Hauntlet

I’ve never liked boats. Not that Papa cared how I felt about it, but in all my life I had been on a boat three times and I hated every single minute of it. Imagine my surprise when one fine Thursday evening he comes home from work and announces that we're going to America. What rubbish. Six days on a fucking boat, nowhere to go but back and forth from bow to stern, over and over and over like a caged animal. If you got sick of that you could just heave yourself into the ocean. Before I even set foot on the ramp of the Titanic it gave me a sick feeling in my stomach and in my head, as if my whole body knew better than to climb into that floating metal coffin, unsinkable though it was boasted to be. I’ll never forgive Papa for buying those tickets, for sealing our fate all for a chance to move to America. In the sixty years since I set foot in the land of opportunity, I'm still not sure it was worth it.

Seven members of the O'Shaughnessys of Clare set out on April 10th but only 2 of us made it to the other shore. People have asked me to recount the events of those days many times over the years. Every time I have given the same answer, or some version of it: I don't remember. I say I was too young and too scared. I was eight years old, the youngest of Mama and Papa's five children, and the truth is, I remember everything. Like most stories, there is the version you tell people, and there is what really happened.

This is what really happened.

On the evening of that last day, our family decided on a stroll around the ships outer decks, exploring and racing down hallways, as we had done the days prior. I walked hand in hand with mama as we navigated the narrow passages from our cabins below deck to the fresh air outside; papa ambled along several steps behind and in another world, silently puffing on his old pipe.

My brothers, Liam, Oliver, Owen and James had made up a game the first day aboard ship: they called it hauntlet. Each time you entered a hallway they raced to be first to the next turn; each hallway one went through first counted as a point. but if you smashed into another passenger at an intersecting hallway you lost all your points. With each hallway their energy increased, along with their speed, until they were dashing down hallways so fast I was certain they would injure someone. There was much pushing and shoving and throwing of elbows and knees involved, each brother hoping to trip up another for a shot at a win. Owen had gashed his ugly mug right open day one when Ollie shoved him into a handrail. Neither the name nor the game itself appealed to me in any way; I preferred to stick close to mama.

My brothers formed a rowdy band of noise and rough-housing everywhere we went. All four were born within five years of each other, and came out looking just like Papa in every way: red faced and cranky, with obnoxious lush tendrils of deep red hair. Five years later, I was born, looking nothing like Papa, fair haired and even skinned. I resembled my mother quite a bit, but also something else.. As I grew older, my hair darkened a bit, I achieved a few freckles, but in all, it appeared as though I did not belong to Ian O'Shaughnessy. Nobody really talked about it, but his distaste for me was evident. I was afraid to be alone with him, knowing that he would find fault with me somehow and take the opportunity to punish me for the embarrassment my appearance caused him. It wasn't proper for a good Irish Catholic family like ours to have suspicions of adultery, and my face was living proof that Mama had done something wicked. Papa never once told me he loved me; rather he took jabs at me behind Mama's back, or ignored me altogether.

Mama, on the other hand, loved me dearly. So dearly, in fact, she would make unthinkable choices, the way so many did that dreadful night. Mama always kept me close, as if I were an extension of herself. She treated my brothers sternly, practically; with love, of course, but always with a sense of duty, always at a distance. She treated me with more protection and care than I had ever seen her take with the boys. I'd seen papa backhand each of my brothers on more than one occasion, with mama standing by silently, eyes at the ground. I'd seen him smack mama a time or two as well. Most of it was being in the wrong place or the wrong time. But he never dared raise a hand to me, mama would never allow it. Somehow we all knew without having to say it. “You don’t dare hit another man’s child,” Mama seemed to warn.

I rounded the corner of the hallway opening up to the lower deck, Mama's hand cradling mine; Liam took first in another round of hauntlet, hooting and hollering while they all took off under the open blue sky. Mama shouted after us, beckoning us to go back down into the ship for bedtime. I begged Mama to stay a little longer out of our cabin, grabbing her hand and yanking her away from the doorway. "No mama, I don't want to go back inside yet!" I squealed, digging my heels in. She looked so beautiful in the orange-pink light of sunset at sea, her soft brown hair curling around her face. She looked like a painting; I loved the way her tartan plaid shawl flapped in the breeze, the way her blue-green eyes looked far away when she stared out at the ocean. I wanted to keep us here, out in the open and basking in this cool, quickly darkening night sky for as long as possible.

From nowhere, like an invisible force, I felt a hand grab the hair at the nape of my neck, pulling me off my feet before I could even react. Papa shoved me up against the wall, in an instant his hand wrapped around my throat, pressing against my windpipe. I squeaked pitifully, sensing a rage in papa's body I always knew was there, but had never been so close to. I did not know he had been drinking until I smelled it on his breath as he held me against the wall, sneering in my face too closely. "You ungrateful little shit! You should be happy you got a ticket at all."

Faintly I heard mama shriek, realizing what he had done. She rushed over, pushing him out of the way and wrapping my body in her graceful arms.

"Keep your fuckin hands off her!" she shouted at Papa.

Mama, always so timid and obedient, was pushed to the edge by this act of violence against me. Still reeling, I nodded numbly as she asked if I was alright; she rushed us back towards our cabin as quickly as she could, muttering under her breath the whole way, holding my head against her side as we raced through the maze of passages below deck. My mind raced. Why did Papa hate me so? What had I done to incur this attack?

Once safely inside our cramped, windowless room, mama took my face in her hands and held me to her chest. I knew it wouldn't be long before Papa came charging into the room after us. Mama hurriedly checked my head for a lump from where it had been smashed against the metal floor. We both jumped when Papa threw the door open, swaying menacingly in the dim light pouring through the frame. In an instant Mama was in front of me, a knife in her hand, held up ready to slice him.

"If you ever touch her again you will lose a fucking hand".

I had never heard mama cuss before today, nevermind to do so at him. To threaten him went far beyond any disrespect she had ever shown. I had not known that she, too, held so much rage

Papa stood in shock.

Most abruptly, when the room's tension could not get any tighter, the world trembled. Mama and I went crashing to the ground as items tumbled down from the bunks, the floor itself rumbling and lurching. Later, of course, we learned that we had hit an iceberg, but at that moment, all I cared about was getting as far away from that cabin as possible. Papa, reeking of whiskey and muttering belligerently, was last to recover from his fall, but by the time he did mama and I were already halfway down the second corridor, running like we had never run before. We hurried by other passengers who had begun to congregate in the narrow hallways to gossip and speculate, dodging and darting all the way, throwing elbows and racing for the next hallway like our own cursed game of hauntlet. As we rounded the final staircase leading to the upper deck, we were knocked down by a fury of red haired boys. Our boys.

Mama stood up quickly, wasting no time grabbing my hand and hauling me back onto my feet. It felt like time stopped when she spoke.

"Go find your father!" she shouted. Oliver, James and Liam ran, but Owen lagged for just one moment. “Are you alright, Mama?” he asked sweetly. “Go!” she shouted at him, and without a second glance at them she pulled me up the stairs and out onto the deck.

Mama and I were fortunate enough to arrive in the proper place at the proper time. When they began loading the lifeboats, mama had already led the two of us nimbly through the throngs of people, her hand glued to mine like cement. My arm felt like it was going to detach from being yanked so aggressively; my ears pounded and the world around me turned blurry as we ran for what felt like hours. I do not know what she was thinking, I only knew that she was taking me away. One of the first lifeboats to be lowered successfully was right in front of us, but this catastrophe with the ship seemed only an arousing distraction to the other significant event happening. I dared not ask her, but it seemed that Mama was abandoning her sons and her husband; more unsettling was the fact that, although we never spoke of it, this disaster with the Titanic was a blessing in disguise. A horrid truth, and to say it makes me feel ill, but truth nonetheless. Papa would have beaten mama, or me, near to death the next chance he got. We both knew it. Fleeing in the night, this most awful night, was our chance to be free.

Mama shoved through the masses of passengers hurrying only somewhat as if they were about to die, still wielding the knife she had just raised against Papa clutched tight to her chest. The fate of this ship and its hundreds of other passengers seemed to be the furthest thing from mama's mind. As we approached the lifeboat, she pushed us up against a young woman who was waiting to board. She thrust the knife against the woman's throat, as discreetly as one can do such a thing, hissing fiercely.

"You can catch the next one, we're taking this seat." She shoved the woman to the ground, lifted me into the lifeboat, and hurried in beside me.

The rest, as they say, is history. We floated around that ocean for hours, listening to the sounds of death and despair as we drifted further into the night. Mama held me on her lap, face to face and chest to chest, my legs falling numb as we bobbed about. She wrapped me in her tartan plaid shawl, blanketed with checks of hunter green and navy blue and charcoal gray and she did not let me go. She sang to me all the nursery rhymes she could think of, her lips pressed against my ear as our caramel hair swirled together, drawing warmth from what little was left of our resolve.

When we were rescued, I followed Mama quietly as she rebuilt a life for us in this new world. We never found any record that papa or the boys survived. We had no reason to believe that they did. Mama went for many years without saying much of anything to anyone after that day, including me. It wasn't until decades later, sipping coffee on the porch of the house that we shared together outside of Boston that she began to talk to me about everything that had happened.

There was an unspoken tether between us forever from that cold, cursed day. Mama chose me, over her husband, over her other children. For a long time I thought I might never forgive her for leaving Papa and the boys to suffer that awful fate. Then I realized I would never have forgiven her if she didn't. She couldn't save all of us.

I never had children of my own. It was enough to have my mother. She chose me, and so I chose her, above anything else, until the day she died. I buried her in a sweater that I had knit for her the Christmas before- a cobalt blue that made her eyes sparkle and her skin glow- and wrapped her shoulders in the plaid shawl that crossed an ocean and survived a night that most did not. I ripped a shred of it off for myself before the undertaker closed her casket, saying goodbye to the woman to whom I owe my very life.