by Elske Rahill
For just that morning as she rinsed the smalls she thought of her cousin May sent away and not spoken of and her Aunty Nora slow and steely after that and why had silly May – silly soft May, and so plain it was a shock to imagine how she had got that way – why had she not gone to Grandma for some yellow soup? And what did Grandma think of it all and why did nobody say about it, except with sighs and tears held in, and shaking heads and that look Mam had, that would send needles into you; that look like something too bad had happened and could not be unmade. The baby died anyway. She heard it from Kat many years later, and poor silly May had fallen mad in there washing other women’s napkins. And they said then, after that, Cara or one of the children told her it was the nuns who sold those babies or killed them, though that would be a hard thing to believe with the soft hands they had and soft ways, and why had Molly never looked for May though she thought of her often? Stupid girl, May. But wouldn’t you be ashamed, your own cousin, to never seek her out, to never help her out, even later when they had so much money. They could have helped her, certainly they could. She was afraid – was that it? Afraid of what she might find there, May an old halfwit… The baby died anyway, so for what, May? For what, May, did you go in like that, a martyr like that to waste away your life for a child who didn’t want you either?
She had atoned hadn’t she, for May’s lost child and lost life, and for her sister Kat too and her mam, hadn’t she? With her little boy. For nothing could be so bad as holding him there and knowing, suddenly, that the thing had happened. Her little boy.
Could that be how it was with her Lily too, with the thing that’s not right about her and the fatherless grandchildren. But what of Jem then, with the eyes of the little boy they lost…
Was it for other things, maybe, that he had been taken from her? For she and Dinny, up in that little room. Unbuttoning his shirt like that.
Or is it just the way the world is? The Reilly girl, and her cousin May. A world full up of magnificently terrible things – the things you see on the news, the things people do to one another, people in uniforms, people with money. Is it that there are blameless little sadnesses in it too, that run right down into the guts of this earth and change everything?
They put him in a cardboard box because that was before they had much money and what with the cost of Cremnitz White… What a stupid girl she was, wasting money on that cauliflower that time; weeping about it that night with Dinny’s arms around her and her little boy turning in her belly. Death was not a thing he understood. There was just surprise for him and then nothing, but for her the moment stretched out – his mute shock and her banging his back and hoping she would hear him breathe now and cough but knowing he would not, for the thing had already happened, long ago.
45
THERE’S NO CLAMP ON the wheel.
‘Phew!’ says Jem. ‘They must have been nice clampers. They must have known we didn’t mean to be late.’
Freya opens the driver’s door and reaches around to unlock the back. ‘Get in, little man,’ she says. ‘Strap yourself in. Good boy.’
In the car, she lifts her feet onto the seat, rests her head on her knees. Freya loves being in this car.
‘Where are we going, Mammy?’
‘Home, little man.’
‘To DenDen’s home?’
‘Yes, Jem.’
‘When are we going home to Mimi’s?’
‘We’ll have to see…’
She needs to sort something else out for them; a flat for just the two of them. But so far, she can’t even get it together to pay her college charges, let alone rent a flat. Will she have to drop out? Is she homeless? Could it be this easy to go from middle class to flat broke? The woman in the County Council office didn’t seem to think so.
There is a trust fund – Grandma and Grandad set them up for her and Cara. Cara used hers towards her wedding and her house, but Freya has never touched hers. There should be more than enough in there, Cara said, to finish college, get a flat, keep her and Jem going until she’s on her feet… but when she went to the bank to ask about it, they said she needed the trustees’ signatures. ‘My grandad’s dead, though, she said, and Grandma’s not well. I’m twenty-four…’
‘They’re not the trustees,’ said the man in the bank. He lowered his voice, leaned in. ‘It changed. The new trustees are Aoife O’Carroll and Eileen Kearney.’ She emailed Aoife, who said Freya must have been misinformed. There’s nothing left in that trust, she said, after deducting Jem’s fees and ‘all sorts of other things’.
At Cara’s house, she hasn’t been paying her way. She’s been adding things to the shopping list on a Wednesday night – mandarins for Jem, fancy youghurts for her, and she never offers to pay for them. She will have to sort something out. Yet there is comfort in living with Cara, and the gentle, hardworking man she has married. When Freya falls asleep at night, she feels safe, the family bonds wrapping the house like a cloak.
Sometimes the three of them sort the laundry together, chatting, or watching the news on the laptop. On weekend nights they sit outside on the decking, tatty fleece blankets wrapped around themselves, and drink gin and tonics out of jam jars and chipped mugs.
For years Freya thought nothing of raising Jem alone – if anything, she thought, it was easier than all the bureaucracy co-parenting must entail. But she can see now why married parents say things like, ‘Aren’t you amazing, doing it all alone,’ or ‘Isn’t he a credit to you – can’t be easy doing it alone…’ Cara and Pat are partners in a way Freya had never considered before. At night Freya hears moans and whispers and quiet, gentle chatter from their room, and she knows she is lonely.
*
‘Your phone, Mammy. You got messages, remember?’
‘Yes, thanks, darling. I’ll look at them now.’
*
The first two are from Dermot:
You said I could be involved but you haven’t exactly made an effort to keep in touch, have you? Well, you’ll get what’s coming to you. That kid is half mine you seem to forget that when it suits you. Oh well see you in court bitch.
Then, sent three minutes later:
ignoring me wont get you anywhere slut tomorrow we’ll let a judge decide who’s the psycho
A message from Unknown says:
Aoife wants to know how much you got for having Jem. She needs to know asap.
hugs and kisses xxx Mammy
Then a WhatsApp from Cara:
Wt Grandma can’t leave can u pick up Den @ 6 @ music? U free 2 go 2 Grandma 2night she lonely?
‘What are your messages, Mammy?’
Freya is dizzy. The air seems to tighten around her. Everything swaggers – the phone, the steering wheel, the pedals beneath her feet. They couldn’t give him access, could they? They couldn’t give him custody. To protect Jem – that is her only job. That is all that matters.
When she starts the engine, the radio comes on ‘… there were maybe fifty babies,’ says a voice, ‘all wrapped and placed on shelves, but the adult bodies were thrown into a pit, you know like very much without ritual…’
Freya switches it off. ‘We’ve to go and get Den,’ she says, ‘then we’ll go home. I just want to give Mimi a call, so keep very quiet while I have her on speaker okay? We don’t want to confuse her.’
‘Okay. Home to DenDen’s?’
‘Yes.’
‘When can we go home to Mimi’s?’
‘We’ll see, Jem. Stop asking all the time, Jem. I’ll tell you when I know.’
Stopped at the lights, Freya calls the rest home. She slots the phone into the loudspeaker so that the sound of ringing fills the car.
‘Okay, super quiet now, Jem, okay? Yes hello, I wonder if you could put me through to Molly Kearney please? Room twenty-six…’
46
‘ONLY IF YOU LET me play.’
‘No, Megan.’ Cara pulls the phone off Megan. ‘I need to call the music school. We’re very late for Denise.’
She tries to get the seat
belt across Megan, but the child squirms away, snatching for the phone. ‘LET ME PLAY!’
Cara opens the passenger door and shoves the phone into the glove compartment. Some tapes clatter onto the floor, some envelopes and scrunches of clean paper.
‘Megan, sit down and let me strap you in. We’re late. I don’t have time for this.’
‘No.’ Megan crosses her arms and looks up at Cara, her lips drawn down into a parody of sadness; eyes pink under the low black brow and her whole face a blur of saliva and snot and tears. ‘Not less you gib it to me. GIB ME VE PHONE!’
‘Megan, if this is how you react when I let you play then I’m not going to let you go on the phone at all anymore. Ever again. Sit down.’
‘No!’
‘Sit!—’ Cara grabs Megan by both shoulders, squeezing her a little too hard, kneeing her lap – ‘Down!’ There’s a hollow plastic bop as the child is plonked onto her booster seat. Megan won’t allow herself to be folded in. She straightens her legs, twists off the seat, a flurry of elbows and squeals and whips of snotted hair, arms flailing for the glove compartment. She grabs a bill, scrunches it and throws it at Cara. It hits Cara’s nose. ‘Enough!’
She slaps Megan hard on the hip, and the child’s face drops. Cara joggles her into the seat, holds her there with one hand and pulls the seatbelt with the other. Megan lets herself be strapped in. A silence of disbelief and her mouth shuts in indignation, but as the car starts she throws her head back and lets out a cry like a cartoon baby.
‘Waaaaaaahhhh! You – hit-ted – meeeee!’
‘You have to be strapped in. It’s dangerous not to be strapped in. I’m sorry, Megan. I’m sorry I slapped you.’
‘Sowy’s NOT DOOD ENOUGH!’
‘Quiet, Megan. I have to call the school and I have to call Daddy or Freya. Someone has to collect Denise.’
Megan fills the car with a long, metallic screech. Cara looks at the phone. No reply from Freya. Eight per cent battery.
‘Shut up, Megan.’
She dials Pat. The phone rings on loudspeaker while she drives out the gates of the nursing home. He doesn’t pick up. Stopped before the main road, she searches her contacts for the music school.
‘Megan, be quiet while I make this call.’
‘Noooo. I will NOT BE KVIET! YOU HIT-TED MEEEEEE!’
‘Shut up, Megan. I need to hear them.’
She joins a line of traffic. The light is red. A wind whines in through a hole under her car. While she listens to the ringtone, she picks up the ball of paper, and smooths it out.
FINAL DEMAND
Re: Arrears of Tax
Dear Sir/Madam,
I hereby request payment of €4,094.31 in respect of arrears of tax. A schedule detailing the amount due is attached. Interest on the amounts due has been accruing from the due date shown, at the appropriate rate.
Failing payment within 7 days the amount in question may be the subject of court proceedings for recovery of the debt.
‘Hello, Tawny Park?’ Then the phone goes silent. A blue ring appears, turning for a second, and the screen goes black.
‘Battery’s gone. Fuck.’
‘YOU HIT-TED MEEE.’
‘Stop it, Megan, I need to think.’
‘Mean Mammy! MEAN MAMMEEE! You Hit Ted Mee yee yee yee.’
Cara can feel it like something lashing loose from its peg, something heavy and leathery, something tight and dark and private, unfurling itself, opening its mouth, something angry at being forgotten. She hardly knows she’s doing it and then she has turned around and she is screaming too, screaming at her daughter, her nails digging into the tired upholstery, her head banging against the headrest, her cheeks wet with tears and her throat raw with it, ‘SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP!’
47
MOLLY NODS INTO THE phone, speaking as loudly as she can, to be sure they hear her from wherever they are.
‘Oh, Freya. Yes. Thank you for calling. It’s very nice of you to think of me.’
She cannot find the person, but the name sends a surge of something through her – love and worry, love and worry. Freya, Freya, Freya. There is a snagging concern about Freya, something that makes her fret. It is not Cara but like Cara. Freya is love and worry, like Cara, but Molly can’t find what Freya is – the face or the status of Freya. She must conceal this. She does not want to be found out. She does not want to be laughed at or fooled by them all. She must keep her cards close to her chest, under her chin, the backs facing out, showing only the purple clover pattern, the backs of the cards in the pack that they bought once in a newsagent, she and Dinny – and they were expensive – for a train journey to Galway, the cards they bought packed in a little felt pouch and each back the same. Rows and rows of slanted clovers, the pack piled on the rigid little table between them, and then her cards with the faces pressed into her neck and his cards with the faces pressed to his chest, bending his head low and smiling up like that while he bluffs, so that she loves him and she can’t wait until he leans over to kiss her – though she has the feeling now that there are too many for her toad-wobbly hands to hold, that her bones are rigid as ancient megaliths and the cards are slipping through like water, cascading down her body into her lap, onto the floor, the faces exposed—
‘How was your tea? Did you have something nice, Grandma?’
‘… excellent. Oh, excellent. You have no idea. Beautiful… fresh ingredients. That’s the thing. When the ingredients are fresh you can’t go wrong.’ Who is she speaking to?
‘What did you have for supper?’
Her mind grasps for it. The voice is one she loves. Like her sister’s voice. Kat has had great disappointments in life.
‘You are disappointed.’
‘What did you have though, Grandma? What did you have for supper?’
Trying to catch her out. Trying to rattle her with all these questions when she is so tired and they know she doesn’t have the answer but they want to catch her and she will not be caught.
‘Yes,’ she says, ‘oh you have no idea. Beautiful.’
‘But what did you have, Grandma?’
‘Oh… I think it was a kind of soup Ka–. Very nice.’
She over-salted the cauliflower. That was it, she knew there was something. Watching Dinny’s face as he ate – and there was she, delighted with herself for getting that cauliflower, and then she saw him wince as he chewed and she knew. It was a beautiful little thing, ivory white and young tight leaves. She couldn’t really afford it but she had to have it, and she had gone to too much effort, perhaps – she didn’t want to scrimp on the salt and she had used a lot of mace too, and she had gone overboard. She should just have boiled it and tossed it in butter. Dinny ate it anyway, and that was the worst part – watching him suffer through it. She was really big by then, with their first baby, and she had heartburn and she couldn’t swallow a mouthful.
‘It’s Freya. Cara was with you earlier. It’s Freya, Grandma.’
‘Oh, Freya. Yes.’
‘Well I’m glad it’s nice, Grandma. Is there anything I could bring you for lunch tomorrow? They might let us eat together in the refectory, if I brought something?’
She knows the refectory. Decked out like a toy restaurant. White light. Red paper napkins rolled into clouded plastic cups. People wheeled to the table. Negresses wheel them in – tall with regal cheeks and funny hair like ribbons, black fingers with coloured jewels for nails, and paler on the palms, like they are holding handfuls of clean, dark earth that has made valleys hidden in the folds, so it would be easier to read their palms than hers, and in the wheelchairs the pale, balding halfwits who eat baby food, pushing at it with their tongues and the black ones catch it from their chins and spoon it back in. A dirty job, poor girls. But she too has an unpleasant task. She is to sit with the dribblers and play the hostess. She is introduced to them. She is as polite as she can be, she nods at them and invites them to sit with her, but they drop food from their mouths. She conceals her disgust with a
small smile but what can she say to them? The lady with the little hat on her, black netting over her eyes, her face powdered like a death-mask, balls of pink lipstick and gravy and mash beside her mouth. Why has she come like this into Molly’s home? Molly does not remember inviting her but she is afraid to say as much, in case she has forgotten, in case the lady is a good friend, or her sister-in-law, and Molly has forgotten because she is so tired these days and she forgets.
‘Well, I hired some very good girls to help the halfwits to eat. They can be very nice and just as efficient as you or me.’
There was a little restaurant she was in with her sister once and they had rabbit and then some very nice coffee with a plate of four fine biscuits, each one different, and there was a French name for what they were. Her sister was there and they laughed together.
When her own children were young there were black babies starving and they used to knit cardigans for them, though Molly thought that couldn’t have done much for babies starving and parching under the crackling sun.
She paid.
Molly paid, because Cara is only young and has children and she worries about how she pays for things and she likes an excuse to buy things for her. She said to Cara, ‘They can train them to do all sorts of things. Amazing how they can learn things so quickly. They have brains alright, same as you and me.’ And Cara looked angry and ashamed of her, but then she laughed at Molly and kissed her, and then she told people afterwards beside the Christmas tree. She told everyone and they laughed at her and shook their heads and her face burned but she had a glass of champagne also and they said, ‘Your nose is red, from the champagne!’ They liked to tease her but it was not to be cruel. Molly is no racist. She thinks it is terrible what was done to the blacks. She likes Black Power. Malcolm X, when he calmed down at the end. Muhammad Ali. You can’t blame them for their rage, sure who wouldn’t be raging after what was done to them all, women and children and all? She liked Orson Welles being Othello that time. Very attractive. But don’t talk to her about Americans. She wants nothing to do with Americans. Don’t talk to her about Americans. They took babies from their mothers, sold people like cattle at the market, men to work to death and women to pleasure themselves with. Now they even buy their babies like dolls to make believe with. That was the worst. To take a child from its mother. The thought that her Sinéad could do such a thing… ‘We might adopt,’ she says. No. No, Molly wouldn’t have it. There were rich ladies in France who took black babies from their mothers so that the milk could be used for their own babies instead. Dinny told her that. The corners of his eyes jittering back tears. Those ladies were disgusting. They weren’t ashamed of giving another woman their babies to feed while they lay back on a chaise longue. They had a very ugly time of it, the black women, and the men too. They must have felt ashamed to see their women like that, suckling another’s child while their own perished on a boat. But there was black like the girls she hired to wheel the halfwits – black that was on the skin and not black but up close really brown, brown skin like her skin, cocoa-brown to protect against the sun. Full lips too. Fuller lips, usually. Lips that would be beautiful to paint if you mixed the colours right.