Cinders to Satin. Fern Michaels
you didn’t hear me,” Patrick said, his tone polite and in direct contrast to the fierce grip he had taken on the man’s coat front. “My wife! She needs help!” There was desperation in Patrick’s voice, a white line of hatred circling his mouth.
“Patrick! Patrick!” Beth screamed, tugging on her husband’s arms, attempting to break his deathlike grip on the official.
Almost instantly two other men wearing armbands seized Patrick, throwing him roughly to the ground. “Behavior like that will get you a stint in jail,” the men warned. “Keep your hands to yourself, man, if you know what’s good for you. We don’t like troublemakers here.”
Regaining control, Patrick shrugged off the men’s hands with a violent motion. Beth fell tearfully into his arms. “Patrick, please. We must do as they say.” Her voice was soft, a sobbing entreaty.
“Yer little missus is right, man,” said one of the men. “Yer so close now, don’t ruin it for yourself. Go on over and get in line with the other men. We’ll look after your wife.”
Patrick responded to the man’ suggestion, but when he left Beth’s side, his shoulders were slumped in weariness and defeat.
Beth watched her husband, her heart breaking for him. This was supposed to be the most wonderful experience of his life! The great adventure! And because of her and Paddy it was draining the life right out of him. She’d known and loved Patrick Thatcher too long and too well not to know that his enthusiasm was fast on the wane, that worry and concern for his family were dragging him down. Patrick, her Patrick, so filled with life and eagerness for America, was beginning to realize the burden he carried. And Beth’s gentle heart cried for him.
Nearly an hour later Beth and Callie were near the head of the line. Paddy slept with his head on Callie’s shoulder, his thumb pushed firmly into his mouth. Pressing her cheek against his forehead, she could feel the dry heat of a fever. She looked over at Beth who was sitting on a bedroll and wondered if she realized how ill her son was, or was she just too weary to notice? Surely this would not be an indifferent examination such as they’d had back in Liverpool. Would Paddy pass? Callie hugged the child protectively, assuring herself that this was why they’d built the hospital—to care for the sick and ailing. Paddy would be fine in the competent hands of the American doctors.
When they were ushered into the low, flat, tin-roofed building, they realized why they hadn’t seen any of the hundreds of women leaving. At the far end of the stark interior was an exit door. There were the women, holding their children by the hands, crying, expressions of humiliation and utter defeat on their ravaged faces. It seemed to Callie that everywhere she looked, pain and suffering were the order of the day.
Beth, along with Paddy and Callie, was hustled into a small side room by a man wearing a rubber apron. One window, grimy with dirt, shed the only light into the interior. Beth and Callie glanced around uneasily as the man was joined by a slattern of a woman carrying sharp-tipped scissors. “Sit down, girlie,” the woman commanded Callie, attempting a smile that revealed her toothless gums.
“Why? Who are you? You aren’t a doctor!”
“Sit!” It was an iron command. Hesitantly Callie gave Paddy over to his mother.
“If the boy is too heavy for you, you can put him down there,” the woman indicated a pile of burlap sacks whose soft fullness made them appear to be stuffed with rags.
“We’ll just take these pins from your hair,” the man said in false friendliness. “What do you say, Sally, shall we leave her hair in the braid?”
“Aye, ’twill make it easier at that,” the woman answered.
Callie anticipated their motives. “No! No, I won’t let you cut my hair! Why?”
“Don’t give us any of yer lip, girlie. We’re told to cut your hair because it drains yer strength. And for reasons of hygiene,” she added as a last word of authority. “The lice in this place is terrible from you dirty Irish. Now shut your mouth and sit still.”
“I’ll be damned to hell if I’ll let you lay one hand on me!” Eyes wide, face white, Callie leaped from the chair. “You aren’t cutting my hair! Never!” Warily she backed toward the door, her arms in front of her to ward off the expected attack.
“You have lice! Bugs, lassie. We can’t be letting you mingle with the others when you’ve vermin crawlin’ through that lovely hair, now can we? Now, be a good girl and sit down. Don’t make Sally tie you up. We have to do that sometime, eh, Jake?” She winked at the burly man who seemed to be observing the scene with great amusement.
“I don’t have lice and you know it!” She looked over to Beth for assistance only to see her fling her hands up before her face as though shutting out the scene would make it untrue. Paddy turned, awakened by the commotion, arms outstretched for his mother. With his movements, several of the burlap sacks fell over, revealing that they were stuffed with hanks of hair.
Paddy began to wail. “Look what you’re doin’ to the child,” Sally said. “Now sit down and it’ll be over one, two, three.”
The man, Jake, yanked Callie away from the door, forcing her into the chair, holding her arms behind her back. Sally wielded the scissors, hacking away at Callie’s long thick braid. Tears of humiliation stung her cheeks; her teeth bit into her full underlip. Quicker than two shakes of a lamb’s tail it was over, and Sally held up the mutilated braid to Jake who stuffed it into a sack.
Beth was led without protest to the chair. Sally and Jake helped themselves to the tortoise-shell combs Beth wore in her hair and the long pins she used to fasten the gleaming, auburn tresses to the back of her head. “Put this one’s hair into that separate sack, Jake. It’ll bring a nice price, considering the color of it.”
Callie heard the words and turned with a vengeance. “Price? What price?”
“This is America, darlin’,” toothless Sally explained. “Waste not, want not, just like the Bible says.”
Jake and Sally pushed Beth, Paddy, and Callie out of the small room. Pulling her shawl up over her head to hide the ugliness, Callie now understood the weeping women they had seen when they first entered the building. Women who had nothing before coming to Tompkinsville and who had even less now.
Beth began to sob, touching the short, blunt ends of her hair. “Beth, it’ll grow back, you’ll see,” Callie tried to reason. “There’s nothing to do but live with it. Maybe we can fix it up a bit. Just to even it out . . .”
“Patrick loved my hair. He said it was my glory.” Beth moaned. “Everything is wrong. Everything!”
Paddy whimpered and wined. Callie picked him up and cradled him to her.
“Pull your shawl up over your head, Beth,” Callie instructed. “We’ve got to find Patrick. Don’t let him see you crying like this, Beth. The worst has been done.”
Lifting her head and looking her young friend directly in the eyes, Beth whispered, “Has it, Callie? Somehow, I don’t think it has.” The sound of Beth’s tone and the expression of complete hopelessness and resignation in her red-rimmed eyes made Callie shudder. As though a goose had walked on her grave, as Peggy used to say.
Dear Mum,
I have stepped my foot on these new shores of America. I wish with all my heart you had not sent your daughter to the gates of hell. We are not allowed to go into New York as yet, although I can see the city and its wharves from this place across the bay called Staten Island. Here the waterway is very narrow, and a man can row across the bay without working up a sweat.
We are being held at a place called Tompkinsville, facing quarantine because Typhus was found aboard the Yorkshire. Like the doctors in Liverpool, this place too is a shame in the face of God. While they hold the poor back from their lives, the captain and his crew are free to enter the city. Were they not aboard the same ship as we? Do they have some magic against disease?
I wrote you how