by Honor Harlow
“Tráth, a mhuirnín, when the Good People take a soul, they leave the person as hollow as a sucked-out eggshell.”
“Nanny, are the Home Babies away with the fairies?”
“Why do you think that, a grá?”
“Cos they have no smacht on them. My mammy is always telling me to straighten up, but they slouch along, looking at the ground. Why doesn’t someone put smacht on them?”
“A mhuirnín, the nuns have the heart frightened out of the poor creatures up there in The Home.”
“What poor creatures?”
“The mothers and their babies.”
“The Home Babies have mammies?” I asked all surprised because Mammy told me they didn’t have mammies or daddies.
“Whist with the questions. Go outside a whileen. Let me smoke me pipe without having to take it out every five minutes to answer you.”
Just as I was going out, Úna and Kait were coming back with a pile of blackberries. They pushed me back into the kitchen and dumped the berries on Nanny’s table. Úna’s mouth was black inside from eating the berries and Kait was holding up her finger to show us the thorn stuck in it. Nanny told Úna to go over to the window and take a sewing needle from a box with threads and scissors.
Kait was making faces saying her finger was sore and didn’t want anyone to touch the thorn. Nanny took no heed of her and held the finger while she lifted the skin up a bit with the needle then squeezed. Me and Úna were on each side of Nanny and we saw the thick, little brown stick pop out. It was smaller than a fairy and the two of us wanted it, but it got lost. Nanny called Kait over to sit on the hob and started fussing over her.
Úna gave me a handful of berries and stuffed another pile into her mouth. Then she rooted under the bed and pulled out a long stick and a short, fat one, with the ends pared into sharp ends, that we left in Nanny’s house for playing Buille. She skipped out the door pulling me along with her because we were tired of seeing Nanny making a peata out of Kait.
Úna broke a bit off the bottom of the whitewashed walls to use as chalk. She drew a box and a half circle. She told me to stand in the half circle and to throw the short, fat stick at her. She was standing in front of the box holding the long stick in her two hands. I threw the short stick at her. She tried to hit it but kept missing, so I said I was going home.
“Wait til I call Kait and we’ll all go together.”
On the way down the hill, I said, “Úna, the Home Babies have no souls.”
“They have souls.”
“They don’t have souls, Úna.”
“They do, so they do,” Kait said as though she knew what she was talking about, so I explained it to her.
“They don’t, they are away with the fairies.”
“How do you know that, Know-All?”
“Cos their eyes have the look of people who are away with the fairies and I am not a Know-All.”
Then Úna, who was six and a half and minded her brother and sister and stopped them fighting, said, “The nun told us when you made your First Holy Communion, Baby Jesus goes into your soul and the Home Babies are making theirs, so they have to have souls for Baby Jesus to go into.”
Me and Kait knew Úna was the boss but I still wanted her to show her the nun didn’t know everything, especially about the babies with no names and I said, “She doesn’t know more than my daddy. He told me all babies go to heaven.”
“Your daddy is a Garda, so he knows where everyone goes but he doesn’t know the Catechism off by heart like the nun does,” Kait said.
“Does she know it, so the priest won’t get cross?” I asked Úna.
“She has to know it to teach us and the Home Babies so we can make our First Holy Communion.”
Úna was smart because she was six and a half, real old. I was only gone five and Kait was only nearly six, but she still went with Úna to the dump and got money to buy things when we were playing shop in the yard. We sat on our hunkers to play shop and used the shiny biteens of glass and delph from the dump to buy things.
“A penny worth of sweets, Mrs.” Úna was the shopkeeper and she separated three pebbles and passed them over to Kait, who paid her a piece of glass. Úna examined the glass. If it was big or sparkly, she would give back a bit of delph as change but if it was normal glass, Kait got no change. They gave me glass and delph to buy sweets with, but I wanted my own money.
“I want to go to the dump the next time with ye.”
“You can’t come cos it’s a long way and you’d be late for your tea,” Kait told me cos she didn’t like Úna linking me when we were together.
“I can. My daddy knows I’m big and can stay out playing on my own.”
“We still can’t go this evening, so we can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Cos it was raining yesterday, so it was.”
“What’s the rain got to do with going the dump?” I asked with a puss on me.
“Cos now it’s all messy and smelly, so it is,” Kait said.
“It’s not fair, ye have great fun rooting around in the dump and finding treasures.”
“It was Kait who found the fairy on a box. She always finds the best things.”
“Mammy said when it was new, the fairy twirled around and music came from the box, so it did.”
“Was it a real fairy?” I asked.
“No, silly goose, real fairies live in fairy rings,” Úna answered.
“I know, I was just asking to see if Kait knew. Anyway, if we can’t go to the dump, what will we do after school?”
“Do ye want to see the house where the Home Babies live?” Úna asked.
“I saw it already,” Kait said. “We hear the babies crying and the nuns giving out to them.”
“I didn’t see it and I want to.” I was dying to see the place where the still, silent children lived.
“If ye’re going, I’m going too, so I am,” Kait said.
“But you see it every day, Kait.”
“But soon I won’t.”
“Why won’t you?”
“Cos we are getting a house on Kilmartin Road.”
“Why do you have to get a different house? I won’t be able to see you after school,” Úna said, like she was going to cry.
“Cos Mammy told the town council the crying and screaming of the babies is driving her demented and if she doesn’t get a house away from the Home, she’ll end up in the mad house in Ballinacora.”
Úna was still looking sad, so to cheer her up I said, “Mrs McLoughlin lives in Kilmartin Road, and it’s near the railway station. So, me and Kait will go up the tracks to see you some days, won’t we Kait?”
“Ya, we will, so we will. And we’ll see the Home Babies too.”
“We can’t see the babies. They will be in their cots asleep,” I said.
“We will see the babies who got big, so we will and not the small ones, silly goose,” Kait answered. She was right because the Home Babies in our class were the babies who got big and could walk.
When I was small in Low Babies and High Babies, I never saw Home Babies in class colouring without going outside the line, or to cutting with the small scissors.
“Úna, did you see them in High Babies?” I asked Úna cos she was big and knew everything.
“They start school in first class.”
“Why did they not go to High Babies?”
“Cos we don’t make our First Holy Communion in High Babies.”
“And?”
“We make it in first class, that’s the reason why,” Úna told me.
“They have to learn about the body and blood of Christ and how to tell sins in confession to the priest, so they do.”
After the yard, I got in line with Úna and Kait but went to my place on the good side beside Colette Daly. Our desk was in front of Pauline Byrne and Fionnuala McCabe. I was giddy thinking I was going to see where the Home Babies lived. In the classroom, I was able to look over at them when they came in the door on the garden side, b
ecause Mammy was sick in bed and couldn’t see me watching. They couldn’t see me either because they never looked up from the floor. They shuffled along in a line, two by two. The bunch of them wore black laced up boots and made no noise with their feet as they moved to their seats and sat, heads bent, on the bad side with the dunces. Úna and Kait were on the bad side too.
I was sitting with the children of the mammies and daddies that my own mammy and daddy were palsy-walsy with. Colette Daly’s daddy did houses, Pauline’s daddy had a shop and Fionnuala’s daddy worked in the beef factory. They were nice but I liked my pals the best. Úna waved at me and I waved back. The nun saw me. She said I didn’t know how to behave myself and pointed the ruler towards the bad side. I got up and sat in beside Úna and Kait in the front row of desks. The Home Babies were behind, so I turned around to look at them, but they didn’t see me because they never raised their eyes. I saw their arms were like the thin, white clay-pipe Nanny Ward smokes, inside the sleeves of their jumpers knitted in a pile of different coloured stripes.
I didn’t go to The Home to see the Home Babies because Daddy and Dr Kelly were outside the gate on Cork Road. He was off duty and he was bringing me to the pitch with him. Dr Kelly spoke to Úna to tell her the ambulance came for her mammy and she was to go home straight away. Kait said she’d help Úna mind the children. I went with Daddy to the pitch, at the back of St Jarlath’s Avenue, and watched Daddy teach the boys how to play football and then we went home for tea.
At teatime I told Mammy about the jumpers with the different colours and asked why they weren’t the same colour. She said it was because the women didn’t have enough of the same colour wool to knit a whole jumper.
“Why don’t they buy enough of the same colour wool, like you do?”
“Mary, they don’t buy the wool, they are given it.”
“Who gives it to them?”
“The good nuns.”
“Then why don’t the nuns buy enough of the same colour?”
“You have my head light with so many questions.”
“Answer me.”
“Don’t be so forward but if it will keep you quiet, I’ll tell you the nuns are good enough to give the mothers their own socks when the heels are worn out.”
“Mammy, I’m talking about their jumpers and not about the socks.”
“Mary, less auld buck and more manners.”
“Alright Mammy.”
“The nuns give the mothers the socks for them to rip them out.”
“And make balls with the wool!”
“Mary, will you let me talk and I’ll tell you why the geansaí are of different colours.”
“Alright.”
“When the nuns’ socks get too thin to darn any more, they give them as a present to the mothers, so they can rip them for the wool and knit the geansaí.”
“Socks jumpers?”
“Real jumpers.”
“With long sleeves, Mammy. I saw a boy wiping his nose on the sleeve of his geansaí.”
“Don’t go anywhere near those children.”
“Why can’t I go near them? Will they take my cardigan to wear?”
“Mary, how many times have I told you – children are seen, not heard.” I lowered my head and she continued. “God knows what kind of diseases they have and sure their heads must be crawling with lice.”
I didn’t want to go near the Home Babies, without Mammy having to tell me. Some were scabby and had cold sores around their lips. Others had running noses with green, thick snot stuck on the bottom. No one ever heard them speak or saw them smile. In the yard the Home Babies stood still in a pile and didn’t play. It was great fun to mock them because they never answered back.
I didn’t mock the stringy girl, because she made me feel funny, like the day she had her arm around the skinny boy’s shoulder. I felt a big puss coming on me inside and I wanted to cry but I didn’t in case Loretta called me a cry baby, but it wasn’t fair the stringy girl had someone to put her arm around, but my brother was in Limbo.
Since I learned about Limbo, I hated Catechism class. Besides, I was fed up listening to the nun saying the Host wasn’t bread but the body and blood of Christ. Everyone knows a loaf is thick and you can put butter on it. Only a stupid person would think the Host, thin like paper and round like a mushroom in the grass, was bread. I sat still and when my body got giddy, I only swung my legs under the desk. When Loretta called me Giddy Goat, I pretended I didn’t hear her and crossed my fingers for it to be time to make a line to go out to the yard.
In the yard, I played ‘Tick’ with Úna and Kait Kenny. They showed me how to play plenty of games and sometimes after school we went to see their grannies or to the dump.
“If ye are going to see your nannas today, I want to go too.”
“We are. Úna wants to show Nan the bruises on her arm.”
“Why?”
“To see if it’s the Dead Man’s Pinch.”
“What’s the Dead Man’s Pinch?”
“Nanny said if a Dead Man comes into your room at night, he will pinch you if your arms are out.”
“Did he pinch you, Úna?”
“Don’t know. That’s the why I want to ask Nan if this is his mark.”
We forgot to ask on account of Nanny shouting at us. We were running through a bunch of beautiful red flowers growing along the road. They looked like roses without the thorns or bushes. When Úna bent down to pick one, Nanny cried out in terror.
“For the love of God, throw that flower away from you and on no account smell it.”
“Why?” I asked.
“It will give you a headache.”
“Why?”
“They’re poipeens or poppies, the fairy flowers.”
The nannas knew about everything to do with the fairies. When we went up to Nuns Field to pick mushrooms, they warned us on no account were we to touch the pointy brown ones. They were pucaí mushrooms. If we ate them, we’d be away with the fairies for a day and a night, but it was alright to pick up the white, round mushroom, we saw in the grass. Mushrooms were lovely to eat. Nan used to put them upside down, like a cup, with a pinch of salt, in the iron pan over the coals. They sizzled and juice came into their middle. We drank it before we ate the soft mushrooms shells.
Afterwards we all ran down the hill together, with the lovely taste from the mushrooms in our mouths and went home. I cut through Kilmartin Road over to Sligo Road and to my house on Suileen Lane. Úna and Kait walked through St Jarlath’s Avenue onto Railway Terrace, past the station house and then took the short cut up the tracks to Dun Na Rí Road. The railway track was a long, winding, metal ladder lying on top of small, sharp stones packed in between the wooden rungs. When Úna and Kait came with me as far as the station, they would sneak in through a gap in the metal fence of bull-wire that was supposed to keep people from going on the railway line. I’d stand and watch them leap like hares from one wooden plank to the other along the railway track.
When I knew what the nun was telling us in class, my mind used to go on the track, and I’d be flying along before Sr Ignatius ruined it all by shouting and bringing me back to class.
“Mary Blake, sit quiet. You’re as giddy as a goat.”
I tightened myself up and tried not to move. I crossed my fingers and wished it was time to go home, run and play with my pals, Úna and Kait.
Town
The station was a big house where men and girls, with suitcases, waited for the train to Mullingar and Dublin. In summertime Mammy, Daddy and me went on the train to Sligo and we walked out to Trafada.
Lots of puff-puff trains, with wagons of purple lumps like big potatoes, hooted their way through the station without stopping. Mammy said they were taking the sugar beet to the factory in Tuam. When the trains were going to come whizzing along the railway tracks, a man, with a dark-blue coat and waistcoat and a round cap of the same colour, blew a whistle and waved a small flag. He closed the wooden gates, with iron bars, on the two sides of
the road where we walked. People had to wait until he opened them again or cross over the bridge to get to the other side of the railway track.
I used to see children go up the iron stairs holding on to the banisters. The sides of the stairs were pretty with slanted bars that crossed over each other and made diamond shapes in the empty spaces. When the children got halfway up the steps, there was a small landing and then after that more iron steps before they got to the top, to a long hall. The hall was the bridge that passed over the railway lines to the stairs on the other side for people to go down. The children ran to the middle, kneeled down to put their faces through the diamond shape and wait for the train to come along.
The long, white trail of smoke from the train took the children’s heads with it. Parts of their heads came back on their shoulders when the ribbons of cloud got ripped into small, fluffy bits. Noses or eyes or heads would appear and instead of the chug-chug noise of the wheels, it was coughs and laughs that sounded.
I wanted to do the same, but Mammy said it was dangerous. We always waited for the blue man with the whistle and flag to open the gates before we walked across the road with the railway track stuck in the middle and went up town or back to our own house.
The front of our house was in the town, but the back was in the country. Outside the front door there was footpath and a street called Sligo Road. It was a big, wide, tarred road that went back to the sawmills and then kept going for ages until it got to Sligo. Mammy was careful when we crossed over it to the other side with the footpath in front of the houses. There were more houses and gardens and sometimes a car passed by.
The back of our house was in the country. There were no other houses, only fields, trees and bushes. At the gable-end side outside our railing, there was a stony lane called Suileen Lane. From the upstairs back windows, it looked like a shaky line of grey painted in the countryside. The stone walls and metal gates along the way decorated it like the trimmings Mammy sewed on my dress hems to make them prettier. The farmers used the lane to bring the cows home to milk. Cows didn’t know you have to use the toilet, so they just lifted their tails and let the number two fall on the ground. Mammy didn’t like the cow dung, but I thought it looked like chocolate dropped scones, frying on the road.
