by Annie Murphy
“What’re you doing?” I screamed.
“Baptizing it.”
I was dumbfounded. I had registered as a Catholic—what else when my child’s father was a bishop?—but I had not asked for him to be christened. Maybe this was another way Eamonn had of demonstrating his power. “Let him be baptized and, behold, it was so,” regardless of the mother’s feelings.
“Name?” Father Coughlin demanded.
I was worried lest he drop or soil my baby. I said: “You know my name.”
He held the baby up. “His.”
Why hadn’t Eamonn baptized him himself? He was, after all, in the business. Maybe he feared that would give the game away: a bishop baptizing a bastard. Or maybe that went against the rules, like absolving me after we had made love. But it was against the rules to sire Peter in the first place, and that hadn’t deterred him. And why not in the hospital chapel; why the hurry? Our son was not even ill, let alone in danger of death. Even if he were in danger of death, Eamonn was not concerned with Peter’s going to heaven, only with himself going to hell—this side of the grave, I mean. I concluded that Peter was being baptized as the necessary prelude to being adopted by a Catholic couple.
“His name?” Father Coughlin repeated.
“His names,” I said belligerently. “He’s entitled to more than one.”
“All right.” He was putting a ribbon-like stole around his neck, purple side up. “Names.”
“Peter Eamonn.”
His face creased even further. If he had doubted who the leg-over man was, he surely knew now.
He had brought a small bag with him like the one my father carried when visiting patients. Out of it he took a bottle of blessed water and a prayer book. He handed the baby to one of the women and somewhere along the line he poured water over Peter Eamonn’s head and made him a Christian like his father.
Peter Eamonn did not seem to approve. The cold water made him scream his defiance even louder at the priest. Another proof he was his father’s son.
My God, I thought, when he grows up he’ll eat the likes of Father Coughlin. But why do clerics keep making my son cry?
In my shocked state I stood barefoot in my old bathrobe, a towel girding my waist, and silent. In our family, baptisms were big things. Mommy spent two hundred dollars on a christening robe alone, and there was always a family gathering, and home movies made as a memento. And Peter was a bishop’s son; he was entitled to be baptized in a cathedral. Father Coughlin’s private Barnum & Bailey was over in three or four minutes. He hovered over my son and asked him in all seriousness if he renounced Satan and all his works and pomps. I felt like saying, Why not ask that of his daddy?
As I walked back to my room, my baby in my arms, baptism seemed to have made no more difference to him than it did to me. Who was supposed to be cleansing whom?
What worried me most was not that silly game in the storeroom but the feeling that what that priest had done had somehow, in his mind at least, given him and the institution he represented a hold over my son.
We would see about that. If there was to be a fight, I would take them all on—Father Coughlin, Bishop Casey, the Pope himself. “Don’t you worry, Peter,” I said, as I settled him back in his crib. “I’ll give them all a bloody nose.”
As a professional counselor, Sister Eileen was horrified at the Bishop’s attitude. “Most inappropriate,” she said, too moderately.
I had never even hinted that Eamonn was Peter’s father, but she was so wise she could have found no other explanation of his behavior at Inch and now. As to Father Coughlin, she described his action not only as “bizarre” but probably against canon law. The Bishop must have put him up to it.
Eileen advised me to go to St. Patrick’s, a home for unmarried mothers run by French Sisters of Charity on the outskirts of the city. There, I could make my own decision about adoption. Now that Peter was baptized, I was eligible.
I accepted Eileen’s advice and she made the arrangements. Eamonn approved of St. Patrick’s, possibly because it was his idea in the first place. Nuns were part of the system that he could manipulate.
On the day before I left the Rotunda, he paid me a second visit, which was a carbon copy of the first. Except that this time he really tried to pick the baby up but, in the end, withdrew his hands as if they were too near a raging fire. I was perplexed. Each day at Mass he took a bit of bread, changed it into the body of God, and held it up, marveling. But we, in love, had taken an invisible seed and an invisible egg and turned them into the miracle of a human being and he dared not touch it.
Once more I crawled down my bed and picked Peter up. “Look, Eamonn, he’s the spitting image of you, can’t you see?”
He could, and it terrified him. He gulped painfully but did not react in any other way.
“He’s got your bump on his upper lip, the same ears, the same big birthmark on his left knee.”
He shielded his eyes. “It’s unbelievable. I don’t know how I did this, I really don’t.” His voice sharpened. “Put it down. I can’t talk to you till you do.”
He did not like being outnumbered two to one; I put Peter down so we could converse in a civilized way.
“If you’re not ready to come back to Inch,” he said, drawing up his chair close to my bed, “Saint Pat’s is the best place for you.”
My milk had turned sour after his first visit. What would this visit do? “Talk for as long as you like,” I said, “provided you don’t mention adoption.”
He was unable to stop. It was his obsession. Cuckoo-time again. He had even brought adoption papers with him. He waved them in front of me. Could I not see that I was fallen, that the child deserved a proper home and family?
For an hour he went on. When he had finished, I was convinced he had composed his own special Ave. It went: Hail Annie, full of sin… cursed be the fruit of thy womb, Peter.
Eamonn was such a decent person; he really cared for the sufferings of little ones all over the world. Yet there was no room in the inn of his heart for his own son. Oh, Eamonn, I thought, you are so good; how can you do this bad thing?
By now I no longer trusted him. If Peter were adopted, Eamonn would know where he was and the name he was adopted under — wasn’t he a bishop, an all-seeing peregrine on a cathedral spire?—whereas I would never know. I would always be wondering: What is he like now? Is he well? Is he making progress at school? Is he even alive? Moreover, what would Peter think of me? Would he hate me for not loving him enough or having courage enough to keep him? Would he want to look for me as much as I would want to look for him? Would we go to our separate deaths, distant graves, with unfulfilled longings in our hearts?
With all trust waning, I felt Eamonn’s one concern was to cover his traces. As far as he was concerned, it would have been better if Peter, like Judas, had never been born.
From the moment he showed me round his Cathedral and entertained me in his Palace, I saw he had much to lose. Power, prestige, trips abroad. He did not realize that he was asking me to give up my future so he could keep his.
Mary called me just as I was packing for St. Patrick’s. She pleaded with me to return to the States immediately. But Peter still had jaundice and I was weary enough to die. Was my refusal to go home also an unwillingness to accept that my dream was finally dead? Did I expect the wizard to do one more trick for me, maybe the biggest of all: change a bishop, himself, into a human being?
* * *
The next morning, Barbara Devlin came to the Rotunda to drive Peter and me to St. Patrick’s, a home on the west side of the city. I was not feeling well. I had a high temperature and a burning sensation in my left leg.
The first sight of St. Patrick’s seared my soul, and I saw Barbara recoil, too. It was in a pleasant setting on the edge of the Dublin mountains and not far from the Phoenix Park, but the black steepled building stood behind high stone walls and you went through a big wrought-iron gate to get to it. It was a prison. Except the tops of the walls were
studded with broken dreams.
With a sense of foreboding, hugging my Peter tight in his white crocheted blanket with tassels, I begged his forgiveness. First, I had seen him baptized in a broom closet and now I had brought him to this prison as his first home. I had slept with Eamonn month after month without any sense of guilt, but now I was, yes, ashamed.
Chapter
Thirty-Four
INSIDE, ST. PATRICK’S WAS DAMP AND GLOOMY, with floors so highly polished they must have been responsible for many more fallen women.
There were smirking pictures of Mary, who had got a child without you-know-what, and, in niche after niche, life-size bleeding statues of the Sacred Heart. Cruelest of all were the crucifixes everywhere. Their purpose was to tell the girls who, after all, had brought miracles into the world, that they had done this terrible thing: put nails through the hands and feet of Jesus Christ.
One heavily pregnant girl was on her knees shining the already shiny corridor tiles. Did they want the poor kid to eject her baby there and then into the bucket?
A Dublin girl called Shelagh, chief of the inmates, led me to the mother superior’s office. It was comfortable, with soft green lights and only one religious icon. The superior was a small lady with rimless glasses sitting in a big chair at a big desk. In no way judgmental, she told me my duties, the pass I would need if I wanted to go out for a few hours. “Back before dark, of course.” In particular, she explained that the babies were kept in one place to facilitate care and feeding arrangements.
Shelagh showed me to my room at the top of four flights of stairs. My left hip hurt, making it hard for me to move. Even when I was pregnant I walked more easily. I was sharing with three others. One of them was Morag, the girl whom I had seen polishing the floor. She was from Monaghan, only nineteen years old, with black hair, white skin, green eyes, and freckles. We were separated from each other by a curtain over the entry to our own dark wooden cubicles, each with a picture of the Sacred Heart on one wall. The bed was hard and there was a tiny attic window.
The nursery was in an annex and could be reached only by going down, along a corridor, and up more steps. It was as bright as a greenhouse. The room was decorated with plants and ferns, the walls were a pale yellow, and the cots, though of iron, were painted white. There were about thirty-five babies there at that time, all in spotless white gowns. We were only allowed to see our babies when the bell rang at mealtimes. I could not breast-feed Peter, and I pointed out that he was not taking the bottle feeds. No one listened to me. Was I not in St. Pat’s because of my stupidity?
To reach the laundry, we had to go into the courtyard and up more steps. It was insufferably hot because of the huge steel sinks and scrubbing boards. An elderly nun, she must have been over seventy, slight of build and with a beautiful face, took my hand and stroked it. I wondered what the hell she wanted.
Her name was Sister Ignatius. Christ, I thought, the men have taken over the women even inside a convent. They give them men’s names. Why? I guess to stress the fact that male clerics can do to them what they like. And these male-dominated women were in charge of the fallen girls of St. Pat’s!
The next day, I was in the downstairs corridor, which Morag was again polishing. Sister Ignatius appeared and tapped her on the shoulder with “Get up, my dear.” Having heaved her to her feet, she led Morag by the arm to a bench.
“You sit here, darlin’, and have a rest.”
“But, Sister,” Morag said, in her northern accent, “the bursar will give out to me if I don’t finish soon.”
Sister Ignatius merely winked at her, walked over to Morag’s bucket, knelt down next to it, and proceeded to polish the floor herself.
Within minutes, a senior though younger nun named Sister Vincent appeared, looking very agitated. “Will you get up, Sister Ignatius.”
She just went on polishing the floor.
Sister Vincent, the bursar, hissed, “You are setting a very bad example. Get up.”
The old nun did not so much as move a muscle on her face. In a fury, Sister Vincent said more loudly, “Did you hear me, Sister Ignatius?”
She looked up very sweetly and whispered, “No.”
As the bursar stomped off to get help, Sister Ignatius went on calmly polishing the floor.
I was ashamed. I had done an unforgivable thing: I had lumped all the nuns together. A victim myself, I was prepared to victimize everyone else. That nun must have been under a Gestapo-like discipline for fifty years and she had kept her freedom. Her inner voice drowned out all the commands of petty tyrants around her. Under her kittenish exterior, she was an almighty rebel, a rebel for her God. Through that little word no, I was able to see in miniature the whole history of her life, its struggles, its persecutions, its tiny but terrific triumphs.
Maybe this was why the Catholic Church produces so many saints: it makes life so damned hard for everybody. Maybe the place was stacked with saints, I don’t know.
Sister Ignatius helped me when the girls stole four of my best blouses. In the laundry, she took me by the arm into a quiet place and, stroking my hand, said: “They mean you no harm.”
“What would they do to me if they did?” I said angrily.
“Annie, Annie, they’re nice girls in trouble.”
“Those nice girls stole from me.”
“Stole?” Sister Ignatius looked really puzzled. “Borrowed. They have nothing, you see. They think this rich American girl can get replacements any time she wants.”
“Is that borrowing, Sister?”
“Sure, I’ll get them back for you.”
She did get three blouses back. That wonderful lady could have persuaded Satan to part with damned souls.
I began to sweat badly at night; Peter had a rash, would not drink milk, and lost weight. It seemed as if we both were doomed. I could not have walked without Morag and Shelagh, also heavily pregnant, supporting me. Sister Ignatius was right. These were marvelous girls victimized by life.
On my fourth day, I received the summons. Bishop Casey had appeared.
When I made it downstairs, I found him in the corridor, the center of attention. The sisters were practically gobbling him up as they knelt to kiss his ring and “My Lord” him. They kissed that ring as if they really loved it.
When I was at my sourest, I remembered Sister Ignatius and thumped my breast. She would make ten of me. I was in my dowdy dress while Eamonn was in clerical harness, with a choirboy innocence of face, talking charmingly to the sisters as if they were mental defectives. I could see them thinking, “Isn’t his Lordship a marvel taking the trouble to come all this way to see a fallen woman?” How were they to know he had come from Kerry to force his mistress to give up his son? I could have told them I had kissed more than his ring; I had kissed him and he had kissed me all over. I had breastfed their bishop.
These things needed to be said, but who would have believed me?
As he dismissed his admirers with a final glossy cock-a-doodle-doo of a benediction, I almost expected him to say to me, “Follow me, my dear.” He led me into a dark room furnished with cheap crucifixes and holy pictures. No economy spared.
Had I not known what he did for a living I would have wondered how Eamonn was always available when he was not needed. I wanted to go down on my knees and kiss his ring for fun, but the fun days were over. I didn’t feel well and he looked awful. Peering into his hollowed eyes, I softened and asked myself, Eamonn, what have we done to each other?
How could he let me, who had shared his bed, stay with our son in a place like this? A home for Unmarried Mothers! Where were the Unmarried Fathers? Surely not all the babies in this place were conceived by the Holy Ghost? Unmarried Fathers must exist, but they didn’t have to have their noses rubbed in it. They were invisible, like Eamonn. Not a line on his belly, a bead of milk on his breasts, not a mark of paternity on him. Was this why men were such hypocrites?
Sure, I was bitter but I didn’t want to be. I had no regrets. I had my je
wel, my son. I only wanted to be left alone. Which is one thing Eamonn could not allow. He had too much riding on this. Peter was his Sword of Damocles, and Eamonn was shrewd enough to know that kids grow up asking dangerous questions like “Who is my father?”
Feeling as menaced as was Herod by a baby, Eamonn began again with his demands that I give Peter up. Oh, what had happened to my jazzman who had created worlds for me on mountaintops that he was reduced to playing a single mournful note.
I was a chancer, he was saying, I was selfish, unstable, concerned only with myself. I almost laughed—it was so like a cracked record, his demand and my refusal. This could go on till we were both senior citizens. Unless he forged my signature on the adoption papers he waved in front of me—and, in my present mood, I would not have put forgery past him—Peter was mine forever.
In my room I had Peter’s birth certificate. Its aim was to prove he was a person in his own right, with a country and parents he could be proud of. But under the heading “Name and surname of Father,” there was a blank. This nameless unmarried Father, without any acknowledged rank or profession, who even had the same big birthmark as his son, waived his paternal rights. All but one. The right to take the boy away from plain Anne Murphy and give him to strangers who, he presumed—such insolence! —would be more capable and more worthy than she. How he despised this woman who was once good enough to grace his bed.
The irony was: he could claim his right to dispose of Peter only if he put his name on that certificate. The last thing he would do. I had read that St. Augustine had a son in sin, yet he called him Adeodatus, Gift of God, and was proud of him. Who did Eamonn think had given him Peter that he wanted him adopted? Oh, why couldn’t he see that through his Gift of God he would live on after his death not in some distant heaven but here on earth, forever? The more he talked, the more I thought, When will you get it into your bead that I love you but I love Peter more?
