Silent Child

by Toni Maguire

  In my gran’s house nothing had changed. There was no one telling me to do my homework or saying that television was bad for me. Later, when bedtime came, I was allowed to read a little by the reading lamp that Gran left on for me. Feeling safe and cared for, I finally drifted off to sleep with a smile on my face as I thought about the sister I would soon be meeting.

  Chapter 33

  All that week of being with Gran, I felt so spoilt – there was homemade cake when I came back from school, my favourite meals were cooked for supper and the television was turned on for us both to watch.

  It was she who told me after I had been there a few days that my mother had been taken to the hospital and given birth to her daughter.

  ‘When are they coming home?’ I asked.

  ‘Not for a few days, dear. Your mum needs some more rest.’

  ‘And then she will bring Maria home with her?’

  ‘Maria might have to stay a little longer,’ Gran told me gently.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Oh, just to make sure she’s strong and healthy.’

  ‘Is there something wrong with her?’

  It was not often my gran was at a loss for words, but she was this time. I just knew she was holding something back. Aunt Lizzy came and stayed one evening when Gran went to visit my mother, but as I had not heard her come home, she must have stayed a long time.

  Which wasn’t usual, was it?

  Understanding that I was unlikely to stop bombarding her with questions if she didn’t tell me more, she sighed a little and explained that Maria was slightly delicate: ‘She just needs to get a bit stronger before she can leave hospital,’ she said in an attempt to be reassuring.

  Now, eight-year-olds might not be unduly sensitive, but they can spot an evasion when they hear one. So, I was not as satisfied with her answer as she might have wished, although common sense told me that I was not going to get any more information from her.

  Later the same day, Carl turned up. If I hadn’t realised just how ill my baby sister was, his appearance told me everything. The grey-faced man who came into Gran’s sitting room was not the Carl I had ever seen before. For the first time since I had met him, with his creased shirt and dark stubble on his chin, he looked almost dishevelled. All the bounce had left him and instead of his overly confident self, he looked both tired and worried.

  I wondered why he had come because I would hardly be going back with him if Mum was still in the hospital. He didn’t offer any explanation for his visit, just slumped on the settee and gratefully took the cup of tea Gran had quickly made.

  ‘Betty is staying in for a few days longer,’ he told her. ‘She just doesn’t want to come home without the baby.’ And did I really see the moisture in his eyes as he said that? I think I did.

  Just when I was wondering again why Mum would be told to go home without the baby, he asked my grandmother if I could stay a little longer, explaining, ‘I need to be at the hospital with Betty as much as possible.’

  Gran said of course I could and I tried not to look too pleased that I did not have to leave yet. At eight, I just did not understand that Maria, who had been born after the full nine months, was likely to be very ill if she had to be kept in the hospital. But then, I had no way of knowing that the moment she entered the world, her blue-tinged face rang every alarm bell in the delivery room. She was whisked away to the neonatal clinic so quickly, she hardly had time to utter her first cry.

  Today, I can picture my mother, arms aching to hold her daughter, being told the reason why her baby was not with her. Even now, after all she did to me, I can still feel some pity. As a little girl, I was unaware of what was happening though. There was only so much information my gran thought should come my way. I had not been told that the baby was on a ventilator while the surgeons discussed the nature of the operation she needed on her heart with her distraught parents. If anything, I was upset that I had not been taken to see her – I knew my grandmother and my aunts were visiting, so why couldn’t I go too?

  Even if they had told me more, I would not have understood what Mum was going through though. How when she went to her daughter’s cot, she had to look at all those tubes inserted into that tiny frame. She must have longed to be able to hold her, but Maria was just too fragile and the only part of her she could hold was her hand. It was not surprising that she barely rested during the weeks Maria was in there – if it had been my child, I would hardly have left her side either.

  Of course, my eight-year-old self was repeating the same questions excitedly to her grandmother.

  When can I see her? What does she look like and when is she coming home?

  My very patient gran kept telling me that she was still poorly and I could visit her when she was a little better. What she did not tell me about was the heart condition that Maria had been born with.

  After another week had gone by, Mum came home from the hospital and for the next three weeks, I went to and fro between my home and Gran’s. I found it hard to concentrate at school, though I did manage to do my homework.

  If Carl had appeared looking tired and dejected when he came to Gran’s, my mother seemed even worse. Although it was mid-winter, she was constantly wearing sunglasses. This was very strange to me. I only realised later on that it was to hide her swollen eyes. She was smoking a lot too, which was not something that she normally did. I heard them reassuring each other, saying the doctors were doing everything they could. Mum was trying to convince both Carl and herself as well that the doctors would save her. For those three weeks she lived in hope – or rather, perhaps I should say, she tried to.

  It seemed her time was split between telling whichever one of us was in earshot that everything was going to be all right and that soon, she would be bringing Maria home to either bursting into tears or, with shaking hands, lighting up a cigarette. During that time, I hardly saw her without a cigarette or a sodden tissue in her hand. Although most of the time was spent at the hospital, she did try and rest when she drifted back into the home. It was then I would hear her sobbing and sobbing; that sound made me start to cry as well.

  It was then that my gran told Carl very firmly that she wanted to take me to the hospital to see Maria.

  ‘Why, exactly?’ he asked in a disinterested tone.

  ‘Because, Carl, Maria is Emily’s sister and she should see her.’

  ‘Half-sister, you mean. But take her if you must.’

  Placing a hand on his arm, Gran just said, ‘Thank you, Carl.’

  He must have known then the reason she insisted I went with her. Gran had already told me that Maria was in a Special Unit and that she was still very ill. On the way to visit her, she also explained about the ventilator and what it was for. She tried her best to prepare me for what I was going to see when I got there – the tubes that were helping my sister breathe and receive food and other liquids containing medicine that were there to make her better.

  Gran had explained that I would have to look through a glass panel but nothing she told me could ever really prepare me for the sight of my new baby sister. Tubes seemed to be attached to every part of her tiny, unmoving frame.

  Tears spurted from my eyes as I gazed at her.

  ‘They are trying to make her better, Emily,’ Gran told me as she placed an arm around my shoulders.

  But they didn’t.

  She was just under a month old when she died.

  It was my mother who told me. Not face-to-face, so I could offer her some comfort. Instead, she chose to do it by phone. In a cold dispassionate voice that was almost a whisper, she told me, ‘Maria died during the night.’

  I have only a blurred memory of what happened after that – I can’t remember when I went home or who took me there. Just that not long after that call, I was back.

  * * *

  I did ask myself why my mum and Carl had not left me with my gran – they certainly did not seem to welcome my presence. Since Mum had come home from hospital it was as though in
all her efforts to save my sister, she had completely forgotten my existence.

  Over the remaining years I lived with her, it was as if I was a mere memory of a past life, one that didn’t matter anymore – I was there, but somehow invisible to her. While she had been spending time with Maria, I had been an inconvenience to her busy hospital life. Even when she was in our home with me, her mind was exclusively with my sister.

  She only seemed to know how to be a mother for Maria.

  After Maria’s death, it seemed that neither Mum nor Carl could look at me. Now I can understand my mother’s grief and accept that my stepfather was also devastated – after all, even monsters have feelings, but then their grief unsettled me. Children do not see adults as people who can break down without warning, they think they are invincible. It would never enter a young child’s head that sometimes adults too can be incapable of handling what life throws at them. So, if I didn’t fully understand what they were going through, neither did they recognise my grief.

  So, yes, I do empathise with the pain my mother must have felt after losing her child – I cannot imagine anything more horrific for a woman to endure. As I have said earlier, I have gone through three miscarriages myself and that is nothing close to losing the child you have given birth to. It would break the strongest person, and it broke her.

  Chapter 34

  Dear Diary

  So very sad because Maria is dead. We all are and it’s horrid in the house. I think Mum wishes it was me who had died, not Maria. I think he does too. Then he would have a perfect little girl instead of me, who is not one.

  * * *

  I can’t remember how many days it was before the funeral when Carl came home from visiting Mum’s family just about shaking with rage. I think it was no more than a couple of days, but so much of that time is a blur and memories do get jumbled.

  He had left saying he just wanted to go over a few details with them about the funeral. My mother didn’t ask what details he was referring to, or suggest that he could pick up the phone instead of driving over. Since Maria had died she was, for the most part, too wiped out on medication to question him.

  After he left, she hardly uttered a word. Not that this was too unusual. Most of the time she was either in her bedroom with the curtains closed and the lights off, or sitting staring unblinkingly into space. I too sat silently, listening to the eerie silence in the flat. Mum had no interest in switching on the television or tuning in the radio to one of the music stations she loved. I had tried to talk to her, but even when I asked a simple question, such as could I get her anything or make her a cup of tea, I seldom received an answer. She did not even turn her head when I entered the room. Mealtimes were completely dismal too – she picked at her food or pushed it to one side. If her sisters or Gran hadn’t brought over their casseroles and home-baked pies, I don’t know what we would have eaten.

  Carl, too, hardly said a word, apart from telling me to remove the dishes from the table or clean something, and in the end, I couldn’t find any words to break the silence. Their grief weighed too heavily in the air, the weight of it pressing down on me every waking hour. My sleep was interrupted by dreams, and during the daytime I felt both disconsolate and listless.

  In my room, using my new silver pen, I had begun to write down my feelings in my diary. It had become my friend, the one I could share everything with. When I look back on those entries, I can see the start of my younger self’s depression. Now I call it the ‘Black Dog’, one that can sneak up and nip at our heels and the same one famously suffered by Winston Churchill. But dogs can be trained to stop their misbehaviour, can’t they? They just need a firm hand. It was only when I learnt to look forward and not behind me that I finally mastered how to make it obey me.

  I remember my schoolwork suffered. I could not concentrate, words blurred in front of my eyes and made no sense, and the answers to those Maths questions suddenly refused to jump into my head. The teachers were very understanding, but it still bothered me that I was not getting the marks I was used to. The Head sat me down in the privacy of her office and asked if I wanted to talk about how I felt about my sister’s death. She gently explained that it was natural to grieve. And although I just nodded instead of opening up, she reassured me that if I needed to talk at any time, her door was always open.

  But it was a door that I never did walk through voluntarily.

  * * *

  I knew from Ben that our grandmother had asked Carl to let me go and stay with her. She had told him that I was too young to cope with their grief as well as mine and that I would be better off spending some time with my cousins, who would try and cheer me up over the weekend.

  ‘And what did he say?’ I asked when Ben told me all this.

  ‘What do you think? Of course, he said no, that your place was with them and they both understood that you needed attention and so on and so on. Gran also said she was worried about your mum, that she had seen she was not coping at all. She mentioned a grief counsellor – you know, that’s someone you can talk to if you are unhappy. He just laughed at that. Said she had pills from the doctor which were doing the trick and she had her mother and her sisters to talk to.’

  ‘How do you know all that?’

  ‘How do you think? My mum told my dad when we were having supper. Anyhow, how is your mum really?’

  ‘Bad, Ben, really bad,’ I said sadly. ‘She cries a lot. I was told to pack away all of the new little baby outfits people had sent over so she wouldn’t have to see them. And then she wanted to know where they were, told me to bring them to her and she just sat there stroking them and crying.’

  ‘Sounds just awful, especially for you.’

  ‘It is.’

  Chapter 35

  Over the coming months, the belief that my mother felt the wrong daughter had died steadily grew in my head, so it’s little wonder that this was one of the saddest times in my life. During her pregnancy, I had felt a closeness growing between us, only for it to disappear instantly. I had spent weeks imagining having a baby sister and stood in the hospital with a lump in my throat when I saw her. From that one time I felt such a surge of love that I prayed every night that the doctors would make her better. Not that I really believed in God – my gran had never managed to persuade me that He heard our prayers. But after Maria’s death, any scrap of faith I had in the man who lived above the clouds withered and died.

  The night when Carl came back from visiting Mum’s family, I still believed that our lives could not get any worse. Wrong again. By the end of that evening, I had found out it could. It started with the sound of the front door slamming so loud, it made me jump. Even before he called out, the noise alone warned me that all was not well. A sense of dread made me sit bolt upright, hands under my knees as in those loud, aggressive tones of his he called out for my mother.

  My stomach twisted with apprehension as Fear muttered, Yup, there’s trouble coming. For using that tone of voice was something Carl did when his mood was darker than a night’s starless sky. As the flat was scarcely large, it was hardly something he needed to do. He did it solely to make us quake in fearful anticipation before he told us what the problem was.

  Before I could try and guess just what had angered him to such an extent, I heard him yell, ‘Emily, get in here now!’ My legs shook when I stood and left my room. Surely there was nothing wrong I had done? A thought that wouldn’t prevent an icy chill touching my neck as reluctantly, I walked into the sitting room.

  As soon as I entered, I could see how flushed Carl’s face was and how those cold grey eyes glittered with rage. Whatever he had managed to say to my mother before he shouted out my name seemed to have had very little impact on her. She was staring up at him almost blankly. Not much of what went on around her penetrated her pill-taking haze – something else that increased his temper.

  ‘Emily, get your mother some strong coffee. She needs to be able to listen to what I’ve got to say and so do you,’ he instru
cted.

  Thanking my lucky stars that his anger had little to do with me, I sped into the kitchen and returned with a cup of steaming coffee that I handed to Mum. Carl barely took his eyes off her as she very slowly sipped it. I began to wonder if she was using a delaying tactic to put off hearing the tirade that he was waiting impatiently to release. Clearly, he wanted us to recognise that he was furious about something or someone. In no time at all, he would be pouring out details of his dislike for whoever had upset him in the time he had been out. Yet there was a difference in the anger he was showing that night, something in it that did not quite ring true. Even at eight, I was able to question the performance unfurling before me.

  ‘Are you fully awake now, Betty?’ he snapped when her last drop of coffee had finally been swallowed.

  ‘Yes, Carl.’

  ‘Good,’ he said and then stood in between us and almost shouted out the string of venomous words that caused my mother to lose even more colour from her cheeks and me to start trembling throughout my body. Not that I can remember every single word, but much as I would like to wipe his words from my mind, I can remember the gist of them all right.

  Having both an echoic memory, which means I can remember conversations word-for-word, as well as a photographic one, is not always as useful as we think!

  ‘They all refused to lend us a single penny to help with the funeral,’ were the first words he spat out.

  Mum suddenly woke from her daze. She might not love me, but I knew her sisters and her mother were important to her and who else could he be referring to?

  ‘What are you saying, Carl? That you went to my family for help and they refused you? I can’t believe that! For heaven’s sake, they have all been really supportive – looked after Emily, brought round meals for us and Mum was a brick when I was spending all that time in hospital. There must be some mistake. Let me ring Lizzy, she’ll know what’s going on.’