The Irish Lottery Series Box Set (1-3)

by Gerald Hansen

  Thomas Jennings. They called him an African-American on Wikipedia, but Fionnuala knew from his photo what that really meant, and her lip curled with distaste before the screen as she thought it: a wog. A coon. A nig-nog.

  She had fled from the computer and the cafe, damning the £5 it had cost her to find out this outrage. There had been no mention of Thomas Jennings' religion, she thought as she raced to the bus stop, but she had seen a few of the darkies' strange church celebrations on the telly. She didn't know if whatever alien religion they practiced was worse than Protestant, but suspected it was probably equally as bad. She already knew dry cleaning wasn't dry, but now, with a darkie as an inventor, she thought with a sense of panic as she boarded the bus, how could it even be clean? She couldn't have been more disgusted if the inventor had been Jewish.

  Fionnuala had gotten used to working for the dark side, in all senses of the word, she thought. There were now eight curtains, two raincoats, a three-piece suit, uncountable sweaters, loads of white office shirts and a bridal gown sloshing around at 78 degrees amidst the toxic solvents in the industrial-sized machine out back. Soon they would have to be dried on the drying machines, puffed up like strangely-shaped balloons. There were 27 buttons that needed to be sewn on shirts and 12 zippers to replace. Fionnuala would soon make short work of that. She was a marvel at the sewing machine; she had only Dymphna's wedding dress to think back on to know that. Except for the deception Fionnuala was a part of, she had had worse jobs.

  The buttons and zippers would have to wait. Fionnuala sat at the counter staring down in disbelief at an article in the day's Sun newspaper. Her drooping head with its bleached ponytails and overbite, and her arched, manly shoulders were framed by half the partition and, beyond that, a vista of endless rows of plastic-wrapped coats, shirts, gowns and sweaters that hung like lynched bodies.

  She had found the newspaper on the seat beside her on the bus. She wasn't one for reading; indeed, it was a chore, but the journey from the caravan site into town was forty-five minutes long, and Fionnuala had memorized every field, every tree, and recognized many of the sheep they passed daily. She read out of desperation. When she could nab a free newspaper. And the article she was reading now caused her more horror, more shock, than the discovery of the inventor of the non-dry, non-clean dry cleaning. Had the world finally gone mad? She was so outraged at what she was reading, she didn't hear the bell of the door tinkling.

  An irritant, a remembered noise that both repelled and enticed her, sounded in her ears from the other side of the counter. She forced her eyes up from the newsprint and saw, as if in a horror movie, her 12-year-old daughter Siofra's decapitated head sat there on the counter before her. Fionnuala screamed, and the eyes of the head widened with shock, and then Siofra took a step back from the counter, and rage bubbled up in Fionnuala as she realized it was only her daughter, her living daughter, though taller since the last time she had seen her, standing at the counter before her. I have to get me eyes seen to, Fionnuala thought. But was the girl a spastic? A tall spastic? What would make her risk her life visiting her mother?

  “Mammy! Come home!” Siofra was saying, and her voice was filled with such emotion and longing, her little eyes brimming with tears, that Fionnuala's heart welled. She had long wondered who would be the first of her offspring to crack, brave enemy lines, realize the care and love Fionnuala had bestowed upon them all, and at no charge.

  “Mammy! Come back home! Please!”

  Tears sprang in Fionnuala's eyes. Though her daughter's eyes were sunken, though her One Direction shirt was tattered and stained, though her limbs were like twigs, and her multi-colored leggings were littered with ladders, Fionnuala loved her. Unconditionally.

  Somewhere in a cavern of Fionnuala's brain, the troubling thought that her children were growing up out of her sight stung her deeply. Growing up without the mother who loved them.

  “Och, get you around here, would ye, love?” Fionnuala said, choking back the tears. “How ye've shot up!”

  Siofra skipped around the counter. After a quick check for lice, Fionnuala held her daughter's head to her sagging bosom. She sighed mournfully into the black locks that could've done with a shampoo.

  “Would that I could come home, love. Yer daddy won't let me, but.”

  “They've me doing all the cleaning, all the cooking, all the messages”—the shopping— “and they lounge around doing nothing. Daddy knocking back the drink and staring at the telly! Granny tries to pitch in, but with her cane and all, it ends up being more graft for me rather than less. I'm knackered by the end of every day, Mammy! Dead on me feet! Me poor wee feet! Me arms fairly aching. Slaves had it easier, I'm sure. We watched a video on them in class the other day. Not that I saw much of it, but, me eyeballs aching from exhaustion as they were.”

  Inside Fionnuala, a fury was growing. Siofra writhed as her mother's fingernails dug into her flesh.

  “Of all the thoughtless, self-centered...!”

  “Aye, Mammy,” Siofra said with a wince and a nod, “not a finger do they lift to help me. Padraig playing his video games all hours of the day and night, Seamus slobbering into his cuddly toys, while I've been making all the beds, doing all the washing, hanging out all the clothes, hoovering every inch of the f—”

  “Naw! Not themmuns, ye daft wee bitch! You!”

  Fionnuala threw her daughter from her. Siofra didn't miss her at all! She missed her housekeeping!

  Siofra stared up at her mother, eyes saucered.

  “M-me?”

  Her lower lip trembled.

  “Aye! Do ye not know, it's a woman's place to do all that?! The way of the world, wane! The way of the world!”

  “A w-woman's...” Siofra looked down at her chest, where something of interest had yet to blossom. “I'm twelve years of age, but.”

  “Aye, old enough to know the way of the world, ye feckin wee eejit, ye! Look at the state of me hands, would ye!”

  Siofra shirked from the things her mother thrust before her, like wrinkled sausages, nails cracked and chipped, the tarnished wedding band embedded in the flesh.

  “Who do ye expect is meant to do the hoovering? The scrubbing of the scullery floor?” Scullery, kitchen. “The washing? Our wee Padraig? His mates at school would beat seven shades of shite outta him if they caught a glance of him hanging the washing out to dry in the back garden! Catch yerself on, wee girl! Now ye know the hell of me own existence! Or what me life used to be like when I was at home, anyroad. Working all day long, then more work when I drag me body through the front door. Do ye not realize, it's the way things is meant to be?!”

  “When our Dymphna lived there, and earlier, our Moira, they never lifted a finger—”

  “Aye! Because they had aul muggings here, me, to do all that. And now that I'm not there, it's yer duty as the oldest girl! Is that why ye came here? To tell me to get back to work? I'm raging, so I'm are! Spitting with fury!”

  And here Siofra avoided a call to Child Protective Services by reaching into her pocket and tugging out a packet of Jelly Babies. She held the baby-shaped soft candies up to her mother, her eyes shimmering with tears.

  “Are ye not happy to see me, but, Mammy?”

  “Och, catch yerself on, wee girl! Don't be so flimmin foolish,” Fionnuala was eying the bag hungrily, “ye know I love ye. What will yer daddy say, but? A thumping, he's gonny give ye, if he finds out ye've been seeing me. The penance yer daddy and granny doled out to me as it he were God Almighty himself and she the Queen of Sheeba. Banished from the family, ye flimmin well know I am. I'm meant to be dead to youse all. What will the rest of the family say if they knew ye were here? If they saw the two of us breathing in the same air, like? Naw, yer daddy would do worse than thump ye. He'd hole ye up in that bleeding caravan of mines same as me.”

  “How are they gonny catch wind of it, but? With all them bubbles painted on the front window of the shop, even if they was to walk by, nobody can see in, sure.”

  T
his was true. The amount of times Fionnuala had cursed those bubbles, couldn't see out onto the street, couldn't see the people walking by, the setting of the sun. Spring had turned to summer, and she hadn't seen it.

  Fionnuala could hold off no longer. She reached her hand into the packet that Siofra was still offering up to her. Her bloated fingers struggled to fit inside. She drew out three yellow ones, a green one and an orange. It was plain from the look on her face these were her least favorite.

  “I see ye've already crammed every last purple one down yer greedy wee throat, and the red ones and all,” Fionnuala complained. She ate them anyway.

  An alarm sounded beyond the partition. The final rinse was complete. The load needed to be removed as soon as possible and placed on the various drying machines, and the pressing begun, but Fionnuala wanted to pump her daughter for information about the family.

  Still chewing, jaws working like a cow's with cud, she grabbed Siofra's grubby hands and, eyes glinting, asked in a voice laced with as much sweetness as her sour character would allow, “C'mere, Siofra, love, I've heard yer brother Lorcan's finally off to Florida to join our Eoin. Me heart longs for him. Ye know he's me favorite of youse all. Have ye heard from him? What's he doing over there in the States? And yer daddy. I've heard tell the fish plant closed down. What's he doing for work now? Have ye seen him with other women? Has he got himself a fancy woman, hi?”

  The door flew open, and old Mrs. Ming forced her walker into the dry cleaners, her skeletal body and her oversized head with wisps of pinky-gray hair following. A garbage bag swung from one of the poles of her walker, and as she made her way towards the counter, a never-before-encountered stench from the bag caused a rising discomfort in Fionnuala's throat. Siofra's eyes began to water. She plugged her little nose with her fingers.

  “What about ye, Fionnuala?” Mrs. Ming said, unable to look Fionnuala in the eye. “I'm wile sorry,” wile, wild, very “to do this to ye, love, to bother ye, like, I'm mortified to be asking even, but I'm at me wit's end. I've some things here I hope ye can help me out with.”

  Fionnuala and Siofra braced themselves at the edge of the swinging bag, the little girl clutching her mother's elbow for protection. Pulsating from the plastic was a mixture of what might have been decomposing fish, old bleu cheese, stagnant water from a well in India and some gangrenous flesh. Mrs. Ming unwound the bag from her walker and pushed it across the counter. Mother and daughter recoiled.

  “God bless us and save us!” Fionnuala gasped, eyes stinging, nose offended. “What've ye got in that sack, woman?”

  “We'll get to that in a moment. First and foremost, but, I need for ye to rescue one of me most treasured possessions. What am I after saying? Me only treasured possession!”

  Fionnuala and Siofra hadn't noticed a smaller, more carefully tied bag that Mrs. Ming had pushed onto the counter along with the garbage bag. The pensioner now untied this smaller bag slowly, reverently. Fionnuala and Siofra gritted their teeth in suspense. Mrs. Ming's shuddering hand slipped inside.

  “Generations, it's been in the family. Passed down from grandmother to granddaughter, mother to daughter, since it was made, handmade by the light of a candle, back when people did that. During them terrible dark times right after the great potato famine. The 1840's, I believe it was.”

  Fionnuala gasped. A thrill ran through her, realizing what her eyes would soon be feasting on. If it had to do with needlework, she knew her stuff. “Ye don't mean...an original Irish crochet? Fine linen thread? Separately crocheted motifs on a mesh background?”

  Mrs. Ming nodded proudly. “I do, aye. A wee bit of luxury for our table at special teas and dinners throughout the decades, it's been. From the finest, most delicatest linen in the world. Lace.”

  Fionnuala caught sight of the first corner the woman gently tugged out of its hiding place. Her eyes still stung, but now also shimmered with disbelief. She couldn't hide her wonder, or her envy.

  “Is that...can it actually be...Youghal point?” The best of the best in lace worldwide, made by the nuns, the Presentation Sisters, in County Cork, and, most famously, the design of Queen Mary's train for her trip to India in 1911.

  “It is indeed, aye.” Mrs. Ming said it proudly.

  Fionnuala, po-faced, jealous, shot her arms around her chest. “Ye know, many of them so-called heirlooms that look like Youghal point has proved to be made in factories in Japan during the 60s.”

  “Not this one,” Mrs. Ming said with conviction. She grunted as she unfurled the entire table cloth in the air for them to lay their eyes on. After a brief flutter, it deflated under the weight of its filth.

  Siofra gawped as Mrs. Ming displayed as much of the treasure as she could with arms that shuddered and struggled to remain aloft. It wasn't the fine craftsmanship, or the captivating pattern of little daisies inside circles atop a field of roses, or the leaves and the myriad mazes of little squiggly bits, or the dainty sheen of the mesh background, that had the girl gawping, but what was on the tablecloth.

  “How the bloody hell,” Fionnuala sputtered, a tic in her left eye as both shot expertly from one side of the table cloth to the other, taking stock of the damage, “did ye manage in one stroke to get black wax, red wine, blue ink, mustard, grass, blood, egg, and...is that rust, on the one item? On the one antique, priceless, delicate item ye own? Could ye tell me that, woman?”

  It didn't quite explain the smell, however. Fionnuala now eyed the bag on the counter, her mind having moved on to wondering what horrors might lurk there, soon be revealed from its depths.

  “That's the tragedy of it all. One antique, priceless, delicate item. Ruined beyond all repair.” Mrs. Ming seemed close to tears. “Unless...unless...” She eagerly eyed the partition behind Fionnuala and Siofra, and her eyes seeming to say that that was where fantastical wonders of rejuvenation were concealed. “Ye've wee tricks back there beyond that partition ye can make use of. Haven't ye? It wasn't in one stroke, but. It happened in bits and bobs. First off, there was our Keeva's séance on the Tuesday evening. I know the Church frowns upon it, but it's a bit of harmless fun, now really, isn't it, don't ye think? As long as I don't tell the Father, I figure we're still up for heaven. That explains the wax. From the candles, ye understand. And the wine and all. We was in the dark and needed something for the steel our nerves. As for the mustard and the grass...”

  As Mrs. Ming roiled through the list of mishaps and misfortunes and 'ye-had-to be-there-to-see-it's that had led to the sorry state of the table cloth today, Fionnuala wondered about the state of the woman's life in general, then about the contents of the mystery bag, still spilling out its noxious odors, and all the while a different part of her brain was clicking, brain cells churning, running through then discarding all the options of rescue the dry cleaners had at its disposal. She feared the secret solvents in the washing machine in the back would dissolve the lace. When Mrs. Ming got to the mud and rust section (her grand nephew Joe had tried to clean some mud off a rusty spanner with the table cloth, while paladic, of course), Fionnuala realized she didn't need or, more, didn't want to know, the how. She wanted to know the why. She cut the woman off, and peered at her with suspicion.

  “They've not sent ye from that Kreases-N-Klean Kollars Galore up the Strand, have they? Are ye working for them undercover, like? For to test our premises and our expertise?”

  “As God's me witness, naw.”

  That settled it, then. Fionnuala could do nothing but trust the woman, bringing God into it like that. Fionnuala gently pried the table cloth from the woman's fingers and placed it on the counter. She cleared her throat.

  “I fear there's something terrible I must reveal to ye. We're not magicians. How can I explain to ye that what ye once considered the most priceless item ye own now be's the most useles—”

  “Naw, Mammy!” Siofra wailed. “Don't say it!” She turned to Mrs. Ming and said kindly, “Give us it here. Leave it with us. We'll take good care of it. We'll see what we can do. Wo
n't we, Mammy?”

  Fionnuala flashed the girl a look of betrayal. How dare she undermine her mother!

  Mrs. Ming looked up in surprise at the girl, and she did have to look up. “Do ye work here and all then, wee girl?”

  “And now,” Fionnuala said, clamping her fingers into the back of Siofra's left upper arm and twisting the flesh tightly. Siofra winced as her mother continued, “would ye care to explain what in the name of God be's responsible for that stench? What's in that bag ye've hauled in here?”

  Mrs. Ming, her eyes still on the table cloth, waved her hand dismissively. “Och, that. Only our Joe's. He's me grand nephew and is staying with me for a while, and them is his overalls. Five pairs. One for each day of the work week. Did ye not know he got a new job fitting that swanky new sodium lighting in all Derry's sewers? Them ladders they have him perched on be's terrible slippery, and sometimes he falls in. Into the, well, have ye any idea what be's in them sewers? Fece—”

  “No need for ye to reel off a list, woman. Them we can take care of, aye. I might need to swallow down a gin or two before I touch them, but.”

  “I think most have underarm stains for ye to get out and all. Like lakes, they are. It be's terrible hot down there in them sewers, ye know. I have trust in ye. Ye can make them like brand spanking new. I hope ye can retrieve me beloved table cloth and all. And I've a wee coupon with me someplace,” her face burned with shame as she made to click open the handbag which swung from her elbow to locate it, “ten percent off, I believe it is. I wouldn't bother ye with that, but the prices ye charge here, and me being a pensioner and all...”