foth
rating: 0+x

DEAR MOTHER,

I am writing to you from a cellar in 155th street.

It borders two places: one named Harlem and the other named Washington Heights, respectively. I arrived off the steamer from Liverpool to Ellis Island, scurried past the clerks and watchers, and hastily made my way from Jersey to Manhattan. I spent several days trying to find work and rent, settling for a winery housing four other migrants. I can say with utmost certainty that Dublin had less Irish than New York. Everywhere I went, all, or at least, most, looked like me. They were poor and ragged and running like pigeons to work for bread.

The streets here are not paved with gold, some are barely paved at all. At night they are overrun with rats as thick as dogs. The belching smoke from the chimnies chokes air and makes rainy days all the more suffocating.

Those ship brokers and emigration agents lied to me when they told me of "vast volumes of gold" and the "buildings made ivory." So did the letters from Maggy.

She was nowhere by the docks when I came, and I haven't seen hide nor hair of her since I took rent beneath a winery.

Please do not send Father or Uncle or yourself here, not before I have found work with a decent wage. A Pole I room with said a nearby factory work favored Irishmen over Germans and Italians. I will head there by the morning.

Greet everyone at home for me. Tell them that Maggy is safe with me, for the time being.

-P. O'Sullivan

DEAR MOTHER,

I worry for Maggy.

The letter she sent a year ago made no sense. Exaggerations were never beneath her, she always tended to have an eye for whimsy, but towers that went into the sky? Stars that shined brighter in the night? Land of honey? Whatever she described, it was not New York.

I remember when we were young, we would read the posters and poems and newspapers from Father's small printshop. She was always frail and softspoken. Short fiction and poetry were where she found her true voice — bereft of her stutters, her timidity, her nervous ticks, and her ennui. Her thoughts were so-often filled with tales of worlds that were seas away from Dublin, rich with all manner of exotic feasts and people and culture.

When she came down with an outbreak of typhus, it made her write more feverishly, often working away by candlelight in the early morning. By the grace of God, she recovered and had penned a series of stories that grew increasingly incoherent from page-to-page — an anthology of hectic stars. I remember when you and Father could not make heads or tails of it and recommended she take a nursing job, instead of becoming a writer.

Afterward, I do not know why she took the steamer first to America. Perhaps, she saw Lady Liberty on a postcard and her mind went West. I miss her.

Yesterday on my way to work at the factory, I walked past a very young pale thing that looked exactly like her. The small girl had feathers in her hair and smelled far too clean for the city. She went into an alleyway, knocked thrice on a handleless door, and was allowed in by someone behind it. I noticed men flocked there by night — others women, no more than fifteen and no less than eight, go in as well from time to time, and they often come out bruised or limping.

It appears that the degradations of man do not fear our Lord here. It appears that the Lord is blind to the alleyways.

Maggy has no place here; I pray for her safety.

Greet everyone at home for me. Tell them Maggy has found work as a nurse.

-P. O'Sullivan

DEAR MOTHER,

The summer swelters here.

I regret to inform you, I, your son Patrick O'Sullivan, lacks the funds to purchase tickets for all of you. I regret to inform you that he has had little time to pursue the whereabouts of your daughter, his sister, Maggy. It is a man's duty to provide, and it is this duty he feels he has failed in.

I have worked long and hard for meager wages. The foreman keeps us busy from dawn to dusk with little more than two dollars per wrought iron sheet. The large Bessemer converters that help process raw ore often cause accidents amongst the unfocused laborers. I wish that you nor Father would have to see a man's arm melt from a mishandled leakage. It is enough to make a man believe in the murmurs of anarchists and the whispers of communists, both of whom demand unionization.

At work, I always take the machines by the windowsill. It is affixed with black-iron bars on the exterior, and further obfuscated by a red-bricked wall. Between the crevices of two buildings, I see the alleyway — the one I had mentioned previously — as if the Lord confronts me, and the Devil goads me. I can view them as they come out; faceless and blurry, obfuscated further by the old window.

They wear streetworker's outfits. I shall not speak on the details of such, but some possess these queer feathered-wings strapped to their backs. Maybe it is the heat or the sweat from my brow. Perhaps, I am seeing things, but some seem to drift ever so steadily across the concrete floor.

All appear like Maggy.

Perhaps, this is divine providence, a sign, or these images are simply fueled by my regret and frustrations. By tomorrow, I will visit that place and knock three times on the door.

Greet everyone at home for me. I will find Maggy.
-P. O'Sullivan

Unless otherwise stated, the content of this page is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License