The Celtic Knot

Table of Contents

• Late!
• Mother Rosario
• Brown Bread
• Polly
• Flying
• The Letter
• A Plan
• The Conversion of Russia
• Miracles
• Bad News
• Scarlett O’Hara
• Cottage Industry
• Celtic Knots
• Curtains
• The Cake from Jacob’s
• Then and Now: Ireland

Late!

“Wake up Kathleen!” The hiss jolts Kathleen awake and she turns her ear away. She doesn’t want to wake up from her dream. But the voice persists and she irritatedly opens her eyes. She’s in her own bed that she shares with Madge, Patsy, and Lily. Mam is shaking her shoulder and hissing her to wake up. Her eyes flutter open and Mam quiets her down. Her mother tells her to whisper so she doesn’t wake everyone else up. It’s only four o’clock in the morning but her mother has to go out. Young Jimmy O’Brien came for her. Apparently, Liz is in a bad way and she needs help.

Liz is Jimmy’s older sister. Her mother explains that it’s Liz’s time. Kathleen’s mother is a midwife. Not an official one, but this is their area of Dublin, near the center in a neighborhood called Pimlico, and she’s always sent for when a woman needs help in the night. In the daytime, they can send the Jubilee nurse, but at night, people call in Mam.

Liz is a young girl, not one of the married women that Kathleen’s mother usually attends. But because she’s not married, they shouldn’t be telling the whole world that she’s having a baby. Kathleen is instructed to get the children up and give them breakfast and make sure they all get to school. Kathleen will need to get up early to help them. Kathleen’s father will mind Eddy, the baby. Kathleen has to pull out the damper on the fire and then put the porridge on the fire. When Kathleen starts to ask questions, Mam reminds her that children should be seen and not heard.

This sentence is the one that Kathleen hates most in the world. She likes to be heard. She seems to always have questions bubbling up inside her and she wants answers. Do nuns wear shoes? If they do, how come they don’t make any sound when walking? If Mr. de Valera, often called Dev by the people, was against the government in their Civil War and his side lost, how come he is now in charge of the government? If Saint Patrick is a Catholic, how come the Protestants called their cathedral after him? If only married people have children, how can Liz O’Brien, who is not married, be having a baby?

But whenever Mam doesn’t want to answer a question she has all sorts of tricks for wiggling out of it. Kathleen will have to ask Polly. Polly always has an answer for everything. To tell the truth, Polly may make up the answers half the time, but that’s better than not answering at all like other grown-ups.

Kathleen tries to go back to sleep, but she’s so nervous about not getting up on time that instead, she just lays in bed with her eyes wide open, not daring to turn in case she wakes up her younger sisters. She gets out of bed to creep to the kitchen to check the clock multiple times. On the third time, it’s almost seven. She raises the blind next to the bed and sunlight floods the room. She hurries away to put the porridge out. They have to leave for school by half past eight.

The porridge is horrible. It’s cold, glutinous, and it’s not the lovely or creamy or steamy stuff that Mam usually prepares. How is Kathleen supposed to transform it from this glue-like substance into food? Patsy crosses over and asks where Mam is. Kathleen says she’s out. Patsy asks if it is one of the First Fridays? Sometimes mother slips out early in the morning if she’s “doing the First Fridays.” This means going to Mass on the first Friday of the month for nine months in a row. Then, you will be in God’s good books and you could ask for just about anything. Mam usually asks for Da to get a job. That works, but it never lasts long. The factory closes or there’s a strike or he gets sick.

Just then, the girls smell something. Kathleen runs to the kitchen half-dressed, but it’s no good. The porridge is ruined, bubbling away fiercely on the hot range top, half of it stuck to the bottom of the pot. The whole place stinks but Kathleen can’t open the window because the top pane is cracked. If it falls out, they’ll freeze to death from the cold or starve to death from having spent their food money on glass. Kathleen cracks open the door. Da appears from the other room. It’s not really a separate room. It used to be an area of the kitchen with a curtain across at night, but Da put up a wooden screen to make it more private. He comments that Kathleen Murphy is a disgrace. She must go cover herself. Kathleen is wearing her slip. She can feel herself going scarlet. She races into the bedroom and puts on the first clothes she can find, an old gray skirt and a blue cardigan. When she comes out, she apologizes for wasting the porridge. He comments that it could happen to a bishop.

Unfortunately, they can’t have anything for breakfast today. If they eat more oatmeal, then there would be no porridge tomorrow. Kathleen can feel her stomach rumbling already. But the worst part is that her sisters will have her life for burning the porridge and making them all go to school hungry.

Then, Da peeks in the lid of the bread crock. There’s half a loaf. He comments that if she cuts it thin there will be enough for everyone. Bread is better than nothing. He tells her to go get the rest of the girls, and he’ll put on the pan to make some fried bread. Kathleen checks the clock. It’s nearly eight.

Patsy and Madge are fully dressed but Lily can’t do the buttons up properly. Kathleen fixes Lily up, but then she has to make Madge undress again because she forgot her bodice. Bodices are horrible, but Mam always says that if they don’t wear their bodices from September to June, they’ll catch their death of Old Moany. That’s her joke word for pneumonia. Kathleen doesn’t really know what pneumonia is, except she knows that you catch your death of it.

Kathleen brushes all of the girls’ hair as they wail and squirm. They all have short hair, cut just below their ears with fringes across their foreheads. It’s supposed to be easier to keep. Kathleen has long hair, which is a murder to brush in the mornings. She uses a blue ribbon for Madge, a green one for Patsy, a yellow one for Lily. Kathleen isn’t very good at bows, but she does her best. By the time they’re all done, it’s a quarter past eight, and Da has a small pile of fried bread on a plate. He halved the slices to make the bread go farther.

When Patsy spills grease on her blouse, Kathleen goes to hunt for another one. She brings out a shirt of her own that will do, even though it’s a little big. Patsy says she doesn’t want to go out like that, she’ll look like a tinker. Now Da’s cross. The countryside, where he’s from, is filled with people who roam the countryside looking for odd jobs when farmers are their busiest. There’s nothing wrong with that, and it’s rude to call them “tinkers.” Now Patsy is crankier than ever. Kathleen rushes to find Patsy’s other blouse, which is worse for wear, but at least it’s better than the one with the streak of grease.

Now it’s half past height and the dishes aren’t washed. Da says he’ll do them as the girls rush off to school. Just then, Eddy appears out of the other bedroom. He stands sucking his thumb. Kathleen can tell his nappy needs changing, but she doesn’t say a word. Hopefully Da will do it after they leave.

A few distractions later, at ten to nine o’clock, they clatter down the stairs and out the door. They pass the toilet just inside the street door opening, and pinch their noses. The passing drunks use it during the night, and it stinks permanently. Kathleen’s family never uses it. They have a chamber pot in the bedroom, but mostly they train themselves to hold on till they get to school. Mam used to say that the house toilet is full of germs, but when Kathleen was younger, she thought it was a slang word for “Germans.” They had heard about the Germans from their granda who fought in the Great War. Now, there’s that Hitler fellow who’s always yelling on the wireless and he doesn’t sound very nice. But even without the threat of Germans, Kathleen wouldn’t have wanted to use the toilet anyway.

They fly through the streets, their school bags bouncing on their backs. They’re nearly at school and going like the clappers when Madge falls at the curb and cuts her knee. Without time to wash it, Kathleen whisks out her hanky and spits on it. Madge doesn’t want spit on her knee, so Kathleen says spit is good for healing. If Kathleen lets her go to school with dirt on her cut, she might get blood poisoning. Blood poisoning is worse than pneumonia. It runs through you and then kills you stone dead in a matter of hours. Kathleen can hear the school bell clanging.

The school bell gives the final clang as the girls get to the gate. A nun is just coming over to lock it. The nuns always lock the gate at bang on nine, and if you’re not on the right side of it, you’re in trouble. Kathleen dives forward pushing the other three ahead of her into the closing gap. They lurch and stumble but make it to the other side. But Kathleen doesn’t. Kathleen puts her hand to open the gate, but the nun rattles the bars.

The nun says that there’s no pushing on the gate. It’s after nine. Then, a clock starts up and rings the bell. Kathleen knows it couldn’t have been nine o’clock when the nun closed the gate. It’s Sister Eucharia, the one who never smiles. Her face looks as if it’s made out of bacon fat—dirty white and featureless. She pulls a large man’s pocket watch out of her starch white bib and holds it out. It shows a minute past nine. The church clock must be slow or else Sister Eucharia’s watch is fast. The old rip, she could have given Kathleen the benefit of the doubt.

Kathleen slumps against the locked gate, feeling the cold iron against her forehead. It’s her third time to be late this term, and that means she used up all her chances. Now she’ll be in for it.