evidence of it yesterday afternoon when they went out to the old graveyard after hearing talk of the burial in town. I have no doubt the story was simply the product of someone’s overactive imagination, passed from one gossip to the next, until it garnered a life all its own.” She turned to Matilda. “Gossip is not a slight bit better than eavesdropping, and I best not find you doing either in the future or you’ll catch a switch on that pasty white backside of yours.”
I laughed, which quickly turned into a cough. Ma poured me a glass of water and I drank it eagerly. My throat felt raw, as if I had chewed on stones and swallowed the bits.
Ma continued. “The famine has taken a toll on many of our countrymen. In Dublin, the sick and homeless are dying in the streets. The poor are robbing the poor. Men who once worked their own fields are begging on corners in order to scrape together food for their families. Don’t ever underestimate what a man will do to put food into the mouth of his starving child.”
“Pa says it’s getting better,” I said.
“Sometimes I think your father prefers to believe the rhetoric preached amongst the aristocrats at the castle. They want us to believe the famine is coming to an end, so they stand around telling one another it is, but speaking of such things does not make them fact.” Ma looked down at her hands. “I think things will get far worse before they get better, so when I hear that a sick man was buried alive, I don’t dismiss it as fiction straightaway; I know firsthand what evil men will do when frightened. When I was a little girl and cholera ran rampant, I witnessed men do far worse than bury a single sick soul.”
“Was cholera worse than the famine?”
“I don’t know if one death is better or worse than another, Matilda. Both kill without prejudice.”
Matilda spoke, her voice thin and sheepish. “Is that what will become of us here? Is everyone going to die?”
“The famine is different, Matilda. There is sickness, yes, but nothing like cholera. Most of the ill you behold are suffering from starvation and dehydration, men drinking themselves into a stupor, having failed to provide for their families. It is horrific, to be sure, but a very different beast.” She patted our knees. “Enough of this talk; we have much to do today, and I have a feeling Nanna Ellen will not be offering her help.”
The three of us glanced down the hall to Nanna Ellen’s sealed door. Ma stood. “Matilda, be a dear and gather today’s eggs.”
My sister wrinkled her nose. “It’s Thornley’s turn!”
“Your father sent him to the Seaver cottage in Santry for a load of peat for the fire. We’re nearly out, you know, and the nights are soon to grow frigid with the approach of winter.”
Matilda eased off the bed and thumped down the hall without another word.
Ma placed her hand upon my forehead and smiled. “God has smiled upon you, my little man.”
My eyes remained fixed on Nanna Ellen’s door, the images of last night still playing in the theater of my mind.
* * *
? ? ?
SEVERAL HOURS LATER—“What is Nanna Ellen doing?” Matilda asked.
I stood on my toes and peered out my window to our backyard. “She’s taking down the laundry from the line.”
As I stood there, I realized I felt much better today. Although the telltale ache in my bones remained, my illness had somewhat retreated. Weeks would sometimes pass without my rising from bed. I remained in bed so much, I sometimes developed sores, and my muscles atrophied from lack of use. Ma often worried I would develop an infection and cleaned the sores as best she could, then dressed them in sphagnum moss she kept on a high shelf in the kitchen pantry, away from Pa’s eyes, a bit of folk medicine no doubt spurned by the modern doctors in our family. As for my muscles, there was little to be done. On many days, I was simply too weak to leave my bed. At Ma’s coaxing,