Maggie's Breakfast

by Gabriel Walsh

  “You’re walkin’ very slow, Ma.”

  “Ah, leave me alone and don’t you be bothered with telling me how to walk. Go on. Walk ahead of me if you want,” she said, pulling at the old corset she’d insisted on wearing.

  “If you could walk a bit faster, Ma?” I said impatiently.

  “In the name of God will ya leave me alone! I’m doin’ me best! I’m thinkin’ I’ll have to go somewhere else before I go to the hotel.”

  “Where?” For a moment or two I thought my mother was going to run away from me. The fear that we weren’t that close to each other again surfaced in my mind and I couldn’t keep my teeth from rattling. “What are you talkin’ about, Ma?”

  My mother didn’t answer but she increased her pace considerably.

  When we got to Clarendon Street, a side lane off Grafton Street, my mother decided she had to stop at the nearby church to say a few prayers. I was hoping she’d walk past the church but she didn’t. She stopped and blessed herself.

  “I want to go in here and light a candle for you, son.”

  I was getting closer to fainting. I worried that once she entered the church she might stay there all day praying to every saint she had known since childhood. Clarendon Street had twice as many statues and paintings of Jesus and his apostles as any church in Dublin. It was also my mother’s favourite church to do the Stations of the Cross. She even knew the cleaning women who swept the floor and polished the marble on the altar. If she got into a conversation with any one of them l knew we’d be late for our appointment. I kept my mouth shut and entered the church with her.

  Inside the church my mother Molly instantly blessed herself and knelt down in subservience. After a few minutes she got up from her kneeling position and walked from painting to painting of Jesus carrying his cross to Calvary. It was something she had done every day of her life since at least the age of seven. At each depiction of Jesus my mother made the Sign of the Cross and mumbled a few prayers to herself. She talked and prayed to the paintings as if they were human. She then moved to the image of Jesus where the blood was dripping from his head. A terrible expression of pain came upon her face. It was as if the man in the picture had come alive and had recognised my mother. This was the man she knew most. The way Jesus shouldered the cross mesmerised my mother. The admiration expressed in her eyes seemed liberating. The suffering and the depiction of torture seemed reassuring to her as she stared upwards.

  I remained seated in the back row while my mother walked up to the altar to light a candle. After dropping a few pennies into the collection box she took a small white candle and lit it from one that was still holding a flame. The flickering light from the candle reflected off the brown painted robes of Saint Francis of Assisi. My mother looked up into the painted eyes of the saint and called out something that sounded half-hymn and half-lament. I had never experienced so directly the sense of concentration and commitment she had for the Church and its saints and statues. It was as though she knew them personally and talked to them as if they were old friends who knew everything about her life. I realised there and then that being my mother was only part of her existence. She had another family. They had blue, purple and golden robes and they were made of stone. She believed, lived and belonged in this world of devotion. Christ with the thorns on his head and the blood dripping down his face was an image she identified with. The burden of carrying the cross on his shoulder was a reminder and an inspiration to her. I had not known the depth or meaning of the religion I was born into.

  I had been schooled in the religion of pain and self-denial. If I hurt my knees after falling on the ground or if my lip bled from bumping into a table or a chair I’d try to convince myself that I didn’t feel the pain. When I walked around in my bare feet in the cold during winter I’d believe that the saints in Heaven were watching me and cheering me on. When it came to having thoughts in my head, particularly sensual or pleasurable ones, simple and innocent as they might be, I’d slap my forehead to chase and frighten them away. But today when I saw my mother in the chapel I felt that there was something to my religion that I had not been taught. I sensed a strange peace while observing her losing all sense of her physical self. She seemed more at home in this house of worship than she did in our own little house in Inchicore. She was at peace. As she moved from each image and statue of the saints and Jesus she talked as if they were all friends meeting again. In some ways I was proud and envious at the same time. I felt a tinge of jealousy towards the statues and the religious paintings.

  After making the Sign of the Cross my mother turned away from the altar and walked down the aisle again towards me.

  “You’re blessed now, Gabriel,” she said with a warm smile on her face. She felt better and for the first time in a very long time I began to relax.

  * * *

  As we stood outside the front door of the Shelbourne Hotel, Molly without notice abruptly turned and ran across the street. I wanted to faint and watched in wonderment and confusion. My mother had left me again at the time I wanted to leave her the most. I watched her make her way through the traffic as she held her hat on her head with one hand and pointed her way with the other in the direction of Stephen’s Green. When she got to the other side of the street she walked into the Green. I followed her but she kept walking until she stopped and sat down on a bench in front of the duck pond. She was staring straight out across the park, not looking at anything in particular. I sat down next to her and kept my eyes on the ducks swimming about in the pond. I was afraid to open my mouth in case she’d argue with me. I was even more afraid that she’d jump up from the bench and leave me there alone.

  The complicated feelings I had for my mother ran through my veins faster than the blood in them. I thought of the countless times she and I had sat silently side by side throughout my life. In my early childhood she gave me strange looks that made me feel she didn’t really know me. At least half the time I thought she was thinking I had done something bad or wrong. There were times when I wished I had done something that annoyed her or made her angry. I was willing to confess to anything. Even to things I didn’t do or have any part in. I felt if I was accused of having dropped one of the many holy statues in the house or of making a scratch in her mahogany crucifix that was nailed on the inside of the kitchen door, I’d at least be able to talk to her and she’d get to know me better. Sometimes, sitting by the fireplace, she’d look at me as if to ask me what I was doing sitting next to her. But, for the most part, whenever I sat next to her around the fireplace or at the dinner table she appeared not to notice me. Sometimes I thought it was because she didn’t have enough wood or coal to heap on the fire or enough food to feed the whole family. Or maybe because there wasn’t enough paraffin oil left in the dented tin can to put in the lamps that lighted the house, or any coins to insert into the gas meter to keep the gaslight on so that we could all see each other’s faces around the table at night and have boiled potatoes for dinner and stale fried bread for breakfast. But deep down I sensed there was something awry in our relationship.

  I don’t know how many times I tried to get her attention and tell her about myself – such as when I sewed buttons on my trousers or stitched a hole in the pocket of my jacket or brought home the odd turnip and head of cabbage that rolled off the vegetable cart on the street. Whenever I attempted to declare my presence to her I was ignored and my small accomplishments were dismissed. Occasionally I witnessed my mother complimenting my brothers and sisters and placing an affectionate hand on their heads as if she was blessing and anointing them as her own. At times I would purposefully sit close to her and hope she’d place her hand on my head and make a connection that made me feel I belonged to her and that our small house and the world outside were safe places to live in. But she never did. There were times when I even thought that I was an invisible person and didn’t exist at all. When she sensed that I wanted to make contact with her she’d begin humming a song she knew in her childhood. Singing songs
from her youth was a habit she had whenever she felt angry or annoyed at my father. The songs more than likely took her back to a time when she was young, free, innocent and single. Certainly a time before she met my father and got married. The most frequent thing she ever said to me, and she said it repeatedly was: “You’re just like him! You’re the spitting image of your father!” Of her ten children – I was the seventh – biology and timing dictated that I was the child who most resembled my father. Apparently I not only looked like him, I evidently – and unbeknownst to myself – behaved like him as well. Unwittingly I kept alive for my mother what she considered to be the biggest regret and mistake of her life: her marriage. As far as she was concerned I was too much like the man she married and my existence and presence appeared to impede her evolving retreat from him. Whatever the dynamics of it all, I had always felt I was born into enemy territory.

  We sat there on the bench together without a word, both of us staring ahead at the duck pond. At last I ventured to look at her. She had an expression on her face as if the Sacrament of Communion was stuck to the roof of her mouth. I didn’t recognise her. I thought she was leaving the world, with everybody and me in it. Her face was so expressionless I got frightened.

  I called out, “Ma?”

  In a second she was changed again. She had come back from somewhere holy and religious. The devotion she had for the Church had conquered her and it wasn’t going to let her go. She started to pray again. “Dear Father above, come down and take me from here. I’m not able for it any more. I’m not able for it!” This day like every other day of her life she was surrendering to the reality of her existence and appeared not to be present in front of me at all. After what might have been the longest minute in the history of my life she spoke again.

  “I’m not goin’ in that place. I’m too poor a woman. Don’t ask me, son. Don’t ask me. I’m too poor a woman.”

  I didn’t answer. I couldn’t answer. I began to cry. The meeting at the hotel was the most important time of my sixteen-year-old life and I was beginning to think it wasn’t going to happen. It appeared the world was about to fall in on me at the moment I wanted it to change the most.

  “Go over, son, and ask the ladies if they’d mind comin’ over here. Would ya do that? Would ya do that for me?”

  I stopped sobbing for a moment or two and began to seek a way to make my mother comfortable.

  “Ma, can’t you just come over just for a minute?”

  “I’m sorry, son. I’m sorry. Look at me. Look at the ould dress I’m wearing. I’d be better off sittin’ here,” she said, wiping away the tears from her eyes. She then started to talk without looking directly at me. “I’m sorry, son. I’m sorry! I couldn’t go into the hotel with what I’m wearin’. Look at me. Look how I look.”

  By this time I had forgotten about the old dress and the twine holding up her stockings. Her face seemed open and clear and her eyes were actually sparkling. She didn’t look poor any more. The old hat on her head actually looked good on her. It had a small bird’s feather sticking out of it and it even looked fashionable. I saw for the first time why my father had married her.

  “You look fine, Ma. Why don’t you come over to the hotel and we can get the meeting over with. Nobody’s going to say a word one way or the other about anything.”

  She leaned back and looked directly at me. “I’d be better off sittin’ here, son,” she said again.

  I placed my hand on top of her head to comfort her. “I’ll ask them to come over here.”

  “You don’t mind, son?”

  “No, Ma. Wait here.”

  I walked across the street to the hotel.

  Mrs. Axe and Maggie Sheridan were sitting in the tea lounge. Maggie stood up as if she was prompted by a moment in some tragic opera.

  “Well, well, well,” she mumbled rapidly and theatrically. She took advantage of any and every moment to display her larger-than-life personality.

  Sitting next to her Mrs. Axe broke into a laugh as if she was enjoying Maggie’s performance. Margaret Sheridan and Ruth Axe were naturally complementary. I’d never seen them not smiling when they were in each other’s company. Maggie and I had a different kind of relationship. In my own pain, sadness and loneliness she felt some kind of kinship and redemption. My silent pain might have been loud to her. At least it surfaced in my eyes and manner no matter how much I ignored or attempted to deny its existence. I didn’t acknowledge loneliness as something strange or unnatural. It was as much a part of me as the colour of my eyes. Loneliness in the Walsh family seemed to be inherited. Maggie Sheridan knew and understood it. Her life forged this kind of ability to express and share something that only pain and loneliness can allow and design. I lived in my own clouds and shadows and only somebody who had travelled that road more and longer than I had could understand it.

  As I stood in front of the two women I blurted out in as nervous a voice as I ever remembered having, “My mother won’t come in!”

  “What’s the matter?” Mrs. Axe asked.

  “I don’t know. She came to the front door but she wouldn’t come in. I think she’s afraid.”

  “Afraid of what?”

  “She’s just afraid. She’s not used to places like this. She feels bad or something.”

  “Poor woman! I know exactly what she’s going through. Where is she now?” Maggie responded.

  I quickly answered. “She’s across the street in Stephen’s Green.”

  Mrs. Axe stood up and walked to the window. “I think we should go over there to her,” she said.

  “I absolutely agree, Ruth. Why don’t we?” Miss Sheridan got up from her chair and started walking towards the lobby.

  When we got to the park bench my mother was sitting as still as any of the statues in the park and was staring at the ducks swimming about in the pond. I looked down at her.

  “Ma. We’re here. This is my ma,” I said to the ladies. “Ma, this is Miss Sheridan and Mrs. Axe.”

  My mother turned her eyes away from the pond and made eye contact with the two women. For a moment or two it seemed like no one knew what to say.

  Then Mrs. Axe broke the silence.

  “Well, finally we meet,” she said with her usual warm smile. “I hope we didn’t keep you waiting too long.”

  In full voice my mother answered, “Not at all, ma’am. I wasn’t feeling well. I‘m sorry I couldn’t step into the hotel to meet you, ma’am.”

  “Ah, it’s a lot better out here in the fresh air,” Mrs. Axe responded with an encouraging tone in her voice. She and Maggie then sat down next to Molly.

  “So you’re Gabriel’s mother?” Mrs. Axe reached out and held my mother’s hand as if to reassure her that everything was okay.

  Miss Sheridan was carrying a small bouquet of flowers and a photo album. The flowers she handed to my mother. “For you, Mrs. Walsh.”

  My mother looked the two elegantly dressed women over. “Are ya goin’ to take him to America?” she asked with a tinge of nervous laughter in her voice.

  Mrs. Axe and Miss Sheridan joined her and encouraged the laughter. I sensed the ice melting and sat down on the garden railing next to the bench.

  “You always wanted to go to America, son, didn’t ya?” my mother said as she looked towards me.

  “I think it wouldn’t do him any harm if he got the chance to go to America,” Miss Sheridan responded. “Mrs. Axe will make sure that everything will be fine with him.” She then showed a few photos of herself to my mother. “This is me. I don’t suppose you ever heard of me. Anyway, why should you? I’m from Mayo.”

  “Me son’s been talkin’ about you from mornin’ till night, ma’am.”

  “I hope he said nice things,” Mrs. Axe quickly said.

  “Oh, he did! He’d only say nice things, ma’am!”

  “I’m sorry we didn’t meet you sooner, Mrs. Walsh,” said Miss Sheridan. “It’s really my fault. You should have more time to consider everything. I’ve been running back
and forth and I hardly know where I am these days. I promise you Gabriel will not be disappointed if he decides to go to New York.”

  My mother then looked at me with tears in her eyes. By the way she was biting her lower lip I knew she was holding back a lot of pain.

  “D’ya want to go, son? Are ya sure about it now? Tell your mother the truth! You want to leave home?” She leaned over the bench as if to emphasise the importance of the question, not just for herself but for me as well. She then stretched out her arm and placed her hand on mine. Her fingers and skin were all worn-out looking. Her fingernails had little black specks of dirt under them.

  I took her hand in mine. I realised then that I hadn’t been this close to my mother in years and the experience of holding her hand was something I wasn’t used to. My mother’s hands had been her energy and her wings all her life. She depended on them like no other part of her body. What she wasn’t able to achieve with her mind or even with her prayers she could accomplish with her hands. All her life she scrubbed, cleaned and washed everything in front of her with them. The front steps of Hume Street Hospital had been washed and scrubbed by my mother’s hands when she was just a young girl. Her hands had held each other in prayer as she believed that she would find peace and complete happiness when they could no longer be joined and held together in prayer. They were so over-used and depended on, they looked like they had never been cared for or held affectionately.

  As I continued to hold onto my mother’s hand I became afraid to look at her. I felt I would back off and run away crying and even frightened. As I struggled to hold back my feelings, my mother’s voice broke into my thoughts.