MAUREEN MONAHAN
by Melissa J. Taylor © 2002-2003, may be printed only in full by an individual reader, with full credit to the author. May not be resold or lent. This book is not freeware or public domain, and may not be reprinted on any other website.
Chapter One
The Dress
Maureen Monahan looked at the dress on her bed, spread out like a banner. With her finger she traced the intricate embroidery on the bodice, which depicted the “tree of life.” Years ago, it had taken her months to convince her mother and father that she had what it took to be a step dancer. She suddenly felt self-conscious about the green color of the dress. Her American cousin always wrote letters to her about how “quaint and green Ireland is in pictures,” and the dress color seemed to only hammer in her cousin’s stereotypes—it didn’t help that she also had red—very red and almost orange—hair, which also seemed to wrap her up in a nice little “package” that fit her cousin’s notions. Maureen always felt tempted to write back and tell Sarah how America must be full of rich blonde people, because of all the ones she saw in magazine snaps. Honestly, sometimes it felt as though everyone outside of Ireland thought everyone who did live there was a little green leprechaun who gave out golden coins to anyone who could snatch them. But the children of Ireland knew all about Harry Potter and animals and video games and television—or telly—and didn’t have little pointy ears or wear green top hats.
“Maureen! Are you in your room?” Her mother called, interrupting her thoughts.
“Em…em…yes.” Maureen stopped looking at the dress, and sighed.
“We’re going to video you for Sarah to see, you know.”
Maureen shivered involuntarily, and her heartbeat quickened. “Ma, it has been donkey’s years since I’ve danced.”
“Mmm…and don’t I know it.” Mrs. Monahan opened the door and walked into Maureen’s room. She stopped and looked at the dress. “I’ve missed seeing that dress. It’s so pretty.”
“I don’t want to dance, Ma.” Maureen sat on her bed next to the costume, and covered her eyes to block out the tears that threatened to flow.
“Don’t be silly, youngwan, it’s only for a video. You will do it once and it will all be over.
“Snobby weather!” Maureen’s mom said quickly.
“Em? Oh, Ma. I’m not ignoring you on purpose. I was just…em…thinking.” Thinking about her silly cousin who had been born and raised in America. Thinking about how she didn’t want to dance. She couldn’t dance. She wouldn’t dance.
“If you’re worried about dancing, I’m sure it’s just like riding a bicycle,” Mrs. Monahan smiled. “Once you fall off, you just get back on again, and after a while you’ll never forget how to ride.”
“I suppose I fell off already,” Maureen said dejectedly. “I don’t know why we have to send them a video of me for the holliers.”
“Because, every Christmas we exchange something special with their family. You know that. My sister said she was going to send us a video of Sarah’s tap dance, and I thought we could show them that you’re a dancer, too.”
“Aunt Skyla is off her nut. Always bragging about Sarah this, Sarah that…”
“Maureen! That was bold.”
“Sorry, Ma. But you know it’s true.”
“Well…I can’t say that I disagree. I do hear an awful lot about Sarah’s straight As and how she’s in lots of honor societies. On the phone my sis—her mum is always speaking ninety to the dozen, this that, this that and the other thing about wonderful Sarah.”
Maureen and her mother looked at one another, and laughed. Maureen thought Ma had sounded too much like a little kid, cnawvshawling like that.
Her mother patted her on the head. “Maureen, just this once I wish you would get into that dress and dance again. You’ve no idea how pretty you are in that get-up. In the meantime, I’ve got to tape Rona singing some Christmas carols and Meriel playing the piano.” Rona and Meriel were Maureen’s sisters, identical twins and seven years old. They liked showing off to the camera, and the camera liked them, as well.
“I’m sure they’ll be brilliant,” Maureen said to her mother.
“And I’m sure you will, too, gersha. Now, get dressed and get your hair all prettied, and I’ll be back.”
Mrs. Monahan left Maureen’s room, shutting the door behind her. It was then, unseen, that Maureen let the tears flow.
Maureen’s mother returned about an hour later, looking worn. “I’ve listened to a dozen Christmas carols being sung, and chopsticks on the piano about as many times as I can manage,” she admitted. She stopped and studied Maureen, who was holding her stuffed brown teddy bear.
“Maureen, are you feeling OK?”
“You probably think I’m a header.”
“You are acting a bit silly,” her mother admitted. “You’re still in your longers. Can’t you get in your costume at least? You won’t even need to dance. You can just stand and look pretty. No more malarkey, Maureen.”
“You think I’m off my nut.”
“No, I don’t. I know how you feel.”
“I don’t think you do,” Maureen said, shocked at her brazenness toward her mother. She quickly closed her mouth and squeezed her stuffed animal a bit tighter. She studied the bear’s floppy ears and wished he weren’t so manky. She’d had him so long that the washing machine couldn’t get out the years of loving and snuggling and abuse he had been through.
“Cuttie, cuttie,” her mother sighed. “I can’t force the issue, can I? No, I can see that I can’t. I guess I’ll have to go back to video taping my happy little musical sprogs.”
“Em…Ma, please don’t be mad, okay?”
Mrs. Monahan looked at Maureen sideways and then sighed. “Not mad, Maureen. Not mad. Just…sad. Maybe someday you shall dance again, Maureen?”
Maureen tightened her grip on her stuffed animal and shook her head. “I don’t think so, Ma.”
Chapter Two
The Letter
“Maureen, what did you do?” Maureen’s friend Aislin asked her a few days later at school lunch. The two were in fourth class, and ten years old.
“What do you mean, what did I do?”
“Well, you look as though you were shook.” Aislin looked at Maureen quizzically, and put her hand to Maureen’s forehead. “Not shook. You feel normal as anything. Are you just letting on that you’re ailing?”
“I’m not sick,” Maureen replied. “Just…em…well, it’s hard to say, Aislin. Sometimes I get this feeling in my gut that something awful is going to happen.”
“Are you thinking you’re psychotic?”
Maureen giggled. “No…I’m not psychic. I just have a feeling. A bad feeling about something.”
“What is it?”
“Well, do you remember my cousin who always thinks silly things about us?”
Aislin groaned. “Ack! Don’t remind me. The letters you have let me read! She’s loopers, me ould flower,” Aislin said, letting Maureen know the two of them were best friends. “Sigh and double sigh. Here am I acting like Sarah: ‘Howya!—‘”
“Em…they say, ‘how are you doing?’ or ‘how are you?’”
“All right, let’s try this again, shall we? ‘How ya doing? My name is Sarah and I live in America where everything is beautiful. We do not travel the world like you unlucky knackers—‘”
“’—gypsies!’” Maureen laughed. “They call them ‘gypsies.’”
“’…and we are so smart our pencils still have all of their rubbers, because we never make mistakes—‘”
Maureen giggled again. “They would say ‘we still have our erasers.’”
“Eh, you’re no fun, Maur. Anyway, she’s a scanger.”
“Nah, she’s not dumb. She gets all As, according to her ma,” Maureen said.
“But what has any of this got to do with the bad feeling, Maur?”
“Oh yes, the bad feeling. Well, I got a letter from Sarah.”
“Can I read it?” Aislin asked. “I’m in for a good laugh!”
“Em…oh, all right.” Maureen handed the letter to Aislin.
Dear Maureen,
Have you ever kissed the Blarney Stone? I have heard it is a huge emerald the size of a large statue, and that people have left lipstick marks all over it! That sounds kind of gross and germy.
Knowing that my mother and your mother are sisters and grew up in Ireland has made me all interested in it. I always wear a green sweater for St. Patrick’s Day in March. If it’s too warm, I wear green socks instead, so I don’t get all sweaty. Last year I wore green socks and this boy in class kept pinching me until I could scream! He didn’t think I had any green on. I had to lift up my pants leg to show him I had on green socks. What a dope! We have a tradition in the US that if you aren’t wearing green on St. Patrick’s Day, people are allowed to pinch you. I suppose he probably likes me. That’s the way boys in the USA are. If they like you, they act like dopes. My mother told me you celebrate St. Patrick’s Day in Ireland, too! I would have never known that.
I heard Ireland is getting the Euro this year with a harp on it and will have it all finished by February 2002. I can’t imagine changing all of my money over! Can you send me some Irish Euros? I can send you some US money in exchange, if you want. We have special coins with the States on the back, and I collect them. I wonder if the Euro is copying the United States in the way you put different images on for each country, the same way we do States.
I’m very good in spelling at school. What are you good at? I just wanted to tell you that you are misspelling words like color with an ou, like “colour.” You always add a “u” to words! I’m not trying to be rude, but I’m trying out for the spelling bee and I think I’ll make it.
I’m wondering about East Midlands, where you live. How can something be in the east and the middle? Is that sort of like the Midwest here, only in the east?
Do you know anyone who was in the potato famine? I am just hearing about it in school. Also, I have been listening to Enya who is very popular over here. You should feel proud of her for making it big. She even had a song on the movie Lord of the Rings. Do you ever get movies there?
I am excited for the video of you step dancing. I have watched lots of step dance videos and they are so powerful. I hope you have curly hair in it. Do you curl your hair?
My mom mentioned the Kilmacurragh arboretum that she used to go to as a little girl. Have you been there?
Well, you can tell me more about it some day when I see you!
your cousin,
Sarah
“What! Away with ye! When she comes to see you? What does that nutter mean?”
“’When she comes to see me,’” Maureen said slowly. “That’s what Ma was so quiet about. I asked her what it meant and she said we shall see. Da wouldn’t say anything, and he looked out the window when I asked him. You know what? I think maybe she’s coming here!”
“Or worse, you’re going there to go see her. You’d just die, Maureen. Just think, you would simply die.”
Maureen shook her head. How could she bear to see Sarah? Sarah was the reason she had stopped doing step dance. Sarah with her perfect American self and all of her comments about how quaint Maureen was. How could she ever admit to anyone how absolutely silly Sarah always made her feel?
“Oh, let me write her a reply, oh do!” Aislin said, not noticing that her friend was busy thinking. “We’ll pay back this gackawacka for all her stupid blather.”
Maureen snapped to attention. “She’ll recognize it’s not my writing.”
“Nah, I’ll tell you what to write, and you can write it. Let’s go.” Aislin handed Maureen a piece of paper and a pencil, and read over Sarah’s letter again. Then she began dictating a letter to Maureen.
Dear Sarah,
Why yes, thank you for asking. I love to kiss the blarney stone, and I do so almost every day. It is a long hike to get there, but I must always begin my morning with a pogue on the stone. A pogue is a kiss, but I’m sure you knew that
I never knew that your mother and my mother were sisters! Will wonders never cease? Why, that would make us…cousins!
Imagine wearing a green sweater or green socks on St. Patrick’s Day. Here it is illegal to wear any green on St. Patrick’s Day, and they will behead you if you do that.
It’s very interesting how you said young boys will show that they like girls in the States. Here the boyos show that they are keen by throwing muddy boots at us. Perhaps we are not so very different.
I cannot send you any Euros at this time. I am at school, and if we bring money into school they hang us by our muddy boots.
Thank you for correcting me on my spelling. I will try to write less colourfully from now on.
I don’t know anyone who lived in the Potato Famine. We like to call potatoes “praities.” You need to learn how to write in Irish…I can scarce understand your English. Do you know anyone who lived during the Mayflower arrival? Please send pictures.
East Midlands is in the East of the Midlands, East of the West of the Northern East West Southern Midlands, which are Southwest of the Northern Eastland Midwestlands. Thank you for asking.
No, we do not get any movies here. What is a movie? We do like to watch pictures and flicks, but no movies.
I am no longer step dancing, though I’d love to see a video of you doing your best impression of the sinking of the Titanic.
Yes, I have been to Kilmacurragh arboretum many times. It’s a bunch of trees. Surely you have trees in America?
Thank you for writing to me! You are certainly a very interesting scanger!
your cousin,
Maureen
“OK, read it back to me.” Aislin said when she was all finished.
Maureen laughed so uproariously while she read it that some other children eating lunch turned to look at her. “Oh, too bad I can’t really use this. I wish I could, but Ma would never let me send it,” she said to Aislin. “Especially calling her ‘scanger!’ I suppose in the USA that doesn’t mean ‘stupid’ as it does here, I hope!”
“Why? Does she read all the letters?”
”Oh, yes. She makes sure I don’t say anything cruel or that might be seen as cruel. I have to be nice. Then she takes the letter to be posted and has it weighed so that it gets to her home safely. There is no way she would let me send it.”
“Hm...then let me keep it, will you?” Aislin smiled. “It will at least give me a good laugh.”
Maureen nodded and handed it to her friend.
Aislin had written down Sarah’s address off the envelope from her letter. Aislin sent the reply that day.
Chapter Three
The Talk
As Christmas approached, Maureen felt terribly about the joke letter, and was very happy that she had decided not to send it to her cousin. Aislin was so much more outgoing than she was. There was no way she’d ever speak her mind to Sarah or let Sarah know that she made her feel like a terrible misfit—an alien with antennae sprouting out of her head. Aislin somehow made it fun by cracking jokes about Sarah, but the truth was that Maureen would never let Sarah know. Never. She still hadn’t written Sarah back, because it was so terribly hard to write to Sarah and not say something mean.
After the last day of school before holliers, Maureen’s mom stopped her at the door when she arrived home. Maureen was happy, because she had a couple of weeks of vacation before her, but her smile faded when she saw her mother at the door.
“Maureen Brenna Monahan, we need to talk.”
“Ma, I need to do my eccer,” Maureen said lamely. Ma had used all three of her names! It couldn’t be something good!
“Your homework can wait until after we have a talk.”
Maureen reluctantly followed her mother into the kitchen, and they both sat down at the table. A piece of paper lay face-down in front of Ma.
Her sisters Rona and Meriel came into the house a few moments later, interrupting the awkward silence. They tossed off their winter gear and began running around, pushing their dolls in their prams. The way they treated the dolls, it looked more like they were pretending to be bumper cars rather than mothers.
“Girls!” Mother cautioned. “Please play in your room.”
Rona and Meriel scrunched their noses at their mother, but complied.
“I got a call from my sister Skyla today,” Ma said, crumpling a paper napkin in her hands nervously.
A call from Aunt Skyla? It was incredibly expensive to do out-of-country calls, and Ma and her sister normally kept in touch through e-mails and letters and videos. Surely this meant Sarah was soon to come to Ireland and ruin her life.
“You showed a lot of cheek, youngwan,” Ma said softly and sadly.
Maureen didn’t know what this was all about. She wished she could ask her mother, but it would be rude to speak up when she was obviously getting a talking-to.
“I can’t imagine how you got it past me. Imagine! Why, Maureen, it just isn’t like you!”
Maureen sighed. She wasn’t sure what her mother was getting at. What in the world had she done? She hadn’t written to Sarah in a few weeks. Was that what all of the trouble was? “I wasn’t sure how to answer Sarah’s letter…” Maureen said quietly.
“Go way outta that! It was more than that, Maureen! Why, it was sheer cheekiness, and I’m terribly ashamed.”
“Wh…what was sheer cheekiness?” Maureen couldn’t understand what her mother was talking about. She was sure that taking her time in writing back was not all that bad.
“Oh, this is just grand! Maureen! I don’t even know what to say to you. Do you not think what you did was wrong?”
Maureen was never one to talk back to her parents. She loved her ma and da and didn’t want to hurt them or do anything they would consider ghastly. But right now, she was not sure how else to discover what exactly was wrong unless she questioned her mother and spoke up.
“Ma, I did nothing! I haven’t written to Sarah and I promise I don’t know what I did wrong!”
“Maureen Brenna, how dare you deny that you wrote a despicable letter to your cousin. I bloody don’t know what to say!” Ma threw down the paper napkin and jumped up from the table. It wasn’t like her to use strong words. She went to the sink and picked up a cutty knife and began to slice a loaf of freshly baked bread. “Do you want the heel and some jam?” She asked more calmly.
“No thank you, Ma,” Maureen said.
“Would you like a bag of taytos?” She asked, wondering if Maureen would like chips.
Maureen again said, “No thank you, Ma.”
She could tell Ma was nervous. Ma always liked to have something to do with her hands when she was nervous and struggling for the words she needed to come up with. Ma had the hardest time punishing anyone, but often her silence was enough to make Maureen confess and apologize profusely for whatever it was she had done. This time, however, Maureen couldn’t think of what she needed to apologize for, so she sat in silence as her mother searched for words.
Sounds of Meriel playing the piano drifted into the kitchen. Obviously the little girl had disobeyed and left her room. Maureen longed to leave and run to her room and turn the fan on full blast, and hug her teddy bear. That was what she did when she wanted to completely drown herself out the world. But she knew something was wrong, and she desperately wanted to find out what it was.
Rona walked into the kitchen, grumbling. “Ma, I’m so hungry! I've a mouth on me!” Sometimes the twins reminded Maureen of hungry little birds, with their beaks wide open, chirping to be fed.
Ma took a moment to hand her a bag of crisps and the heel off the bread. “Run along now,” she said, giving Rona a quick tap on the rear.
“Ma, I don’t…”
“Hush, Maureen. Please don’t say anything. I’ve got to think how to go about saying this.”
Maureen thought she would probably have gray hair and wrinkles before she knew what her mother was so upset about. It had to be something pretty bad for Ma to take so long to come out with it.
But it didn’t take quite as long as Maureen thought it would.
Ma went to the table, sat down, and collapsed onto the tabletop, sobbing.
“Ma! Oh, Ma!”
“Maureen,” Mrs. Monahan collected herself after a few moments, “I didn’t want to burden you with anything, I thought you were so young…you are so young. Sarah is so young, too. You’re both so young. My sister and I—when we were expecting—thought it was so wonderful that we would have our firstborns only a few months apart. We hoped you would be friends, but she and your uncle moved away and I haven’t seen her in ten years, Maureen.”
Maureen had never realized how hard it must have been for her mother to be so far away from Aunt Skyla. She often imagined it would be awfully nice to be far away from Rona and Meriel for a while. But, now that she thought of it, never ever seeing them for ten years would be more than she’d ever wish for.
“I guess I’ve always been hoping the two of you would be friends, best friends, like my sister and I were. But I suppose it was just jam on my egg.”
“Ma, no…I…” Maureen wasn’t quite sure what to say. She had never seen her mother so upset, but she understood better now. She had never met Aunt Skyla, except through videos, so she couldn’t feel the connection that her mother felt. “Ma…I just don’t understand what I did wrong. I haven’t written—“
“Maureen! You can’t deny this forever. Why can’t I get this through your noggin? My sister read it to me. She said she knows it was in your handwriting—I didn’t believe it at first. So I told her over the phone, I said, ‘Skyla, I just don’t quite believe it.’ And she said, ‘Sis, I’m going to send you a scan…you check your e-mail.’ And what do you know? There’s no denying it.” Ma finally picked up the piece of paper off the kitchen table that had been in front of her the whole time. “And, here it is.”
Maureen was almost too afraid to look. She peeked, and she saw. Why, it was the letter Aislin had dictated to her a few weeks back! How did that ever get sent? She knew she hadn’t sent it, she knew she had never given it to Ma. Now that she thought of it, she had never even brought it home from school!
Aislin! Aislin had done it! Aislin had taken that letter, and sent it to her cousin!
Maureen gulped. She didn’t want to get Aislin into trouble, but she had to tell the truth. “Ma, I didn’t write that letter.”
“Maureen, please. Don’t fib. You came across as such a muzzy, no child more bratty than all that.” Mrs. Monahan was fiddling with a fork, examining the tines and trying to catch her reflection on it.
“I’m not bratty, Ma! I promise!” Maureen looked at the table, and then looked her mother straight in the eyes. “Aislin wrote it. Aislin told me what to write, and then I wrote it down. It was just in fun. But it was never meant to be sent to her, never!”
Her mother studied her closely. “Maureen, is this the truth?”
“Yes, Ma.”
“I’ll be gobsmacked!” Her mother looked completely shocked, and didn’t know what to say. “Maureen, you mean…this…it was all a joke?”
“Sort of, Ma.” Maureen explained that she and her friend had been talking about Sarah. “Sarah upsets me, Ma. She makes me feel thick as a brick. She always goes on and on about Ireland and how everything is green, and how Ireland must be so picturesque and peaceful…as though we lived smack in the middle of a fairybook. She makes me hate my red hair, step dance, everything!”
Now it was Maureen’s turn to cry. She had kept the secret for a long time, and once it came out it almost sounded ridiculous. How could someone who lived thousands of miles away from her impact her life so much?
“Oh, my gersha,” Ma said comfortingly. She patted Maureen’s hand, and smiled warmly at her. “This has been quite the burden, em?”
Maureen nodded, and wiped at her eyes. “Ever since she started writing, I’ve felt like a bollocks. Sarah is so perfect and smart and American, and I’m ‘Oirish.’”
“Maureen, it’s high time you were proud of being Irish and didn’t feel so silly about it.”
“But it’s hard not to…the way she words things…” Maureen trailed off. “She makes being Irish sound stupid.”
“Maureen…is this why you stopped step dance?”
Ma had finally put two and two together, and Maureen didn’t know what to say. She had lied to her mother and father when she quit step dance…and she never lied to her parents. She had told them outright that she had quit because of a girl named Maoliosa who had joined and was a braggart about near everything, and was making step dance a chore for anyone in the group.
In truth, Maoliosa was all talk and no action. She tripped a lot and could never get the dance moves correct. In truth, she didn’t really bother Maureen because she made everyone laugh. Thankfully, Maoliosa didn’t mind the other girls laughing at her, because she was just one of those types who didn’t care if she got good or bad attention, as long as she got attention. The instructor had once even said that Maoliosa made step dance come across as a tragic comedy, and Maoliosa had taken it as a compliment, believing it meant she was on the level of Shakespeare.
Slowly, Maureen nodded. “Yes,” she said. “I was tired of Sarah always talking about how ‘charming’ it was that I was so typically Irish. I didn’t want to be ‘typically’ anything.”
“I understand, Maureen. You’re at that age, aren’t you? It’s hard to remember what it’s like to be a youngwan. When you’re my age, you’ll understand what that’s like. But we won’t be vexed about this any more. You’ll write to Sarah, and let her know what happened. Then everything will be grand.”
Maureen wasn’t so sure. She still figured Sarah was coming for a visit. “Well…” she trailed off, unsure how to get it out. “Ma, would you…would you tell me if Sarah were coming over on holiday?”
“I’m afraid I’m flummoxed. What do you mean, Maureen?”
“I think she’s coming over here for holliers. I think she let it slip.”
“Maureen, what made you think that?”
“Well, I thought…I just…because of what she wrote to me, I’ve thought for a long time that Sarah was coming visiting or I was going to the United States.”
“No, Maura. We never even thought of that. It would be terribly expensive to travel like that…”
As her mother talked, Maureen felt worse and worse. She felt awful. She had been blaming Sarah for everything. Sarah was the reason she had stopped Irish step dance. She wished that the big lies she had formed in her head about Sarah would form into one big rain cloud over her head, and that lightning would strike her right then, right there.
She had been jealous. She knew it. Sarah was the perfect child, the one who got straight As and never messed up, never tripped when dancing and never got a C- on a math test. Maureen felt nawful. A huge cloud lifted, and she saw that she had been mad at Sarah for no reason.
“Sarah’s letters are sort of silly,” Ma finally laughed after a few moments of silence. “I’ve read them, too. But she’s just curious, gersha. You would be, as well, if you had not grown up in your homeland.”
“Yes,” Maureen agreed. She smiled. “Ma, would we have time to send Sarah a video of me, instead of a letter, for her to get before Christmas?”
“Em…I don’t think so, Maureen. But we can send a video, anyway.”
Maureen nodded. “Good.”
Chapter Four
All’s Well That Ends
Maureen gave Aislin a real tongue lashing over the phone. “You’re a real ape, and I thought you were me ould segotia.”
Aislin, of course, had much to say for herself, such as that it was all in fun and that she shouldn’t take things so seriously, and besides, it was the holliers and wasn’t everyone supposed to be happy?
“Is anything going on in your noggin?” Maureen asked her friend. “You had me in heaps of trouble with my ma. And come to find out my friend is off her nut, writing to my cousin and getting me in heaps of trouble.”
Aislin asked Maureen, couldn’t they still be friends, and after all it was the holliers and wasn’t everyone supposed to be happy?
“Okay, you plonker,” Maureen laughed. After insulting her friend and calling her all sorts of names, it was apparent Aislin was in too much of a Christmasy mood to argue with her. “Let’s just call a truce, em?”
Aislin replied, “Yes!”
“But you’ll never guess…” Maureen trailed off.
“Guess what?”
“Guess how I’m going to make it up to Sarah. Well, you’ll find out…I’ll let you watch the video.”
“I think I know…I think I know what you’re gearing up to do,” Aislin said. “And good luck to ye!”
“You know, I have the luck o’ the Oirish!” Maureen laughed. “See you later, Aislin.”
“Bye.”
*
A day before Christmas, Maureen stood in line next to Maoliosa onstage. “My mom told me it’s like riding a bike…you never forget. But I had to study extra, extra hard and work so many hours to catch up.”
“Em,” Maoliosa said. “Yes, and don’t be surprised if I mess you up anyway. I’m always stepping on people’s toes.”
Maureen smiled, realizing Maoliosa was nervous. “Don’t go scarlet,” she said. “You’ll do fine.”
Maureen had long ago thrown away the little strips of material—rag curlers—that she had used while in step dance. The evening before she had meticulously cut out scraps of material so that she could wrap her long, damp red hair. Some of the girls wore wigs, because their hair was too short, they didn’t like the color, or they simply didn’t want the fuss of sleeping on uncomfortable bundles of hair, but Maureen wanted to be authentic, to be truly who she was, to be truly Irish. She took a deep breath, smoothed the green material of her step dance outfit, patted at her headpiece, and waited for the music to begin.
Out of the corner of her eye, Maureen could see Ma holding a camera, and beaming. Maureen smiled back, thinking in her head, “Just wait until you see me, Sarah! And, yes, I have curly hair!”
As a child, I had pen pals, and local friends were sometimes jealous of my hobby—or just plain interested—and occasionally copied down their addresses without even telling me! One friend made me very paranoid by saying she was writing to my pen pals and, if I remember correctly, trying to get them not to like me. This served as part of the inspiration for Aislin’s mischievous actions.
https://www.angelfire.com/mi/FAST/maureen.html