by Irene Kelly
I screamed in agony and then immediately drew up my knees to my chest and rolled onto the floor, hugging myself and crying in pain. Why? Why are they doing this to us? I didn’t understand any of it. All I knew was I had to make it stop.
The next morning, as the dorm came to life, I rolled out of bed and winced slightly as I felt a soreness down below from what Bernie had done to me. I crawled over to Agatha, who was still asleep, and nudged her impatiently – I’d barely slept a wink all night from the pain and I was relieved to finally get up.
‘Come on,’ I whispered. ‘Let’s go back home.’
‘What?’ Agatha mumbled, still dumb with sleep. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean it’s not far from here and if we got back home, there’s nothing they could do about it.’
There was a pause.
‘Won’t we get into trouble?’
‘This place . . .’ I sighed and rolled my eyes. ‘You’re always in trouble here anyways! It doesn’t matter what you do. I hate it, Agatha. I can’t stay any longer. If we get home and tell Mammy what’s happening she won’t make us go back.’
Agatha locked eyes with me then – I saw in that moment she felt the same way and she nodded. We dressed quickly and tried to make ourselves small and quiet so that nobody would notice us. We went to morning prayers as usual and then afterwards we snuck into the nursery to get Martin.
‘What about Cecily?’ he asked. I shook my head sadly.
‘Her foot is burnt – she can’t walk!’ Agatha explained.
‘Look, we’ll just have to make Mammy come and get Cecily once we are back home,’ I said. ‘We can’t take her now – we can’t carry her all the way back.’
By now most of the other children were rushing from the church and into the dining hall for breakfast. We followed the line but instead of turning up the corridor which led to the dining hall, we went straight on, towards the front door that led out to the driveway, the paddock and beyond. There were no nuns around and Agatha and I held hands with Martin, who walked between the two of us. My heart was hammering like crazy inside my chest but I tried to stay calm. All I wanted now was to go home and see Mammy. Beside me I heard the footsteps of my brother and sister. I heard Agatha’s footsteps speed up and felt a little tug as she hurried on towards the front door. She was panicking.
‘Just go slowly,’ I whispered. ‘Don’t worry – I don’t see any nuns. Just keep walking and we’ll be out really soon.’
It felt like forever but eventually we emerged onto the driveway we had travelled up almost a month earlier. It had been the worst month of my life and now I just wanted it all to go away.
Once we were out in the open air, I quickened my pace.
‘Come on!’ I urged the other two. ‘Let’s run!’
And the three of us, hand in hand, ran all the way down that long driveway, past the grazing chestnut horse with the white stripe and away from all the nuns in St Grace’s. A few minutes later we popped out onto the main road. Excited, I turned to my brother and sister and, for the first time since we passed through those gates, we all smiled.
8
IRENE
A Way Out
I had a funny feeling about the police car that rolled down the road beside us. The way it was moving, it was going too slow. A car doesn’t normally crawl along, I thought. They were looking for someone. We were walking now at a steady pace and though every fibre of my being wanted to run, I knew that if we sprinted away from the car, it would only attract attention. When it pulled up alongside us and I saw a nun in the front seat, I knew it was all over.
‘Irene! Agatha! Martin!’ the nun addressed us briskly.
We all stopped dead and looked at her now. But none of us moved.
‘Come on now, children.’ The nun began to fuss as she got out of the car and opened the back door, herding us all towards it. I could have run at that point but I knew it was useless. They would catch up with me too quickly. My heart sank as I realized my plan had failed. We had been gone fifteen minutes at most! Agatha looked at me with tears in her eyes. I turned away. I couldn’t bear the fact that we were trapped in St Grace’s and there was nothing we could do to escape. All the way back in the car, Agatha sobbed while Martin just stared morosely out of the window. I was too upset to cry.
Back in the orphanage, Sister Beatrice was almost gleeful at our failed attempt to run away.
That’s the devil in you,’ she cackled triumphantly. ‘The devil is in you, Irene Coogan, and he makes you do wicked things!’
And with that she whacked me across the back of the head so hard my teeth clanged together and my head rang.
‘You’re to go see the Mother Superior straight away!’
Standing outside the Mother Superior’s office, Agatha and I were both too terrified to speak. I’d seen the Mother Superior before but I’d never had anything to do with her. She was a tall, well-built nun in her mid-fifties and when she opened the door her expression was so severe I nearly wet myself.
‘Just you first.’ She pointed a thin, bony finger at me and Agatha shrank back on the wooden bench while I followed her reluctantly, my knees shaking with fear.
‘How dare you,’ she started quietly once I was inside her small, sparsely decorated office. I looked around – just a crucifix on one wall and a picture of Christ on another. There was a desk, chair and fling cabinet in the corner – that was it. The Mother Superior leaned on her desk, fingers white where they bent at the knuckles. Her voice soon rose to a bellow:
‘HOW DARE YOU! Taking the nuns’ kindness and mercy and throwing it back in their faces like the horrible, ungrateful child that you are.’
Martin had been ordered back to the nursery – they must have assumed we had forced him to go with us. I kept my eyes fixed on the floor, just praying for it all to be over quickly.
‘You! Irene. You are a very wicked little girl. A bad girl from a bad family and what you did today, well, it doesn’t surprise me. There is evil in a child that runs away from goodness. Now you’ll have the evil beaten out of you. Bend over.’
I bent over the desk as she took off a thick leather belt. I tried to brace myself for what was to come next but nothing could have prepared me for the pain.
Whoomph! The force of the belt threw me forward and into the desk, knocking the wind out of me. Pain erupted through my body – Jesus, it was unbearable! The worst thing I’d ever felt in my life. Tears sprang immediately to my eyes and even as she struck the second and the third blows across my bottom, I sobbed like a baby. Big, snotty, gulping sobs as she walloped me again and again.
As soon as it was over she ordered me back to class and I ran down the corridor as fast as I could, not even looking back to catch my sister Agatha’s eye. I hoped it wouldn’t be as bad for her. The rest of the day I perched delicately on the edge of my seat as I couldn’t sit down properly for the pain.
I didn’t see Agatha until it was time for bed. I kept trying to catch her eye but she wouldn’t look at me. I could tell from the way she was moving that she was in pain too. That night, after lights out, I listened as my sister wept quietly to herself.
Aggie!’ I whispered. Aggie! Are you okay?’
Silence.
‘Did you get a beating, Aggie?’
From under the covers came a tiny little whimper: ‘We didn’t get to see Mammy.’
And then the crying started up again.
‘I know,’ I said sorrowfully. I was sad too. Aggie, you’re not angry with me are you?’
‘What for?’
‘You know, for the running away.’
‘No, no, I’m not angry, Irene,’ she said. Then she sighed and we both stopped talking. There was nothing more to say.
From then on, I decided, I’d try to keep my head down and stay out of trouble. But at school the next day Mrs Lawley was in a foul mood. She stomped around the classroom, swiping at us for doing the tiniest little thing wrong. Halfway through the morning I jumped when I heard her
call out: ‘Irene Coogan! Come to the front!’
Nervously, I walked to the front of the class – all around me the rest of the class scribbled furiously at their desks. Nobody looked up or caught my eye. They were all just relieved it wasn’t them. Oh God, what have I done now? I wondered. My backside was already killing me from the beating with the belt. Now I expected to get my hands blistered again. I stood in front of the desk and held out my hands.
‘No, come round here,’ Mrs Lawley insisted, indicating that I should come behind the desk to where she was sitting. Confused, I did as I was told. Once I was close enough, she grabbed my hand and put it under her skirt and between her legs. She wasn’t wearing any knickers and I felt her . . . her . . . urgh!
I recoiled in shock and dragged my hand away. What is going on now? This isn’t right! You have to wear your knickers – that’s what we are always told, or it is sinful. My mind raced and my stomach flipped over. Mrs Lawley grabbed my hand again and, with a quick glance across the classroom, making sure the others had their heads down, she put my hand right back there. Now I started to cry. This was too much. I didn’t like it.
I pulled my hand away again and whimpered, ‘No, I don’t want to do it. I don’t want to do it.’
She grabbed my wrist now and held on hard as she pushed my hand down between her legs, but I was crying loudly and a few curious heads bobbed up. She let go and I pulled my hands up to my chest.
‘Get back to your work!’ she shouted at the children.
Eventually frustrated with my refusal to do what she wanted, she picked up her ruler. Relief flooded through me when I saw she only planned to hit me now.
‘Hands out,’ she snapped. ‘Back of the hands facing up.’
Getting the ruler on the back of my hands was even more painful than the palms. But it was better than that other thing she’d tried to make me do.
I no longer prayed for my mammy to come and get me – I knew that she wasn’t coming. So each morning when I opened my eyes and saw I was still in my small, cold bed in St Grace’s, a heavy sadness settled on my chest like a thick blanket. It became harder and harder to drag myself around, I felt so sad. I tried to talk to Agatha but she didn’t want to know. She had stopped trusting me after our escape plan had gone wrong. As for Mrs Lawley I didn’t talk to anyone else about what had happened. Who could I tell? There was nobody in here who was kind to us children. It felt like we were always in the wrong, no matter what we did or didn’t do. To the nuns and the staff, it seemed that just the fact of us being here meant we were bad children.
As the weeks wore on, I saw that Mrs Lawley did that dirty thing with other girls too. She got other children to go up to the front and stand behind the desk to make them ‘touch her’. It was horrible but, like everyone else, I kept my head down and pretended I couldn’t see what she was doing. We didn’t want to get into trouble and we didn’t want to embarrass the girl in the front of the class either. She tried it a few more times with me but each time I struggled and each time I got the ruler. That thing – it scared me. It was different from the beatings, I knew that. I knew you weren’t meant to do stuff like that. I mean, even touching yourself was banned. A child could be beaten half to death for such a thing. We girls weren’t even allowed to hold hands with each other because the nuns said it was dirty, something I really couldn’t understand because it was just holding hands with another girl. But this? This was disgusting! So each time, I resisted. I struggled and cried and made too much fuss and eventually she gave up and just beat me with the ruler.
But as bad as it was in school, it was still a million times better than going to the nursery. I hated it in there, I hated all the crying babies and the staff who made it so much worse. Each day I dreaded leaving school at 2.30 p.m. to go to the nursery. My duties were usually the same – changing the nappies and the beds, changing the sheets, scrubbing the floors and helping the older ones with the potties. They had a terrible time, the toddlers, when they were learning to go on the potty. The nuns would strap them down for hours at a time. At night I lay awake, thinking of all those babies and their mammies and daddies, thinking about whether they knew their poor babies were being tortured, day in, day out. If they knew, they wouldn’t leave them there, I reasoned. If they knew, they would take them away from that place. It tormented me, worrying about those children all the time.
One day I was instructed to go to the infirmary where they had a clothing supplies cupboard. A two-year-old girl needed new shoes. When I got there I told the sister in charge the reason for my errand and she ordered me to wait in the corridor while she fetched a pair of shoes that were the right size. Out in the corridor, I leaned against the wall and looked around. It was light here thanks to large windows along the top of the green walls and polished wooden floors. I wondered who had polished those floors this morning. My eyes roamed over the skirting and it was then I saw the socket. At that moment, my mother’s voice popped into my head: ‘Don’t put your fingers in the socket. It’s dangerous.’
It was like something clicked in my head. The socket was dangerous! This was my chance – my way out. Until this moment I hadn’t thought of harming myself. It just never occurred to me. But now I could see a way for me to escape my painful existence. I didn’t want to be around any more; life was too horrible and scary all the time. I went to sleep frightened, I woke up frightened. It seemed like there was no escape from the fear and the pain – until now. The white socket seemed to grow as I moved towards it. I couldn’t stop myself – I felt my hand being drawn towards it like a magnet and before I knew what I was doing I had stuck my little fingers fully inside. Instantaneously, I felt a powerful surge through my body and I flew across the room . . .
Then I woke up. For a while my vision was blurry and my head pounded. I felt groggy and disorientated. Where am I? What happened? A fuzzy outline sharpened up to reveal a man in a white coat sitting at the edge of my bed and a nun standing behind him. Everything was white – was I in heaven? The man took hold of my wrist and turned it over, then he counted as he looked at the clock on the wall. After that, he shone a little torch in my eyes. No, this isn’t heaven. I must be in the infirmary. Suddenly it all came flooding back. The socket, the electric surge. I must have passed out. A deep sadness swelled in my chest – it hadn’t worked! I was still here.
The man, I realized, must be a doctor. He put away his little torch, sighed, folded his hands on his lap and looked at me with distaste.
‘Why did you do a stupid thing like that?’ he said. ‘That was dangerous.’
I felt a lump in my throat and the tears threatened to fall but I didn’t want to cry in front of him and I wanted him to know the truth.
‘It’s because they’re hurting me,’ I said, unable to meet his eye. ‘They’re doing things to me here. And I don’t like it.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘In the nursery.’
I paused. How much should I tell him? I felt dirty even talking about it but I knew I had to tell the truth. He was a doctor! Doctors were meant to make people better. Maybe if I told him, he could make the nuns stop.
‘They’re . . . putting things into us.’ I gasped even as I spoke and the tears spilled out. A second later, I crumpled in distress. I had said it. I had done it!
‘I told you, doctor,’ I heard the nun say somewhere above my head. ‘Evil. She’s a very evil child. The devil’s in her.’
I looked up beseechingly then. Won’t you help me, doctor? Won’t anyone help me? But the doctor seemed disappointed. By now the nun had wandered off and he got up off my bed, shook his head and followed her out.
I lay there, horrified. He’s not going to help me. This is it now, this is my life. I’m stuck here and there’s nothing I can do to escape – I couldn’t run away and I couldn’t hurt myself. Nothing is going to get better, nobody is coming to rescue me so I better just get used to it.
Something inside me seemed to disappear then. I don’t know what it was
or how it happened but it felt like I went away inside myself and some other little girl came and took over from her. And this little girl had just one thought on her mind – survival. That night, as I lay in the infirmary recovering, I told myself that I would just have to get on with it. Head down, mouth shut. Just get through it. You’re on your own now, Irene, so don’t expect help from anyone.
The next day I was pronounced well enough to return to the dorm but, strangely enough, instead of being sent to the nursery after school I was put to making rosary beads instead. There were about thirty of us in a large room and we were given the wire and the beads and we had to make them a certain way, the whole thing from beginning to end. The wire was sharp, and by the end of the first day it felt like my fingers were torn to ribbons. Still, at least it was better than being in the nursery.
We had to make at least twelve a week and I made sure I just kept my head down and got on with my work. I shut myself away in my own little world and tried to concentrate on staying out of trouble. At least with the rosary beads I wasn’t tortured by seeing all the little babies and what the nuns and Bernie did to them. Still, at night, in the silence, I could hear the sound of the babies crying. They sounded so real but we were too far away from the nursery ward to hear them so they must have been in my head.
I got used to the random beatings – no matter how much I tried to be good, it was impossible to avoid getting a daily wallop across the head. I could be hit if I was talking in line, if my hemline was down, my hair was too messy, my shoes were dirty, I didn’t clear up my bed properly, I gave the nuns cheek, I didn’t move quickly enough, I moved too quickly, I prayed too loudly I didn’t pray enough, if I was late or early . . . on and on it went. The list was endless and made no sense. I could never get it all right so I just got used to getting hit. The beatings only served to fill a deep well of injustice inside me. Apart from that, life was more or less a daily struggle to get enough food in my stomach so that I didn’t keel over.
