Last of the Name by Rosanne Parry

Author:Rosanne Parry [Parry, Rosanne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Fiction - Middle Grade, Middle-Grade Fiction, Middle-Grade Novel, Middle-Grade Novels, novel, Novels, Historical, United States, Civil War Period (1850-1877), Emigration & Immigration, Social Issues, Family, Siblings, American History, Carolrhoda Books, Civil War, Class Inequality, Class Struggles, Cultural Heritage, Discrimination, Draft, Family & Relationships, History, Immigrant, Immigrants, Last of the Name, New York City, Race Riots, racial inequality, Racial Tensions, Riot, Rosanne Parry, Traditions
Publisher: Lerner Publishing Group
Published: 2019-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 14

Sunday, May 10, 1863

THREE THOUSAND WOUNDED SOLDIERS IN WASHINGTON

—New York Times

The next morning, Kathleen returns Temperance’s gift of clothes without a word. Temperance doesn’t tell her parents I’m a boy. Kathleen doesn’t tell the neighbors that Mr. Treadwell is a drunk. There’s a chilly sort of respect between them as they soldier on through her dress fittings and hair styling.

Two days later, Kathleen and I walk side by side in our clothes from home, all washed and mended for Sunday. I don’t mind wearing Granny’s dress so much this time. It feels like home. I’m so busy every minute of the day, between the eternal round of scrubbing and keeping out of sight of the man of the house, that I go for hours, a whole day sometimes, without thinking of my family. And then I am more homesick for forgetting them.

New York is fine in May, trees in the park leafy, and the last sooty lumps of snow melted away. Flowers fight their way up through the mud and gravel. Kathleen revels in it. I throw a skip-two-three into my walk just to see if I can get her to dance with me. We used to dance the two-hand reel when we were little, but Kathleen hates to have eyes on her.

We start through the park at sunrise and take our leisurely time walking the two and a half miles to St. Francis Xavier. I still haven’t told Kathleen about the dancing money so I pretend that everything we’re seeing is new to me. She is bursting with curiosity, and I realize with shame that she has never been away from the Treadwell house, not once in the six weeks we’ve lived there. Her whole life has shrunk to one city block.

Lucky for me, the shops are all closed on Sunday, so there’s nobody who might recognize me at the greengrocer’s or the butcher’s.

I spy the bootblack who wouldn’t take my coin of apology, but his head is bent over shoes and he doesn’t see Kathleen and me pass by.

The farther south we go, the more people look like us. There are fewer top hats and fur collars. Men in soft plaid caps and women with their shawls wrapped around them walk arm in arm, trailing strings of blue-eyed children. The only workers on the street are the newsboys. They come pouring uptown from the print shops.

“Chancellorsville! Death lists today!” they shout.

People open their windows. They stream out their doors with pennies in hand. When the newsboys run out, people share the pages around. Some gasp sighs of relief and some turn away weeping. The black street sweepers and tub men walk on by, paying the commotion no mind. Kathleen puts an arm around my shoulder.

“You are never joining the army, Danny. I won’t have it.”

I slip my arm around her waist and we keep walking down Fifth to Madison Square. With every step I think of Eliza’s boy, Michael, and the grocer’s boy, Jackie. By the time we hit Twentieth Street, weeping and moaning can be heard from every tenement window.

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