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.
‘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
