by Honor Harlow
Mammy kept the chickeneens in a drawer with a hot water bottle and a towel until they were a bit bigger. Then she put them into the henhouse and called them fowl. The fowl in the henhouse went to sleep sitting on wooden poles, up high from the ground, with their claws wrapped around the bar because they were birds and thought they were on the branch of a tree.
Weekends
Daddy was teaching me the days of the week. I knew today was Friday because we had fish. Daddy told me the fish day was Friday. After tea on fish day, Mammy always went out the back door to the henhouse and came back with a squawking cock. In the back kitchen, she’d hold the jerking chicken under her elbow and put her hands around its neck. With a quick movement, one hand turning in and the other one turning out, she’d wring its neck, with the same motion she used for wringing out the face towel she wiped my face with. When the chicken stopped moving and jerking, she tied its legs with a bit of twine and hung it up on the back door of the kitchen. Sometimes when I was bold, she would say, “I’ll wring your neck if you don’t stop that.” and I’d be good in case she did! My legs were long, and my head would hit the floor if she put me hanging on the backdoor.
There was no school the morning after. I knew it was called Saturday cos Daddy had told me. Me and Mammy got up early on Saturday and went to the market where the country people had their asses and carts around the giant cross. On the way downtown to An Lár, Mammy told me the names of all the streets so I would learn them. I knew when we came out the front door of our house, we were on Sligo Road. When we crossed over the road and started walking on the footpath, we were on Railway Terrace. After we walked to the railway station and went over the railway tracks, once the gates were opened and pushed back, we were on Hospital Street. It was called that because it was the street where the hospital was. The nuns who wore white habits and had stuck-out flaps on the ear side of their veils, ran the hospital. Mammy said the nuns came from France and were called The Sisters of The Good Heart. Their hospital was in a place full of trees and everyone called the hospital ‘The Woods’.
The Parish Hall came after The Woods. It was a long place with windows high up in the wall and a wide, brown door. Mammy said it was hall where Daddy went playing cards and the big people went to dance at night. The barracks with the jail, where Daddy worked, was on top of Hospital Street, but the street changed its name to Barrack Street. Beside the barracks was the bicycle shop where Daddy got his bike fixed and right next to that on the corner where you turned to go to Cork Road and to our school, there was a big bank that stretched around the corner of the two streets, so it was half on Barrack Street and half on Cork Street.
Right across the street from the big bank was the big furniture shop called Cassidy’s. It went around the corner of two streets but to make sure I knew I was right, I asked Mammy.
“Is half of Cassidy’s shop in Cork Street and the other half in Barrack Street?”
“Mary, Barracks Street stops at the bank. This here is An Lár, so Cassidy’s is in An Lár and Cork Street.”
“And what street is the hotel on, Mammy?”
“The Royal Hotel is on An Lár.”
I didn’t tell Mammy because she would be cross but when me and my pals, Úna and Kait, were downtown walking with the big pram, we saw big people sitting in the hotel with glasses in their hands.
Me and Mammy always walked on the side of the street where the hospital and the barracks and the bank were but on the other side were the shops. The first shop was Moran’s, near the station and then a good bit up the path, all the shops crushed together in a bunch. I knew the names of all them. Mammy bought the newspaper and sometimes an ice-cream cone for me in Byrne’s. McCabe’s clothing shop was next; it sold clothes like dresses and nylon stockings. Mammy bought knickers, vests, petticoats and socks for me there. The chemist came after McCabe’s. Shatter’s Jewellery was next, with rings and watches and earrings in the window. Shatter’s was stuck onto the town hall, a long building that had a clock high up on its wall and inside had shelves full of books because one of its rooms was the library.
Mammy said the town hall was in An Lár, the place with the giant stone cross. An Lár was the place where the country people put their asses and carts on Saturdays and had the market to sell what they had. There was plenty of room for them and the bags of potatoes and cabbage and hens, and for everyone to stand or walk around, because An Lár was big. It was like a spider’s belly and all the streets coming out of it were the spider’s legs.
Church Street, the road for going to Mass, was one of the spider’s legs that came out of An Lár near its shoulders. It was smashing because it had Wynn’s Cafe and Bakery Shop on it. Next to it was Callaghan’s shoe shop. Mammy was always buying shoes in there. Me and my pals never looked at the shoe shop, but we used to look in Wynn’s Café and see big people sitting at tables with tea and a bun on the table. The windows had curtains falling down on each side. I suppose it was so people couldn’t see in, but we did by peeking in through the spilt where the curtains didn’t meet. I didn’t tell Mammy that, I only held her hand and went with her from cart to cart when we were at the market.
The market was a shop in the street. It was full of carts with cabbage, turnips, carrots and potatoes on them. Men in boots and caps stood by the carts and wheelbarrows selling to mammies or other men. They sold eggs, hens, pigs, sheep, cows and horses too. When two men spat on the inside of their hands and slapped them together, it meant an animal was sold. I liked the asses that pulled the carts, but Mammy told me not to touch them and not to stand behind them because they kicked.
“Alright Mammy,” I said, not wanting Mammy to get vexed because after she got the messages, we would go over to the town hall where Jock Connor played his accordion away from the asses that might kick him.
The first time I saw Jock Connors was when I was small in Sr Paul’s class. That day Mammy said, “Let’s see how Jock is.” She opened her purse and took a penny out and told me, “Don’t lose this penny before you put it into his bag.”
“I won’t, Mammy, but the accordion man is smart.”
“Why do you say that, Mary?”
“Cos the small bag he ties to the accordion wouldn’t stay open if he didn’t put the wire around about the top.”
“Mary,” she said ‘Mary’ in her cross voice, “how do you think Jock can stop playing and put the bag out every time someone gives him a penny?” and I knew she thought I was a silly goose to ask her that.
“Why does he take pennies from people?”
“It’s the way he gets money.”
“Mammy, I want to learn to play like him and get money in a bag.” She made a vexed face at me, so I didn’t say anymore and only put the penny in the bag, that was sticking out from the accordion. Some market days, another man with wooden things under his arms was standing beside the accordion man. I asked Mammy who he was, but she didn’t answer, so when Mrs McLoughlin came to clean our house, I asked her. She said it was Mick the Sticks.
“Why do you call him that?”
“Because he had only one leg and uses crutches.”
“Where does he live?”
“In the same lodging-house as Jock in Kilmartin Road.”
Mrs McLoughlin always answered my questions and didn’t get vexed like Mammy.
After Mammy got the messages, we crossed An Lár to Church St and went into Wynn’s Bakery. We didn’t go into the part that had tables and chairs, but I didn’t care because Mammy always bought me a bun in the shop part.
“Mammy, will you get me a bun with pink icing?”
“Mary, children are to be seen, not heard.”
She bought buns for tea and a Chester cake. It was a square slice of cake for grown-ups, with currants in the soft brown middle part and it had a white, flaky crust on top. Daddy said it was a square Christmas pudding. Sometime Mr Delaney would come to visit, and Mammy would give him tea with the Chester cake. I didn’t like Mr Delaney, but he was Daddy’s friend.
After we came back from town, Mrs McLoughlin had the dinner ready for us and then she went home to her own house until Monday morning. Mammy made the tea in the evening and washed up the plates before she lifted the chicken down from the back door. Mammy sat by the fire and placed the cold hen against the side of her lap, holding the hen by its yellow legs above the claws, with its head hanging down towards the floor. With quick movements of her fingers, she plucked out all the feathers until the body was pink and covered in goose pimples. Most of the feathers fell into a box. She swept up the ones on the floor and threw the lot into the fire. They sizzled and melted into the coals on the fire filling the kitchen with a funny smell.
Then she put the naked chicken over a bowl and poured scalding water on it. After that she cut off the head and scaly legs and cut a hole at the top of the pimply chest and pulled the insides out. Then she’d shove her hand up the chicken bottom and draw out more pinky-red lumps. She left the heart, liver and long tubey things on the table. Then she picked up the giblets, that sometimes she called the craw, and sliced it down the middle with a sharp knife she told me never to touch. The craw was shaped like a scone but heavy. It had sand and small stones inside and the food the hens ate.
I loved watching her slit it open and separating the skin, ridged like the galvanized roof on the henhouse, from the rest. It was the lining. She pulled it from the thick brown, red meat and threw it in the rubbish bucket. All the things from the chicken’s inside were put in a small saucepan and boiled to make soup for the gravy, but she didn’t make the gravy until Sunday when the chicken was roasting in the oven.
Saturday evening was the day I got my hair washed in a tin bath in front of the fire because I had to be clean for Mass the following morning. I bent my head over the basin and Mammy rubbed the soap around my head and a white foam came all over my hair. I hated it when Mammy poured a jug of water over my head and face to rinse the suds off. Afterwards, I sat in front of the fire so my hair could dry. I had long black hair like Mammy, but Mr Delaney said I needed to stop growing if I wanted to be as dainty as her. When he turned his back, I stuck my tongue out at him and thought when I got taller and got strong like Daddy, I was going to put him out in the henhouse with the chickens and let them lay an egg on his head.
Before we went to bed, Mammy made the jelly. She always cut off a bit of the look-through red square and gave it to me. It was harder and chewier than the real jelly in the bowl that we had on Sunday. My teeth and mouth moved up and down before the lump broke up and slipped down my throat. She put all the rest in a bowl and poured hot water on it to melt it. She let me stir it around with a wooden spoon until it dissolved. Then she left the bowl in the press. I went to bed thinking of the lovely red jelly I was going to have after dinner the next day. It would be a bit hard but shaky and moving when it was put on the plate beside the yellow custard.
Daddy was teaching me the days of the week and I knew the morning we went to Mass in the chapel was Sunday. The church was big up to the sky and had windows with bits of colourful glass fitted together like a jig-saw puzzle that let in coloured light.
We walked into the room where there were two big holy water fonts at each side of the big doors. Mammy always dipped her fingers into one of them and blessed herself before we went into the big room full of benches. It was where the altar with Holy God was. Mammy held me by the hand as we made our way up the top, near where the altar was. I had to sit still and not fidget because I was near the priest. At communion time, I was so near the altar rails I could see the people sticking their tongues out at the priest. Mammy said I would be able to do that after I made my First Holy Communion.
Kait and her mammy and her sisters and brothers sat in the side aisle near the confession boxes. I used to look over at her and smile.
Even though the priest said the prayers in Latin everyone knew when the Mass was over. The seats would empty. People headed out the open doors and made their way down the gravelled ground towards home. Groups of the mothers and grandmothers and aunts, wearing what they called binógs, but Mammy called scarves, stayed at the doors outside the church and talked. Most had black handbags stuck stiff in under their oxters.
Mammy stayed in the nice front porch with the big stone holy water fonts. The porch was outside the big, middle door but still in the chapel. There she spoke to other mammies who were hers and Daddy’s friends. Úna’s and Kait’s mammies wore binógs had handbags under their oxters. They stood outside by the little side door with their friends. Little by little, the mammies drifted off until only the old women who spend all their time in the chapel were left. After all Mammy’s friends were gone, she would catch me by the hand. We would go back in again but to Úna and Kait’s side of the church. It was the aisle where the confession boxes and the pictures of the stations of the cross were.
At the end of all the rows of the benches there was a big statue of Our Lady. In front of her, there was a golden table where red flames danced on top of quivering night-lights. Mammy put money in the slit, lit a candle, knelt down and looked up at Our Lady with her hands clasped against her chest, the small, white, shiny rosary beads twisting around her fingers. She always seemed sad. While Mammy was looking up at the lady with the white and blue, long dress, I’d break off some of the warm, wax curls dripping from the flat stumps of the candles and roll them into shapes.
The Sunday after the fight with Loretta, I asked Mammy for a farthing and lit a candle for Liam and Brigid.
“Who are lighting the candle for, Mary?”
I lowered my head, so she couldn’t see my eyes and muttered, “It’s for the Babies at school.”
“The Black Babies! Aren’t the nuns good to be teaching you about the children they have in the missions in Africa.” At school there was a square box on the nun’s table with a picture of a black baby and a slot on top where we put the pennies in. After Mammy blessed herself with the rosary beads, we’d walked home so Mammy could make the dinner.
On Sundays Mammy made a special dinner of roast chicken and potatoes and peas. The peas came from a tin, but the chicken was from the henhouse outside in the back yard. The chicken was ready on the roasting tin, waiting to be put into the oven in the range. While the chicken was roasting, Mammy made the custard for the jelly. She put milk in a saucepan to heat and then she’d put a big, heaped spoon of Bird’s Custard into a cup and stirred it with cold milk. It looked easy but when I asked to do it, I couldn’t move the spoon though the wet, hard power. When the milk got warm, Mammy poured the stuff in the cup into the saucepan and kept stirring it while it was heating on the range. The milk became thick and yellow. It was the custard for the jelly because on Sundays we always had jelly and custard after dinner. When the chicken was nearly done, Mammy took it out of the oven and poured some of the grease into the frying pan and mixed flour into it. Then drop by drop, she poured the soup from the giblets and made lovely gravy for the dinner.
On the Sundays when Daddy didn’t have to go to the barracks after dinner, he would sit on the armchair in the sitting room and read the paper. I’d lay on the floor near Daddy’s feet with my big book of stories. Mammy would say, “Mary, let your father read the paper in peace. Stop tormenting him with you wanting him to read your story book.” The newspaper was as wide as the chair and when Daddy winked at me, it meant he wanted me to duck under the paper and stand against him, as he read about a silly goose called Gussy Goose. When the football match came on the radio, Mammy and me would go into the kitchen. When she was talking and smiling instead of being cross, it was great.
One day in the kitchen she started talking about ‘the home place’. By her voice, I knew she didn’t like that time and said it was better to forget the past. I didn’t bother telling her Nanny and Nan told me stories about the banshee with the comb made of bones she used on her long, wild hair or about the Ghost of Bowers and his carriage driven by ghost horses.
I didn’t even tell I went to their houses, so as not to vex he
r or have her give out to me. She knew Irish like Nan and Nanny, but it was only when she was very, very cross she’d say Diabhail imhuid or Ba cheart é a chur soir or something else in Irish.
“Mammy, why don’t you speak like you did when you were small?”
“Mary when my family left that half-savage place where no English was spoken, my father did not want another word of Irish spoken by us.”
“Mammy, we are learning to count in Irish at school. I know haon, dó, trí.”
At that moment Daddy was coming into the kitchen for his tea and helped me count by saying ‘ceathar, cúig’ but the look on Mammy’s face made us stop.
At tea, I squeezed some bread and jam into my hand and ran upstairs to put it under my pillow for Liam. In the morning times there was never sweet jam on the table, only an orange jam with skins that was called marmalade. Mammy and Daddy liked it on their toast, but I didn’t, and I knew Liam wouldn’t either, so that’s why I kept the bread and jam under my pillow for him.
The next morning I jumped up the stairs two steps at a time to get the bread and jam I had under the pillow for Liam. It was all squashed up, so I wrapped it up in the clean hankie Mammy gave me going to school and shoved it up my sleeve.
“Mary, make sure you tell your friend Loretta you want her to come to your house.”
“I will Mammy,” I said.
I sat in my place on the good side beside Loretta Fitzgerald and Regina Burke, but with my head turned towards the bad side, wanting to see Liam.
Regina Burke poked me in the side, “What’s wrong with you. Is your head on crooked?”
