Dying to Survive

by Rachael Keogh

  ‘I think my realisation that, when I was “sick” in some way I would get the attention I craved, stems from this time. Even though I had everything that I needed materially, the people in my family weren’t around much when I was younger. My grandmother had started a job as a cleaning lady in Dublin Airport and she worked for the best part of the day. My mother, aunties and uncles were at the age of going out and socialising with their friends. I was left on my own with John who, although I loved him, could be unpredictable at the best of times. Every day when I came home from school I would say a little prayer that John would be either in a good mood or gone out.’

  I continued to tell Dr Sweeney...‘His drinking and his mood swings had become so bad that my friend Mary wouldn’t come near our house. This led to me staying with another neighbour who became my unofficial babysitter. I hated being in her house, because it was cold and it smelt of old musk, but anything was better than staying with John.’ I cringed now as the disturbing memories of that house came back to me.

  ‘She had a brother who was in his late teens and who always seemed a bit strange to me. He was tall and skinny, with brown greasy hair and pasty white skin. He didn’t seem to have any friends of his own and he spent most of his time hanging around his sister. One day he asked me if I wanted to learn how to play the keyboard. When I agreed, he brought me up to his bedroom and shut the door. I was so in awe of the size of the keyboard and of all its gadgets that I immediately ran over and started to play with it. He didn’t join me. Instead, he took out a blindfold and asked me if I wanted to play a game of blind man’s bluff...’.

  As if he sensed the direction in which my recollections were going, Dr Sweeney broke in to my thoughts. ‘Sorry for interrupting you, Rachael, but before you go any further I just want to remind you, in the nicest way possible of course, that I am not here to counsel you. I am merely here to assess you. You are doing really well and being completely open and you can continue if you like. But I just wanted to remind you that I won’t be giving feedback on what you are telling me. I am more than willing to listen to you, if you want to go on.’

  I was revealing myself and my life to this man whom I didn’t even know. Everything was coming out and it was as though I had no control over what I was saying. Somehow I knew that I had to keep going. ‘Yeah, I’ll keep going if that’s ok?’

  ‘Sure,’ he replied, nodding.

  ‘Where was I?’

  ‘You were saying that this guy wanted you to play blind man’s bluff.’

  ‘Oh yeah, he asked me to play a game with him, but I had no idea what he was talking about. He explained to me that I needed to put the blindfold on. Then he would hide and I had to find him. So I let him blindfold me. Then I blindly walked around his room, arms stretched out in front of me, excitedly trying to find him. Then I felt him and he took me by the hand to steady me on my feet. He lifted the blindfold from my head and when my vision became clear I realised that his jeans and his underwear were down around his ankles. I didn’t know what was going on. Then, without saying a word, he put my hand on his penis and slowly showed me how to masturbate him. I did what he wanted, but something within me knew that what we were doing was wrong. He kept his hand on my hand as I touched him, then he suddenly jumped away from me. He quickly pulled up his jeans and before I knew it his sister was standing behind me. She had a puzzled look on her face. She asked us if everything was ok and then she left us on our own again.’

  ‘What age were you when this happened?’ asked the doctor.

  ‘I was only seven.’

  ‘Did it ever happen again?’

  ‘I don’t think so. If it did, I can’t remember. But I have memories that don’t add up or make sense. I remember being in his bedroom another time. I was hiding under his bed. I was really afraid and I vividly remember the bedclothes. They were like corduroy with strings hanging from the ends of them. I was sitting in the dark and I could just see the light from the hall coming in around the edges of the door. I have no idea what I was doing there. I just know that I was scared stiff. I couldn’t even tell you how long that girl baby-sat me for. I think I have a lot of it blocked out.

  ‘It was around this time that things began to change in my house. My mother was becoming more and more distant from me and I was starting to really miss her being around. At the time she was doing part-time modelling and at the best of times the closest that I could get to her was by wearing her clothes. She would keep these fancy dresses that she got from modelling out in my grandparents’ shed. Every so often I would go out to the shed on my own and dress up in her clothes.

  ‘Then one day, herself and my auntie Jacqueline were talking in the kitchen. Jacqueline took out this bag of baby clothes. “They’re gorgeous,” Jaqueline told my mother, oohing and ahhing over the tinyness of them. I listened and watched them carefully, wondering who they belonged to. I asked my mother who they belonged to, but she just told me that they belonged to a friend. A few months later my brother Philip was born. I had had no idea that she was even seeing someone, not to mind expecting another baby.’

  ‘Your mother had another baby?’ the doctor said, looking surprised.

  ‘Yeah, but at this time I didn’t even know who the father was. What I do know is that when Philip was born I felt like my world fell down around me. It was September 1986. Christmas was coming and I remember auntie Marion’s boyfriend, Declan, being in my grandparents’ house. He was dressed up in a Santa Claus suit and was trying to distract me from something, but his attempts to amuse me had no effect. I was more concerned with my mother and couldn’t help but wonder why she was pulling all of her clothes out of the wardrobe and putting them into suitcases.

  ‘Declan kept trying to distract me, sitting me on his knee, asking me what I wanted for Christmas. I kept worming my way away from him every time. I couldn’t get close enough to my mother to ask her where she was going. Then she came down the stairs with her suitcases and bags. Declan grabbed me and held me tight in his arms. I called after her, screaming and crying, but she looked straight ahead and just kept walking. That was the night my mother left me.’

  _____

  I continued telling Dr Sweeney...‘I don’t think that I ever got over it. I cried every night for weeks after she left. Until one day, I didn’t cry any more. Of course I have spoken to my mother about this and asked her why she left. She has said that she felt I was better off in the stability of my grandparents’ home, in my school and with all my friends. But I have always felt the reasons were more complicated than that. I know now that she had met someone new and so perhaps she wanted to start again, away from her own past—I was a constant reminder of that past. And she was so young, hardly more than a child herself when she had me. But to me, as a seven-year-old, she had simply abandoned me.

  ‘Don’t get me wrong,’ I continued. ‘She still came up to see me every week, bringing Philip along with her. Philip was so tiny and cute. I couldn’t believe that he was my brother. But I never got to spend enough time with him to be able to bond with him. I felt like I was outside the window, looking in on my own family. I just thought that my mother would always be there, so when she moved out with Philip, I was really hurt. I was convinced that I had done something wrong.’

  ‘Did you ever tell your mother this?’ asked the doctor.

  ‘No, I couldn’t. I didn’t know how to. God forbid that you express your feelings in my house. In my family, we were experts at burying our feelings. We had learned this from many years of living with John, trying to keep out of his way and not make too much of a fuss. When my mother left, it was no different. Nobody said anything. No-one tried to explain to me what had happened and why.

  ‘So I just kept everything in and pretended that it hadn’t happened. I engrossed myself in my school work and my friends. Anyway, my Holy Communion was coming up and I was really looking forward to it. Religion was one of my favourite subjects, and I loved going to the church to practise our readings for our big day.
I couldn’t wait for my family to see me singing in the choir.

  ‘It was a few days before my Communion and our families were asked to come to the church for rehearsals. My grandmother came, but during the whole mass I kept looking at the door to see if my mother was coming. She never turned up. When the mass was over, the priest asked myself and all my classmates to kiss our parents on the cheek. Everyone did, except for me. I felt so angry with my mother that I couldn’t even look at my grandmother. Again, I kept it all in.’

  At this point in our conversation, the ringing of Dr Sweeney’s phone brought me back to reality. ‘Excuse me, Rachael, I need to answer this.’ Then Dr Sweeney looked at his watch. ‘We’ve just gone over time. If it’s alright with you, I’ll come back and continue the assessment with you tomorrow.’

  Thank God, I thought to myself. I was starting to get really tired and agitated. I had enough of talking about myself and badly needed some air. ‘Yeah, that’s grand, thanks very much,’ I said, relieved that, for today, it was all over.

  ‘Take it easy. You have talked about a lot today.’

  ‘I will,’ I said. ‘See you tomorrow.’ I shook his hand and left the room. The numbness which I had felt earlier had now been replaced by a jittery feeling, a churning in my stomach. I had remembered things that I really didn’t want to remember, ever. I had forgotten the rage and anger that I had felt against everyone, most of all my mother. And how I wanted to destroy everything. Now the memories came flooding back and I felt restless, uneasy and apprehensive.

  _____

  The next day I continued telling Dr Sweeney my story. He hadn’t forgotten anything.

  ‘Right,’ he said confidently. ‘We’re going to pick up from where we left off yesterday, if that’s ok with you?’

  ‘Yeah, that’s fine,’ I agreed, determined to keep going.

  ‘You were talking about your mother leaving you and of how she never turned up for your Communion rehearsals. Did you spend time with her at all after that?’

  ‘I did, but very rarely. I began to get really resentful towards my ma: I don’t think I was even aware of it at that time. Sometimes she would collect me from my nanny’s and she would bring me into town. Then she would buy me a knickerbocker glory ice-cream and we would take a walk up to St Stephen’s Green. I was completely in awe of my mother. She was so young and beautiful. She had a charismatic personality that everyone wanted a piece of. Especially me. I remember wanting to be like her, imitating everything that she did. That sounds messed up, doesn’t it?’ I asked Dr Sweeney. ‘The more I talk about the relationship that I had with my ma, the more I’m realising just how fucked up I was. Do you think my relationship with my mother was dysfunctional, even when I was that young?’ I asked the doctor.

  ‘Well, I think only you can answer that, Rachael,’ he answered, giving nothing away. I continued. ‘I think I just craved my mother’s love and attention. But at that time I was so confused. I didn’t know what was going on and I didn’t have anyone that I could really talk to.

  ‘I remember this other time, my mother was bringing me up to my cousin Martina’s house in Finglas. Martina was a year younger than me and she was celebrating her birthday. My ma had bought me a whole new outfit. I thought that I was gorgeous and I couldn’t take my eyes off my shoes. They were little black pumps with bright blue and white sparkles all over them. My mother was walking ahead of me as I trailed behind. I was singing to myself, in my own little world, fascinated with how the sun reflected off my shoes. Then I heard somebody call my name. I looked around me, but there was nobody there.

  ‘“Rachael,” I heard again, louder this time. There was no-one around except for this man who was standing in a garden, just across the road. He was in his late twenties with dark hair and good looks. He wore blue jeans and a white vest top. It looked as if he was doing some gardening, because he had a shovel in his hand. He started to wave at me. I looked to my mother to see if she knew who he was. But she hadn’t even noticed; she was still walking ahead. Then he stuck out his tongue at me and began to smile. I recognised him from somewhere, but I couldn’t remember how or where. I smiled back at him, feeling as though I knew him well.

  ‘“Rachael, don’t look at that man,” my mother suddenly shouted as she came running back to me. “Let’s go,” she said, as she grabbed me by the hand and pulled me onwards. I couldn’t stop looking at him as he waved me goodbye. The story does have a point, Dr Sweeney, but it wasn’t until months later that I realised what it was.’

  ‘Sorry, Rachael, you have just lost me. How do you mean?’ asked the doctor, with a confused look on his face.

  ‘Well, my grandmother used to have this big black briefcase that she kept all her photos in...’ I continued, recalling the time when, one day, a few months after I had seen the man, out of boredom I decided to have a look through the briefcase. There were pictures of John when he was a fisherman, looking windswept and proud of the fish he had caught. There were pictures of Laurence and Jonathon with their arms around these two girls, looking coy, in Holyhead. There were loads of pictures of my mother and my aunties with the bad perms that were stylish at the time. But one picture stood out to me. It was a picture of my christening. I recognised everyone in the photo, except for the man who was holding me. Then I remembered. It was the man who was smiling at me in Finglas. But I still didn’t know who he was.

  ‘Clutching the photo in my hand, I ran downstairs to my grandmother, who was sitting in the sitting-room watching television. “Ma,” I called her (I had taken to calling her Ma), ‘who’s that?’ I handed her the photo.

  Her jaw dropped. ‘Come over here and sit down beside me,’ she said, patting the chair next to her. ‘That’s your father,’ she said softly.

  ‘Is it?’ I said, taking the photo from her and examining my father carefully.

  ‘But he’s not around any more,’ she continued.

  ‘Why not?’ I asked.

  ‘He’s dead, Rachael.’

  Then I was really confused. ‘He’s not dead, because I saw him a while ago,’ I told my grandmother, on the verge of crying. I had no idea who my father was, but I didn’t want him to be dead.

  ‘When did you see him?’ she asked.

  ‘When I was going to Martina’s birthday party. He was in somebody’s garden beside Martina’s house.’

  ‘That couldn’t have been him. He died a few years ago in a car crash.’

  ‘But the man I saw really looked like him,’ I told my grandmother, totally unconvinced by what she was saying.

  ‘Well, whoever that man was, he wasn’t your father, because your father is dead,’ my nanny announced firmly.

  At this point, Dr Sweeney broke into my thoughts. ‘What was that like for you, being told that your father was dead?’

  ‘I remember feeling very sad. But to be honest, I got over it very quickly. I never had a relationship with my da anyway, so I didn’t know what I was missing. I just got on with things, as children do.’

  Chapter 3

  FALLING APART

  When I told Dr Sweeney that I had got over my father’s ‘death’, it was only partly true. In reality, I was so traumatised by my mother leaving that I couldn’t take it in, and so, like much else in my life at this time, I buried it somewhere deep down, where I thought it couldn’t hurt me. I knew that my nanny was telling me a lie about my father, but I hadn’t the heart to care any more.

  I had opened my heart to Dr Sweeney because my life depended on it. I knew that to stand any chance of real recovery, I had to tell him the truth, but more importantly to tell myself the truth, about my life. And so I began to keep a journal, to jot down memories of my life as they came to me. I decided that no matter how painful these memories were, I would write them down, as it really helped me to make sense of them and to understand how my trying to bury them had nearly destroyed me. The most painful of these memories were those about my mother and my life after she left. I felt empty inside and, although I couldn’t ar
ticulate it, I was filled with a rage that at times threatened to overwhelm me.

  I was eleven years old and, on the outside, I was still the golden-haired girl who loved school and everything about it. Art and music were my favourite subjects. I used to do a lot of the paintings for our local church and on Saturdays I would go to school for piano lessons with my music teacher. But inside I was really struggling to contain my anger and the constant, nagging feeling that I was worth nothing. I was a time-bomb waiting to go off, and as I grew into adolescence all of the ingredients to light the fuse were beginning to come together.

  With the adults in my life in and out of the house, there wasn’t always someone at home to keep an eye on me. My grandmother made sure I got up every morning for school and would often see me to the bus stop. She would always ensure that there was a hot meal for me when I came in from school, but because she worked she wasn’t always there. I spent most of my time out of the house, hanging around with my friends on the road, playing games with my friend Mary and her older sister and some other kids from the area. My auntie Jacqueline, who lived at home, would call me in at night or to take my asthma medication.

  Then I met Katie, a new girl who had moved into a house just two doors away. We quickly became best friends and her family became my own. Her mother and father—Breeda and James—and her five brothers and sisters had all moved into a three-bedroomed house in Ballymun with Breeda’s mother, Bernadette. After converting the bathroom into a bedroom, they somehow managed to fit themselves into their house. They had very little financially, but they were closely knit together and seemed very happy as a family. I was very attracted to their closeness and I began to spend most of my time there. Their house was always noisy and full of kids.

  I loved spending the night at the O’Connors’. Breeda would wake us up for school and we would all sit around the table together for breakfast: this was new to me. Then the kids would kill each other over who got to use the bathroom first. Breeda would make a chore list for the week, and God forbid that you didn’t abide by it. She would ground the kids for weeks, making them do all the housework. I always wanted to be grounded like Katie, but my nanny wasn’t strict with me—she didn’t need to be because I had always been such a good child.