being sung come from the back of the hall, in a harmony so haunting I think my heart will burst. I feel no fear; there is no understanding of what I’ve stepped into, until the boy who answered the door begins to cry harder. Then the realization comes to me in a slow crawl of dread: this place is not one of refuge.”
Maeve stopped, looking directly at me. “Now, Kara. Here is where you must be careful. Not all things are as they appear to be. You must understand that this was the first time I had ever come to a place and time that appeared to be something it was not. I did not understand my visceral instinct. I was a thirteen-year-old child who had grown up in the Claddagh village.” Tears filled her eyes. “Not all things are as they appear.”
I shook my head to let her know I heard her, but I was afraid to speak, afraid to stop the flow of words. The sun sat warm on our shoulders, and tears threatened at the back of my eyes for this poor motherless boy, and this child-Maeve looking for him. Even if, as Caitlin had told me, this was not a true story, my heart ached for Maeve as she believed and remembered a pain that was real to her.
She brushed at a tear. “I look up at the nun—her habit so tightly wound around her head that her wrinkles are smooth. I tell her who I’m looking for, that he was taken when his parents died three months ago. The nun’s face registers nothing and my pain deepens.”
Maeve turned to me now. “Do you know this pain I mean, when you look and look and want and want and don’t find?”
I nodded my head, which was heavy and full of unshed tears.
“You know,” she said. “Already you know.”
She took a deep breath. “Then the boy—the one who’d answered the door—runs from us. The nun reaches for him, grabs his ear. He lets out a yelp like a puppy. He flicks her hand away and runs through the hall. The nun looks down at me. ‘Do your mam and da know where you are?’ she asks.
“I still believe she will be the one to help me, but doubts creep in and I do something I have never done: I lie to a nun. I wait for the bolt of lightning, the earth to swallow me whole. But this is my mission—to find Richard. I tell her that my mam has sent me to find him, as he is our neighbor and should live with us and not in a state home. Then this nun stands, calls out in a voice that sends shivers down my spine. Another tall, thin nun appears and looks at me. ‘This girl states she is looking for a Richard and that she has been sent by her mam to find him. Do you know such a child?’
“The other nun says ‘no.’ I hang my head and turn away. When I open the large doors, the tattered boy runs to me, reaches my side, looks up at me. ‘Richard is here. He’s here,’ he tells me. The nuns grab him by the cuff of his collar, pull him away. The older nun leans down and looks into my face and tells me, ‘This poor child lost his mind long ago. God bless his soul. He also thinks St. Patrick lives here.’ I nod at her, but I am feeling it for the first time.”
Maeve paused; I squeezed her hand. “Feeling what?”
“The Spirit talk to me.”
“The spirit?” Maybe Maeve was too senile to tell this story.
“Our prayer, the prayer of St. Patrick. ‘Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ within me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ at my right, Christ at my left.’
“I’d heard these words since I was a child; I probably heard Mam’s words echoing inside me. But it is there, in the Industrial School, that I finally feel it and know what it means as the Spirit whispers in my ear, ‘He is here.’ And I see the nun’s terrible lie spin and shimmer around me.”
“Richard was there?” I asked.
“Yes, he is there and I feel it in every way as the door slams behind me. I stand outside that locked door and weep as I have never wept. My world closes around me as evil threatens my soul. I have never experienced it before, as