by Honor Harlow
When the Nannas walked, moving their long skirts that reached down to the tops of their boots, like the boats that I saw gliding across the harbour when Mammy, Daddy and me were in Trafada. The bright shawl with different coloured squares that Nanny Ward threw across her shoulders and covered her head when it rained, was nicer than the coats Mammy wore. Nanny had a red petticoat that showed under her black skirt and looked lovely. Nan Gormley was different and dressed all in black.
“Nan, why don’t you have a colourful shawl too?”
“When Jack died, my heart was broken, and all the colour went out of my life. How could I be going around in cheerful clothes and him in the grave.”
“Tráth, tell the child the real reason. The shawl went to pawn-shop to pay for the wake.”
“Well, there is a bit of truth in that now.”
“A girleen, the women’s shawls are the first thing to go when money was needed.”
“For wakes?”
“For everything. During the times of the Big Hunger my mother said it was the shawls that always went first to pay the rent or buy a drop of stir-about.”
“What was the Big Hunger, Nanny?”
“Tráth, it was an awful time altogether. Sure, weren’t the people dying on the side of the road and their mouths green from eating the grass,” Nan said.
Nanny blessed herself as she added, “Ne’er a prayer said for them or a shaking of holy water over their dead bodies.”
“Was the Big Hunger in Drumbron, Nan?”
“Indeedin it was. My own mother said people with only the flesh covering their bones came from every corner of the county to Drumbron.”
“An awful sight to see with eyes as big as the full moon shinning in their shrunken heads,” Nanny added.
“Why they did they come to our town, Nanny?”
“If ya had money you could buy the yalla meal or if you hadn’t, you’d go to the workhouse up the Cork Road.”
“It was many the one from my own place of Suilín Beag that dragged themselves into Drumbron,” Nan said in a brónach voice.
“The workhouse wasn’t big enough to hold all that wanted to get in. Sure, weren’t the people dying on their feet.”
“Why were they dying on their feet?”
“When they went to the gate and weren’t let in, the only thing left for them to do was die.”
“My own place of Suilín Beag is gone. If you went along the road by the Suilín River, sure you’d never know there was a village out there at all.”
“Where is it gone to, Nan?”
“The earth swallowed the houses up with the people dead inside them.”
“Why was that, Nan?
“A grá, the hungry brought sickness on them and made them weak and all they could do was die to get away from the suffering that was on them.”
“Who buried them?”
“No one buried them. The houses became the graves.”
“When I was young, we used to bless ourselves when we passed by our tumbled down houses,” Nanny said.
“Why Nanny?”
“Some of my people were in the ground and no headstone to mark the spot where they were lying,” Nanny said and blessed herself again.
Nan gave her a look and mouthed, “Ná béid ag caint.” and then asked, “Which of ye three young craturs will go out and get water from the pump?”
We pushed each other trying to be the first to take the jug down from the dresser but Úna got it. When we came back, the nannas were saying prayers in Irish. I suppose it was for Nanny’s family who were under the ground. After we had tea, we ran outside to play Buille. Liam’s face was in my head, so I told Úna and Kait I wanted to go to the gable-end of the house the nannas said was from the Big Hunger time. I blessed myself and said a Hail Mary and told the people lying underneath it that I was sorry they died, because they had no food to eat and told them I was going to put some Marietta biscuits under my pillow for Liam.
At school the next day, I tripped on my way out to the yard and pushed the biscuit in under Brigid’s desk. She looked up but I think her soul was with the fairies because her eyes were hollow. Liam was a good while sick. I crossed my fingers for him to get better and come back to school to learn about sins so he could make his first confession.
At home Mammy was putting the last touches to my communion dress. She told me I needed white shoes, ankle socks, a veil and white gloves too. As well as all those, I needed a white bag to put my new rosary beads in. Mr Delaney was drinking tea and said he would drive us to Sligo as there was more shops there and then the silly goose said to me, “It won’t be long until your Communion Day is on us, Mary.”
In Sligo, the amadán told everyone, “It won’t be long until Easter is on us and we are eating the eggs.” But he wasn’t right because we had Palm Sunday before Easter Sunday and everyone got branches at Mass. Mammy told me it was to remember the day Jesus rode through a city called Jerusalem on an ass and people cheered and waved palm branches. Good Friday was another day everyone spoke about. It was a sad because Jesus was crucified on the cross. He was put into the tomb and stayed there until Easter Sunday when he rose again.
On Easter Sunday, the day Jesus, came back from the dead, people wore something new to show they were happy he was alive. Mammy bought me a light blue cardigan in McCabe’s clothes shop to wear to Mass. Úna and Kait were in the side aisle wearing new ribbons in their hair. I don’t know what Brigid or Liam got new because we had holidays and didn’t have school. That Sunday everyone tried to eat as many eggs as their tummies would let them. My tummy was small and after eating two and a half eggs, I couldn’t eat any more. Daddy said he ate five, but his eggs were scrambled so I didn’t know how many Mammy had broken into the saucepan with the butter and milk. In the evening time when Mr Delaney came, he told us he had duck eggs because they were bigger.
“What colour are duck eggs?” I asked.
“Look at your cardigan, it’s duck-egg-blue,” Mammy said. After that I didn’t like my new cardigan much because it reminded me of Mr Delaney stuffing his mouth with duck eggs.
After the holidays, we started back in school with Sr Ignatius jumpy and shouting at everyone, except Loretta and her pals, because the priest was coming in the following day to examine us for our First Holy Communion. Fr Mannion was the priest’s name and he asked easy questions and when some children got nervous and didn’t answer right, he half told them the answer, so in the end we all passed. That meant we could go to the church on Friday to make our first confession and get our souls cleaned to receive Holy Jesus into our souls. Before Fr Mannion left, he told us our First Holy Communion would be the happiest day of our lives.
As soon as school was over, we rushed up Clonthu Hill to tell the nannas we had passed our catechism exam. They knew we were coming and had crubeens and cabbage boiled because we loved sucking the crubeens and eating the jelly-meat around the bones. Nanny peeled the spuds and dropped them on our plates with plenty of butter while we told them what question the priest had asked us. They laughed when we told them about Loretta.
“Loretta, my dear child, how many persons are there in the Holy Trinity?”
“Seven, Father.”
“Loretta, you know there are THREE persons in the Holy Trinity.”
“Yes, Father.”
“They are the Father, the Son and…”
“The daughter, Father.”
“The Holy Ghost is the third one, as you well know, Loretta.”
“Yes, Father.”
When we were finished eating, Nan took out the pouch she had tied around her neck with the string like shoe lacers. It was hidden under her jumper in the spot between her diddies. It was full of the coins she was saving for her wake.
Taking a coin out for each of us, she said to make sure to come and show her our dresses and veils. Her and Nanny told us that our First Holy Communion Day was the happiest day of our lives.
The Best Day of my Life
Our First Co
nfession on Friday was smashing. We made a line of twos and went out of school and into the street. Sr Ignatius, at the very top of the line, was holding no one’s hand. Behind her was Loretta holding Regina Burke’s hand, behind them was me holding Noeleen Pitt’s hand. Pauline Byrne and Fionnuala McCabe came next. Úna and Kait were at the back with the children from the bad side. Sr Paul, holding no one’s hand was at the very end. The Home Babies didn’t come because they had their own chapel in the Home.
We went in the side door to the small aisle in the part of the chapel with the pictures on the wall of Jesus carrying the cross, and where Úna and Kait sit for Mass. The nun led us passed two wooden boxes stuck into the bench on the wall, to the last bench and box up at the very end where the statue of Our Lady was. The nun said this was the confessional box we were going into. We were to sit on the bench and be very quiet.
Sr Ignatius opened one of the two doors on each side of the dark confessional box and Sr Paul opened the other. Our nun took Loretta by the hand and brought her to the door. Loretta went in. Sr Paul was holding Regina’s hand on the other side. She went into the other one. We waited wondering where they had gone, and would they come out again They did come out and knelt down on the long seats in front of the statue of Our Lady. Then it was my turn and Noeleen’s turn to go in through the doors.
The wooden box was like a coffin standing up and I was frightened but pretended I wasn’t. Sr Ignatius told me to kneel on the little step under a funny window with a curtain. She closed the door, and the tiny room became dark. I bit the back of my hand and wanted to do wee-wee because I heard voices whispering and mumbling inside the funny window. I nearly screamed when the curtain opened. I saw white teeth moving behind the criss-cross boards. My mouth wouldn’t open to say, “Bless me Father, for I have sinned.” but I remembered I was supposed to say it was my first confession when the teeth asked, “How long since your last confession, my child.” I told him all my sins. He told me to say a prayer for penance and to go in peace and he shut the window with a snap. My first confession was finished, and I stood up as Sr Ignatius opened the door and pulled me out by the shoulder and told me to kneel and say my penance.
It took me ages to remember a prayer and then I said, “God bless Mammy and Daddy.” like I say at the end of my prayers as night. Everyone else had their hands joined, their heads bowed, and their mouths mumbling like me.
On Saturday, Mammy got me up when Daddy was having his breakfast. She told me not to dress but to come downstairs in my nightdress. We had a lot to do because tomorrow was my First Holy Communion Day.
“William, fill up the bath before you go to the barracks and put some more turf on the fire,” said Mammy.
Daddy picked up the kettle and poured it into the tin bath in front of the fire and emptied the two big pots boiling on the range into it as well. “Arlene, you’re going to be spotless for tomorrow,” he said as he lifted me into the bath. Then he was saying goodbye and rushing out the door. Mammy washed and dressed me real quick.
“The whole town will be getting their hair set today, so we better hurry.”
“How do you get your set? Is it like the jelly?”
“Whist. Grab that piece of bread and butter and eat it on the way uptown.”
In Peggy’s hairdresser’s there were five chairs against the wall with people sitting on all of them, while children were standing, leaning against their mammies, like me. When the hairdresser saw Mammy coming in the door, she hurried over holding a comb and a fat sausage thing in her hand. Bending close to my mother’s face she whispered something. Mammy smiled saying, “That’s very good of you, Peggy.”
An older woman who was looking at us said, “Mrs Blake, have my chair.”
“No, not at all, I’m fine.”
“Sure, it will do me legs good to stretch them a bit.”
“I couldn’t.”
“Here you are, Mrs Blake. Sure, what would I be doing with me sitting down and you standing up,” the woman said as she stepped to the side of the chair. Mammy nodded her thanks and sat down. She picked up a magazine and started looking at it, instead of talking to the woman who had given her the chair. Peggy, the hairdresser, finished putting the fat sausage things in the hair of the woman she had sitting on a chair.
“Mammy, what is Peggy doing to the woman’s hair?”
“She is putting in rollers.”
Peggy put a hairnet around the hair and led the rolled woman to another seat with a sort of wide lamp that was hanging on a metal bar.
“What’s that, Mammy?”
“It’s a hairdryer but Mary, remember what I told you about being seen, not heard.”
“Alright, Mammy.”
Peggy called Mammy over to a basin stuck to the wall covered with a big mirror and put a towel around her shoulders. After washing my mother’s hair, Peggy picked up a comb with a long tail and used it to make a short line on the top of Mammy’s head. Then she took a pink roller thing, from a box with trays, and twisted that piece of hair around the pink roller and stuck a hair pin into it. Peggy did the same to every bit of hair on Mammy’s head. Then she asked Mammy to sit in a different seat and put her head under the hairdryer.
Mammy had her hair cut to her chin, like a woman called Jackie Kennedy who was always in the magazines. She and Mr Delaney went to Sligo to buy a suit for my communion like the ones Jackie wore. My hair was long, down my back, not short like Mammy’s. I didn’t want Peggy sticking my head into that basin on the wall and drowning me with water, so I moved behind the woman, who had given Mammy the chair, and looked at the floor. I crossed my fingers hoping Peggy wouldn’t see me in my hiding place.
I nearly jumped out of my skin when I heard her say, “Mary, can you come over with me to the wash basin.”
She had put two cushions on the seat to make me taller. She washed my hair and rubbed my head real hard with a towel. I wanted to cry but knew Mammy would be annoyed with me for disgracing her, so I put my knuckles into my mouth. I bit them when Peggy combed out the tangles with quick movements that pulled the skin on my head and made me wince. While she was pulling and dragging my hair, she said, “I heard you were sick. How are you now?”
“Better than yourself,” I said like the man in the hotel had said to Mr Delaney the day I had the trifle.
“Mary, how dare you answer like that,” Mammy said in a cross voice from under the lamp. When the old man said the same thing to Mr Delaney in the Royal Hotel, she had smiled.
“Mrs Blake, I won’t use the rollers. I’ll just brush Mary’s hair into curls.”
“Do that, Peggy.”
My head was hurting but I kept quiet because Mammy’s eyes left the magazine every now and then to dart over to me. I knew I had to be good and not complain. I started thinking about how Loretta got ringlets put in her hair every night to look like Shirley Temple. It’s stupid to hurt yourself to look nice. I was glad when Peggy finished with my hair.
The hair dryer Mammy was under made a click sound. Peggy lifted half the front and Mammy came out. She sat on a chair in front of a mirror while Peggy pulled the rollers from Mammy’s hair.
“I’ll backcomb this bit on top.” She made piles of tangles with the comb and then brushed a piece that had no tangles over it and sprayed lacquer on the two sides, the back and front of Mammy’s hair. When we left the place, I thought we were going to An Lár, but Mammy said we had to go home so the wind wouldn’t ruin our hair.
At home, when I touched my Mammy’s hair, it was stiff like a board, but Mammy was happy and smiling. Later when Mr Delaney came to visit, he helped her put on the pink, pillar-box hat they had bought in Sligo at the back of her head. She looked beautiful.
At teatime, Mammy told me to eat plenty.
“Do I have to fill myself to the brink?”
“You do because after tea you can’t eat anything else.”
“Why? That’s not fair.”
“Because to receive, you fast all night and morning.”
/> “Receive what, Mammy?”
“Your First Holy Communion, of course.”
Daddy winked at me and said, “You’re a big girl now and have to do what the grown-ups do, so you’ll have to piggyback me upstairs to bed.”
“I can’t, Daddy, you’re too heavy.”
Before I went to bed, Mammy put a hairnet around my ringlets so they wouldn’t fall out during the night. Daddy laughed. He said his mother used to wear a hairnet too, to keep the bun on her head in place.
“Why did Granny Arlene put the bun on her head instead of eating it?”
“Mary, a bun is what the old women called their hairstyle.”
“Like Nanny Ward’s at the back of her head.”
“Who’s Nanny Ward?”
“A woman who goes into Byrne’s Sweetshop,” I said thinking I would have to tell the priest in confession that I had told a lie.
My First Holy Communion
My communion day was smashing. A crown of white flowers with shiny beads in the middle, kept my veil on. I wore white gloves and carried a bag. Daddy even came to the Mass to watch me walk in with all the boys and girls from our school. The children from the other school sat in the opposite benches to us. The Home Babies didn’t come because they had their own chapel in the Home and were making their communion there.
Everyone was buzzing as happy as a bumblebee except Loretta. Sr Ignatius had to give her a drink of water. She was feeling faint because she hadn’t eaten her sliced pan bread with no crusts. I didn’t care I had no breakfast. Úna and Kait told me their big sisters and brothers told them after we made our First Holy Communion, we were having a feast in the convent parlour.
We stood up when Sr Ignatius and Sr Paul stood up and sat down or knelt when they did. Then after a long time, we were sliding out of our seats and going up to the railings to receive. The priest stood in front of me with a big, golden glass, with one leg like the trifle glass. He lifted a round thin wafer from it. I stuck out my tongue at him and he placed the Host on it. Jesus didn’t taste of anything and was hard to swallow. After making plenty of spit in my mouth, He went down my throat. I stood up, put my hands with my lovely white gloves under my chin, lowered my head and walked back to my place. I thanked God for coming into my soul with the prayer we had learned. This was the happiest day of my life.
