Chapter One

October 10, 1870

Boston Massachusetts

Sister Sarah reminds me of a penguin as she stands erasing the blackboard, all black and white and round. She’s two big jiggly balls stacked on top of each other with a smaller one on top. Every bit of her is covered in black veils. When she turns around, the white wimple goes right up to her chin and down to her eyes and pinches. I wonder if it hurts. The worst of it? I know that underneath that top round veil, she’s bald as an egg.

When Monsignor asks which girls in our class want to be Sisters, I never raise my hand. Sometimes, that gets me in trouble. Of one thing I’m certain, I will never let anyone shave my black hair off. It took too long to grow it this long.

“Nellie Kelly, stop daydreaming.” Sister hollers.

“Yes, Sister,” I answer, glad she can’t read my thoughts.

My mother scolds me if I say bad things about Sister. She says I’m too smart to talk such skilamalink about poor Sister, but is it all right to think it? After all, I can’t help what I think.

No question about it, Sister in her long, black habit, bobbing from foot to foot at the board, is the image of a penguin. Not that I’ve ever seen a real penguin, just pictures of them. Oh, and those penguins didn’t have rosary beads wrapped around their middle. Sister must have two or three of them around her. One would never reach.

I can’t let her catch me staring at her again, so I gaze down at my paper, pretending to pray to The Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost. Actually, I finished my quiz fifteen minutes ago. So here I sit, watching the clock and pretending to check my paper again while the other girls hunch over their tests like crows over dead rats.

Religion is dead in a way, especially its language, Latin. I loathe all the stuff about crucifixion and suffering and blood. The most boring part of being a Catholic is having to memorize all the prayers. And the Commandments. Nothing but rules, rules, rules. Wish the Church would come up with some new ideas. Perhaps I’m a terrible girl, thinking these thoughts, but I do think them. Don’t tell Sister Sarah or Mother, though.

Hiding my face with my hand, I sneak my eyes over to the window. The sun glaring through the wavy panes sure doesn’t warm things up much. They must be trying to save money on coal again.

My stomach rumbles, wanting lunch.

Hurry up, time. Hurry up. Hurry up.

At last, Sister glances at the round wall clock and clucks. She reaches under her desk to bring up the big copper bell and clangs it three times.

I shake my pen into the inkwell and wipe it on the rag in my desk. That black ink is impossible to remove if it gets under your fingernails. My mother made me soak my hands in a nasty mix of vinegar and ammonia last time that happened. You should have seen my fingers. For a week, they looked like the peeling varnish on the pews at church.

“Everyone, put on your shawls. It’s chilly out.” Sister declares.

It’s pretty chilly in here, too. I can almost see my breath.

Brigid, Kate, and Lizbeth, the three first graders in the front of the classroom, stand and file out. Lizbeth pulls her shawl around her shoulders, then looks back at me and smiles, her big blue eyes shy yet mischievous. I cross my eyes and stick out my tongue at her. She laughs.

Lizbeth’s my favorite and she knows it. If I had a little sister, I’d want her to be just like Lizbeth. I don’t have a sister, and wish I did. I’d even take a brother.

The four second graders start out next, then the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh graders. The room empties so fast you’d think someone had set off the fire alarm. Finally, it’s our turn. The eighth graders. After eight years in this one room, it’s hard to believe I’ll be leaving it come summer. In a way I’ll miss St. Augustine’s, but I do wish it was bigger. At Boys’ Academy where all the rich Protestant boys go, every grade has its own classroom. Sean O’Halloran goes there, though I don’t think he’s rich. I can’t understand that. Sean’s as Catholic as I am.

“Just one minute, ladies,” Sister pauses. “I’ve graded your arithmetic tests.” She holds the papers up in the air and bustles back to us, turning sideways so as not to smack her wide hips on the desks. My stomach clenches a little. I need to keep my marks up so I can get into Girls High next year. Mother and Da are counting on me. Arithmetic is hard. I’m never sure how I did in it.

Sister’s round face betrays no expression as she hands me my paper, but I spot the word ‘EXCELLENT’ scrawled at the top. My one hundred percent is right under the A.M.D.G. we always print. Sister has explained it’s Latin from St. Ignatius and means “For the greater honor and glory of God.”

I catch a glimpse of the paper under mine. It’s Fiona Doggett’s and it’s covered with red X-marks. Oh, no. Sister doesn’t look up as she hands Fiona her paper. I shove my test into my book bag, hoping Fiona didn’t see it. She’d be jealous, and a jealous Fiona is meaner than a cat hung on a clothesline in the rain. When Fiona’s mad, her eyes narrow into slits of blazing red fire. She’s scary. When Fiona’s scary, all the store-bought dresses in the world can’t turn her pretty, and she has most of them. Actually, Fiona’s not very pretty even when she’s happy.

Once out of the classroom, I race past the brown wood walls of the hallway and glance out the window to the St. Augustine Chapel graveyard. My schoolmates have grandparents buried there. My father’s parents are, too, but my mother’s mother died in Ireland and her father’s ashes disappeared somewhere. He was murdered by some old mobster here in Boston before I was born. We visit my father’s parents’ graves every Sunday after church.

Outside, cold air blasts my face like a slap of ice. My eyes water instantly. Before the tears freeze on my cheeks, I brush them away. Good heavens, it’s frigid. Heavens, this is only October! What will February bring? I pull my shawl tight around my shoulders.

I run for the swing Father Ruzzo hung on the oak tree. Jumping on it, I start pumping right away. As I swing out from under the tree, the sun, a warming fire, hits my face. As I pump harder, the air pulls my hair into my mouth, but I spit it out. My breath pours out in a foggy mist as I soar higher and higher. The rope starts doing that topsy-stomach stall that happens just before flying back down.

Sister’s yelled at me about swinging so high, but I can’t stop doing it. How am I ever going to be a trapeze performer if I can’t get used to heights? I’m still not sure if I want to be a teacher or fly on a trapeze in the circus. I lay back on the swing and extend my arms and legs out to the side, balancing perfectly. My skirt flutters above my knees, showing the lace on my pantalettes, but I don’t care. These girls have seen pantalettes before.

I’m flying. I’m flying. Higher and higher. I bet no one in this school has ever flown this high before. Opening my eyes, I see people on Dorchester Street way beyond the fence. I want to shout to them. “Look at me. Look at me! I’m flying.” Higher, higher, higher.

Suddenly, Sister Sarah roars out the door yelling, “Nellie, get off that swing. One of these days, you’ll break your neck, I swan. And pull that skirt down.”

Darn. Who told?

Sister shivers and rushes back inside, her chubby bottom wiggling, two battling piglets under the black skirt of her habit. It makes me giggle out loud.

She slams the door. I pump twice more and ready for the jump. It must be timed perfectly or I’ll land face first in the dirt like that time in sixth grade. The scabs lasted a month. My mother scolded me even as she plastered my puss with some foul-smelling ointment she got from Uncle Neo. The girls called me Smelly Nellie.

There will be no such mistakes this time. When the swing hits its highest point, I soar. Arching, then rounding my back, I pull my arms back next to my ears. I point the heels of my boots down. Suspended in the air, I pretend I’m the trapeze lady I saw in a poster from the Dan Costello Circus. When I hit the dirt in a hard-heeled landing, I am only two feet from the wire fence.

A new record. Brilliant. What a day. First, the A+ in arithmetic and now a record landing. Life is perfect.

Right then, a cloud passes over the sun and my shoulders tremble with the chill.

Skipping to stay warm, I join the other girls at the wooden table. As I unwrap my cheese sandwich, I look up and realize Fiona, her eyes narrow, is staring at me, eyes blazing. I hadn’t noticed her sitting there or would have sat on the grass.

Actually, Fiona always looks mad about something lately, except when that disgusting Orville Mattison’s around. She told us girls Orville said her brown eyes were his sparkly diamonds in the sunlight. Ever since he said that, she flutters her eyes all over the place on sunny days, but not today, not with that cloud.

Fiona likes Orville, and that confounds me. Most boys stink of dirty socks and rotten underwear. The stinkiest of them all is Orville Mattison. Really. It’s true.

Last winter, when Fiona and I were still friends, we had a snowball fight with Orville and some kids. I flopped down on my back and started making an angel. That pig, Orville, jumped on top of me and put his hands on my chest. I kneed him so hard he screamed as if I’d stabbed him. He climbed off me, in a hurry. He stunk that day, and still does.

I uncap my jug of water and take a swig.

“Did little Miss Kelly get a perfect paper again?” Fiona spits sarcastically.

“Not sure,” I lie, taking a bite of my sandwich.

“Oh, right.” She laughs, but it’s not a happy laugh. It’s a laugh squeezed through an angry throat, with not a bit of belly in it. “You might be the teacher’s pet, Nellie, but you don’t know everything. There’s things we all know that you don’t.” Her raspy voice is as ugly as her tight-grinned face.

What does she mean by that? What things? I think for a second that I should just ignore her and walk away, but my curiosity gets the best of me. I bite. “Like what?”

The other girls grow quiet and seem to be holding their breaths. My sandwich sticks in my throat. Fiona’s secrets are never happy ones. I grab my jug of water again.

Fiona sits back, brushing a crumb of bread from her uniform. “Oh, just an itty-bitty secret everyone knows but you.” She fluffs out her hair.

A crow caws as another cloud passes over the sun.

I swallow too fast and hiccough. “What secret?”

“Oh, nothing.” She grins and whispers something to Annie O’Hara.

“Fiona, tell me right now or I’ll tell Sister.”

Her eyes bug out. “Oh, no!” Her mouth twists. “All right, if you insist. What you don’t know is that your mother was the whore of the Pilgrim’s Dandy, that coffin ship, when she came over from Ireland. Everybody else knows.” The hiss of her words bounces off the brick walls of the school house, a devil’s echo. She rises from the table and pats her skirt down over her bustled rump.

The playground freezes into a tintype. There’s no sound until a second grader leaps off one end of the teeter totter, bouncing the other-end girl to her backside. The one who lands wails, “Sister Sarah.”

Her cry sounds as if it comes through a cotton fog, but I don’t take my eyes off Fiona.

What did she say? My mother? The whore of a ship? That’s crazy.

“Take it back,” I snarl. “You’re lying.”

“Am not. My mother told me.” She turns away as though this is the end of our conversation.

I grab her by the shoulder and whirl her back to face me. “Your mother’s a liar, too.”

“Nuh-uh,” Fiona shakes her head, “my mother was on that ship, and she knows.”

There’s Banshee blood on my mother’s side of the family and she’s always warning me not to lose my temper lest I unleash a Banshee inside me, but this time I can’t help it. I ball up my fist and hit Fiona square in the snoot. She squeals like a pig stuck for roasting. Blood spurts from her nose and down the front of her blue silk uniform.

Suddenly, Sister Sarah is between us, pinching our arms with fingers strong as a blacksmith’s vice. “Stop that, you two brawling street urchins. I won’t have you fouling the air of St. Augustine’s with a donnybrook.”

“She started it,” Fiona whines, tears streaming down her face as she tucks her curls back into their topknot and wipes the blood off her face with her shawl.

“I don’t care who started it,” Sister yells. “I’m the one who’ll finish it.” She grabs me by the ear. “Nellie Kelly, in my office.” She jams a finger into Fiona’s collar bone. “I’ll deal with you later.”

My heart hurts from Fiona’s lie, and I blink back tears. She used to be my best friend. I loved sleeping at her mansion on Beacon Hill and eating crust-less sandwiches cut in perfect little triangles by her maid. Her closet was a fairyland, packed tight with beautiful dresses. I’d die for such dresses. It was wonderful being Fiona’s friend. Since last year, though, she hates me.

“Sit, Miss Kelly.” Sister points to the leather chair opposite her desk. I fidget into it, pulling at the tight buttons on the seat. Her office is warm, and I feel perspiration pop out on my forehead. My eyes fix on the crucifix on Sister’s chest. She settles in, huffs, and crosses her arms. “Now, Miss Kelly. What’s this all about?”

What can I say? If I tell the truth, I’ll be punished for repeating a bad word, whore. If I lie, Jesus on Sister’s crucifix might start bleeding right down the front of her habit as a sign of my sinfulness. I’ve heard that sometimes Jesus does things like that for punishment.

“I asked what this is all about,” Sister repeats.

I can’t sit here quiet all day. She might take out her ruler and pound my hands like Sister Annunciata did to Maeve O’Grady’s last year after she caught Maeve smooching some kid from Boy’s Academy. After that, they shipped the old nun back to Ireland.

“I’m sorry, Sister,” I mumble.

“Sorry for what?”

“For fighting with Fiona.”

“Look, Miss Kelly. You can stall ‘til the cows come home, but you’re not leaving this office ‘til I know what the fight was about.” Her brogue is thick now, a sure sign she’s mad.

I suck in a deep breath and admit, “Fiona said something bad about my mother.”

“About Mary Kelly?” She gasps, her eyes round as two blue marbles. “Who could say anything bad about Mary? She’s a saint, she is, a saint.”

I dig my nails into the wooden arms of the chair. People are always saying my mother is a saint. They should only see the way that saint rubs up against my da, nibbling on his ear. It’s embarrassing. I slump down in the chair.

“What exactly did Fiona say?”

The ‘saint’ comment made me so mad I don’t even care if I shock Sister now, so I say it. “That my mother was the whore of the ship she came over from Ireland on.”

The chubby face flames above the white wimple. She sputters something in Irish I can’t understand and catches her wire-rimmed glasses just before they fall off the tip of her nose. For a minute, I think she’s going to climb over the desk and smack me one, but she stays squatted there, like a little black-and-white hen. “This is a matter for Monsignor Varley.”

Panic floods over me worse than the Charles after a storm. No. Monsignor’ll go to my house. My mother and da’ll think he’s visiting because of me getting good grades or something. My mother will make black-currant scones like he’s the President or Pope or something. Then Monsignor’ll tell them I hit Fiona. My da’ll be so mad. My mother might cry. Think, Nellie, think.

Taking in a deep breath, I say, “Sister, can’t we handle this another way?” I clasp my hands into a steeple.

She doesn’t answer.

I say a quick prayer to St. Jude. He always works. “What if I ask my mother to come here for a meeting with you?”

She pushes her spectacles up again. One eyebrow rises, and the other flattens, then she smiles. I think my idea makes her feel special, perhaps nearly as important as Monsignor. If that thought wasn’t so funny, I’d feel sorry for her. Nuns beg for money at the Beacon Hill mansions; monsignors are wined and dined in those same houses.

She finally speaks. “Very well, Nellie. Tell your mother to be here tomorrow after school, and you with her. We’ll settle this between us.”

Good. My mother will say Fiona lied, and that’ll settle it. Then, Fiona’ll be the one in trouble. I won’t have to watch my da’s face when Monsignor says bad things about me. “All right, Sister. I’ll tell her.”

“Now, tell Fiona Doggett to get herself in here. Tomorrow afternoon, you get to confession, girl.”

Oh, no. I hate confession.