Dying to Survive

by Rachael Keogh

  Every Saturday myself and Katie would be sent to do the weekly shopping, giving us a sense of responsibility. We thought that we were great, with our shopping list and trolley. One Saturday, on our way back from the shopping centre, we bumped into Katie’s sister Susan. She was hanging around the towers in Sillogue. I remember her all done up, as if she was going somewhere. Then I realised why. She was with these two young fellas. They were a year or two older than myself and Katie and couldn’t have been more than twelve years old. Their names were Steo and Snarts and it turned out that Snarts was Susan’s new boyfriend.

  I had never met anyone who lived in the blocks before and they looked like little gurriers. Steo was pocket-sized, with sallow skin and a pretty face. Snarts wasn’t much taller and looked like the Milky Way kid, with white hair and a dimple in his chin. Myself and Katie weren’t impressed with Susan’s new friends, but as time went on Susan began to invite them to her house and my whole world began to change.

  When the O’Connors moved into our street, kids came out of the woodwork from all over Ballymun. A friendly and open person, Mrs O’Connor opened her doors to all of her children’s friends. Nearly every weekend we would have a hop or a dance-off, where all the kids from the area would come to Katie’s house for a disco, or we would have a dancing competition. A new world was opening up to me and at first I wasn’t sure if I liked it. I was painfully shy and I didn’t know how to act around our new friends.

  Steo and Snarts listened to techno music that I had never even heard of before. They would arrive at Katie’s, smoking cigarettes and wearing baggy jeans, lumber jackets and Paddy caps. All the kids would gather in the sitting-room, where we would blast the stereo and become more hyper by the minute. I would usually bury myself in a corner of the sofa, dreading that Katie might ask me to show the other kids the dance we had practised earlier or to sing a song that we had made up ourselves. When she did ask me to dance, I would go red in the face and she would say, ‘Don’t be going scarlet. C’mon’. I would reluctantly get up and dance, hating every minute of it and wanting the ground to open up and swallow me. Especially the first time Steo asked me to dance with him to a slow set. I’ll never forget it. I was tall for my age and towered over him and I felt so silly. He gently put his hands around my waist and I put my hands around his neck. We were barely touching each other. I remember catching Katie’s eye a few times and she was grinning from ear to ear. She knew that I liked Steo. ‘It’s ’orrible being in love when you’re 82. I’ve got your picture on my wall, I’ve got your name up on my scarf, Oh it’s ’orrible being in love when you’re 82,’ played on the stereo, as myself and Steo awkwardly swayed from side to side, doing our best not to stand on each other’s toes.

  In the beginning I would get really embarrassed around Steo and Snarts, but as time went on I began to feel more comfortable with them. The novelty of going out with Snarts wore off Susan quick enough, so she started seeing Steo’s brother, David. David was the same age as Susan, eleven, and looked nothing like his brother. He was a lot taller, with sandy coloured, tousled hair and he took the role of group comedian. We were becoming like a little gang and it was getting bigger by the day. A new girl moved in between Katie and Mary. Her name was Emer. She was a placid girl, the same age as myself. She was skinny with pale skin and had a big mop of dark coffee-coloured curls on her head. Her parents were young and stylish and had two younger kids. Myself and the three girls, Katie, Mary and Emer, became as thick as thieves and never went anywhere without one another.

  My grandmother wasn’t like the other girls’ mothers. Even though she wasn’t very strict, it took her a while to come around to the idea of bringing my friends into the house and I would usually have to sneak them in, depending on John’s humour. But my grandmother became very fond of my three friends, and when John wasn’t there she would let us raid her presses for loads of munchies. My grandmother must have thought that there was going to be a war, because she bought all her groceries in bulk, making sure that I never wanted for anything. For this reason alone, my friends loved coming to my house.

  With my grandmother working in Dublin Airport she was making her own money and she wasn’t as reliant as before on John, something which pleased her greatly. ‘I’m telling ye, Rachael, never rely on a man. Get out there and stand on your own two feet,’ she would say to me over and over again. But at the same time as my relationship with my nanny became closer, my relationship with my mother was becoming more and more distant. Although she still visited at the weekend, she had moved into a new flat in Mercer Street with Philip and his father, Mick, my mother’s new partner, who was a soldier in the Irish Army at the time. Mick was a stranger to me then. I can only remember meeting him once before they moved into the flat together, at my auntie Marion’s wedding to Declan.

  However, once she was installed in her new flat, I think my mother made an effort to involve me more in their lives, because she began to invite me over to the flat to mind Philip. My brother was only five at the time. He was tall for his age, with chocolate hair and eyelashes that went on for ever. He was adorable, but he was a real handful, always doing the opposite to what my ma told him to do. The flat had only one bedroom, with a separate kitchen and sitting-room, but my mother made it as homely as she could.

  My mother had a history of difficult men. Her relationship with my grandfather had never really recovered from her teenage pregnancy, although they had reached an uneasy truce, and my father’s relationship with her had been fraught with violence and stress. Unfortunately, it looked as if history might repeat itself with Mick. One night when I was visiting, my ma and Mick came back from the pub. I was lying on the chair in the sitting-room, pretending to be asleep. My ma came straight in and kissed me on the forehead, then she went back into the kitchen with Mick, leaving a whiff of alcohol and perfume behind her. I lay in the dark, trying to hear what they were saying. They were at loggerheads over something. They argued for a few minutes, then everything went calm. I knew that she was ok. They both quietly went to bed, as I glided off into a deep sleep.

  Mick and my mother subsequently had an argument that left her very upset. I don’t know the details but he left the flat in a hurry. As soon as Mick was gone I ran in to my mother. She sat up straight in the bed and reached out her arms to me. She was crying. She held me in her arms, saying that she was so sorry. I became hysterical. She took me by the hand and brought me out to the sitting-room where she sat me down and knelt before me.

  ‘Rachael, make a promise to me?’ she asked.

  I couldn’t look at her. ‘What?’ I said, still hyperventilating.

  ‘Promise me that you’ll finish school and go to college.’

  I didn’t know what she was talking about. ‘Why? Where are you going?’ I asked. For a moment I thought that she was going to die and that was her last wish.

  ‘Nowhere; just promise, will you?’

  ‘Ok, I promise.’ At the time I didn’t know what she was talking about, but now I do. She wanted me to have a better start in life than she had, so that I would be able to make better choices. She wanted me to have an education, so that I could grab the opportunities that she had missed and not end up like her, depending on an unpredictable man to get by in life. I wish I had understood her better then.

  ‘And will you not say anything to nanny about this?’

  I looked at her red-rimmed eyes. ‘Ok, I won’t.’ I never did tell my grandmother. I kept my mouth shut for a long time about that row and about others, but the more I kept to myself, the more lost I became. The hurt and fear were simply too much for me to handle, so I buried them. But the strain was beginning to show. My grades in school were beginning to drop. I was losing interest. In spite of my mother’s plea to me, I couldn’t see the value of getting an education, not when hanging around the tower blocks was becoming more appealing. Going home to do my homework just wasn’t an option for me. After all, what was the point, I thought, when I had nobody to answer to, nobody wh
o would take a real interest in me? I guess my family just assumed that I was ok. But it wasn’t long until they found out the truth.

  _____

  It all happened very quickly, now that I look back on it. I was only eleven, and when I think about this time of my life it just seems like a blur. I remember the first time I smoked a cigarette. All my friends were smoking and I needed to prove to them that I was part of the gang and up for a laugh. The only thing was, I was afraid of smoking in front of Steo and Snarts. I was convinced that I would do it wrong and make a holy show of myself. I thought that they would laugh at me. So I practised smoking until I knew I looked cool enough to stand there with them and take a puff.

  The days rolled into one-another and before I knew it I was drinking alcohol and smoking hash as well. School quickly became a hindrance, so myself and Katie started to go on the mitch, spending every minute we had in Sillogue. We would bring a spare set of clothes with us and get changed in the tower blocks. Then we would wait for Steo and Snarts to fall out of bed. We could always depend on them to have a bit of hash. We would usually sit in the sun, slag everyone off and get stoned out of our heads. I began to wonder why people even went to school or work, when they could easily draw the dole, sit on their arses and get stoned all day, like we did.

  I was having the time of my life and I never wanted it to end. Especially when Steo asked me to go off with him. We had become the best of friends and I was so impressed with how cool and laid-back he was, saying all the right things at just the right time, making everyone in awe of him. But I was the one that he wanted to be with. I felt special. My confidence was sky-high. I was no longer this shy and reserved little girl who shrank when someone looked at her. Especially when I smoked hash. I was the life and soul of the party, willing to do anything for a laugh.

  I now had a boyfriend, my body was going through so many changes and I was beginning to wonder about sex. All my friends were talking about it and I would play along, pretending that I knew what they were talking about. But I was completely in the dark.

  ‘Did Steo try anything on you?’ Katie would ask me when we were alone.

  I got embarrassed at the thought of it. ‘No. Why? Did Snarts try anything on you?’

  ‘I wouldn’t fuckin’ let him if he tried.’

  Myself and Steo were spending more and more time together. We would lie on his bed and I would tell him all about my family. He would hold me in his arms and make me feel like the most important person in the world. We had been together for two years before he tried anything at all.

  _____

  One day, I lay on my bed staring into space, smoking a joint and listening to Cat Stevens’ ‘Wild World’. The words of the song, ‘I’ll always remember you as a child, girl,’ made me feel empty inside, as though I were missing something. For some reason I thought about my father. I vaguely remembered him holding me on his lap, singing and playing with me. I thought about my christening photograph. Him with his hand gently touching my head. Thoughts of the man in Finglas, who had called my name and who looked just like my da, surfaced. Was my da really dead? I thought. Have they being lying to me all these years? I felt butterflies in my stomach and a flicker of hope being born. I wondered what he’d look like now. Whether he had more kids or not. Would he recognise me if he saw me on the street? Would he hold me tightly in his arms, like any dad would, promising to protect me from this wild world? There and then, I made the decision to find out the truth about whether he was alive or dead, once and for all.

  Chapter 4

  I’LL ALWAYS REMEMBER YOU

  ‘Only one more flight of stairs to go,’ I said to Katie as I struggled to catch my breath and dragged myself up to the top floor of the tower block. We had run all the way from my grandmother’s house up to the eighth storey of the flats after we’d stolen bottles of Black Russian vodka from my uncle Laurence. Just as I was about to take the cap off our prize possession I heard a door open and close. ‘Hide it, hide it,’ Katie urged as I shoved the bottle into my jacket. I held my breath as I heard footsteps coming towards us.

  ‘Alright, girls?’ said this rough-looking lad with a heavy Dublin accent. He looked down at my jacket. ‘Wha have yiz got there? Don’t tell me yiz are drinking, are ye? Ah, don’t worry, love, I won’t tell your da,’ he said, grinning and looking me straight in the eye.

  ‘Why, do you know me da?’ I asked, puzzled by his comment. ‘

  Ah, yeah. You’re Con Geraghty’s daughter, aren’t ye?’

  ‘How d’you know that?’ I asked, hanging on his every word.

  ‘I know your da and his bird, Marion Carey, fuckin’ years.’

  ‘Would you be able to tell me where he lives?’ I tried, feeling like my heart would burst through my chest at any given moment.

  ‘Give us a sup of your drink and I’ll tell ye,’ he smiled.

  I glanced at Katie who sat motionless beside me and then handed over our bottle of vodka. I watched his every movement as he opened the bottle and slowly took a swig from it. Then suddenly he made a dash down the stairs, taking two and three steps at a time, and after peeling my jaw off the floor I chased after him. But it was too late. He was gone.

  I stood alone, looking up and down the desolate street, as the reality of my father being alive sank in. ‘Where’s that other bottle of vodka?’ was all I could say to my friend when she finally caught up with me.

  ‘Oh my God, did you hear what he said about your da? And the gobshite robbed our drink,’ she said, gasping for air.

  My head was spinning and I couldn’t think straight.

  _____

  It was a night for getting in out of the cold and getting drunk. I could feel the warmth of the fire as I entered our new hideout, a basement shed under the eight-storey block. The sound of UB40 came from the stereo, while Steo and Snarts and some other friends sat on crates, skinning up spliffs and laughing amongst themselves. Steo’s face looked soft by the light of the fire. He looked at me and smiled as I snuggled into him for comfort. Before I knew it I had forgotten all about my da. I could no longer understand what people were saying. Everything was becoming a blur. But it didn’t matter—I was with Steo and no-one could hurt me.

  _____

  I felt paralysed. I could hear Steo crying, people shouting and dogs barking. My clothes were wet and somebody was dragging me from one place to another. My mind was racing, but I couldn’t move my body. I felt a burning slap to my face. ‘Wake up, Rachael!’ I opened my eyes and realised that I had blacked out. I was lying on the floor of the shed with my top up around my neck and the shed was flooded.

  ‘I thought you were dead,’ I heard Steo say as I tried to focus on my surroundings. But all I could do was vomit. Everything became a blur again until I felt a tube being forced down my neck and into my stomach.

  I finally came to my senses, but I had no idea where I was. And then the memories of the night before came rushing back to me as I stared at the bunnies painted on the wall in Temple Street Hospital. I remembered that I had drunk a bottle of vodka and smoked some hash, and the rest is a blank. Then I saw my mother. She was sitting beside my bed, pale and stoney-faced. I wished I hadn’t woken up. I closed my eyes, telling myself, ‘Never again.’ Perhaps it was just finding out about my da that had set me off, I rationalised.

  But in fact, ‘never again’ was just the beginning. I was twelve years old and quickly becoming more and more disconnected from my family. Hanging around freezing cold tower blocks and mitching from school was becoming the norm for me. Nobody seemed to care about what we got up to, either our families or anyone else. We could light our bonfires and drink our illegally purchased flagons of Scrumpy Jack without anyone blinking an eye. Every so often we would get a visit from the gardaí: ‘5.05.0,’ somebody would shout, warning us of their approach, giving us barely enough time to stash our hash and our alcohol.

  On one occasion the ‘blue bottles’ snuck into the block and caught us red-handed with our joints and lumps of has
h. Before I knew it I was being marshalled away from my friends, out to the front of the block. It was broad daylight and all I could think of was, what if somebody saw me standing here with this guard? They would definitely think I was a rat.

  ‘Well, what’s your name?’ asked the garda.

  ‘Rachael Keogh,’ I replied, anxiously looking around me, hoping that no-one was watching.

  ‘What are you doing hanging around here? And why aren’t you in school? You’re going to end up in trouble if you keep hanging around here, d’you realise that?’

  I didn’t respond. I had been well trained never, under any circumstances, to talk to the gardaí. ‘Tell them nothing,’ I was warned by my friends. ‘They’re only scum.’ So I just nodded my head at the garda, shuffling childishly from side to side, feeling like an ant in comparison to this man who was built like a tank.

  ‘I have a daughter and she looks just like you,’ the garda continued. ‘Now, if I catch you around here again you’re in trouble, ok? So go on. Go home,’ he demanded.

  But I didn’t go home. I hid in another block until they were gone and off I went back up to my friends, completely unfazed by what had happened. I desperately wanted my friends to like me and I was willing to go to great lengths for their approval.

  My need to be liked and accepted became my motive for everything I did. So much so that I began to steal from my grandmother in order to buy hash for myself and my friends. I kept this a secret from everyone, knowing well that what I was doing was wrong. But it was worth it when my friends patted me on the back, saying, ‘Nice one, Rach, fair play to ya.’ I was definitely part of the gang then. My friends needed me. They could depend on me to do anything. I was intelligent and clever, but I was quickly becoming devious in my ways, telling nobody anything and holding my cards close to my chest where my family was concerned.