Late 1889-early 1890
All of the children in the apartment hoped that someone had gotten a sled for Christmas. None of them did.
Eight or ten of them, the tall nurturing big girls down to the 5-year-olds with mittens around their necks, gathered in the alley the day after Christmas to build a snow fort. They stood in a circle and complained that Santa always seemed to bring the rich kids more.
Ciara was the one who noticed key players, 9-year-old twins who lived above them, missing. "Ain't Charlie and Annie coming out?" she said.
"I knocked on the door. They both gots the flu." One of the kids said.
"My mother has a cough."
"So does my big sister."
"Opie's gone too. Is he sick?"
"I heard old Mr. B upstairs is dying." That was from Maggie, who was the oldest and the smartest, so she would know.
Their breaths froze in the air in front of them. Jack was quiet. A decade later, he'd remember this conversation and roll his eyes at his brothers. "Santa never brought rich kids in nice big houses no plague either."
.
A couple days later, it was Jack's turn to report to the crowd that Ciara had woken up sore and feverish. That night, Pat came home from work and crawled into bed. For two weeks.
It wasn't really good playing outside weather, if they were being honest. The snow was too wet and dirty to pack into balls and launch at each other. Their snowballs mostly sunk in midair, collapsing into the street with a cold, sad splat. The ground was slippery, and the littlest kids whined.
But the remaining healthy kids in the building gathered in the alley day after day. Being outside was better than being inside. Inside was suffocating with sickness and anxiety. Jack tried not to think of Ciara and his father, and his mother taking care of them, as he pelted wet snowballs at the side of an old building, leaving polka dots across the red brick.
He and Ciara shared a bed, so Jack wasn't surprised, just miserable, when he woke up on New Years with a cough and a blinding headache.
…
Jack and his father emerged from their feverish haze about a week later. But Ciara wasn't getting better. Neither was Evelyn, flattened by weeks of caregiving.
Not many of the neighbor kids played outside for a week or two—too many people sick, taking care of the sick, or wrapped up in a grey cloud, grieving.
Pat returned to long, hard hours of bricklaying. Jack did his best to make sure Ciara and his mother, both weak and wheezing, had what they needed. He spent most of that long, grey January drawing on scraps of newspaper. He laid on his stomach near the heater, sketching whatever he could see—the table and chairs, the curves of the big stove, snow and buildings, carts and horses out the window. When he showed his drawings to his family, his parents would give a passing nod. Ciara would lift her head from her pillow and smile. He drew her more horses and snowflakes.
.
Ciara died almost exactly how Molly did almost two years earlier.
She'd been coughing for weeks, but one night her breaths grew rapid and shallow. She sat straight up in bed, desperately trying to suck in air. No one slept. Her mouth and fingers and toes turned blue. Breathing took the energy of mountain climbing. It wore her out, until, at sunrise, her breaths were slower and slower. Then they stopped.
Jack kissed her cheek.
Evelyn was too sick for a proper goodbye. She didn't wake up the next day.
The suddenness always haunted Jack. How his mother and sisters—all three strong, sparkling, smiling—could just be gone.
.
Jack pretended to be asleep at their double funeral. He closed his eyes and slouched low in the pew next to his thin, shaking father. He hoped maybe, just maybe, his mother and Ciara would be there when he woke up.
…
Pat didn't like him out on the streets alone, and Jack hated being trapped in their apartment. Everything was too still. Too quiet. Even worse was trying to play in the alley without Ciara's loud laugh and wild imagination. His mother's friends gave him sad smiles and pennies for odd jobs. They taught him to cook well enough to keep them from starving. Jack drew and drew and redrew pictures of every piece of furniture they owned.
He made it to school once or twice a week. He was the only one who didn't know how to read, except for a little girl still young enough to chew on her knuckles. He was okay at math. Jack sat perfectly motionless near a boy he knew from the neighborhood, legs aching on the hard seats. The corner of his slate was filled with drawings of eyes and trees and dogs. He usually erased them before he got caught, but sometimes the teacher's ruler would crack down on the corner of his desk.
"Boy, stop dawdling!" The teacher had a long nose and wore her blonde hair in high, severe bun. She rarely smiled. Jack thought she looked like an owl.
As weather warmed up, he picked up a shift here and there shining shoes, gravel digging into his legs as he knelt on boxes or the sidewalk. The other boys were mostly older, rougher, with ragged clothes and cigars hanging from their lips. But they were nice enough to him.
Shoe shining was good for people watching. Sometimes he tried to tell himself the old Irish legends. Mostly he stared into shiny, expensive shoes and went through the motions. The polish turned his hands grey and brown. Pat worked a lot, too. The busier they could stay, the less they had to think.
...
Jack turned 8 at the end of May, without strawberry cake, without his mother's vibrant stories about him and Ciara as babies, without Ciara's hand in his as they made their wishes for another year. There was nothing but a choking loss, a black, airless pit that settled somewhere under Jack's rib cage. On his birthday, Pat gave him fresh pencils and a small pad of paper to draw with. He was almost too tall to crawl into his father's lap, but he did it anyways. Pat kissed his hair. They didn't talk about it. They couldn't talk about it.
"Love ya, lad." Pat said quietly.
"Love you, too." Jack said. He was thinking of what he could draw with his new paper.
...
Oof that was a heavy one. This was so hard to write, and I'm still not totally happy with it, but I wanted to get something up before work picks up all week. We get to see Jack start drawing! We'll see other baby Newsies in the next chapter. thanks for reading and let me know what you think! -Em