We’ve just got back from Christmas in our grandmother’s house when a black car with white tyres, a real oldie like you see in gangster films, parks in the green shed beside the nuns’ blue mini-bus. A purple-faced man carrying a brown leather briefcase steps out and looks down, checking his shoes haven’t been dirtied. He’s dressed in a blue suit and blue tie over a yellow shirt and he’s wearing gold glasses. Nobody runs over. He doesn’t look like the kind of man you run over to. He stands there for a minute watching us play ball, then walks past us and goes inside to the convent. I see him again in the evening walking around the playground with Reverend Mother and Reverend Mother doesn’t come to the playground unless there’s something big going on.
We’re all trying to find out who he is but Gabriel won’t say and you’d never know where you’d meet him. At the back of the chapel in mass, walking down a corridor, peeking out a window at us in the playground and then writing stuff into a notebook. I’m certain he’s a spy only I don’t know who’d be spying on us. The big girls say he’s from the lunatic asylum. I don’t know what’s going on. Every night at bedtime we gather round Gabriel in the corridor and it takes days for her to give in. She’s not getting out of here until she does. Even the toddlers are pulling at her black skirts, though they haven’t a clue what’s going on, but if it’s something we want to know then it’s something they want to know too, because you can’t have secrets in here, even from toddlers. Gabriel tells us the Purple-Faced man will be here for a week and each of us will see him in her office, separately.
We complain. No way, Mother, you’re not puttin’ us in a room with a looneytoon.
Stop that silly talk. Mister O’Donovan is a respectable man. Saturday morning, leave your clothes in the kitchen and be ready when you’re called.
You mean all our clothes, Mother?
Down to your underwear.
I am scared. I don’t want to be in a room alone with a stranger, even if he’s not a lunatic.
Saturday morning, I’m sitting at the kitchen table with Lucy, Pippa and Holly Green from the group next door. My jeans are fired over the back of the chair I’m sitting on. There’s a pound note in the back pocket that Uncle Philip slipped me getting out of the car when nobody was looking. I wasn’t going to take it.
The room smells of washing-up liquid from Doyler clanking cups in the sink. We’re wearing knickers and vests, except Pippa, who’s wearing a trainer bra and a smile, but she loses the smile when four big girls shout in the window that he’s a dirty bastard and he’ll make us take our knickers off. Doyler fires her tea towel at the glass.
I hear yee over there. I know what yee’re up to.
Pippa asks, Will he Doyler?
Doyler bends to pick her tea towel off the floor. What’s that, Pippa?
Make us?
Make you? Make you what? If those girls try making you do anything you tell me.
Not them, Doyler. Him.
Yes, Pippa, it would be a sin.
Pippa coughs. The pink going from her cheeks and that grey look she gets when her asthma comes on. Gabriel glides in from the corridor clapping her hands and tells us to wait outside her office. I don’t know what to do with the pound. I can’t leave it in my pocket or it’ll be robbed, or, worse, Gabriel might find it and ask how I got it and why didn’t your brothers and sisters get a pound too? Are you doing something you shouldn’t be doing? Can you answer me that, Matilda?
Lucy is first in and I lean against the wall with Pippa and Holly Green. Holly is about twelve. I don’t really know her that much apart from the playground. She’s small and wide and when she walks her knees don’t bend. Her arms don’t bend much either. She always reminds me of Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz. I had a fight with her once but I can’t remember why. I think it was just because she was in the group next door and we had nothing better to do. She’s making faces at me and if she doesn’t stop she’ll be in another fight. Gabriel comes out from her office and sits in the chair in the bay window clacking her rosary beads and mumbling her prayers. The watery sunlight comes through the glass and it’s like she’s sitting in a grotto. The big girls at the window behind her make faces, trying to worry us over knickers. Pippa is behind me snapping her bra straps and there’s a worried look on her face. I’d ask Gabriel if we really have to take our knickers off but she’d box me on the head for interrupting the Sacred Mysteries. There’s nothing to do but wait and worry until Lucy comes out and Gabriel brings Holly Green into her office. Pippa and me gather round Lucy.
What’d he do to you, Lucy? Pippa asks.
I had to put somethin’ in a hole.
That finishes Pippa. She collapses against the wall, clasping her throat and trying to breathe. Lucy runs away down the hall. I want to run for help but Gabriel comes out of her office with Holly Green and the Purple-Faced man. He takes one look at Pippa and tells Gabriel that Pippa is to go straight to the Infirmary. Gabriel brings Pippa down the corridor to find a nun to take Pippa to the Infirmary in the mini-bus and the Purple-Faced man goes back into the office and closes the door. I grab Holly by the arm.
What’d he do to you?
She sticks her tongue out and tells me to mind my own business.
Make me.
She tries to pull her arm away and I tell her I’m not messing.
So?
She knows I won’t fight in here. You’d never know who’d turn up when there’s nobody to do look-out.
Your father’s an alco, Holly Green.
You can’t be talking about fathers. At least you don’t see my father in here killin’ us over spellin’s and shit.
He would if he could get up offa the footpath.
It doesn’t matter what I say. She has it over me. I let her go because I don’t want her to know how scared I am of the Purple-Faced man. She pulls her arm away like she made me leave her go. People are fuckers when they have it over you.
Gabriel comes back and sends Holly down to the kitchen to get dressed and go back to her own group and sends me inside.
The Purple-Faced man is sitting at the polished table reading one of my school copybooks. He has a thing around his neck for listening to my heart but I’m certain he can hear it hammering away in my chest.
I stand in front of him with my arms folded and my legs crossed and Uncle Philip’s pound note clenched in my fist. I look over my shoulder. The key is in the lock. Gabriel never leaves the key in the lock! He points to the empty chair in the corner and tells me to sit. I sit facing him and feel my arse clench on the edge of the plastic seat. He stands up and walks towards me and tells me to lift my vest. I keep my eyes to the floor. He lifts it himself. His hands are cold and I grip the sides of my knickers. The drapes are open and a sunbeam lights up the face of the Blessed Virgin Mary praying in the opposite corner.
Breathe in.
Hail Mary full of grace the Lord is with thee blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit…
Breathe out.
… Holy Mary Mother of God pray…
In again. No, in, I said.
… now and at the hour of our death.
And out.
He spreads wooden bricks on the round table, squares, rectangles, triangles and circles.
I’d like you to fit these bricks to the matching shapes on the board here on the table, Matilda.
He takes a stopwatch from his trouser pocket and sits back in his chair looking at it. I won’t get off the seat. The minute I touch those bricks he’s bound to see the pound note in my hand. He’d ask where I got it. He’d be on to me. I try not to look at the watch. He wants to hypnotize me so I’ll tell him everything. I saw it on television.
Come on, Matilda. I don’t have all day. There’s nothing to be frightened of. Is there anything on your mind? Anything I should know. Have you problems?
Problems? I’m living in here and he’s asking me stupid questions like that.
He leans forward on his elbows and I feel the cheeks of my arse stick to the plastic seat and every time I move it’s like pulling off a sticking plaster that’s been there for a month. I turn my face one way but my eyes glance the other, towards him. He still has the stopwatch in his hand waiting for me to either put the bricks in the hole or talk to him, but I can’t talk. My mind is blank. You can’t talk to grown-ups. No matter what you tell them it’s never enough. Sooner or later I’d end up telling him about Uncle Philip and then I’d really be in trouble. I’d be sent to a reformatory school or out on the street with no place to go.
The Purple-Faced man leaves the stopwatch on the table and writes something in his notebook that’s on the desk and tells me to go. Send in Sister Gabriel.
I wait in the hallway on my own until Gabriel comes out. I’m shaking and my legs are stiff and sore. Through the window I see Pippa being driven away in the mini-bus and a crowd of kids tearing after it. When Gabriel comes out she looks disappointed. She didn’t expect that. It was only a few bricks, Matilda. Mister O’Donovan is concerned. Your father will have to be told. It’ll be up to him to have the final say.
What’s my father got to do with it, Mother?
She looks down at me like she’s waiting for me to say why I didn’t put the bricks in the hole. She looks serious. But the pound is sticking to my palm and I just want to go.
Can I go out to play now, Mother?
She says I might as well.
In a few days the Purple-Faced man leaves. He’s left tablets behind and every morning we queue by the kitchen sink so Doyler can check we swallow them. In a week the whole convent has gone quiet. Mona hasn’t thrown a tantrum or there hasn’t been a fight. I’m sure it’s the tablets. They’re trying to poison us. Kill us off because nobody cares if we’re alive or dead anyway. Every morning at breakfast I put the blue pill under my tongue and when Doyler squints inside my mouth she says, Good girl. We all do the same. Pippa is useless at pretending so she swallows it whole but she’s able to bring it back up again, still dry, no missing bits or anything. We flush them down the toilet until Sheamie says he can get twenty pence each for them in the boys’ school. He can save to go find our mother.
Twenty pence. That’s the new money. Sheamie says it’s because we joined Europe. I know nothing about Europe and Sheamie don’t know much more.
In a few weeks everything goes back to normal. Mona throws her tantrums, there’re loads of fights in the playground and Sheamie is saving for his escape. In a year he’ll be fourteen. He’ll have enough to go to England where nobody knows or cares where you came from and he’ll get a job on a building site where he’ll save to go to Australia to find our mother in no time. She’s the only one who can get us out of here. I tell him don’t be stupid, Sheamie. The gardaí will find you. But he takes no notice. I want to tell him he shouldn’t have to look for our mother she should just come back to look for us. Only I don’t have the heart to tell him. I’m not even sure I mean it. It’s just that I don’t want him to leave. I don’t want to lose a brother as well.
Holly Green is standing in front of me at Communion and her head is shaking. Like I said, Holly is in Sister Ellen’s group so maybe she shakes her head all the time. Sister Pascal is playing the organ like she’s Vincent Price in a habit, and the penguins and the laundry women have received their host and are either kneeling in their pews or walking from the altar rail with their hands clasped and heads bowed. I kneel at the altar and watch Father Devlin walking along the rail giving out the host.
Body of Christ.
Amen.
It’s nearly my turn when Holly, who’s just received her host, jumps up screaming. There’s a mouse, look, a mouse. There he is. Get him. None of us can see a mouse and, even if we could, we couldn’t run or scream because we’re in chapel and, mouse or no mouse, we finish Communion and the penguins will sort the mouse out later. Two nuns grab Holly by the arms and drag her up the aisle trying to get her outside.
Mouse!
Come along, Holly. Come along.
Mouse!
I wonder why Holly’s gone mental. And at Communion of all times. We stopped taking the tablets. Maybe they’re putting it in something else? Maybe they’re putting it in the host. That’s it. They haven’t poisoned us with the tablets so now they’re putting it in the host.
Father Devlin is standing in front of me with the chalice in one hand and the Body of Christ in the other.
Body of Christ, he says.
Mouse!
I don’t want to take the Body of Christ. I don’t want to die before I see my mother again. I don’t want to end up in the asylum and come back with my jaw wobbly and eyeballs fluttering. I have to do something, but Father Devlin forces the host past my lips before I get the chance to think. It feels round and dry in my mouth. I try to wriggle it under my tongue but I can’t let it touch my teeth because that’s a mortal sin. I turn from the altar trying to look calm and holy walking back to my seat while all the time I’m begging, Please, God, don’t break up.
I get to my pew. I can move God a little with the tip of my tongue. God is loose enough to get my tongue under but He’s going to touch my teeth. Just a little, but a little is enough, now there’s a mortal sin on my soul but I can’t say it in confession because I can’t tell Father Devlin, I know you’re trying to poison me with the host.
Things are worse. I have to get God out before he melts. I’m not supposed to touch it with my hand but what can I do? I glance around to make sure nobody is watching. Everyone is kneeling, heads bowed. I think Holly is outside someplace. The organ has stopped playing. I cover my mouth and spit God into my hand and make a fist around it and there’s two mortal sins on my soul but I burn for eternity with one so one more doesn’t really matter.
Now what do I do? I can’t drop God on the floor because the penguins will find Him and they’ll get the bishop up to bless and lick the floor and there’ll be no end to the masses, rosaries, benedictions, retreats and penance begging forgiveness for the Body of Christ being left on the floor where anyone can walk on it and carry it on their shoe. I’ll put it in my pocket and do something later, only nobody ever said what to do with God when He’s in your pocket. I kneel to pray but I feel like a sinner. I’ve got two mortal sins and I haven’t even left the chapel. Maybe I should pray but I don’t know how to ask God how to get his body out of my pocket and anyway I don’t think God listens to someone with two mortal sins and then tells them how to commit a third.
After mass the men in white coats come to take Holly away. Holly screaming, Mouse! The men whispering, Shush.
A week later I still don’t know what to do with all these Bodies of Christ I’m collecting every morning. I can’t ask Mona. Not with the way she comes down to breakfast every morning with a face like a wet week telling anyone who’ll listen she’s on withdrawal.
A big girl at the table says, That don’t work, Mona. Me older sister tried that and now she has twins.
Sheamie has his problems too. He says he’s owed a fortune in the boys’ school but the boys up there haven’t a tosser between them. He should have more than fifty pounds saved by now but he’s only got six pounds fifty pence and, to make things worse, the headmaster is suspicious.
Gabriel brings our group in the mini-bus to see Holly in the Red Brick. That’s what everyone calls the asylum. The Red Brick. There’s never room in the mini-bus for everyone. No matter how much we squeeze there’s always someone’s foot buried in someone else’s jaw. We can see Gabriel’s bushy black eyebrows in the rear-view mirror when she shouts from the front seat.
Quiet back there, into your seats.
I can’t, Mother. Molly Driscoll’s fat fuckin’ arse is taking up the whole place.
Who said that? Who’s swearing back there?
Nobody.
Is that you swearing, Pippa Kelly?
Pippa ducks down on the floor and hides among our legs.
No, Mother, it wasn’t me.
I want to hear it no more. I’m talking to all of you.
Yes, Mother.
There’s an empty seat behind Gabriel but nobody dares sit there. That’s Reverend Mother’s seat. Pippa says, The aul cow, she wouldn’t let the Pope sit on her precious seat.
The corridor in the asylum is white. The walls are white the doors are white the ceilings are white the nurses are in white the doctors are in white Holly is in white and the two men holding her up by the arms are in white. If you weren’t already insane coming in here you’d go insane from looking at white.
The two men let Holly’s arms go and she drops to her knees and babbles like an idiot. We stand and watch her crawl around on her hands and knees. Some girls giggle behind their hands, others stare with their mouths open.
Now, says Gabriel, let Holly be an example to all of you.
Sheamie says, An example of what, Mother?
Never you mind, Sheamie Kelly.
I won’t, says Sheamie.
Don’t backchat me, Sheamie Kelly.
I won’t, says Sheamie.
I won’t tell you again.
That’s good, says Sheamie.
The men in white coats start to laugh. Gabriel’s red face turns redder than ever but even Gabriel will think twice before she’ll take on Sheamie when there’s anyone around. She can’t win unless she clobbers him and nuns won’t hit you when there’s anyone around.
Sheamie’s right. I don’t know why Gabriel brought us here but I’m glad she did because now I know Holly isn’t poisoned. She’s gone mental and there’s nothing new about that.
But it doesn’t solve my problem. I’m still stuck with loads of hosts in my pocket. It’s washday tomorrow and if Gabriel finds out there’ll be war. One host on the floor is bad enough. But pocketsful?
I know Gabriel won’t look in my pockets. Maybe I’ll just say nothing but then they’d just come back next week, only cleaner. No matter where I leave them someone is bound to find them. There’s only one place.
Someone is hammering at the door.
I’m comin’. Give me a minute.
I never saw hosts going down the toilet before and they don’t seem to want to go down either because they keep bobbing back and I don’t know what I’d do if the penguins heard the Body of Christ is bobbing around the toilet bowl.
The door is coming off the hinges and I know it’s Mickey Driscoll looking for a wank.
Fuck off, Mickey. I’m busy.
Ah, Jasus, Matilda, I’m burstin’.
Ask Pippa.
She’s not home from school yet.
I don’t know what to do. Mickey won’t leave and the hosts won’t flush. I don’t mind giving any of the boys a wank. Most of the girls do it for them. It’s not like kissing or anything. There’re a hundred girls and only ten boys and they always stand up for us if we get in a fight with kids from the outside. I can do it under the breakfast table with one hand while I’m shaking the ketchup bottle with the other. Boys are quicker than ketchup.
What are you doin’ in there, Matilda?
Never mind, Mickey. Go away.
Ah, come on, Matilda. Please.
I open the door and Mickey hobbles in with his trousers already around his ankles. I close the door behind him and fire in loads of toilet paper in the toilet bowl, and pray.
Jesus, says Mickey.
Good guess.
The toilet is finished flushing but I’m frightened to look. I don’t want to see Christ clambering up the bowl wearing the white toilet seat as a halo telling me he’s suffered enough for the sins of the world and do you realize what you’re doing to that boy is a mortal sin?
One quick look, the toilet bowl is empty. Mickey’s empty. God’s gone. Mickey pulls up his trousers and we’re out the door and up the corridor just as Gabriel and Doyler are coming round the corner. One big, one small – like Laurel and Hardy.
And where are you two coming from? says Gabriel.
The chapel, Mother.
Praying, I hope?
He was on his knees, Mother.
Oh, really. That makes a pleasant change for you, Mickey.
Sure, I’m doing so much praying, Mother, I don’t know whether I’m comin’ or goin’.
Sheamie is outside in the playground and he waves me across to tell me the principal of the boys’ school has been to see Reverend Mother. He complained there were boys in the school walking around like zombies. The tablets are stopped. I need a new plan, Matilda.