Hartless

Hyacinth Brown boarded the ferry at Fordham Street pier on City Island, alone amid an eclectic cargo of mourners. She hid a small corsage of freesia in a plastic box inside her purse, which she clutched to her chest as the boat slipped its mooring. The wind whipped off Long Island Sound and Hyacinth forced her hat lower, fingers crossed the bobby pins holding her steel-gray wig in place would hold for the duration.

Duration, now there was a word. Endurance: another that felt fitting. Fifteen years she’d waited for this day. Fifteen years of asking questions no one wanted to hear, let alone answer. Fifteen years of trying to get the Office of Chief Medical Examiner to track down her dead child. Fifteen years that had led to this.

In the distance, Execution Rocks lighthouse stood winking like a co-conspirator to all this death and dying. There was no saving to be done out here where so many had reached their journey’s end; all hope and dignity dashed on Hart Island’s rocky shore. One million souls and counting.

The boat docked and Hyacinth walked ashore, her whole body trembling. A more bleak landscape she’d never seen. A Department of Corrections truck passed by loaded with Riker’s Island inmates headed to dig more trenches and bury more unclaimed bodies for just fifty cents an hour. In 1869, after the city bought this land, to end up here would have been unfortunate. In 2017, it seemed barbaric, and all for the sin of being poor or alone.

Hyacinth turned away as a crane stacked cheap pine coffins three deep down near the shoreline. The white marker in front of her was all that mattered now. Almost 9,000 babies buried in this mass grave alone. Her Marcus just one of them. She hid the freesia in a clod of dirt. No mementos or flowers were allowed. Just a five-minute stay to pray to whichever God was yours, and then back to the ferry and dry land.

If you judged a people by how they cared for their poor, their sick, their confused, addicted, destitute souls, then this city surely fell short. Hyacinth crossed herself and turned away, certain only that she would be back.