Wednesday's Child

by Shane Dunphy

  Her breath reeked of tobacco, sour milk and bile. As she shouted, her spittle rained on me like bitter hail. I blinked and tried not to seem as scared as I was.

  ‘Will ye shut the fuck up? I’m watchin’ this,’ the woman in the corner called at us. I heard another match being struck as she lit a cigarette. I glanced at her for an instant before turning my attention back to the clear and present danger in front of me, who was now growling like a rabid dog and frothing round the edges of her mouth. I smiled weakly at her and moved back slowly on the couch. Joe was stirring again beside me.

  ‘Maybe we should just try and stay calm. Maybe I could ring the community welfare officer on your behalf, explain the situation …’

  She turned back to her armchair. The cigarette in her hand had burnt down to the butt. I looked over at the redhead.

  ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t get your name.’

  ‘That’s cos I didn’t tell you it,’ she snapped, never taking her eyes off the screen.

  ‘It’s Geraldine.’ Joe was with me again.

  ‘Geraldine, I’m pleased to meet you. Is that your baby?’

  She nodded.

  ‘May I have a look?’

  I stood up. Joe slid down into a half-lying position without my support, and stayed there. I moved over to the pram, keeping half an eye on the bulk that was now shaking and frothing. I looked into the pram. A baby of maybe three months was lying on a stained sheet, half-covered with a ragged shawl. It was awake and looked at me with large blue eyes. It had been sick, and white semi-digested milk lumps were dried on to the side of its face.

  ‘Boy or a girl?’ I asked.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Is your baby a boy or girl?’

  ‘A girl. Christine.’

  ‘May I?’

  An indiscriminate shrug met my request, so I lifted the child out of the pram and went back to the couch, where I had to perch on the edge so as not to sit on Joe. The child continued to look at me. It gurgled and waved its chubby arms and kicked its legs. It was wearing a grey sleep suit which had probably started out life white, but which was black at the elbows and bum. I could tell that the nappy was full.

  ‘I think she’s due a change, Geraldine. I’ll do it if you like. Don’t get up.’

  She hadn’t moved or even registered my statement. The changing bag was beside the pram and I grabbed it and pulled it towards me. I found a semi-clean towel on the top of the bag and spread it out on the couch, shoving Joe’s head aside to make room. Christine had a very slight nappy rash, but nothing too bad, and I quickly cleaned her and put on a fresh nappy. The nappies were a decent, named brand, as were the wipes and cream. I washed the puke off her face and freshened her up with the wipes: behind the ears and under the arms, her legs and feet. She seemed well fed and not unhappy. I sat her on my knee and looked back at Mrs Kelly, who was now rocking and swearing quietly.

  ‘How long has your mother been like this, Geraldine?’

  The redhead sighed and used the remote control to mute the television.

  ‘She went mad last night. The ESB bill came. We’ve no money. She can’t stand the stress.’

  I nodded and gave Christine my index finger. She grasped it firmly and pulled at it. Reflexes seemed to be present and correct.

  ‘There’re a few of you living in the house here, aren’t there? The youngest is fourteen, right? She’s the only one at school. Can’t you all club in and help her? Even if you aren’t working, you’ve got the dole or Lone Parents or whatever …’

  She was looking at me with real anger.

  ‘You people make me fucking sick. You think you know it all, coming here in your big car, telling us how to live our lives. I don’t have the money for the bill. The others don’t have it either.’

  I looked back at her unwaveringly.

  ‘How much is the electricity bill?’

  ‘It’s not just one bill. There’s the gas as well.’

  ‘Okay. Bills. How much do you owe?’

  A roar broke off my line of thought as Mrs Kelly thundered from the room. The door that she had wrenched open slammed off the wall, puncturing a hole in it that crumbled plaster all over the already grimy floor.

  ‘I’d say it’s about four hundred euro now.’

  ‘For two bills?’

  ‘We owe for the last ones too.’

  I nodded. The cycle of poverty. I stroked the baby’s head and watched as she tried to focus her big eyes on my hand.

  ‘If you could even pay something off them, they’d make allowances. They don’t actually want to cut you off. Give them something to work with.’

  She fumbled for another cigarette.

  ‘Yeah, well fuck you.’ She mumbled around the filter.

  ‘Geraldine, come on! I’m trying to help you here. I’ll ring them if you want, see if we can’t work this out.’

  She was shaking with rage and her cheeks were flushed with the embarrassment of the conversation. I could tell that she wasn’t stupid, and that she had a sense of pride that simply did not belong in this slum. It would be knocked out of her the hard way. It was a wonder it hadn’t been knocked out already.

  ‘Whatever. I don’t care any more.’

  With a thunderous roar Mrs Kelly lumbered back into the living room, this time brandishing a bread-knife.

  ‘Oh shit,’ I muttered.

  She was glaring at me with a savage intensity, her left hand bunched into a fist, her right hand clamped around the handle of the knife. I looked quickly at the blade. It was slightly rusted and far from razor sharp, but it would be enough to do some damage with her obviously manic strength behind it.

  ‘Now you big bastard!’ she seethed through clenched teeth and a constricted throat. ‘You will listen to me!’

  She drew the jagged end of the blade over her arm in a swooping arc, grating the flesh rather than cutting it. She grunted and did it again. The blood came immediately, running in thin sheets down her forearm.

  ‘Mrs Kelly! Please!’

  I quickly placed the baby back in the pram. She didn’t make a sound, unaccustomed to being hastily dropped. I sat back down. I didn’t want to threaten the woman by standing. She growled deep in her throat, and stood there, seemingly for a second unaware of what she was doing, where she was, even of my presence. Geraldine had gone back to her television. She looked mildly upset by the turn of events, but not so much as to lose track of the morning programme. Mrs Kelly slowly drew the blade over the flesh just above her wrist. I watched, my mind working rapidly. She was purposely not hitting the artery. She wasn’t trying to kill herself – yet. I shot a lightning glance at Joe, but he was still out of it. The woman before me was growling again, and continuing to make red, raw grooves in her arm. I could hear the sound of the drops spattering on the floor and pulled my legs away from them.

  ‘This isn’t helping anyone, Mrs Kelly,’ I said, barely aware of a tremble in my voice.

  ‘You’ll listen now, you bastard,’ she said, her eyes fixed on me, trying to gauge my reaction.

  ‘I was listening anyway!’ I shot back, feeling desperate.

  She blinked at that, uncertain.

  ‘I was just chatting to Geraldine here, and we were saying how, if we could get ye all to club in together and pay a bit off each of the bills, it’ll keep the services switched on. Weren’t we, Geraldine?’

  The redhead looked over at me in disgust, but nodded and grunted assent. The knife remained poised over the seeping arm.

  ‘Could I have the knife, Mrs Kelly?’ Joe asked, sitting up shakily.

  He had his hand outstretched towards the huge woman, who was also trembling, the tears welling up in her eyes. She slowly placed the knife in his hand and sank down on the floor amidst the cigarette butts, the dust and the old newspapers and sobbed, rocking rhythmically. Joe sagged on the couch, panting, the knife blade held away from himself. I stood up and walked over to Geraldine, squatting down in front of her so that I was in her line of vision, obscuring Rich
ard and Judy. There were tears streaming down her cheeks, although she wasn’t making a sound. I took the smouldering cigarette from her and had a long drag on it. I hadn’t smoked seriously in years, but suddenly needed one badly. I held her hand gently.

  ‘I need to ring Dr Maloney to have your mam admitted as soon as possible. Today.’

  She nodded, crying more openly now.

  ‘I’ll organise with the ESB and with Bord Gáis to have the bills paid in instalments, but you need to get your brother and sister to help with it. Can you do that?’

  She nodded again. Mrs Kelly had begun to sing ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’ as she rocked. She sounded like a little girl.

  ‘You have a beautiful baby, Geraldine. She needs to be safe and this isn’t a place for a child. You know that – maybe better than anyone.’

  She nodded again. I pulled on the cigarette and flicked it into the fireplace. I stood up.

  ‘I’m going to make a phone call. Will you be okay to watch your mother till I come back?’

  Again a nod, this time accompanied by a sniff. I went over to Joe and grabbed his arm, hoisting him up. He came to consciousness as I lifted him and half-walked and was half-carried to the door. I dumped him in the passenger seat of the car and called the gardaí, asking for the squad car to come around, then called the office of Mrs Kelly’s psychiatrist.

  It took another two hours for her to be taken away. She remained locked in that childhood place all the time. Geraldine returned to sullenness, embarrassed by the vulnerability she had shown and the agreement that she should not be raising her child in the horror she herself had been raised in. I stood out by my car in that strange, tormented housing estate as the ambulance pulled away. The gardaí had taken Joe home and I was alone. I smoked a cigarette provided by one of the ambulance men and felt empty and tainted. Short of having a sick woman placed in hospital, had I achieved anything; had I helped in any sense at all? I sat into my car and started the engine. As I drove out of Doonan, the only thing that I knew was that there are sometimes situations in social care where there are truly no winners. And the day was only halfway through.

  2

  I ate lunch in a small café. I didn’t know anyone in the office well enough to meet them for lunch, and anyway, I felt the need to be alone, to regroup my resources before my afternoon appointments. I had returned to fieldwork after two years of teaching college, training childcare workers, because I felt that I was getting out of touch with the work at the coal-face. I thought that I would benefit from reimmersing myself in the day-to-day realities of child-protection work. After a morning at the sharp end of it, I was already wondering if I had done the right thing. Was I really able for this after so long? What did I hope to achieve? Could I get the teaching post back if I prostrated myself before the Head of the Faculty? I pushed such thoughts aside and pulled myself together. I’d give it the week and then consider the best approach – outright begging, threats or simple bribery.

  I paid for the meal and walked the short distance back to the office. Rosalind, the office administrator, was still at lunch when I came into the lobby, and I walked through and up the stairs to the work area. Downstairs was made up of Rosalind’s office, a meeting room, an observation room and a playroom. There were eight rooms upstairs, a small office for the team leader, a kitchen, a bathroom and five larger offices for the rest of the team. The rooms were all small and cramped, most with only one phone for often three or four people. I was based in the room at the top of the stairs. I had my diary open and was flicking through it as I came in the door of the room, but a voice stopped me in my tracks.

  ‘Hi Shane.’

  I looked up and saw a slim woman sitting in my chair. I looked at her blankly.

  Her name was Melanie, and she was a social worker. She was, in fact, one of the reasons I was there, as she and several other workers were being moved to other projects.

  And she was seated in my chair at my desk.

  She was a talented worker and, from what I had gathered in the few brief conversations with members of the team before my arrival, had established herself squarely as a powerful matriarchal figure. She had subsequently been offered the job of setting up and managing a new team in a nearby village. This meant that she had a whole building at her disposal from which to work. She seemed, however, to feel the need to retain claim over her desk. I looked aghast at my small collection of stuff – a jam-jar full of pens, a notebook with phone numbers in it, a hardback ledger in which I logged phone calls – a collection that had been shoved aside to make room for a large pile of files and loose papers.

  ‘You didn’t think I was giving up my desk, did you?’ she asked, smiling condescendingly.

  ‘Yes, I did actually,’ I said, still frozen to the spot.

  ‘Well, I need it,’ she retorted, pulling over the phone and punching in a number aggressively.

  I stood and watched her, unsure what to do. Around the same age as myself (late twenties), she was slim and striking. She dressed like she had put a great deal of thought into it, and I would learn that her colours always matched and her accessories were always co-ordinated. Her dark hair was thick and worn shoulder length in an expensive cut.

  She was fiercely territorial and I had been told, by her as well as by some of the other staff, that no one would ever fill her shoes. I was aware that she had a small group of followers among the social workers, and that there had been open aggression between her and the team-leader until this new post came up. It seemed that conflict was something that she did not go out of her way to avoid.

  As she began her phone conversation, I reached over her and grabbed my stuff, pulling a chair up at a neighbouring desk. A numbness settled over me like a flame-proof blanket. To tell the truth, I was enraged. In this type of work, the office desk and small amount of miscellaneous junk are a person’s base of operations and therefore sacrosanct. You don’t screw with them. Although I was new to the team and new to the job, I still warranted this small amount of respect. Melanie, however, was an unknown quantity to me, and I knew enough to realise that she had the capacity – at the very least – to cause me a world of unwanted pain. I decided not to get into direct confrontation with her … yet. There were political ramifications that were too complex for me to fully grasp. I would wait and see how best to handle her.

  My afternoon appointments were all with the local Travellers’ Centre, and I was getting up to leave when my mobile phone rang. The number that flashed up was our sister-office in a neighbouring village. I wasn’t due to visit there until the following week, so was surprised to hear from them.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Shane Dunphy?’

  ‘Speaking.’

  ‘Hi. This is Mary Jeffries, Team Leader with the South Team.’

  ‘Hi. What can I do for you? I don’t think I’m due to meet you until next Wednesday.’

  ‘No … no you’re not. It’s just that an emergency has come up.’

  She spoke with a broad Dublin accent in quick, short bursts. I could tell already that I would like her.

  ‘An emergency?’

  ‘Yes. Have you read the file on Gillian O’Gorman yet?’

  ‘Barely at all.’

  ‘Well, it seems she’s had some sort of an episode at school. They need somebody to get out there.’

  ‘Okay. I have some other meetings lined up, but they’re nothing that can’t wait. Should I go alone? She’s never met me before. If she’s in an agitated state …’

  ‘Is there anyone else there?’

  I looked over at Melanie. The thoughts of going on a visit with her after the morning I’d had did not fill me with confidence. I heard a tread on the stair and Andi, the other Community Childcare Worker on the team, strolled in. Andi was a warm, friendly, open-faced girl who tended to dress in a slightly hippy style, all tie-dyes and paisley dresses and trousers. Her hair was long and curly and she always seemed to have a bounce in her step.

  ‘Andi, are you free t
o do an emergency visit?’ I called over.

  ‘I can be.’

  ‘Yeah,’ back to the phone. ‘Andi can come out with me.’

  ‘Good stuff. Call me when you’re done.’

  I filled Andi in on what I had been told, which in fairness was virtually nothing, and waited while she cancelled her meetings. I used the phone in her office when she was finished (since Melanie was still talking loudly into the phone in mine) to make the single phone call required to cancel my own appointment, and we headed down to the car park.

  ‘I’ll drive,’ Andi said as we left the building.