MOLLY WAKES WITH GRIT on her tongue and her guts full of scream and when she opens her mouth the whirl of sand rushing in and there he is with his eyes blank as buttons, his mouth tunnelling into dark and still maybe, maybe he will draw a breath now and maybe, maybe, maybe she should never have dropped to her knees that time and let herself think gone and her lungs pull for air but fail and fail for his nails are too short for clawing up to her; his fingers, his clean clipped nails, and under the baby skin and blubber the perfect arrangement of his bones and time is running out for she can hear the bells ringing…
‘—Mrs Kearney? The phone, Mrs Kearney. It’s your daughter.’
A neatly dressed stranger with a kind, open face. Wordlessly, she helps Molly to shift her shoulders and her neck, and position the big phone – a mobile phone, is it? But big. The girl helps her to hold it comfortably to her ear and puts a cushion under her elbow.
The phone says, ‘Mammy.’
‘Hello.’
‘Mammy, it’s Aoife.’
‘Oh. Hello.’
‘What day is it today, Mammy?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘Mammy, do you know what day it is today?’
‘Yes. No, darling.’
‘Think, Mammy.’
‘Tell me, darling.’
‘Oh, Mammy, you ninny, do you really not know?’
‘I’ve been sleeping, darling.’
‘My birthday, Mammy!’ Her daughter laughs – her grown-up daughter, Aoife – she laughs, but there is no mirth in it. ‘Oh Mammy, you ninny-hammer! Imagine your own mother not remembering the day she gave birth to you…’
‘Oh yes. I didn’t forget. I was sleeping, you see. Happy birthday, darling.’
A year to the day, she came. A year to the day after Molly held him there and looked from the clean floor to his face and back again to the clean floor. ‘Has your mammy been starving you?’ That’s what they said, for the cord was knotted tight as though to choke off the next life she tried. A year to the day. But the baby that came was red and with a hurt grimace and its cry said more more more and Molly’s breasts grew shy and no milk came.
‘How old are you now, darling?’
A year to the day, and oh, so many years to the day that it makes an ache in her to try to count them. While her daughter talks, Molly rubs at her cheek, her forehead, looks at her hands to find no clay beneath her fingernails.
The girl – sallow skin, a heart-shaped face, so pretty – crouches down before her, her eyebrows raised with concern. With fine lips she mouths the shape of ‘Okay?’ Molly frowns and nods. ‘Yes, goodbye darling,’ she says, and she hands the phone to the girl. She can hear the girl talking as she moves from the TV room away to the kitchen.
‘Hello!’ calls Molly. ‘Hello, are you there?’
‘Yes, Mrs Kearney,’ says the girl. ‘Yes, I am here. I am just saying goodbye to Aoife, your daughter. I said we will phone when you are more awake.’
‘Is it Polina?’
‘No, Sally. I am Sally, Mrs Kearney…’
‘Yes. Do you like coffee, Katie? Stick on the kettle there, will you. Make us two cups of coffee, if you don’t mind… Sit with me awhile?’