About Matilda

by Bill Walsh

  Sometimes I sit on my own in the green shed and wonder if any of my life is real or is God just testing me. I wonder if the people around me exist when I don’t see them and where do they go? Do they just vanish like my mother? Are my brothers and sisters really my brothers and sisters? Do they feel like I feel? Hurt like I hurt? Cry like I cry? When they laugh, do they feel the same way I do when I laugh?

  Thinking about it gives me a headache. It’s too big for me. It’s like trying to think about algebra. Sometimes I think God is like Santa Claus. There’s a different one in every shop and none of them ever comes to the convent.

  Halloween night, my belly is stuffed with apples and nuts and Pippa gives my shoulder a shake in the bed. Come on, Matilda. We’ll sneak over to Trinity Park to play spin the bottle. You can see her blue eyes twinkle in the moonlight and I know she’s excited.

  Since when did you start kissin’, Pippa?

  Never mind.

  Come on tell us.

  I went with Mona a few times.

  Why don’t you go with her now, then?

  I don’t know where she is.

  Well, tough. You’re not usin’ me just ’cos Mona isn’t here.

  Pippa doesn’t answer. She ties her blonde hair in a ponytail and pulls the blankets off me but I tell her I’m asleep and I don’t want to go spinning stupid bottles and kissing stupid youngfellas with spotty faces tryin’ to put their hands up me jumper.

  They won’t try puttin’ their hands up your jumper, Matilda, ’cos there’s fuck all up there. Ah, come on girl, it’s only kissin’. Just don’t let ’em put their tongue in your mouth. ’Cos I told you already, that’s how you get babies.

  Don’t be so stupid, Pippa. I seen the girls down in the toilets bent over the toilet bowl with their knickers around the ankles and the workmen queuing up outside the door.

  Liar.

  Suit yourself.

  Pippa doesn’t want to hear anymore. She just wants to go over to Trinity Park. I pull the blankets over my head again but she still torments me. Come on, Matilda. Don’t be a scaredy cat. You have to do it sometime.

  I’m not going.

  Scaredy cat.

  Don’t care, I’m not going.

  Scaredy cat.

  All right. I’ll go.

  I climb out of bed, get dressed and we creep down the corridor. From the bathroom window we can see bonfires lit all over the city. We climb out the window. A few windows further on the girls from the group next door are swinging from bed sheets tied to the heating pipes. We shin down the drainpipe and climb out over the wall just as the fire truck roars past with its blue light flashing and bells ringing. Across the street, under the yellow light of a lamp pole, a gang of boys and girls from the estate are puffing cheap Albanys they bought in Kennedy’s shop after one of them asked a passing grown-up, Hey, Mister, will yeh get us five fags? Some do, others say, Piss off, yeh little bollox.

  A boy in a tartan jacket offers me a drag. Pippa says, Go on, Matilda, but I won’t because of the running and Pippa doesn’t push it. She knows it’s a waste of time.

  Young kids in masks and costumes go from door to door collecting money and slowly our group moves from the lamp pole and heads for the field behind the houses. There’re about ten of us. We strike matches till we get to the top of the lane. The iron gate is cold and rattles under us when we climb and once we’re in the field we stand and wait for the light of the moon to come from behind the clouds to show the way to the chapel ruin where the grown-ups can’t see us. A dog howls.

  I’m goin’ back, Pippa.

  It’s only a dog, Matilda.

  I know it’s a dog. I’m not deaf. You’re mixin’ me up with Mona.

  Very funny, says Pippa.

  Yeah, well you asked for it.

  Would you two ever shut the fuck up!

  Mind your own business.

  The damp from the grass seeps through our sandals and when we get to the ruin we sit in a circle around a small fire we light from bits of twigs and papers we find.

  The empty milk bottle spins and clinks on the concrete floor and I want to go home again but the bottle is slowing. It passes Pippa, her blue eyes glowing in the firelight. Slower again, passing the girl with the ponytail. It rattles a bit, then stops, pointing to me.

  I have to kiss George O’Brien. His mother scalps him to save money on haircuts so he wears a wool hat with a pom-pom and he’s the spottiest youngfella in Trinity Park. No, the world. He’s thirteen and I wonder if you can kiss a boy who’s thirteen when you’re only ten.

  Pippa is laughing her head off telling me, Go on, Matilda.

  I’m not kissin’ him, Pippa. Fuck that. Take that mask off a your head, boy.

  I’m not wearin’ a mask, Matilda.

  Could a fooled me.

  Everyone shouts, Go on, Matilda. My face is on fire. I lean forward and a tongue rushes at me from the firelight.

  Put that tongue back in your head, boy. I’m warnin’ yeh.

  Scaredy cat, scaredy cat.

  Pippa says, Thought you said nothing could happen to you over tongues, Matilda.

  Something’ll happen to him if he doesn’t put it back in his gob.

  The tongue goes back in his mouth and I lean forward. I close my eyes and my mouth. I feel him close. I hear him breathe. His lips touch mine. They’re soft, warm, minty. It only lasts a second. I’d a done it for longer.

  9

  We’ve just got back from Christmas in our grandmother’s house when a black car with white tyres, a real oldie like you see in gangster films, parks in the green shed beside the nuns’ blue mini-bus. A purple-faced man carrying a brown leather briefcase steps out and looks down, checking his shoes haven’t been dirtied. He’s dressed in a blue suit and blue tie over a yellow shirt and he’s wearing gold glasses. Nobody runs over. He doesn’t look like the kind of man you run over to. He stands there for a minute watching us play ball, then walks past us and goes inside to the convent. I see him again in the evening walking around the playground with Reverend Mother and Reverend Mother doesn’t come to the playground unless there’s something big going on.

  We’re all trying to find out who he is but Gabriel won’t say and you’d never know where you’d meet him. At the back of the chapel in mass, walking down a corridor, peeking out a window at us in the playground and then writing stuff into a notebook. I’m certain he’s a spy only I don’t know who’d be spying on us. The big girls say he’s from the lunatic asylum. I don’t know what’s going on. Every night at bedtime we gather round Gabriel in the corridor and it takes days for her to give in. She’s not getting out of here until she does. Even the toddlers are pulling at her black skirts, though they haven’t a clue what’s going on, but if it’s something we want to know then it’s something they want to know too, because you can’t have secrets in here, even from toddlers. Gabriel tells us the Purple-Faced man will be here for a week and each of us will see him in her office, separately.

  We complain. No way, Mother, you’re not puttin’ us in a room with a looneytoon.

  Stop that silly talk. Mister O’Donovan is a respectable man. Saturday morning, leave your clothes in the kitchen and be ready when you’re called.

  You mean all our clothes, Mother?

  Down to your underwear.

  I am scared. I don’t want to be in a room alone with a stranger, even if he’s not a lunatic.

  Saturday morning, I’m sitting at the kitchen table with Lucy, Pippa and Holly Green from the group next door. My jeans are fired over the back of the chair I’m sitting on. There’s a pound note in the back pocket that Uncle Philip slipped me getting out of the car when nobody was looking. I wasn’t going to take it.

  The room smells of washing-up liquid from Doyler clanking cups in the sink. We’re wearing knickers and vests, except Pippa, who’s wearing a trainer bra and a smile, but she loses the smile when four big girls shout in the window that he’s a dirty bastard and he’ll make us take our knickers off. Do
yler fires her tea towel at the glass.

  I hear yee over there. I know what yee’re up to.

  Pippa asks, Will he Doyler?

  Doyler bends to pick her tea towel off the floor. What’s that, Pippa?

  Make us?

  Make you? Make you what? If those girls try making you do anything you tell me.

  Not them, Doyler. Him.

  Yes, Pippa, it would be a sin.

  Pippa coughs. The pink going from her cheeks and that grey look she gets when her asthma comes on. Gabriel glides in from the corridor clapping her hands and tells us to wait outside her office. I don’t know what to do with the pound. I can’t leave it in my pocket or it’ll be robbed, or, worse, Gabriel might find it and ask how I got it and why didn’t your brothers and sisters get a pound too? Are you doing something you shouldn’t be doing? Can you answer me that, Matilda?

  Lucy is first in and I lean against the wall with Pippa and Holly Green. Holly is about twelve. I don’t really know her that much apart from the playground. She’s small and wide and when she walks her knees don’t bend. Her arms don’t bend much either. She always reminds me of Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz. I had a fight with her once but I can’t remember why. I think it was just because she was in the group next door and we had nothing better to do. She’s making faces at me and if she doesn’t stop she’ll be in another fight. Gabriel comes out from her office and sits in the chair in the bay window clacking her rosary beads and mumbling her prayers. The watery sunlight comes through the glass and it’s like she’s sitting in a grotto. The big girls at the window behind her make faces, trying to worry us over knickers. Pippa is behind me snapping her bra straps and there’s a worried look on her face. I’d ask Gabriel if we really have to take our knickers off but she’d box me on the head for interrupting the Sacred Mysteries. There’s nothing to do but wait and worry until Lucy comes out and Gabriel brings Holly Green into her office. Pippa and me gather round Lucy.

  What’d he do to you, Lucy? Pippa asks.

  I had to put somethin’ in a hole.

  That finishes Pippa. She collapses against the wall, clasping her throat and trying to breathe. Lucy runs away down the hall. I want to run for help but Gabriel comes out of her office with Holly Green and the Purple-Faced man. He takes one look at Pippa and tells Gabriel that Pippa is to go straight to the Infirmary. Gabriel brings Pippa down the corridor to find a nun to take Pippa to the Infirmary in the mini-bus and the Purple-Faced man goes back into the office and closes the door. I grab Holly by the arm.

  What’d he do to you?

  She sticks her tongue out and tells me to mind my own business.

  Make me.

  She tries to pull her arm away and I tell her I’m not messing.

  So?

  She knows I won’t fight in here. You’d never know who’d turn up when there’s nobody to do look-out.

  Your father’s an alco, Holly Green.

  You can’t be talking about fathers. At least you don’t see my father in here killin’ us over spellin’s and shit.

  He would if he could get up offa the footpath.

  It doesn’t matter what I say. She has it over me. I let her go because I don’t want her to know how scared I am of the Purple-Faced man. She pulls her arm away like she made me leave her go. People are fuckers when they have it over you.

  Gabriel comes back and sends Holly down to the kitchen to get dressed and go back to her own group and sends me inside.

  The Purple-Faced man is sitting at the polished table reading one of my school copybooks. He has a thing around his neck for listening to my heart but I’m certain he can hear it hammering away in my chest.

  I stand in front of him with my arms folded and my legs crossed and Uncle Philip’s pound note clenched in my fist. I look over my shoulder. The key is in the lock. Gabriel never leaves the key in the lock! He points to the empty chair in the corner and tells me to sit. I sit facing him and feel my arse clench on the edge of the plastic seat. He stands up and walks towards me and tells me to lift my vest. I keep my eyes to the floor. He lifts it himself. His hands are cold and I grip the sides of my knickers. The drapes are open and a sunbeam lights up the face of the Blessed Virgin Mary praying in the opposite corner.

  Breathe in.

  Hail Mary full of grace the Lord is with thee blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit…

  Breathe out.

  … Holy Mary Mother of God pray…

  In again. No, in, I said.

  … now and at the hour of our death.

  And out.

  He spreads wooden bricks on the round table, squares, rectangles, triangles and circles.

  I’d like you to fit these bricks to the matching shapes on the board here on the table, Matilda.

  He takes a stopwatch from his trouser pocket and sits back in his chair looking at it. I won’t get off the seat. The minute I touch those bricks he’s bound to see the pound note in my hand. He’d ask where I got it. He’d be on to me. I try not to look at the watch. He wants to hypnotize me so I’ll tell him everything. I saw it on television.

  Come on, Matilda. I don’t have all day. There’s nothing to be frightened of. Is there anything on your mind? Anything I should know. Have you problems?

  Problems? I’m living in here and he’s asking me stupid questions like that.

  He leans forward on his elbows and I feel the cheeks of my arse stick to the plastic seat and every time I move it’s like pulling off a sticking plaster that’s been there for a month. I turn my face one way but my eyes glance the other, towards him. He still has the stopwatch in his hand waiting for me to either put the bricks in the hole or talk to him, but I can’t talk. My mind is blank. You can’t talk to grown-ups. No matter what you tell them it’s never enough. Sooner or later I’d end up telling him about Uncle Philip and then I’d really be in trouble. I’d be sent to a reformatory school or out on the street with no place to go.

  The Purple-Faced man leaves the stopwatch on the table and writes something in his notebook that’s on the desk and tells me to go. Send in Sister Gabriel.

  I wait in the hallway on my own until Gabriel comes out. I’m shaking and my legs are stiff and sore. Through the window I see Pippa being driven away in the mini-bus and a crowd of kids tearing after it. When Gabriel comes out she looks disappointed. She didn’t expect that. It was only a few bricks, Matilda. Mister O’Donovan is concerned. Your father will have to be told. It’ll be up to him to have the final say.

  What’s my father got to do with it, Mother?

  She looks down at me like she’s waiting for me to say why I didn’t put the bricks in the hole. She looks serious. But the pound is sticking to my palm and I just want to go.

  Can I go out to play now, Mother?

  She says I might as well.

  In a few days the Purple-Faced man leaves. He’s left tablets behind and every morning we queue by the kitchen sink so Doyler can check we swallow them. In a week the whole convent has gone quiet. Mona hasn’t thrown a tantrum or there hasn’t been a fight. I’m sure it’s the tablets. They’re trying to poison us. Kill us off because nobody cares if we’re alive or dead anyway. Every morning at breakfast I put the blue pill under my tongue and when Doyler squints inside my mouth she says, Good girl. We all do the same. Pippa is useless at pretending so she swallows it whole but she’s able to bring it back up again, still dry, no missing bits or anything. We flush them down the toilet until Sheamie says he can get twenty pence each for them in the boys’ school. He can save to go find our mother.

  Twenty pence. That’s the new money. Sheamie says it’s because we joined Europe. I know nothing about Europe and Sheamie don’t know much more.

  In a few weeks everything goes back to normal. Mona throws her tantrums, there’re loads of fights in the playground and Sheamie is saving for his escape. In a year he’ll be fourteen. He’ll have enough to go to England where nobody knows or cares where you came from and he’ll get a job on a buildi
ng site where he’ll save to go to Australia to find our mother in no time. She’s the only one who can get us out of here. I tell him don’t be stupid, Sheamie. The gardaí will find you. But he takes no notice. I want to tell him he shouldn’t have to look for our mother she should just come back to look for us. Only I don’t have the heart to tell him. I’m not even sure I mean it. It’s just that I don’t want him to leave. I don’t want to lose a brother as well.

  Holly Green is standing in front of me at Communion and her head is shaking. Like I said, Holly is in Sister Ellen’s group so maybe she shakes her head all the time. Sister Pascal is playing the organ like she’s Vincent Price in a habit, and the penguins and the laundry women have received their host and are either kneeling in their pews or walking from the altar rail with their hands clasped and heads bowed. I kneel at the altar and watch Father Devlin walking along the rail giving out the host.

  Body of Christ.

  Amen.

  It’s nearly my turn when Holly, who’s just received her host, jumps up screaming. There’s a mouse, look, a mouse. There he is. Get him. None of us can see a mouse and, even if we could, we couldn’t run or scream because we’re in chapel and, mouse or no mouse, we finish Communion and the penguins will sort the mouse out later. Two nuns grab Holly by the arms and drag her up the aisle trying to get her outside.

  Mouse!

  Come along, Holly. Come along.

  Mouse!

  I wonder why Holly’s gone mental. And at Communion of all times. We stopped taking the tablets. Maybe they’re putting it in something else? Maybe they’re putting it in the host. That’s it. They haven’t poisoned us with the tablets so now they’re putting it in the host.

  Father Devlin is standing in front of me with the chalice in one hand and the Body of Christ in the other.

  Body of Christ, he says.

  Mouse!

  I don’t want to take the Body of Christ. I don’t want to die before I see my mother again. I don’t want to end up in the asylum and come back with my jaw wobbly and eyeballs fluttering. I have to do something, but Father Devlin forces the host past my lips before I get the chance to think. It feels round and dry in my mouth. I try to wriggle it under my tongue but I can’t let it touch my teeth because that’s a mortal sin. I turn from the altar trying to look calm and holy walking back to my seat while all the time I’m begging, Please, God, don’t break up.