"STAR PARK" - a short story by Squid McFinnigan.

© Copyright Martin Brett.  All Rights Reserved.

Peg Magner and her family tumbled from a rotting ship onto the dock at Ellis Island, and thanked their lucky stars to be alive.  It was a miracle they’d all survived the journey, while so many others, who had not, bobbed in the frigid waves between here and Ireland. That was until she spent two weeks in the dusty New York City hellhole called ‘The Five Points’, after which she thought a quick death at sea might have been preferable for them all. That was time aplenty, well enough to convince Peg that her family needed to find some place better to live.

Philadelphia was growing beyond all constraints and expectations in the year 1876.  The city was burgeoning from a waterside town into a modern metropolis.  Week after week a seamless flood of immigrants streamed in from the harsh boroughs of New York.   So when they joined that migration from New York to Philly, Peg’s husband Sean worried they would starve on the roadside before the journey was complete.

However, the ragged family never had to walk one mile, thanks to a deal Sean made with a kind old steamer captain.  Sean and the captain made friends over a couple tankards of ale one evening after work, and that proved to be a fortuitous bond.  Sean agreed to load and unload cargo, as well as pay a small fee, for which four miserable Irish wretches could sleep on deck among the casks of whiskey at the close of the day’s labors.  Even though the fee was small, it represented nearly half the family’s worldly wealth.

By the end of loading time, the palms of Sean’s hands, the insides of his fingers, were the color and texture of old minced brisket.   When the day was all but gone, the boat slipped its mooring, and the smokestack belched dirty coal smoke into the night air.  Sean staggered over to where Peg and the kids were huddled and dropped on one knee to the deck, then sat and slumped to one side.

“Sweet Mary above, what have they done to you my dear man?” Peg said, seeing the bloody palm prints on the deck, and smears from the ends of his trembling fingers.  Peg bandaged Sean’s hands with strips of cloth torn from her underskirts, and let him rest on her lap.  He soon fell sleep over the warmth rising from her body.

Soon she felt the first small waves raise the nose of the boat, and a fine sheet of spray whipped across the deck.  Peg gathered the children to her and wrapped her shawl around them all, like a mother hen cloaking chicks against an autumn rain. The journey from New York City took nearly two days.  The passage was mercifully calm, which Peg took to be a happy omen for their new home in Philadelphia.

Peg and Sean were blessed with twin girls, now four years old. The girls loved the boat and delighted in playing tag among the stacks of barrels. Their names were Aishling and Aine, two cherubs with flaming red curls and faces full of freckles.

On the afternoon of the second day, the ocean swell relaxed dramatically as they entered the Delaware River estuary, but that was the only indication they were making their way inland, so huge was the waterway.

“Sean, is everything in this place so huge?  Rivers as wide as the sea;  land you couldn’t walk if you lived to be a hundred; and so many people?” Peg pondered, shaking her head after Sean had explained they were now steaming up a river.   A few hours later the banks closed in on either side, and they could make out buildings beyond the growth of trees from time to time.  Soon the buildings multiplied until there was no bank left to see.   A fog of city smoke hung over the docks as they moored in Philadelphia, dulling even the strong October sunlight.  Sean braced himself for the pain his already raw hands would bear during the backbreaking task of unloading the boat.  Peg had cut pads from her only jacket to cover his hands, to give him a little more protection, and she hoped, to stave off dangerous infection.

“Ah Peg, you’ve gone and destroyed your coat!  Winter is coming, and you will need that more than I need these,” her husband said when she presented him with the stitched wool pads.

“I’ll need a husband with hands able to work, to bring in a living for the four of us,” she replied, pressing the cloth pads into his hands and prodding him gently toward the gangway.

While Sean labored at the docks all day, Peg and the girls went off in search of lodging. Wherever she looked there were signs declaring, “No Dogs, No Blacks, No Irish.”  It was a mantra she’d encountered often in New York City and it cut deeply.  Her wanderings brought her further and further, deeper into the city.  Soon she came across a section of clapboard houses, thrown up so shoddily they leaned over the narrow lanes, blocking nearly all view of the smog-stained sky above.

This teeter-totter of buildings housed hundreds of people, all thrown together by circumstance and poverty.  Whole families living in one tiny room shared a single privy if they were lucky.  The less lucky slopped out piss buckets into the street, and just made do.  A meal a day was like riches for most.  Here, the mud clung to Peg’s boots in foul smelling lumps, but she did her best to clean them before climbing the steps of one house after the other.

At last, she agreed to a lease on a dismal little room. She paid in advance for a month with what was left of the family’s savings. The Magners were one of the few white families living in this part of Philly, which sat in a no-man’s land between Seventh and Lombard streets.  When Sean had finished unloading the steamer, they carried all they owned on their backs and moved in one go to their new home.

It took a while but Sean found work at a tannery on the docks, moving stinking piles of horse- and cow-hides covered in lie and tallow.  Every night he washed in the freezing water of the Delaware before making his way home.  Even so, the smell of rotting animal hides could not be flushed off his own skin.

But there was a bit of cheer, some light in every day.  It wasn’t all bad in their new home.  Peg soon found what she thought of as a little bit of Ireland in the shape of a small square of green named ‘Star Garden Park.’  The paths were lined with majestic ash, oak, and maple trees, some of them two centuries old.  Someone had hung a rope swing from a low-hanging bough which the girls loved to play on.  Aine found her mood rising and soon was a right whelp, always giving her mother the most terrible frights by hiding, and refusing to come out until she was found.

On the last day of October, Peg and the girls were in the park as always.  Aishling and Aine were taking turns on the swing, while Peg sat on a nearby bench and fretted over the looming rent.  It could have been a minute, or it could have been five, before Peg noticed the chatter of little girl voices had stopped.  She looked up and Aishling was alone on the swing, gently swaying over and back.

Peg jumped to her feet and walked over, calling for Aine to come out, to show where she was hiding, but she didn’t.  Peg checked all the bushes and trees, but her little Aine was not hiding behind any of them like she normally would.  Dread filled Peg’s whole body like a dark drenching liquid.  She grabbed Aishling from the swing, dragging her along as she searched every inch of the park, yelling herself raw.

As a last resort, she ran back to the tenement, hoping against hope that Aine had come home by herself.  But the tiny room was empty.  Her unnatural cries of worry rang through the neighborhood, and soon drew a crowd of black faces to her open door. 
“My baby is gone. My baby is taken,” Peg wailed at the gathering crowd.  One slim young woman pushed a hole in the crowd and ran away down the stairs.  It was only minutes before she reappeared, shadowed by a huge-breasted woman as dark as a starless night.  The crowd parted before this woman like courtiers before their queen.

Her face was a patchwork of long-healed welts, raised years ago by an expertly laid whip.  Her eyes were deep brown, with yellowed whites.  They looked neither left nor right, but took in everything on all sides.  Her pillowy lips were pursed and the flesh of her neck wobbled a little as she walked.  The crowd fell back, respectfully bowing their heads, silent.

“Lady, Lady,” said the thin girl, shaking Peg by the shoulder in an attempt to break through her hysteria.  “Dis be Mama Tess, she is come to help, Lady.”   The elderly woman squatted low on creaking knees.  She roughly grabbed Peg’s face between two paddle-like hands.  When Peg continued bawling, one hand lifted a few inches, then landed a thunderous slap.  The sound caught Peg in her chest and her eyes finally fixed on the dark gaze floating inches from her face.  Holding Peg’s chin, big Mama Tess drilled into Peg’s mind with ageless eyes.  After a second, the old black woman looked away, fixing her gaze on the tiny red-haired sister cowering in a corner.  At last, the huge woman spoke, her voice deep and melodic, the words like a tongue from another world.  The thin girl translated the strange dialect for Peg’s benefit.

“Mama say it's not too late, the bond between such girls is strong. Yo' daughter can be found, but you muss take us now to way she an' dat little one were last together,” said the young woman who translated.  Mama dragged Peg to her feet with one powerful hand, while lifting Aishling in the other.  Peg was pushed, not unkindly, into the still gathering crowd.  The frightened mother’s legs were numb as she walked, while her mind struggled to cope with what was happening.  Then they quickened the pace to a run.  Peg reached the Star Park swing ahead of anyone else. 

Collapsing to the ground, she threw her arms around the plank of wood her daughter sat on not an hour past.  She was then pushed aside by Mama Tess, who placed a shocked Aishling onto the seat.  Mama knelt, face to face with Aine's sister, then she began rocking over and back.   From her huge chest a low hum of noises gathered strength; soon the air was filled with wild female hunting sounds which made Peg’s head just spin.  The crowd following the hysterical Peg had swelled now to more than fifty, but none approached big Mama Tess, whom they clearly held in awe.   Mama Tess was chanting words with eyes half-lidded, like a lingering spell.

As the huge black woman stroked Ashling’s cheeks, her words grew in volume, and speed.  Aishling’s eyes glazed over, Mama was now nose to nose with the child, peering deep into her eyes.  A second grew into two, two into an age.  Peg and the crowd held their collective breath.

It was Mama who broke the spell by bounding to her feet and dashing off towards the far end of the park without a word.  The crowd sprinted after her, like hounds on the scent of a fox.  For an older woman, and an ample one, Mama Tess showed astonishing speed.  Even Peg, who was driven on by fear, found it hard to keep up.  Mama Tess tore out of the small park, heading for the river.  Down streets and lanes she led the still growing throng, now a couple hundred strong, and Peg at the head of them all, with Aishling pressed to her chest as she ran.

Without warning, Mama Tess stopped at the door of a back-alley tavern.  She flung it open with such force she split one of the planks in half.  Inside sat a group of rough-hewn mountain men from Appalachia. They wore wild beards and their clothes were sewn with animal gut that stitched together pelts of bear and beaver.   Mama Tess approached the group and pulled the one sitting nearest her to his feet. She grappled with the man, yanking him close as if he were as light as a feather.  The man struggled in her grasp, lashing out and landing several heavy blows. 

He might as well have been beating his fists against the trunk of an oak, to dare such an impudent assault on Mama Tess.   Without warning, her voice erupted in a fountain of gutteral sounds, chilling noises that froze the crowd in their tracks.  Her clawed hand carved a symbol in the air, and the wild man she held in one hand shuddered.  Mama’s voice grew louder.

White foam rolled from the man’s lips, his eyes bulged and filled with blood.  With a tremendous groan, Mama grabbed something like a ball of air above the man’s chest, grasping at a thing only she could see, before tearing it away with an alien smacking sound.  The man gurgled, then crumpled to the table.  He was dead.  The rest of the mountain men stood rooted to their spots with shock, as vomit, blood and beer ran from the table onto the floor.  Mama Tess reached out and grabbed another raggedy man.  This time her words were nearly English as she said, “Way’s dat girl chile?  Way she at -- you low down dawg?”

Mama Tess let the man loose and watched him scurry like a furtive ferret to the far side of the tavern.  He shoved a bench away from the wall.  Beneath it was a tiny trap door.  Mama Tess strode over and hooked the door with one meaty finger of her right hand.  She threw it open and revealed a head of bright red curls that rolled back to frame a wan little face, etched in fear.

Peg howled a primal sound, from somewhere so deep the crowd was robbed of breath for a moment.  It was a sigh of utter mammal joy that any mother on Earth would understand.   Peg rushed forward and plucked her precious girl from the hole in one swift reach.  The little thing was bedraggled, smudged and limp, but alive.  The neighbors clapped and shouted, slapping each other on the shoulders. 

"The girl's been found; she is fine!" they cried.  The message fanned out from the core of rescue, where a mother fiercely held her daughter, like ripples in a still lake where a big stone is lobbed.  Murmurs in the crowd began to fade and they slowly shuffled back to their block, forming a flying wedge around Peg and her two little girls, closing in around them like a buffalo herd will shield its wobbling newborn calves.   The people flowed like one big organism, weary and relieved.  In an umber orange stain of the setting sun, that splashed through clouds for a moment across Peg’s face as they rounded the final corner, her neighbors saw what seemed like a trace of a smile.

Tomorrow would come soon enough, the mother thought; and thank ye Lord above.  But now tonight I have my girls -- both darling girls -- in Philadelphia, City of Sisterly Love.