Her Mother's Daughter

by Alice Fitzgerald

  ‘Calm down,’ he says.

  ‘I will not calm down,’ I scream at him. I can’t help it. I can’t help myself. I’ve been holding it all in for so long. Can’t anybody see anything? I scream. I don’t know whether I’m screaming it out loud or in my head, but I’m screaming.

  CLARE

  26TH JULY 1997

  I snuggle up under the duvet and watch the green fields fly by. I look over at Thomas. He’s fast asleep, his head on his teddy as a pillow. Sooty is on my lap, on top of the duvet. He’s still a baby, so he sleeps all the time and my lap is the perfect place for him, all comfy and warm.

  The colours of the fields change and I watch them and wonder what Mummy’s family will be like. I hope I like them, and that they like me and Thomas and Sooty.

  I watch Mummy and Daddy’s heads and feel my eyes closing. Mummy says sleep is the best thing because it stops me feeling sick. She turns to check up on Thomas and then me and looks down at Sooty and tuts, but it’s one of those tuts that isn’t very serious.

  I smile, and hug Sooty close to me. I still can’t believe he’s mine.

  I start to drift off, all warm and snuggly with Sooty in my arms, and think about what I know about my kind-of-new granny and granddad. Mummy has told me stories about them when we were on our own, and Daddy was working late and Thomas was in bed. She tells me things she shouldn’t tell me. The next morning, when her eyelids are black from make-up and she is in her dressing gown and says she has a head on her like a bull, she tells me not to mention any of it to anyone and to forget all about it, so I know that she has trusted me with secrets she hasn’t told anyone else, not Thomas, not even Daddy. That’s why I am extra-special and need to look after Mummy like she’s famous and I’m her bodyguard. Because even though she looks like a film star, sometimes all she wants is for me to hug her and rub her hair while she cries into my chest.

  Once, when Thomas was in bed with a temperature, we sat at the kitchen table and Mummy drank her brandy and I ate chocolate biscuits.

  She told me that when she was my age she thought babies came from behind cabbages. The room was filled with smoke, because it was one of those moments when she needs a cigarette, so she gets one from the box in the cupboard that she keeps for emergencies. Whenever she gets one, Mummy always tells me that she gave up smoking for me, and that’s why she has all these size-ten dresses in the wardrobe that she can’t get into.

  She said she would look behind all the cabbages in the field in case there were babies there. I started imagining the fields, because I’ve never seen them, and I imagined lines and lines of cabbages going on for ever and ever, and Mummy pulling back the green leaves to find babies.

  Then she told me about the day she found out that babies didn’t come from behind cabbages.

  She walked into her parents’ bedroom and my granny was lying in her nightie on her bed, and her nightie was wet, red with blood. I asked how much blood and she said the whole thing was soaking wet and covered, as if it had been dipped in bright-red paint. I shivered then. Why was there so much blood? I asked, but Mummy carried on. She never answers questions she’s not ready to answer. You always have to wait until she has said what she wanted to say and gets there eventually.

  Mummy and her sister took my granny to the bathroom. So that’s her sister, I think, with my eyes closed and my hands cupped around Sooty. Her name is Siobhan. She’s younger, I remember that from the story. And I remember her eyes were like two piss-holes in the snow, which means they were small and dark, like when someone has weed in the snow. I don’t really know what that looks like.

  Why didn’t Granddad help? I asked. Because that’s women’s business, Mummy said, explaining that her dad and brothers, Brendan and Sean, were all in bed and it was up to her and her sister to help their mum.

  In the bathroom, Siobhan lifted my granny’s nightie over her head and Mummy got a terrible shock because Granny’s boobies were big and black and blue with bruises. She started squeezing her boobies. Why did she do that? I asked. Mummy took a gulp of her brandy and I heard when she swallowed, because there was so much. I thought, That’s naughty, because we’re not allowed to make noise when we swallow. She smoked her cigarette and the grey smoke shot out of her nose and into my face. She was squeezing the milk out, she said, watching me, waiting for me to say something even though I didn’t know what I should say.

  She told me her mum had lost a baby. I still didn’t understand. But where do babies come from? I asked.

  She smoked her cigarette and pushed the yellow bit into the bottom of the ashtray on the table, wiggling it around, and then she pointed downwards at me. I looked down. She was pointing in between my legs. I looked down and then up at her. From your special part, she said.

  While I wondered exactly how that worked, I ate the last of the chocolate biscuits.

  Mummy carried on talking. She said that babies who died were buried next to the graveyard, on the other side of the wall. Her eyes got all watery and her nose got snotty.

  ‘The little dead babies in limbo,’ she said.

  I wondered what limbo was, and if it was nice.

  Then she started sounding like she was giving a speech in Mass, like Feathers does. The tiny little babies, she said, denied into heaven, denied the vision of God and the purifying of their soul and left in no-man’s-land. Left in the abandoned patch across the road from the graveyard. She wondered if they were any better off for being near the church, or if wild dogs would have found them. She ran her hands through her hair, so it went big and messy, and her eye make-up smudged over her cheeks, and she cried into her hands.

  ‘My baby,’ she said. ‘One day soon your body will be ready to have a baby.’ She smoked her cigarette; took a drink of brandy. ‘If you feel uncomfortable with a boy or a man at any time, scream and run. And kick them in the balls.’ She was angry, now. ‘You have to protect yourself.’

  ‘Which men?’ I sniffed.

  ‘Any men,’ she spat. ‘They’re all as bad as each other, all capable.’

  ‘Not Daddy.’

  She threw her head back and laughed then, and I didn’t understand what was funny.

  *

  I put the duvet between my head and the window and lean against it, so I can’t feel the bumps on the road. I put my hands through Sooty’s fluffy warmth and close my eyes, but all I can see are Sooty’s brothers and sisters. They’re dead and floating on a river of tar, the black liquid Daddy uses to repair roads. That might be what limbo is like.

  ‘There it is,’ says Mummy.

  The house is huge. I can see it over the hedges far away. It stands tall like a palace, with a triangular roof like the big Toblerones we get on the way home in the shop on the boat. Daddy always gets one to cheer us up when we have the post-holiday bluesy-twos. Mummy tells Daddy to pull in on the side of the road. There’s a bump when we go up on the grass. Mummy lowers the thing that keeps the sun out of your eyes and looks in the small square mirror on the inside. She gets her bag from her feet and takes out her make-up bag. Me and Thomas stand up and hold onto the heads of the seats to watch. A car swishes past and Mummy turns to the side and hides her face behind her bag.

  ‘Why did you do that?’ Daddy asks.

  ‘I don’t want them to see us sitting outside the house!’ Mummy laughs, but I can tell she’s pretending. ‘We should have stopped somewhere on the way to get ready.’

  I hold onto Daddy’s neck.

  ‘Let’s go!’ shouts Thomas.

  ‘Shut up, Thomas,’ I tell him. I don’t want to go in. I don’t think any of us should go.

  ‘Clare,’ Mummy says. ‘Don’t speak to your brother like that.’ She turns to Thomas. ‘Two minutes, darling.’ Her voice is high and happy, but thin like the ice that can break and little children slip through and never come out of again.

  There’s a pond in our park – it’s not our park but the one near our house – and when it freezes over Daddy always says it’s so dangerous we can never g
o anywhere near it, do you understand? Yes, Daddy, we say together, to keep him happy. I’m sure I could pull Thomas out if he fell in, but he wouldn’t be able to pull me out and I wouldn’t like to slide under the ice and never come up again.

  Mummy pushes ruby-red lipstick onto her lips.

  ‘Can I put some on?’ I ask. I’m scared, too, and I want to paint my face.

  ‘No, you cannot,’ she says, looking at me in the little mirror, snapping the lipstick closed and rubbing her lips together.

  ‘Oooooooh,’ I moan, and I pick Sooty up, who has been sleeping quietly on the seat beside me. I put him to my face. ‘She won’t let me put lipstick on,’ I whisper into his ear.

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ she says, and puts shadow on her eyes. ‘You don’t need any.’

  When she has finished, she closes the make-up bag and places it in her handbag and puts that on the floor and turns round. ‘Now. The two of you are to be good, do you hear? No fighting, no screaming, no noise. Neither of you are to get in the way of your grandmother and grandfather.’

  ‘Yes, Mummy,’ we say, stroking Sooty.

  Daddy laughs the way he did when Uncle John told him he’d asked me to take Sooty off his hands as he had too many puppies and Mummy jumped up and said, No way! And Daddy said, Come on, Josephine; and Mummy said, Why do I always have to be the bad guy?

  He reaches over to put his hand on Mummy’s leg, just like he put his arm round her shoulders before. ‘Come on,’ he says, ‘we’ll have a great time.’

  Mummy smiles at him and nods, then looks back at us and smiles. But there’s something in her eyes that makes me scared, the way she looks at me as if she’s going to say something, but doesn’t.

  Uh-oh, I think. Something smells fishy. Not because I can smell fish, because there’s no fish in the car, and Daddy always washes the car so it is lovely and sparkling clean, but because that’s what Daddy says when something is weird. Then when something bad happens he says, I knew there was something fishy going on. Or if it’s really bad, I can smell a rat.

  ‘Ready?’ Daddy asks, slapping Mummy’s leg gently.

  ‘Ready!’ Thomas shouts.

  ‘Ready! Let’s go,’ Mummy says.

  Daddy turns and looks at me.

  ‘Ready!’ I say. My voice comes out high and thin. I rub Sooty under his ears.

  Daddy starts the engine, pulls out onto the road and drives until we get to a gate and he turns in there.

  The stones swish like the sea when Daddy rolls on them, and I remember the beach and Sarah and Mary and John. I have my shell in my pocket and I put my hand inside to check it’s still there. It is.

  We stop outside the front door and I get out and then get Sooty. Thomas climbs out and I close the door.

  ‘The dog stays here, Clare,’ Mummy says.

  ‘Mummy!’ I cry. ‘I can’t leave Sooty, how will he sleep without me? He’ll be all on his own.’

  ‘Clare,’ she says, in her I’m-not-messing voice.

  ‘Come on, honey.’ Daddy opens the door and puts Sooty inside.

  I cross my arms across my chest and close my mouth as tight as I can, to show them both how extremely unhappy I am. I decide not to talk to them for one hour.

  Mummy goes to the door and rings the doorbell. We stand behind her. Thomas stays close to me, but I push him away because I am not in the mood.

  The door opens and a big, tall, old man appears and smiles a big smile. ‘Well, hello there – look who it is,’ he says, looking at all of us.

  When he looks at me I smile a bit, even though I am not one bit happy.

  Mummy steps forward and they hug and then he shakes hands with Daddy and says, ‘Micky, so good to see you, how are you?’ And then he stands and puts his hands on his knees and leans over and I think he might fall, he is so wobbly. ‘And who have we got here?’ he says.

  I know this means I am now supposed to introduce myself. ‘Clare,’ I say, looking down at the ground.

  ‘Who?’ he says.

  ‘Clare,’ I say again.

  ‘I can’t hear you!’ he shouts, which makes me and Thomas giggle. Thomas hides behind Daddy’s legs.

  ‘Clare!’ I shout back.

  ‘Hello, Clare,’ he says.

  ‘Hello,’ I say, because Mummy has always said that when someone says hello, you should say hello back.

  He turns to Thomas. ‘And who else do we have?’

  But Thomas just hides behind Daddy’s legs because he has gone shy and doesn’t know he should play the game. ‘That’s

  Thomas,’ I say, pointing over at him.

  ‘Who?’ he shouts, holding his hand up to his ear.

  ‘Thomas!’ I shout louder.

  He laughs, and his eyes light up and his shoulders shake and then he coughs. Mummy and Daddy laugh, too.

  I can’t believe how old my granddad is. And he’s really fat.

  ‘Would you like to meet my dog, Sooty?’ I ask.

  ‘Well, of course I would.’ He steps down from the big step outside the house and comes over to the car, and I point through the window at Sooty, who has his paws up against the window and his tail wagging really quickly.

  ‘Oh, isn’t he lovely,’ he says. ‘Sure, why don’t you bring him in?’

  ‘Can I?’ I ask.

  ‘Of course you can,’ he says.

  I shriek and open the car and pick Sooty up, and Granddad pushes the door closed again.

  We all walk into the house and I just can’t believe I have never met my lovely granddad before today.

  JOSEPHINE

  26TH JULY 1997

  I go through the motions, but in my mind I am playing out sequences of how it will be, how it will go. Finally, our days with Michael’s family come to an end. It is time to get in the car and drive across Ireland. The ground, the trees, the sky are soaked after the rain. Shells of houses lie broken in the middle of fields, left to crumble. A single corner attempts to stand, a reminder of what was once there. I am like those jagged brick stumps. A part of me is trying to stay alive when the rest of me is dead.

  Villages, towns, those corners of houses grow familiar. Finally I am near to being put out of my misery.

  The dog whimpers. I had forgotten all about it. A mongrel Clare picked up on the way. What lunacy! We all know who is going to be cleaning up its mess, letting it out in the morning and walking it twice a day. But what could I do, there in front of everyone, with them all in cahoots for us to take the damned dog? I was forced into a corner. They say you should never force a rat into a corner, because it will bite.

  Shut that thing up, I want to shout. But I bite it back. I wind down the window and the wet wind hits my face in bursts that force my eyes shut. After all these years, I smell home. My clothes are soaked with the strong sweat of fear.

  It’s all smiles and how-do-you-dos. It’s like a dream. I tremble my way through it. My father is smaller than I remember. Michael is taller than him. Who would have known?

  ‘Josephine.’ He opens his arms wide.

  I turn to Michael, the children, wondering what to do, wishing someone would tell me, help me. They smile back at me.

  There’s nothing else for it. I go to him. ‘Hello,’ I say, as he plants kisses on my cheeks and hugs me. His kisses are like glass paper across my skin. His arms, like tentacles pulling me underwater. I fight the urge to be sick.

  ‘Daddy, this is my husband Michael, my daughter Clare and my son Thomas.’ I watch him shake Michael’s hand, clap him on the back, bend down to the children. Get away from them! Don’t touch them, you monster! But I don’t say a word. I watch, mute, as he manipulates my family – my family who I have kept safe and far from here, until now.

  He is full of loud, low-belly laughter. There are no signs of the tyrant I grew up with.

  When I demand the dog stays in the car so as not to make him angry, he sweeps out, all arms and chest and belly, and says he wouldn’t hear of it. Out comes the dog. Clare flocks to him. The dog flocks to him. The sun
breaks out from behind the charcoal clouds, the dog yaps playfully. I am in a nightmare that will never end. Sweet Jesus, will it never end?

  In her room, as I had pictured, is my mother. Lying up against the headboard, with machines going in or coming out of her, I’m not sure which.

  I go to her, sit on the edge of the bed, hold her hand. Seeing her like this makes me forget. ‘Hello, Mammy.’ It’s my voice but it’s not.

  ‘Hello, Josephine.’ There is no smile. Just an older version of the woman I remember as my mother. A thinner, meaner-looking version of Granny. The cheekbones are there, the hair. But the eyes are not kind and sparkling, and the lips are a gripped line of bitterness.

  I bring the children in and she looks at them. I tell them to go and give her a kiss; they do. She touches their small hands.

  ‘Off you go now,’ I tell them. ‘Be quiet and keep out of your grandfather’s way. Play outside with the dog.’

  ‘Sooty!’ Clare corrects me.

  ‘Play outside with Sooty.’

  They run outside. The door stands gaping open after them.

  Had I expected tears? Love? Everything to be different, after all these years? I don’t know. I don’t have any of the answers.

  Siobhan comes to visit. She doesn’t bring her son and she doesn’t look me in the eye. She talks to Michael and the children, but with me she is shy, she makes sure to stay away, and when I try to talk to her alone in the kitchen she finds an excuse to leave. She is a stranger. I wouldn’t know her on the street, neither in London, nor here. Sean comes, too, another stranger. A grown man with a beard, no longer the little boy I knew so well and cared for as if he were my own. He is pleasant, making jokes and getting everyone laughing. It’s as if we’re all playing roles in a film, playing it out until the end. Brendan is spared the charade; he is making it big in America. America. Now that’s far away.

  *

  I ask where Granny’s grave is and they tell me it’s on the far side of the graveyard, up the hill. We walk through the moss and the stones, careful not to step on the dipping graves that could collapse at any minute.