John Sayles - A Moment in the Sun

“I mean hungry for everything. Hungry for our lands, our souls, hungry for the world. These people,” he waves to the south, to where he knows the Americans are marching, steadily moving forward, “they could devour every one of our islands and never be satisfied.”

The capitán municipal shuffles up to Diosdado, bowing twice as he approaches, and holds something out to him. It is a flintlock pistol from the time of the Peninsular War and smells like the cigar box it has been kept in.

“My grandfather owned this,” he says. “He fought against the Spanish.”

“All alone?”

“Whenever they turned their backs. I offer it to the Cause.”

“Do you have bullets for it, hermano ?” asks Bayani.

The man scratches his head. “My grandfather kept them hidden in a different place, so we wouldn’t be tempted to shoot each other. But he is dead now.”

“After the battle has passed and you’ve come back,” says Diosdado, gently pushing the pistol back into the capitán’s hands, “send the children out onto the field to pick up the shell casings. We have a factoría in San Fernando where they are filled and become bullets again.”

“ Por supuesto, mi tentiente .”

“And when you talk to the yanqui officer, tell him that you were forced to help us dig, that there were hundreds and hundreds of us and you were afraid.”

“If you wish, sir.”

“And when those boys who raised the flag are a bit older—”

“My sons?”

“When your sons are a bit older, send them to join with us.”

The capitán municipal is clearly troubled by the idea that the war may last so long. “But where will you be?”

“With the Igorots,” smiles Bayani, “in the Cordillera. Sharpening our spears with the true Filipinos.”

“It’s a poor cut of meat that wants special wrapping.”

Brigid tries to pull her stomach up under her ribs as Grania laces from behind. When she bought the corset, the shopgirl called it an investment in her future.

“Ye should wear it more often,” says Grania. “It wouldn’t hurt so much.”

“And trussed up at work as well? On my knees scrubbin the boards with this takin me breath away?”

Maeve holds the pitted mirror she salvaged before the trash man got it. “But look at the shape it gives you.”

“It isn’t natural.”

“All the girls will be lookin the same,” says Grania.

Grania is an authority on what all the girls are wearing, what all the girls are saying and doing. Not a thought in her head but boys and how to get them to pay mind to her, impatient to escape from school and begin what she likes to call her “proper life.”

“None will hold a candle to our Brigid,” says Maeve. Brigid has hope yet for Maeve, who is sweet and clever at books and speaks like an American and still has her hair in braids.

“None will be my age, either.”

“Ye look no older than ye are,” says Grania, pulling the laces taut and tying them off. “Turn sideways — there, d’ye see?”

“Hand me the waist.”

“Yer not wearin the plain one—”

“And why not?”

“Because yer going to see the Elephant, not to a temperance meeting.” Grania pulls her own striped blouse from the peg beneath Father’s fading portrait of Parnell. “This might fit ye.”

“The Elephant burned down, and I’ll not wear that, whether it fits me or not.”

“Ye liked it when ye bought it for me.”

“It’s too flossy for a woman of my—” she is about to say age, but that isn’t it. They bought it from a jewcart because it looked like the one Grania had admired in a store window on Grand Street, the three of them out dream-shopping together one night when Brigid wasn’t too tired. But the material is not the same and up close you can tell that it is only an imitation.

“Ye have to wear somethin.”

“Give me the black.”

“That ye wore for Father’s funeral?”

“It’s the best I own.”

“But—”

“Black will set her hair off,” says Maeve, putting the mirror down and hurrying to the dresser. Trying to spare her feelings, it’s clear, but Brigid appreciates the effort. Maeve jiggles the broken drawer till it opens, then pulls out the blouse, black bombazine with vertical pleats that Mother brought from Donegal.

“And it goes with my skirt—”

“He’ll take one peep,” says Grania, sighing with exasperation, “and offer his condolences.”

“One more word,” says Brigid in the tone that Mother would use when she’d had her limit with them, “and I’ll jerk a knot in ye.” She feels a fool, standing there in corset and gauze stockings, girding herself for an excursion with a man she hardly knows, and her sister’s mockery on top of it—

Maeve has to climb on a chair to deal with her hair, plaiting it first then artfully piling it over the pompadour frame on the crown of her head. She does it with the same nimble care as when she hung the cloth to cover the grimy walls, as she applies to the funeral wreaths assembled by lamplight each evening after school. “ A dexthrus hand ,” Father used to say. “ She’ll earn a handsome wage someday .”

“If ye had a poof,” says Grania, “ye could wear it higher.”

“Any higher and I’ll topple from the weight of it. And I haven’t even got the shoes on yet.”

Rivka who scrubs with her at the Musee has loaned her the shoes, calf-high leather with a heel as long as her middle finger.

“They’ll shape up your legs,” she said, winking. “Just in case he gets a gander at em.”

Brigid can’t bend over with the corset on so Maeve kneels to button them up.

There is much discussion over the hat, ending with Grania allowing her the simple black straw as long as Maeve is allowed to decorate it with ribbon and rosettes. Grania studies Brigid’s face as she buttons her collar tight.

“Ye should do yer lips over.”

“I’m a working woman,” says Brigid, “not a streetwalker.”

“It’s not who ye are, it’s the idea of ye they carry in their heads.”

“And what do you know about men?”

Grania sneaks out with older ones, girls sixteen and seventeen with money from their shops and lunchrooms, and Brigid has warned her and threatened her and pleaded with her not to be so fast, to enjoy what she can of life before giving up to the hard weight of family the way that Mother did, just a girl herself when Brigid was born. Mother who was wore out at thirty when they took the boat, and dead within the year.

“I know enough,” says Grania. “Take a few steps and lookit yerself.”

Grania holds the mirror for her and she totters around a bit, getting used to the shoes.

“You look lovely,” says Maeve, on the chair again to pin the newly adorned hat to Brigid’s hair. “Like a queen.”

Brigid turns to kiss her cheek. “Yer a darlin to say so. But I don’t feel like meself at all.”

“It’s only a different you,” says Grania, taking her hand. “A special you.”

“You’ll have a grand time,” says Maeve. “Ride the wheel, shoot the chutes—”

“I’ll do no such thing.”

Neither of the girls has ever been to Coney, and Brigid only the once with Mick Cassiday the bricklayer who was so full that halfway through the day he pulled her out on the crowded beach and proceeded to fall asleep right on the sand, herself sitting on his little square of a handkerchief till his snoring attracted a gang of little mischief-makers and she took the steamer back alone.

“It’ll be loads of fun whatever you do.”

Brigid turns her head this way and that, studying the damage in the ancient looking glass. “Fun,” she says, “has nothing to do with this.”