MOLLY HAS STRANGE DAUGHTERS. But there must be some sense to it. They were knitted into life in her private nooks; they are the culmination of it all.
Growing up, they escaped her. Always she was looking, looking and looking, trying to see them clearly like those magic pictures you have to stare at in the right way, but now she never will understand for her mind is full of snow – a blinding thing – and thinking is like wading through it. It is heavy. It stops her breath; cold in her mouth.
There are nightmares in her. She can hear them braying now in the silences left when words slide away. Now she knows they are coming for her, their hooves growing louder on the packed earth, the terrible muteness of them before they shriek.
There are things better left in the dark.
Did it happen after the birth of her little boy, or only with her daughters?
Her daughters’ first years were haunted by the darkest possibilities. She would see it with every blink – the choking – and she would put her face close and her hand on the little chests to feel the breath. Walking down the stairs, she would have to stop and cling to the banister, for fear that with her next move the baby might slip from her arms. She could see how the head would be dashed on the steps – the blood congealing in the silky newborn hair. She knew the silence. The sense of waiting; waiting to believe the thing that has just happened, waiting for the mind to catch up; the lungs, the heart.
Dinny shrugged; the shadow side, he said.
It became worse with every birth, so that when the last one came – scrawny, fussy little Eileen – Molly had only to look at her to see every violence that could befall the child. She couldn’t tell Dinny the gruesome things that went on in her mind’s eye. As she knitted, she would fight the images of the needles stabbing her child through the eyeballs, in through the ears, the tiny anus. She could feel it; the resistance and give of that tender body. Everything Molly did was terrifying. She couldn’t chop an onion or she thought of what that knife could do to her baby, the neat slices it could make, the way it could open her. If she boiled a pot of water, she could hear the screams of scalded girls.
She told Mrs Brereton a little of it. Mrs Brereton had something like that, she said, after her son was born. She said she used to dream about climbing up onto the roof and letting him drop. In the dream, she said, she had no remorse, but she was very frightened of what her husband would think.
The visions made Molly fearful for Lily, and she was given to panics over nothing. She couldn’t bear to see her cry, and nor could Dinny. There was a feeling between them, a sense that she might be taken from them at any moment, that they didn’t quite have her. People said she was too protective. They said she indulged Lily, spoiled her. Dinny’s mother said it, and so did Molly’s sister Kat and her Aunty Doll. They warned her.
That’s why when that thing happened, she wasn’t sure had she imagined it or what. She heard it, didn’t she? But Lily was giggling so much, perhaps she had misunderstood?
‘Mammy! Mr Edwards is putting his fingers into my knickers again! My front bottom Mammy…’
And when she rushed into the good room, Dinny wasn’t there but off fetching something to show his friends, and the three men looked up from their whiskey, their faces bewildered. Lily was sitting on Edwards’ knee, smiling, and Danny – a really decent fellow – said, ‘Honestly Molly, I was right here the whole time. I don’t know why she said that…’
Molly’s face was numb with the shock of it. Her voice sounded like it was coming from outside her, and far away. ‘Lily, stop pestering Daddy’s friends. Come and help me in here in the kitchen.’
Edwards was Dinny’s best friend. He was often about. They could sit for hours, chatting, drinking whiskey; sometimes when Molly came in with the messages, he was there. He was a very talented man and very knowledgeable about Irish folklore. He was what they called ‘cultured’, and sometimes she thought Dinny was flattered by his friendship. He drew books for Lily, lovely books full of pixies and fairies.
Was she wrong to say it to Dinny? He wrote Edwards one of his letters and they never spoke again after that. The other friends – Danny and Casey – they stopped coming so much.
Even back then you could never tell, with Eileen. You could never tell if she told the truth or a lie and you could never understand why she said the things she did. For a reaction that’s what Dinny used to say, Lily likes a reaction. Doesn’t matter what it is…
And when Molly asked her about it that evening, and even months later, all Lily did was laugh at her. She looked her in the eye and laughed and laughed, as though she was being tickled.