by Martha Long
‘OK, bye bye,’ he said.
‘Thank you once again. Goodnight!’ I said.
I put the phone down, blowing air out through my cheeks. The ma would put years on you. What’s she up to now? Three cars – for who? I suppose I better give her a quick ring and sort it out. Otherwise, she could end up getting upset in the morning, then drive herself and everyone around her mad. She gets like that. No matter what I ever gave her in the past as a little kid, she would not be satisfied.
‘But ye say they had this! An tha as well! So why did ye not go an get it for me, Martha?’ she would wail, sounding and looking like she was going to lose the mind. Then she would keep on and on until something else came along. I recognise it now as sheer greed. But at the bottom of it is really a more serious problem, I thought, thinking about it. She expects someone to fill up the insides of her, where she has nothing but emptiness. It seems the ma is like a bucket with a bleedin hole in it. The more you put in, the faster it runs out and the more miserable she gets! Nobody can fill up that emptiness she carries. It has to come from herself; material things will never do it.
25
Right! Get it over with. I don’t want trouble.
I rang the number, hearing it ring for the first time. Jaysus! Imagine the ma having a telephone. Jackser must have got that in. Hmm, he sure was getting himself all sorted. I know one thing, he would never have done to Charlie what me ma did to him tonight. No, he was more fair than that. Incredible! I never saw any of the good things about him before. I was always too busy seeing how incredibly demanding and vicious he was. The positive things he did passed me by. I was too busy thinking of the poor ma. If I turned up at the door, she would never answer. She would always shout through the door, ‘Who is it?’
‘It’s me, Ma, Martha. Will you open the door ma and let me in?’
‘Ahh, I’m goin out’, or ‘Ahh! I’m in me bed. I’m not well. I can’t let ye in.’
That would be the end of it. I used to go away thinking it was Jackser – he wouldn’t let her open the door. ‘No,’ Charlie used to say, ‘it’s the opposite. If he’s there an he hears ye knocking, he will shout at the ma te open the door an let you in.’
I took no notice of that. I thought that was just Jackser being in one of his rare good moods. It seems I was wrong – got it all arse ways.
‘Hello!’ a little voice said, sounding very cautious.
‘Ma! It’s me.’
‘Who’s this?’
‘It’s Martha, Ma!’
‘Oh, it’s you! Wha do ye want? I’m just goin te me bed. I haven’t got time te talk te you.’
‘Yeah, OK. I won’t keep you. I know it’s late. Listen, Ma, the undertaker says you were on looking for another car! Sure, we don’t need another car, Ma. One is enough.’
‘No! I’m gettin wha I want. It’s nothin te do wit you! An ye needn’t think ye’re comin in tha car, you or any a yours!’
‘What do you mean, Ma? Sure, I know that.’
‘Tha car is only fer me an my family!’
‘I know, Ma. Sure, that’s what we agreed. It’s only for you and Dinah and Gerry and Sally. Just the immediate family.’
‘Well! You’re not comin in it! An I don’t want them kids a yours comin neither! I have enough wit me own family.’
‘What, Ma?! You don’t want me to bring the children? Sure! Why would I do that? They don’t know you, Ma.’
‘Yeah! An tha suits me. Tha’s the way I want it te stay!’
‘OK! Don’t worry yourself, Ma. I won’t be bringing them next or near you anyway,’ I said, feeling her words cutting right through me.
Even though they had never met her, I still had hopes she would be a part of my life now that Jackser was gone. I thought somehow things would be different. Still, she’s just upset.
‘Listen, Ma …’
‘No! You listen te me. You’re interferin too much, ye’re takin over! Like I said, ye’re not comin wit me in tha car. I want only me family in tha car wit me.’
‘Yeah, Ma. Will you please listen? I told you – sure, I have my own car and I can take Charlie with me, or if someone else wants a lift I have plenty of room.’
‘No! I told ye! I’m sortin things out meself. You shouldn’t have been takin over an interferin in the first place! Who put you in charge? Sure, you’re not family!’
‘What do you mean, Ma?’ I said slowly, feeling me heart begin to race.
‘You’re not one a them! You’re not belongin te Jackser. You an tha other fella have nothin te do wit this family.’
I could feel myself going rigid and my whole body tensed as I let what she just said sink in. She sounded so distant, like she was angry with a stranger. There was no feeling there for me. I had nothing to do with her. Suddenly a red-hot fire of rage shot up through me. I exploded.
‘So! Who am I? Your bloody social worker? I’m not your social worker, or your mother. I’m your fucking daughter! You’re supposed to be my mother.’
‘Yeah! So ye say,’ she said, sounding very cold.
‘So! You’re denying even that? Of course you bloody are! It never once in yer bleedin life dawned on you that I was the fucking child. Oh, no! You were too fucking busy getting me to mind you. You were too fucking busy letting yourself and Jackser send me out to rob! Week after week I went, and I brought you home the money and the food and anything else I could get me hands on to feed you fucking two and your poor starved kids.
‘You fucking bastard! You no-good bitch! You whore! Do you know what you really are? You are a prostitute! No! Wait a minute – that’s too good for the like a you! A prostitute sells it for money! You couldn’t even do that much. Oh, no! You have to give it away for nothing. A prostitute? A real mother would have sold herself for money to feed her starving children. You fucking dumped us – on that ship, in that little sitting area, when I was only five years old. You went off and left your little baby and me while you fucked your way across the Irish Sea, earning your passage with the fucking sailors!
‘We were left tired, hungry and thirsty, and the baby crying all night with me sitting terrified, holding onta him. People sat and watched us, Ma! But then they just turned away. They thought we weren’t worth bothering about. Why? Because they knew! We were nobody’s bastards. We were only the scrapings of the mother that came in with the sailor. That was you! You did that! Then fucked off and left us. I watched that door from the minute you walked in and dumped us there, then walked straight back out again with that fucking sailor who told you where to dump us. I didn’t even see you the next morning when the ship docked in Liverpool! Everyone had left the ship. They walked off turning their backs on us! We weren’t worth even the cost of a few minutes outa someone’s time. No! We weren’t. We were the only two left, fucking abandoned. It took me to start screaming! Running around that ship hysterical, I was. We had lost the only one in the world we knew. Frightened outa me heart I was, for meself and me little baby brother, before that man sweeping the floor went off to find you! The fucking ship had docked, Ma! The passengers were all gone! Long bloody gone! You were still getting fucking screwed!
‘YOU’RE THE WORST WHORE’S MELT THAT EVER WALKED ON GOD’S EARTH!’ I screamed, right at the top of my lungs with the rage and the tears and the horrible uselessness of it! The whole God-awful life I had wasted on her! ‘Do you know? Harry killed himself to get away from you! Yeah, he damned took himself off up to the highest balcony and threw himself off, killed himself, Ma! Just to escape you, to get away from you. Teddy is missing! He ran and he hasn’t been seen since. Just to get away from you. Some of them have driven themselves mad just to get away from you! Charlie is drinking himself to death on the streets because of you! So, you want your family around you at the funeral? So have them, so. What?! Because I am not belonging to Jackser, that means I’m nothing to you? Right! So have your fucking car to yourself. I was only trying to help you. I put myself out for you! I have done it all my life. I got locked up in a conven
t because of you.
‘So now you can get on without me. Call yourself a fucking mother? No, you are right! You are not my mother. You never were my mother. You don’t know what the damned meaning of the word is. You think I was born for your convenience? So! Fuck off. This is the last time you will ever hear from me again! As far as I am concerned, you don’t exist. Goodbye!’
Then I slammed down the phone, seeing different colour stars with my head spinning and me heart threatening to burst with the rage. I had just gotten a terrible insight into the ma. It was her! Her all along! She had hidden her madness and badness behind Jackser all the time! She had escaped for so long. Never had I directed any blame, any wrong, in her direction.
I got pictures of her come flying at me, seeing her looking at me with her cold marble eyes. Then a picture flashes across my mind. It is me looking at myself. I am standing in front of the fireplace. I must be heading on for ten years old. I am naked except for an old frock covering me. It’s lightweight, only a summer frock black with the dirt. But it could be winter because I’m trying to warm meself, standing next to the fire. Jackser is sitting on the chair beside the fire, smoking his Woodbine cigarette butt. Then the ma starts laughing, grabbing at me frock, trying to pull it up. She giggles, with a high-pitched laugh, saying, ‘Ooooo! Ha, ha! She’s wearin nothin underneath tha aul frock!’
I grabbed my frock with the sudden shock and fright, saying, ‘Ma! Ma, leave me frock alone. Don’t be doin tha te me!’
Then she steps back, looking and pointing at me with her finger, losing her breath in the back of her throat, making her face go red. Then she finds her breath and starts saying, like I am the one doing something wrong, ‘Ohhh! She’s not wearin any knickers.’ Then she darts in again, grabbing, while I try to hold on to my frock, nearly crying. But before I can escape, I can see Jackser’s eyes going red with the lust and he says, ‘Go on, Sally. Go on, do it again!’, pointing with his finger towards me frock.
She makes a sudden grab and manages to get my frock up, exposing me completely.
It was after that he had no problem raping me whether she was around or not. Because his rotten secret was now out in the open. She had given him permission to do something he was doing anyway. I sensed now she wanted to make a gift of me to him; she wanted some of that lust it would bring out in him for herself. She needed him to feed her a bit of passion. She wanted to feel like a woman; she wanted him to make her feel she was still alive. For that, I would do the job nicely. Nothing and nobody came in the way of her getting her needs fulfilled. She was the child I minded. He told her what to do. The kids were rearing themselves, or at least I was looking after them. The only reality existed was her own self – everyone around her was just ‘things’. Not real. They were there to give comfort, like a kettle will boil water to give you a nice cup of tea. That was us!
I felt then suddenly sucked into their world of madness and private things that belong only to them as men and women. I had most evilly and grotesquely been plucked from being the child I was into their grown-up world. Forced to live with something dark, vile and alien, an unholy world, no place for the shining, innocent beauty of childhood. She took it all away. She had made me become just like her. She was telling me I was no longer a child. I was to stand side by side with her, be the toy in the middle between her and Jackser. She was not going to be my mammy any more. I was now to help her keep Jackser happy with his lust – be his wife, so she can get some of that too. She would do anything to keep Jackser happy. If he is happy, he will make her happy. I didn’t understand any of it. I just felt sick. I sensed then what I know now, but I had to blank it out. As soon as the nausea passed, and the terrible pain of knowing me ma doesn’t want me – she’s thrown me away and turned her back on me – when the fright and fear had slowed down to a terrible empty ache, I forgot it ever happened and carried on loving her like I had always done. I had no one else in the world I could call my own. I needed to believe I belonged to her. She was me mammy. What happened to me is just the way of the world. You live with what you have. There was no other way to cut myself off from believing I was totally alone in the world. That would be more unbearable than what had just happened. I thought like a child – I was a child. Children all have mothers – they have to belong to somebody. I had somebody – I had a ma. I had to believe that.
This had all laid buried until now! Suddenly the floodgates were opening – all my nightmares were tearing out of the darkness and roaring at me!
I made a dive for the stairs but tripped and felt a distant burning pain in my knee. I couldn’t get a breath with my mouth wide open. I can’t see where I’m going. I gasped for air and hot salty water gushed into my mouth, getting caught in a bubble. It’s the blinding tears flooding out of my eyes and down my face. I didn’t know I was crying. I wiped my eyes with the arm of me shirt and kept running. I tore up the stairs heading for my bedroom, then staggered into the shower. I need to get clean! I need a drink. I need someone to tell me I am worth loving! I need … ‘God! Hear my prayer! Give me peace,’ I screamed, dropping on my bended knees and screaming up at the heavens.
I came down the stairs wrapped in a warm winter dressing gown, wearing cotton pyjamas and soft slippers on my feet. I felt calmer after having the shower – fresh and clean. But I could feel myself icy cold inside. I need something to heat me up, I thought, heading into the kitchen. My eyes lit on the tin of hot chocolate sitting on the open shelf – that will do. I’ll have some of that. Normally I keep this only for the children. I took out a little saucepan and poured in milk, then set it on the cooker to boil. The Aga is kept at a very low heat for the summer, but it gives gallons of hot water. I lifted up the saucepan, seeing the milk froth to the boil, and stirred in the chocolate, pouring it into a mug, then took meself over and sat at the kitchen table. I sipped at the chocolate, letting the sweet hot taste bring a bit of life back into me. I could still feel myself icy cold, even though I stayed for what seemed like hours under the shower. Oh, this is better, I thought, gripping hold of the mug in two hands, then lit up a smoke and stared out into the garden. I stayed that way, hearing my breathing beginning to slow down and feeling my heart ticking away, getting more gentle. I could feel a calm coming over me now as I listened to the sounds of the warm, dark summer night, bringing with it the scent of the lemon trees just outside the open kitchen window.
I knew I was now light years away from them terrible times, but I felt like I had been transported back there again and ended up in the middle of an earthquake. It’s only now I’ve just escaped, because I’m still feeling the ripples of the tremors rumbling all the way down to the core of me. Yes, but I know I’m safe. I am back home now in my warm, clean kitchen, with the yellow glow from an old ship’s copper lantern throwing out a gentle golden light. It stands in its own place where it belongs, where it has found a home, sitting on the old pine fiddle-front dresser that has seen more life than I ever lived. I feel comforted by that, surrounded by old things that have survived the ravages of time. I like to rescue them, let them share my space and make a safe haven for me and mine. I need that comfort right now.
I feel myself in shock, confused. What happened? How did I arrive at this, end up turning against the ma? From where and why did that awful memory just arrive like a bolt of lightning? I never saw any of this coming. Then it really hit me! Jesus, you have forgiven Jackser, made your peace with him and yourself, then ironically turned against the ma. I could and can forgive anything – it is better to let go. But first I need to understand what it is, or was, all about. I reached that with Jackser. His intent was never malicious; he acted on emotion – anger mostly, driven by madness.
The ma seemed to channel her anger through hate. It was deliberate, it was calculating. She was not giving way to a surge of emotional anger. No! It is psychotic, insanity, a person who enjoys causing intense suffering to someone they can control. That is the Sally I saw today – watching us with a malevolent glint of power and excitem
ent in those icy-cold blue eyes. No, Jackser did not deliberately set out to cause pain; he just did. It was all through his madness. Besides, he was not my flesh and blood; Sally was. She may be crazy, but she deliberately put us in harm’s way, knowing what she was doing. She used us both from birth, Charlie and me. She dragged us with her intentionally. We were money in her pocket and could be used to pave the way for her to get her what she wanted.
I feel nothing after saying all those things to her earlier this night. It will not cost me a thought. I feel no remorse; I feel nothing for her. Yes, the ma is completely disassociated from reality. That is what made her what she was, I think – a stone mother. Charlie and me would have been safer and warmer if we had sat clinging and hugging the statue of a woman. At least it wouldn’t have done us any harm. Come to think about it, we never did hug her or cling to her! So the statue was definitely a better bet!
I didn’t go to the funeral this morning. It did cross my mind that Jackser was being buried so maybe I should go along and just watch him being lowered into the ground. I could watch from a distance. For one last time I could see him being taken from this world and put into the earth, taking with him all the fears, tears and the terrible pain he had once caused to a little waif. But then I thought, no! I don’t feel the need to see him laid into his grave. I had travelled enough miles with him searching to find the answers when I had sat through the last agonised days and nights of his life. I know now and understand where he had been coming from. I had found the answer. No, let it rest now. Enough is enough. One day I will have to face into all of this and then the child in me will burst back into life. Jesus, it will then be an all-out battle cry once she is let loose.
This morning, I listened to a little voice inside my head saying, ‘You are kicking her when she is down, when she needs you the most.’
Yes, I am. So be it. I am clearly no loss to her, so what is there to kick? She would take what I have to offer her then have no use for me. As she said, I am not belonging to her. She feels she has nothing to do with me. Amen for that mercy. Anyway, be grateful for an even bigger mercy. Jackser is now gone – the two together were pure evil.