by Honor Harlow
I pretended not to hear and kept watching. Sister Ignatius was opening the Cork Road Door. When the children trooped in only Brigid came in, without Liam. Her face was pale and the lids of her eyes red. She went to her place in the last row. I was dying to ask her if she was able to get Liam’s underpants on, before the nuns found out she had taken them off to clean his bottom with, and if the pains in his tummy were gone. I threw my eyes a few times at Brigid, but her gaze never left the floor. I wondered if children could have a squint that keep their eyes looking downwards, like Cathal McHugh who has an eye that looks in at his nose the whole time. All the Home Babies’ eyes seemed to always slant down towards the ground.
The one time Brigid looked up, her face was so sad that I nearly started to cry. Liam must still be sick with pains in his tummy and scuttering himself. Loretta saw me biting my lower lip. “Giddy Goat is eating her lips,” she mocked. I didn’t care.
The nun called the roll and told Loretta to give out the slates. I was busy thinking we’d soon be going out to the yard and wasn’t in time to pull my hands away when Loretta let my slate fall on my fingers. I was going to hit her but saw her smiling, and knew she wanted me to lose my temper and get chastised, so I didn’t. We did our sums. Loretta copied my answers and Noeleen Pitt copied hers and I didn’t care.
The nun told Loretta to hand out the holy books with pictures of Baby Jesus and the penitent faces of children kneeling in the confession box. There were very few of these books, so we only got one on each desk. Loretta kept her arm around the book on our desk, the same way I did when I didn’t want her to look at my sums. The Home Babies got no books at all. The lesson was about confession. We had to answer questions about venial and mortal sins so we would know what sins to confess.
“Mary Blake, tell me a venial sin you are going to tell the priest when you make your first confession.”
“I took sugar from the sugar bowl when Mammy wasn’t watching.”
The nun’s eyes crinkled up. “You stole sugar.”
“I didn’t, I only took it.”
“Make sure to tell the priest you are impertinent and bold in class.”
I was going to answer back, “I don’t know what impertinent means.” but remembered I wanted to go to the yard to ask Brigid about Liam.
“Loretta, what venial sins will Úna McNulty have to tell the priest?”
Loretta looked at Noeleen Pitt and Noeleen whispered to her so loud that everyone heard except Sr Ignatius.
“She copies her sums down wrong from the board.”
Loretta stood up and shouted out, “She copies her sums down wrong from the board.”
I was going to say, “That’s not a sin, it’s short sight.” but I managed to stop myself in time. After getting Loretta to tell all the sins the girls on the bad side would have to confess, the nuns asked her to collect the books.
When the class stood up to make a line, I sat in my desk until Loretta was nearly out the door. I took my hankie from my sleeve and put it to my nose. Pretending I was wiping my nose, I let the lump of bread and jam fall into my other hand and stood up. The children on the bad side had to stay sitting until the last one from the good side was in the line. On the way out, I shoved my closed fist to Brigid and mouthed, “For Liam.” and then pretended to trip. I shoved the bread under her desk near her feet.
Outside, I wanted to go over to Home Babies part of the yard to ask about Liam, but Loretta and her gang made a line, like ring-a-ring-a-roses around me and Kait and Úna. We couldn’t break out unless we pushed them and then we’d be in trouble, so we sat on our hunches and played shop. I was thinking if Liam was sick, he’d be in bed. I was not big enough to look over the Home’s wall, so even if he was lying near a window, I wouldn’t be able to see him, so I stopped thinking about him and listened to what Úna was saying.
Barm Breac & The Banshee
“Nan is making a barm breac for us this evening,” Úna said.
“Are you coming, Arlene?”
“Course I am. What’s barm breac?”
“A currant cake with the ring in it, silly goose.”
“It has everything, the ring, the coin and currants.”
“Why?”
“That’s why,” Kait said.
Úna said, “It’s for Ducking Night. They are making it to know who is getting married this year.”
“Will they give us some today?”
“They might.”
“I wish Nanna would let me use the tongs to put the sods on the lid,” Kait said.
The nannas didn’t have a range. They baked the cakes on the fire, in a black, iron pot on top of the grate. Nan, even though she couldn’t see, rattled among the lumps of turf in the fire with a long-handled tongs. She’d pick up the hot sods and place them on the lid so that way the cake was crusty on the top and on the bottom but soft in the middle. The nannas made round cakes of white and brown bread all the time. They cut a cross in the middle so they could break it into quarters with their hands. When it was baked, they left it on the windowsill to cool. They only use the knife to cut it into slices and to butter it.
As soon as class was finished, we raced across the road and down past the bank on the corner playing ‘Tick’. Úna was ‘It’ and she was trying to catch me or Kait, but we were too fast for her. We sped past St Jarlath’s Avenue and when we were halfway up Clonthu Hill, Kait stopped and said, “Can ye smell the cake?” That gave Úna a chance to tip her on the back and Kait was ‘It’. She came after me, so I galloped faster and burst into Nanny Ward’s house.
Nan Gormley and Nanny were standing in front of the fire with their skirts lifted at the back, because the nannas always stood like that to warm their backsides. Nanny was saying, “Mary, as true as God is in heaven, I saw the Banshee last night…” as I skidded to a halt, but Nanny was like Loretta and tell-taled to Nan and Prince that I nearly knocked her into the fire.
“Would you whist, a cailín dana. Are ya trying to push me into the fire and kill me, you villain.”
Nanny Ward started laughing and said, “Tráth, when I saw the Fairy Woman last night, I never thought for a minute it was yourself she was coming for, Mary.”
Nan laughed and answered, “She’ll be waiting a long time before I’ll go with her Molly, but I’m telling you, she has great meas on you.”
“What makes you say that, Mary?”
“Yourself is the only one who sees her, the rest of us have to do with hearing her.”
“Nanny, what do people see the banshee for?” I asked.
“Ah, a girleen, she comes to tell us she is taking one of ours to the Otherworld with her.
“Well, I didn’t see or ever hear her.”
“The banshee only comes to the family where one of them is going die, a grá,” Nan said.
“Do you mean if Mammy or Daddy or me was going to die, the banshee would come to our house, Nan?”
“That’s right.”
“She hasn’t time to be going around to the whole town, so she only goes to the family where someone is going to die.”
I was thinking there is only three in my family and I didn’t want her to take any of us.
Nanny Ward saw the worry on my face and said, “Arlene, there’s no heed for you to be worrying about the banshee, she only comes for auld ones like meself and Nan, even though, I’d be thinking she wouldn’t be interested in you, Mary, seeing as you’re as blind as a bat.”
“Arrah, I might be blind but I’m not deaf, Molly. I can hear as good as the next. The banshee was lamenting last night.”
“It was only the seordán, you óinseach,” Nanny answered back, hearing well what Nan had said. Sometimes we had to shout at Nanny but other times she heard us, even when we didn’t want her to. Nan was always blind. It didn’t bother her because she could hear the kettle singing on the fire. She lifted it off the hook with a cloth and pour it in on top of the tea leaves in a big teapot she left on the hob. Nanny Ward told us Nan was a great tea-leaf reader
before she lost the sight. Now she only knitted socks and shooed the hens out with the twig. Nanny helped turn the heel when she got to the heel part because you needed to put some stiches on another needle and knit with three needles until the heel was turned. She gave the socks to Mick the Sticks because none of her socks were the same length. Some were very long and some very short and Mick didn’t mind if the two socks weren’t the same length, like his legs weren’t.
Nan’s dog was Prince. His job was to bark and pull at the bottom of Nan’s long black skirt when there was something in the way, so Nan wouldn’t fall. She put her hand on his neck and got him to lead her slowly back to her house, which was stuck onto Nanny Ward’s one. We followed behind, knowing she would give us a dropeen of tay and a slice of bread. Biting through the butter with the sweet, condensed milk and soft bread, licking the sticky, sweet drops dripping down the sides was like having dessert after dinner on Sunday. We passed Nan’s wide, tin mug with a big handle at the side, where your whole hand could fit in, around among us, drinking sups of tea out of it.
Nan put on the radio because she had the free one blind people get. It was plugged into the place where the bulb should be. Prince knew he had to be careful and not go near the black cord hanging down or let Nan near it. Afterwards we ran out and stared screaming because Prince was chasing us and putting his paws up on our shoulders as though he was ‘It’.
Before it got really dark, we went home. I lived nearer to Clonthu Hill than Úna and Kait. They went to the station and took the shortcut up the tracks while I galloped through Kilmartin Road to Sligo Road and then crossed over to Suileen Lane.
I burst in the door. Mammy said my tea was waiting for me in the kitchen. My tummy was full of the soda bread and I wasn’t able to eat anything. Mammy kept looking at me and when Daddy came home, she said, “The child isn’t well, William.”
“What wrong with the wee lass?”
“She’s all flushed and not eating.”
“When the wee one doesn’t eat, that surely is a bad sign,” he covered my forehead down to my nose with his hand. “No fever, Dervla. She’s as right as rain.”
He bent to pick me up, but Mammy ruined our fun by saying, “Don’t get her all worked up before she goes to bed, William. She’s bad enough without you making her worse.”
“No horseplay then, only Pudsy Ryan before she goes to bed.”
Mammy nodded her head but didn’t smile. She went to the back kitchen. She came back with a small saucepan in her hand. “Mary, I’ll make some coca for you to drink before you go to bed.”
While Mammy was boiling the milk, Daddy got the magazine called The Far East. It was full of writing and pictures of black babies, priests, nuns and people from places that were different to Drumbron. The pages at the end were for children.
“Arlene, let’s read Pudsy Ryan while Mammy is rattling in the kitchen,” Daddy sat me on his lap, and we laughed at Pudsy who was a silly goose. Before Daddy piggy-backed me up the stairs to bed and helped me say my prayers, Mammy washed me in the tin basin.
During the night, screeching like the wind that cries through the trees when there is a storm, woke me up. Shaking I sank down in the bed. I wanted to put my hands over my ears to shut out the piercing sound but was afraid to move from under the blankets. The wailing was getting nearer and nearer, making the hairs on my arms go prickly. Long drawn-out sobs wrapped in whispers and screeches – the same as music from the bagpipes but loud and squeaky like the time I stood on the cat’s tail – were outside the window. I heard tapping on the pane of glass. I clenched my eyes shut and pressed my back into the tick, trying to sink in a space among the feathers, frightened, knowing the banshee was outside.
I didn’t want to see the fairy woman’s white face with her wild hair blowing all over the place and her bony fingers holding the comb, looking in at me. She might be here to take me or Mammy or Daddy back to the Otherworld. I screamed, “Go away, banshee, I won’t let you take Mammy or Daddy.” My voice was wobbly. I knew the banshee would only laugh, so I closed my mouth tight, swallowed all the spit in it, put my chin down on my neck like when I put a puss on me, and pressed my elbows into the tick and make my back move up. My voice sounded different and I shouted, “Clear off to a different house, you óinseach. Go to a house with plenty of brothers and sisters and nannas and granddaddies. At school there are girls with first cousins and cousins once removed. Leave my daddy and mammy alone, you bold banshee.” Mammy was standing beside my bed and I asked her, “Mammy, do you hear the banshee?”
“Whist.” Mammy sat on the bed and said, “Whist.” again. She touched my forehead with her hand and muttered, “Fever. Mary you are having a nightmare, a bad dream.”
“Mammy, listen to the crying. It’s the banshee.”
“No, Mary. It’s only a fox crying.”
Mammy took me to their room and put me in the bed. Daddy was in the barracks so I wrapped my arms around Mammy’s neck and fell asleep, but inside me, I knew it was the banshee and told the fairy woman I would pull her hair if she tried to take any of my family. Nanny Ward and Nan Gormley had said the banshee cries out to tell you someone in your family is going to die.
I woke up lovely and cosy between Mammy and Daddy. I had stopped the banshee from taking any of us. Daddy got up before us to light the fire, so the kitchen would be warm when Mammy got up. When I went downstairs, I didn’t want to eat my porridge and said, “I’m not going to school.”
“What nonsense is that?” Mammy said looking vexed.
“I have to mind ye from the banshee.” I was stamping my feet and putting on the biggest puss I knew how to make but Daddy pretended he didn’t notice. His bike had a flat tyre and he wheeled it out to the garden to blow it up with the pump, while Mammy said, “Mary, a stoirín beag, you’ll have to stop your rámhaille. There is no such thing as the banshee. It’s auld women’s talk and not a word of truth in it.”
“I’m not going to school, do you hear me? Well, Mammy, heed me.”
“Mary, how dare you speak like that. The next time you do, I’ll wring your neck.”
I had to be careful, so I bit my bottom lip hard so no bold words could come out of my mouth and only said, “Tell Daddy to pump his bike in here, in case the banshee takes him.”
“That’s enough out of you, a girl. There was me thinking that when I left Connemara and the old ways, I’d hear no more nonsense about the Otherworld.”
“Daddy, Daddy.” I jumped up and ran towards the front door, but Mammy held me. “Mammy, the Banshee came last night to tell us one of the family is going to die. Kiss my heart and swear to die, I heard her last night.”
“Can’t you see we are all here, no one died.”
“Mammy, I thought the banshee came to let you know someone is going to die and the Ghost of Bower comes for the spirit of the person when they are dead?”
“The right name is the Coster not the Ghost of Bower.”
“How do you know, Mammy?”
“I heard my mother say it.”
“Did my nanna know about the banshee?”
“Some said she had the Second Sight and was in touch with The Others, but it was only piseogs.”
“What’s the Second Sight, Mammy?”
“Seeing things other people don’t. When you were a baby people used to say it wasn’t your first time around.”
“Why did they say that?”
“You were a very knowing baby, and as my mother had the Second Sight, people thought her gift had been passed on to you but as I said, it’s only piseogs.”
“I’m not a baby now, Mammy.”
“No, you’re nearly six. Your birthday is just around the corner.”
“When will I be six?”
“Around Ducking night. My mother said babies born around Oíche Samhain ate a bit of the Salmon of Knowledge and that makes them very knowing.”
“Well, I know more than the other children who are all nearly six.” I was thinking of Loretta who stil
l didn’t know the two and the other two with a cross at the side was four.
“Sometimes I think you’d be better off in not knowing so much.”
For all the pusses I put on, in the end, Daddy brought me to school, but Liam wasn’t with Brigid.
The nun warned us the priest would be coming in soon to ask us questions for our First Holy Communion and Confession. She didn’t want us to make a show of her and was going to test us before we went out for playtime.
“Mary Blake, what is the difference between venial sin and mortal sin?”
“Mortal sins are big, big sins and venial sins are only small ones.”
“Is stealing sugar a mortal sin?”
“A pinch of sugar is small, Sister, so it’s a venial one.”
She shook her head and looked cross. Loretta put up her hand. “Yes dear?”
“May I go to the toilet, please?”
“Of course, my dear. Noeleen Pitt you go with Loretta.
Sister Ignatius kept asking the same questions over and over again. After Loretta and Noeleen came back, we made the line to go to the yard. I looked at Brigid, but she kept her eyes down and was biting her lower lip like Liam had done.
In the line on the way out, I pretended to trip. Brigid raised her eyes and I mouthed, “Where’s Liam?”
She whispered back, “Liam is in the infirmary.”
I didn’t know what the infirmary meant and wanted to ask her in the yard, but she was in a different part, away from us. I played with Úna and Kait and thought when Daddy comes, I’ll ask him what infirmary means.
Daddy was outside on Cork Road with Mr Delaney and Mr Fitzgerald. They were saying Galway had a good chance of winning the championship. I knew children are to be seen but not heard, so I kept quiet and watched Mick the Sticks. He was lifting himself along the path on his crutches. He used the crutches to swing his body a bit forward and land on his one leg. The gone leg had the empty trousers tied at the knee with a safety pin. The knuckles of his hands were white and up a bit from the rest of his fists because he was pressing down really hard and tight on the little sticks that went across the middle of the two sides, like the middle bar in the goal post in the pitch. The long, side sticks went down to the ground and joined together into one at the bottom. It changed into a thick, round, black peg, like the leg of a chair. The top part of the crutches, covered with a thin pillow of brown leather, were under his oxters and were pushing his shoulders up near to his neck.
