‘Of course I have.’
‘And?’
‘I’m sorry for what I’ve done, but that doesn’t change how I feel. If they don’t let me keep it, Nancy, I’ll just move out and get a flat.’
‘Now you’re talking nonsense. How could you afford that, and you at home all day with a newborn baby?’
‘I’d get money from Social Welfare, wouldn’t I?’
‘Aye, a pittance. It wouldn’t keep you in nappies.’
‘I don’t care.’
‘Off the top of my head, I can think of three … no, four women from this locality who have given up babies for adoption. Each of them has gone on to get married and have kids with their husbands. If they’d kept their babies, as sure as eggs are eggs, they’d still be on their own and they’d never have had more children. You need to think about the whole thing on a long-term basis. A year from now, you could be away at college and doing the things that girls of your age should be doing, not stuck in some poky flat with a baby.’
‘I don’t want to go to college.’
‘What do you want to do with the rest of your life?’
‘I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it.’
‘You’re six weeks away from finishing your secondary education and you haven’t even thought about it?’
‘I was planning on going to Dublin to get a job, but all I can think about now is keeping my baby. Please help me, Nancy. Talk to my mother; she listens to you. Just ask her to think about it!’
‘I don’t see that there’s any point.’
‘Then I’m not doing my Leaving.’
‘Don’t be so foolish. You have to do it.’
‘Why? I know I’m going to fail. How can I possibly study when all I can think about is them giving my baby away to strangers?’
For a moment, she looks thoughtful.
‘OK,’ she says, getting up and walking over to the window, ‘let’s say I do decide to have a chat with your mother, will you promise to concentrate on your schoolwork and do your best in your exams?’
‘Yes.’
‘And will you continue to keep your pregnancy a secret for as long as your mother wants you to?’
‘I will.’
She pulls back the net curtains and looks out on to the street.
‘Because even if she does change her mind, it won’t happen overnight.’
‘Yeah, I know.’
‘So, you’ll stay calm and go along with her wishes for now?’
‘OK.’
‘Then I’ll have a word with her,’ she says. ‘Not today or tomorrow, mind you, but whenever I think the time is right.’
‘Thanks, Nancy.’
‘Merciful hour, is that the angelus I hear already?’ she says, checking her watch. ‘I’d better be off.’
‘You know, I’m really sorry for the trouble I’ve caused,’ I say as she heads for the door.
She mutters something under her breath. I can’t be certain, but it sounded like ‘You girls always are.’
I’m the only student in the examination hall wearing a cardigan. My mother has warned me not to take it off because it conceals my now suspicious protrusion. My armpits are seeping and my blouse is cleaving to my skin. I can’t stop scratching myself. Since my chat with Nancy a few weeks earlier, I haven’t discussed my baby’s future with either of my parents, but if the number of times my mother has visited Nancy’s house recently is anything to go by, then the matter is being discussed at length, which I’m taking as a good sign. Half-way through my Maths paper, my mind drifts. I can’t help imagining Lesley’s reaction when she hears I’m having a baby too. If nothing else, it will make her see that she’ll have to stop gossiping about me being a lesbian. And who knows, she might even be glad of a friend who’s in the same boat as herself.
The Sunday after I finish my exams, my mother tells me I have an appointment at the hospital the following day.
‘OK,’ I say, opening my jeans button to sit down.
‘It’s in Enniskillen.’
‘Enniskillen!’
‘Yes, that’s what I said.’
‘Why there? I thought you hated the North.’
‘I do, but that’s where you’ll be delivering the baby.’
‘Why will I be going there? What’s wrong with Castleowen hospital?’
‘What do you think is wrong with it? If you have it there, all and sundry will know about it.’
‘But I’m keeping it: they’ll know anyway.’
‘What do you mean you’re keeping it? You’re doing no such thing.’
‘But Nancy said she’d –’
‘Nancy is of the same opinion as I am. The best option … no, no, the only option is adoption.’
‘But she said she’d talk to you about me keeping the baby.’ My lips are trembling.
‘Yes, and she did. She thought it was a ridiculous idea, if you must know.’
‘She said she understood,’ I cry, cradling my tummy.
‘Look,’ my mother says with a sigh, ‘no matter how you feel, you have to do the right thing by your baby.’
‘Nancy led me to believe that there was a chance you’d change your mind.’
‘Because she wanted you to be able to get through your exams. We all did.’
‘So she lied to me.’
‘She was only trying to help you.’
‘She’s worse than Lesley.’
‘Lesley! Don’t talk to me about that trollop. It was hanging around with that madam that got you into this mess in the first place,’ she says, walking through to the kitchen.
‘At least she had good reason to betray me.’
I hear her rooting in a cupboard, then filling a glass with water and popping in two aspirin.
I get up and stand in the doorway between the two rooms.
‘How would you have felt if someone had taken me away from you after I was born?’
She looks down into her fizzing remedy. ‘I … I …’
‘Oh, Mammy, if you have to think about it …’
‘You should be counting your blessings that there’s a nice, good-living young couple out there, willing to raise your child as their own.’
‘That doesn’t answer my question, Mammy. I want to know how you’d have felt if –’
‘No matter how I’d have felt, I couldn’t or wouldn’t have kept you if I hadn’t been married. It wouldn’t have been right.’
‘It wouldn’t have been right for whom?’
‘Either of us.’
‘So, you’d have handed me over to a stranger … just like that.’
‘The woman who’s adopting your baby is barren. Can you imagine how happy she’ll be to get this baby?’
‘I don’t a give a damn about her! She’s not having my child.’
She turns her back to me. ‘Stop torturing yourself, Frances,’ she quavers. ‘Just accept that you have to give it up. It’s for the best.’
By early July, I can’t hide it any longer; even in my baggy sweatshirts I look pregnant. Father Vincent rings my mother to tell her that I’m welcome to stay in a convent in Enniskillen until the baby is born.
‘Everyone will be wondering where she is,’ she says to my father. ‘If it was only for a couple of weeks, grand, but from July until October, how do you explain that?’
‘It’s up to you,’ my father says. ‘Whatever you think yourself.’
‘I think it’s best to wait until September.’
My father’s indifference is killing me. Sometimes I feel like lifting up my T-shirt and saying, Look, Daddy, it’s your grandchild, but then I know that he’d pretend not to see me or hear me, or even feel for me.
I’m not allowed out. The only fresh air I get is in the back garden. Any time the doorbell rings, I’m shooed upstairs out of sight. One Sunday early in August, my mother arrives home after attending Mass in the village.
‘I’ve told everyone that you have shingles,’ she says. ‘They’re highly contagious, so they’ll understand why they
don’t see you out and about.’
When Nuddy Neary hears of my plight, he arrives at the front door with the name of a man who has the cure. I listen in amusement from my bedroom door.
‘He lives up in the Cooley Mountains,’ he tells my mother. ‘Everyone swears by him.’
‘Really. Well, thanks very much. I’ll think about it.’
‘It’s an odious tricky spot to find,’ he says, ‘but if youse like, I’ll accompany youse on the journey and be your navigator, so to speak.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘He’d have her right as rain in no time. They travel from all over the country to see him. He’s dynamite altogether.’
Inside my tummy, the baby stretches its limbs. I’d swear that’s a foot pressing down on my hipbone. I lift my T-shirt and watch the contortions underneath my skin.
‘Don’t worry,’ I whisper, touching my tummy. ‘I’ll never sign those papers.’
After an afternoon nap, I wake up with pins and needles in my feet. Across the landing, I can hear my mother humming. As I hobble towards the top of the stairs, I catch sight of her standing facing the mirror on the inside of her wardrobe door. She doesn’t normally leave her bedroom door open. Standing with my back to the landing wall, I stop to listen. It’s only then I recognize the song she’s humming – ‘The Mocking Bird’. Peeping round the corner, I see that she’s holding something to her cheek and swaying her upper body. There’s a white ball of wool, stabbed with knitting needles, lying on her bedside table.
‘How long have you been watching me?’ she says, swinging round and stuffing something into a drawer.
‘You want this baby as much as I do, don’t you?’ I say, stepping into her room.
‘Don’t talk nonsense.’
‘Let me see.’ As I walk towards the drawer, she stands with her back to it.
‘Go away,’ she says. ‘Get out of my bedroom right now.’
‘I’m not going anywhere until I see what’s in that drawer.’
‘It’s none of your business.’
‘If you don’t let me see, I’ll go downstairs, open the front door and walk up and down the street until everyone witnesses this,’ I say, pointing at my stomach.
‘If you do, my girl, you won’t get back in.’
‘I don’t give a monkey’s. I’m sure someone will take pity on me.’
‘For God’s sake, Frances, it’s just something I knitted for the baby.’
‘I want to see it.’
‘Why?’
‘I just do. What’s wrong with that?’
With eyes downcast, she steps to one side. As I reach out to open the drawer, she says, ‘It’ll be cold in October,’ then turns on her heel and walks away.
Inside the drawer I find three matinee coats in white, yellow and pale green, three little hats and mitts to match, and two pairs of bootees in yellow and green. One by one, I spread them on the eiderdown. Three little sets: all that’s missing are the white bootees. They’re the sweetest things I’ve ever seen. Picking up the white matinee coat, I sit down on the bed and lay it across my tummy. The mere thought of being separated from my baby sends me into floods of tears.
‘Getting yourself into a state is no good for the baby,’ my mother says.
I hadn’t heard her come back into the room.
‘I love the little pearl buttons,’ I snivel, fingering them.
‘Here,’ she says, handing me a handkerchief.
‘We could always raise it together.’
‘No,’ she says, shaking her head.
‘What does it matter what other people think or say?’
‘It mightn’t matter to you, but it matters to me and it’ll matter to that child.’
‘Times have changed.’
‘Oh, don’t kid yourself, Frances. Children born out of wedlock will always be considered bastards. That’s what they were a hundred years ago, that’s what they are now, and that’s what they’ll be a hundred years from now.’
Nancy gives me a quick examination. I’ve been complaining about pains in my back all day.
‘Likely it’s the lack of exercise,’ she says. ‘You’re bound to be stiff and you sitting about all day.’
‘That’s probably all it is,’ my mother says. ‘Sure, she’s not due for six weeks yet.’
During the night the pain grows stronger. It feels as if an iron claw is crushing my back. I don’t want to disturb my mother. She’s already said that all pregnant women get aches and pains. When it eases, I try to sleep, but each time I’m about to drift off, it comes back – fiercer, sharper, longer. Around three o’clock, when the pain becomes unbearable, I roll out of the bed and crawl across the room and on to the landing.
‘Daddy,’ I cry out. ‘Daddy! Daddy!’
My mother comes to me first and tries to pick me up off the floor. She’s shouting at my father to get up and ring Nancy at once. I’m clutching the carpet pile and moaning with pain. My father’s bare feet hurry past me and thud down the stairs.
‘Offer it up,’ my mother says, getting down on her knees and rubbing my back. ‘Think of it as penance and offer it up.’
‘Nancy’s on her way,’ my father pants, dashing up the stairs.
Taking an arm each, they help me back into the bedroom and lay me down on my bed.
‘Can you feel the baby moving at all?’ my mother asks.
‘No,’ I cry, as another spasm seizes me.
When Nancy arrives, my father leaves the room and the two women start to strip me.
‘She’s definitely in labour,’ Nancy tells my mother, as she removes my panties. ‘She’s had a show. You’ll have to take her straight to Castleowen hospital.’
‘Castleowen!’ my mother says.
‘Yes. Youse mightn’t make it to Enniskillen.’
‘We will.’
‘Youse mightn’t, Rita.’
‘Joe!’ my mother shouts. ‘Get dressed quickly.’
‘You get ready too,’ Nancy tells her. ‘I’ll stay with her.’
‘Oh, the pain,’ I cry. ‘Make it stop.’
‘You’re all right, love; just take deep breaths,’ Nancy says over and over as she dresses me. ‘There’s no need to panic.’ But her voice is shaking, her hands are fumbling and her eyes are taut with fear.
Outside I hear the car’s engine running. My mother sends Nancy out first to make sure there’s no one around; then they both help me into the back seat. All the time, I’m groaning and crying and begging them to take the pain away.
‘Keep going, Joe,’ my mother says, as we head into Castleowen. ‘Enniskillen is only thirty miles away. We’ll get there.’
‘No,’ I howl, as he turns left to follow her instructions.
Nancy is sitting in the back with me holding my hand.
‘Her contractions are getting worse, Rita,’ she says. ‘My advice is to turn back. What do you say, Joe?’
‘It’s up to Rita,’ he says.
‘If she delivers it in Castleowen,’ my mother says, ‘town and country will be gossiping about her by morning and then where will we be?’
The pain spreads across my stomach and down into my groin. Every mile we travel seems longer and bumpier than the one before. Nancy tells my father that I’m sweating buckets and asks him to turn down the heat, but he can’t; he needs to keep the windscreen clear. While I cry and curse and dig my fingers into the back of my father’s seat, my parents say a frantic rosary and Nancy says, ‘Take deep breaths, Frances. Come on now. Calm down, deep breaths.’
‘Aaaah, help me,’ I scream. My lower body feels as if it’s being torn apart. I’m sure I’m going to hear my pelvis snap.
‘Keep her quiet,’ my father says, ‘we’re coming up to a checkpoint.’
‘But the baby’s coming,’ I sob. ‘The baby’s coming.’
‘Don’t push yet whatever you do,’ Nancy says. ‘We’re nearly there now.’
‘We have a young lassie in labour,’ my father tells the policeman a
nd we’re immediately waved on.
In the next couple of minutes, the pain becomes so intense that I start to lose consciousness. Nancy is looking at me and her lips are moving, but I can’t hear a word she’s saying. It feels as if my ears are bleeding.
What happens after that is hazy. I remember the cold night air, the vibration of the trolley as I’m rushed down a corridor. I can still hear the huff of my own breath inside the mask over my mouth and nose, the jangle of medical instruments. I don’t know if the blinding light that makes me squint is real or just a figment of my imagination, but I do know that the living, breathing baby I see, all dressed in white with rosy lips, is just that.
‘They did everything they could for her,’ my mother whispers before I even manage to raise my post-sedative eyelids.
She and Nancy say I shouldn’t see her, but I know that if I don’t, I’ll lose my mind. A kind nurse takes me to her and lays her in my arms. I look down on her tininess and cry on top of her.
‘I was right to want to keep her, wasn’t I?’ I sob, stroking her cheek with the back of my forefinger.
‘Of course you were,’ the nurse says.
‘She’s my flesh and blood after all.’
‘Yes, she is.’
‘My little girl.’
‘Yes.’
‘My disgrace.’
‘No, Frances,’ she says, putting her arm around me.
‘Yes,’ I say, lowering my head and kissing her cold lips. ‘My beautiful disgrace.’
5 December 1999 (evening)
I saw my therapist today.
‘I’m very sorry about your daughter, Frances.’
‘Thank you,’ I said, wiping the condensation from the window. ‘You’re the first person to say that to me.’
‘Were you told why she died?’
‘Yes.’ I sat down and touched my throat. ‘The umbilical cord was tangled around her neck.’
In the long sad silence that followed, I tried to remember her perfect little face, but I couldn’t picture it. It was like waking up from a dream, still feeling absorbed by its atmosphere and charged with its emotions, but unable to grasp its physical existence. In frustration, I began to cry.
‘Does she have a name?’ he asked, passing me the box of tissues.
‘No,’ I sobbed, ‘just Baby Fall. My mother and Nancy told me there was no point in giving her a name. She was a stillborn, not a child. Stillborns didn’t get names.’
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