A Ghost in the Throat

by Doireann Ní Ghríofa

  What I couldn’t bear to tell them was that my husband was intent on ending the growth of our family. He wanted a vasectomy. If he had his way, all the future babies I had been wishing for would be deleted. His reasons were many and complex. Mine, on the other hand, sounded so superficial that I cringed hearing myself say them aloud, and yet, I asked the same question over and over again, always with my head tilted sadly. ‘But what about me? I want another baby,’ I would say, addressing my greedy question to his pale face and his drained, dark-ringed gaze. He always shook his head. I sulked in bed with the cat purring on my chest, trying to dream up some way to deter him.

  This was a man who fainted giving a blood sample; the mere mention of a needle made him clench his fists. I’d seen him shudder whenever such procedures were mentioned on TV. I’d seen him cross his legs; I’d seen his wince. I tried to use these fears to weaken his resolve, asking again and again if he had considered the gory reality of the procedure, but he knew me too well, he saw through my scheming, and simply shrugged. ‘You’re being so selfish,’ I said. ‘Am I?’ he replied. ‘Think about it.’

  I did. I could see how he had married a woman who loved the drug of birth, who habitually drowned herself in nursling-love, a woman who flung herself to her knees in housework, and merrily made of herself a shadow to the tyranny of lists. When he looked at our family he saw an exhausted mother already stretched too thin, and a cluster of children who needed more of their parents, not less of less of less. Think about it, he’d said, and the more I did, the more I understood his argument. It may be unpleasant when another claims to understand one’s needs better than oneself, but it is excruciating to realise that they are correct in their assessment, and that they wish to help, even if doing so means inflicting surgery on themselves. His eyes were love-lit when he explained that in choosing this procedure, he might free us both from exhaustion, that for the first time in a decade, we would have no milk-broken sleep, no more bouts of fever-teeth, and no more nappies. I wanted to ask what I would do without a baby to attend to, but I couldn’t bring myself to interrupt him. He had watched me birth four children by scalpel, and now he was calling for the blade to be brought to his own body. Once and for all, he had said. For all. I was beginning to see what he meant – if his decision was selfish, it was selfless as well.

  V. SNIP-SNIP/LIMP-LIMP

  Making our way to the clinic, my sighs grow frequent. My husband parks and kisses me as our daughter snores in her car seat. I meet his eye. ‘Are you sure?’ I ask. ‘Yes. Yes! You wait here. I’ll be back soon.’ He smiles and, with that, he leaves.

  I sulk, ripping open the purple foil of a Twirl and slamming the chocolate on its inner silver, chewing crossly while swiping my phone. I gorge myself on bullet-points of vasectomy until I can create a vision of what might be occurring in that room. I imagine a doctor with a therapeutic grin, a white coat, and a jaunty moustache, which I twirl at either end. I set him applying anaesthetic to my husband’s scrotum, then I put a silver scissors in one of his hands and a needle in the other. He snips through skin while my husband averts his eyes, dodging the sight of an opening opening. With a deft and practised pinch, then, he finds a miniscule tube under the skin and tugs it cleanly from his balls, unspooling it as firmly as a seamstress tugs thread. Just before the doctor severs the thread that bound us to all our future children, my husband might feel the air glitch a little in his fingertips. Snip goes the evil scissors, snip-snip, and the doctor nods and fixes it with a tiny surgical clip. There are still stitchings and dressings and debriefings to be dreamt up, but I have been too slow in my imaginings, because limp goes my husband, limp-limp into the car park towards where I sit, wiping chocolate from my lips, feeling suddenly tender towards this thief of children. Watching his slow, bruised return, he seems almost to hover. If altruism may be interpreted as prioritising others’ wellbeing over one’s own physical comfort, then I am watching it in motion now, pure and holy, sidestepping an empty crisp packet, grimacing towards me.

  In this moment, I am a very reluctant recipient of another’s gift. I do not want it, this gesture of his, I want nothing to do with this ending. But despite how strongly I raged against it, I find that I can’t quite resent it anymore. This decision, and the physical pain he has endured in proceeding with it, are a strange sort of gift. He is not only freeing himself, he is snipping me free too. If I cannot hold another infant, then maybe I will begin to grow something else – something I can’t imagine yet.

  VI. TELL

  I couldn’t keep the secret for long, not from my precious bees. Much as I loved him, I knew that I’d have to report him for what he’d done. I found them stumbling through the purple parlours of foxgloves. There, I rehearsed what I’d say: that my husband had chosen a blade over us, and that our family would never grow, now, as I’d hoped, that I loved him more than ever before, but I was also filled with sorrow. My lips quivered a little in ugly self-pity as I prepared to speak, but then I saw that the bees would hold no sympathy for me. I should have listened more closely to the hum of their daily return. Such are their mysterious judgments – they guessed my message before I spoke, and simply nodded. They stayed.

  17. how blurred the furze

  dúnta suas go dlúth

  mar a bheadh glas a bheadh ar thrúnc

  ’s go raghadh an eochair amú.

  keeping it sealed so tightly

  as a lock clasps a chest

  whose golden key has been lost from me.

  —Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill

  as a heart holds its chambers, as a poem holds its verses, so a house holds its rooms. Within, a throbbing presence comes and goes. In one room is a mirror in which a woman’s reflection is scrubbing a sink. She pauses, then bends to peer into her most cherished room of all. Perhaps it is the old wallpaper that gives this cupboard the distinct air of a room within a room, an echo of another she once knew, cast again here in miniature, for beyond its door lies a breast-pump in a crumpled bag. Little engine, little pulse, tenderly dismantled and packed up, it rests here in silence, its cord long disconnected from its source. To look at it is to conjure again its old purr and hiss: a remembered chorus. The right thing to do would be to relinquish it to someone who’d make better use of it, but I can’t imagine myself without its presence, any more than I can imagine my life without Eibhlín Dubh.

  When I first dedicated my days to searching for hers, I hoped that I might honour her by placing myself in service to her. Only now do I see how much she has given to me in return. Before my life collided with hers, so many of my hours were spent skittering between the twin demands of milk and lists that I hadn’t noticed how blurred the furze had grown around me. Now I delight in the yellow petals jigging in the breeze, in every thorn-tip, and even in the bare gaps between them. Some parts of Eibhlín Dubh’s life, I know now, will always remain hidden to me, no matter how closely I look. Instead of resenting the many lacunae where I have not been able to find her, my hand has learned to hover over those gaps in awe. My attempt to know another woman has found its ending not in the satisfaction of neat discovery, but in the persistence of mystery.

  These years have shown me an oblique kind of holding – I have held her and held her, only to find that she holds me too, close as ink on paper and steady as a pulse. Only now do I see that I can’t continue to grip her like this, in quiet selfishness. If I could find a way to communicate all I have learned of her days, maybe others would discover the clues that eluded me, and I might learn more of her from them. To do so, I would have to give something very precious away. I would also have to surrender to an ending.

  —

  On my final sunlit evening in Kilcrea, my daughter gallops ahead of me, clambering between stones, darting fast until she is out of sight and I am alone again, chasing the sound of her voice.

  I stride from nave to chancel and catch her close, piggybacking her to the tomb where Eibhlín’s men lie together: husband, son, grandsons; skull, skull, skull, skull.
Could she be here too, her finger-bones among theirs, all held in the same disarticulated dark? Perhaps. Perhaps not. I remind myself why I have come. I close my eyes to see. I say her name. I thank Eibhlín Dubh. I say all that needs to be said, feeling each word float away from me on the breeze.

  My daughter giggles as she twists from my grip and then she is off again, leaping and squealing. I don’t want to leave, not yet, but I worry that such exuberant bellowing may upset some unseen mourner, so I sigh and swing her high and turn us towards our car. She throws back her head, fists thumping my breastbone, her voice loud and hot in my ear, bellowing, ‘DON’T GO. STAY. STAY.’ Through the gate and along the avenue once bounded by skulls, she continues to shout. I press the key and somewhere beyond the boundary wall, the car unlocks itself to my scarred fingertip. Heaving the door open by knee and by shoulder-bone, I click her into her car seat, my voice cold. ‘That’s enough of that. We are leaving, so be quiet. Good girl.’

  Leaving Kilcrea, I regret my stern words, and my gaze seeks hers in the rear-view mirror. Under our freckles, our cheeks are both ember-bright, but her eyelids have fallen closed. Although her roar still surges through my thoughts, she is already elsewhere.

  I don’t want to go. I drive slow. When I get home, I think, maybe I’ll try to cheer myself up by opening a new notebook from my stash. This time, I won’t let myself begin by writing Hoover or Sheets or Mop or Pump. Instead, I’ll think of new words, and then I’ll follow them. As I turn the bend towards home, I find that I already know the echo with which that first page will begin.

  This is a female text.

  caoineadh airt uí laoghaire

  the keen for art ó laoghaire

  i.

  Mo ghrá go daingean tú!

  Lá dá bhfaca thú

  ag ceann tí an mhargaidh,

  thug mo shúil aire duit,

  thug mo chroí taitneamh duit,

  d’éalaíos óm charaid leat

  i bhfad ó bhaile leat.

  ii.

  Is domhsa nárbh aithreach:

  chuiris parlús á ghealadh dhom,

  rúmanna á mbreacadh dhom,

  bácús á dheargadh dhom,

  brící á gceapadh dhom,

  rósta ar bhearaibh dhom,

  mairt á leagadh dhom;

  codladh i gclúmh lachan dhom

  go dtíodh an t-eadartha

  nó thairis dá dtaitneadh liom.

  iii.

  Mo chara go daingean tú!

  Is cuimhin lem’ aigne

  an lá breá earraigh úd,

  i.

  O my belovèd, steadfast and true!

  The day I first saw you

  by the market’s thatched roof,

  how my eye took a shine to you,

  how my heart took delight in you,

  I fled my companions with you,

  to soar far from home with you.

  ii.

  And never did I regret it,

  for you set a parlour gleaming for me,

  bedchambers brightened for me,

  an oven warming for me,

  plump loaves rising for me,

  meats twisting on spits for me,

  beef butchered for me,

  and duck-down slumbers for me

  until midday-milking, or beyond

  if I’d want.

  iii.

  O my companion, steadfast and true!

  My mind summons again

  that spring afternoon:

  gur bhreá thíodh hata dhuit

  faoi bhanda óir tarraingthe;

  claíomh cinn airgid,

  lámh dheas chalma,

  rompsáil bhagarthach –

  fír-chritheagla

  ar namhaid chealgach –

  tú i gcóir chun falaracht

  is each caol ceannann fút.

  D’umhlaídís Sasanaigh

  síos go talamh duit,

  is ní ar mhaithe leat

  ach le haon-chorp eagla,

  cé gur leo a cailleadh tú,

  a mhuirnín mh’anama …

  iv.

  A mharcaigh na mbán-ghlac!

  Is maith thíodh biorán duit,

  daingean faoi cháimbric,

  is hata faoi lása.

  Tar éis teacht duit thar sáile,

  glantaí an tsráid duit,

  is ní le grá dhuit,

  ach le han-chuid gráine ort.

  how handsome, your hat

  with the golden trim,

  the silver hilt gripped

  in your firm fist,

  your swagger so menacing

  it set enemies trembling

  as their foe approached,

  oh, and below, the blaze

  of your slender mare glowed.

  Even the English would bow before you,

  bow down to the ground –

  moved not by respect,

  but by terrible dread – and yet,

  by them you’d soon be struck dead,

  o my soul’s sweet belovèd.

  iv.

  O, my bright-handed horseman,

  how well it suited you, the pin

  pressed in cambric, fixed fast,

  and your hat, lace-wrapped.

  When you returned from overseas,

  the streets cleared for you instantly,

  all enemies would flee, and not for fondness,

  but in deep animosity.

  v.

  Mo chara thú go daingean!

  Is nuair thiocfaidh chugham abhaile

  Conchubhar beag an cheana

  is Fear Ó Laoghaire, an leanbh,

  fiafróid díom go tapaidh

  cár fhágas féin a n-athair.

  ’Neosad dóibh fé mhairg

  gur fhágas i gCill na Martar.

  Glaofaidh siad ar a n-athair,

  is ní bheidh sé acu le freagairt …

  vi.

  Mo chara is mo ghamhain tú!

  Gaol Iarla Antroim,

  is Bharraigh ón Allchoill,

  is breá thíodh lann duit,

  hata faoi bhanda,

  bróg chaol ghallda,

  is culaith den abhras

  a sníomhthaí thall duit.

  vii.

  Mo chara thú go daingean!

  Is níor chreideas riamh dod mharbh

  v.

  O, my steady companion!

  When they come home to me,

  our dotey little Conchubhar

  and Fear Ó Laoghaire, the babba,

  I know they’ll ask me fast

  where I’ve left their Dada.

  Wretchedly, I’ll tell them

  that I left him in Kilnamartra,

  but no matter how they roar

  their father will never answer …

  vi.

  O, my companion, my bull calf!

  Kin of the Earl of Antrim

  and the Barrys of Alkill,

  how well your sword became you

  with that banded hat,

  your slender boots of foreign leather,

  and the suit of fine couture

  stitched and spun abroad for you.

  vii.

  O, my steady companion!

  Never could I have believed you deceased,

  gur tháinig chugham do chapall

  is a srianta léi go talamh,

  is fuil do chroí ar a leacain

  siar go t’iallait ghreanta

  mar a mbítheá id shuí ’s id sheasamh.

  Thugas léim go tairsigh,

  an dara léim go geata,

  an triú léim ar do chapall.

  viii.

  Do bhuaileas go luath mo bhasa

  is do bhaineas as na reathaibh

  chomh maith is a bhí sé agam,

  go bhfuaras romham tú marbh

  cois toirín ísil aitinn,

  gan Pápa, gan easpag,

  gan cléireach, gan sagart

  do léifeadh ort an tsailm,

  ach seanbh
ean chríonna chaite

  do leath ort binn dá fallaing –

  do chuid fola leat ’na sraithibh;

  is níor fhanas le hí ghlanadh

  ach í ól suas lem basaibh.

  until she came to me, your steed,

  with her reins trailing the cobbles,

  and your heart’s blood smeared from cheek

  to saddle, where you’d sit

  and even stand, my daredevil.

  Three leaps, I took – the first to the threshold,

  the second to the gate,

  the third to your mare.

  viii.

  Fast, I clapped my hands,

  and fast, fast, I galloped,

  fast as ever I could have,

  until I found you before me, murdered

  by a hunched little furze

  with no Pope, no bishop,

  no clergy, no holy man

  to read your death-psalms,

  only a crumpled old hag

  who’d draped you in her shawl-rag.

  Love, your blood was spilling in cascades,

  and I couldn’t wipe it away, couldn’t clean it up, no,

  no, my palms turned cups and oh, I gulped.

  ix.

  Mo ghrá thú go daingean!

  Is éirigh suas id’ sheasamh

  is tar liom féin abhaile,

  go gcuirfeam mairt á leagadh,

  go nglaofam ar chóisir fhairsing,

  go mbeidh againn ceol á spreagadh,