The Silent Children

by Honor Harlow

  Later in the evening Daddy piggy-backed me up to my room and threw me on the bed and said he was going to eat me.

  “William, don’t get the child wound up or she’ll never get to sleep.”

  Daddy helped me say my prayers, gave me a kiss and went back to the kitchen and I fell asleep dreaming of my dress.

  Cold air blowing on top of my face woke me up. The room smelled of clay. I leaned my head up to see why. I wished I had not because I saw the outline of a figure near the bed. It was watching, waiting for me to sit up. The Dead Man was wanting to touch my flesh, to leave his mark on me. At least my arms were pressed in tight against my sides, but my face was outside the blankets and my head was stuck up a bit from the pillow. I lowered my neck back onto the pillow and sank my body down in the bed, afraid to move my hands to pull the bedclothes up to my chin and over my head to keep my neck and face safe from the Dead Man’s pinch.

  When the dark shadow leaned over me, I clenched my eyes shut and screamed. Daddy came running in. I clung to him and told him about the Dead Man. He said the cold air was only a draught and the smell of clay came from the soles of my shoes. He took to his room and put me in the bed between him and Mammy.

  The next morning, I was tired and didn’t want to get up. I nearly got to stay at home, but I didn’t because of Mammy.

  “Ach, a day at home would do her no harm, Dervla.”

  “William, you are spoiling that child. If you weren’t so soft, we’d have less nonsense out of her,” she said giving out to him. He winked at me and told me we would read ‘The Ugly Duckling’ after school.

  I was still sleepy and in half a temper when Loretta started copying the answers of my sums. She was peeping over at my slate every chance she got and rushing up to the nun’s desk before me. Sister Ignatius was praising the copycat, as though she was the best in the class. I stopped doing my sums and sat with my arms folded, so Loretta couldn’t copy my answers anymore.

  The nun said, “Mary Blake, take that puss off you and copy down what I’m writing on the board.”

  I didn’t budge and kept the puss on me.

  “Mary Blake, did you hear me? Well, heed me!”

  I still didn’t move so she came charging down and dragged me over to the bad side and shoved me in beside the skinny boy who was always hanging on to the stringy girl.

  Once the nun was back at her desk, I was able to look at the boy and see him right. He was bony with a belly the shape of the bag of flour mammy had in the pantry. His face was floury white like the sack. He was wiping his snots with the back of his hand, his small teeth biting into the lower lip on a quivering chin with a dimple. I kept looking at the dimple because me and my daddy were the only ones I knew who had a dimple in their chins. I think he bent his body over the desk to silence the sounds of the snivelling slipping out. His back reminded me of our dinners. The matted and stringy geansaí looked like the cabbage we ate on Tuesdays. Mammy puts the spareribs beside the cabbage, but this lad’s ribs were underneath it. His stuck-out shoulders were like the wishbone of the chicken we have on Sundays.

  When Sr Ignatius told him to stop whining, his sister said something in a low voice about Liam. The nun’s eyes opened wide and we all turned and gawked at the girl, with hair the colour of butter, surprised that Home Babies could speak. A stirring noise, like when the kettle on the range is singing but it’s not boiling, hummed in the classroom. Bubbling through our heads were the thoughts that Home Babies could talk and had names.

  “What are you saying, girl?” thundered Sister Ignatius.

  In a voice that stumbled to come out, the Home girl lisped that Liam, her brother, had pains for the last days and his tummy was very sore. The nun seemed outraged by being told this. She roared at the girl to take her brother to the toilets and to stay with him. There was whispering and nudging in the class as the two, heads looking at the floor, shuffled out towards the door near the big window with squares. It was closed and the girl couldn’t pull it back.

  “What’s wrong with you, girl, are you too stupid to even know how to open a door? Mary Blake get up and open that door. That lad needs to go to the toilet by the smell of him.”

  Sniggers ran around the room. I jumped up from the wooden plank seat and nearly tripped on the footrest in my hurry to get out of the desk that squeezed me in. As I stood in front of the hollow-cheeked girl, she raised her eyes without raising her head. The glance from the light blue eyes felt like a hug and a giggle tickled me inside. The grá came out on my face in a smile. I must have frightened her cos she dropped her eyes. I pulled the door open and stood looking at the two as they rounded the corner of the garden with the statue of Our lady, to go to the yard where the grey toilets were. The sister had her arm wrapped around Liam’s bony shoulders. I wanted to be on the other side of him.

  “Mary Blake, what do you think you are doing, staring like that? Sit down this minute,” Sister Ignatius shouted but she didn’t say anything to Loretta who was laughing about the Home Boy having the runs, saying she was sure he had scuttered himself. I crossed my fingers for the break to come so I could rush out and see what had happened to Liam and the girl.

  When playtime came, Loretta was the first to stand in line. She made a bolt for the small outhouse, where the toilets were, but with my long legs, I outran her and got there first. I rushed to the toilets and saw the boy, standing in front of the wooden half-door of the cubicle, only wearing his stripy jumper of black, grey, beige and white, his spindly legs like the sticks of chalk we used in class. The sister was trying to clean his bottom and legs. She had taken his trousers and underpants off and thrown what was inside the drawers into the stone lavatory. The girl was now dragging the underwear along the trough-like sink, built into the wall of the cement outbuilding.

  Loretta managed to squeeze in past me. She said she was going to tell the whole class he had done number two in his trousers and started to push the scrawny lad out of the toilets so everyone could see his knotty knees and the caked yellowy brown stuff around his bottom. I got in between them and blocked Loretta’s way, keeping the little squirt in and shouted at the string girl.

  “Hey you, hurry up! You know well the others will be piling in here any minute now. You don’t want them mocking your brother and calling him shitty arse, do you?”

  The sister used the underpants to wipe his red, sore-looking bottom. After that she picked up the trousers and pulled them over her brother’s boots. She then wrung out the underpants and shoved the wet garment up under her dress.

  Liam whispered, “Brigid, the nuns will be cross if I don’t have my drawers on.”

  I saw her touch his hand and tell him she’d put the underwear on him before they went back to the Home. I thought if I had a brother or sister, I would be nice to them like Brigid was to her brother. A cold, sick and miserable Liam looking at his sister with his watery blue eyes swimming in tears reminded me of the picture of The Little Match Girl with her wishing-well eyes of sadness in the big book Daddy reads to me.

  While I was looking at the two, Loretta started pushing against me, still trying to get out of the toilets. I lowered my face until it was in front of hers and said, “If you go and tell the nun about this I’ll wait for you after school, you little butt, and step on you with my foot and grind you to pieces, like my Daddy does to his cigarette.”

  “You can’t do that.”

  “Yes, I can. I’m bigger than you.”

  “I’ll tell my mummy to tell my uncle.”

  “And I’ll tell my Daddy to put you in jail cos he’s a Garda.”

  Noeleen Pitt and three more of Loretta’s pal were coming over to where we were and heard. They asked her, “Will we get Sister Ignatius and tell her Mary Blake is bullying you?”

  “If ye tell the nun, I’ll tell my daddy and he will lock ye all up in jail.”

  “He won’t,” Noeleen said.

  “He will,” Regina told her. “My Daddy says Sargent Blake is a tough sham from the North –
you wouldn’t want to get into a fight with. Even the tinkers are afraid of him.”

  Loretta was looking up at me. I think she was trying to see if I could really stand on her. I lifted my leg up in the air, like we learned in the Irish step-dancing classes and put it on her shoulder. She backed away and went off with her pals, but her head was turned back looking at me, Liam and Brigid. She didn’t tell-tattle because the nun didn’t come flapping over to give out to me.

  Brigid led Liam by the hand to the place where the Home Babies were. I remembered ‘The Ugly Duckling’ and how he felt alone because the other ducks mocked him. I smiled at Brigid, but she didn’t smile back. Liam’s face was crumpled up and I knew his bottom would be hurting him when he sat down because my arms and back hurt me awful when I got sunburned at the beach.

  One day me, Mammy and Daddy went on the train to Trafada with sandwiches and a bottle of lemonade. Daddy bought me a bucket and spade in a shop near the sea. On the beach he showed me how to make castles with the sand. Mammy took off my dress so I wouldn’t dirty it and I only had on my knickers and vest and a sun cap on my head. The sun was shining yellow in the sky, it felt like a blanket making the skin lovely and cosy on my arms and back.

  When I got fed up making castles I skipped down to where Daddy was. He had his trousers legs rolled up and was walking along the sand near the edge of the water where the waves were coming in. When I got near the lapping water, he splashed me. I filled my bucket with water and threw it at his legs. We were laughing and having great fun. After a good while, Mammy called us back to the spot where she was sitting on the rocks to drink lemonade from a bottle and to eat the sandwiches.

  Then I played in the sand again until Mammy called me to put my dress on. The three of us crossed the road to a sweet shop. Daddy bought me a sweet, fluffy thing on a long, thin stick called Candy Floss. It disappeared on my tongue, so I stuff a pile into my mouth, but it melted away very fast too. On the way back to the station, we bought cones with lovely soft ice cream. I wanted to eat mine but after a few licks, my tummy started moving up and down, making me feel terrible. I opened my mouth and the lemonade shot up, but it tasted horrible.

  Mammy touched my face and looked at my arms. She told Daddy, “William, the child was in the sun too long, she got sunburned.”

  Daddy picked me up and carried me to the station. On the train I vomited into Daddy’s big white handkerchief. Mammy was vexed because one minute I told her I was boiling hot and wanted to take my clothes off and the next minute I was shivering with the cold.

  At home, my arms and legs were red. When Mammy touched them to spread a paste of bread soda and buttermilk she made, they hurt.

  “Ouch! Mammy, I’m sore.” I started crying and Daddy carried me upstairs. In bed, the sheets hurt me too. “Mammy, don’t let the sheets touch me. I think my skin is getting too small to fit me. It’s like an elastic band pressed in against my arm.”

  When Daddy tucked me in, he told me to sleep with my arms outside the sheets.

  The next morning when Mammy looked, she saw blisters starting to appear on the red, cracked parts of my body. I told Mammy I wanted to burst the bubbles, but she said that would make my skin worse. When she saw me rubbing my hands really fast along my shoulders, she bought me cotton gloves to wear, so I wouldn’t burst the blisters. They burst on their own. Sometimes I couldn’t help pressing them with my finger until a sticky water tickled out. After a small while, the burst blisters changed to scabs with crusty tops. The rest of the skin was itchy and started to peel. I scratched the red parts because the itch was driving me crazy. Mammy told me not to, but I did when she didn’t see me.

  That time, when I was small, I had great fun peeling the strips of my arm off, but Liam wouldn’t be able to see his bottom to peel his skin off and it would be red and scalded and tight, and the itch would be driving him crazy. I wished Mammy would let him come home to our house and wash him in the lovely warm water in the tin bath in front of the fire, but she wouldn’t because she didn’t like the Home Babies and wouldn’t put bread soda and buttermilk on his bottom either. I was going to get a Marietta biscuit in my house for Liam and bring it to school and maybe that way his bottom wouldn’t hurt so much. I crossed my fingers and wished school would finish quick.

  At teatime, I wanted bedtime to come quick. When I was in bed, I wanted morning time to come.

  The next day I couldn’t get a Marietta because Mammy kept the biscuits in the press, and she would see me. Instead, I shoved a piece of my toast up my sleeve with the butter side near the skin on my arm, so it wouldn’t dirty my cardigan and vex Mammy. She was looking out the window at the rain. Big raindrops were throwing themselves against the roof of the house and making a pounding noise on the ground and the sky growled every now and then.

  “It’s pelting out of the heavens,” Daddy said as he put his cap on and got his overcoat from the back of the kitchen door. He would hide me inside the big coat when I was on the bike and go right up to the school door with me walking up against him, so I wouldn’t get wet.

  At school, everyone was looking at Loretta. She had a small umbrella and wellingtons and a shiny blue coat with a hood to cover the curls on her head that were tied with white ribbons on the two sides. Noeleen and Regina were asking her to open the umbrella and then to close it again. All I wanted was to see Liam, so I was looking at the Cork Road door waiting for the Home Babies to file in. I saw Brigid but no Liam. She was shivering and drops of rain were falling down her shoulders from her hair that stuck onto her head and was grey instead of yellow. She kept her head down. I couldn’t question her about her brother with my eyes.

  I was sitting in my seat near Fionnuala and Pauline but I wanted to be on the bad side so I could ask Brigid about Liam. When Loretta sat down, I stuck my tongue out at her and pulled at one end of the white bow. The two long ribbons fell over her face.

  She screamed, “Stop it!”

  “What kind of devilment are you up to now, Mary Blake?”

  Before Sister Ignatius got to me, I was up and hurrying over to the bad side.

  “Your father is going to hear about this, you bold girl. And you, Úna McNulty, if I see as much as a budge out of you, you will be the sorry girl,” the nun said in a squeaky voice. Úna looked surprised and stared at the nun’s face, red like the steak Mammy buys for Daddy, wondering why she was getting given out to because she hadn’t budged since she came in, don’t mind doing anything bold.

  While the nun was fixing Loretta’s bow, I turned around and passed the piece of toast to Brigid. The girl’s eyes opened really wide. They were blue with long, brown eyelashes. My eyelashes were black and long like hers, Úna’s were sandy and Kait’s were normal. Brigid was gawping, her mouth opened. I was afraid she’d say something, so I put my finger on my lips.

  The sky was still falling out of the heavens. That meant the class would still go out to the yard but to the part where the bicycle shed with the galvanized roof was, and crowd into it and have great fun opening our mouths and let the drops that fell from the roof into them or rushing out and jumping in the puddles and rushing back to the shed before the nun caught us. On rainy days she didn’t come to the yard, but every now and then, looked out the corridor windows to see if we were bold. The class made the line, but the nun had chastised me, so I was not let out. When the rest left the classroom I waited, sitting down, in case the stupid nun came back. I hated the silly goose for not letting me out to the yard to hold my hand out under the drainpipe to see if I could keep the water in it. If the Dead Man came to my room again, I’d tell him to pinch Sister Ignatius and leave his mark on her.

  My bottom got tired sitting on the seat, so I stood up and walked around the classroom and up to nun’s desk. I looked around and opened it really quick. There were three long sticks of chalk. Out of spite, I broke one in four bits. Let her think the púca did it. Nanny Ward told us the púca fairy plays tricks on people. When I heard the whistle blow, I sat down again really qui
ck and waited for lessons to begin.

  We were learning, “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.” for when we went into the confession box, and, “This is my first confession, Father.” to answer the priest when he said, “How long ago since your last confession, my child?” After a hundred times of saying it, I crossed the fingers on my two hands wishing school would finish soon.

  Daddy was coming to pick me up and we were going to the football pitch because Daddy trained the under-16s. They were big but not as big as him. In the pitch he always left me under the stand, where I could walk on the cement seats or run between them or watch him blow his whistle. I used to see him showing the piles of lads how to kick and punch the ball on the small field of green grass, with the two tall poles at each end. He said it was a pity that girls couldn’t play Gaelic football.

  “You have the makings of a great player, Arlene.”

  “Is it because I have long legs, Daddy?”

  “That’s right but a player needs to be nimble and have good eyesight and that’s you.”

  Brigid had long legs too, so she might have the makings of a great player in her as well.

  In the evening after we got home, Mrs McLoughlin had the tea ready and Mammy gave out to Daddy.

  “William, the pitch is no place for Mary. It would be more in your line to be here at home.”

  “Ach, Dervla, if I don’t go and train the lads, Drumbron hasn’t a chance of winning the match against Sligo on Sunday.”

  After Mammy gave out to Daddy, she didn’t listen to what he said because she was heading out the backdoor, like she always did in the evenings, saying, “The fowl are gone in for the night to roost.” and went out the back to close the shed with the straw scattered on the ground, where the chickens lived.

  Mammy liked chickens. When the winter was going away, she wrote a letter and sent it off with a postal order to buy baby chickens. After a few days, a cardboard box with tiny, yellow, fluffy chickens came on the bus from Dublin for Mammy. She’d put it on the table and open it. Chickeneens with spiky legs would jump out and run all over the table. One by one, Mammy picked them up and looked at their underneaths and a cross look came on her face. The reason she got vexed was because she wanted pullets that would grow big and be chickens and lay eggs but nearly all the chickeneens in the box were cocks.