Sins of the Mother

by Irene Kelly

  On that first day I spent hours wandering through the fields at the back of the house, exploring my new environment. I loved being out there in nature, listening to the sounds of the birds and the frogs. Out in the open air, away from the clamour of the house and the constant shouting and thumps, I felt free and happy. Here I could talk to myself, sing to myself and just be myself. It was wonderful.

  At home, Mammy didn’t like us making a lot of noise – she said it drove her mad – so she made us sit on the sofa with our fingers on our lips for hours on end. And if we accidentally spoke or laughed then we were sent to our room with no supper. We had to be especially quiet when Mammy had one of her ‘soldier friends’ round. There was one soldier friend in particular who came to visit her a lot and then she would push us all out of the house and lock the door, saying we weren’t allowed back into the house until later that day. I didn’t mind being locked out all that much – I could spend hours sitting at the side of the river, throwing stones and watching the water speed by. Sitting there, I could get lost in my fantasy world – the world of my ‘real’ family, my soft, kind mammy and handsome daddy who loved me so much. I knew them so well in my imagination that I could summon them at will, picturing every detail of how they looked from their smart, colourful clothes to their beautiful, shiny hair. In my daydreams, they would dote on me, bringing me all sorts of delicious treats and sweets. They would dress me in pretty dresses, hug me lots and tell me how much they loved me all the time. They would say kind things to me, never tease me or call me names. And never ever hit me.

  During the week we went to school on a bus – me, Frances, Agatha and Peter. The best thing was that we passed by a bakery every morning and they gave us warm, freshly baked crusts of bread as our breakfast. It made me happy. I liked school – it was a huge place, every room had dozens of children, and I kept up quite well with the lessons.

  When we first moved in to the new house we had all our furniture from the old flat – beds, table, chairs, sofa, drawers – but as the months passed I noticed the furniture disappearing. When my older sister Frances asked Mammy where the table went one day she told her she had to sell it to buy food. That night I was careful to eat all of my stew because I knew our old table had paid for it – but I also noticed that Mammy had a couple more bottles of vodka than she had the day before.

  We never had new clothes. I always wore my sisters’ hand-me-downs, but they were so well worn that by the time they reached me they were completely threadbare. Kindly neighbours sometimes left bags of old clothes outside our door and we’d fall on these offerings, rooting around for something decent to wear. But often they were too big for my skinny frame or had been washed so many times they were falling apart. I adored my patent black shoes so much but soon they too were falling off me and eventually I had to tie elastic bands round them to keep the soles on.

  One night we were sat around the fire when Mammy suddenly ordered us to shut up and listen because she had something important to say.

  ‘Come here, you lot!’ she slurred. She’d already drunk a couple of bottles of Guinness that night and her head bobbed unsteadily as she waved her arms at us to come closer. ‘Come to your mammy now and watch – I’m going to take an overdose.’

  ‘No, Mammy!’ Frances cried. Martin and I just looked at each other, a little concerned but mostly confused. What is happening?

  ‘Please don’t, Mammy!’ Agatha was in tears.

  I didn’t quite understand what she meant but I didn’t want to upset my mammy so I just sat quietly. Carefully, Mammy opened all of the bottles of pills she’d been given by the doctor then emptied the contents onto the table. There must have been twenty or thirty tablets there – some were just plain white but others were little coloured capsules with tiny beads inside.

  I didn’t know what they were but Mammy always said they were for her nerves.

  Now she rolled her fingers over them, almost lovingly, spreading them out on the table. She seemed to be deciding which ones she wanted to take as we sat there in complete silence, watching her. None of us dared to stop her as she picked one up, stuck it on her tongue and took a swig of Guinness, throwing her head back to make sure the pill went down properly. She did this again and again and again. Agatha cried silently while Frances and Peter just looked at Mammy with dismay.

  Eventually, Mammy’s head swayed, her eyes rolled back and she fell sideways onto the sofa.

  ‘Quick, Peter! Come with me.’ Frances jumped up. ‘Agatha, you look after the little ones.’

  Agatha nodded while I just sat there, not knowing what to do or say. I saw Frances and Peter run out of the house and heard their frantic knocks on the neighbours’ door.

  ‘Will you call the ambulance for us please?’ I heard Frances beg when the door opened. ‘Our mother’s taken an overdose and needs to go to the hospital.’

  I was scared and confused, especially because Agatha was crying so much. I wanted to comfort her but I didn’t know how.

  ‘What’s Mammy done?’ I asked her finally. ‘Why is she sleeping?’

  ‘It’s the pills!’ Agatha wailed. ‘She’s gone and taken an overdose with the pills and it could kill her! Our mammy might die!’

  At that moment I started to shake. She could die? Why? Why has our mammy done that? I couldn’t understand it at all. Just then little Cecily started to cry from her cot and Agatha wiped away her tears with the heel of her hand, got up and went over to pick her up. She put Cecily over her shoulder and rubbed her back, making hushing sounds. I felt sick then. I just didn’t understand why our mother would try and kill herself like that, right in front of all of us.

  ‘Why?’ I whispered. ‘Why would she do that?’

  But with the baby still wailing, the ambulance screaming up the road, the cacophony in the hallway from the neighbours and everyone still going mad, nobody heard me.

  The paramedics were soon in our house, moving my mother onto a stretcher while seeming to try to wake her up.

  ‘Can you hear me, Mrs Coogan?’ the old, bald one shouted into her ears. ‘We’re taking you to the hospital now.’

  But Mammy was gone – her mouth hung open, her eyelids drooped and her body was completely limp.

  More than anyone, Peter seemed to be in charge of the situation. ‘She took eighteen pills before she passed out,’ he told the paramedics as they lifted the stretcher out of the house. ‘She drank Guinness and the pills came from these bottles.’ He handed them the bottles.

  ‘What time did she pass out?’ the paramedic asked.

  ‘Ah, not long ago,’ Peter shrugged. ‘Fifteen minutes, tops.’

  ‘Good lad! Now get the door for me, will ya?’

  Later our neighbour came to look after us and, in bed that night, Frances whispered that Mammy was having her stomach pumped and not to worry because she’d done it before and it was all going to be fine. The next morning we were taken to stay in a children’s home while Mammy recovered in hospital. Since I was still with my brothers and sisters, I didn’t feel too worried. It was only for a few days and then we were all returned home.

  Funnily enough, Mammy seemed much happier when she came back after her ‘rest’ in the hospital.

  ‘Ah, it was just me nerves,’ she said airily. ‘I feel a whole lot better now.’

  ‘You’re not going to do it again, are you?’ Agatha quizzed her. Agatha and I had been the most upset by the overdose and I also wanted to know that she wasn’t going to do it another time.

  ‘No,’ Mammy said. ‘I’m fine now. Absolutely fine.’

  I wanted to ask her more questions – like why she had done it – but Mammy turned away from us then. That was the end of the conversation.

  But she was never really fine and it wasn’t long before she sat us down again, telling all of us that she planned to kill herself. As usual, she seemed angry and determined. I knew the drill so I didn’t get too upset but still Agatha shook and wept with fear. This time, Mammy was out of hospital after j
ust a few days. After the third time, it felt normal. Like the cold, the hunger and the beatings – it was just another part of life I got used to.

  5

  IRENE

  Rags and Bones

  ‘Don’t forget to collect the sandwiches!’ Mammy called to us as we left for school that morning. I was pleased to have joined my older siblings at our local primary school for the past few months. It was a relief to get out of the house and away from Mammy, especially since food had been scarce recently. Now whole days went by when we didn’t eat anything at all, and the bakery had stopped giving us breakfast. Today I was going to class on an empty stomach as usual. At least at school we could rely on being fed at lunchtime. They gave us corned beef sandwiches. Today I was extra pleased because it was Wednesday – on Wednesdays we had fruit buns.

  ‘Mammy, it’s fruit buns today!’ I reminded her cheerfully.

  ‘Oh, whatever!’ she replied. ‘Sandwiches, buns – just make sure you go round the classrooms after school and collect whatever you can find.’

  It was one of the ways Mammy found to feed us when she didn’t have any money. We would go round all the classes after school and stuff any leftover sandwiches in our bags. The teachers didn’t seem to mind and I didn’t mind either, even though they were usually hard and stale by the time we got them home. I was used to doing whatever I could to stop my belly from hurting.

  If I wasn’t at school I spent most of my days roaming the streets or the fields behind the house – I sometimes went with Frances and Peter. Occasionally some of the other kids off the street came with us but Agatha wasn’t one for playing outside much. She preferred it indoors. Mammy was busy during the day, entertaining her soldier friends, and she didn’t like us to be around so she’d put us out in the mornings with the strict instruction not to knock until we were called in. We were on the streets all day long but I didn’t mind because they were wide, clean streets with big front gardens and I often played skipping games or ‘piggy beds’ with the other estate kids. Piggy beds was played with an empty shoe polish can filled with soil which we kicked onto numbered squares chalked onto the ground, trying to get the can onto each square from one to ten.

  If I saw a crust of bread on the ground that someone had thrown out for the birds, I’d sneak it into my pocket and then go into the fields to eat it. When I was really hungry I’d go through the bins at the back of the estate – sometimes people threw out stale loaves or rotten vegetables. Peter often came back after a day on his own with a couple of loaves of bread, and when Mammy had a little money she made stew in the evening and porridge in the morning. When there was nothing else, there were usually potatoes to make chips – but not always.

  On the few occasions when Mammy had some money she would send me out to the shops with Frances to buy the groceries. She’d hand us the list and the money and tell us: ‘Don’t come back without the money.’

  At first I didn’t understand what she meant so after we had set off towards the shops the first time, I asked Frances, ‘How can we do the shopping if we don’t spend the money?’

  ‘Because we’re not supposed to buy the food, eejit!’

  ‘How are we going to get it then?’

  ‘We have to steal it!’

  ‘Oh. Oh right.’

  Frances explained what we had to do. I had to pull our tartan shopping trolley while Frances held the shopping basket. We were to walk down the aisles together and she would put a couple of items in the basket but most of the food would go into my trolley. When we reached the counter I was to walk outside with the stolen food safely hidden in our trolley and she would pay for the items we’d put into the basket at the counter. The idea was to try and get as much as we could into the trolley without anyone noticing.

  I was terrified of getting caught. I was shaking with nerves all the way round the supermarket as Frances casually tossed the butter, bread, tea and cans into my shopping trolley. She put the sugar and oats in her own basket and then, when we got to the counter, I walked outside. Frances, meanwhile, stood at the counter, calm as you like, as she waited to pay for the two measly items in our basket.

  The first couple of times went like a dream and Mammy was pleased with us for coming back with the shopping and most of the money too. Trouble was, she kept sending us out to do it again and again and, of course, we got caught. Then the shop made us pay for everything in the trolley and they called the police. I was terrified as the large policeman marched us to our front door.

  ‘What do you mean – stealing, officer?’ Mammy clutched at her chest, pretending to be shocked when she opened the door to find us standing there shame-faced with two burly officers looming behind us.

  ‘I’m afraid so.’ The officer with the moustache behind me didn’t sound at all convinced by Mammy’s performance. ‘Stealing to order, it looks like!’ And he waved my mother’s list in her face.

  ‘Give that here!’ She snatched the piece of paper from him. ‘I had no idea they weren’t using the money I gave them. How dare you make such a suggestion! I’m their mother, a good Catholic woman. They’ve been taking the money for the’selves, the little scoundrels!’

  And with that she clipped me round the ear.

  ‘Get inside, the pairs of you, before I give you a bloody good hiding!’

  Frances and I scurried indoors, relieved to be away from the policemen.

  ‘Now then, Mrs Coogan,’ I heard them say. ‘They’ll get a warning this time, but mind, the next time this happens we’ll press charges.’

  ‘I understand, officer,’ Mammy replied politely. ‘And don’t you worry – it won’t happen again. I can assure you of that.’

  She had not long closed the door before whacking Frances and me about the head.

  ‘Ow!’ Frances exploded.

  ‘You pair of eejits!’ she blasted. ‘Why d’ya have to go and get caught? Now I can’t send you out shopping for me again, can I? Bloody eejits!’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mammy,’ we both whimpered. ‘We’re really sorry.’

  I was just relieved that we hadn’t been taken to the cells and locked up in prison. It could have been so much worse.

  The day they did take us away, in October 1965, I had no idea what was happening until it was too late. I suppose I should have noticed the official-looking men who came to our house the week before, poking around in our bedroom, asking us funny questions about what we’d eaten for tea the night before, but I didn’t know who they were and nobody told me.

  That morning Mammy said we were all going for a little walk and we all had to be on our best behaviour because we were meeting some important folk. So we marched behind my mother through the streets of Dublin until we came to a very large red-brick building. Mammy said Frances had to go with her but the rest of us were led into a small room.

  ‘Now yous lot just wait here and don’t be making a scene!’ she warned. I didn’t know what sort of a scene she thought we might make there. We just stood around, waiting, while lots of serious men in suits came and went.

  After a while we were taken into a large room with high ceilings, and a policeman showed us to a hard wooden bench along the wall. We sat down and a man with a smart thin moustache, sitting behind a big wooden desk much higher than us, told us this was a court and then garbled a lot of strange words I didn’t understand. He talked very fast and kept rustling papers so I couldn’t really hear him very well: something about a court order, reports from people called ‘social services’ and then finally something about us all being made ‘wards of the state’.

  Mammy was in a different part of the room, sitting next to Frances behind a desk, and when the strange man asked her if she understood she just nodded, looking a little sad. I turned to my siblings – Peter looked stony-faced and angry, Agatha, who was holding Cecily, was panic-stricken and Martin seemed as confused as me. At that moment a large policeman came up to us all and asked us to stand up and follow him outside. None of us moved.

  ‘Come on now
, children,’ he said gently. ‘There’s no point making this any harder for yoursel’s. Just come along now . . .’

  ‘NO!’ Peter shouted violently. In that instant, my mind flared with understanding: They are taking us away from Mammy!

  ‘I won’t go!’ Peter shouted again and then got up and made to run out of the court, but the policeman was too quick for him. He leaned down and caught him in a big bear hug – Peter was struggling and shouting and in another second we were all up on our feet, bawling and screaming at the same time.

  ‘Let go of me, you bastard!’

  ‘I don’t want to go!’

  ‘Mammy! Mammy!’

  ‘Don’t let them take us away!’

  ‘NO!’

  ‘Mammy! I want to stay with Mammy!’

  Before I knew what was happening we were surrounded on all sides by gigantic legs encased in black trousers – there must have been three or four policemen towering over us, their arms outstretched to stop us escaping. I dropped to the floor and started to crawl through a pair of legs, desperate to get to Mammy. Being so skinny, it wasn’t hard to get through the legs but in another second a firm pair of hands dragged me up by the armpits and swung me out of the room.

  ‘Get off! Get off me!’ I screamed, my legs bicycling helplessly through the air. The elastic band on my left shoe broke and my precious black patent shoe fell to the floor.

  ‘My shoe!’ I yelled. I was crying now, tears streaming down my face, unable to comprehend what was going on, helpless to stop it. ‘Please! Don’t take me away. I need my mammy!’

  All around me the air was filled with the terrible screams and wailing of my brothers and sisters as we were dragged, carried and heaved out of the courtroom and into police cars. Blind with rage and terror, I felt the cold Dublin air hit my calves. And still I struggled and still I called out to my mammy. The hands under my arms were too strong for me. I wriggled left and then right, I tried to reach for a face to claw at, I tried to kick out but I couldn’t find anything. Where are they taking me? Where is my mammy? I screamed for her over and over: ‘Mammy! Mammy! Mammy!’