Letters sent by one Patrick O'Sullivan.



FEBRUARY 27, 1915

DEAR MOTHER,



I am writing to you from a cellar on 155th Street.



It borders two places: One named Harlem, and another named Washington Heights. I arrived off the steamer from Liverpool to Ellis Island, scurried past the clerks and watchers, and hastily made my way from Jersey to Manhattan. I spent several days trying to find work and rent, settling for housing in a winery with four other migrants. I can say with utmost certainty that Dublin had less Irish than New York. Everywhere I've gone, all — or at least, almost all — have looked like me. They are all poor and ragged and running like pigeons to work for bread.



The streets here are not paved with gold; in fact, some are not paved at all. At night they are overrun with rats as thick as dogs. The belching smoke from the chimneys chokes the air and makes rainy days all the more suffocating.



Those shipbrokers and emigration agents lied to me when they told me of "vast volumes of gold" and the "buildings made ivory." So did the letters from Maggie.



She was nowhere by the docks when I came, and I haven't seen hide nor hair of her since I took lodge beneath the winery.



Please, do not send Father or Uncle here, and do not come here yourself — not before I have found work with a decent wage. A Pole that I room with said that a nearby factory favoured Irishmen over Germans and Italians. I will head there by the morning.



Greet everyone at home for me. For the time being, tell them that Maggie is safe with me.



-P. O'Sullivan





MARCH 19, 1915

DEAR MOTHER,



I worry for Maggie.



The letter she sent a year ago made no sense. Exaggerations were never beneath her — she always tended to have an eye for whimsy — but castles that rise up into the sky? Stars that shine as bright in the day as at night? Land of honey? Whatever she described, it was not New York.



I remember when we were young, we would read the posters and poems and newspapers from Father's small print shop. She was always frail and soft-spoken. Short fiction and poetry were where she found her true voice — bereft of her stutters, her timidity, her nervous ticks, and her ennui. Her thoughts were so-often filled with tales of worlds that were seas away from Dublin, rich with all manner of exotic feasts and people and culture.



When she came down with an outbreak of typhus, it made her write more feverishly, often writing by candlelight into the early morning. By the grace of God, she recovered and had penned a series of stories that grew increasingly incoherent from page-to-page — an anthology of hectic, angry stars, screaming into the night. I remember when you and Father could not make heads or tails of it and recommended she take a nursing job, instead of becoming a writer.



Afterwards, I do not know why she took the steamer first to America. Perhaps, she saw Lady Liberty on a postcard and her mind went west.



I miss her.



Yesterday, on my way to work at the factory, I walked past a very young pale thing that looked exactly like her. The small girl had feathers in her hair and smelled far too clean for the city. She snuck into an alleyway, knocked five times on a handleless door, and was allowed in by someone behind it.



I noticed men often flocked there by night. Others were women — in groups of no more than fifteen and no less than eight — who went in from time to time, and they often came out bruised or limping.



It appears that the degradations of man do not fear our Lord here. It appears that the Lord is blind to the alleyways.



Maggie has no place here; I pray for her safety.



Greet everyone at home for me. Tell them Maggie has found work as a nurse.



-P. O'Sullivan

