Daughter of Australia (7 page)

Father McIntyre ground his heel into the dirt and he was suddenly angry and he was too tired in mind to know that it was wrong to be angry. “Aren't you happy here?” It was more accusation than question. “Haven't I cared for you as a real father would? Haven't I taught you and loved you as a real father would?”

James's face fell and his chin pointed to his chest.

A pit filled the Father's stomach. “I'm sorry, James.” He covered his eyes with his hands and rubbed away the anger. “I'm so sorry. I had no right to say such a thing.” He squeezed his temples. “I'm not well today. The Bishop's visit . . . the stress of . . . I took it out on you. I'm sorry.” He pulled at the boy's arm. “Do you forgive me?”

“Yes, Father.” But the great hurt still clung to his voice and face.

“I'll write the letter, James. Just as you asked. I'll do it today. I promise.”

James looked up and hope entered again, cautiously this time. Father McIntyre took the boy's face in his hands and cradled it. “I'll write the letter, James. But please don't get your hopes up. Ireland's a big place and O'Connell is a common name. I'll write the letter. But please, my son, don't dream too much.”

James nodded, but the dream had already taken root.

T
hey met at the cliffs every day—Leonora with bread and James with beetles and worms. They padded the nest with new, green leaves and refilled water in hollowed sticks. At times the bird beat her dead wing for flight and at others sat upon tucked legs while the meal was fed to her.

James plopped next to a scraggly yellow-blossomed wattle and leaned on his elbows, his knees bent at the cliff edge and his bare toes pointing down toward the sea. Leonora's legs crossed at the ankles as she swung them gently against the sandstone wall.

The two small bodies sat in quiet company under a sky rich and thick with periwinkle, mimicked by the ocean in both expanse and depth. Hundreds of feet below their toes, unfiltered rays played across the sea as light dances over diamonds, the ocean moving lazily, peacefully along its natural current, meeting the cliffs with laps that hardly splashed. Pelicans and seagulls bobbed effortlessly along the ebbs and flows, their bellies fat and tired from feeding in the clear water. And the children settled into the environment just like the birds and lizards and insects, as if they had always been there.

From the corner of his eye, James caught a glimpse of Leonora's long hair, the way each strand held the sun. She turned to him and smiled and the warmth spread across his skin until he had to turn away.

“Ireland's got cliffs like these,” James announced too loudly. “Only white. White as powder. They're made of chalk. Did you know that? No different than the stuff they use on the blackboard. Father McIntyre's got a whole book about the place.”

Leonora leaned on one hand planted in the grass, listened with full eyes to every word.

“They call Ireland the Emerald Isle 'cause of all the green,” he continued. “The grass grows greener and brighter than anywhere else on earth. The houses there are white like the cliffs.” He looked far off over the sea. “Must be so beautiful with all that green and white. Must look like a field of mushrooms.” They settled their thoughts on the image.

“Ireland's got loads of sheep, too. Not brown ones like here but soft white ones. They got piles of potatoes . . . got so many in the ground you can't hardly put a spade down without digging one up. You've never seen potatoes like Irish potatoes, Leo. They're near bigger than my foot!” He stuck out his foot dramatically and her irises shone.

“Someday I'm gonna live there. Gonna build myself a little white house right atop those white chalk cliffs and I'm going to fill that green grass with sheep. Gonna fill it with so many sheep that when I look out my window it looks like clouds floating on a green sky. I'll shear them myself, too. I've been practicing. Probably have a patch of potatoes, too. Got to. Might even be the law that you gotta grow potatoes.” He squinted and his eyes flickered with the thoughts forming in his mind. Leonora followed suit, trying to see what he saw.

“Every night I'll have stew so thick with meat and potatoes it'll be hard to get the spoon in. In the corner of the kitchen I'll set a butter churn. I'll churn it myself, I will. I'll slab that butter an inch thick on my bread and eat it at every meal.” He looked over at Leonora and lowered his eyes in embarrassment at all his talking, but she only smiled, and when she smiled she brought his out of its dormancy and it didn't feel so odd anymore.

“You can come with me, you know. You can spin the wool. I saw you do it with Sister Margaret. I'll shear, you'll spin and we'll go into town and sell it and then get fat on butter.”

Leonora rested her head on her shoulder and listened to his voice like it was a song. In the distance the church bell rang dully, and James's brows fell heavy again.

“I gotta get out of this place.” He held his knees and rocked, looked out over the water. “Something about this place turns people mean and I hate it. Sometimes I feel like I could get mean and I don't want to.” He looked at her desperately. “I don't ever want to turn mean, Leo.”

A final ring rose from the bell, then died in the air. He watched her profile for a moment, noticed the odd way the sun etched the lines of her forehead, nose and chin as if they glowed. Then he threw his legs back over the edge of the cliff and laid his head into the grass playfully.

“Know what your problem is, Leo?”

Her face grew worried.

He smirked and closed his eyes. “You talk too much.”

 

A few days later, James and Leonora met at the curved trail of the church. A rush of sprayed pebbles and laughter met their ears and Michael Langley and two other boys plowed over the stones, whipping past them. Michael turned, held his neck as if choking before running clumsily down the path.

James watched them disappear. “Ignore them, Leo. Bunch of idiots.” When he turned to her she was still as stone, her eyes glued to the sea. Realization hit him slowly, but she knew already and a flash of heat shot through his veins. He tried to speak, but his throat tightened. “No, Leo,” he whispered.

Like a snapped rope, she tore to the cliffs, but he was stuck with heavy feet, mired in dread. “Leo, no!” he screamed, and pulled his muscles to hurry and catch up.

He found her in the only place she could be, in front of a pyramid of boulders and a wild rosebush. He stood several feet behind and she did not turn around. Her body was stone again. James breathed hard through his nose and his lips stretched against his teeth. “Don't look at it, Leo. Don't look.”

Leonora finally turned, her face pale. Her lips were open and her chin crinkled. Her eyes were wide circles of bewilderment and horror and grief so deep it physically pained his chest. James stepped forward. “Leo . . .”

But she turned from him and ran hard along the cliffs and he did not follow. His eyes fell to the ground, to the clump of yellow feathers that ruffled in the wind and stuck to the edges of the rosebush, and anger welled inside—an anger he'd never known, an anger that clawed his insides and made him dizzy with hate. He turned toward the orphanage and beat the path with a steady, determined pace.

F
ather McIntyre's cassock draped over his thighs as he pulled his legs uphill, the exertion laboring. The evening descended and the sky turned indigo. A thin slice of moon paled above the steeple like a lizard's eye.

Growing winds reminded him the ocean was near. Father McIntyre focused on his stilted breathing, surprised by how out of shape he had become. His black shoes navigated the rocks, temporarily flattening any long grass that grew between. A small wool blanket swayed in his arms. He crossed the line on the path between comfort and vertigo, but he huffed through it, knowing if he stopped he'd lose his nerve. He owed the child at least this much.

Father McIntyre found the little girl sitting against a gnarly gum, her head buried in her arms. He stilled for a moment to calm his breath and then approached, gently covering her shoulders with the blanket. “It's all right, dear. I've got you now.” He picked her up into his arms and tucked her head into his neck. She was light as a feather.

Father McIntyre carried her away from the cliffs and the vertigo lifted. A few stars peeked through the darkest line of sky as he brought her into the church and settled her into his office chair.

“James told me what happened,” he said quietly. “I'm sorry, Leonora. Children can be cruel. Deeply cruel.” They were words that would mean nothing and he struggled for inspiration, swept his mind for words that could console. He lifted her chin. “Leonora?”

Her pupils rose slowly and met his and his heart pulled. He stared into aged eyes that had seen too much sorrow for one lifetime—old, sad eyes trapped in a beautiful sweet face that held no hate, though it had every right to. Father McIntyre knew those eyes, knew them so well that he saw himself in their reflection. A deep sadness overcame him and tears formed. Memories trickled to the surface and he could not pull away from her pain, his pain. He knew what he had to do, even if it meant opening a part of his past long locked away.

He fell into thought for several moments, his features grave as he gathered enough strength to proceed. He sighed, found the key tucked in the desk drawer. He took down a long wooden box from a shelf and brought it back to his desk, unlocked it. He hadn't looked inside since he was a child, but he never forgot for a moment what it held.

His bottom lip twisted as he held his jaw tight and pulled out a square photo. The paper, sepia with age and ripped slightly in the corner, had creases marking years of folds. His thumb covered one of the faces and he moved it slowly, uncovering his face as a young boy. Father McIntyre placed the photo on the desk. “This is a picture of my family—my mother and father, my two younger brothers. That's me with the hair sticking up.” He pointed without joviality.

The sound of a rifle fired in his mind and he jumped invisibly. His nostrils flared; he could almost smell the smoke. “I was just a little older than you.”

Leonora, still as a statue, stared at the picture.

“About a year after this photo was taken . . .” He paused. The rifle blasted again and he closed his eyes. “My parents . . . passed away.” He swallowed the lump filling his throat, but it didn't pass. He remembered the feel of the gun as he tried to push it out of his father's hands; the coldness of it and then the enormous heat as it smashed his mother across the wall. An icy rush washed over him. He had watched paralyzed as his father turned the gun on himself and fired. “They went to Heaven,” he said softly.

Father McIntyre pushed the gun, the faces, away and spoke clearly. “We were all alone, my brothers and me. We had nothing. No money. No food. No parents.”

Her eyes were on him now, watching him closely from under lowered lids.

“I was sent to live with my uncle and his wife. My two little brothers were sent to an orphanage.” Fresh pain stabbed as he remembered seeing their tiny, scared faces—two faces he promised to protect and never saw again.

“In less than a week, I had lost my parents and my brothers. In a matter of a week, my world crumbled.” His gaze bore through her and fell far away. “I didn't understand. My whole world, my life, my family, swallowed up. I wanted it all to stop . . . the insanity to just stop. I didn't want to move. Didn't want to breathe. Didn't want to speak.” He looked at her intently and said softly, “So I didn't. I folded into myself and I stopped talking. I just stopped.”

Leonora's tiny hands tightened on the blanket folds.

“It wasn't something that I chose to do and my life was much harder because of it, but I just couldn't. Every time I wanted to speak, something closed. My uncle would scream at me to talk, hit me. The kids at school tormented me to no end. The more I was abused, the deeper my voice hid. I wanted to disappear, to fade away.” He stared above her head as he spoke, as much to himself as to the child.

“I suffered greatly until that was all I had left in my life—suffering. I didn't want to exist anymore, Leonora.” His face twisted and his eyes burned with restrained tears eager to fall. “And I almost didn't.” He remembered the razor, the sharp pain from its blade and the calm. He remembered the bright blood and the hope, the flow of death. “I almost disappeared.”

His gaze carried to her face, the sadness weighing in his dark eyes. “I don't want you to suffer as I did, Leonora.”

Their eyes locked and a communion forged that went beyond age or gender—went below skin and resonated to the organs and blood. Beyond his pain and the memories, something screamed in victory. For this was what he had lost, the soul's connection to another, and the fire lit and spread across him to the parts that had begun to numb and take him over, and it overshadowed the blood and the pain and the death.

A tear filled the corner of the girl's eye where it sat heavily before releasing down the side of her nose, over her cheek, and then swept to her neck. It was the first time he had seen her cry and he smiled gratefully, for if she allowed herself to feel she could heal.

Father McIntyre rose from his desk and knelt, taking her little hands in his. He worked through a constricted throat and pleaded, wanting her to understand the significance of his words. “I know your story, Leonora. I know what happened to you in the desert. I know things have happened to you that should never happen to a child. Things that shouldn't happen to anyone.”

Panic entered her face and he was afraid she might try to flee. He held her hands tighter. “I don't know why you were left, but I do know that it was no fault of your own. Only God knows why people make the decisions that they do. What's important is how you deal with the pain. Don't let it consume you. Don't let it turn to hate and consume those around you.” He smiled weakly. “You have better days ahead of you, Leonora. This I promise you.”

Warm tears fell from her face onto his hands and he squeezed her fingers gently. “I know you feel alone, Leonora. But you are not! You weren't even alone in the bush. God was and continues to be with you at every moment, protecting you, watching over you. Don't you see? You were meant to survive; you were meant to be found.”

The warmth of truth seeped through his veins. “You were meant to survive. There is so much light in you, Leonora! I don't want you to fade into the darkness; God doesn't want you to fade into the darkness.

“You are loved, Leonora.” His eyes rimmed with tears as he emphasized each word. “You . . . are . . . loved.”

As he held her hands, something broke inside of her. A cry, almost inaudible, released from the depths of her soul. Father McIntyre's chest burned as he pulled her to him, holding her in his arms while her body shook with the force of sobs, her tiny body crumpling. In choked whispers, he repeated over and over in her ear, “You are loved, dear. You are loved.”

Time did not move as they held together in the small and cluttered office. Only after her shoulders had stilled and her eyes no longer spilled heavy drops upon his sleeve did he pull away from the embrace. He put his hands on either side of her face and tilted her head until her exhausted eyes met his. He smiled. “You're still here, Leonora.”

When he thought she was ready, he rose and held out a hand. “Come with me. There are some people who want to talk to you.” Wearily, she took his hand, and they walked into the hall. The sky was fully black through the windows and the only light came from the open door of his office and the wider ones opened in the rectory. He brought her to the doorway. She froze and would not go farther when she saw the boys sitting in the pews, their backs toward her and heads down but for one.

“It's all right, Leonora. Trust me.” He squeezed her hand and moved her down the line of pews. “Michael,” he ordered fiercely, “stand up!”

Michael stood and turned around, his head bent. “I'm sorry, Leonora.” He raised his head quickly, revealing a bloody nose and swollen left eye.

Thomas rose next. His left eye closed nearly shut and he missed a front tooth. “Thawwy, Leonowa.”

Patrick stood, tried to blink beneath his bruised and cut left eye. “Sorry, Leonora.”

“Go on to bed now!” Father McIntyre snapped. “You'll be doing Leonora's chores for the next month.”

Leonora sat next to the boy in the last pew. His right hand was bandaged from fingers to wrist. A line of red bled through the gauze at the knuckles. And she leaned in and placed a small kiss to James's temple.