I needed the toilet too, and before Mammy’s friend came in from the pub I crept downstairs cautiously in the dark.
Feeling my way across the backyard and into the outside toilet, I stepped cautiously through the old wooden door.
As soon as my feet hit the cold concrete of the toilet floor I wet myself. I sat down on the toilet feeling shaken. I’d never wet myself like that before, and it startled me.
My stomach was feeling tight and sore, and I felt weird inside. I had a strange sensation down below too, like something pushing down inside me. It scared me. I wanted my mammy.
I crept inside and went up to Mammy in her chair by the fire.
‘Mammy, I’m sorry,’ I blurted out. ‘Mammy, I’ve wet on the toilet floor. My stomach is sore and...’
Mammy jumped out of her chair, fetched a light bulb and went outside to put it in the toilet. I scuttled after her, thinking it was odd, because we hardly ever had a bulb in the toilet, and Mammy never normally leapt out of her chair like that.
She looked at the floor, and so did I. Now I was even more confused. I hadn’t just wet myself, there was watery-coloured blood on the floor. It frightened me, and I thought Mammy would shout, but she just told me to go into the sitting room and sit by the fire. I sat staring into the fire, feeling mesmerized by the dancing flames.
I knew that Daddy was in the house as I had heard him earlier with Mammy. But it was just Mammy’s voice I heard now. She was muttering under her breath. I blinked sharply, peeling my gaze away from the fire.
I overheard Mammy’s whispered words: ‘We will have to kill her as well as the baby, we will have to kill her in case she tells what happened.’
I looked at the flames dancing in the fire, and heard the words dance in my head. They were all jumbled up and didn’t make sense.
Then it all went very quiet until, moments later, Mammy reappeared. ‘Go upstairs to bed,’ she commanded.
I crept up into the front bedroom, the weight of my tummy slowing me down. I felt very relieved Mammy had stopped hissing and muttering. She had threatened me with all kinds of things in the past, and I knew she didn’t want to actually kill me - did she?
Daddy was in the double bed, and I sat on the floor at the end of it, hunched in the alcove carved in the wall.
And that’s when the pain started.
It got so sharp so quickly I started whimpering and writhing in agony.
I sat there for ages clenching my tummy, and the pain was so bad I couldn’t help making noises, even though I was afraid of Mammy getting cross. I thought I was going to die.
Daddy stirred and sat up in bed when Mammy entered the room. Now they were shouting at each other.
‘Get her!’ he was yelling. ‘Get her, will you!’
He wanted Mammy to stop me writhing and screaming, but I couldn’t stop. The pain was coming faster and faster, tightening my stomach and making me push down below.
It was unbearable. I winced and pushed. It felt like I could push the pain out, and suddenly I was groaning and the pain was nearly out.
The baby was on the floor.
Mammy picked it up, but I barely even looked. I was still in agony and still pushing. There was something else inside me.
Mammy clawed at me, trying to pull out the rest of it. Her touch frightened me. She was touching me between the legs, pulling something out of me, hurting me with her spiky fingernails.
‘Daddy!’ I screamed. Mammy was hurting me. I didn’t like her touching me down there. I wanted her to stop.
Mammy had it now. She pulled it out of me. It was big a lump of blood and veins. I recoiled when I saw it. I was still twisting in agony. I was panic-stricken by this thing that had come out of me. I had no idea what it was. Maybe it really was a freak? It scared me so much.
Daddy appeared above me. He looked stern and incensed. He handed Mammy a pair of scissors and one of her knitting needles.
‘I don’t want them - you do it,’ he warned her.
Mammy thrust them back at Daddy, but he shoved them back in her face.
They were arguing now, hissing and snarling over who would ‘do it’. I was petrified. The blade of the scissors and the point of the needle dangled in front of me, terrifying me.
I didn’t know what they wanted to do, I was just glad to have Daddy here, so I wasn’t all alone with Mammy. She was frightening me far more than he was. She usually did.
Eventually Mammy said, ‘If you won’t do it, then I will,’ and she snatched the scissors and the knitting needle out of his outstretched hand.
It was dark in the room, but I could see the baby now. It was on the floor in front of me. I could see it was a baby girl. She wasn’t a monster after all. She was a perfect baby girl, with soft hair and pink skin. Her little fingers were wriggling, and I wanted to reach out and touch her, but I was frozen with shock.
Mammy was reaching for her now. She had the knitting needle.
I saw it flash as she lifted it above my baby’s face. I wanted to scream but nothing came out. I was afraid of making Mammy any angrier. I was afraid of what was going to happen.
I looked on in helpless horror as she stabbed the needle into my baby’s beautiful little face.
She did it once, and then she did it over and over again. She stabbed her in the neck too.
I could hardly breathe through my shock. My baby’s face wasn’t perfect any more.
She was bleeding, but just a moment ago she had been so flawless. I couldn’t take it in.
Daddy was watching Mammy, but started to tut and shake his head, like he was in a hurry. He walked away, and I heard him sink back into bed.
I had to touch my baby. I had to feel her warm skin.
I stretched out my trembling hand and nearly reached her, but Mammy jabbed the top of my hand sharply with the knitting needle.
It hurt, and I pulled back.
‘If you ever tell anyone about this, you are next,’ she spat.
‘Please, Mammy,’ I stuttered. ‘Please let me touch my baby.’
‘Shut up!’ she snarled. ‘Just shut up!’
I really wanted to touch my baby. I felt an overpowering urge to reach out again, but Mammy’s hand swiped out in front of me.
She had the scissors in her hand now. It looked like she was going to cut the bloody rope that was hanging out of the baby’s tummy, but then Mammy paused, and just ripped it out of my baby instead.
The baby cried, and Mammy put her on the pink double candlewick bedspread off Daddy’s bed and left the room with her.
I couldn’t move. My body felt very heavy, and my eyes started to go black. I was slipping away, blacking out with pain.
Everything went very dark, and when I opened my eyes I tried to move, but my legs felt paralysed. It felt as if I’d lain there for a while, but I wasn’t sure how long.
I blinked and looked down slowly. I saw three leather belts strapped around my legs, pressing them tightly together.
The pain in my tummy was back again, as sharp as ever. My whole body was aching, and I started to cry. I couldn’t lift my legs, I was in too much pain. I reached down and undid the buckles on the belts. Blood was running down my legs. All of a sudden, my mind slipped into a sharper focus for a second. I had to go down the stairs and out the front door.
I’d never experienced such fear in my life. It felt so raw, as if the fear was in every part of my body and running through my veins like poison, jolting me and terrifying me.
I had to get out. I had to get away. I was in a blind panic now.
I inched down the stairs in agony and reached out ever so slowly for the front door.
I prised it open carefully and breathed in a drop of the night air, smelling freedom.
But before I could get out of the house, Mammy was yelling at me like a maniac from the hall. ‘Get back here!’ she screamed. I was so afraid of her that I closed the door instantly and walked obediently into the sitting room.
Mammy turned her back and walked away from me.
She was moving towards the sink, and she had the baby in her arms.
The baby was still in the pink blanket, and she was covered in blood. I started screaming hysterically.
I was shocked to see that Granny was at the back of the living room. She was standing at the kitchen table with her hand on her hip.
‘I told you not to do it in front of her,’ she scolded.
‘Put the baby in the sink and wash the blood off it.’
Then Granny looked at me. ‘Cynthia, sit on the blanket on the floor.’
It was the crochet blanket that was usually thrown over the back of my granny’s chair.
The armchair had been moved back, and the crochet blanket was in its space.
‘Sit there,’ Granny ordered.
I slumped onto the blanket.
Mammy was at the sink now. I looked up and panicked. She wasn’t washing the baby at all. She was stabbing her again and again in the neck.
The baby was crying and wriggling.
‘Try the gas oven,’ Granny said to Mammy.
I watched horror-struck as Mammy placed the baby on a green towel on the draining board and turned on the oven.
I waited for her to light it, because that’s what always happened after the gas was switched on. But Mammy didn’t light it.
She placed the baby’s head by the oven door. The baby was still crying and squirming.
Her little body wasn’t pretty and pink any more. She was starting to turn blue.
I was weeping loudly now, and complaining that the smell of the gas was choking me and hurting my head.
Mammy was on her knees in front of the oven.
I watched helplessly as she moved her own head and body away from the gas fumes but held my baby at the oven door.
Granny walked to the back door and opened it, letting some gas out of the room.
Mammy rushed outside with the baby. Granny was distracted, and nobody was looking at me, so I seized my chance and staggered out the back door and locked myself in the outside toilet.
I sat down on the toilet seat, panting and puffing and trying to gather my thoughts.
I put my hand down the side of the toilet towards the floor to get some paper to wipe myself, and my hand touched something soft and furry.
I snatched my arm away in terror and ran back into the house screaming.
‘Mammy, please help! Mammy, there is something furry in the toilet!’
‘Cynthia, love, it’s our neighbour’s rabbit,’ she snapped back.
But I knew our neighbour didn’t have a rabbit. When I argued, Mammy got angry and started to shout at me, and I suddenly realized that it must have been my baby in the toilet, dumped on the floor.
I dashed back out, slammed the toilet door behind me and picked my baby up off that cold, damp concrete.
I hugged her to my chest, but something frightened me. It felt like I was holding a slab of meat in my arms, because the baby felt so cold.
Was this really my baby? I was in such a state I wasn’t sure.
Mammy came to the toilet door and told me to come out now. I didn’t move or speak, even when she started to bang loudly on the door.
‘Come out here and get away from that baby,’ she bellowed.
‘No, I just want to hold her,’ I shouted back. ‘Leave me alone.’
Then suddenly I felt so scared I walked out of the toilet, holding my baby. I just wanted to hold her, that’s what mattered most. Mammy lunged at me and grabbed the baby out of my arms.
She told me to follow her into the house and sit down on the crocheted blanket that was still on the floor. As soon as I sat down on the blanket, Mammy told me to get off it and pass it to her.
I was terrified, so I did as I was told. Mammy placed the baby on the blanket and laid her face down, on her stomach. Then she started ranting at me. I couldn’t take in what she was saying at first. It was a stream of pure anger, and Mammy was stabbing the baby again, plunging the knitting needle into the back of her neck.
The baby wasn’t moving, but Mammy turned her over and carried on stabbing her again and again in the neck, and once in the chin. She had a dimpled chin, like my Daddy.
‘You should have listened to me and kept away from him,’ she accused.
‘It’s all your fault, Cynthia! I told you to keep away from him, but you would not listen, would you?’ I just knew she meant Daddy, I could tell.
Mammy’s pale skin was scarlet, and she was panting and gasping for breath.
She seemed worn out from the effort of stabbing the baby, but she kept stabbing.
‘Now will you listen to me?’ she taunted. ‘Now will you keep away from him?’
I sat, terrorized, on the floor, rocking back and forth, saying the same thing over and over again.