It was my mum, grief-stricken, my aunts, soaking with tears down their faces. The man on the cross was someone dead in the family, and Good Friday was when he died. I was there too, crying at the foot of the cross because I was frightened and the surge of the crowd separated me from my mum at the funeral. Then the words stopped, and everyone went wild. It’s hard to be without God. Everyone was pressing forward, all the statues covered in black. I looked up at the cross, dripping blood from the thorns and nails. My dad turned up his nose and wouldn’t go, he called it ‘the blood and wig-hair melodrama’. Strangers groaned and my nana wept. A hole opened up in the middle of my chest and I clutched at people I didn’t know to stop it pulling me under. A bell rang and stifled it. I pushed back against the wetness of the bodies, sobbing until I got out the church.
Buses were passing, the street was still there. The shops were closed, the sun was shining. I was on my own.
‘Never again!’ I said out loud. A passer-by over the road glanced at me, I was shivering. I’d seen Jesus crucified and I didn’t want to be there ever again.
‘Are you going to do your first communion?’ I nodded at my mum because I had to. Everyone was busy opening out the Guinness and fish and chips and beer and lemonade and being noisy coming in from church. I didn’t want to tell her I’d already gone up when she was in hospital and tasted the wafer and wine they gave you when you kneeled at the rail. I wasn’t supposed to, but everyone else did and I followed. I kept my head down and my hands together while I tried to see my way back to my seat and if I’d been found out. I had to step over Busola who was kneeling with her eyes closed in the pew. ‘That’s a sin,’ she said, without even looking up at me, ‘you’ll go to hell for that.’
I thought if I did my first communion it would make up for it. I’d only meant to get the taste, but it swallowed down the wrong way when Busola tripped me up and I’d gone into a coughing fit. People turned round in the pews and looked, ‘Sit down and shut up,’ Busola said, ‘for God’s sake!’ I could see a smirk on her face even though she kept it closed, like she was going to be an angel and I didn’t even believe in God. I gave her a kick and she opened her eyes. ‘You’re a pagan,’ she said. I didn’t know what that was, so I ignored her and put my hands back together and my head down and tried to think who God was.
‘Don’t just nod at me,’ my mum said. ‘Are you going to do it? Do you want God in your life?’
‘Yes,’ I said, standing in front of her with my hands in my pockets and my fingers crossed. Yes, because God washes away your sins, and sin divides you from yourself, and who wants to go to hell?
‘About time,’ Annie said. She was my aunt and I had to be nice, so I gave her a blank look.
But it meant I had to do Saturday mornings with the nuns. They didn’t know who I was. They weren’t my aunts but they wanted to smack me like my mum. They wanted to get up close, and cling to my hair like bats in their black clothes. It was too much. As soon as they came flapping into the room I was on the run, I had to do my catechism on the hoof. Who loved me? Who died for me? Who do I owe? I never asked for anyone like that. I wasn’t stopping for it, I wasn’t going to be grabbed.
Anyway, they didn’t like me, turning up to their classes not knowing anything at my age.
‘How old are you to be coming to catechism?’
I said nothing.
‘Are you baptised?’
I had this way of not saying anything in case the answer came out the question and I could work them both out together. But the question was enough, they were telling me I didn’t belong.
‘Cat got your tongue?’
It was the best way of making them lose interest. I didn’t want to be there. The questions were in bold type and the answer was plain it wasn’t going to be nice with the nuns.
‘What’s a boy your age doing in this class?’
I looked for the door. If I made a dash for it, that would get back to my mum. The best I could do was make myself invisible. Say nothing, don’t let them see what I’m thinking.
‘What the devil are you playing at?’
It wasn’t going well. So I did the next best thing – I put my hand up to ask for the loo. They ignored me, I was already invisible.
‘God moves in mysterious ways ... and so does the devil.’
Holding my arm up in the air, I watched as they tried to drag us down into Hell to meet him, and dangle us there, Here you are – he’s burning – what do you want? Do you want to end up with him, or do you want to come back with us?
He’d always be hanging about afterwards anyway, in case you changed your mind. Only there wasn’t much difference between him and the nuns. The devil could be nice to you, and they could be nasty.
‘I want the toilet, miss.’
‘Sister!’ she hissed. ‘See you wash your hands with soap.’
The last door on the left of the corridor was further than the middle on the right where the entrance was. I hung about, looking out the glass doors on to the brick wall in bright sunlight, sounds of traffic echoing down the passageway from the street. There was the sound of a flush and the toilet door opened. The caretaker came out doing up his belt, saw me and frowned. A bald Irish man burst in through the entrance, banging the doors and shouting, ‘Where’s the priest? Where’s the fuckin’ priest!’
I ducked and bolted, not breathing till I reached the street.
‘How was catechism?’
‘I’ve got too much homework, Mum.’
She looked at me and sighed. I looked to my dad.
‘They can choose when they’re older,’ he said, doing that burrowing thing with his thumb in his ear that meant he couldn’t listen to any more of this.
I settled in to watch the telly, but my mum picked out some coins from her purse and folded them into my hand, closing my fingers into a good grip.
‘This is to put in the box for the collection next week,’ she said. ‘God gives everyone something in this life. He gave me my children and I want them to know Him.’
My dad stood up, shaking his ear with his thumb, and left the room.
‘Don’t mind him,’ my mum said. ‘He’s a heathen.’
‘What you doing?’ Connor shouted across the road.
It was Saturday morning, I was hanging back at the bus stop instead of going over to the church. Manus came out the sweet shop behind me and gave me a shove in the back, ‘You’re going to church,’ he said.
‘No, I’m not,’ I said. ‘Why aren’t you?’
‘We’re going to Saturday morning pictures.’
‘Come on!’ Connor shouted, walking off on the other side of the road.
‘I haven’t got any money,’ I said.
Manus looked at me like I was stupid and shook his head. ‘Jump!’ he said.
‘What?’
‘Jump!’
I did and the change for the collection jingled in my pocket.
‘There it is.’ And he smirked at me, licking his lolly, and went off after Connor.
I didn’t know everyone else was doing Saturday morning pictures. It was a long walk once you got over the busy crossroads down Nine Elms to Battersea. It was hot and dusty. My legs started to ache, but then they got excited as we got nearer and crowds of children were pushing and shoving to get in the cinema – hundreds of them yelling and calling and whistling without their mums and dads there.
Manus and Connor put their shoulders in and I came up behind, pushing to stay together. We all gave Manus our money as he reached out to the kiosk. He kept the change and gave us melted ice poles from the popcorn counter that dribbled over my chin as I watched the first film. Charlie Chaplin was pushing and shoving people in through a door and they wouldn’t fit – everybody laughed. Then he gave the crowd a kick up the bum, and the house fell down with everyone laughing. But the main film was about a man chucking the big stones of the Ten Commandments down at our feet.
‘Who’s that?’
‘Charlton Heston,’ Manus said, his eyes reflecting the screen.
‘Moses,’ Connor said, chewing on bubblegum.
‘God,’ said the boy next to me, his face squeezed up tight over his knees from his feet up on the seat.
I looked up at the white beard and bushy hair. He looked angry like God, coming down off the mountain to see the Golden Calf. There was a burning bush where he had to take his shoes off. He opened the Red Sea and drowned the Egyptians. There was thunder and smoke. Screams for Pharaoh’s son. He was a murderer. His big stick shook with lightning and turned into snakes. ‘I am who I am!’ He wasn’t telling you his name but you had to believe him.
‘Hold on,’ said Manus. He looked up at the flats in case anyone was looking, pulled his pants down and sat over a low wall. There was a gargle then a stream of poo came out his bum.
Connor made a face and walked off, ‘I’m not with you.’
‘I had to. Get me that chip paper,’ Manus said. There was a twist of newspaper with the smell of vinegar still on it under the wall. I handed it to him and he wiped his bum.
‘Run!’ he said.
An old lady was looking at us off the balcony. We ran past Connor and kept on going. My hands felt dirty.
‘Why d’you do that?’ I said.
‘Because I couldn’t hold it in.’
I hung back and let Manus go on. We all walked back on our own. Up the road, Nine Elms cold store, the big building with no windows, looked like a dead pyramid for people who didn’t believe in God. Even the river when I got up close and looked over was swirling and muddy like the Red Sea. I thought of Manus being flushed away as he pulled up his pants from the poo. The old lady was shaking her head at me as I looked up to stay afloat, but she wouldn’t grab hold of my hand to pull me out because it was dirty.
Connor caught up.
‘What’s Mummy gonna say?’ I said.
He leaned up against the wall over the river for a rest because the sun was really hot and made you feel tired. ‘Who’s gonna tell her?’
‘I mean about Saturday morning pictures.’ I looked down at the water again and sighed, ‘She won’t like it.’
‘Everyone else is going, why not us?’ He shrugged, ‘No one’s forcing ya.’
‘Does Busola come?’
He took out his bubblegum and chucked it in the river. ‘That’s different,’ he said. ‘They’re not letting her off.’
‘Why not?’
He looked at me like it was obvious, ‘She’s a girl.’
I shook my head and he saw I didn’t get it.
‘She’s gonna be a nun,’ he said.
‘That’s stealing!’
‘It was a Bible film,’ I said quickly, wishing I hadn’t told her, ‘Mummy won’t mind.’ We got home and my mum and dad weren’t back from the market. Busola was playing in the backyard and I wanted to tell her about Saturday morning pictures, what a big screen it was. ‘Manus and Connor were there, too.’
‘It’s not about them, it’s about you. You stole – you did. That wasn’t your money to spend on yourself.’
‘Mummy gave it to me.’
‘That was money for the starving people in Africa! For the collection! And you spent it on the pictures. I’m gonna tell on you.’
‘Just because you want to be a nun!’
She stopped. ‘Who told you that?’
‘No one,’ I said.
‘Good,’ and I could feel talking to her was over.
‘Mum,’ I said. She’d got back and left my dad in the downstairs kitchen to start up cooking for the people who were coming. ‘Manus did a poo in the street.’
She looked up from the shopping bags round her feet in the hall. She was counting up to make sure she had everything and hadn’t been cheated. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘I went up Battersea with him,’ I said, ‘and he did a poo walking back.’
She shook her head, ‘What were you doing in Battersea?’ She looked at me sideways, trying to work it out. ‘How was catechism?’
I hadn’t thought it would lead back so quickly. I had to make her believe me, so whatever Busola said, Manus pooing in the street would be more serious than the money. ‘No, really, he sat on the wall and it came out. He said he couldn’t hold it.’
My dad called her from the kitchen. She shook her head at me, ‘Stop telling tales.’
‘He did, he wiped his bum on a newspaper,’ I said. ‘My hands feel dirty.’
‘Now, you’re not making sense, go away.’ And she pushed me off and went down the corridor to the kitchen.
Manus and Connor were upstairs watching the wrestling on telly. I sat with them, watching Mick McManus and Giant Haystacks bang into each other. I was thinking if Busola told on me, she’d have to tell on everyone – but if it was Manus who found out it was me who told on him ... Ouch! Mick McManus had his arm twisted back in a half-nelson, slapping his free hand on the floor, ‘Not the ears, not the ears!’ ... when the door knocked and my mum called out for someone to answer it. Manus and Connor were frozen in the fight so I had to go out slowly backwards to see what happened, which meant Busola got there before me and opened the door to Canon Byrne.
‘Kathleen, is your mammy or daddy at home?’ I was halfway down the stairs trying to turn back and hide but he saw me and peered in, ‘Who’s that? Connor?’
At least he didn’t know who I was, so I nodded.
Busola turned and saw me but her eyes went to my dad coming out the downstairs kitchen along the side of the stairs. ‘Father!’ he said, ‘Come in! Long time no see!’
‘Ah, now, that’s the truth of it,’ Canon Byrne said. ‘And that’s what I’m here about!’ He grinned and they shook hands.
My mum came out, wringing her hands on a cloth, and said, ‘Won’t you come in, Father, for a cup of tea?’
‘No,’ he said, pointing at all the shopping bags in the hall, ‘I can see you’ve your hands full.’
My dad looked up at me, ‘Go on and put the kettle.’
I turned to go upstairs to the kitchen and heard Canon Byrne behind me, ‘Will Connor not be coming to catechism?’
I scrambled up fast, banging my knee on the top stair, which slowed me down as I tried to absorb the ache. ‘We’ve the future Bernadette Mary here,’ he was putting his hand on Busola’s head as I glanced back, ‘doing great things with Sister Anne, but not so much as a glimpse of Connor or ... Manus, is it?’
I got into the kitchen as fast as my knee could come along, and put the kettle on. There was a soft explosion of gas because I couldn’t get the match to light but when it did a blue puff of heat blew into my eyes to tell me what it would be like in Hell and that I was getting close. I crept back to the door and peeked down the stairs to see what was going to happen.
There was nothing happening. They were looking down at one of the shopping bags. I saw the bag move – all by itself. It moved and made a scratching noise. I put my head out on to the landing.
‘What’s that?’ said Canon Byrne. ‘Hiding another child away from me in there?’
My dad laughed and said, ‘That’s the one we are eating for supper.’
My mum was pale as paper and shaking. She had the dishcloth folded over one hand and tucked across under her arm, the other hand was covering her eyes not to look while my dad unzipped and pulled a white chicken struggling out the bag. My mum crossed herself.
‘Just chicken!’ my dad said.
It goggled its eyes, twisting its neck round like it was surprised to be there.
‘That’s a cock,’ Canon Byrne said. ‘You’re going to kill it yourself?’
‘Take that one to the backyard.’ my dad was trying to give it to Busola, but she hid behind Canon Byrne and didn’t want to touch it. ‘What’s the matter? It can just run round!’
The white wings fluttered and settled back into his hands. My dad shrugged as if to say it wouldn’t hurt, but the chicken looked round to see what would happen next.
‘You’ve definitely your hands full,’ Canon Byrne said. He turned to my mum, ‘I’ll have that cup of tea.’
We were sitting in the upstairs kitchen, my dad banging pots downstairs and the grunts of wrestling coming off the telly in the living room. Busola was leaning on my mum’s arm, sucking her thumb across the table from Canon Byrne who was blowing on his tea and not drinking it. I put the milk in my mum’s cup and pushed it across to her, thinking I might be able to slip away, but he started before I could get the sugar out.
‘Bridie, they’re to be brought up in the faith. That was the understanding.’
My mum winced and nodded her head, ‘Yes, Father.’
‘What’s going on?’
‘Well ...’ She was lowering her voice so my dad couldn’t hear, ‘I’ve to deal with his people. He’s not very sympathetic.’
‘Is that all you’re telling me? I’m an old hand, Bridie. I’ve been with the White Fathers in his part of Africa, and I know what a white cockerel is. It’s a sacrifice, is it?’
‘Oh no, it’s not black magic at all ... oh, Jesus! I didn’t mean that. I meant the Muslims, Father. He says they’ve to let out the blood and pray over it.’
‘That’s as may be,’ said Canon Byrne, ‘but you’ve the three children and that’s a responsibility – to God, to the Church and to them.’
‘Four, Father,’ she said, lifting her head up.
‘Is it?’ he said, looking at me, like I was going to become two people, but I could see he was on the back foot from the way my mum wasn’t having any of him not knowing who we were and set her shoulders back, and closed her lips.
‘Well, there’s Connor here –’ he said, and my mum flashed her eyes at me like he’d just made it worse but I shouldn’t say anything. My face went hot and flushed and I felt my ears burning.
‘He doesn’t know who we are, Mum,’ Busola said with her thumb still in her mouth.
‘Sh! you!’ and she shook Busola off her arm, even though Busola didn’t budge and grabbed it back and leaned on it.
‘Now, Bridie, you’re doing your best. You haven’t been in the best of health and you’ve a big family. I know the sacral burden falls to women, and that’s good for Kathleen, but that’s no excuse not bringing Connor into the Church, is it? He’s not in catechism.’
‘Bernadette Mary,’ Busola said, taking her thumb out her mouth and giving him her scary blank stare. ‘And Jesus loves me. Sister Anne says.’
‘Now, go on, you two. Go and watch television,’ my mum said, but I was stuck and Busola wasn’t moving.
Canon Byrne wiped the bald top of his head with his hand and nodded, and gave a big sigh. He looked at my mum, and at Busola and at me. ‘We’ll have to start again,’ he said. ‘How is it the chickens are not coming to church? Oh, for God’s sake! The children aren’t coming? And is there anything I can do to help?’
He took a big gulp of his tea and put the cup down gently on the table, giving my mum a long look, and making peace. ‘I’m old now, Bridie,’ he could see an opening, ‘and I can’t for the life of me pin a name to every last chicken I’ve on my conscience. Truth be told, I’d want to go home. Knowing full well I’ll never get back there. Couldn’t tell you the way. And why would I want to leave you and your beautiful children when they never loved us enough in Ireland to keep a hold? Isn’t that where we are?’
‘It is,’ she said.
And that would have been good, because they liked each other, and he gave my mum lots of support and she said interesting things to him I never heard her say otherwise, but Busola pointed at me and said, ‘He’s the one who’s missing.’ They all looked, ‘He spent his collection money going to the pictures.’
I thought the ground was going to swallow me up, but it didn’t. I was still there, my face burning in front of them.
‘You?’ my mum said.
I looked at her and didn’t say anything.
‘I’m the only one who goes,’ Busola said.
My mum put her head in her hands. She looked at Canon Byrne and said, ‘What am I to do?’
‘Was it a good film?’ he asked.
‘It was Moses,’ I said.
He laughed. Still holding her head in one hand, she shook her fist at me, ‘Ye’ll go to the devil, all of you! And you’ll never see the face of God!’
It was my turn in the backyard, digging up earth in the cracks and watching the cock in its white feathers poking about in the corners. It moved in behind the bins and came back in jerky slow motion, trying not to notice me. Canon Byrne was upstairs, laughing with my mum and dad who’d brought up bottles of Guinness.
I was frightened. I wanted to see the face of God and I wasn’t going to. The backyard looked grey, like the bins, and the crumbling bricks along the backyard wall looked sooty and black. The broken concrete on the ground made me feel there wasn’t any colour anywhere, just the dirt in the cracks. Only the cock’s bright red bits on its head looked like drops of blood. I looked up in the sky, the blue had gone overcast and grey. It was hot and heavy, with spots of rain falling and drying up before it could get wet. The beady eye fixed on me and scratched its claws on the ground. When God turns away from you, there’s a wind and you feel someone else is watching. The clothes pegs shook on the washing line and there was a white ruffle of feathers. The back door banged shut, I was on my own. I looked up for God and couldn’t see him. I lifted up my arms to the clouds floating over the roof of the church, and remembered that’s what Moses did. For a moment I thought I have seen the face of God. It’s Charlton Heston. I had to cross myself because it wasn’t true. He was Moses, a murderer. I glanced at the cock and it was walking away from me past the upturned metal bucket, so I thought I better keep on going. I turned up again to the heavy grey-white clouds and saw a dark smudge forming above a lip, then eyes and the white face of Charlie Chaplin, looking detached and kind and helpless. I couldn’t make him look down at me, he drifted away into the clouds.
My eyes were welling up with tears.
Why are you crying? I said to myself.
Because the devil had won.
Canon Byrne was gone and my mum had switched off the telly to tell us off. My dad was standing by the door, half in, half out, and stood back to let me through, his hand on the back of my head pushing me gently into the room.
‘There he is,’ she said. ‘And who took him the wrong way?’
Manus and Connor didn’t even bother to look at me. They knew it was my fault. I sat down as quickly as I could.
‘And what happened on the way home?’ she said.
That’s when Connor gave me daggers with his eyes and Manus looked at the floor.
‘Are ye animals, or have you no fear of God?!’
‘Ah-ah! Calm down,’ my dad said to her. ‘Just talk to them. They are children.’
‘The curse of God on the child brings the devil to this house!’
My dad stopped it. ‘That’s enough! God is not cursing anyone here,’ he said. ‘They will choose for themselves.’
‘How can they choose if they don’t know? If you won’t let them?’ she said, on the edge of tears and shaking.
They’d been drinking so it was unsteady. I didn’t want it to get out of control, but there was nothing I could do except hold on tight to the arm of the sofa.
‘I’m not stopping anyone,’ my dad said. ‘Let them think.’
He was holding on to the door handles but my mum was standing in front of us, trembling from the chin, as though it was her who was on trial and losing the struggle to speak up for God.
Manus looked at me like he wanted to gob in my face. I looked away and saw Busola standing in the corner by the window, flicking the curtain open from behind and looking down at the street. I hadn’t noticed her before. She was better at disappearing than me.
‘I think you’ve got a nerve,’ my mum said, ‘bringing your juju into the house!’
We all looked at my dad. His eyes clouded, ‘You are confusing them,’ he said.
‘God is good,’ and that was everything out in the open – they were going to fight. ‘Whose side are you on?’ she said to us.
No one answered.
Connor closed his eyes. Manus looked down again. Busola looked at my dad like it was his fault, even though I knew it was mine.
‘I turn my back in the hospital, and you’ve turned them against me,’ my mum said.
And he said, ‘You are ambushing them.’
She had a look on her face that wasn’t disappointed. It was a look of being on her own, expecting to be wounded. We were betraying her and moving away from God, and it was a way of being strong. She faced my dad, ‘You’re poisoning their minds against me.’
He flew off the handle and into the room, making the floorboards creak under his weight. Connor jumped up on his feet and got in the way. ‘Who is poisoning who?’ my dad was shouting. ‘Look at Busola!’ We all looked at her trying to disappear behind the curtain. ‘She won’t go to bed without knicker! And why?’ My dad was screwing his face into a fist, ‘She doesn’t want Jesus to see her without clothes, and he’s always looking!’ The look on his face curled up in disgust, ‘Always looking! Who are you putting with her in bed?’
‘The blaspheming ... !’ but she didn’t finish, she just took her rosary and started praying.
‘Son of God,’ he muttered. ‘God has no son to embarrass you with knicker ...’ but he didn’t finish, either, because he’d gone too far. She was glaring at him, and he left the room.
There was the click of the rosary, the whisper of blessed art thou among sinners and Busola let out a stream of pee, running down her leg by the curtain and pooling on the carpet before it soaked in. Manus picked a towel off the drying frame and started mopping it up, moving the curtain around her feet as she stood there looking out the window. Connor shrugged and went back to turn on the television but stopped as my dad came straight back into the room.
‘Keep Busola,’ he said, ‘the boys can come with me.’
My mum wasn’t looking at him. He followed to where she was staring down at Busola by the window with Manus stooped over drying her feet.