OEES READING Short stories to improve your reading! Good source for IELTS test takers. Enjoy! Asylum 1928 by Maureen E. ONeill There was a rankness about the place. The straw that was bunched over the roof frame was never dry and mildewed shafts dangled over the doorway like dirty yellow hair over an insolent eye. And the dour cold pinned Elly to the bed, the flimsy cot that had been provided by the landlord who, in stilted unschooled penmanship, had promised modern conveniences, referring, it turned out, to a small dark stove that had to be kept going throughout the day for heat, for food, for light. Temporary, wasnt that another word used in the letter on translucent airmail paper? A lure sent across the sea to Elly and her husband Jeremiah to break them from the life they had had in America, to draw them back to Ireland, that place that had spawned the flight of a desperate people, people who hung onto the boards of ocean vessels with fingernails of green hope, knowing that what was at their backs would have broken them if they had stayed on even one more fortnight. Elly had the mornings. That was when Thomas was at school. She busied herself wiping down the windows and walls, hurrying the hopeless mist down into pools on the warped sills and baseboards. You could move the water from place to place, but it would be a circle in the end. It was in the mornings that Elly would think of Patrick, back in Michigan. Patrick belonged to Ellys mother now. Thats the way, because of what Elly had done. Crying, burrowing under wool blankets over sheets of despair. I wont, Elly had called out after the birth, tearing at the diapers shed saved so carefully from Thomass infancy, refusing to bare her breast to the ugly gnarled shrunken male thing. Had Jeremiah signed the papers, as the orderly had implied? Signed her away? Her fighting was the color of exhaust and the texture of scratches. There was a force like arms thrashing, pressing down on her, pulling her, as if she were expected to stretch, as if that were the whole point. Fingers making deep wells in her flesh that seemed to touch her bones. And then cords wrapped and extended, as if she were a tent being pulled to the four corners. Did she look up that once and see Jeremiah in the white collar she herself had starched? The black hair like spilled ink on his forehead. Jaw rippling – was it with sympathy? Or was he afraid the men he had called wouldnt be able to drag her out? So, even though Elly had come back from that place and had been a dutiful mother for almost a year, Patrick had been left behind when the family set out for Ireland. Better off, everyone thought, without his mother. Elly bent over her embroidery, the altar linens and vestments she embellished with invisible stitches for the Irish priests. Mother always said it was a sacred honor, as close as a woman could get, and Elly had such good eyes, she was known for her fine work. Did the priests send their baser garments up the hill to the Magdalen Laundry to be mended and scrubbed by the women imprisoned there, in that imposing fortress connected by tunnels to the convent and orphanage and separated by no more than an acre of barren land from the parish school? Would the poor, seduced women ever have been taught how to sew, how to pierce a delicate satin with a sharp needle and leave no mark? Well, escapes were not unheard of and there was talk of people out in the country, hermits even, who sheltered those who had gotten over the wall. Elly stood at the door, watching. Her boy Thomas loped down the road, swooping up stones and tossing them. Where did that gait come from? It was as if some wind lifted him, he was up and down like a flag. When he had set out that morning, Elly had pulled his head against her, hard skull against hard womb. Stay. Dont walk down to the school, where they teach nothing but folk tales and nonsense, where the nuns are overrun with orphans, and distracted by the watch they must keep over the laundry, the laundry full of women gone bad. Elly envisioned the inmates bending their shaved heads over boiling tubs, leering out barred windows, begging fags off passersby. It would be better if Thomas were safe at home, for Elly had gone to normal school and could teach him to read herself. But he must get to know the lads, insisted Jeremiah. Since when did her American husband call boys, lads? He seemed to adapt so easily. Did it really not matter at all where he was? As Elly regarded the pine table with its splinters, the stove that exuded a pervading stench, she thought of the polished walnut table and sideboard her parents had bestowed as a wedding gift and on which the tenants in Detroit would now be enjoying dinner parties. The situation here hardly seemed equivalent. Wasnt that the word used in the letter? She remembered it, how she had italicized it in her mind, her hopes hanging on the loops of the q, the l. But she found the word had been a deceit, like the smell of baking bread in a house of sickness. Elly thought back to her kitchen in Detroit where she had read the letter, where she had first thought Ireland, where she had slid off the chair thinking of the place and what it would mean. Crying, making lists, her mind frantic about how to buy milk in liters or jugs or whatever they had there, and how she would get to the village, with Patrick to carry and Thomas running off to school, first grade it would be, and how she would manage the packages, from the butcher and fresh grocer, and she remembered Patricks carriage, and thought of hanging the bags from the handle bar, or rigging a little basket underneath. And since the Irish children were no doubt badly nourished and carriers of diseases never even heard of in the United States, she would buy dozens of oranges, precious oranges from Spain, cod liver oil, spinach, pot roasts every Sunday, and she would have so many bags, that in her haste she might toss the roast into the stroller, onto Patrick, who would be asleep, not even stirring in response to the weight right on his chest and shifting soon over his face, covering his face with the damp butcher paper, the bloody string pressing a groove into the boys cheek. Out of the depths I cry to You, O Lord. Ellys mother, 300 miles north of Detroit, intervened. If you cannot see it in your heart to turn down this promotion for the sake of your family, the older woman wrote to her son-in-law, you must at the least deliver dear little Patrick into my hands, to spare the child the arduous crossing and the hardships of Irish country life. Elly did not understand why Jeremiah considered her mothers action an interference. Elly had always sought and followed her mothers advice to the smallest detail. Hadnt she married Jeremiah, hadnt she painted the bedroom blue and kept a basket in each room for odds and ends? Her mother had been right, the baskets made it so much easier to keep order in the house. Elly looked at the picture of her mother and father on their wedding day, in its silver frame with velvet backing. She could not keep the dust off the velvet, but every morning after she lit the stove, she rubbed the silver to shining with the hem of her apron. Elly, for mercys sake, her mother had written, do not send me news of your being with child while you are in Ireland, so far from home. This time, the good advice had come too late. Jeremiah came to Elly the other night. Let me see. His eyes greedy for her, his flesh coarse with appetite. He might as well have said, let me eat. And she had thought pregnancy repulsed him. But there he was, untying her gown, opening the shutters, taking her by the arms, placing her in the moons glow. Her breasts were swollen and aching, but the pressure, the warmth of his palms, was a relief. When Elly opened her eyes, she could see the moon directly through the window and her husband uncovered beside her. The baby had been riled, its sense of insult brewing under her blood. Elly thought of her approaching confinement, the waves of pain, the tearing of that engorged flesh between her legs. How many children would she bear? Patrick had been so small. Ellys mother had been anxious, rubbing ointment into his purple knotted skin and breathing into him with her own lungs. But Elly had made peace with God. With sweat clinging to her temples and above her lip, Elly had agreed that it was right and good that the tiny infant ascend to heaven. Detroit was no place for a sickly boy. And even though Patrick had survived, they only had three plates in the little Irish cottage. Forks and spoons and glasses and saucers and bowls, all in threes. You wont be here long enough to do any entertaining, said the supervisors wife, who had been there two years. Her sons already had accents. Youre lucky one of yours is so young, she had said to Elly, young enough to be left in the States and never know the difference. What did she mean, lucky? Was there some danger here for Thomas? Elly wondered if she was going to have another son, as she felt the familiar stirrings under her ribs. What was Gods plan? she had wanted to ask the priest in the shadow of the confessional. She could imagine his eyes boring into the screen. It is not for you to understand Gods ways. Ellys missal landed with a thud and she scrambled to gather up her holy cards from a marble floor worn down by generations of sinners. Still, Elly felt that something could be done, though the specifics were dim. Get rid of it. Elly was sure she had once heard that expression, years before in Detroit. It had issued like a bullet from the back of the streetcar, ripping her attention from her diligent reading of Great Expectations. She had wanted to turn, to examine the speaker, with her odd speech, unfamiliar cadences, but Elly was afraid to look at any woman who had the audacity to say the word pregnant so loudly in public. Elly knew almost no one in Ireland. Who could help her? There must be a medication, a regimen. But if folks around here knew of one, thered be no need for the laundry or the overbrimming orphanage. Elly looked into the sink at the cold peeled potatoes, like chunks of flesh in murky pond water. They were poisonous raw, her mother had always said. Uncooked and undigested, the potatoes were still burning Ellys throat when she went to bed. She slept fitfully and dreamed. A woman was leaning over a wide steaming washtub. Up and down her arms, with clenched fists, were churning a white fabric stained red. The suds were rising and the red was flowing onto her hands, which were raw and chapped, and onto her forearms where the sleeves had been rolled up, and even up to where her chest pressed against the wooden wash board. When the woman raised her hand and motioned for Elly to join her, Elly bolted awake, her gown soaked through with sweat, her limbs trembling with foreboding. The midwife came every week now, but never responded to Ellys hints. To the midwife, the misguided efforts of women to meddle with pregnancy had become tedious, hardly worth the trouble of recounting. Instead, the midwife told of crossways babies, torn women, childbed delirium, and even the rare moment of bafflement. No one knew why, the midwife intoned mysteriously as she shared a cup of tea with Elly, but after this wee bastard was born and taken away, the girls milk began to flow and it would not stop. As the midwife talked, Elly formed a picture in her head of the wet souring limp linen hanging washed to dry, to be taken in in an hours time and exchanged. The dressing and undressing would have been wearying, and besides the milk there would be tears to add, and still more blood. The young girl was a Maggie, locked up by her own family in the Magdalen Laundry workhouse. Now in the aftermath of her illicit birthing, she couldnt move but floated. Soggy newspapers lining the chair, the bed, and the nuns praying and calling the doctor, even Father James, who it was observed made the sign of the cross before stepping through the doorway. Bibles and black gowns and black leather bags and spectacles to guard themselves against the dank fluid air coming round their male forms, touching them perhaps in some personal revealing place, or letting something precious seep out before the aghast averted eyes of the ministering women. The midwife insisted that she had had a premonition before this particular birth. It wasnt just the midwife attending with the cooks assistant by her side to run for water and to lend a hand. No, there was Father James in the vestibule, and Mother Elizabeth, who was the Maggies own sister who had entered the convent three years before, and in this crowd there was yet another one in habits scurrying around, making the midwife nervous. Nuns have no business at a birth, she scoffed, even one in their own convent. Now the midwife knew better than to let the Maggie see the babe, and Mother Elizabeth should have as well, but she must have had a softness when it came to her own kin that muddled her thinking. When the midwife had cleaned the baby and wrapped him in the toasted flannel, Mother Elizabeth reached out and, not seeing ahead, the midwife let her have the bundle, which Mother Elizabeth handed straight away to her sister. It was not right and the midwife and the cooks assistant opened their two mouths with the word no at the same exact moment, hoping to prevent the unwed mother from looking upon the face of her baby. But there is a point after which what has been set in motion cannot be undone. A spell had descended on the poor girl and, at the very instant that they wrenched the baby out of her arms, the milk began to flow. For Elly, after she had given birth in the little Irish cottage, there had been no wrenching, no flowing of milk. The pains, Elly could remember the pains, but not what came after. Had there been a cry? Had there been a ghastly thump upon the floor? She had pressed her eyes shut and thus she was delivered into darkness and silence, saved this once from the danger of looking, saved from the face of her own baby, for hours, days, it could have been weeks, until, even from within her damp bedclothes, Elly could no longer block out voices in the parlor. Its a sin against God, the priest said through his teeth. No, Father, said Jeremiah, she cant help herself, she is not responsible. And its better that she not know. Would the baby be safe here? asked the priest. Certainly, if we could get a girl in to help. Much later, Elly heard wailing and curtains rustling and then a distinct crunching that issued from the roadway, down the front path and through the door. The girl they had been talking about was coming, a Maggie in laced boots at least one size too big but stuffed with newspapers to keep her feet from sliding. Im sticking my neck out for you, the priest said to Ellys husband. Elly heard the name Kate and when she opened her eyes she saw floating by the bed a broad-faced girl with a ragged short crop of hair, where no doubt a nun had registered spite. You are paying now for your weakness, the nun would have spit as she hacked off the girls flowing auburn hair. I knew the first minute I saw those black gypsy eyes of yours that this was to be the end of it. Let the Mother of Jesus save you now, if she has the strength for it. During one of their gloomy afternoons, the midwife had revealed more about the girl at the Magdalen Laundry whose milk would not stop. Before she had been confined to the laundry, before anyone in the county even suspected that the girl was pregnant, she was found wandering on the hills about the holy well, frantically gathering stones to place at the edge of the well, not the midwifes idea of a Christian offering. The girl must have realized that no one would have her or the baby, no one in his right mind. She was heard calling for Aiden. She seemed to think the hermit would be her benefactor. She thought she heard him speak. My name is Aiden. Give me the child and I will care for him. The longed-for words drifted into the girls mind. They stopped her hand from placing another river-smooth stone on the pile she was making. You will not do better. The voice was warm and airy, gathering in about her like mohair. I live beyond that hill. It is help that I offer. And silence. But of course when the poor demented girl opened her eyes, she could not see beyond the brick rim of the holy well nor could she hear a sound other than of her stone, her last of atonement, dipping into black final water. So when Kate prattled on with stories about her family, Elly knew they could hardly be believed. Stories of cheerful family love. Stories of how Kate would make treats for the younger children, calling to them with a voice of sweetness, hallo, do you think it is November Night yet? Well, come and see! And Kate chatted on about making them tea parties, doting and serving and trying to impress everyone with what a mother she would make, so kind was she, so filled with light and laughter. More than likely, Elly thought, the homestead was a dismal hovel, and the old folks had a space lined off with rope and a ratty sheet, but it did no good for all that the others could hear. The wee one is like to go to school soon, Moira, could you turn to me now again? It was the fathers tweed voice, one that would rough up your insides and more so when you heard the whimper of his wifes reply, like the sniffle of a child about to take the strap at school. A once stalwart mother transformed by darkness and by lying flat against the pallet on the floor. In Ellys cottage, Kate slept in the room behind the kitchen. The bassinet was wedged between the wall and the bed and the great lazy girl lolled on the covers letting a white breast hang over the babys mouth. Wet nurse. The very idea was disgusting. Elly could not understand how her husband and Father James, a man of the cloth, could support such a slatternly custom. If that had actually been Ellys baby, she would have protested more. As it was, she merely nodded when they claimed that Kates husband was in England and her own infant had died at birth. Elly walked in and out. All you really need is some hard sucking and the will to do your duty. She paced the boards and looked out the window. She could not abide strangers in her home. Visitors had stopped coming. The midwife, naturally. The supervisors wife. The two neighbors. Even the woman who had initially invited Elly to her sewing circle. Elly could see very well the campaign Kate was on to seduce little Thomas. She played catch, sang long baleful songs about fairies, told him over and over how dashing and manly he was getting to be. Even Jeremiah was taken in. The bread is delicious, Kate, he gushed, what would we do without you? Elly was on her knees every night. Say the rosary, Elly. Keep your hands busy, Elly. Have a basket in each room for odds and ends, Elly. What would her mother say about this situation? She had been disturbed to hear about the pregnancy, of course, she believed Jeremiah should have stopped, left Elly alone after the two boys, even though she knew how important a daughter would be to Elly. Important, but not worth the risk. She wouldnt need a daughter anyway, as long as she had her mother. Her mother should have come. What kept her in Michigan, other than the knowledge of what Ireland was like? Kate was gone, walking to town, and the baby was crying. Elly put her pillow over her ears, and the long arms of Father James reached through the window and silenced the baby. From then on, it was Kate or Jeremiah or Father Jamess housekeeper, a series of guards to watch that the changeling was not left to cry. Wasnt it enough that Elly suffered these two, Kate and the baby, within her home? But that she tend to them, when her head was splitting and she had her own sons education to think of, was too much to ask. I am not a nursemaid, she told her husband. But hes yours. How many times must I tell you he is not? And the priest came again and again, as if the family were in a faith-shattering crisis that demanded the steadying force of a celibate man who wore a linty black cassock with a stiff white collar. He would hold the baby, calling him ducky and chum and pretending to be oblivious to the babys real identity. Kate, Ive come to see how youre getting on, the priest said as he leaned jauntily in the doorway. Fine as the day. I cannot ask you in, Father James, as the child has a fever. No bother to me. Visiting the sick is my line. Suit yourself. Kate, he says, his crooked forefinger lifting her chin like a cup of tea, dont be so hard on me. Will you go to America with them? he asked idly, though through the thick lens of his glasses his fleshy eyelid twitched. Is that a concern to you? Ay, you are still one of my flock. Elly wondered at the connection between these two. She thought of the story of the unnatural flow of milk, the consternation at the laundry, the role of this Father James, who seemed to show up everywhere. Its a sign, the midwife had said, the girl is intended to be with her child. Elly began to see Kate as the Maggie in that story. She imagined the priests interference, his insistence on a private interview with the patient. Now Kate, the good father might have said, lifting his glasses from the bridge of his nose and rubbing stout dry fingers like sandpaper over his eyes. I dont know what kind of pact youve made with the devil here, but this is not the work of the Lord. That I know. We cannot go on like this, with you in this state. Its unseemly. So, he continued, turning his back to her and looking out the window, it is decided that you should take your leave of the laundry. You will be hired out to an American family that has a newborn. The mother is unable to provide nourishment and, upon assurances that you are a clean girl, she has agreed to your nursing the child. The Mother Superior has given her approval. Has she then? Kate would have said, mimicking the efficiency in the fathers voice. Elly saw Kate standing up and walking to the washstand, her skirt brushing the hem of the priests cassock. On impulse, she untied the suffocating smock and threw it off her shoulders. She lifted the chemise over her head and began to peel off the milky membranes, layers of cloth the nuns had wound around her chest, a busy forlorn stab at containment. Pulling off the last threads like tape, she was unbalanced by the weight of the breasts, the arid swirl around the bursting flesh, the only part of her that had ever wanted a child. The man had taken such an interest, the girl reasoned, he might as well see what all the fuss was about. The father glided in the girls direction, his eyes concentrating as if studying a statue that had moved. He dipped his hand into the washbowl to cradle up the fresh water, and tilting, let it run down her skin, the startling coolness changing the terrain, making her nipples stand out. The wet hand then hovering and pressing. And the mouth closing down, pulling, drawing the hardness out of her. And the girls wanton eyes closing, remembering. Elly closed her own eyes, her hands gripping the telegram that had arrived from her mother. Send her to me, dictated the block letters. Not an interference this time, but a solution. Jeremiah immediately arranged for Elly to travel back to Northern Michigan with Thomas, as well as the baby and Kate. Now wasnt that a fine entourage for Ellys mother to take on? Jeremiah would follow. On the boat, Elly watched Kate closely, noticing how the girl was reacting to having left her whole world behind. There had been no tearful last visits, no loud send-off at the dock. No mention of the husband in England. Only a single letter, written to her sister the nun who had emigrated to Australia. Kate must have risen while everyone was asleep, lit the gas lamp, and wrapped the mohair blanket around her shoulders. In the morning, Elly saw the wildly scrawled letter on the nightstand, and read it before Kate stirred. To my sister, I am writing again because I dont know what else to do. Do you know where he is? You pulled him from me, didnt you? Who did you hand him to in the dark, without my seeing? Still wet from me, still wanting me, shoved into cold waiting hands. Were they the blanched white hands of Father James? Elly staggered at the thought that she herself seemed to be the only one who knew where the bastard had ended up. Of course the baby had the same exact round chin as Kate, and there was the matter of the dark gypsy eyes that stared at Elly from all sides of the room. There was no man to handle matters at port. The hall was a cavern of dust and foul-smelling smoke, and uncouth immigration officers were everywhere, peering into envelopes, severely examining tags and documents. Elly felt a surge of patriotism mingled with an irritation at being so treated. But she needed to concentrate. Kate, she directed, you stay here with the baby, while I take Thomas to the rest room. In the lounge, Elly reached to the bottom of her bag. A small pair of scissors, her mother had often advised, comes in handy on a trip. Behind the door of the stall, Elly snipped the string Jeremiah had knotted around the bundle of vital documents, and removed the papers they had not had with them on the voyage from the States to Ireland eleven months before. When the officer got to Kate and papers were discovered wanting, Elly responded with haughty reserve. Of course I dont know the poor souls. At this testimony, Kates mouth widened in queer silence and she tried to thrust the baby into Ellys arms. The officer shook his head with contempt, Theyll do anything to make their kids American, and moved menacingly into the space between Kate and Elly. Kate struggled and pleaded, but the officers arm was rigid, gripping her from behind and crushing her breasts, while the baby dangled from her hip, his bonnet askew and one bare foot twisted between Kates flannel skirt and the officers woolen pant leg. Elly took a moment to regard a thread hanging from her own sleeve. Slowly, she twisted it around her finger and snapped it off. She breathed softly and evenly as it drifted to the floor. Then Elly put one gloved hand on the back of Thomass neck and tenderly guided her son out of the polluted hall. OEES.
Posted on: Thu, 25 Sep 2014 14:26:48 +0000
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