The cogs in her mind were stuck like wheels in the mud after a heavy rain. She tried to think of something that might interest Joseph, but no matter the memory that came to mind, it was too pitiful to share with him.

“Tell me why you call your mother Twiggy.”

Mercy expelled a breath, allowing herself to relax, even as the ship continued its deathly rising and plunging. “Twiggy didn’t want us calling her Mother. She didn’t want the rent collector knowing she had so many children.”

Mercy went on to tell him about rent day, known as Black Monday, the day the women lined up outside the pawnshops with anything they might be able to sell so they were ready for the rent collector. He’d evict tenants who couldn’t pay up or charge more for those who’d added people to their already-crowded living spaces.

“Twiggy thought she could fool the rent collector about how many youngun’s were hers, and yet he always knew.”

Joseph was unnaturally silent as she finished answering his question.

Had she disgusted him with the tale? Part of her wanted to bury her face in her hands in shame, for her past was so different from his. How could he even begin to understand what her life had been like? And how could he still want her for a friend?

Before he could apologize or say something to try to make her feel better, she pushed aside her woeful past and changed the subject. “What about you? I’d be right pleased to hear about your family. They’ll be a mite more interesting than mine, that’s to be sure.”

Again he was strangely quiet. The moans of the other passengers blended with the incessant creaking of the ship’s timbers and the pounding against the hull. The dampness, the stench, and the filth of the mattress beneath her didn’t give her pause. Instead, it reminded her of the hell she’d left behind, the hell that most of these immigrants hoped to leave behind.

Like her, these people had stepped out of the only existence they’d ever known. They’d shown great courage in taking such a risk, embarking on a long, difficult journey, crossing an ocean in an attempt to find a glimmer of hope—a new life for themselves upon foreign shores.

But had they traded one hard life only to be swallowed up by another that was just as hard, just as stormy and fathomless?

She began to think Joseph wouldn’t speak any further when he blurted, “My mother, father, and brother perished of cholera when I was away at boarding school.”