Her Mother's Daughter

by Alice Fitzgerald

  We stand still, watching each other, while he walks slowly to the door, eyeing me suspiciously. He turns the corner.

  Siobhan walks over to the door and closes it. Then she goes to the cupboard and gets two glasses out and a bottle of whiskey. She pours us a glass each and hands me one. ‘Here,’ she says.

  ‘I don’t want it,’ I tell her.

  ‘You’re shaking – look at the state of you. It will calm you down.’

  I look down at my hands; she is right: my hands, my arms, my whole body is in tremor. I take the drink and down it, wincing at the taste and the heat in my chest. ‘I was raped, Siobhan.’ The words are out. All these years unsaid, and there they are, floating in the air between us as if they didn’t weigh anything at all. ‘The night Sean was born. Someone came into my room. Daddy, he came into my room.’

  It sounds so simple, put like that. I gaze out the back window at her view of the garden. Her son’s clothes are drying on the line.

  ‘It wasn’t Daddy.’

  I look back at her. I shake my head. I don’t understand.

  ‘Shall we sit down?’

  I shake my head. ‘What do you mean?’ My voice is a whisper. ‘What are you saying?’ I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand.

  ‘When Patrick was dying, he confessed to Mammy. I wanted you to come and see her because I thought she should tell you.’

  I lose the feeling in my legs.

  Siobhan lunges forward and catches me in her arms, then leads me to a chair to sit down.

  ‘You mean… you mean Mammy has known since he died?’

  She nods.

  ‘And you?’

  She nods again, tears falling from her eyes.

  I hold my face in my hands. I don’t want her to see me. I don’t want anyone to see me. I want to crawl into bed and never get out. I stay like that, I don’t know how long for. Finally I take my hands away and look at her. She is sitting opposite me, looking down at the floor, her hair hanging around her face. ‘Why?’ I ask. ‘Why have you never told me?’

  ‘She said she would never forgive me if I told you. She said it was long in the past and there was no point in digging up old dirt.’ Siobhan starts crying. ‘I told her she had to tell you. Last night I said she should tell you before you went.’ She goes and gets tissues, gives some to me and keeps some for herself.

  ‘I went to Mammy, all those years ago. I tried to tell her. She shut me up.’

  ‘She didn’t know then.’

  I hear a loud cackle. It is me. ‘She didn’t know then! Oh, well, that’s fine then, isn’t it?’ The realization hits me. All these years – all the time spent going over every memory with a fine-tooth comb. Thinking it was my own father. But it wasn’t. It wasn’t him. It was Patrick.

  ‘So he confessed on his deathbed, did he? How good of him!’

  ‘Josephine, I’m so sorry.’ Siobhan takes my hand in hers. I look down at our hands, but I can’t feel hers on mine. I can’t feel my hand at all.

  There’s the sound of the front door opening and closing; footsteps coming. Of course. Michael, the children. They’re all out in the car.

  The door opens and there is Michael. He stands still, looking at us. You can see from the red colour of his face that he has been crying. He rubs his nose. He doesn’t speak.

  ‘I should go,’ I say.

  ‘Whenever you want,’ Michael says. ‘I just wanted to make sure you were okay. I’ll be in the car.’ He turns and walks out.

  I blow my nose and wipe my eyes. I should go. ‘I should go,’ I say out loud, to her, to myself. I walk out to the front door. She follows me. When I get there I turn round. ‘Did he ever do anything to you?’

  ‘No.’ She shakes her head.

  No. Of course not. Instead of relief, I feel bubbles of anger under my skin, in my throat, in my eyes. Tears of anger drip down my cheeks. ‘Goodbye, Siobhan,’ I say, and I step down onto the mat and walk along the path to the car.

  ‘Goodbye, Josephine.’

  I hear her, but I don’t turn to look back. I get into the car and do up my seatbelt and wait for Michael to start the engine and drive away.

  CLARE

  15TH SEPTEMBER 1997

  I sit backwards on the sofa facing the window, with my elbows resting on the back and my hands on my chin. ‘One, two, three, four…’ I count out loud.

  Thomas has ten seconds to hide. I count slowly to give me more time. I don’t want to play. There’s nowhere to hide here anyway. I know Thomas will be behind one of the chairs. There’s nothing else in here. Four chairs. A fireplace, a bit like ours, but bigger, with tiles on it. This one isn’t real like ours, though, it has plastic logs in that you can turn on with a switch. They go red when they’re hot.

  We’re in the room with toys in the big building in the nice wide road with lots of huge trees on it, where Mummy takes us after school. We can draw on a big white board with felt-tip pens and play anything we want, while she talks to a lady called Jane in the room next door. I play with Thomas, so he thinks everything is normal and we’re really here to play, but it’s cold and dark outside and I want to go home. I know we’re in a room for children while the adults go and talk about what’s happened, just like when we went to hospital before the summer.

  ‘Six, seven…’ At least I’m out of school, I think. I don’t want to see anyone, not even Mandy and Hannah. They want to compare our holidays and hear every detail about mine. And I can’t tell them about mine, because then I would have to tell them about my new granny and granddad, and Mummy shattering the house into smithereens and us leaving without saying goodbye. So I am staying away from them.

  ‘Ten!’ I say, spinning round. I get off the sofa and walk slowly, over to the fireplace, because that way the chairs are facing me. I can see Thomas’s elbow sticking out from behind one of them. I sit down. ‘Where is he?’ I say out loud. ‘Hmmm.’

  Thomas giggles.

  I stand up and go around the back of the chair. ‘There you are!’ I say.

  He jumps up into a star shape.

  ‘Do you want some water?’ I walk over to the corner where there is one of those water-thingies. You have to press the lever and nice cold water comes out, and the water does a big burp and bubbles go to the top. You have to take a plastic cup first from the tube at the side and put it underneath, or you’ll splash water everywhere. Thomas wants to pour his own, but he spills it, so I hold the plastic cup while he pushes on the lever.

  The door opens and Mummy comes in, followed by the lady called Jane.

  ‘Ready?’ she says. She smiles and her voice is light and fluffy, but I know she is just pretending. We play Let’s Pretend all the time. Thomas might fall for it, but I don’t.

  We nod and gulp down our water and put the cups in the bin beside the water-thingy.

  ‘How are you both today?’ Jane says.

  ‘Fine, thank you,’ I say.

  ‘Fine thank you, too,’ says Thomas.

  She smiles and turns to Mummy. ‘See you next week.’

  ‘Great, see you next week,’ Mummy says. ‘Come on, you two,’ she calls to us.

  I get my cardigan and Thomas’s jumper from the sofa and go over to the door. I give Thomas his, and tie mine around my waist.

  Mummy doesn’t say anything until we’re outside in the dark walking down the steps. ‘Clare, take your cardigan from around your waist. You know that stretches the sleeves.’ Her smile has gone.

  I kick the pavement as I walk, to make scratching sounds with the pebbles.

  ‘Clare, stop that,’ Mummy says.

  It’s cold in the supermarket, so I put my cardigan back on. We follow Mummy around while she looks at things and puts some of them into the trolley. When we get to the best aisle, she won’t let us go down it. ‘We’ve talked about this,’ she says, which means, We’re not talking about it again.

  Since we’ve got back she won’t let us have one single teeny-weeny piece of chocolate or crisps or biscuits, or anything that t
astes nice. She says the holidays were the holidays and we all over-indulged, and now we have to eat healthily. I don’t think it’s fair that she has been on a diet for as long as I can remember, and now she’s making us go on one, too. I walk down the sweets aisle by myself and pick up a packet of sweets. I keep them in my hands and walk all the way down the aisle until I get to the bottom and turn round the corner into the next one. When I turn the corner I push the packet of sweets up my sleeve. My face is hot, like it’s on fire. I look down, but can’t see anything under my cardigan. I breathe out slowly and try to walk like normal, holding onto the sleeve of my cardigan, so the sweets won’t fall out.

  ‘Wipe that puss off your face,’ says Mummy.

  I have to turn away because that makes me smile. She doesn’t know that I’m going to have sweets all to myself for dessert. The big decision is if I risk giving one to Thomas or not.

  I stay three steps behind and make sure Thomas is always on my left, so there is no reason for either of them to touch my right arm, with the sweets up my sleeve. We go up the last aisle and Mummy picks up some bottles and then we go to the tills. My face is on fire when I walk through the tills bit, because I think maybe something might go off. Mummy packs up all the bags and pays the lady and then pushes the trolley towards the door. Thomas takes my hand and I squeeze it; he pulls his hand away and says I’m sweating. We go through the doors and there is no beep-beep-beep. I’m free, and I have my sweets! I skip ahead to the car and wait at my door, which is the back passenger seat one on the left. Thomas can go in the front.

  I do my homework in my room with Sooty in my lap and then we go downstairs to watch TV. Mummy is at the table writing a letter. I’m so excited about the sweets that I just cannot contain myself. That’s what Mummy and Daddy say, when me and Thomas are so excited we could burst. I have hidden the sweets between my pillow and the pillowcase. No one will ever find them there until the weekend when Mummy washes our sheets, if she washes our sheets. I sit down next to Thomas on the sofa and watch TV, but all I can think about are the sweets upstairs. I say I’m going to the toilet and leave Sooty with Thomas, and go up to my room and open the sweets and take the first one out and pop it in my mouth. It’s yellow and tastes of lemon, and I chew it as fast as I can. I take out one more. Purple. I eat it. When I have chewed every last bit and have none in my teeth, I go downstairs and sit next to Thomas. I want another sweet.

  I say to Thomas, ‘Thomas, do you want to see my homework?’

  He nods. I knew he would. He always wants to see my homework. He loves it. Sometimes he even wants to do it, so I tell him what the homework is and he does his beside me.

  We go upstairs and Sooty pitter-patters up behind us, the way he does. I close the door and whisper, ‘Thomas, I have a big secret to tell you.’

  His eyes go big, like the round bits of Mummy’s bras. ‘What?’

  ‘I’ve got sweets!’

  He gasps, just as I’d hoped. ‘How did you get them?’

  I put my hands over his ear and whisper into my cupped hands, ‘I took them from the supermarket!’ He lets out a shriek and I have to put my hand over his mouth. ‘Ssssh! Mummy will hear you!’

  I climb up to my bunk – one, two, one, two, one, two – and Thomas climbs up after me. We leave Sooty on the floor and he keeps trying to get up the ladder, but can’t reach higher than the first step. I get the sweets out of my pillowcase and give him an orange one and take a pink one for me. When they’re finished, I take out another two – purple for Thomas and another pink one for me – and we gulp them down. When they’re gone, I take out another two and we gulp them down, too – yellow and orange. Then I give Thomas a pink one and I have the last purple one, and the packet’s gone.

  We climb down the ladder and I hide all the wrappers in the side pocket of my schoolbag and we go downstairs to watch TV.

  ‘DON’T lick your lips,’ I warn Thomas before we go into the sitting room.

  We sit down. I get the remote and flick through the channels to see what’s on, and stop at whales sliding through the sea. Thomas snuggles next to me and I put my arm round him. Sooty can’t jump up yet, so I lift him up and he curls up on my lap.

  Mummy is over at the table, writing her letter and smoking a cigarette. Since we got back from holiday she is smoking all the time. She gets up and puts the paper and pad and pen into the drawer of the cabinet and says she’s going to get dinner ready. The whale spits out of the sea with a big sneezy noise, and me and Thomas laugh. I tickle him under the arms because it’s good to hear him giggle, and hearing him makes me laugh harder. We lie back and I snuggle my feet under his bum so they are nice and warm. I twiddle my toes and he says, ‘Ow!’ but I tell him to be quiet or else Mummy will come in.

  After we have played in the big playroom and Mummy has talked to the nice lady, she always comes back and writes a letter. She seems okay, but you just never know. It’s like tying my shoelaces. I can never guess how the bow is going to look. One time one of the loops is huge, another time I don’t have enough lace to wrap around to make a loop; sometimes they last all day, and sometimes they come undone ten times and I fall over my foot and everyone laughs. I can never guess how they are going to be. Or Sooty’s poo. It’s all different colours and different shapes and sizes, and sometimes he does it in the kitchen, sometimes the garden, sometimes on the patio or the grass, sometimes in the sitting room. It’s different every day. And that’s just like Mummy. I never know how things are going to end up.

  When I think she is good and try to give her a hug, she shouts at me to get away from her and give her some space. Then when we stay in our room, she comes in crying and gets into Thomas’s bed with him and makes me get in, too, and she holds us tight and cries all over our hair.

  I haven’t asked her what happened with Granny and Granddad, or at Aunty Siobhan’s. I don’t ask her anything any more. Because if I ask something she doesn’t like, she might slap me across the face or pinch me really hard.

  The half-moons I had on my arm are fading now, and so are the pink blood-spot stars. When the stars and moons are gone, I won’t have anything to remember – it’ll be like it never happened. Maybe it didn’t ever happen. Maybe it was a dream. No one has said anything about it, so maybe I fell asleep and it really is all a dream.

  ‘Thomas,’ I whisper. ‘Do you remember what happened at Granny and Granddad’s?’

  ‘When the lightning hit the house and the glass broke?’ he says.

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘That was scary, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ he sniffles. ‘I don’t want to go back there. Lightning is scary.’

  I rub his soft blond hair and he leans his head on my chest.

  My throat hurts and my eyes sting because I want to cry, but I hold it back. I have to be strong for Thomas. I pick Sooty up and hug him close. He makes everything better. He understands like no one else does. Thomas is a baby, and Daddy is working all the time. He has lots of work and they’re against the clock, he says. But I think he’s upset with Mummy, because I heard them talking after we got back and he was telling her to go to the police, and she screamed at him that he was crazy and stupid and what was she going to go to the police for? The bastard is dead, she screamed. He said then that he was only trying to help and that whatever he did or said was wrong. And since then he’s been looking nearly as sad as Mummy. They don’t speak like they used to, they don’t dance, and he doesn’t kiss her when he comes home, or at surprise moments to cheer her up.

  Mummy carries my plate and Thomas’s first. She puts them down on the table so fast that the food slides to one side.

  I pick up my fork to move it back to the middle.

  ‘You don’t start eating until we’re all sitting down, Clare,’

  Mummy says, giving me evils from the oven.

  ‘I wasn’t,’ I say.

  ‘You got too used to all that food in Ireland. You’re too hungry for your own good,’ she says. She’s angry.

  ‘But
I wasn’t—’ I try to say.

  ‘No interrupting.’ She shakes her head. ‘I will have to start cutting your portions down. And you will have to ask my permission before eating anything.’

  I tuck my hands under my legs, but instead of kicking the chair legs with the backs of my shoes, I pinch one of my thighs. I’m so fat that loads of skin goes in between my fingers. I am a little fatty. Mummy’s right. She wants me to be nice and pretty and slim, like her and women on the ads in the magazines she buys and on the inside pages of the newspaper. But instead she’s got me. A round ball of fat. If I fell off the chair now, I would roll across the kitchen floor and fall off the step and into the utility room. Sooty would think I was a ball and would push me along with his nose and paw at me, scratching my arms and legs, the way he does that drives Mummy mad and makes her say I look like a tinker. My face burns.

  Mummy comes and sits down. She blesses herself, and Thomas and me do the same. ‘In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,’ she says.

  ‘Amen.’ We say it so perfectly in time that it sounds like there is one of us here, not two. Sometimes I stay so still, so Mummy can pretend I’m not here at all, so I’m not driving her crazy and getting under her skin. We say together:

  Bless us, O God, as we sit together,

  Bless the food we eat today,

  Bless the hands that made the food,

  Bless us, O God. Amen.

  We bless ourselves, and Mummy and Thomas pick up their knives and forks. We can eat now. But I’m not hungry. I keep my hands under my legs. Mummy cuts into the chicken Kiev and the oil oozes onto her plate. She gets a big piece on her fork and puts mash on top of it and opens her mouth wide so it fits in. That means she’s hungry. But she’s not starving, because when she’s starving we don’t even have to say our prayer and she puts the plates down and picks up her knife and fork straight away. On those days she says she could eat a horse. On those days she piles her fork so high she can’t close her mouth. When we eat with our mouths open, she slaps us across the legs.