?”
His arm tightened around her waist, and to her surprise the pain subsided. “Isn’t she a thought too grand for it?” he said. “Of what use would she be to you?”
No, the pain was coming after all, and it would be worse than before. “She is my particular woman friend. This is her place to be on this night. With me.”
“Aye, so particular a friend is she that you call her Miss Tremayne.”
The pain crashed over her, out of her, through her, strong and violent like a hurricane wave. She wanted Emma to hold her hand, to keep the tears at bay.
“Bring her to me, Shay. Please . . . I need her.”
Emma Tremayne walked out of the dining room feeling stifled. As if she’d just spent the evening locked up in a clothes press, being smothered by yards and yards of silk and satin and taffeta, and all of it smelling powerfully of stale perfume and camphor balls.
The men had been left to their cigars and brandy. The women were retiring to the drawing room, where they would engage in more conversation, and Emma didn’t think she could bear it.
Afterward, when the men rejoined them, she would be expected to play the piano and sing a lover’s duet with Geoffrey, although she was not particularly skillful at either singing or playing, and everyone would of course be staring, and she really didn’t think she could bear that at all.
Emma stopped suddenly just inside the drawing room, unable to go one step farther, to take one breath more. She gripped her green chiffon skirts so hard she trembled and her hands made tight fists.
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