The Charm Bracelet(19)

As the snow melted atop Mary’s head—white on white—Mary crawled on her knees over to another chicken and roused it from its home. It cried and squawked, but reluctantly found another resting place. Mary felt its anguish and mouthed, I’m sorry.

She looked at the ticket as she felt for more eggs:

June 14, 1901.

Prepaid Passenger Ticket

Steerage to America

Four months later, she stood at the rail station, one suitcase and one ticket in hand, ready to board the train that would take her to the ship that would take her to America.

“We will try and send money, but you will need to work when you reach America,” her father said. “Then you can go live with your aunt and uncle in Michigan.”

“We love you, Mary,” her parents said, holding her tightly, kissing her cheeks, her head, her eyes. “Write! And we will see you soon!”

Mary could feel her knees buckle and her heart crumble as her parents let her go, but she could see the hope in their eyes and that alone carried her forward.

Mary boarded and took her seat next to a window, watching her dark-haired, handsome father hold his tiny, blond wife. When the train began to move, Mary’s parents ran alongside, waving goodbye, until the platform ended.

It would be the last time Mary saw her parents.

When Mary arrived at port, she couldn’t believe the size of the giant hulled steamer ship and the number of people boarding. “It’s as if all of Ireland are going to America!” she said to another young girl as she waited to board.

For a brief moment, as Mary boarded with hundreds of others, she walked the ship, wide-eyed at its opulence: Grand salons, flamboyant ballrooms, stunning dining rooms with white tablecloths, silver, and crystal. One of the ballrooms seemed as large to Mary as her whole county.

“Miss! Ticket?”

Mary jumped at the sound of the voice, and turned to find a man in a white uniform holding out his hand.

“Steerage,” he said, before pointing toward a stairwell outside the ballroom. “Down. Down, down, down.”

Mary disappeared down a steep winding steel staircase, her bag banging behind her, until she emerged at the bottom of the ship and was herded—just like she used to do with her father’s chickens—into a tiny pen.

If the top deck were heaven, Mary learned, than steerage was more like hell: It was dark, noisy, smelly, and stuffy.

“Better find a bunk,” an older woman cautioned Mary, as people jostled one another in a near panic.

Mary passed by a series of large bunk dormitories, with little or no privacy. She peeked into bathrooms that were open to all. A sign read that access to the open deck was limited.

Mary tossed her suitcase on an upper bunk, crawled in, and stayed until the same elderly woman who had helped her before brought her soup that night.

“I’m scared,” Mary told her. “I miss my family. Why is everyone leaving home?”

The woman smiled at Mary and swept her locks out of her eyes. Her touch was soft and gentle, like Mary’s mother’s. It grounded her.

“Hope,” the woman whispered. “Hope.”

And for seven days, Mary lay in the dark, eyes closed, fighting seasickness and homesickness whispering that word, “Hope!” to herself, as if it were a life preserver in the middle of the ocean, a parent in this vast world in which she now found herself alone.

“We’re here!” she heard one day. “We’re here!”

A flood of people rushed for the steps, swimming up the stairs, like salmon.

When Mary made it to the deck, exhausted, dirty, dragging her only belongings, she thought she was going blind: She had seen little light in days, and it took her eyes a while to adjust.

Slowly, slowly, the first thing that came into focus—as her hair blew in the early summer wind—was a giant woman, wearing a crown and raising a torch in her right hand, her sandaled feet trampling a broken chain.

“Is that…?” she started.

“The Statue of Liberty!” people were yelling. “America!”

Mary didn’t know why, but she started to cry, weep, and—for the first time—she didn’t feel totally alone.

The steamship docked at Hudson’s Pier to disembark first-and second-class passengers, while third class and steerage boarded a barge to Ellis Island. Mary stood on the barge, clutching her suitcase, the cool wind of America tossing her hair around her head, like the clouds above. The grandeur of the immigration station was unlike anything Mary had ever seen: Towering on Ellis Island was a stunning French Renaissance structure in red brick with limestone trim.

Is America so grand? Mary thought.

Mary was ushered with hundreds of other steerage passengers to the Great Hall Registry, where they waited to undergo medical and legal inspections.

Mary watched as doctors scanned patient after patient, listening to their hearts, looking into their mouths and eyes, studying their skin.

Each time a doctor would state, “Quarantine,” and mark a patient with an X, Mary would struggle to hold back tears.

After hours of waiting, she heard: “Mary O’Connell?”

As a doctor began to look over Mary, her heart raced.

“You are nervous,” he said. “Just take a deep breath…”

Mary inhaled, shut her eyes, and said a prayer.

“Next,” the doctor said, pointing toward another man sitting at a desk, who then checked Mary’s identity against the ship’s manifest.