Anna Quinn - The Night Child

Now, she pushes to the back of the closet, where she keeps the shoes she doesn’t wear but might someday, and notices, as if for the first time, the number of shoe boxes, at least thirty, stacked high and in no apparent order. Saucony, Brooks, New Balance, Birkenstock, Doc Martens, Steve Madden, Nine West, Vera Wang. There is only one Vera Wang pair. She’d found the glittery, flirty shoes at a consignment store years ago and had hoped to wear them to a Clinton Inaugural event at the Seattle Center, but when Paul said there was no way in hell he’d go with her, no way he’d ever support a fucking “New Democrat,” she’d decided not to go after all but kept the shoes anyway.

Her eyes scan the columns for the orange box with the white check mark—a Nike box. She would be surprised if she still had Nikes, was sure she’d thrown out the few she had when she’d heard the allegations of abuse in their factories in Asia, their exploitation of children as laborers. But there it is, an orange Nike box, near the bottom of the first column of boxes.

She stares at it, her heart racing like a caged animal. She grits her teeth, refusing to let herself panic, and stretches her body up to remove the boxes above the orange one so the entire column doesn’t fall. By the time she finally gets to the Nike box, her hands are shaking. She hesitates for a moment, then picks it up. It is heavy, and immediately there is the jangle of coins. She sets the box on the floor, kneels, and with trembling hands removes the lid. It’s full of pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters. She touches the coins as if they might not be real. Then she notices things under the coins. A small brown box, a tiny white envelope, and folded pieces of notebook paper. She opens the brown box first. Draws a breath. Her rosary beads—the beads from the rosary her mother had broken. Her cheeks blazing, remembering that moment, Nora counts the opaque blue beads. Forty-nine. She remembers ten beads had been lost. And here is the crucifix. She remembers placing the forty-nine beads with the crucifix in a jar under her bed, and once her mother had died, once she’d been sent to Ireland, she’d never seen the beads again. How is this possible? Could she really have forgotten she’d found them? Placed them in this box in her closet?

She picks up the white envelope. No writing on either side. She opens it. A holy card. A pin-pricking charge ripples across her skin. On the front, a woman with a ring of stars around her head, body draped in purple, a gold sword held high, her right foot on a dragon’s head. On the back, typed words in gilded print: st. margaret, patron saint of the falsely accused and those in exile, help us. Nora sits perfectly still in the silence. Eyes fixed on the holy card, the beads, the coins, items she has no recollection of saving in this box. A realization hits her hard—she needs to take Margaret very seriously. Margaret may be an invention of her consciousness, ludicrous, contrary to reason, but nonetheless, Margaret knows things . Things that Nora does not. Still, Nora thinks, nausea rising again, that doesn’t mean her words about my father are true . “Go away,” Nora whispers out loud to Margaret. “ Please go away .”

And finally, the white notebook paper. She unfolds the pages slowly. It’s a story she’d written on her tenth birthday. She remembers writing this. She’d gone into her closet one afternoon to stay out of her mother’s way until her father got home. He was going to bring a birthday cake.

Promises

Once, a long time ago, a mother and father took their new baby girl across the sea to Ireland to have it baptized by an Irish priest because the mother said Irish priests were closer to God than priests in Chicago and because the mother had not seen her family since she was eighteen years old and now she is twenty-one. In America she met her husband and married him.

On the morning of the baptism, it was very stormy and the hawthorn trees outside the church were shivering in the wind and people had to bend their heads down just to walk. The grandmother and grandfather and seven aunts and their husbands and two uncles and their wives and one uncle who was too young to have a wife yet and twelve children were going to the baptism. The neighbors were going too. Everyone walked for miles in a long line to the church.

The father looked extremely handsome, like a prince. He was twenty-two years old. He wore a navy-blue suit with a white shirt and a sea-green tie. He wanted to wear his new black hat but it kept blowing off in the wind so he carried it in his hand. The mother wore a lovely violet dress and a matching violet hat pinned into her long, flaming-red hair.

The baby wore a special white gown worn by her mother at her own baptism. The gown was made by the mother’s great-great-grandmother Brighid. She knit the white gown from the finest white yarn. She made the yarn herself from the wool of her own fine sheep.

Babies must wear white to show they are spotless in the eyes of God.

Everyone went inside the church except for the grandfather who waited outside because he didn’t like churches.

Inside the church, it was dark, it was very dark and the baby became scared and began to cry and so the mother carried her to a life-size statue of the Virgin Mary up by the altar. The Virgin Mary held out her arms out as if she wanted to hold the baby. The baby stared at the statue and stopped crying.

The mother stood with the father and the priest in front of everyone and held the baby tight in her arms. An altar boy dressed in white held a golden tray with two golden chalices upon it. One chalice was filled with holy water and the other held perfumed oil blessed by the bishop. The water would wash away the sins of the baby and give her new life. The oil would give the baby power from the Holy Ghost.

The priest sprinkled drops of holy water and perfumed oil on the baby’s forehead and said to the father in a loud voice, “Do you promise to love this baby with all your heart and soul?”

And the father said, “Yes, I promise.”

And the priest said, “Do you promise to protect her from all harm?”

And the father said, “Yes, I do.”

And then the priest said to the mother, “Do you promise to love this baby with all your heart and soul?”

And the mother said, “Yes, I promise.”

And the priest said, “Do you promise to protect her and keep her safe and protect her from all harm?”

And the mother said, “Yes, I promise.”

And then the priest turned to the Godparents and asked them to make promises too.

Then the priest took the baby from the mother and lifted her up high and said, “I baptize thee Nora in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Oh, Almighty God, may you bless this child and help her mother and father keep their promises forever and if they don’t, please help save the girl. Amen.” And then all the people in the church said, “Amen,” and the priest gave the baby back to the mother.

After the baptism everyone walked down the road to the pub to celebrate because the baby’s soul was saved. When they got there the mother was tired and she set the baby on a hard bench and went to get a drink at the bar. The baby became frightened and started to cry but the grandfather came and held her in his arms. He dipped his finger in whiskey and put it on her lips and sang, “The violets were scenting the woods, Nora, displaying their charm to the bee,” until the baby fell asleep.

Nora wipes her eyes and wills her hands to place everything back in the box, wills them to put the lid on and shove it back into place, piling the other boxes, one by one, on top of it. She will not think about this anymore tonight.