A Fenian Girl
Mary Ann McGuigan
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It sounds like she’s reciting the rosary, her way to get through this. It’s dark outside, way past our bedtime, and Mama is repeating names and dates once told to her, conjuring faces long gone. “We lived on MacDougal Street in the Village. Grandpa worked for the city. For many years. He never lost his job during the Depression. We even had a car.” We’ve heard the stories many times before, always in the dark, when we’re too frightened to stay alone in our own beds, recited like incantations, like proof that her life wasn’t always without hope.
I lie close to her, burrowing under the ratty blanket with Kevin and Irene, their skinny legs entwined in mine, our eyes and hair a medley of Celtic genes: Irene, eight years old, with hair the color of sable matching huge black eyes already haunted; me, two years younger, with freckles on pale skin; three-year-old Kevin, blond and wordless, with a troubled face. Mama is just beginning to go gray, and her bottle-red hair, like her skin, has no luster.
“The Depression was a terrible time in our country,” she croons, weaving a past unlike the present, strengthening the flimsy threads connecting us to people we don’t have to be ashamed of. “So many men were out of work. Grandpa made me give up my job, leave it for someone who needed it more.”
“Someone trying to support a family,” Irene intones, able by now to recite the stories herself.
In the next room, connected by a wide doorway, Kathleen, Sean, and Danny—all in their teens—are seated at a three-legged card table braced against the wall, where it has blackened the fading wallpaper. Sean, my oldest brother, keeps the table still with one knee as he deals the hand. The flickering light from the Magnavox’s tiny black-and-white picture makes their faces jump in the darkness. It’s nearly ten-thirty, and I can tell from the way Kathleen giggle that Milton Berle is dressed in drag.
Mama’s words have turned into song, her voice like malted milk, filling and sweet. I rest my head against her stomach, and I can hear the song forming there. She sings about waiting for the man she loves and how he’ll come along some day, big and strong. We’re waiting for her man tonight. He’s big and strong, but I don’t know why she loves him.
Daddy’s key scrapes the lock. The others must have heard it too, because everyone gets quiet. I can’t feel the movement of Mama’s breathing anymore. Someone turns off the light above the card table, and the players rise almost as one, tiptoe into the bedroom, with barely a sound. Scurrying across the linoleum floor, they climb onto the bunk beds, tucking themselves close to the wall. Someone giggles, and I’m sure it’s Danny. “Shut up,” Sean hisses.
“Shut up, yourself,” Danny says. “I ain’t afraid of him.” And he may be right to feel that way, because sometimes Daddy comes home practically sober, with stories to tell about his crazy drinking buddies. But when he’s drunk he’s like a stranger, smells like the inside of a smoky tavern, doesn’t seem to understand who we are.
Kathleen’s head appears above the railing of the top bunk, her thick hair, wild, escaping its barrettes. She peers down at me, as if from a rickety lifeboat, and presses her finger against her lips, a needless warning to stay quiet.
“Maybe he’ll go right to sleep,” Mama whispers. She strokes Kevin’s sweaty hair, but the gesture doesn’t soothe, because I can feel him trembling. I want him to stop. I want to put my hand over his mouth, because he may cry out, signal where we are. Nora, the oldest, was always able to keep Kevin from crying, but she got married last year, after she turned sixteen, so she’s not here anymore.
The door slams shut, and Daddy’s broad, callused palm slides along the living room wallpaper. Then stillness. He doesn’t turn on the light; it’s useless to him. Since the accident, his eyesight has worsened. He’s all but blind.
I strain to hear the direction of his footsteps, bite the edge of Mama’s nightgown, tasting the perfume and soap now part of the cotton. Irene takes Mama’s Virgin Mary—the statue Sean won at the parish fair—from the bedside table and holds it to her chest. At last the first guttural mumbles break, at once a fright and a relief because he isn’t within reach yet. The springs of the couch creak and I lift my head above the rampart of my mother’s hip to watch him slowly remove his shoes. A nasal voice beckons from the television screen, “Call for Philip Morris,” but he waves it away, as if annoyed, then sits quiet, leaning forward, elbows on his knees, his head in his hands.
I pray he’ll go to bed, retreat to the tiny bedroom off the parlor, but the mumbling resumes, turns into slurred shouts. “Where are you?” he calls, but Mama doesn’t answer. “Get out here,” he commands and I close my eyes. “Get out here,” he repeats, shouting it differently this time, like a drunken actor testing his inflection, and when I open my eyes again I see that he’s on his feet. “I’ll tear this place apart. I’m warning you.” He begins to make good on his threat, smashing the card table to the floor. The TV lights up the hearts and diamonds scattering through the air.
I feel Mama’s body stiffen. Maybe some resolve has formed. Daddy shuffles toward the wide doorway. “Where are you?” His silhouette blinks on and off in the TV light. I smell his drunkenness, hear Irene’s frightened cry catching in her throat. I reach for Mama’s arm, but I’m too late to stop her. She’s out of bed now, on her feet. His arms flail in the air, a comedian running in place before the flickering light of a movie projector. He can’t connect.
“I’m right here, Jim. Right in front of you,” Mama taunts. The challenge is foolish, dangerous.
Kevin cries out loud, and Irene holds him closer, their sobs indistinguishable. But I watch Daddy’s hands as he reaches for Mama’s voice. They’re huge, unpredictable, within reach now, and as his broad palm smashes her face, her head jerks back. She regains her balance and lets out a sound, a moan that comes out like a warning. Mama becomes a warrior then, like the Fenians in Daddy’s songs. “No more,” she whispers, a horse growl, as if she’s changing the rules. “That’s enough.”
Kathleen calls to her—“Mama, don’t”—because she knows what comes next. I know it too, but I don’t want her to stop. I want her to take a stand this time, like our people fighting the British. It’s the right thing to do, the only thing. I stand up, my footing wobbly on the bed, feet tangled in the hem of my hand-me-down nightgown. To my father, I’m a shadow. He can’t see me getting out of bed, moving toward them, can’t see my whitened knuckles.
He strikes again, and this time Mama falls. A discarded baby doll squeaks beneath her as she hits the floor. He gasps, then leans over her, reaching down, his hands probing for her shoulder, her hip. “Mary. God dammit,” he says, as if bewildered by how she got there.
With both hands, I grab his arm, but he pays no attention. Sean’s voice is the loudest, shouting my name, because I’m trying to pull Daddy away from Mama. I hear Irene screaming and Kathleen calling to me as Sean climbs down from the bunk. Daddy straightens up, and I know I should run. But Sean stands near him, chest to chest. “Leave them alone,” he says, though all he has is a boy’s voice, not a warrior’s.
Daddy raises his hand, as if about to strike him. “Stop it,” I shout, and he lowers his hand, covers his face with it, begins to moan. He seems dazed, and I feel my heart pounding in my chest, the sharp urgency low in my groin, the fear I might wet myself. Mama struggles to her feet, her mouth slightly open, as if unable to find words to describe what’s become of us. She grasps Daddy’s forearm, which steadies them both, and he puts his arm across her shoulders, leans toward her. “Mary?” he says, as if she can explain all this to him, these children standing there before him like toy soldiers, fists ready.
She puts her arm around his waist, a comfort that confuses me. They’re like soldiers left dazed on a bloody battlefield, unsure whose side they’re on. But I see that it’s safe to breathe, that we’re all safe for now. And I know whose side I’m on.
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Mary Ann McGuigan’s creative nonfiction has appeared in Brevity, Citron Review, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. The Sun, The Massachusetts Review, North American Review, and many other journals have published her fiction. Her collection pieces includes stories named for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net; her new story collection, That Very Place, reaches bookstores in September 2025. The Junior Library Guild and the New York Public Library rank Mary Ann’s novels as best books for teens; Where You Belong was a finalist for the National Book Award.
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