The Healer

by Thompson, Sharon

  He slips from her grasp a bit. I hold his bottom and put my other hand on Mammy’s heart. She closes her eyes and whispers to me and the baby. She’s frightened and doesn’t want to leave him and Daddy.

  All in the room now are waiting for me to tell them all of this. Even the birthing woman has her eyes on me. Daddy’s gulping at the mug and I’ve the baby to swing in my arms like the women do. The doctor leans forward and takes off his fancy spectacles and I know by him he wants me to tell him all about it.

  ‘She’ll not talk at all,’ Daddy’s saying and the shadows are there yearning for me to stay quiet too. ‘Our Molly won’t know anything much. She never does. I’ve told you all that she’s half-simple. Has us worried to no end about her. God is punishing me. Left me on my own to cope with her and a baby.’

  I don’t know if it is because the doctor’s kind, or because Daddy’s saying those things, or because I want the baby in my arms to think better of me, but I want to talk. ‘Daddy’s lying as usual,’ I tell the doctor and then everyone else too. ‘I was never a help to Mammy, until she knew she was dying.’

  There’s a glug of the whiskey from the bottle. I know Daddy’s not wanting me to go on. I couldn’t blame him. No-one ever wants the whole truth about anything.

  ‘Mammy was never sweet to me.’

  There’s a gasp from the birthing woman.

  ‘Daddy loves me more.’

  ‘Shut up now, child,’ my father says, but I’m walking around and cuddling our boy as he goes on. ‘She’s sad with the grief of it all and being here alone when the angel of a mother of hers died… Don’t be listening to what she says. She knows nothing about anything.’

  It must be the doctor’s eyes that silence him. I don’t know, cause I’m cooing at our baby.

  ‘I have the power to stop the bleeding. But Mammy died,’ I tell him.

  ‘Do you know what death means?’ I hear the doctor ask me. ‘Do you understand that your mother’s heart stopped beating and she’s gone to heaven?’

  ‘I knew death was coming,’ I tell them without looking at them. The shadows stop me from saying what I really want to. I want to scream at them that I’m glad that Mammy’s left me with the baby and Daddy. I want to tell them that Mammy had a tight and rotten heart and that all my healing couldn’t cure her from it. The beings who look after me don’t let me say any more. They won’t let me say that it was me who stopped her heart and made her dead.

  Yes, I held my hand on her tired heart and I stopped the blood. I felt it go slower until it stopped.

  ‘I’ll be your Mammy now,’ I tell the baby. Dr Brady has something in his eye that he wipes away. ‘Let’s call you Jude.’

  5

  The wake is bad. When people die more people come to sit with the dead corpse and tell stories. It seems silly, but it is supposed to help with the family’s healing. I don’t need any, though. I feel like a weight is gone from my belly too. The soul of Mammy is well gone now, and her shell is all beautiful, but starting to rot. I know she’ll go to mush quicker than most.

  All Daddy’s men from the train yard have come and there’s a lot of cursing and drinking, with the neighbours not staying long but leaving an odd tray of nice sandwiches and porter cake. Mammy would have been cross that the china cups aren’t out and in ways I am too. My aunts and the women weren’t for staying, either, with the ‘hoards of brutes about’ and someone stole the baby from my arms while I slept in Daddy’s armchair.

  ‘He needs milk,’ Daddy told me when I pulled at his sleeve. ‘He’ll be back.’

  There was something deep within me that knew he was lying to me. As I listen to the chatter, it’s obvious that I might be given away, too, only no-one wants me. The creatures in the shadows tell me that a house full of men is not the place for me either. I freeze myself in the turf byre out the back of the house and fling hen dirt at the tin roof. I try to believe that Jude’s sucking the udders of a nice Mammy.

  The men teased Daddy about me being stupid and he didn’t put them right. It stings me like a nettle burn.

  ‘She didn’t do much healing when it mattered now, did she?’

  ‘Stuck with a child who’s not the full shilling. Lord love ya, Michael. There’ll be other women. You’re young enough yet. But with the likes of that one burdening ya?’

  I don’t think of Daddy as having a real name. Michael McCarthy is a fine name. Mammy was called Nancy and her sister’s called Aunt Bredagh. I hope they call Jude by the name I’ve given him.

  There’s an old sack from the coal that Daddy stole from the station. I get into it. There’s no way I’m ever going to be clean again anyhow as there’s no Mammy to scrub me or make me stand in the tin bath and hurt me with the nail brush. I make a bed for myself in the hard turf and hum a little lullaby for Jude. Living just makes me so tired. It is no wonder that dead people sleep forever.

  There’s one more long day of weeping and one more horrid evening of callers to the house. I slurp the tea a small woman called Jane O’Shea gives me and it is grand and sweet. She ruffles my hair and then wipes her hand in her apron. The bread’s turning up at the edges but there’s fish paste to lick off and that makes it soggy. I dip it into the tea and no-one gives out or notices. The priest does a great deal of throwing holy water everywhere and mutters, ‘someone needs to wash that child.’

  I know he means me, but people are mostly afraid of ‘the child’. They say it to him in whispers. ‘She’s not right in the head. It might be catching.’

  ‘She can’t go into the chapel and her as black as the ace of spades,’ Father Sorely says but no-one offers to clean me. Aunt Bredagh totally ignores him when he mentions it to her too.

  I don’t want to go anywhere anyway. They take Mammy in the long box up onto their shoulders. Daddy does a whole heap of sobbing and moaning. I laugh a good bit at that, until someone elbows me out the back door and shuts it with a loud bang.

  When they’re all gone, the silence in the house is nice. The room downstairs is still warm from the bodies and the open fire and stairs are clear of the sound of Mammy’s footsteps. Their big bed is unmade and the window and mirrors are covered in case her ghost does something. My own room is as cold as snow and looking out on to the turf shed. There’s nothing to do but sweep it with the twig-brush and empty the chamber pots. I’ll wait on Daddy and me to start living again without Mammy. I know I should be sad about her being gone, but I’m not. I’ll wait to ask Daddy about me having Jude back.

  I eat some of the picked-over sandwiches. My singing clears the house. I put some more fuel on the fire and boil the big kettle, thinking of the time Mammy threatened to cook me in it.

  ‘I’ll not fit.’

  Then she’d mentioned the axe outside and making bits of me. On I sing until the water boils. I fill the basin and clear the table. There’s plenty of water to soothe my swollen face and I swish a cloth under my pained arms and between my legs and the water is still clean enough to wash the few plates that I know aren’t ours.

  My one other dress that Aunt Bredagh made for me is getting tight but I squeeze it on and find a pair of Daddy’s cleaner socks to pull up over my knees. I figure that the good days must be coming, but Jude’s not with us and it feels wrong that he’s missing. I pray that he doesn’t go with Mammy. Some of the people said he might when they gathered around the coffin box.

  6

  I know the car in the yard. It is the black one belonging to the doctor’s wife. People say she shouldn’t be allowed to drive. She is ‘all over the road’ and has been known to need someone to hill-start it for her.

  But the lady with the fur-collared coat is back and smiling at me. Daddy has poured her tea. I notice it’s in the chipped china cup that Mammy saved for herself. Mammy would’ve died of shame at this fine woman drinking from the chipped cup.

  ‘I’m so sorry for your loss. I didn’t come to the funeral as I was minding a special little man. My husband is the doctor,’ she tells us. ‘Dr Brady? You m
et him the other night.’

  We all know who she is, but no-one says nothing. Aunty Bredagh with her dark hair in a bun and her brown eyes squinting, has warned me to stay quiet far too many times. I am to let them do the talking. They had hoped to bundle me off to wander to the river but the fancy woman had asked to see me, too, and they hoped that there might be more healing needed. Daddy likes the money.

  ‘I was eager to come and see you again.’

  She’s talking to me, but I am looking at the fire. It’s not blazing like Mammy would’ve had it for the visitors coming.

  ‘Richard tells me it was you who named your brother.’

  Her eyes are the bluest I’ve ever seen and she knows of Jude’s name. I know she’s in love with him too. I can tell.

  ‘We kept his name. He’s to be called Jude.’

  My heart does a flutter. I hold a hand over my mouth. I might cry out that I want him back. I might scream at her that he is mine.

  ‘Jude needs food and babies drink lots of milk and are hard work,’ she says.

  She’s trying to make it all right that she stole our Jude. Took him for her own. The shadows are telling me that they sent her here. She was lonely when she lost her own baby. They tell me that Jude’s cared for, that he is warm and safe and that she is a good woman. I’m not sure there’s such a thing alive as a good woman. Even Aunt Bredagh can lash out at me.

  ‘I felt I should tell you in my own way, Molly, that Jude is cared for… and safe… and loved.’

  Her blue eyes search mine for forgiveness. I give it over to her with a smile. ‘I know in my guts that I couldn’t keep him,’ I tell her.

  She shakes her head and a tear lodges in the corner near her long lashes.

  Daddy’s looking for a drink even though it’s only early morning. He’s fidgeting with his boots and Aunt Bredagh’s giving him the evil eye. The fire is warmer now and the flames lap the back of the hearth.

  ‘You can come to see Jude,’ she says. ‘You can visit.’

  Daddy’s on his feet now muttering about it not being a good thing, but she reaches out and touches my arm. ‘You saw him into the world, Molly. You can come see him anytime you want.’

  I nod and look deep into the blueness of her. ‘Are you who the angels have promised me?’ I ask and she leans forward more in her chair.

  ‘She’s never mentioned angels to me before!’ Aunt Bredagh blurts out. ‘There’s something not quite right about her, as you know. More nonsense comes out of her every day. Surely to goodness! She comes up with more play-acting all of the time. Pass no heed on her now. I told her to be quiet when a lady, such as yourself, was visiting.’

  ‘Maybe I am the one the angels promised you, Molly?’ She smiles. ‘You healed me. It was you who made me well. No-one can understand how it happened. Maybe you do have the powers of the angels. You healed me so that I could look after Jude. There’s a synchronicity in life, isn’t there?’

  I ignore her big words. ‘The angels aren’t all white with wings,’ I tell her while staring into the flames. ‘They are cross sometimes. The angels get cross. But they like you.’

  ‘I’m glad.’

  Then there’s a silence a cart would take away.

  ‘She needs lots of looking after. See all that chat there, it’s very hard to listen to,’ Aunt Bredagh announces with her pink cheeks, not that she’s done anything to care for me. ‘And this man here isn’t fit to look after himself, never mind a child like this.’

  ‘Molly and me are good together,’ Daddy says. ‘It’s only been a few days. I need to get better at the cooking, but we’ll get a way of working and set up a nice home now.’

  The fancy woman looks around and smiles at me. I smile back. She’s pretty. Not like Mammy pretty, but a niceness comes from her heart and her lips are fine and happy. I like that the shadows have found a tall woman with love in her for Jude. Her curls aren’t natural, but her rosy cheeks are.

  ‘Who else have you healed, Molly?’ she asks me. Those blue eyes squint a little. I don’t like her air suddenly. It changes quick as a flash. I’m not sure what I don’t like about it.

  ‘Why do you want to know that?’ I ask at her, noticing she’s got nice shoes.

  ‘Do you heal all sorts of things? What else have you done for people?’

  Daddy goes to answer, but a gloved hand rises from her lap and he stops.

  ‘What do the angels let you heal, Molly?’ she asks.

  She sure likes my name as she says it all the time. The shadows like being angels but they know that there’s some funny reason behind her questions too.

  ‘There’s no devil in me,’ I say, remembering the time the priests came and doused me in buckets of holy water, held me down and prayed over me. It lasted far too long. It felt awful and me with no food. I peed in fright and it gave me the shakes for days. I was so scared even Mammy had cuddled me afterwards.

  ‘Course there isn’t a devil in you,’ I hear her voice say. ‘Why would I think there’s a devil in you?’ She’s nice again, the sound of her true and the shadows nod at me to talk. ‘Why would you say such a thing?’

  ‘Folks thought she was possessed,’ Bredagh says with a tutting and blessing herself. ‘Nothing came out of her, even with the biggest and best of prayers.’

  The lady’s eyes go wide and her gloved hand goes to her mouth.

  ‘I heal anyone,’ I say wanting to bring us out of the bad memories that I cannot fix. ‘I don’t know yet what works and what doesn’t. But your husband is the same.’

  Daddy chuckles and sticks his hand into the dresser and turns his back on us all.

  ‘And how do you know where it hurts or what to do?’ she asks. ‘How did you know how to help Jude?’

  I love that she mentions our baby boy. Daddy or Bredagh haven’t said a word about him, since he left us. She’s asking me the question again as I’ve got loneliness stuck in my throat. I can’t answer her. I swallow a few times and shrug. ‘I just do what feels right.’

  ‘That’s her gift,’ I hear Daddy mutter from the dresser. ‘She’s gifted.’

  ‘Indeed,’ the fancy woman says. ‘And are you good at school?’

  Bredagh laughs and it hurts my ears. I put my hands over them and rock a bit until I hear a muffled niceness from the fancy woman. ‘It is fine not to like school, but you must go,’ she says, knowing that no-one has made me go since Mammy died. ‘You will go?’ she tells me.

  ‘Yes,’ I lie to her. ‘I’d rather be healing. I will never be able to read or write, but I know I will be a great woman.’

  Bredagh is doubled over with the ‘hysterics’, as Daddy calls them, and the fancy lady’s smiling at me, while Daddy takes another big mouthful from his mug.

  7

  ‘Being cross with me isn’t going to bring anyone back,’ Daddy says, trying to cook the potatoes. He keeps jabbing at them with a knife. ‘I can’t handle a baby. It’s a woman’s job and you’re no woman.’

  ‘Remember that then,’ I say to his back.

  He stops stabbing the hard spuds in the water. A few days ago he asked to see if I was growing udders but he could see plain as day that I wasn’t. Even though he is almost always drunk, he is far from stupid. I’m tired of having no sleep and tired of living in the haze with the shadows. The shapes around me have been good to me, but they aren’t real people. I need to stop depending on them for everything. Well, that’s what they tell me.

  ‘Jude’s having the best of everything in that doctor’s house. Them with no children an’ all. The lucky fella will want for nothin’ and he’ll grow up knowing all sorts and having all that he needs. It’s a lucky turn of events that she was here just days before… and that she took pity on us.’

  ‘Pity is not nice,’ I mutter. ‘I want to visit Jude.’

  ‘How many times do I have to tell you? There’s no way of you getting all the way to Ballisodare and back. I’ll be at work… and no good will come out of it.’

  ‘She told me…’ />
  ‘She pitied us and felt bad. That is all. She came to make sure we wouldn’t ask for him back and got me to sign some papers. Clever doll she was. She came here when I was at my lowest. I had that Bredagh one breathing down my neck. I’d have done anything to make them all go away and leave me alone.’

  ‘Us alone,’ I remind him.

  ‘There’s no use in sulking. You’re stuck with me and I’m stuck with you. We’ve to make the most of it. Going up to their house will make you want more and there’s no point in that. Jude won’t want to know the likes of us in years to come. You’re only a curiosity to them, that’s all. Once they feel you’re not all that gifted, you’ll be dropped like a sack of coal.’

  He’s afraid of losing me. I’m a burden to him, but he doesn’t want anyone else to want or have me either. His heart is growing like Mammy’s. Maybe the walls have some sort of bad medicine in them that makes us all go a bit wonky. Mammy didn’t hate me when I was clean, pretty and quiet. But, she didn’t want the other things in me coming out at all. Daddy was hardly ever here and he didn’t need to deal with all of that. Now, he sees what she saw and he doesn’t like it.

  ‘I can make us lots of money,’ I tell him to make the air change around him. ‘Good days are coming.’

  His air is a bit happier as he puts the lid on the spuds and checks on the meat in the pot on the griddle. It is black and smelling burnt, but he’s still pleased with himself. ‘You’re a clever girl. Despite all those empty stares and humming, there’s a pretty, clever soul in you. We’ll be fine.’