I had just stopped rattling after The Bronchitis when Auntie Eileen told me I would be looking after Bernie on Saturdays. The thing was, she’d only gone and got herself a job in Crawford’s the newsagent. I nodded through the blue smoke she puffed out from her Embassy Regal and the joy shining in her eyes. I was her best hope of freedom before she went off her rocker. She needed the money and the craic and the company before she took Bernie and headed for the deep water of the River Cloon with rocks in her pockets, ha ha ha.
Kathleen wasn’t so sure – it’s not safe to leave Bernie here, she said – but Auntie Eileen was full of plans. She was going to rope Mick in too and pay the both of us with sweets, as many sweets as we could eat!
She reminds me that Bernie is a china doll; she’s delicate and in need of careful handling. If she has the odd accident or some such, don’t be bad to her, just remember she wouldn’t hurt a fly and if there’s sweets she’s to have as many as she wants as long as they’re not toffees. A strawberry bonbon got stuck in her once – Bernie, not the T.R.A.M.P. – and she had to be rushed to hospital. Hospitals must have bloody little to bother them these days, Mammy had said when she got back, wasting time on a wayne who will never be able to serve Good Holy God’s purpose.
Kathleen is still not sure I’m the best girl for the job. Bernie is more than delicate and she is hard to watch, she says. What if something goes wrong? What if Mammy has to be called? We need to make sure that nothing else happens to Mary!
I was dreaming about the jars and jars of lovely-coloured sweets lining the shelves at Crawford’s right up to the ceiling. I kept my eyes on the pinks and purples, the reds and greens of pear drops, rosy apples, kola kubes and fruit rocks. My mouth filled with spit at the thought of them being handed to me in a brown bag with twisted paper ears on the side.
– Sure, what could go wrong? says Eileen, lighting another fag with the butt of the first one. Sadie’ll have no part in it, the bad-tempered auld F.U.C.K.E.R.! Mary’ll do grand, won’t you, my wee Mary Moo?
I nodded and peeled another toffee.
We played piggy in the middle way out in the back field behind the barn on the first Saturday. It’s safer not to be seen from the kitchen window. Mick was shouting, get the ball, get the ball, Bernie, the ball, over there, look, look, Bernie, look, her just laughing her big, gurgly laugh. She’ll never get the ball but she likes to watch it sailing over her head. We picked mulberries when she got tired, dropping them into old jam jars to have later. But Mick and me didn’t watch her properly and she ate a mountain of them straight off the bush. Her whole chin was purple. She had an accident and there was mess all down the backs of her legs.
Mick started crying before he could stop himself. I wish he’d stop beating me to it. We checked the barn for rags. Nothing. Mick rubbed at her with a fistful of straw that made it worse. We had to try and sneak her into the bathroom without Mammy seeing us. Bernie started to howl as soon as she saw the house. I wasn’t going to get a turn at crying at all today. We tried to shush her but it was no good. Mammy was waiting. Bernie bit her too-big tongue when Mammy was shouting at her.
– Hopeless, good-for-nothing article! What are you?
She wasn’t going to answer but Mammy kept at it, she never gave up. She prodded her in the chest with every word. Poor auld Bernie started to moan and dribble and rock, any minute she might have a fit.
– Well? Can you not even manage to get yourself to the toilet! Born idiot! Do you even know what a toilet is? IDIOT!
Leave her alone! Was it Mick or me said that? No matter, it was me that got the wallop! The tracks of her fingers lit up my face, hot and cold, and her wedding ring burst my lip. Mammy stripped her right in front of us even though we know it’s a sin to show someone your bottom or to look at anyone else’s bottom. She slapped Bernie all the harder when she tried to wriggle away. Whack, whack, whack.
After Bernie was washed down and dried and shoved into an old pair of trousers to make sure Eileen knew she had to be changed, we were told to all disappear, disappear clean out of Mammy’s sight until teatime! She was sick of the sight of us! And it was no one’s fault but mine that I had got myself another clout, No Siree Bob!
We went back behind the barn, shivering and shaking and hoping Daddy would find us this time, just once, please Holy God. But he didn’t show up, too busy with the beasts as usual and as like as not to turn if he saw us standing in a miserable clump. Liam, Dominic, Brendan, Matthew and him were moving the cows to the far edges of The Hill. I thought he would stick up for us one day but Kathleen says that’s nonsense, he never will. I had an emergency humbug in my pocket that I peeled and gave to Bernie. She needed it more than me.
China dolls definitely don’t shit themselves, Mick said to cheer me up and to make Bernie laugh again though she was gone pure white in the face. A hot sob was rising up from my guts but it came out as a hiccup and we giggled. There’s no use crying over split lips. We know we’ll still get the quarters of clove rocks and pink elephants.
When Auntie Eileen came back with Kathleen from Carncloon, they found us in the barn. We got so, so tired that we went to lie down in among the bales of hay. Mick went in the middle because he’s the man and me and Bernie put our heads on his chest and I suppose we all nodded off. It was Eileen sobbing that woke us. She just stroked my face and kissed Mick’s head before she pulled Bernie out and held her as if she would snap in half.
Kathleen wiped at my mouth with her hanky but she couldn’t really see what she was doing through the tears. Mick doesn’t like to be left out so he got under her coat and hung on to her waist. That’s how Mammy found us, and she blew her top because we were being so mucky. She doesn’t like hugs, hugs are worse even than talking. A big fight got up, all three of them were shouting and roaring ’til Eileen put Bernie in the car. The door banged shut and they took off. The sudden quiet was weird. I swear I could hear everybody’s heart beating, not just my own.
Kathleen stormed into the house and me and Mick ran after her like orphaned ducks. She had me in her arms by the time Mammy caught us, telling me for the hundredth time that I would be alright, to not cry, to be brave, it wasn’t forever. One day we’d be gone. Seventeen or not, she wasn’t safe, not yet. Mammy rounded on her.
– Get away from her! The problem with that wayne is she’s spoilt! Spoilt rotten by that idiot aunt of yours with her boiled sweets and her dotey-this and darlin’-that! Pah! Who does she think she is? Ruining my waynes because her own is soiled?
– You didn’t need to hit Mary in the face! Don’t you think she’s been through enough lately? Eileen says she’s going to get the priest out to you!
– She wouldn’t dare get the priest out to me! That tramp?
– She would and you know it!
Kathleen had stood up now to face her. Mammy was taken aback but she was not beaten. Mammy couldn’t be beaten but even I could see that she had a worm of worry. The priest comes because we don’t have policemen. We don’t speak to the RUC because we’re Catholics. He will tell her off bigtime and everyone will find out. It’s even worse because he has God on his side not just a gun. His housekeeper, horrible Mrs Byrne, goes straight across to the parish-hall bingo and tells whole rows of women who’s in the clabber. I’ve heard about this before, it’s called ‘losing face’. Mammy usually really enjoys it when other women have lost their faces.
She’d likely fed the priest enough times to keep him on side. He always dropped by almost exactly at dinnertime and had to be persuaded that there was enough food to go round and he must stay – ‘shame not to, Father O’Brien, when it’s my own chicken roast.’ Mammy’s own chicken roast was famous throughout the whole townland and she threw open the windows even in the fierce winter frosts so the smell of it, stuffed to the gunnels with sausage meat and scallions, drifted down into the Cloon Valley to fill every mouth with water and nothing else.
The butter bubbling under the skin likely made it all the way to the parochial house on Aghabovey and the poor men of the cloth, suffering the skinny shin stews of Mrs Byrne all week, would be like lambs to the slaughter. If he tried to back out of the kitchen she would follow him with a roast potato on a fork ready to feed him like a baby bird if he opened his beak.
– Father O’Brien will understand I’m rearing waynes who will honour their father and their mother, Kathleen Rattigan!
She knew she was safe. What happened inside the walls of this house stayed within its walls. Whatever Father O’Brien threw at her wouldn’t stick. That she had hit such an innocent as Bernie would be passed over as an accident. She’d be able to make him see that it needed to be done. He wouldn’t care that she had hit me, I was hers to hit.
When Mammy moved down the hall pulling Mick behind her by the ear, Kathleen bolted for the bedroom. She was sitting on the bed pretending not to cry but she had got out her suitcase again. It had been packed for weeks and sat to the side of the dressing table like a bomb about to go off.
She patted the stuff with shaking hands: the towels, the washbag, the new clothes from Auntie Eileen, stuff she would need to live somewhere else, somewhere I couldn’t see her every day. I climbed on to her lap and wrapped my arms and legs around her like the stupid, petted baby that I was. She rocked me as she cried.
– It’s not forever. One day we’ll be gone, she said.
We clung on to the magical ‘one day’ because it was the only raft we had. One day we would get married or just leave home. One day we’d be away to college in Derry or Belfast or America. Kathleen was close to escape but I still had years to go and very soon no one to take my corner. I wished Daddy would come home.
I listened on and on to Kathleen crying but my own eyes were dry; somewhere deep down inside me was a big hollow. I tried to imagine being all alone in our room but I couldn’t. Mammy ripped open the door and jerked her head in the direction of the kitchen. Kathleen walked past her without a word. The tea had to be made. You’re to stay in bed for the evening, Mammy said to me, I don’t want you appearing down those stairs, do you hear me? I heard her. Wild horses couldn’t have dragged me down there.
That night the pan hissed as usual, the salmon and brown onions were fried in butter, the boys and Daddy came in, their socks trailing the smell of the byre, cowshit mixed with Indian meal and tobacco smoke. I heard them all at their tea, knives scraping plates in the silence. By the by, Mammy brought me up a bit of cold fish and bread. She’d come to tell me why I had a sore lip. It’s because she cares, she says, cares that I grow up to know right from wrong.
She wouldn’t be doing her job, and it’s a very serious job being someone’s mammy, a calling straight from the Virgin Mother Herself, a vocation almost. If she took her eye off me for one minute I could be ruined. Children can be ruined in a minute. Look at me, I was nothing, a slug under her boot, but still she would never give up on me.
She leans in, and with sugar on her tongue from a confiscated bag of barley twists, tells me how vital it is to be good because even when she’s not in the room, Good Holy God is always watching. He can see through doors and around corners and into the very soul itself where all the black marks live. I must always save my sins for the ears of the priest and the priest alone, never breathing a word to another person in case they figure out what a bad girl I am.
Did I remember what happened the last time? The time when I committed the sin of pride? She smiles when I nod. I’d done well, learned another lesson. I just had one more thing to remember. Auntie Eileen must never know exactly what went on today, no matter who asked. Even if the priest asked, it was alright to tell a white lie this time. It was better for everyone to keep this S.E.C.R.E.T. After all, Bernie could have been badly hurt, much more badly hurt.
– You don’t want that on your black little conscience as well, do you, Mary Rattigan?