by Elske Rahill
That was negro people. That was people, dark-skinned people, darker than the Spanish gypsy skin. But then there is another dark in the night; not people at all – shadow people in the night and they are another kind of black; black that is no colour. Black like a space in the world, like a string of paper dolls cut out of the night, their skulls a hole where teeth and eyes glint like pebbles by the moon. They have no skin because they are made of something else. There is black in the night and strange words in the night. In the night figures cut out of the air come marching and they are made of no-matter. They come carrying sacks of sand to stack up against the walls and block out the day. They walk in lines like shadows on the walls outside her windows and she hears them stack the sand against the back door and they have guns and they plant bombs and they throw babies at the fireplace and let their little skulls crack. She is fortunate to have no such beliefs as the lady in the netting and hat with her rosary in her fingers, muttering like a mad woman, shrieking suddenly, ‘fruit of thy womb.’ Fruit is an apple, isn’t it? Cut into wedges for the children. Womb is where they turn in the dark and emerge into life and are slashed in the face. It was all for nothing because all the love and all the joy cannot be reeled back in because he lay dead like that, laid out in a cardboard box because they hadn’t the money for a white one – she washed him and laid him out like a gift for the earth and they asked her what words she would like and told her they had a priest who would do the funeral like charity as though they could give her anything after he was dead and as though she could give him anything now with words that the priest would say.
There were things she loved in mass, things she missed – the part with the shaking all the hands, and the part with the bread. When she heard the mass in English for the first time, she was already a grown woman and a heretic (though it was only Dinny knew it) but when she heard it that time – oh, oh, the poetry of it. The priest lifted up the holy bread in two hands, saying, ‘He took the bread, broke it, gave the bread to his disciples and said, “Take this all of you and eat it. This is my body, which is given up, for you.”’
This is my body – the way he said that made a little chink in her, and he cracked the bread in two, and she felt a sweet tearfulness sweep up over her face – which is given up, for you.
The lady on the phone wants to sell her something. They all want something now. They all want her to sign things.
‘No. Thank you. I am very happy with the service. I am very happy with my belief I do not want your religion, thank you.’
Molly will go happily to dust and let that be the end of it.
‘I have to put Jem to bed, Grandma, but I will come in the morning to see you.’
If Molly can only push her mind a little bit, she knows she can understand what the voice is saying, but she is so tired and she cannot do it.
‘Yes, yes, we will make an appointment. Okay,’ she says, and drops the phone.
She is supposed to hang it in its cradle. Stupid woman. Stupid old woman she is now. Did you ever? Shouldn’t she be ashamed of herself? It is dangling somewhere beneath her. It should be beside her. She pulls the spiralled wire and she feels the receiver bounce on the end but she cannot find it.
Molly’s granddaughters must be clever things – going to university like that; flying along. She saw the library once – Freya brought her in to see all the books there were there in Trinity College Dublin – a long room with high walls like a cathedral; balconies and books stretching to the ceiling. Was it a jealous feeling she had in there, or pride, or what, or just the beauty of the place, she didn’t know but a tearfulness leapt up in her. There are so many things Molly is never going to know now, but what of it? We all know different thing, isn’t that it? The smell of books in there too, of old pages, careful letters, crispy spines. And polish. Floor polish and wood polish. A fine place.
She uses her hands to heave her legs off the bed, but she cannot stand. Her body feels too heavy. Then she remembers – she needs to be helped to the bathroom now because she has broken her leg or something from hopping over fences with Dinny. Stupid goose. At her age to be hopping over fences. But such fun she wouldn’t miss it. She pulls the cord with the red toggle, but they don’t come.
*
There are kind negresses and small Oriental girls with heart-shaped faces and straight black fringes and sweet high voices. These are the women who wash her, and paint her nails, and she is glad to have these women with her at this time, not men or nuns who could be hard sometimes, and could be disgusted by things. She cannot wait much longer here for Dinny… but what else can she do? She cannot leave without him. She must warn him to look after their little boy because it would be terrible for anything to happen. She could not bear it if anything was to happen. She must ring Freya and tell her to sieve the child’s food before she gives it to him – press it through a sieve and squash any lumps out.
Her neck is very sore, very stiff. She must lie down to sleep because her neck is sore from bending down into her chest. She pulls the red toggle and hopes they will come soon. She hopes Dinny will come soon before they start with the heavy sacks, blocking up the back door and the front gate so that he won’t be able to get in, stacking them up one on top of the other like the bodies of soldiers until there is no light at the window anymore. Black and Tans black in the night and the inhuman things they could do… The boy who was touched forever after, walking up and down Manor Street, muttering to himself, because they threw him like that and his little skull cracked. And Kat with the great ugly scar down her cheek. She pulls and pulls and is becoming angry because she needs them to fetch Dinny and she must be clean before he comes. She is very, very tired and it is getting dark and she cannot sleep without him.
Molly presses on the button now because it’s serious now and there are electric cries and beeps from the corridor and all the rooms full of drooling ladies in black mesh hats and on the wall Dinny’s paintings are sinking out of colour and flattening and she knows that when she looks at her legs there in the painting there is not so much realness as once there was because she is blanching now the way photographs do when the light shines on them too long and the way asparagus does when you throw it in boiling water and she is limp now too, and white and wrinkled like an over-soaked thing, and she closes her eyes and she wants sleep to come soon, but not before the girl has come with her little boy so she can see that there has been a mistake, that’s all foolish old woman with your spooky dreams, here he is, smiling, here he is. And Molly will see that he is alright, after all.
48
‘I’M TOO TIRED. I’M sorry, Freya, I’m too tired to talk about it anymore.’
‘I’m just saying, if they do give him custody, I can just leave the country, can’t I? If they give him custody, I’ll just pick up Jem and go straight to the airport. I’ll just…’
Out of breath, Freya puts the back of her hand to her forehead. There’s onion juice drying to salt on her fingertips.
In the pot, the butter has melted to a clear, fragrant pool. Cara lowers the flame and throws in a palmful of thyme. ‘Don’t be so dramatic, Freya. They won’t give him custody. Guardianship, maybe. That’s what the solicitor said.’ The fat bubbles and fizzes. The tiny leaves jitter on its surface.
Freya picks up the knife again, presses it into an onion – the crackle of fine, dry skin, the crunch of the bulb. ‘No, of course they won’t. They won’t, will they?’
‘I’ve put in too much thyme. That’s too much, I think… shit, will I try and spoon it out?’
‘It’s fine… But they couldn’t, could they? Like that’s just not something they would do…’
‘Freya, I’m sick of listening to this. We don’t know what will happen. Your guess is as good as mine.’ Freya bites her lip, nodding. There are pools of mascara beneath her eyes. The onion is very fresh; white froth foams on the blade. She makes another slow incision.
‘We don’t know,’ continues Cara. ‘We’ll have to see. We’ll see how
it goes and then we’ll decide what to do.’
Freya stops slicing. She puts a hand on her hip, points the knife as she speaks. ‘No, like it’s not even a reasonable concern, is it?’
The butter sizzles – brown specks at the edges; a smell of caramel ripening to rancidity. Cara kills the flame, adds sunflower oil. A flap of smoke leaps from the pan. The fire alarm starts to yelp. Cara throws open the kitchen windows. She runs into the hall and waves a tea towel.
‘Freya, please can you cut the onions? We need to get the dinner on. We need to eat and we need to get the kids to bed, okay? That’s what we need to do now.’
*
At nine o’clock – an hour after bedtime, and it’s a school night – they sit down to a thin risotto. Denise eats grimly, lips pulled back, scraping the fork with her teeth. Jem sits on his hands. He gives his mother a long, meaningful look.
‘What is it, Jem?’
‘Onions.’
‘You like onions.’
‘Not these onions.’
‘Oh God, Jem, please?’
‘If he’s hungry he’ll eat,’ mutters Cara. ‘Look, Jem, even baby Peggy is eating it.’
Sucking his lips, he shakes his head.
‘Fine,’ says Freya, sighing. ‘What will you have then? Will you have cereal?’
‘Not fair!’ says Megan. ‘I want cereal.’
‘Oh Freya, why do you do this? It’s hard enough to get Megan to eat well…’
‘There’s lots of cereal, Cara.’
‘Fine. Fine, give them cereal…’
‘It’s fortified.’
‘Oh, fortified, is it? Well then.’
Her own voice surprises her, the nasty inflection in it. She sees Freya flinch and her lip tremble.
*
Cara is bad.
There has always been something ugly in her, a steely core. It is when she should feel the most love, the most care, the hottest instinct to protect, that she knows it most keenly – the coolness in her; the bad, dead coolness right at the centre of her.
Her mother knew it, just as Cara knows her own children; Baby Peggy’s ferocity, the kaleidoscopic world of Denise. Megan, my God, what a handful.
Peig has fallen asleep in her high chair. Just as Cara lowers her into her cot, she wakes and pulls at Cara’s collar, making kisses with her lovely little mouth, ‘mama ma’.
‘Sleep, baby. Sleep, baby Peggy.’
But Peig hitches herself onto her mother with all four of her lovely limbs, the soft buttery fat on them, the strong fingers, the gravelly breath. Cara is tired. She pries the baby off, forcing her into her cot. The baby screams, pulls herself up, trips in the sleep-sack and hurts her shoulder and throws her toy dog out. ‘Sleeping time,’ says Cara, and she can hear the deadness in her own voice. ‘It’s sleeping time, baby.’
‘No.’ Slowly, and with great effort, baby Peig gathers the little baby-sized duvet and rolls it out over the bars.
‘Sleeping now, baby…’
‘No.’ She cries and coughs and the cough becomes a bark and the colour leaves her face, and Cara picks her up. The baby nuzzles her neck, drooling, coughs.
*
Pat’s lips are dry. There’s dust on them. He stands in the door of the children’s bedroom, and pulls a hand down his cheeks.
‘I’ll take her. Come here, baby girl.’
‘Oh. I didn’t hear you come in. How was work? There’s risotto on the stove…’
As he reaches for Peig, Cara kisses his shoulder; a smell of wood and oil and sweat – his sweat. He is beautiful – the straight slope of his jaw, the big gentle lips, the square hands: hair on them, callouses, blunt nails, round fingertips. Peig screams and splutters, stretching for her mother, but Pat kisses Cara’s mouth briskly.
‘You go read to the girls. I told Megan she can sleep with Denise tonight. She says she’s scared.’
His voice soothes her like a blanket, like stepping into warm water – how is he possible? But Cara is bad. Cara is cold. The way she shouted at Megan today – she recognised it.
*
It’s a rhyming story: a dinosaur hatches all alone in a forest; he spends six pages looking for his mother; he meets a frog, a bird, a large tree, but so far, not his mother. Cara can hear her voice trip on itself, crackle and strain, and under it a hoarse roar, like grief. She stops reading, listens – Peig is still screaming. Her cough is like the bark of a seal; she’s getting croup again. They’ll have to leave her window open.
Denise taps her shoulder, touches her chin with both hands, directing her face towards the book. ‘Yes, come on, Mammy, read.’ But Megan wails, ‘No Mammy, poow Baby Peig. Poow Baby Peggy.’
‘Daddy’s minding her. She’s okay, Megan.’
When the story is finished, Denise smiles at her triumphantly – she has been chosen over the baby tonight.
‘I love you, Mammy.’
‘I love you too, little lady.’
‘Are you going to go to Peggy now?’ asks Megan.
‘Yes, baby, I’ll go into her now. But you know she’s not really that sad. She just can’t talk so she cries.’
Megan raises an eyebrow: ‘I fink she is twite sad, Mammy.’
*
The baby stops crying as soon as Cara enters the room. She stretches her arms out, opening and closing her fists, a big breath juddering into her chest. As Pat offloads her into Cara’s arms, she gives a committed, congratulatory nod, as though they have all finally understood what she has been saying. ‘Yep,’ she says, ‘yep. Up.’
Cara uses a muslin square to clean the dribble and tears off Peggy’s face and neck, and lies her down in the cot. Her eyes stretch round as though she is drowning or choking, and she grapples for Cara, but Cara sits on the floor and holds her hand, and the baby sighs a rattly sigh and settles down onto her side, gazing through the bars at Cara’s face, holding Cara’s fingers – two to each of her hands.
‘There, baby girl. We’re okay, my baby. We’re okay, you and me.’
She switches on Peig’s mobile – Mozart – and sits cross-legged on the floor. It is peaceful in here, and very boring. She should read a book or something but she can’t these days. It’s always like this when she is pregnant. She thinks of food and warmth and drawing, and that is all.
She can hear Megan shouting at Pat: ‘I want Mammy to kiss me doodnight. Not! Woo!’
Cara bought that chickpea flour. Why has she never thought of chickpeas before? They’re not something Grandma ever made – she never used beans or pulses like that, perhaps that’s why. Tomorrow she’ll try that recipe. She’ll make it in the morning and send it in Megan’s lunch box. She might get some chickpeas into Megan that way. She might finally get something decent into her.
The baby’s face breaks into a big smile: dimples, gums, eight very white teeth still jagged from cutting through. ‘Hiya!’ A rush of tears comes up through Cara; she has been forgiven.
Out on the landing, Pat is talking calmly and steadily to Megan. He looked tired earlier, rubbing his face like that. Pat. What does she offer him, except to assemble his sandwiches in the morning, a thing he allows only to make her feel useful. Pat, whose body makes the oils of labour and sex, whose physical proximity still makes her wet and aching for him, whose armpit smell clings to her hair like a blessing, whose children break his heart just by being out in the world and subject to all the little blows it will throw them.
What has parenthood done to them? And why won’t she stop?
Every child takes Pat further from himself, from the things he used to want to make. ‘I’m happy making furniture now,’ he tells her. But the things he made – she remembers one sculpture, a woman’s face shrouded and her fingernails tearing through the film over her face, like a birth. She remembers that piece, and the way she could not stop looking, and the feeling it gave her of frustration and hope at once, and the way it made her know some parts of Pat that could not be known any other way. The piece was sold to someone who thought Pat was t
he next best thing. And he was – Pat was the next best thing then. Some of their mediocre classmates, who had even themselves given up believing in their talent, have careers now. People buy their work. They stuck it out. They have become ‘names’.
Peig blinks at her. She is a beautiful thing, all cheeks and eyelashes; the monkey darkness of her hair, impossibly plump lips, pudgy fingers that taper at the tips like the cartoon hands of a fat king. Cara realises she is crying. She is not right tonight; she is not right these days. Hormones, perhaps. Or is it just that she’s a slave to these little girls? Hanging on the curve of their lips, their cries driving panic deep into her, their tiniest discomfort like a thing tapping at her bones.
She feels sick. She didn’t say goodnight to Megan. Megan will be frowning in her sleep, her dreams sore with her sister’s crying and the absence of her mother. These children own her.