Half Moon Place, Boston, 1861
Ellen O’Malley opened her eyes.
Blinked.
Raised her head.
Waited, watching for the sky.
Soon the sun would come creeping into the corners of Half Moon Place. ‘Like a broom,’ she thought. Sweeping out the dark.
When the sun brushed along the narrow alleyway towards where she sat, she opened her throat, and began singing,
‘Praise to the Earth and creation,
Praise to the dance of the morning sun.’
She sat atop a mound of rubbish, raised from the ground and the sordid effluents that backwashed the alleyway. The mane of red hair that fell from her head to her waist, her only garment. The sailors who frequented the basement dram-houses of Half Moon Place, had rough-handled