Early December 1886 Chicago, Illinois

Creeping up the back stairway just before dawn from her cramped and frigid room in the cellar, Mary Agnes steps on the third tread from the top, the one that squeaks. Her feet, still squeezed into last year’s boots, press at her toes. Her black dress falls beneath her calves; she hopes the tear in her black stockings doesn’t show, it being her first day at the big house.

It had been easy being hired out, much easier than Mary Agnes thought. With the newspaper in her hand, she walked for an hour east in bone-chilling wind, weaving through Chicago neighborhoods until she reached the Gold Coast to enquire about the first advert:

Sturdy young woman required for household service. Wages commensurate with experience. Enquire Monday, 1236 N. Astor St.

Just like Aunt Margaret said, Mary Agnes was hired on the spot. And at what a mansion! A sweeping curved staircase with polished bannisters lofts from the entry and disappears to the floor above. From what Mary Agnes can see, everything about the home is grand: its vaulted doorways; high ceilings; arched doorways; massive windows; parquet floors; floor-to-ceiling bookcases; heavy furniture; and thick draperies.

And the décor! Gilt framed mirrors. Portraits. Heavy tufted, brocaded settees. On every spare surface, assorted magazines, journals, newspapers. Doilies, urns, bronze statuettes. Chandeliers and sconces. Floral arrangements and fruit bowls. Even a candy dish in the shape of a blue swan!

It takes Mary Agnes’s breath away. And then she thinks, practical as she is, I must be careful not to break anything. At home, the Coynes had one candlestick and nine chipped ceramic plates. Not even enough mugs to serve everyone at once. She scowls as she thinks of her mother but is quickly distracted as the hiss of the radiators comes on.

Imagine. Heat that comes from a radiator instead of a peat fire. Rooms upon rooms upon rooms fit for a queen. And enough food to feed all of Dawros!

There had been the bit about Sundays, Mary Agnes insisting she would need the full day off to attend Mass and then Sunday dinner at the Laffeys. The mistress of the house, Mrs. Rutherford, agreed, but there’d be no Thursday half-day off then. And only every other Sunday afternoon off. Room and board would be offered and fifty cents per day seeing as Mary Agnes had little experience, with a three-month trial period. So it is agreed upon across a chasm of class and culture and religion.

At least I’m on my own, Mary Agnes thinks. Helen has become tiresome, after less than a week. Aunt Margaret has far more questions than Mary Agnes is prepared to answer, most of them about her mother and Fiach.

And, as for Uncle Fiach, I am glad of it, to be here, away from him.

His nightly pats on her behind have turned to pinches and she fears what might be next. A brush on the breasts? Cold fingers on her neck? Footsteps outside her room? All at once, she is shocked with a thought.

Perhaps Fiach is the son of . . . not the innkeeper or a soldier. Maybe Mam’s very own brother? The resemblance is uncanny.

She shakes her head at the thought of it, ties her crisp white apron tight around her waist over the black uniform, and swipes a stray hair behind her ear. Cook will remind her to do that many times today. But who can afford hair pins? She turns three times, an old Celtic ritual, and prays under her breath: The love of the Father who made me; the love of the Son who died for me; the love of the Holy Ghost who dwells within me. Bless me and keep me, Amen. And you too, Blessed Mother, watch over me today.

Into the kitchen she goes, hip first. All the morning smells greet her: Sizzling ham, fresh baked bread, coffee. “A nasty situation,” is all Mary Agnes overheard as to why the previous housemaid was let go.

What could be nasty enough to get a housemaid fired? Theft? Deceit? A compromising situation?

There is no time to ponder at present. I have to concentrate today, she thinks. No straying thoughts.

The matronly cook grimaces, her floured hands pointing to the clock. “One minute past six; might as well be an hour.”

Mary Agnes dips her head. “Won’t happen again, Cook.” She needs this job. Big house. Important family. Wages. She checks again to see that her hair is neat and dons a white cap. “Put me to work,” she says.

Does Cook see my hands tremble? Or my heart?

The large, low-ceilinged kitchen spans half the length of the house on the first floor below stairs. A long window grazes the ceiling and allows light in from below street level. A pock-marked table dominates the center of the room, with two cookstoves on the north wall and a huge sink under the windows on the east wall. Suspended from the ceiling, like so much hardware, a mélange of copper and cast-iron pots dangles from long copper hooks. A wiry black cat brushes her leg.

“That’d be Tom the Cat.”

Mary Agnes reaches down to pat the cat. “Hello, Tom.” It looks up with wide green eyes and purrs. Just the sound of the name, Tom, settles Mary Agnes’s tight nerves. She thinks of her brother Tommy back at home and longs for him.

“Ya’re allowed one cup of coffee, no cream, on a morning,” Cook goes on. “And a piece of toast. Don’t want ya fainting on yer first day. Ya’ll start on the third-floor rooms first. Strip the beds, dust, polish, clean the grates, sweep. There’s a mop in the closet at the top of the stairs. Rags, too. See to it there’s no streaks.”

“On the windows?”

“What do ya think, the backside of the queen? Of course, the windows. Are ya daft?”

“No, ma’am.” Mary Agnes reaches for the butter knife and Cook swats her hand away. “Didn’t say butter now, did I?”

Mary Agnes wolfs down the dry toast and black coffee, not daring to look at Cook.

“Get on with ya, then,” Cook says. “Best have the third floor finished mid-morning. Check with me before ya start on the second floor. Mistress will be out today, lucky for ya. Oh, and this is Kathleen.” She motions to a girl, a year or two older than Mary Agnes. “She’s kitchen help. See to it ya mind her if I’m not about.”

Mary Agnes nods to the girl, who nods back. The cook’s assistant is dressed in black with a large white apron stained with grease. Her reddish-blonde hair is tied up on the top of her head like a knot, although wisps poke out beneath her ears and at the nape of her neck. She is uncommonly pretty with large blue eyes and only a smattering of freckles on the bridge of her nose, like Mary Agnes.

“What’re ya staring at?” Cook asks Kathleen. “Get back to the pies. They don’t bake themselves.”

Mary Agnes looks at Kathleen, who rolls her eyes toward the ceiling.

“And what if I have to pass water?” Mary Agnes says as she approaches the back stairs. “Should I—”

Cook glares at her. “Well, aren’t ya the impertinent one. No time for that. But if ya must . . .” She points down the stairs where Mary Agnes has just emerged. “There’ll be stew for ya at the end of the day, six sharp, here.” She points then to the large kitchen table. “Ya’ll meet the rest of the help then.”

Mary Agnes takes the back stairs to the top level of the house. She’s fortunate to have gotten the position at all with no references and no experience, although she lied about that. Mrs. Rutherford needed the help, and that was that.

Mary Agnes fingers the ornate woodwork at the landing and her heart lurches. What if I leave a fingerprint?

She opens the closet to a rank smell. She knows what it is before she sees it, a dead rat. Rooting around with her foot, she kicks the rat aside with her boot and grabs the rags. The mop will wait. Three doors down, she cracks a bedroom door ajar. Never has she seen a room such as this. Bed, bedstead, chairs. And a dressing table strewn with handkerchiefs, face paint, perfume bottles. The bed linens look like someone had a wrestling match in the night.

“What are you standing there gawping at?”

A girl, not much older than Mary Agnes, comes up behind her, her long golden hair down. Wrapped in a plush dressing gown, she pushes into the doorway. If it weren’t for the large dark mole above her lip, Mary Agnes would swear this girl was the prettiest she’s ever seen.

“Excuse me, miss.” Mary Agnes sidesteps the girl. “I’ll go on to the next room.”

“Theresa won’t be up until noon,” the girl says. “Wouldn’t disturb her.”

And how am I to be finished with this floor by mid-morning?

“The last room then?” Mary Agnes cocks her head toward the far bedroom.

“That’ll do. Claire’s already down with Mother. Wedding plans.” The girl rolls her eyes.

Mary Agnes bobs and hurries to the far bedroom. “What’s your name, then?” the girl asks after her. “We have so many housemaids I don’t know why I bother.”

“Mary Agnes, miss.”

“Of course you’re Mary. You all are. Just another worthless Irish bogger.”

Worthless? Is that what everyone thinks?

“I’m Doria—Miss Rutherford to you. You’ll meet the rest of them, Claire and Theresa and the twins, Ronald and Roland they’re called,” the girl says. She stops for a moment and leans against the door jamb. “A word of advice, bogger. Stay clear of the boys. They like Irish maids.” The bedroom door closes behind her.

Mary Agnes tries to compose herself. It is not even seven in the morning.

Worthless Irish bogger? Didn’t her gram say she was bold and independent? And her granda that she was, what? A sight smarter—and prettier—than most?

I’ll show you what I’m made of, she thinks. I’m headed to university. And you can bet I’ll avoid the boys.

If Mary Agnes thought Doria’s room looked a fright, Claire’s room looks like a tornado came through, and recently: Dresses, slips, stockings, and chemises, thrown helter-skelter on chair backs, bed, floor. Mary Agnes sweeps up garments in a heap and places them on the window seat. Am I to fold them? Put them away? Wash them?

She didn’t get any instruction on this, and, of course, has not been a housemaid before, although she said she had been. She strips the bed linens as instructed and adds them to the pile, dusts the headboard and footboard and all the wooden surfaces in the room, careful to replace items where she found them, lamps, ribbons, figurines. The windows streak with rain and soot. It’s spitting snow now. Where to start? And where to get water?

Doria’s door remains closed as Mary Agnes heads to the water closet at the end of the hallway. She rinses rags under running water. Soot rings the enamel basin so she scrubs the sink until it shines and the water runs clear. Back in Claire’s room, she wipes the window, up and down, mindful not to leave a streak. Back and forth she goes to the water closet to rinse the rags and wipe the sink. She must ask for a bucket. She then remakes Claire’s bed with fresh linens and backs out of the room, her arms full of dirtied laundry and sheets, which she deposits down the laundry chute.

The coffee has by now run through her. Do I dare use the water closet instead of going down four flights to the cellar? Who is to know?

Checking again that there’s no sound emanating from Theresa’s room, and that Doria’s door is still closed, she ducks into the privy to relieve herself. She knows she’s breaking rules, and is as quiet as possible. As she pulls the chain and tidies up behind her, she listens for any sign of noise. None. She scurries to the kitchen then to report in to Cook before heading back up to the second floor. She is sure her toes are bleeding by now, and it’s only not even ten in the morning.

AT HALF PAST SIX THAT EVENING, Mary Agnes limps down the stairs to her cellar room after a hearty bowl of beef stew with the house staff. Her first day is behind her. She falls onto the cot without lighting the lamp, still dressed.

How many times today was I scolded? The third-floor rooms not finished in time (and whose fault was that?), and no, Claire’s dresses are not to be handled like dirty laundry, where did you learn housekeeping skills anyway? In a barn? Galway, ma’am. I’d have expected ya to know that, eejit. Sorry, ma’am. It won’t happen again, ma’am.

And then there was the matter of passing water in the third-floor water closet. “Never again, girl,” Cook said.

Who heard the chain pulled?

As Mary Agnes drifts to sleep, she remembers why she’s here. And now she’s got fifty cents on the ledger. Three months she has to prove herself. By then she will have earned thirty dollars, although she will have to send it home, it’s expected, Uncle Fiach said. Maybe she can convince him that she should have half her wages anyway. She will have to figure out a way to present her case to him. But not alone. Maybe I can enlist Aunt Margaret. Or, better yet, Helen.

Mary Agnes wakes before dawn and rolls onto her back, her arms akimbo above her head. Her eyes adjust to the near light and she sees a water stain, its tributaries fingering out across the ceiling. In her fogginess and fatigue last night, she at least remembered to pull off her boots and stockings, but she is horrified to see she’d slept in her dress. How to get out all these wrinkles? And did I even pray before I nodded off?

She says a hasty prayer and springs up, her feet hitting the cold cement floor. Her heels are rubbed raw. A chill runs up her spine. She moves toward the radiator and spins slowly, not so much as to warm herself but to get the creases out of her uniform.

Two months ago, she left Ireland, not knowing what life in America would bring. Now she knows.

University? No. All the pretty Irish girls are housekeepers. You were right, Jimmy, my head was in the clouds.