My Mother Wore a Yellow Dress

by Christina McKenna

  My mother told me that my birth had been easy, and that the tiles had slid off the roof in the 80-degree heat of that midsummer’s day. She neglected to tell me, however, that 1957 witnessed more notable events. The Russians sent the first dog into space on Sputnik 2 and women were admitted to the House of Lords for the first time. I doubt if these milestones impacted in any way on her busy life.

  My life only begins to assume definition and colour for me when I turn four. I am standing on the kitchen floor, looking up at three pictures on a wall: the Sacred Heart with its burning candle and a portrait on either side: those of President John F Kennedy and Pope JohnXXIII. My mother is tying my shoelaces. I sense her unhappiness. She shouts at my brother Mark to hurry up with his porridge. She admonishes my older sister Rosaleen for not having her hair combed. My baby brother John screams in his cot.

  I stand there silent and scared amid the mayhem. I hear mother’s voice rise by turns with annoyance and fall to a whisper in my ear.

  ‘You’re going to love school,’ she tells me.

  But I am not convinced. I do not understand what ‘school’ means. What I do know and experience for the first time is fear: fear of leaving home and fear of leaving her.

  When I see her produce a small cardboard suitcase with brass corners I sense danger and my pulse quickens. Inside it she puts a pencil, a jotter and a Paris bun wrapped in loaf paper. She then takes my hand and, with my brother and sister in tow, we set out for school.

  I am escorted unwillingly through that still September morning. The sun stretches across the flat fields and roaming hedges. I gaze at the ragwort that abounds left and right; it slows with my reluctance and speeds up with my mother’s impatience as she tugs me along. The trees whisper above me as I walk.

  Calmly a cloud stands, calmly a bird sings

  Crossing the Forgetown bridge I hear the river clattering over the stones. These are the sounds and scenes I’d come to know so well.

  In my childhood trees were green

  And there was plenty to be seen.

  As our destination draws closer I struggle to keep my tears at bay. My fear and bewilderment increase.

  Letting go of my hand at the end of that journey is a significant betrayal on my mother’s part. I tighten my fist round the hook of her thumb and bawl and wail. My tears are hot and blinding. My heart hammering at the infamy of such a desertion.

  It is not an abandonment, I soon learn, but a handing over into the care of an angel: my new teacher. Miss McKeague strokes my hand with a gentle ‘Now, now, dear’, and so eases my passage from one blurry world into another. …

  Lisnamuck Primary, some three miles from the town of Maghera, was housed in the typical rural school building of the time. It was a simple, two-roomed structure built on a slight incline, whitewashed and drably lifted with a coat of fading blue on windows and doors. A low wall and gate shielded us from the roadway. To one side was a playing field where we were let loose at lunchtime for that necessary respite from the daily grind.

  In Miss’s room there were four rows of miniature desks and chairs, each row representing a year-group from P1 to P4. As each year passed I would be informed and altered, progressing from row to row, from start to finish, from the front to the back of the room.

  The most prominent feature was a large fat-bellied stove, kept burning all winter. There was an ominous guardrail around it which warned us of its danger and kept our childish inquisitiveness in check. The blackboard stood to the right of the fire and faced us accusingly. The only remaining items of furniture were Miss’s desk and several cupboards, bloated with layers of shiny, pink paint. The cupboards contained the tricks of her trade, for our instruction and play. There were books and pencils, paint sets and brushes, toys and skipping ropes. All this equipment would help me engage with a whole new world and tease my brain down new pathways of learning.

  Miss McKeague was the enchantress who would make this paraphernalia live. She was the omniscient presence that would keep an attentive vigil for the next four years and represent all a child desired from a teacher and adult: calmness, stability, gentleness and grace.

  Looking back now I can see that she was a cliché of her time – a model of rectitude and fine breeding, with that dedication to duty that only the selfless spinster can lay claim to. She was the quintessential teacher, who had flattened all her ambitions to fit the classroom – in a drift of ruled lines, squeaking chalk and red comments in margins.

  There was nothing fussy or complicated about her. She wore serviceable tweed suits in blue or grey, and dependable low-heeled shoes in black or brown. Her silver hair was always gathered into a bun. Often some strands would slip their moorings to frame her kindly, unpainted face and watchful, sympathetic eyes. Those eyes were her finest, most distinctive feature. Her only artificial adornments were a pearl brooch and a simple watch that served the dual purpose of telling the time and securing a forever pristine handkerchief at her wrist.

  There was little deviation from routine with Miss. We lined up every morning to await her ever-punctual arrival. She would park her Hillman Minx in the same careful spot by the school gate, then crunch down the hill with her little tan suitcase and her smile. Her singsong greeting seldom varied and we’d respond in kind.

  ‘Good morning, children.’

  ‘Good morning, Miss McKeague.’

  ‘Very cold this morning, children, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, Miss McKeague.’

  She would then appoint someone to hold the case while she fished for the keys. Offering up our little arms as supports, we all jostled for this privilege. But we needn’t have: everyone got their turn in due course. Once she’d found the key she’d turn it in the lock, yank open the swollen door, causing the tongued latch to rattle its objection. We would file in obediently, shrug off our coats, and so our day would begin.

  I was never at ease in school and not even Miss’s love could change this. I looked at others with fear and longing: those girls with bouncy ringlets and shiny shoes who could talk and laugh easily and got all the answers right. By comparison I was not a pretty child – or should I say that little attempt was made to prettify me? I was the seventh child born to a harassed mother, and I can well understand that she had probably given up caring too much at that stage. My little podgy face was marred by a pair of round pink spectacles and a blunt, chin-length haircut, that looked as though mother had used a pair of hedge clippers. She topped off the look with a white ribbon, tied in an enormous bow. The bow seemed like a rueful afterthought, some kind of vain attempt at glamorising the dull little package that was me.

  Gradually, in the warm presence of my new temporary mother, I began to thaw and hesitantly unfold my wings, stretching them out to the sides of my desk to touch my equally tremulous classmates. I sat beside Doreen and made tentative friends with her. She broke into my solitude and gave me the acceptance I needed in the vast, strange world of school.

  Doreen was tall and pale and thin with long, black hair cut in a Cleopatra fringe. We held hands in the playground and kept fear at arm’s length as best we could by sharing talk and toys. Doreen was my first friend. We’d endure a lot together, especially throughout our final three school years.

  In P1 we copied down the endless letters and numbers that marched across the blackboard. With thick, black pencils cocked in our clumsy fists, we patterned pages with ‘walking-stick Fs’ and ‘fat-men 5s’. My jotter was a marvel of disorder, showing all those fitful attempts at accuracy. I would force the pencil so hard onto a page that its grooved impression could be seen on all those underneath. Then the shame of a silly mistake was rubbed with such frenzy that not only the flawed letter disappeared but the very paper itself, leaving damning evidence in the shape of a big, smudgy hole. Miss would give me an admonitory tap on the hand and sigh at my red face and threatened tears, and I’d guiltily turn to a clean page and start again.

  Relief from such rigour came in the form of a great fulvous ball of Plast
icene and a board. My classmates and I spent many happy afternoons rolling out long sausages and shaping them into people and dogs. What an industry this was: palms moving together in circular motions to make bodies and heads, our stubby fingers stumbling over the more delicate demands of noses, eyes and ears.

  Before hometime Miss would read us a story as the fire died. She’d open a big, shiny book on her lap and tell us about fairies or goblins, or sometimes the man named Jesus. She was on her favourite territory then; I was to hear a whole lot more about Him in the near future.

  Miss McKeague’s choice of career had obviously been arrived at after much soul-searching. I believe she’d pondered deeply the confines of the convent before settling on the relative freedom of the classroom. I can picture her as a young girl: head bowed over steepled fingers, kneeling at the altar in pious supplication, asking the Good Lord for guidance. Her final choice seemed a fitting compromise, promising God that as a teacher she would do all in her power to instil His message in her pupils.

  To say that she was a religious zealot would be an understatement because the nun within the educator was forever to the fore. Under her tutelage I learned more about Catholicism than I would at any other time in my life. Too much too soon is a recipe for disaster, so much so that these days I can only describe myself as ‘a recovering Catholic’.

  The RE lesson started at nine and ended at three, or so it seemed. There were morning prayers, mid-morning prayers, grace before meals, grace after meals, then the RE lesson proper, which lasted longer than any other, and finally prayers before hometime. We might have had difficulty with the two-times table or the spelling of our own name, but any such faltering with the Our Father or Hail Mary was the gravest sin of all, and a very good reason for our orisons to be repeated ad nauseam.

  We were floored by Christ’s Passion and invigorated by his Resurrection. There was an extravagance about Miss then which no other subject could evoke; the dramatic gesturing of crossing and breast-beating of herself as she told of His gruelling journey to Calvary and final expiation. She wept real tears then and we did too, as only children can, trying to understand His suffering and wondering all the while how we could have caused it. I would see His bloodstained face and beseeching eyes every day as He looked down on me from the glossy scroll that hung on the classroom wall, and was conscious always that Jesus was watching me closely for the merest sign of weakness.

  Miss had the ability to fuel our fantasies to an intoxicating degree. Heaven was where it all happened. The boys could drive around for all eternity in pink Cadillacs and we girls could wear frothy white gowns with matching wings and golden crowns. At the wave of a silver wand, showers of sweets would pour from an ever-blue sky. There would be rivers of chocolate and mountains of cake and the sun would always shine. We all yearned to go there, but there was just one small problem: we had to die first. And not only that, we had to die in a ‘state of grace’. So we learned our prayers fervently and struck our chests harder with our tiny fists, knowing that the more we prayed and suffered, the speedier would be our entry into paradise.

  Not surprisingly, all this religious brainwashing took up so much room in my head that it tended to block out the rudiments of my early education. And no more so than when I reached P4 and was required to undergo the twin terror-inducing ordeals of confession – the fearful preamble to First Holy Communion – and the Religious Examination.

  Our teacher was nothing if not inventive, improvising with a cup of water in place of wine, and pieces of ice-cream wafer for the host. We stood in a solemn circle, sipped the water, threw back our heads, stuck out our tongues and waited for the proffered wafer. Afterwards there was a tense silence as we hung our heads and contemplated the wafer doing its work of pouring all that grace and goodness into us.

  I was looking forward to the pomp and ceremony of my First Communion. Nobody, however, had told me about the reality of confession. Confessing sins to Miss was easy, but nothing quite prepares a young child for the tyranny of the confessional – the inky darkness, the stranger behind the grille and the stilted litany of one’s misdeeds.

  Father Monacle’s confession box had been designed for adults, not for very short people or little children like me. I entered its dark interior and, obeying Miss’s instructions to the letter, knelt down on the prie-dieu – and disappeared from view. The bewildered priest waited and waited. I heard a tentative ‘Yes, my child?’ and became so petrified that I could not get up. Miss had impressed upon us that we must always remain kneeling in the sight of God and the priest.

  On getting no response, the good Father stuck his head out the cubicle door.

  ‘Who’s next?’ he asked gruffly.

  A lady at the head of the waiting row blushed fiercely, got up at once and entered the confessional – to find me cowering there. She hesitated.

  ‘What’s this?’ Father Monacle roared at me. ‘What are you doin’ down there, in the name of God?’

  ‘M-Miss s-said—’

  ‘What!’

  ‘Miss said I was to kneel down, so she did, and I—’

  ‘Miss isn’t the priest, is she?’

  ‘No, Father.’

  ‘Well, tell Miss that I said it’s all right if you stand up on the kneeling board from now on.’

  ‘Yes, Father.’

  ‘So I hope you’re not going to waste any more of my precious time, are ye?’

  And with that I was hotly dismissed with a very red face and a decade of the rosary to be said right up at the altar.

  Every penitent in the waiting row knew that to be given the rosary and the altar by Father Monacle implied that you had done some serious sinning indeed.

  It was a bad beginning and I was determined from that day on never to put a foot wrong when it came to our parish priest and his confessional. I continued to intone that oft-repeated preamble ‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned; this is my first confession’ when I must surely have been on my twenty-first. It shows how well I’d ingested the mantra, how little I understood the whole sorry charade and, most importantly of all, how fearful I was of committing the sin of disobedience and actually thinking for myself.

  My First Communion was a triumphant affair. I was all got up in a lacy white dress and veil, white patent-leather shoes and matching handbag, and carried the essential accessories of every aspiring young Catholic girl: a prayer-book with a pearlised cover and plastic rosary beads. The book, with its gilt edging and lettering proclaiming My Holy Missal, had been purchased by my thrifty mother in a 1960s’ equivalent of today’s Poundstretcher. It was printed – or rather misprinted – in Belgium, with amusing consequences. Here and there an ‘a’ would mysteriously be replaced by an ‘o’. That missal would help me to relieve the boredom of many a Sunday mass – I would fervently entreat the Lord to ‘wosh owoy’ my sins.

  In my white frock and matching accessories I looked like a miniature bride and felt like a fairytale princess. I believe there’s a conspiracy afoot within the Church with regard to young girls. We’re given the sensation of that white frock and veil so early in life. It acts as the proverbial dangling carrot and gives the dream of marriage focus.

  Not that I entertained such thoughts that day. As I stood at the altar in my finery it seemed to me that all the difficult days of preparation had been worthwhile. Simply to wear the frock – and be made to feel special for once, no matter how fleetingly – was a reward in itself.

  With Communion done and dusted, Miss McKeague focused all her energies on preparing us for the Religious Exam, a yearly test conducted by the fearsome Father Monacle. It seemed to have no other purpose than to ensure that we were in no danger of even thinking about consorting with the Evil One.

  Certainly we children could have done without it, but for our teacher it was yet another excuse to neglect ‘less important’ subjects, such as history and geography. After all, what was more relevant to a Catholic child: knowing about the world or knowing who had made it?

&nb
sp; Our green-covered, dog-eared catechisms of Christian doctrine were learned by heart and we fought feverishly to retain it all in our wee heads until the dreaded day arrived.

  Q. Who made the world?

  A. God made the world.

  Q. Who is God?

  A. God is our Father in Heaven, the Creator and Lord of all things.

  Q. How many persons are there in the one God?

  A. There are three persons in the one God: the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.

  Miss rehearsed the questions, guiding us with a pencil waved dramatically in the air like a conductor’s baton. We sang out our responses, sometimes falling out of tune – due to inattention or, more probably, temporary brain paralysis – but managing always to end together on an ear-popping crescendo. Most of what was taught and learned was delivered in this lilting manner so that eventually the words took on a meaningless life of their own.

  And for ever and ever Amen,

  And two times twelve makes twenty-four,

  And they all lived happily ever after.

  Rote-learning had turned us all into performing parrots. The pedagogical aim of my early schooling seemed to be ‘learn by heart first and understand later’. We were word-perfect though confused, but what did that matter?

  Miss always appeared a wee bit flustered on the morning of the great event, the Exam. After all, her very probity was at stake; she could not be seen to falter in the eyes of the good priest, nor could any of us. When the sharp rap sounded on the door we all scrambled to attention. Silence fell like a great blanket as he entered.

  I’d seen Father Monacle before in the dim light of the confessional, and from a distance as he celebrated Sunday mass (for most of the time with his back to us, in conformation with the Church wisdom of the time). Now I saw him at close quarters.

  He was a heavily built man with an alarmingly bald head that shone, as if he’d used a buffing wheel on it that very morning. His eyes appeared huge and menacing behind bifocals, and his head and neck were all of a piece with a spreading purple hue. He looked like a great, black wine bottle, with his purple stopper head and white elliptical collar.