I was very nervous, but I told myself it couldn’t be worse than being at home. Aunt Ann was older than Mammy. I didn’t think she could do me too much harm. I’d heard all her insults before. If I could avoid getting a soaking from her dirty mop bucket I’d be all right. I’d survive.
I didn’t have a choice anyway. ‘Off you go, Cynthia! Now look after Aunt Ann, won’t you? Don’t go giving out any cheek! I’ll hear about it if you do!’
My heart sank when I realized I had to share a bed with Aunt Ann. She and Granny shared a bedroom in their tiny terraced house and Aunt Ann said I was to sleep in the same bed as her.
The bed had a mattress that had turned grey and saggy. When I climbed into it, I held my nose. All the bedding absolutely reeked and looked caked with dirt, even worse than our bedding at home.
I felt very tense lying in those filthy bedclothes as I waited for Aunt Ann to come to bed too. I started to fret and panic. Getting into bed with an adult made me feel wary. But Aunt Ann was my old spinster aunt. She wasn’t going to touch me, was she? Aunt Mag’s face loomed into my mind. Oh God, no! Not Aunt Ann as well! No, I was being silly. I was worrying too much, but I couldn’t help it. I was trembling, and my teeth were chattering with cold and fright.
Aunt Ann was in the bed now, wearing a ragged, grey cotton nightdress. My mind hazed over, because I felt something bad was going to happen. It did that a lot lately. My brain just seemed to freeze and close part of itself down. Aunt Ann was leaning over me now, her twisted features far too close to mine. ‘You are a dirty little bitch!’ she taunted. Her bad breath swamped me, and her teeth looked like they were covered in mould. ‘Let’s see how much of a dirty little bitch you are!’
She lunged at me and pawed at my chest and legs. Her wrinkled fingertips felt like sandpaper on my skin. I was shocked to the core. I felt like I was bolted to the bed, lying there motionless and powerless against this horrible, smelly woman who seemed to be enjoying making me sob huge tears into the sheets.
I stared at her dressing table while she touched me, desperately trying to take my mind off what was happening. Aunt Ann had perfume bottles, puff powder and sparkly pieces of jewellery. It looked pretty. I wished I was pretty, but I felt very ugly and very dirty. I felt like I would never get rid of her foul fingerprints on my body.
Aunt Ann did the same thing to me many more times over many more months. Telling Mammy would be a waste of time. I knew she would do nothing to help me, but one day I blurted out that I hated Aunt Ann. I just couldn’t face going round there again and being subjected to her torture. I told Mammy I hated the way Aunt Ann ‘beat’ me, but I was too embarrassed to tell her what else she did.
‘Why do people treat me like that?’ I asked. ‘It’s not fair, Mammy. Why me?’
‘Have you ever thought you must have done something bad to deserve it?’ was all Mammy said. Had I?
I tossed her words around in my head for days trying to make sense of them. They really upset me, and made me wonder if I really was as bad as Mammy said. I’d done nothing wrong. I was sure of that. But perhaps I shouldn’t be making such a fuss? Was I odd for not liking what Daddy did, and what Mammy had done to me, and now what my uncle and aunts were doing to me? I didn’t know. I really wasn’t sure. All I knew for certain was that things seemed to be getting worse and worse, and my mind seemed to be feeling foggier and foggier.
Mammy had started sharing her tablets with me when I said I had a sore head. I was very grateful, because my head hurt a lot.
I never got enough sleep, and when I drank the cider Mammy forced on me, it made my head bang even worse instead of helping me fall asleep.
The tablets were the ones Uncle Frank had given her in the big white tub. I saw her crush them up and put them in a sandwich for me once, and in a glass of milk, sometimes when I hadn’t even complained about a headache.
The tablets helped, I think. They made my head feel like soft cotton wool. When horrid thoughts came into my head, they seemed to dissolve in the fluff. I couldn’t think about them for very long, which was good.
Christmas was coming again. Every time I had a bad night with Daddy or a bad day with Uncle Frank and Aunt Mag, or Aunt Ann, it felt like another bit of my mind clouded over. I wanted to forget all the horrible things, but the way my head felt seemed to spoil the happy things too.
I wasn’t really bothered what presents I got, or how we might decorate the house. Granny took us to a party, held by a rich lady. I’d loved it last year, but this time I went through the motions, not really caring if I got the last seat in musical chairs or the last sausage roll. I didn’t know why I felt so strange. Maybe I was just growing up? Maybe that was why I didn’t giggle and play like the other kids?
I had heard that Mammy was having another baby, but I wasn’t excited at first. I was very worried about how we would fit another little one in the house, and how much extra work it would bring me.
One day she asked if I wanted
