‘That’s my baby, I want that baby. That’s my baby, I want that baby.’
As I watched Mammy stabbing and shouting, I felt as if I was looking out of a window that had misted over. I could see what was happening in front of me, but only through the blurred cloud of my mind.
My head felt heavy, as if someone had poured cement into it and it was beginning to harden.
‘I’ll teach you to listen to me in future,’ she seethed. ‘Now look what you’ve made me do, all because you wouldn’t listen to me.’
With every rant she stabbed my baby in the neck and face again. The baby was dead, I could see that. She had stopped moving and crying, but still Mammy carried on stabbing her viciously.
It reminded me of the times when she beat me.
Now she was doing the same thing to my baby, and I was as powerless as when Mammy beat me. I was a child too.
‘Get the laundry bag out of the cupboard,’ she ordered.
I had to crawl along the floor to the cupboard because I was in so much pain I could no longer stand up. I gave her the big green laundry bag, which we hardly ever used, then
I told Mammy I wanted to go to the toilet again.
When I got outside I noticed a plastic bag on the coals in the coal shed, and for a moment I thought my baby might be hidden inside it, so I started to try to stretch my hand out over the coals to grab the bag.
My stomach hit off the little wall that kept the coal in, and I cried out in pain. It made me think that my baby had been safely inside me, and now she was dead. I couldn’t think of anything else but hiding, so I dashed back into the toilet. I knew there was a bolt on the door, and I desperately wanted to lock myself in, to be all alone.
I thought that if I was on my own I could escape the horrors of the night, but once I was inside, alone in the dark, I became hysterical and lost control of myself completely.
I screamed out loud to Mammy over and over again: ‘I want my baby. I’ll get you back for what you’ve done. I’ll get you back one day. You’ll see!’
I didn’t care who heard me. I wasn’t bothered what anyone might think or do. Suddenly I was no longer afraid, other things mattered more. My baby mattered more.
I exhausted myself by screaming and wailing and shouting threats. I was dead beat, and after a while I could say no more. I was trembling with nerves and fear and my body was pulsating with pain.
Now all I wanted was to go back into the warm house so I could feel better.
I hoped I would be allowed to go to bed and fall to sleep, but Mammy told me we were going out for a walk. I didn’t want to go out for a walk, but Mammy already had her coat on, and I could tell we were going whether I liked it or not.
Chapter 15
Goodbye
Mammy had the bag with my baby in it.
I followed her silently out of the back door and down the side passage, wondering what we were going to do so late. I didn’t know what time it was, but it was deep into the night, or even the early hours of the morning. There was a chill in the air. Everything was very black and silent, and I felt scared and cold.
I followed Mammy blindly for ages, feeling deadened with pain and shock. After a while I realized we were walking down a side road towards the main bus route in Sandycove.
Mammy was still carrying the laundry bag in her hand.
‘Cross here with me,’ she told me. ‘If we’re on the other side of the road, the police cars going to Dalkey won’t see us.’
We walked on to the pier in Sandycove, and Mammy told me to go down on to the long slipway that led from the pier into the water.
I obeyed. I couldn’t think properly for myself, so I listened to Mammy. It was dark, and I was scared, so I did what she told me. As always, I was too frightened to disobey her.
‘Bend down and see if you can see an old pram in the water,’ Mammy said in a coaxing voice. ‘We could get it out and take it home with us.’
I bent down to try to see the pram in the dark water, and Mammy strode up behind me. Before I could turn round to look at her I was falling.
She had shoved me really hard, and I was falling through the water.
It was ice-cold and my heart jolted with shock. I gasped for air but swallowed salty mouthfuls of water as I kicked my legs furiously and tried to push myself back up to the surface.
I’d plunged so deeply into the freezing water that I’d hit the bottom of the sea bed. I kicked again and my legs hit something.
It felt like concrete, and I managed to get my feet on it and stand up. I could see again now. It was the part of the slipway that was sunk in the water, and I started wading up it, fighting for breath and shivering with cold. Then I heard another loud splash, and I looked up to see the green bag floating on top of the swirling, dark sea in front of me.
I screamed hysterically and started lunging desperately towards the laundry bag. It was slippery and heavy, but I managed to grab it and clutched it to my chest.
I tried to make my way back to Mammy, further up the slipway. I felt frozen to the bone now, and I was stinging and throbbing with pain in my stomach and legs.
‘Follow me!’ she growled angrily. We kept walking and went down some steps, and as we got to the last step, I put my foot down on to the path and felt something crunch under my foot.
I looked down in horror. There were hundreds of bugs scampering about everywhere. They terrified me, and I started to scream, but Mammy told me to shut up and hurry up. The bugs had just come out because it was raining, she said.
I shut my mouth firmly, because Mammy was losing her temper, and I followed her into the little park in Sandycove, where she told me I had to put the bag down under the bushes. But I wasn’t going to let go of that bag for anything. I was scared of Mammy, but this was my baby. She grabbed my arm and dragged me back towards the sea again.
We walked on a bit more and went down a lane I’d never been down before. It led us out on to the ‘metals’, which was a lane running from Dalkey to Dun Laoghaire.
We had to cross an old railway bridge to get onto the ‘metals’. The bridge scared me. It looked so old and rusty I was sure it would crash to the ground as soon as we stepped on to it.
‘Hurry up,’ Mammy hassled. She was already in the middle of the bridge. ‘Hurry up!’
I trod as lightly as I could and edged my way along. When I reached the middle where Mammy was, she pointed over the edge.
‘Climb up there and see if you can see any trains coming,’ she told me.
I could see if a train was coming by looking through the wire mesh on the bridge. I didn’t need to climb up, and I was too frightened to.
‘No, Mammy,’ I said, but she wouldn’t take no for an answer. ‘Please, Mammy, no. I don’t want to. I’m frightened I’ll fall.’
I stood my ground and didn’t go up, so Mammy grabbed the laundry bag from me and we carried on walking, turning left up a side road that led us up into Dun Laoghaire town, where we ended up at the Christian Institute.
It was an old red-brick building, and Mammy had told me that, years ago, it used to be a library and she went to dances there with Daddy when they were dating.
She walked up the steps of the building saying she wondered if she could still see the dance floor through the window. She made me look through a side window, but I had to lean over to see in, and my stomach hurt. I turned to tell Mammy my tummy was hurting and saw a police car driving towards us. It was slowing down, and I knew it was going to stop.
‘Mammy,’ I hissed. She was peering though the big front gates of the Institute.
‘Mammy, the police are here.’ The car was pointing towards Dalkey, and pulled up in front of us. There were two policemen inside.
‘Are you all right, ladies?’ one of them asked.
‘Yes, Officer. We are just on our way home from visiting relatives,’ Mammy answered, before turning on her heels and walking off in the opposite direction to Dalkey.
I started to walk off in front of Mammy and she pulled me back.
‘Walk on the outside of the pavement near to the road,’ she said. ‘And keep the bag between us.’
‘Where are we going, Mammy?’ I asked. ‘What are we doing?’
She told me we were going to see a furniture shop that belonged to a friend of Daddy’s.
We passed by the old cinema house called the Adelphi, which had been boarded off. Mammy told me she went to the cinema with Daddy when they were courting. ‘Look through the fencing to see if the cinema has been knocked down yet,’ she told me. I was relieved now that Mammy wasn’t angry with me. She was reminiscing, as I’d heard her do so many times. I knew it wasn’t really like any other night, because we had the bag, and the baby was in the bag. But I didn’t want to spoil Mammy’s mood. It was better if she was remembering the ‘good old days’, as she called them. I felt less afraid.
I wondered how long I would have to walk for. My tummy was knotted up with pain and each step made me wince, but I kept going and didn’t grumble.
We turned left into Corrig Avenue, then right into a dark lane way. Mammy told me this was Lee’s Lane, and that the furniture shop was up there.
Soon she stopped outside a shop that had wire mesh on the windows.
‘Look inside at the furniture,’ Mammy told me. I tried, but it was pitch-black in the lane way, and darker still inside the shop.
I sensed Mammy slip away. When I turned round, she was walking off into the night. I felt afraid of being left there all alone, but I didn’t know what to do, so I just stood still.
Moments later, I was relieved to see her rushing back. She was breathing heavily and telling me to hurry up, because we had to go. I felt her take hold of my arm. She was marching me out of the lane now, into the light of the street.
I could see better now, and I realized Mammy wasn’t holding the laundry bag any more.
‘Mammy! You’ve left the bag in the lane way!’ I cried.
‘Shall I go back and get it for you?’
‘No, Cynthia. Keep walking. There’s nothing in there we need.’
But I knew my baby was in the bag, and I knew she had left her in the lane way. I didn’t want Mammy getting mad though. I didn’t want her to shout or hit me. But at the same time I didn’t want to leave my baby all alone.
I rushed off into the blackness before she could stop me.
I saw the furniture shop and turned left into another part of the lane, the part where I guessed Mammy had run off with the bag.
There was a gateway in front of me. I looked in the alcove, and there was the bag, wrapped up tightly.
I recognized it and knew I had to look inside.
Opening the bag carefully, I saw my baby’s body and wanted to touch her, but before I could reach out to her Mammy was snatching the bag away from me.
‘Put that down and come with me!’ she snapped, dumping the bag back in the alcove and dragging me out of the lane.
‘I’ve seen the baby in the bag!’ I sobbed. ‘Let me go, Mammy! I’ve seen her. I’ve seen my baby in the bag!’
Mammy was blazing with fury now, dragging me brutally down the lane while I cried hysterically, trying to pull away from her with all my might.
‘Let me go back and get my baby! Please, Mammy, let me go back and get my baby!’
‘No, Cynthia,’ she wheezed. She had a bad chest and was coughing and spluttering with the effort of dragging me along.
‘It’s for the best. You will never have to suffer again. It is all over now. Once the baby is found it will put an end to it.’
She was talking about Daddy and all the men who hurt me and what they did to me, I was sure of it, but I didn’t care about the men right now. All I cared about was my baby.
‘Please, Mammy,’ I pleaded. ‘I have to go to her. Let me go back and get my baby, I beg you.’
She slapped me hard across the face and I slumped to the ground, exhausted and weak with pain, and sobbing uncontrollably.
A man came walking towards me and asked if I was OK. ‘She’s a gypsy and has been drinking,’ I heard Mammy say in a pitiful voice.
He left us alone and went on his way. I had to get back to that lane, I just had to be with my baby.
‘Mammy,’ I sobbed. ‘Nobody will find the baby where you left her. Why don’t you let me put her in a more open place?’
Mammy thought for a moment, then agreed. She pointed to a streetlamp in the distance, told me to put the baby under there and meet her on the main road.
I felt very alone and frightened walking up that dark lane. As soon as I felt the bag in my hands again I knew I wasn’t going to put my baby under the streetlamp. It was what Mammy had told me to do and I didn’t want to obey Mammy any more, but I did want my baby to be found. I hated the thought of her lying there alone in the dark.
Maybe I could put her on the main road? No, it seemed too dangerous.