2

ON THE DAY Julia Ward died in the Cahills' closest field, Greta had been going to school for a little more than two months. There were laws about schooling, Lily knew. Laws that had been in place since she was a girl, but like most laws, they seemed to apply to other places in Ireland, places where the heavy salt wind didn't rattle the houses and cut swaths through the land. Reading and writing, of course, Lily was all for it. The rhymes of Mr. Yeats, the island stories of Mr. O'Flaherty. Those were the things that kept people company their whole lives. The boys had gone until they were twelve, and it had done no harm. Adding, subtracting, multiplication tables. Yes, yes, yes. But Irish? And history? Those things could be taught at the table at home. And there was the added complication of Greta being Greta. She was, Lily had long ago decided, like a new calf who couldn't find her feet. Sometimes Lily wondered if she'd done anything unlucky when she'd carried the child. That Johanna had lived and was so strong was a miracle, and she'd tried to do everything the same with Greta. But maybe she'd made a mistake after Greta was born, laid her on her left side instead of her right, fed her from the same spoon she'd used to feed herself. Foolishness, Lily had always thought, but when she looked at Greta, she worried.

Lily held Greta at home for two years. The first time, Greta was five going on six, and no one noticed. After Johanna left in the morning, Greta followed Lily around the house, chattered away to Shep, who barked back like he had something on his mind, played mermaid in the swimsuit a distant cousin had sent from England, even when it turned cold and Lily made her wear it with thick wool stockings and a sweater. She hummed, she tried to skip stones on the river like her brothers, she helped Lily chase crows from the yard. Sometimes Lily came upon her whispering to herself, asking questions in one voice and answering in another.

"Who are you talking to, Greta?"

"My name is Mrs. Fishburne and I've come all the way from America."

"Oh, excuse me. What part of America?"

"The furthest part."

"And did you come by sea or by air?"

"Ahhh..." Greta dropped Mrs. Fishburne's expression of exhaustion. "What do you mean by air?" she asked in her own voice.

"In an airplane. Did Mrs. Fishburne fly in an airplane, or did she come on a ship over the ocean?"

"Which would make you more..." Greta raised the back of her hand to her forehead and fluttered her eyelashes.

"Ship, I'd say. Takes a fortnight, and you might be seasick. And the airplane is very dear. Then again, I'd say Mrs. Fishburne is very rich, is she?"

"She is, of course, but she came by ship anyway. The ocean was rough, and we had one man go overboard."

"And did anyone save him?"

"No one noticed but me, and by the time I got to the edge of the ship he'd gone under the water so I thought the best thing was to leave him in peace, poor bugger."

As Greta played, Lily slipped in lessons. She'd hand Greta two spoons and ask her how many she had given her. Then she'd hand her three more and ask how many she had then. When Greta graduated from spoons, Lily used eggs, of which there always seemed to be a limitless supply. Eventually she just told Greta to figure out the sum in her mind. "If Padraic gives you seven sweets and Jack gives you ten, how many do you have?" Almost always, Greta got the answers right.

It was more difficult to teach letters and sounds. Sometimes Lily wrote the letters out on a piece of newspaper and they sounded them out at the kitchen table. Greta didn't like doing this, and she pressed her head against the table and closed her eyes. She cried sometimes, and other times she was all affection, throwing her arms around Lily, snuggling against her, doing her Mrs. Fishburne voice and waiting for Lily to laugh. When there was a bit of chalk and the weather was fine, Lily wrote the letters in huge print on the side of the stable. Greta was better at the stable lessons than the inside lessons, but she always did best when they sounded the words out without writing anything down. B as in box, button, bull. D as in duck, dog, door. And what about when the sound is inside the word? Not at the beginning? Stubborn. Handle.

After the second time Lily kept her at home, Sister Michaela of the convent school rode her bicycle to Ballyroan. It was late June, and the school year was about to end for the other students. It occurred to her recently, Sister Michaela said to Lily, that the youngest Cahill was almost gone eight. She pulled Greta toward her in the kitchen and looked into her face.

"How's Greta today?" she asked.

"Grand, Sister. And yourself?"

Sister Michaela turned to Lily. "This one's as ready as she'll ever be. And"—she released her grasp on Greta's elbow—"it would be a way to show herself in town as independent. You have to consider that part of it as well, don't you? You never know who might be in need of a girl, a live-in to help with the things Greta can help with. Does she understand about cooking and cleaning? Do you trust her with an iron? With so many gone to England now the old ones need looking after. Isn't that where a girleen like Greta would be a great relief to someone? It's an opportunity, really, as long as she's capable."

"I trust her the same as I trust myself," Lily said, and stood to add more turf to the fire.

"Well then," said Sister Michaela. "I'll mark her in for September."

Lily nodded as the nun stood and gathered her things.

"I might as well take my other business while I'm here. Save the girls from walking it into town."

"Oh, yes," Lily said, forgetting about Greta as she hurried into the back kitchen, stepped on the stool, reached up to the top shelf, and moved aside two empty jugs, a stack of tin cups, a jar of sugar, three folded tea towels. She removed two whole cured salmon and wrapped them in brown paper.

The moment the nun left, Lily decided that the lessons she had given Greta were not enough. There had to be more if the girl was going to enter school in a matter of months. Instead of allowing Greta to follow her all day, instead of allowing her to chatter away in her collection of voices, Lily decided it was time to give her some responsibility. She waited for Big Tom to announce that it was dry enough to cut and lap the hay, and then she started Greta on delivering tea to the men: bread, crisp salmon skins fried in butter, tea in a thermos with sugar and milk. She gave the girl some warning.

"Tomorrow you'll have a big job," she told Greta, and spent the rest of the afternoon explaining about men and their stomachs, the hard work they do, how they depend on their sustenance coming across that field at the same time every day, how everything the Cahills had depended on that delivery. After the hay was cut, it had to be dried for three or four days if the weather stayed clear, then a day of shaking it out with the tips of their hayforks, another day turning it over so the air and sunshine could touch the damp underside. Another day of drying, and then it had to be raked, cocked, brought mound by mound down to the hay shed, which had a roof four times the height of the cottage.

"If they don't eat, they won't have the strength to work. And if they don't get it all done before the next big rain, then what? Can I trust you, Greta?"

"Yes, Mammy."

"Can I count on you?"

"Yes." Greta pushed her hair out of her face and looked at Lily with those big green saucers of eyes. Pretty, yes, when she wasn't twisting her features into a scowl. The nose a bit long, granted, but lovely skin, lovely coloring. The hair, black like Johanna's but wilder, a lot like Big Tom's when he had more of it, hair that defied gravity by curling out of her scalp and straight up into the air.

"Will you tie it?" Greta asked.

"What?"

"My hair," Greta said, pulling the curls straight with her fingers. "I can feel you looking at it. Will you tie it back?"

"That's another thing you're old enough to do, Greta."

The next morning, Lily put everything for the men in an old canvas satchel. "You know where Hurney's old field is? The one over and beyond? Well, go on then. They'll be hungry waiting, so off you go."

It started like this every morning for a week, the men in a slightly different place, Lily giving slightly different instructions. Greta, her face pinched up as if she were working on a puzzle, would nod for her mother and set off. Lily would work around the kitchen for a while, then go stand out at the gable to watch Greta try one direction and then another, her head stuck out ahead of her, the bag of food held out as if at any moment she might place it on a table. She would strike out full speed and then come to a halt, stay frozen for a few moments, then turn a few degrees and strike out again. "Go on!" Lily would shout across the distance. "They'll be waiting." Then she'd return to the kitchen and wait.

"You goose," Jack or Padraic would say when one of them found her, and then they'd lead her back home by the hand. If it was Little Tom who came, he would give her a little shake before pointing, almost with anger, toward the direction of home. He'd look at her, point, then look back with his eyebrows raised before marching her all the way back. The times when Lily came, she appeared before Greta in the mist like an apparition. "Just what do you think you're doing?" she'd say, and pinch the lobe of Greta's ear as she led her back to the road. A few times, she was kind when she came and only squeezed her daughter's hand. "Greta," she'd say, just once, as if they were at the end of a long conversation.

When Lily had Greta back home, she led her to the chair by the fire and told her to sit down. "When I send you out to the fields," she'd ask, "what do you be thinking of?"

"Of Mother Goose," said Johanna once, listening from the wings. It was a Saturday, and Johanna was mad because she wasn't let ride her bicycle into town to see her friends. "Is that it, Greta? Little Robin Redbreast sitting on the rail, niddling his head and wiggling his tail? Is that why you niddle-naddle your head and wiggle-waggle your tail?"

"Keep quiet, you," Greta said to Johanna.

"One more word and you'll be sorry," Lily said to Johanna, and turned back to Greta. "What do you be thinking of?"

"Of the men," Greta said. "And how Pop gets if he doesn't have his tea." The tea. The thick slices of molasses-smeared bread, all still in Greta's satchel. Lily knew enough to continue sending food with the men in the morning so they wouldn't go without their midday meal.

After a few weeks, Greta learned a few tricks. She walked along the low stone wall for two hundred and twenty-seven steps, her head cocked to the right to better hear the sound of the ocean; then she was on the bridge, four steps up, four steps down, back to the road and the wall for another thirty-eight steps. When the wall ended, she made a sharp left turn into the field, the sound of the ocean behind her. She walked straight for fifty steps or so until she hit another low wall. She climbed over it, stamping on the nettles as she did, followed that second wall to the right for thirty steps, and then came the final, most difficult part—a walk into the great and shimmering expanse of amber and blue if it was sunny, dull and gray if it was not—until she heard her father and brothers talking or the sound of their forks being plunged into the hay, the hay lifted and tossed to the top of the waiting pile, settling with a sound so soft and light, fainter than any other sound Greta had noticed so far, fainter than the sound of fabric on fabric as Lily tied the belt of her apron and pulled it tight. She heard things other people didn't.

At the end of the hay-making week, Big Tom told Lily that he was afraid Greta would get lost in the bog one day, sink into one of the soft holes like the pig from five hundred years ago. "A girleen like that has to stay close to home," he said. "There are some in every family, aren't there? Ones who can strike out on their own and even go off to England, and then there's ones who never leave and shouldn't leave and that's just the way it is. You should see the cut of her when she comes across the field at us. She's all arms and neck, and why does she stick her neck out like that? And the expression on her face like she's surprised to see us, and then she stands there looking around herself like she's waiting for instructions. You know what Jack figured out? She's dead tired! Johanna would be up and back twenty times in the time that one takes to come once, and not a bother. I say from now on, keep her close to home."

Lily hushed him. "Keep your voice down."

"I had an aunt once who left our place to live outside Oughterard in a flat. She came every Saint Stephen's Day and would sit at the table with her mouth hanging open so far you'd nearly see what she had for breakfast. Then she'd go laughing at nothing and shushing at nothing, and then she'd close her eyes and nod off for a few minutes before jumping up and announcing that she had presents waiting for her at home. There's a woman who should have been kept at home."

"How many times do I have to hear about this aunt?"

"Well now, Lily, remember that girleen when she first came? So red, and the size of her! No bigger than my fist, and not a peep out of her, only those big eyes looking around at everything. All I'm saying is why go trying to change her and turn her into Johanna? Sending her on errands and sending her to school. She's not Johanna and never will be and that's what God made her and that's the end of it."

"All you're saying and saying and saying and saying. Enough."

 

Going to school, for Greta, was a little like leaving the stone wall that showed her the curves in the road and striding out into the twinkling expanse of field and fog. She and Johanna walked together to and from, but once there, they were separated, Johanna in the back half of the room, Greta in the front. Johanna with her friends, Greta with her head down and her hands folded in her lap, praying that the teacher, Mr. Joyce, wouldn't call on her. Mr. Joyce, Big Tom often said around the house, was from Cork, born and raised in the city, and the smell of manure in the country made him sick. To pass the time on her first day, Greta tried to count how many of her classmates wore shoes and how many did not. She could tell by the sound they made walking up the aisle when they were called up to the board. Johanna said that Deirdre Sullivan's feet were blue and would never be right again. Lily had wrapped and double wrapped Greta's feet in strips of oilcloth and promised as she tied the strips off, "Before winter, love. Before winter, and you'll be doing a hard shoe across the boards."

During Greta's first week she was terrified by the scratch of the teacher's chalk as he wrote on the board and the turn of his heel as he scanned the room. The letters and numbers he drew were much smaller than the ones Lily had drawn on the side of the stable. Johanna warned her that he wouldn't go long without calling on her, and urged her to start thinking of the answer before he called on anyone. "Greta Cahill," he said finally, his pointer stopping at Greta's desk. She had been in school for three weeks. "Can you step up, please?" Greta turned to look for Johanna's dark head way in the back. The older students were given their own set of problems, and thinking that Johanna might not be listening to what was going on at the front of the classroom, Greta pretended to sneeze.

"Have you been paying attention?" Mr. Joyce asked. Greta turned and took a step toward the board. She gripped the piece of chalk he placed in her palm.

"I have to ask my sister something important," Greta said.

"Ask her later," Mr. Joyce said.

"It has to do with a calf born this morning. You may not understand, sir, about the animals."

"You've three grown brothers at home, Greta. Step up and finish this problem now, please."

With her nose almost touching the board, Greta moved her head along to follow the marks he'd made. Then she made matching marks: a long line, a short line, a curved line, a dash. She slashed this way and that until she'd taken up as much space on the board as he had. Then she put the chalk down on the ledge and went back to her seat.

"Greta," Mr. Joyce said after a moment of silence, "can you explain yourself?" Greta heard the drawer of his desk open.

"She can't help it," a voice called from the back, and Greta turned to find the dark shine of Johanna's head rise up among the lighter heads around her. "She's not being fresh." Another long moment of silence, and Greta felt Mr. Joyce inspecting her all over, the way her hands were folded, the way her legs were crossed at the ankles in the place where her stockings had fallen and bunched. She turned her head left and right, shifting in her seat to hear what else Johanna would say, but that was the end of it, and the next thing Greta heard was the switch being returned to the desk drawer.

On the way home from school that day, Johanna told Greta that she'd lied to Mr. Joyce and that Greta had to try harder. "How many times does three go into fifteen?" she asked.

Greta counted on her fingers. "Five with none left over."

"How many times does four go into sixteen?"

"Four."

"And how many times does seven go into twenty-one?"

Greta thought for a moment. "Three times."

"That's all the questions were, Greta. Why didn't you just write the answer instead of making all those marks on the board? He thought you were making fun of him."

"Was he very cross?"

"You better cop on, Greta. I won't speak up again."

"But Johanna—"

"Don't but Johanna me," Johanna said, then hugged her bag to her chest and ran ahead.

She'll wait for me at the crossroads, Greta told herself. She'll wait for me at the bridge. It was getting dark fast. Greta moved to the left side of the road and kept close to the wall that would lead her home.

 

In December, just before the school closed for Christmas holidays and almost two months after the tinkers left Ballyroan, a dentist came to the convent school to examine its forty students. By this time it was widely known that Greta smiled and nodded at things that didn't call for smiling or nodding, and that she had a way of walking as if she were leaning into a strong wind. When Mr. Joyce posed questions to the lower levels, he passed over her, calling on students he'd heard from three times already that day.

The dentist came all the way from Galway City in a long blue car that the boys couldn't keep themselves from running their hands over. It was parked outside the gate, and Mr. Joyce had to keep going over to usher them back onto school grounds. When he had everyone in one place, he asked the students to line up single file, youngest to oldest. Greta was placed toward the middle, and she immediately heard whispers travel up and down the line and an unfamiliar voice commanding them to stand still. Two of the mid-level boys took off running across the yard and launched themselves over the gate, which Mr. Joyce had locked. Before he could say a word, another two followed, sending a brief titter up the line. "Next," the dentist said now and again. "Step up." Greta couldn't hear anything except breathing from the remaining students. Those who'd had their turn were shuttled somewhere else, back to the classroom, perhaps, or told to go home early. Every once in a while she heard a sound she couldn't identify, like a pebble dropped into a wheelbarrow. The closer she got to the front of the line, the quieter everyone became. When she was three people from the front, she saw the tin bucket on the ground next to the stranger. She saw the stranger in his long white jacket lean back and forth between patient and bucket until the line moved again and again, and then it was Greta stepping up.

"Open," he said, pressing his thumb against Greta's chin and pushing his fingers inside her mouth. "Wide." He pushed on each of Greta's teeth, then tapped and scraped them with a metal instrument. He prodded her gums with something sharp. He shone a light into her mouth and pressed on her tongue until she gagged.

"Name," he demanded. Greta told him. Then he did something she hadn't heard him ask anyone else on the line to do.

"Greta, if you wouldn't mind, please walk twenty paces in the direction of the gate and then turn back and face me."

Greta turned and did what she was told. At pace fourteen she turned her head to look for Johanna, but at sixteen she turned back, remembering Johanna's warning that she wouldn't speak up again.

"Now, Greta," the dentist called above the buzz that had ignited up and down the line. "How many fingers am I holding up?"

Greta didn't answer. She could see the line of her classmates, one after another in varying shades of gray and blue cardigans, not a bright spot in the bunch. She could see the whitewash of the schoolhouse behind, the shape of the outhouse, the smudge that was the bell, but there was no way she could make out how many fingers the dentist was holding up.

"Take ten paces back toward me. Now tell me how many."

Greta took ten steps. She smiled. She pulled at her dress, brushed the hair from her face. "Now come back and stand in front of me, where you were before." Greta walked back to him as quickly as she could. She stood as close to him as she'd been when he was pushing his fingers inside her mouth. She saw the first three fingers of his left hand held up, the other hand behind his back.

"Three," she announced. He took a notebook and pencil out of his pocket. He made a few marks on the page.

"You need glasses, Greta. With a strong prescription. They will help you see things that are far away." He stopped writing and looked up. "Hasn't anyone ever told you that you need glasses?"

Greta didn't say anything, and as she stood there, he put his hands on either side of her head and pressed on her left eye, then her right, with his thumbs. She stumbled as she took a step back, blinking at the bright white feathers now floating all around.

"Is it your mother you have at home? And your father? And do you ever notice either of them writing a letter? Or reading one? Good. Do either of them ever take the bus into Galway, and do you ever go along? Yes or no, please, Greta. No? Well there's a first time for everything. Isn't there? You'll have to see this doctor in person. He's an eye doctor. You understand?"

"The bus to Galway, yes." Where is Johanna? Greta thought.

"Give this to your mother. It's the doctor's address, and at the bottom is my name, so you can tell him I sent you. I also made a few notes." He pressed the paper into Greta's hand. "It won't cost anything. Tell your mother that too. Tell her everything I said."

Greta folded the paper in fourths as she walked away. When she got beyond the front gate of the school, she sat on the road, opened her bag, and tucked the note neatly between the pages of her book. Behind the rushes she could hear the creek flowing over the rocks. Father Mitchell had glasses. Greta got a good look at them every time she received Communion and their faces were mere inches apart. They seemed yellow in color and always made him look as if he had just stopped crying. Mrs. Norton, who owned one of the two shops in town, also had glasses, but hers were two little half-moons that sat at the tip of her nose. Mrs. Norton's Greta could accept. Father Mitchell's she could not.

"What's the story?" Johanna demanded, breathless from running to find Greta. "What was he on about? Did he pull any teeth on you? No, you're grand. I can see that for myself. Me as well. Did you look in the bucket? You'd think they'd cover it up with something. Johnny Sullivan looked as green when he saw it! I watched him glance down, and then what did he do but put his hand right over his mouth. Trish had a mouthful of blood, and she spit it right on—"

Greta handed her the note, and Johanna snapped it open.

"Glasses?" Johanna said.

"Does it say anything about whether they'll be yellow like Father Mitchell's?"

"No, nothing like that. I think you're supposed to go to Galway." Johanna refolded the note and handed it back to Greta.

"That's what he said. To Galway to see a doctor, and then the doctor will give me glasses and I'll be able to see."

"Can you not see?"

Johanna leaned in close to Greta's face, then leaned away, in and out to look at Greta's eyes up close and then from a slight distance.

"When Pepper went blind his eyes went red and swelled up. And he wouldn't come out of the stable if it was sunny. Remember him rearing up on Pop?"

Greta rubbed her eyes.

"Now, Greta. Mammy will want it to be just the two of you to save on bus fare, but tell her you want me to come. You will, won't you? Tell her you're scared and you need me."

"I will not!"

"Well, I'll be left home, then. You would do that? At Christmas? You and Mammy off looking at the shops and the lights, and me at home listening to the wind?"

"I won't say I'm scared. I'm not scared."

Johanna shrugged and began walking. "Might not happen anyway. You know who'll have something to say about this, don't you?"

 

Lily didn't know what to think. The girls had come home and given her the note as if they were making a formal presentation. Greta offered it on her open palm, and Johanna stood next to her, watching the note pass from Greta's palm to Lily's fingers to the table, where it was opened and the creases smoothed flat.

"Glasses," Johanna summarized as Lily read. "For Greta."

"We're supposed to go to Galway," Greta said. "To see a doctor. Does it say?" she asked, standing on her tiptoes and looking over her mother's shoulder.

"I can't make heads nor tails of most of it," Lily said. "It's mostly to the doctor in Galway. There's just a little bit at the top to me." She turned to Greta, took her by the wrists, and pulled her so that she was standing against Lily's knees. "Can you not see, Greta? I mean, I know we tell you don't squint and do your neck like the goose, but can you not see?"

"I already looked at her eyes to see do they look like Pepper's," Johanna said.

"I'm not blind," Greta said.

"Look around here now." Lily shooed at Johanna to back away, give Greta some room. "What can't you see?"

"Mammy, how can she tell you what she can't see?" Johanna said.

"She knows what I mean."

"I can see the kitchen for a start."

"What in the kitchen?"

"The table, four chairs, the fire, the window, four pipes on the mantel."

"Can you see the four pipes on the mantel?"

"Well, I know they're there. I put them there this morning."

"But can you see them?"

Greta walked over to the mantel and stood on her tiptoes. In that position she was just tall enough to rest her nose on the ledge. In front of her, no more than two inches from her face, were the four pipes, and beside them the box of tobacco.

"I can see them," she said.

"Mammy, will we go to Galway?" Johanna asked, rocking back and forth from heel to toe.

"You? Can you not see either?"

"You wouldn't go without me, Mammy. Now listen, I'll do anything—"

Big Tom and the boys came in just as Johanna's begging reached a pitch that Big Tom couldn't stand. "Calm yourself, girl," he said, and swiped one of the pipes off the mantel before collapsing into one of the chairs. He scratched at his face, then sucked on his pipe in short, quick puffs until it got going. To Greta, the sound of him getting his pipe started always sounded like a person kissing his or her own hand before blowing the kiss away. Then the boys went at their own pipes, and there were kisses flying all around the kitchen as Lily filled them in about the dentist and the note and the doctor in Galway.

"And what's wrong with her?" Big Tom asked. "Useless at finding her way at doing things unless she's shown a hundred times, but nothing a doctor can do that her own family can't. The best medicine is like I said—keep her close to home."

"Peel the potatoes," Lily said to Johanna. "We'll talk after dinner."

"I can't. Please. I can't do a thing until I know."

"You should listen to your father, Johanna, and calm down." Lily took one of the boiled potatoes in her hand and peeled off the skin. With each dark piece of skin that fell away, the white inside was revealed in a cloud of steam. Greta had tried to peel a hot potato once, but she burned herself, and Lily had made her feel her hands and compare them to her own. Greta's were soft and smooth; Lily's were as rough as Big Tom's, thick with calluses and scars.

When Lily was finished peeling the potatoes, she sat on the stool by the fire. Because the kitchen was small and the table seated only four, the family usually ate in shifts: Big Tom and the boys first, Lily and the girls directly after.

Greta thought the discussion would be put off until after they'd all eaten, but suddenly, from her perch, Lily announced, "We'll go to Galway. The girls and I will go and we'll see what this man has to say."

Johanna clapped her hands. Greta dropped down to a stool opposite her mother and wondered what other people saw when they looked at things.

"A bloody waste," Big Tom muttered, and the kitchen was filled with the sound of forks and knives against plates and teeth.

 

The Galway bus came through the Conch crossroads every Tuesday and Thursday, and the journey took two hours. There were some regulars—people who went to Galway once every few weeks to settle up business—but most of the people who went were what Lily called once-in-a-blue-moon types, like themselves. On the Thursday before Christmas, Lily, Johanna, and Greta walked the three miles to the crossroads with a bag of sandwiches and waited for the sound of an engine in the distance. Greta was wearing shoes Lily had bought from a woman in town whose daughter had grown out of them, and Johanna was annoyed that she had boys' shoes and Greta had girls' shoes. To distract them, Lily told them that she could count on one hand the number of times she'd been to Galway. After half an hour they heard the bus approaching. When it appeared, Lily stepped out into the road and held up her hand.

Greta and Lily shared a seat. Johanna sat by herself across the aisle and looked out the window. There had been a lot of talk about Pepper in the days leading up to their journey, talk Lily tried to hush. Pepper was a fine, strong horse when Big Tom bought him, but after a few months his eyes went red and rimmed with pus. That lasted a few weeks; the boys took turns washing his eyes in salt water. Nothing helped. Then he started getting skittish about the sun. He shook his head at every noise, however slight. Then he lost his balance, began to trip and run into things. By the time they had him for a year, he was completely blind.

Lily had asked them how they could compare a girl to a horse, and Jack and Padraic (and Little Tom, by nodding at whatever his brothers said) insisted that Pepper used his eyes just as people use theirs. Didn't horses have eyes to see out of? Didn't Pepper start in with that head-shaking, looking-around-himself routine, and didn't that remind her of Greta a bit, with the neck and the arms and keeping her head cocked to the side?

"Look it," Johanna said. She had her finger pressed to the glass. They'd been on the bus for over an hour and all Johanna had said up until now was that everything looked the same. Finally she noticed something different, and Lily hopped across the aisle to see. There were poles planted in the ground every hundred feet or so, and at the very top of the poles were thick black wires. "Electricity," Lily said. Every day on the radio there was more talk of electricity. The cities were electrified. Large towns were electrified. Soon all of Ireland would be connected in one enormous grid. Big Tom said they could keep their electricity where it was. He for one did not want to worry about being burned alive in his bed.

The bus came to a stop, and the driver got out to help an elderly passenger board. Outside at the crossroads, someone had tied a bull to one of the poles. As Johanna and Lily watched, the bull lowered his ugly head, bunched his massive shoulders, and pulled at the rope that held him. As the animal strained and lurched, a hundred thousand sparks rained down from above as if a bundle of hay had been set on fire and thrown into the wind.

 

Galway was filled with people, everyone squeezed into a space so tight that Greta and Johanna didn't see why they didn't spread out a bit. Because it was nearly Christmas, the streets were also full of lights and wreaths with red ribbon bows. Two steps out of the bus station, Greta found herself on the sidewalk, surrounded by strangers. Next thing she felt Lily's hand take hold of her arm and steer her to a doorway. "Don't walk into people, and don't leave my sight," she said. She tried to take Johanna's hand, but Johanna shook her off.

"You'll hold my hand, girl, or the three of us will get back on that bus and go home."

"I'm old enough."

Lily turned back to the bus and started walking, pulling Greta after her. Johanna lunged forward and slipped her hand into her mother's. "Lovely," she said. "See?"

The three of them made their way past Eyre Square and turned onto Shop Street. One street turned into another as people crisscrossed from side to side, stepped around the threesome, walked close to the storefronts or the curb to let them pass.

"Twenty-seven Market Street," Lily said, dropping the girls' hands for a moment to pull her shawl tighter around her shoulders. "Be on the lookout."

The night before, Big Tom had pulled out his old map of Galway City and shown Lily where they'd have to go. The names of streets, he warned them, could be difficult to find. Sometimes they were up on the sides of buildings, sometimes down at your feet. Sometimes an address was on one street, but the door to get in was on another street around the corner. What he'd failed to mention were the cars and the trucks that would be there, pulled up against all the curbs, rolling down the street one after another like a long caravan. Mixed into all of it were the horse-pulled carts and people loaded down with bags and newspapers. Lily pointed out a donkey with a creel full of turf being led down a side street, a car close on its heels.

Market Street was a side street, less crowded, so Lily dropped their hands and let them walk ahead. Johanna hopped from window to window, calling back information about shoes, dresses, hats, flowers, until she stopped at the window of a bakery. The vents were open to let the steam out, and the smell of fresh bread and sweet glaze pulled them forward. Even Greta could see the muffins and cakes smeared with white frosting or berry red jam. Johanna didn't even have to ask. "First things first," Lily said. "I'll think about it."

The door to 27 was plain, not as grand as Johanna and Greta had imagined. Inside the street door was a list of doctors with corresponding office numbers, then another door. The threesome walked up four flights of stairs until they came to office 4W. "Go on, girl," Lily said to Greta. "What are you waiting for?"

Inside, Lily told the secretary why they were there and handed her the note the dentist had sent. The secretary disappeared to the back room, and Johanna planted herself by the window to watch the people passing on the street below. After a few minutes a young man came out of the back room. "Greta?" he said, turning toward Johanna briefly but then deciding on Greta. "Would you step in, please? Are you Mrs. Cahill?" He came forward to shake Lily's hand. Lily introduced Johanna, and the three of them followed him into his office.

"You're having trouble with your vision," he said as he positioned Greta by an X painted on the floor. Greta nodded as he pointed toward a chart on the wall and told her to read off the letters. After the very top line, Greta recited letters at random.

"Whatever trouble she has isn't new," Lily said. "She's been the way she is since the day she was born."

The doctor had Greta read off the letters with her left eye covered, and again with her right. He made her look into the ceiling light and try not to blink as he squeezed two drops into each eye. Greta couldn't stop her eyelids from fluttering, so he did it again. "That should do it," he said after a third try. Greta's cheeks were wet and streaked dark yellow with the drops that had failed to hit home.

"I'm staining her eyes," the doctor said. "It makes it easier to see if there's any kind of surface damage. Ulcers, for example." He held Greta's eyes open with his first finger and his thumb. "She'll blink it away after about an hour."

"I see," Lily said. Pepper had had yellowish pimples and burst blood vessels in his eyes.

The doctor led Greta to a special chair and fitted a device on her head. Greta looked through a pair of frames while he slid different pieces of glass inside, asking her to look back at the chart after each try. When he settled on one he liked, he told the three Cahills to wait outside. The secretary gestured toward the long, dark sofa and Lily and Greta sat close together on one side of it. Lily waited until the secretary turned back to her work, then she licked the corner of her sleeve and rubbed at Greta's yellow-streaked cheeks. She licked, rubbed, licked, rubbed some more. Johanna stood by a shelf on the other side of the room and examined the different objects on display. She picked up a snow globe and shook it. "Chicago," she announced, and held it up for her mother to see.

After a half hour, the doctor came out to the waiting room and handed Greta a small hinged box made of wood. Greta opened the box and saw immediately that it was lined with blue material that Lily said was satin. There in the bed of satin sat a pair of glasses held in place with two clips. Not as small as Mrs. Norton's from the shop, but not as yellow as Father Mitchell's.

"Go on," Johanna said. Lily hushed her.

Greta put the glasses on and pushed them up to her nose. They slid down. She pushed them up again.

"Show," Lily said, and Greta turned to her.

"Well?" Greta asked.

"Well yourself," Lily said. "You're the one wearing glasses. What do you think?"

That's when Greta noticed that the world looked slightly different. Objects loomed large and seemed to curve in space. She reached for her face, but the doctor stopped her.

"You must keep them on. This is important. Even if you feel sick. Even if you get a headache. Keep them on. It'll take a little while to get used to them. Come back to see me in six months."

Johanna reached over and straightened the glasses on Greta's nose. The frame was black and heavy enough to hold the thickest glass in the doctor's case, and Greta could already feel where the new weight would press down behind her ears and become sore. Next to Johanna, Greta could see the window, the bottles on the ledge, blue and yellow, one with the color purple coming out the top. On the secretary's desk were a teacup and saucer.

 

They stopped at a hotel called The Bay. Johanna swore they'd eat their sandwiches later, that they wouldn't go to waste. Greta was most concerned with keeping the glasses balanced on her nose. The hotel had separate entrances for lodgers and diners, so they didn't get to go through the lobby. The girls wanted to know how much it would cost to sleep there and how many nights did people stay, and why didn't they sleep at home, and if they're so far from home what brought them away when it was so close to Christmas.

They ordered tea and three cream cakes. Greta thought it was just like a ceremony, almost like Mass, the way the man came over first with the plates, then with the forks and knives, then with the teacups and saucers, then with the teapot, then with the plate of three cakes. It was like what the priest did when he went over to the little gold door, took out the dish and closed the door, walked the dish over to the altar and took the lid off, and held the sacrament up in the air before breaking it into pieces and putting a piece in everyone's mouth. By the time everything was laid out, there wasn't an inch of table left to spare. Twice, Lily reminded them that she could have made the same tea, the same cream cakes in her own kitchen in Ballyroan. She could make them better, actually. And cheaper. They had the eggs and cream and butter themselves. She was about to say it a third time when she heard herself as if from the next table and stopped. She took off her shawl and folded it neatly over the back of Greta's chair. "Plenty of heat in this place, isn't there?" she said, and licked the tip of her finger.

The streetlights had all come on by the time they left the hotel, but Lily said there was no rush on them. They'd paid for the bus fare, so why not see what was to be seen? Except for when they sat down to eat, Greta had been holding Lily's hand since they left the doctor's office. She'd also given most of her cream cake to Johanna. As they walked, she kept touching the bridge of her nose with her free hand. "You'll get used to them," Lily said, then suggested they go to the cathedral. That way they could sit, light a candle, Greta could calm down. Lily remembered the bridge from the last time she was in the city, and knew the cathedral was just beyond. They had almost made it when Greta pulled her hot hand out of Lily's, walked over to the curb, put her other hand up to stop her glasses from falling off, and vomited. She froze for a moment, a thick rope of drool stretching down between her mouth and the puddle at her feet. Then she sat down on the curb and began to sob.

Lily rubbed her back. "Isn't it a great day, Greta? You'll be able to see everything very soon. No more Greta the Goose."

"Please," Greta said, reaching for the glasses. "Mammy, please."

"You're meant to keep them on."

"Mammy, Mammy, Mammy," Greta chanted as she breathed in and out, rocked back and forth.

Johanna said, "Could she take them off if she keeps her eyes well closed? I mean, as tight as tight can be? That way she won't be looking at things the old way. It'll be like when she's asleep. She can't wear them when she's asleep, can she?"

"Five minutes," Lily said. Lily and Johanna sat down on the curb beside Greta, and Greta handed her glasses to Lily. "Ten Our Fathers," Lily said. "And make sure you keep them well shut." They nodded their heads to pray. Lily kept a close watch on Greta as she rattled off the familiar words. Greta had her head between her knees and was mumbling the prayer over her sobs.

Johanna, who sat on the other side of Lily, could also concentrate on two things at once. The prayers came so naturally she could recite any one of them without even hearing what she was saying. She made her lips move, and the words came out, but her mind remained in the city. "Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name..." She watched the skirts and shoes go by. She watched the wheels of the cars. She could see the spire of the cathedral. In the other direction, she saw where one busy street intersected the other. She glanced down at the river, black now that the light had faded, and watched the outlines of the merchants selling their wares along the quays. She saw the piles of potatoes, fruit, carrots, parsnips. One woman sold dolls, one sold clothes, sweaters, wellies, fishing gear, hard candies, soft candies, chocolates, Christmas cakes. At the very end was an old woman beckoning people to step in and have their fortunes told. Another stood under a streetlamp and hawked paper flowers. Johanna strained her eyes as much as possible, taking in the woman's weather-beaten coat, her bare feet stuck into sandals despite the cold.

"Greta!" Johanna said, hopping to her feet. She half walked, half ran to the other side of the bridge, down the narrow, blackened staircase, down to the river and along the quay. She took in the telltale shelters, cardboard and sheet metal. She took in the people's haphazard dress, layer upon layer upon layer. She noted the grub boxes outside the flaps of the tents. She took in the windburned faces, the black toes, black fingernails. She watched the flap of a tent being pulled open from the inside and saw a boy climb out on hands and knees. She watched him brush off his knees as he made his way down to one of the merchant booths. She observed the older man say something to the boy, something sharp by the way the boy's back straightened up.

"Johanna!" Lily called as she watched Johanna's head disappear down the steps. Greta, her eyes still squeezed shut, her glasses still in Lily's care, stumbled after her mother, feeling for the edge of each step with the toes of her new shoes, listening to the river lick the pilings. Greta pulled back when Lily shouted again. "Mammy," she said, "you're shouting. And I've my eyes closed."

"Where the hell has she disappeared to?" Lily dropped Greta's hand and walked ahead. "Wait here," she commanded.

Greta stopped walking, dropped her hands to her sides, stood perfectly still. The way the wind pushed her this way and that, the way the water rushed over the rocks just a few feet away, she felt that she could have been standing in the middle of her own back field, except for the rattle of the occasional bicycle and the buzz of voices. She counted to one hundred. She raised her arms and reached as far as she could in front of her; she reached to her sides. The voices faded, and even the water seemed to grow calmer.

"Hello?" she said. Her voice came out as a squeak, barely a whisper. She cleared her throat and took a breath to try it again.

"Hello yourself," said Johanna, her voice landing like a hammer inside the circle Greta had imagined for herself.

Greta opened her eyes. There was Johanna, white electric light from the lamp over their heads reflected in her ink black hair, and beside her a young tinker boy with wide brown eyes and shoulders unusually broad for a child of eleven. He was standing with his feet wide apart, like his father had done in the Cahills' hall when Jack, Little Tom, and Padraic had stepped forward to help with the body. Johanna was holding his hand.

"It's Greta, is it?" he said.

"You remember Michael Ward, don't you?" Johanna asked.