Mammy was waiting outside afterwards, and she gave me the biggest smile I had ever seen on her face when she pulled me back out the door. ‘Let’s go, Cynthia!’ she said, linking her arm through mine and taking my weight. She practically carried me home, and threw me back in bed like a sack of dirty laundry.
I blacked out the second my head hit the pillow. When I woke up I thought I’d had a nightmare. I could see the candles, the sweaty legs and ugly skin, and I could hear the men’s menacing laughter. I touched my face and legs and arms in disbelief. I remembered the night before, the horror. And I’d missed school. I’d woken up far too late, and nobody had bothered to get me up.
Mammy was still sleeping, so I crept out of the back door and ran to the building, retracing my steps in floods of tears. I sat on the curb outside for hours, until my whole body felt numb. It was as if I was only half there. I stared at every window, wondering if I might see one of the men again. Had it really happened? I knew it had, but I didn’t want to believe it. I wished it was a nightmare. Why was my mind so foggy? My head was pounding. What on earth had gone on? All the black shapes danced around in my head like ghosts, haunting and taunting me.
Someone I recognized rode past on a bike and shouted, ‘Hi, Cynthia! How you doin’?’ That cheery voice snapped me out of my trance, and I suddenly thought, Oh God, Daddy will kill me if he sees me here! I ran straight home, feeling sick with confusion.
It must have been Tuesday now, because when I got home Mammy sent me to the post office for our Children’s Allowance money. It always got paid on the first Tuesday of the month, and it was always my job to collect it then go to the shops.
She said nothing about the night before. I was relieved she seemed to be acting normal and wasn’t cross with me for running out without telling her, but then she said that this month, she had some special instructions for me. She explained that once I’d collected the allowance money, I was to put it away in my pocket and not spend it on shopping like I normally did.
I was confused, because she then went on to tell me what food and drink we needed, and where to fetch it from. She gave me specific addresses I had to visit to collect the shopping, but emphasized that I didn’t need to pay for any of it.
It sounded crazy, but I nodded. It seemed that if I went to the places she told me to and said certain things, phrases Mammy taught me, I’d be given the goods we wanted.
It all seemed very weird, but I didn’t bother arguing. I felt exhausted, and I just nodded and repeated what she told me, as if I was a puppet.
I was glad to get back out of the house. I was concentrating hard, because my head hurt. At the first address, I knocked nervously on the door, not convinced that Mammy’s plan would work. It seemed so odd. The man who answered went all red in the face and twitchy when he saw me. He ushered his wife out the back and, to my amazement, without me saying a word, he gave me a bag of things before shooing me away and slamming his door shut in a hurry. At the second place, the man scowled at me and told me to ‘get lost’ as he thrust a bottle of sherry at me.
A few of the men just looked startled, but they kept their cool. ‘My mammy sent me, she wants to know have you anything going spare?’ I asked. ‘My mammy said have you anything you’re throwing out?’ They all handed me things, and not one of them asked for any money.
I died with shame on one street, because some of my classmates were passing in their neat clothes and with fancy ribbons in their hair, but I still said my lines. Going home empty-handed was not an option. I was afraid Mammy would explode and hit me, so I had to keep coming out with these embarrassing phrases.
Sometimes all I had to say was: ‘My granny sent me, she wants to know do you have anything for her…’ I wouldn’t even finish my sentence before the men scuttled off to fetch me a bag and send me on my way.
I ended up laden down with food and drink, and sometimes I was also given a thick brown envelope to hand to Mammy or Granny.
I was ordered to go through the strange ritual every day after I had been taken to the scary building.
Eventually, as I stood in front of the men, month after month, watching them squirm, I had to accept that what happened in the scary place was definitely no nightmare. It was very real, because these were the same men who terrified and hurt me in that creepy old building.
Sometimes when I was taken there, I was so drowsy I could barely remember a thing afterwards. Phrases rang in my ears for ages, and I was reminded of them when I least expected it, like when I was sitting in a class or helping change the babies:
‘She’s my favourite! I like her, she’s the best.’ I was always sore and thick-headed for many days afterwards, but the words pierced through the fog, making me tremble and worry. I remembered these words when I faced the men the next day, but they barely spoke to me when I was asking them for my ‘shopping’. It was their turn to be horrified as they thrust out their sweaty hands and sent me on my way with Mammy’s requests.
One night, Mammy came into the creepy building with me. She touched me like some of the men did. I felt so sick, and everything went black. Some time later, I saw she had the biggest bundle of cash in her hand I had ever seen. I was scared to walk beside her when we went home, but I had no choice. ‘Hurry up, Cynthia!’ she scolded. ‘Get a move on!’ My legs felt like lead, and I felt as if I was floating all the way home, with Mammy’s snarling voice pushing me along, warning me not to stop and to just ‘act normal’.
When I gave Granny the brown envelope the next day, she said, ‘Thanks, Cynthia, love,’ and gave me a sweet smile. She took some of the notes out and put them in another envelope, then told me to walk the few miles to Killiney to donate money to the nuns who looked after the African babies.
I thought how kind she was. I knew babies were starving in Africa, because Mother Felicity had told me often enough, pointing at half-eaten sandwiches at school. I knew Granny didn’t have much money, so I thought she was a great lady to make a donation to the black babies.
Around this time, I had my first period.
I was sitting up in bed one Saturday morning and had pulled back the black blanket from the window to let in a shard of light, as I wanted to cut up some paper.
Mammy didn’t allow me to play with scissors, so I’d smuggled a pair upstairs and hidden them under the bedclothes.
Suddenly I felt as if I’d wet myself. I peered tentatively under the blankets, and gasped when I saw fresh blood.
I was very frightened because I thought I’d cut myself badly with the scissors, so I confessed to Mammy what I’d done and she ordered me downstairs to the kitchen sink to wash myself.
I tore up an old rag and mopped up as much blood as I could, but it wouldn’t stop flowing. Now it was dripping down my leg, and I was starting to panic. Where was it coming from?
‘Mammy!’ I screamed. ‘I can’t stop the blood! Please help me!’
‘You must have got your “things”,’ she said in a disinterested voice. ‘Go into your sisters’ drawer and get those things they wear and put one in your knickers.’
I had seen the white towels in my sisters’ room before. I knew that they were some kind of pad you put in your knickers, but my mammy didn’t explain anything to me and I had no idea why I was having ‘things’ or what they were.
I stuffed the pad in my knickers and asked Mammy what I should do next.
She told me I couldn’t take my sisters’ things again, because they paid for them with the money they earned in their factory jobs.
‘Tear up some old rags and put them in your knickers,’ Mammy told me, and never said another word on the matter ever again.
I was only ten-years-old, and every month I felt frightened and upset when I started to bleed, because I had no idea when my ‘things’ would come or how long they would last.
I went rummaging under the stairs for old towels and jumpers to cut up, and I walked around feeling dirtier than ever. Though Mammy never talked about my ‘things’, she seemed to know when I was having them, and every time I was bleeding, she woke me up in my bed at night quite unexpectedly.
The first time it happened, I thought she was taking me to the building, because that was usually the reason she woke me up at night. I immediately started trembling and gasping for air in a panic, but Mammy didn’t drag me out of bed. She raked at my face with her fingernails and bellowed, ‘You’re a whore! You’re a prostitute! You’re a dirty bitch.’
I did feel dirty, but I didn’t know what a whore or a prostitute was. I knew they were bad words, but I didn’t know why
I
was so bad. Mammy did the same thing every time I was bleeding, and it just became part of my routine. ‘Things’ to me meant panicking at the sight of the blood, tearing up old rags and feeling more filthy and uncomfortable than ever, and expecting Mammy to wake me in the night to claw at my face with her fingernails and insult me.
The blood didn’t seem to bother Daddy or anybody else, as the men still touched me down below and carried on hurting me. But it seemed to send Mammy mad.
Maybe she didn’t want me to be a big girl like my sisters. I couldn’t understand her, but I could tell I was growing up.
One day ran into the next. Nothing excited me or surprised me any more. Every day was like a survival exercise. I had to get through it, and then I had to get through the night.
Some days I felt very groggy, too groggy. Mammy was giving me lots of tablets now, and I was even starting to get scared of the food she gave me, in case it was my sandwiches that were making me so groggy I couldn’t remember anything at all. I tried to make my own food, or throw the sandwiches away when Mammy wasn’t looking.
I wondered why I couldn’t be like everyone else. I wanted to grow up faster. I didn’t like being a little girl. The only time I liked it was when I spent time with Granny. I still loved to sit by her legs and listen to her ghost stories.
Sometimes I pretended I was sick just so I could have the day off school and go round to her house, or I would play truant if Mammy wouldn’t let me stay off. Aunt Ann worked during the day, so it was the perfect opportunity to spend uninterrupted time with my lovely, kind Granny.
She told me terrifying stories about the devil sometimes. I sat wide-eyed and open-mouthed with fright as she told me how the devil haunted St Patrick’s Road, which ran alongside her street.
‘A priest used to walk up and down St Patrick’s Road at midnight saying prayers to rid the devil from the roofs of the houses,’ she told me. ‘But the priest mysteriously died on the road one night, and now his ghost walks up and down St Patrick’s Road! If you’re really lucky, Cynthia, you might see the devil and the ghost of the priest!’
I lapped up her stories hungrily, even though they scared me, because at least they let me escape the horrors of my own life for a while.
Chapter 12
Mammy’s Friend
Something snapped in me one night.
I was feeling more angry than terrified when I went to bed. The night before, I had got so sick of what Daddy did to me I had gone downstairs when he finished and told Mammy plainly I didn’t like what Daddy was doing to me ‘down there’. The pain had got so bad I just couldn’t take it any more.
I pushed aside the scary memories I had about what Mammy did to me when she changed the beds, and what she did to me in the building. Whatever she did, she was still my mammy, wasn’t she? So maybe she might just help me after all.
‘Mammy, I have something to tell you. I don’t like what Daddy is doing to me “down there”,’ I said. I had rehearsed what I was going to say about twenty times in my head. I was too embarrassed to talk about ‘private parts’ and, anyway, Mammy was always saying they were filthy bits of my body. But I was sure she would know what I was talking about this time.
She hesitated for a moment, as if thinking about what to say. I willed her to tell me she would stop Daddy hurting me, that she would make sure Daddy never touched me again.
‘Oh, Cynthia!’ she said finally. She had a half-smile on her lips, but her eyes were dead. ‘He’s just rollin’ over drunk in his sleep. Haven’t I already told you that before?’
‘Yes - but that was when I told you I didn’t like what he did in bed,’ I stammered. ‘What I really mean is I don’t like what he does to me...down below.’
‘Rollin’ over drunk,’ she repeated casually. ‘Stop complaining. You’re makin’ trouble.’ My heart went thump. That was the end of the conversation, because Mammy immediately shooed me back up to bed, where I lay fretting and crying, feeling trapped and totally alone.
Now it was the next evening, and I was in the back bedroom, sensing I faced another long night of putting up with pain. I felt very drowsy and tired and fell into a patchy, fear-filled sleep.
Suddenly, I saw a man looming over my bed, I didn’t even realize he was there until it was too late. I snapped open my eyes in terror, smelling danger, and was shocked to see it was a ‘friend’ of Mammy’s I called the thug.
Mammy knew I was particularly scared of this thug, but she had clearly given him free rein to come into my bedroom and do what he liked to me while my daddy was out drinking. I was exhausted mentally as well as physically, but I made an instinctive decision that night.