The Greatest Hunger
There are twelve of us, not counting the chickens and pigs, that twist on the floor of our house where we all sleep. There is no light, for there are no windows. We look around but we cannot see a thing but the pitch black of the night. We hear the cries of Alexander, our brother, hungry. We hear the grunts of the pigs. We smell the odor of our bodies, hot, from the weather. The summer is transitioning into fall; for us that means harvest time.
We thought about our presents and our pasts. Our summers and our winters. Our gains and our losses. Our hopes and our disappointments.
The greatest hunger is to gaze into an ocean and to feel the taste the salt of the sea. The greatest hunger is to watch all living creatures around you and to smile at their existence. The greatest hunger is to stare into a field and to taste the food on your tongue. The greatest hunger is to touch new land only to hear the laughter of those higher than you. The greatest hunger is to feel old soil only to hear that that winter will be black and cold. The greatest hunger is to go to a shop window in search for a job only to see you cannot apply. You listen to the yells to go. The greatest hunger is to go to the docks where just hours before your love was sent away, and you see where he stood. You can hear his calls for you.
The greatest hunger is being lost, away, apart, from all that you need.
Margaret
April, 1845
They do not understand. I do not feel much guilt for leaving, neither does Uncle Christopher, or so he says. He is, well was, my mother’s brother. My mother died giving birth to my youngest brother Corey.
Uncle Chris and I left. I was tired of taking care of my little ten brothers and sisters I did not fit in. The British were taking control of us and oppressing us. Could we take that? No. Uncle Chris and I said to fight back and to come to America, where opportunity awaits. I told Cecily, my sixteen-year-old sister who is only two years older, to come with us. But no. We did not tell father, he would be angry.
I want my voice heard here in America, not overpowered by screams of little siblings, rebellions of the Irish and oppressions of the British.
I look out into the ocean. I feel the wind blowing into my hair. Behind me I can hear rats scrambling about getting to the end of the port deck.
“You have nowhere to run to except the new land. We will be free,” I whisper. I kneel. Rats fascinate me. Creatures fascinate me. The way they scurry, not minding anything but themselves, they do. I wrap a finger around one of my red curls.
“Margaret?”
I stand at the sound of my name. Hands by my side. Embarrassed of my manner.
“What were you doing on the ground?” Turning around I saw Uncle Christopher’s scrunched forehead and raised eyebrow over his gray eyes.
“Looking at the rats,”
“Ah,” He laughs, “Of course.”
“Uncle,” I start, “when are we,-“ he knows what is to be asked.
He stops me with a mighty finger wave, his brown bulky hair looks like it is about to tumble off in the wind. “Oh, now my Margaret, you know we will be arrivin’ by dawn now. Why’re ya asking?”
“Excitement, I suppose.”
He clasps my shoulder and shakes it a bit.
“Do not get too excited,” he winks and laughs.
“Yes Uncle,” I laugh, “I know.”
In the distance I can begin to see the shore line. I turn look around and see Uncle was gone and no one was looking. I kneel.
“Land ho!” I whisper to the rats.
They scamper away.
I laugh.
Cecily
June, 1846
They say it is to be a good harvest this year. Harvesting has been all the talk, about the potatoes, and the soil. How sweet all the food will taste!
Margaret left about a year ago with our uncle. She told me, but none other. I have told no one that I knew that she was going. Father has quite a temper, when he found they had left he broke the door and disappeared for hours. James and I took care of the nine little ones. Margaret had always been the rebellious one. But to run away? We do not speak of that anymore. Well, at least not to Father. Colleen and Brendan who are twelve and ten talk about it with me and James at times. But never with Father.
Colleen is twisting my hair around, saying how she loves ‘the straight blonde glow.’ I smile, embarrassed a bit by the way she placed her words and tell her I love her delicate hands. We go back and forth saying things, it is our little game, complimenting each other. She says she adores my glass gray eyes, my smile lights this windowless room, my skin is as pure as the finest grain. I laugh at all of this, still embarrassed. And I tell her her freckles are like stars in the sky and her emerald eyes are the moon and earth. We go on but then I notice. It is almost time. I tell her I must go and kiss her goodbye.
“Father,” I approach him “May I go for a walk?”
“What for?” He grumbles.
“Air, perhaps.”
“Perhaps?” He almost mocks.
“Please, Father?”
“Yes, go.”
I smile as I kiss him goodbye.
As I walk I think: I would never feel right to run away. I wonder how much of a new life Margaret and Uncle Chris have made in America. Now they are probably a rich.
Looking out into the dying sunset I think that this is the same sun that is watching over my little Margaret. I hope she is well.
I reach the town. Few people are around. There are a couple of dock workers and a woman. I walk fast past them, they can be dangerous at night, or so he says.
Behind the market, looking over the field. Remembering the words he said I look stand at our meeting place looking at the scenery. Green with the last rain. The air is hot tonight, going into the summer. My pace becomes slower as I round the corner, I reach my arm out to the wood of the building and become engrossed in it. I close my eyes and take a breath and smell purity of soil and air.
“Cecily,” Jumping at the sound of my name, I open my eyes as I turn.
“Sean!” I beam and go to him.
“Were you careful?”
“I was”
“I’ve missed you,” His eyes are glittering in the fading sunset; they are green, with flashes of gold like the sun in them.
“I have missed you too.”
He looks in my eyes too. We have missed each other. Rough hands meet mine as he hums a tune. His fingers make a design on my palm and I become entranced in the twisting pattern. He tells me I seem sad and I mention I was just thinking about what life would be like in America and what a life Margaret has there. We talk and the conversation begins to accelerate into how we’re glad we are there, at this moment, in Ireland with each other.
He rises from his seat slowly and kisses me. His hair, auburn, slightly moves and glistens under the last few rays of sun.
“I love you, Cecily Ryan.”
This was the first time he said this.
A feeling in the pit in my stomach rises, all I want is to reach out and touch him. As I put my hand to his cheek I whisper, “I love you too.”
We kiss again as the sky goes dark.
Margaret
November, 1846
I open my eyes to dust and dawn. Right now it is morning, meaning another day of searching and another day of trying to avoid their laughter. Our tenement is dirty, with no water or air as it has been since we arrived, but it does not bother us much, because we are used to it. At first I was furious, expecting a nice clean room but after I saw how dirty some of they city was, I thought why should a room be any different?
We pay $1.50 a month. Uncle Chris got lucky finding a job in a factory; we get by.
I get up, change into a set of clothes, a floor length dress, covering my whole body. An off white color, and more gray at the bottom. I was laughed at, by Bostonians, at for when we first arrived. ‘Look at her Jim,’ the man at the docks pointed and laughed. I bowed my head and followed Uncle Chris. I had never felt so scared in my life. They were calling us all sorts of things. Things I do not wish to repeat or hear again…
I pin my hair up. I open the door to the room and go down the stairs to the city where children run in the street.
I go to a shop where a nice piece of paper is plastered on the window. NINA. As in No Irish Need Apply. I walk by a few more shops. I stop at one as a girl gets pushed out.
An employer of a factory yells, “Get out of here ya’ Mick” She has tears in her eyes I approach her.
“Are you alright?” I ask. Stumbling still, frightened, I see her, I hold her in my arms.
“Are ya’ Irish?” I ask and she nods.
“Me too” We turn away.
Her name is Kerry O’Connor. She immigrated a week ago by herself. She is sixteen years old- a year old than me I tell her.
“Why did you come here?”
“The famine is why I came.”
“Famine?” I stop.
“The potato famine. It is strong. We all thought the harvest was to be a good one, but we were wrong, there was nothing. My brother died, he did, from the hunger. I says to meself that that wasn’t goin’ to happen to me, no it wasn’t. So I came to America. I never thought they’d be so cruel…”
Kerry comes home with me that night. She sleeps beside me on the floor and we decide to search for a job together.
I think of my family back in Ireland. Of Cecily, of father, of Corey. Of Brendan and Colleen. Of all my siblings.
Are they well? Are they full? And I know they are not. Although I try to make believe they are.
I dream that night of the once full fields empty with dirty soil or bad potatoes. Soon British come in promising us food and giving it to us. We feast, my family, Sean, Uncle Chris, even Kerry. We are laughing. Soon one of us disappears, then another. Then I do.
I am placed in a field and I look around. It is soon filled with water and I am swimming. There is no air, but I can somehow still breathe. I am struggling to get to the surface for every moment it is harder to swim. Wet and cold, I break the surface. I see a building.
Suddenly I am walking to the building. I am looking for someone to help. I look though a window and see a group, I go inside.
“Can you help me?” I ask. They laugh at my appearance, at my voice. The one in charge comes out and yells and pushes me to get out.
I look back at the factory as the door closes and I see a sign.
No Irish Need Apply.
Cecily
January, 1847
We got up in the morning to go to work. Thousands of us, including me, James, and Sean but we have separate jobs. Sean said it was no place for me to work and that I should be taking care of Brendan and feeding him. I told him there was no food to give! The corn is three times as much as it cost the year before.
“I know,” He softly said. We are barely making the rent. The famine is making everyone and everything empty.
We watch as the men hammer the stones apart, giving it to us woman as we carry it to the road site and dump it out. We are building roads that lead to nowhere. It is work, it is money.
I look at all of us working. All of us, skeletons. One woman fainted, I look up the road and a dead man is being carried away. They do not put him in a coffin; they will whisk him away and bury him in some earth nearby, just inches below the surface.
From raised prices to no potatoes our most valuable thing is disappearing. Ourselves.
After a long day at work, Sean, James and I meet up.
“How are you, my dear?” Sean privately asks me.
“I am fine, Sean. I am tired.”
“Yes, you need rest.”
“You do too.”
Although I feel faint, I stay strong for him. For James. For Margaret. For Father. For the harvest. For Ireland.
“I love you,” He kisses me goodbye.
“Goodbye,” I say.
As we walk home, I look into the sky, and I notice that the first star has come out. I notice it was the first I’ve seen in a while. A second star appears.
When we reach home, Colleen is out with the chickens, crying.
“Colleen! What is wrong?”
“Brendan…” she sobs, “is dead”
“From the fever?” James asks, shocked. She nods. I go to her as tears swell in my eyes. James goes to our single room house with one person less.
I look back into the sky as the second star shines brighter than it did before.
Margaret
March, 1847
“Kerry…?” I whisper as we lie in bed.
“Yes?”
“Do you hear any breath but our own?”
“No.”
We could not hear the coughs of sick Uncle Christopher. The sickness came from God knows where. But he was sick for weeks. Uncle Chris was dead, and we lie alone.
In the morning, we go to a field and bury him, with the help of the priest and others. I weep. Kerry comforts me.
“It’s alright, Margaret, hush,” she calmly says.
The days go on, I search for a job. Kerry comes home with good news saying she has found work as a maid in a house. So, I do not see her much anymore.
On this morning I wake and I go to the docks. A ship is coming in! I spot a boy being laughed at and he looks down. I go to him.
~~~
His name is Jack Wilson, and I decide that us Irish need to stick together. He says hears from a bird he says everything that goes on in Ireland. And that this little bird flies back and forth over the sea, to tell him what is happening. He says Cecily is okay. He tells Kerry her family is well. They are hungry, all of them, but well.
But, he says, we are all hungry for something. For money, for food, for knowledge. Everything we live for strives on hunger, he says.
He is a very wise boy that Jack.
As we sit, hidden from the world, in our tenement, we pray for our families.
“Listen,” Jack says, “Do you hear them?”
“Hear who?” I say.
“Oh, hush,” Kerry says, “he’s just making pretend.”
“Who?!” I believe every word he says.
“The Irish of course! Back home! They want you to go,” he says.
“What? Go where?”
“Get a job, of course! Opportunity is a’waitin’!”
“But it’s Sunday!”
“Margaret, Margaret, your red curls are gettin’ to ya’. The factories are still open! They are waitin’!”
I look to Kerry, with a confused and disapproving, look on her face she smiles.
Kerry hadn’t always loved Jack’s foolishness, but now, maybe she was thinking something else.
“Go.” She says.
“What?” I turn.
“They’ll take ya’”
“Are you sure?”
“Go!” They say in unison. I smile and I get up and I go.
Cecily
June, 1847
I return home from the market with Colleen. She is turning fourteen soon, how much she has grown, but how skinny she still is. We lean against each other in the hot sun. I think of my Sean, waiting for me. He says he is going to ask Father, once the famine is over, to marry me! Marriage! How wonderful! To one I love! Oh, I hope Father does approve. We have lost so many; Brendan, Corey too. Perhaps marriage will make it easier to fill the holes in our hearts.
As we approach our house we see James, pacing back and forth.
“James,” I place my hand upon his shoulder. “What is wrong?”
“Colleen, go inside,” Startled by his request, she does what he says.
“Coffin ships they’re called,” James stops pacing and looks me in the eye.
“What?”
“You see them boats, Cecily, you know people are goin’. They’re on coffin ships.”
“Yes. But why? Where do they go?”
“I do not know, but our friends and neighbors are bein’ evicted from their houses because they can’t pay rent. The Landlords put them on the ships and they were pushin’ and shovin’ them out.”
“This is terrible!”
“Hundreds are gone already, Cecily.” I cannot think of what to say.
“Where did you hear this?” I ask.
“Colin, next door came. Said he saw a ship leave today.” I shake my head in disbelief, yet I know it is real.
“Sean! We must tell him!” I walk as fast as I can, James slowing me down.
“You’re looking a bit suspicious,” He says. I take a deep breath, almost stop my pace and begin again only to find myself rushing to his home.
Suddenly, it is dark; I look to the sky to see a cloud has covered the sun. I run up to the door and knock on the doorway of the single room house.
“Sean?”
No response.
“Sean?” I shout.
“He must be at the market,” James says.
“He has no money to spend at the market!” My breath becomes quick.
“Sean?”
“Sh, Cecily.” James places his hand on my shoulder and makes me back away. He opens the door to the house and looks in. I walk in front of him, peeking at in the dark house. Everything is left as if it were if they were here. “They’re gone, Cecily. On a coffin ship.” His hands comfort my shoulders. My heart seems to stop as tears begin to swell. I fall onto the floor, crying for Sean to come back.
Margaret
May, 1850
It’s been three years since I came to Boston. I’ve been working in the factory from seven in the morning to eight at night. I’ve been working for piece work. I make cotton shirts, and I’m paid about 80 cents a week. I am nineteen now, Kerry is twenty. She is doing well. Jack is ill, he got beaten once and broke his arm and never fully recovered. He works at a factory a few blocks away.
We wake to a dark morning, yet again. But does it matter? Nothing will change. I prepare for my day at work.
There’s a knock at the door.
“Hello?” I answer. It is Jack.
“I got the news”
I laugh, “From a bird?”
“If you believe so, yes.” He laughs.
“What was the news?” I ask.
“That I cannot say.”
“Why?” Kerry asks.
“Because the paper was smudged!” He laughs. We laugh too.
To the workhouse I head next, I say goodbye leaving Jack and Kerry to their day’s duties.
When I enter, there are others there already. I sit down at my normal work space.
“Who are they?” I wonder.
“Hush,” says the worker next to me, Hattie.
I start to work when I feel a tap on my shoulder.
“You.”
I turn. “Yes, sir?”
“Come with me.”
I follow the man.
“Margaret Ryan?” Says he.
“Yes?”
“When did you immigrate to here from Ireland?”
“When I was just a child. At age thirteen, sir. 1845. Five years ago, sir” They were placing items, such as handkerchiefs and petticoats in a bag.
“What is that for, sir?”
“You’ll need it.”
“Where am I going to, sir?”
“Get along now, Margaret.”
They push me along.
We go to the docks where a ship marked the Colonist stands.
I look back as girls from my workhouse crowd around me. Fifty of us. Scared alone and Irish. We turn our heads as we hunger for the lives we never had.
Margaret and forty-nine other girls were to be sent to various places such as Britain to make the population less in Boston.
Sean was one out of thousands sent on a coffin ship to Quebec, Canada for not being able to pay rent.
Cecily survived the famine and married when she was twenty-two but never forgot about Sean.
. But also, look in your books, and see how authors use this rule.
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