Hunger, page 3
Against my will, I thought of the cottier wives with their strong arms and hands and how much faster this would all go if they were digging with us now. Four cottier families lived on the land we rented. Da was a tenant farmer, and a poor one at that. Some of the other tenant farmers had homes with three rooms. Our cottage was just one room. Da said we shouldn’t be envious, though, because those farmers kept manure in their houses just like we did, and they, in fact, owned nothing, just like us.
Despite what he said, I was envious. Not of the other tenant farmers; no, not them. Of the landlords. Everyone knew this land used to belong to us Irish. But now the English owned it. When I’d asked Ma and Da how that had happened, Da had started to talk, but Ma stopped him. She said it was behind us, and that meant it didn’t matter.
So this was how it was: They owned the big houses. And the castles.
And they owned the land, while we were just tenant farmers.
Still, all tenant farmers rented the land legally, so we had rights.
The cottiers were far worse off. They were workers without any lawful home. They helped Da in all the chores in the fields: plowing, seeding, and mostly harvesting—the oats and wheat and everything. In return Da helped them build huts in a little cluster on the stoniest part of the ten acres we farmed. And near their huts they had their own private kitchen gardens, just like we did, to feed their families—one garden per hut. Full of spuds. There were eighteen children altogether in the four families. Ma used to say, her voice all wistful, that the cottier wives were lucky to have so many little ones. She hadn’t said that for a long time now, though.
They were hungry, those cottier families. But they were strong—like us. Their mas were just as resourceful as our ma at making broth from kale and cabbage and weeds, and just as severe at doling out the spuds.
The only one who died on this land last year because of the lack of spuds was Granny.
It wasn’t because she was gone in the head, like little Paddy thought. And it wasn’t because she was weak. It was because she simply stopped eating, so she could give her share of greens or turnips to the rest of us. That was something little Paddy didn’t know, something that made my chest squeeze so tight it hurt. I hoped little Paddy grew old without figuring it out. Ma and Da would never say it. But I knew it was true. Granny had done something awful.
Sometimes even the best of us did something awful.
I pressed the back of my forearm against my eyelids. Just for a moment.
Little Paddy was working hard now. So was I. We dug spuds all the rest of the day. When Da got home, he joined us. We dug spuds all through the evening. Then I milked Bo Bo again, and by the time I came inside, we were ready to feast. This time Ma had boiled the spuds and we ate them with the skins. The mealy parts were hardly noticeable. Three apiece for little Paddy and me, four for Ma, and a pile for Da. Seven, actually. I tried hard not to count them, but I couldn’t help it. Somehow, the more spuds I ate, the more spuds I wanted. But Da was bigger than us, he needed more. And I was glad he was big. His size alone made us all feel safe. He could work longer hours than anyone.
We went to bed without a telling. I was too shattered to care, though. Too full of aches. I sprawled on the mat, itchy all over just from being so plain dirty. But even that couldn’t keep me awake. My eyes closed before Ma’s lullaby ended.
The next day was the same, only harder because the dirt was in clumps solid as clay and our bodies were already bruised from the first day of digging. But Ma made little Paddy and me sing with her as we worked, and that helped. Singing was magic. By nighttime we’d finished the entire plot.
So the third day we shifted to the next job—loading those spuds into the pit. We had to layer them with ferns. It hadn’t rained again, not since the night it lashed so hard. That was good, at least for this part of the job; the ferns were dry, the spuds were dry. No new moisture to encourage rot.
We wiped the spuds as free of dirt as we could and were ready to throw them in the pit, when Ma lay a staying hand on my shoulder. “Do you think we should put the ones that look the best on the bottom, because they’ll last longer—and put the ones that are already going bad on top, so we can eat them sooner?”
That sounded right. I nodded.
“But what if the worst ones on top make the best on the bottom rot faster? Do you think instead we should put the worst on the bottom and the best on top? That way we’ll at least get the best ones before they rot.”
I had no idea what we should do. I didn’t move. I didn’t want Ma to read any flicker of my eye or twitch of my lips as an answer. I held my breath.
“Or maybe we should sell the best now, and save the worst for eating. No one would buy the worst ones—but they’d buy the best ones, don’t you think? That way we’ll at least have money later when our spuds run out, and we can buy from others.” Her brow wrinkled and she shook her head. “But I’m thinking all wrong—no one else will have spuds to sell then.”
“We can buy grains,” said little Paddy.
Ma looked at him as though in shock. “Don’t act thick, Paddy. Spuds bring only four shillings per hundredweight—oats bring seventeen shillings. We could never buy oats—at least, not nearly enough oats to make up for selling our best spuds.”
What a thought. We grew those oats, but we were too poor to buy the product of our own labor. That felt so wrong it made my head spin.
“So, then,” said Ma, “we put them all in the pit.” She stared at me now. Waiting. It was up to me!
My heart raced. “Let’s make a second pit,” I said at last. “Then we’ll have one for the best spuds and one for the worst.”
Ma came over and kissed me on the forehead. “Cunning girl. Like your da always says.”
So that’s what we did.
CHAPTER FOUR
Recipes
How big was yours?”
Emmet stared at Quinlin. “Bigger than my hand.” He held one hand out as though it was holding a huge boiled spud, and with his other hand he mimicked peeling the jacket off it in just one swift slice of his thumbnail.
I could hardly imagine a spud that big . . . not now in October. Any big spuds there were had been eaten long ago.
Quinlin blinked. “Flat like that, or curled in a fist?”
“Flat.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Emmet stood up and swaggered toward Quinlin.
“None of that carrying on,” said Deirdre. “Sit down, Emmet.” Deirdre was thirteen, only a year older than me, but she had the weight of authority in her voice. Plus she held baby Nola in her arms, which made her seem that much more in charge. Baby Nola’s hair stuck out in every direction all fuzzy and soft. I wanted to pet it.
When little Paddy was just a babe, I used to carry him around everywhere like that. I pulled little Paddy onto my lap now, big as he was.
“I don’t have to listen to you.” Emmet frowned at Deirdre. “You’re big sister to Nola and Quinlin, but you’re nothing to me.”
“But I’m big sister to you, I am,” said Alana. “Sit down. No one cares how big your spud was, anyway.”
“I care,” said Riley.
So did I. I wished I’d had a spud that big at the midday meal this Sunday. Oh, I knew Emmet had to be exaggerating. As Ma said, for some people all their geese were swans. But I still bet Emmet’s was big. We had only small ones left, and few at that. After the initial digging back in August, with that amazing splurge of spuds, we’d had only one each at the midday meal and one each at the evening meal—Ma and little Paddy and me. Da got two, of course. No one could argue with that. It was pitiful little for a grown man. Pitiful little for all of us.
But even so, Ma’s careful rationing wasn’t going to help for long. Only two months had passed since the murrain hit and that much was already clear.
I was there beside him each time Da went to the spud pits. I helped him lift off the turf he had covered the pits with as protection against thieves, human and animal, and I helped push aside the ferns underneath. I stood there speechless with him as we stared at the mess. Spuds that had looked healthy when they were pulled from the dirt were rotting fast in storage.
And in both pits. So I wasn’t cunning after all.
Last week Da and all the other tenant farmers on the estate had gathered on the lawn outside the landlord’s castle and begged for help. There was nothing to eat. Food, for pity’s sake, food. Little Paddy and I peeked from behind the old stone wall and saw it all and heard it all. The men said things I’d never known before—awful things about what people had done because they were desperate. A few times I put my hands over little Paddy’s ears, but he scratched them off.
The landlord said he knew the crop had been unfavorable. Unfavorable? It had failed, they said. He grimaced, but said there would be no handouts on his property—that was surely the way to ruin trade. Handouts? They were starving, they said. I hated that word: starving. Others said it a lot, but we never even whispered it in our home—as though saying it would bring it on. The landlord insisted that rotten spuds mixed with seaweed were a nutritious meal—even some fancy duke somewhere had said that. That was no answer at all; we all knew how sick we got from eating rot. The landlord would never understand that. So the tenant farmers begged for jobs through the winter. How was a farmer to survive otherwise? But the landlord asked, what jobs? He had no use for tenant farmers during the cold months. And that was the end of that.
Just last night I’d heard Da tell Ma that the pits would be empty soon. Ma had planted extra cabbage and kale right after the murrain, and they were coming in now, big enough to eat. The yield from this planting would last till spring. But Ma said cabbage and kale didn’t put flesh on bones. And they sure didn’t satisfy like spuds.
This was trouble. Worse trouble than we’d ever known.
I looked around at the expectant faces of my friends. “Who’s telling?”
“Telling? I’m for hurling,” said Emmet. He was still standing—and all I could think was, Poor Alana. She was the oldest among us and she was always fair and wise. But she had a horrible, disobedient little brother. Emmet turned in a circle to look at all of us. “Our Sundays were a lot more fun together when we played. Who votes for hurling?”
“No one else had a spud as big as yours at the midday meal today,” said Riley. “No one else has the energy to run after the ball.”
“Aw, cop on! How can you be so thick? Your da’s grand at hurling. You’ll be grand at hurling if you just stop being a puss face and give it a try.”
Alana got up and pushed on Emmet’s shoulders, till he was sitting like the rest of us. “I’ve got a good story.”
“So what?” said Emmet. “I’ve heard all your stories. Besides, good stories don’t fill the belly.”
“Neither does hurling,” said Carrick.
“Do any of you know what haggis is?” said Fiona.
“I do,” said little Aeden.
“Me too,” said Corey.
Fiona put her hand up to hush them. “Don’t be thick. Naturally, you do, Aeden and Corey. We . . .” She looked across Murray and Neil and Iona. “We all do in our family. I’m asking the others, the ones who aren’t our brothers or sisters.”
“You win, Fiona,” said Carrick. “What’s haggis?”
“It’s Scottish.” Fiona nodded at us all. “Our ma used to make it. She grew up way over in Scotland. Close your eyes and I’ll tell you how it’s made.”
“What’s the point of that?” said Carrick.
“Just shut your gob and listen. First, you take a sheep stomach.”
“Sheep stomach stinks,” said Carrick.
“What do you know?” said Corey. He squeezed his eyes shut tight.
“All animal stomachs stink,” said Carrick.
“Just hush!” Fiona clapped sharp and fast. “I’ll belt the next person who speaks. I’m doing the talking now. Just me. So . . . you take a sheep stomach and you wash the inside out really good. Good good good. Then you rub salt into it and you wash it again. By that point, it doesn’t stink; it doesn’t smell at all.” Fiona nodded at us. “Sometimes there’s fat globs hanging on and sometimes stringy things. You rip those off and you soak the whole thing in cold salty water for hours. Then you turn the stomach inside out.”
Emmet cleared his throat and opened his mouth.
“No one speaks but me!” Fiona pointed at Emmet. “No one! Don’t be bold.” She made a mean face at all of us. “Now, while the stomach is soaking . . . before you turn it inside out . . . you boil the sheep heart and liver—then you chop them up.”
Kearney groaned as though in disgust.
Alana punched Kearney in the shoulder and rolled her eyes heavenward. I felt sorry for her, being the big sister of both Emmet and Kearney. It was too much for any girl to bear. I kissed little Paddy on the top of the head.
“Now you take oatmeal and toast it brown. Then mix it with the liver and heart and add nice things—like salt and pepper and nutmeg.” Fiona took a deep breath, as though she was smelling those ingredients. “And you put in some fat from the kidneys. That’s important.” She folded her hands together under her chin. “So important.” She licked her bottom lip. “Then tuck it all into the stomach. You have to leave plenty of room for the oats to swell up. And you sew it tight, then drop it in a pot of stock—you know, the water left from boiling the heart and liver—and cook it for hours.”
Fiona stopped speaking.
We all waited, eyes on Fiona. Even Corey looked at her now.
“Are you done?” asked Carrick.
“I am. Wasn’t that delicious?”
“It was blather,” said Kearney. “Garbage.”
“And a fib,” said Emmet.
“A fib?” Fiona thrust her chin toward Emmet. “I never tell fibs.”
“You did this time,” said Emmet. “If you boil a sewed-up stomach, it’ll explode.”
Lots of kids laughed and whispered.
“You’re all thick,” said Murray. “You make little holes in it before you boil it. Just knife pricks. Anyone knows that. My sister doesn’t fib. Take it back, Emmet. Take it back right now!”
“I take it back,” said Emmet. “You don’t need to bite my head off. I take it back for sure. But haggis is still garbage.”
“No it’s not,” said Corey. “And when Fiona was telling, I shut my eyes and you know what? I tasted that haggis. I loved it. And now I feel full.”
“Full?” said Emmet.
“Nearly,” said Corey.
“I feel satisfied too,” said Teagan. “I love anything with haslet—that’s what my first ma used to call those things, liver and heart and lungs and stuff. It was a wonderful telling, Fiona.”
“I agree,” said Sheelagh.
“Me too,” said Noreen.
“Good, then I’ll tell a recipe with spuds,” said Kyla. “Something my whole family loves—including Emmet and Kearney. And we’ll all feel full. So . . . you chop boiled cabbage.”
“Stop,” said Neil. “Don’t tell it like that. All fast and businesslike. Tell it slow. Like Fiona did.”
“Yeah,” said Quinlin. “Make it a real telling. Every detail. Right from the start with picking the cabbage. Fiona did it that way—just like our da. That’s how to do it.”
So their da did tellings too. And suddenly I wondered, did they get together every night—all four cottier families—for one big telling? We were the tenant farmers, but we were isolated. They were just cottier families, but they had one another. When Ma used to call the cottier wives lucky, I thought she was wrong; we were the lucky ones in so many ways. But now I was sensing something new. I wriggled over closer to Alana, pulling little Paddy along.
“I understand,” said Kyla. “I’ll tell every detail. Let’s see. You start in the garden. It’s late afternoon and it’s been a normal day—cool and drizzly. Can you feel it on your skin? You’re all gooseflesh, you know. Feel it?”
“I don’t feel it,” said Emmet. “I want to hear about the food. Try to fill us up.”
“Shut your eyes,” piped up little Paddy.
“Huh?” said Emmet.
“He’s right,” I said. “If we shut our eyes, we’ll listen better. Like Corey did—he said with his eyes shut he tasted the haggis. If we shut our eyes, we’ll be able to feel what Kyla’s saying.”
“I’m waiting,” said Kyla. She looked around at all of us. “Shut your eyes.”
I shut mine.
“You walk slow among the cabbages. Ah, there’s a nice big one. You squeeze it. It’s firm through and through. You cut it off right—so that you leave behind a nice fat stem. That way you’ll get lots of sprouts on the stem later.” She gave a loud sigh. “I love the little sprouts later. You wash that head, but you don’t have to wash it like Fiona’s sheep stomach because it’s not disgusting.”
Lots of laughter.
“The tight leaves keep the inside clean,” Kyla went on. “So boil it. Then just chop it up. Slice one direction, then slice the other. And that nice smell will fill the room.”
“I can smell it,” said someone. I was pretty sure it was Murray. “Like a fart from a pished old man.”
More laughter.
“Shut up. I love cabbage,” said someone else. “And you better too, since soon it’ll be the best we get till next autumn.” I was almost entirely sure that was Emmet talking.
“Spuds,” said Kyla. “Bring your minds back to spuds. Now you take those spuds from the pit. Oh, there’s no job in choosing them. The pit is full of hard spuds—all of them healthy. They aren’t small like now, but big, really big, full-grown spuds, all of them. And all of them smell of nothing but dirt. Just holding them makes you smile. Feel how solid they are in your hand? You can toss them in the air and they come back down into your hand with a hard slap. Nothing mushy.”
