My memories dimmed, but Mammy’s taunts that I was mad and talking rubbish got louder and clearer. Was there really a baby? I knew the truth. No nightmare could ever be that bad. My baby was real, but Mammy was never going to admit it. How could I ever get her back for what she did?
Chapter 16
The Fire
It was the dead of night, and I woke in terror to find Mammy clawing at my face. She was raking her long fingernails down my cheeks, calling me a ‘little whore’.
I screamed out: ‘Please, Mammy, no!’ but she carried on scraping and cursing and scaring me.
I was so sleepy I felt barely alive.
‘Please, please, no!’ I cried. I lost all control and started lashing out at Mammy, begging her to stop.
She dragged me out of bed, and I sobbed when I realized she was taking me to the building.
My body was sore, and my head wasn’t working properly at all. It was aching and pounding, and my limbs felt like lead weights. It was just weeks since I had the baby, and all I wanted to do was sleep.
Instead, I was subjected to another long night of torture in that creepy old building with those leering, disgusting men.
I now was more terrified than ever of those men in that building. Two of them had threatened me one day, telling me I’d be dead if I didn’t keep my mouth shut. I knew they meant about the baby but, just like Mammy, they didn’t admit it. Nobody talked about it, not really.
There was also a time when one of the men had even come to the house and taken me out in his car.
I begged Mammy not to make me go, but she pushed me out the door and told me to shut up.
‘See how easy it is for me to get you on your own,’ the man snarled. He drove me to a piece of wasteland and pointed to a desolate spot in the ground. ‘If you don’t keep quiet I’ll bury you alive right there.’
When he brought me home I was shaking from head to toe. I was so scared I couldn’t breathe properly, and I kept imagining that place he’d taken me to, and how terrifying it would be to be buried alive.
All I wanted to do was lie down, and I crawled upstairs, hoping for some peace and quiet.
Mammy was rampaging around the bedroom. I wanted to shut my eyes and get rid of the horrible thoughts in my head, but Mammy wouldn’t let me.
She was tearing up anything of mine she laid her hands on - my clothes, some precious photos of my friends I had hidden in a drawer, and the few schoolbooks I owned.
‘Please stop, Mammy!’ I pleaded, but she didn’t stop until she was gasping for air and looked utterly exhausted.
I thought she might be drunk, because she was swaying and slurring her words.
I’d heard Daddy yelling at her lately, telling her not to drink so much, but she had started sending me to the shop more than ever, asking me to buy a bottle of sherry.
Sometimes I refused because of what I heard Daddy say, and she flew at me in a fury, beating me in the face or smacking me with the wooden broomstick, then throwing me out of the house.
If I bought the sherry, Daddy belted me and called me a ‘stupid cow’. I couldn’t win, and I felt totally muddled by all the conflicts around me.
Mammy had started keeping me up late in the evenings a lot too. It was as if I was one of the grown-up children now. One night she was sitting by the fire drinking heavily and encouraging me to drink when she suddenly said, ‘Watch me, Cynthia!’
Her eyes were rolling, and she took out a sharp sewing needle from her knitting bag.
‘Watch me, Cynthia!’ she said. ‘Watch me kill myself!’
I screamed in shock. She was raking manically at her wrist with the needle, and blood began oozing from the cut.
‘Mammy, please, no!’ I cried. ‘Please don’t do that!’
I had to grab the needle off her and hide it while she ranted and raved and at last slumped into a drunken doze.
The sight of blood and the needle made me feel sick. I had seen Mammy with blood and a needle before. I knew what she was capable of, and she terrified me.
I was too scared to go to bed in case Mammy cut herself again, but I didn’t want to be downstairs when Daddy got in, or he would explode with rage. In the end I crept upstairs and lay in bed tossing and turning, petrified that Mammy might find the needle and kill herself.
After a while, Daddy came in drunk and fell fast asleep very quickly, but I still couldn’t sleep a wink. I didn’t want Mammy to kill herself. She scared me and I didn’t like her, but she was still my mammy, and I didn’t want her to die.
I crept back downstairs, and a horrible smell hit me the moment I walked in the sitting room.
It was gas. I’d smelled it that strongly once before, when Mammy had threatened to kill herself and had switched on the gas without lighting it. I never believed she really meant to do it though.
I ran to the kitchen to switch off the cooker, and jumped with fright. This time Mammy was lying slumped on the floor in front of the oven. The four gas rings and the oven were all fully switched on, but nothing was lit.
I could barely take it in. Mammy had really tried to kill herself, and all of us in our beds. I thought about the family upstairs. There were seven of us in total in the house that night. How could she?
I switched off the gas, opened
