Ellis Island Read Free

too hard, my parents replaced them. Other girls wore slips of dresses, torn cardigans and no shoes. Their lack of status was further announced by the dirt on their faces and under their nails, and by their matted, untidy hair. Although we mixed in the yard during break, in the classroom the teachers saw to it that the clean girls sat together near the fire, while the dirtier ones sat nearer the door, to minimize the stench of poverty. The boys seemed more similar to one another, as they all wore shorts and even those who could afford shoes chose not to wear them, apart from on the coldest days. As the boys got older, their legs crammed awkwardly flesh to flesh under the shallow desks, naked to the thigh in outgrown shorts, scabby bloodstained knees quivering with the cold, making the metal legs of the desks rattle against the stone floor until the teacher would come over and bring their fist down on a desktop. Some of us lived near the school—John and I included—but many had to walk up to five miles every morning to get there, and five miles home again.
    When we got back from our summer holiday that year, many of the boys were missing. Their fathers had noticed strength in their sons during the summer and put them to work farming full time. That was what John would have liked, I feared. He never listened to the teacher Mrs. Grealy, but was always looking out the window—not dreaming, like some of us, but studying the apple tree outside the school gates, as its colors changed with the season.
    “There’s nothing happening out there, John,” I said one day as we left to make our way home. “It’s just a tree.”
    He smiled. “There’s more happened in that tree today, Ellie, than will happen in this classroom in a lifetime.”
    I raised my eyes to heaven, imitating Maidy, and he laughed. I loved making John laugh. When he laughed, I felt like he belonged to me.
    As we passed the gate, he reached up casually into the tree and picked off an apple, handing it to me and saying, “See?” As if he had grown it himself for my benefit, just by looking out during lessons.
    It was tiny and hard and as bitter as Satan’s tears. “Yuk!” I said, spitting and making him laugh again. “You’re a stupid eejit,” I said, and he chased me home.
    When winter came the school became bitterly cold. We all moved into the same classroom for warmth, and each child was asked to bring in a piece of fuel with them to put in the small, open fireplace. However, many of the children were from families too poor to keep their own fires burning, or were too stunted and weak to carry even a sod of turf five miles or more. By lunchtime we could barely see the pages we were writing on beneath the fog of our own breath, or hear the teachers above the clatter of chattering teeth. John complained to Paud Hogan about this one afternoon. “It’s school business,” Paud said, but John insisted, “There’s enough turf in the county, Pa, to warm a small school, surely.” We were sitting on the edge of his fireplace, roasting ourselves, and Maidy had to poke us out of the way to get to her cooking. John pushed and pushed until Paud agreed. The two of them loaded the cart with their own bail of turf, then called on every farmer in the area for contributions until they had the cart piled with enough fuel to keep the school cozy all through the winter.
    Everyone loved John, and I felt honored that he was my friend. Even though ten-year-old boys didn’t like to be seen playing with eight-year-old girls, John was happy to walk me home from school, openly waiting at the gates for me if I dawdled. But at break time, John played with boys his age and I was stuck standing with Kathleen Condon, who had thick glasses and was as disliked by me as much as by the other girls. I didn’t know why I got stuck with her. I wasn’t ugly or annoying like Kathleen—in fact, I was smaller and prettier than many of the popular girls. I decided that was probably why