The Next Morning Late October 1886 New York, New York

After a hard night on a hard bench in the priest’s office, Mary Agnes tries to keep up with Father Benedict’s housekeeper’s long legs as they walk up Mott Street after tea and toast in the rectory kitchen. Stepping over refuse, Mary Agnes pulls her shawl close around her shoulders. The rain has stopped but still she’s chilled. She will soon need a coat, it being October.

The housekeeper glances at a scrap of paper. “Here we are, number 67.” Mary Agnes looks up at the massive brick building and counts the floors above street level: One, two, three, four, five, six. She mounts the steps and opens the door. Once inside, a strong smell of urine. She clutches her nose.

“They’ll be on the third floor,” the housekeeper says. “On the right. Up you go, now. Give them this.” She hands Mary Agnes a large envelope addressed to a James Donnelly.

“And when will I be going to Chicago then? Tomorrow?”

“Aye, the good father will get you to the train.” She clears her throat. “And this, for you, from the good father.” She hands Mary Agnes a small, beaded rosary. “Which is your favorite of the prayers?”

“Hail, Holy Queen.”

“‘To thee do we send up our sighs . . .’” the housekeeper begins.

“‘. . . mourning and weeping in this valley of tears,’” Mary Agnes finishes.

The housekeeper is gone on her long legs before Mary Agnes can say a proper goodbye. She picks her way up the narrow central stairway to the third-floor landing and catches her breath. She could use a bath. There are two apartments to the left and two to the right, the doors to each worn and in need of repair. On the right, the housekeeper said. But which one? As she approaches the first door, she hears voices inside. How many live here? Five? Nine? She knocks. A young child, perhaps six or seven, she thinks, like one of my brothers, peeks out the door.

“It’s the girl!” he yells.

This would be it, then.

“Aye, and!” the mother says, as she opens the door and ushers Mary Agnes in. Mrs. Donnelly is slightly taller than Mary Agnes, with an enormous bosom and beautiful dark hair framing a lovely Irish face. She takes the envelope from Mary Agnes’s hands and rubs the dark stubble on Mary Agnes’s scalp. “Just off the boat?”

Mary Agnes nods. She’s heard that how many times in the last twenty-four hours?

And not a moment too soon.

“Don’t worry, lass, yer hair will grow back in a pig’s eye. And a beauty ya are, even without it.”

Eight dark heads crowd the front room, all peering at her.

“This’ll be our girl now,” Mrs. Donnelly says to the children. “Mary, is it?”

“Mary Agnes, ma’am. I’ll be off to Chicago soon.”

“In time, lass.”

“In time?”

“Didn’t the good father tell ya?”

“Tell me what, exactly?”

Mrs. Donnelly pats Mary Agnes’s shoulder. “Ah, it’s better that he didn’t then. A month’s work and then we’ll see ya off.”

“A month?” It is all Mary Agnes can do not to break into tears in the Donnelly’s front room. But I thought . . .

“Aye, the church will pay yer fare, after ya work for it, of course. Ya’re not the first in Five Points to be beholden to the church.”

“Five Points?”

“Used to be the best Irish neighborhood in all of New York. Right here. Not anymore. Crime, pimping. Too many . . . oh, never mind, ya’ll see for yourself.” Mrs. Donnelly blesses herself with the sign of the cross. “We’re surrounded now, Italians and Poles. And Germans everywhere. As soon as Himself can rouse the funds, we’ll be off to Brooklyn. Best to stick with our own people.”

I’ve heard that before, too.

A couch, two chairs, and low table crowd the front room, centered by a small coal stove. To the left, a large dining table sits on heavy mahogany feet with ten mismatched chairs packed around. A large picture of The Last Supper hangs on the yellowed far wall. A bedroom juts off the front room and a long hall beyond leads to what Mary Agnes assumes is the kitchen. She wonders how so many people can live in such a small apartment. Where do they all sleep? Atop one another?

Three of the Donnelly children, a boy and two girls, huddle under a blanket in front of the cold grate.

“That’d be Joseph, Anne, and Meg,” Mrs. Donnelly says.

Mary Agnes winks at them.

“Joseph is the man of the house when his da’s at work. Twelve, he is, on his next birthday.”

“I’m ten,” Anne says.

“And you?” Mary Agnes asks the other girl.

“She’s our shy one, that Meg. She’d be eight.”

“And here,” pointing to four boys playing jacks in the corner, “John, James, Martin, and little Finnegan.”

“Twins?”

“Yes, James and John, five they are now. Martin would be four, and Finn, two.”

“And the wee one?” Mary Agnes asks, peering into a wooden crate on the low table.

“That’ll be our Nell. She’s three months on now.”

“May I?” Mary Agnes asks, as she bends over the crate.

“Anytime, except as it’s for feeding,” Mrs. Donnelly laughs.

Mary Agnes picks up the tiny bundle and brings her to her chest. The baby mewls. “Shh, shh, now, wee one.”

Mrs. Donnelly leads Mary Agnes through a narrow hallway to the cramped kitchen in the back of the apartment. One of the younger boys—Finnegan, is it?—crowds Mrs. Donnelly’s skirts.

“We’ve our own kitchen,” Mrs. Donnelly continues. “The bath is down the hall. Shared, it is, with the Mahoneys and Tooheys and Callaghans.”

“I don’t mind, ma’am. We didn’t have a bath at home.”

A wooden counter runs the length of the wall next to the coal stove. Dirty dishes pile in the chipped enamel sink and spill over on the counter.

“I was just getting to the washing up when ya arrived,” Mrs. Donnelly says.

“I’m happy to help. Let me put the babe down.”

Back in the kitchen, and through a smudged window, Mary Agnes sees the backs of the tenements that front Mulberry Street, a block over. There, in the narrow gap between buildings, laundry hangs hodge-podge like sails between them—a ship without a sea—sheets and underthings flapping in late autumn wind. Even though each building has its peculiar traits (one dark brick, the next light; one with larger front windows and another, to save cost, she thinks, with much smaller windows), the buildings form a cohesive whole, five floors each above varied storefronts, with wide stone steps up to each first floor.

With four apartments per floor up five storeys, and if each family is as big as the Donnellys . . . Mary Agnes taps her foot on the kitchen tile, as she calculates the number, hundreds per building. She cannot get over the fact she is to stay here, in New York, for a month before she goes to Chicago. But what is her choice? At least the floor seems sound, despite the number of people squeezed into the apartment.

“You’ve an extra dish towel, then?”

THAT NIGHT, SNUGGLED ON THE LUMPY sofa in the front room, Mary Agnes spies a shaft of moonlight coming down the hall. Unlike her future, she can count on the moon, like the seasons and the tides and the sun—and the grave, like her granddad said. But she doesn’t want to dwell on the grave, so she watches the moonlight creep into the room until she falls asleep, day one in America come to a close.