—Lucky you, she said. —D'yeh want to know what my first memory is?
—No, I said.
—I'll tell yeh.
—I don't want to know.
—I listened to yours —
—I don't want to know, I told her. —You can keep it.
I can give her back as good as she gives. It took me years to realise that it didn't matter that she was the oldest; it didn't mean that she always had to be right or that she had to have the last word. She still thinks it matters; that's her problem. I like her, though. I love her. I feel sorry for Denise sometimes, stuck between us. They've been great to me over the years, my two sisters. They won't let me tell them that, but they have; they've been just brilliant. I'd never have done what I did — I'd never have finished it — without them helping me.
My mammy lost two babies between me and Roger; she had two miscarriages. I was 1956 and Roger was 1959. She only told me about them two years ago; I'd never have known. I can remember her smiling, patting my head, picking me up, fixing my dress properly on me, a yellow dress. She never yelled. Would I remember if I'd seen or heard her crying when I was still a baby? It really shocked me. She'd hidden it. She was always so gentle; she'd always had room for me. Carmel says it wasn't like that. She says she knew; she heard Mammy crying in their bedroom. She says that Daddy was never there. Maybe I only remember her dressing me because I dressed my girls, Nicola and then Leanne, the same way. I had a yellow dress for Nicola, and Leanne had it after her; it was still good. (I try not to make my kids wear hand-me-downs.) Maybe that's all I remember, me dressing Nicola, and I'm imagining the rest. But I remember it, the yellow dress. It was too big for me; it must have been an old one of Carmel's.
—I never had a yellow dress, she says.
I shouldn't have asked her.
—I hate yellow, she says.
—Yeah yeah yeah, I say.
I hate it when I say that, Yeah three times like that, especially when I say it to the kids. It's a habit I got from Charlo.
I lost a baby as well.
I liked being cold when I was little because there was always somewhere in the house that was warm, somewhere to go into; the kitchen or the living room. They were always warm. The cold pushed you into them. We all fitted, in front of the telly or at the table. I had a corner of Daddy's chair that was all my own. He blew his cigarette smoke so it looked like it was coming out my ears. Carmel doesn't remember that either. I don't know how he did it, made the smoke blow in both directions. I never saw him; I had to keep my back to him. Charlo couldn't figure it out either. He wanted to do it with John Paul. He tried it but he just blew the smoke straight into the back of his head.
There was more ice in the winter. Carmel agrees. If we threw water on the path outside the house before we went to bed there was a slide there in the morning. No one complained either. These days they'd sue you. These days. I sound like an oul' one. It was more than thirty years ago, though. Another thing I remember that doesn't seem to happen any more is freezing cold feet, cold that would make me cry. I remember being in school early and sitting in my desk and dying for the teacher to come in and turn on the heater because my feet were killing me, they were sore like a car had run over them or something really heavy and cornered had fallen on them. It was the cold. I had socks. I had proper shoes. I had porridge for breakfast. Pop on the Flahav-ans. I smacked my feet up and down and clenched my fists; it was agony. I wasn't the only one. We all complained about it. Mammy said it was growing pains — I think she said that — but it couldn't have been; my toes weren't the only parts of me that were growing but that was where all the pain was, and only in the winter. I've never been able to afford good shoes for my own kids — good shoes — and they've never complained about cold feet. Poor Leanne had to go through one whole winter in runners and she never whinged once. She got them drenched one day and I took them off her when she got home from school. I stuffed them with paper and put them up to the fire and hoped to God they'd be properly dry in the morning because I didn't have the money to get her another pair. They were still damp, a bit less than wet, at bedtime so I put them in the oven. I preheated it, then turned it way down and put them in. I sat in the kitchen for an hour and kept taking them out to make sure they didn't melt. It worked. I wanted Charlo to come in and see me, to see how desperate I was. He had money, I knew he did. The smell off his breath told me that. He didn't come home that night, though. I'm almost certain he didn't. (It kills me writing that and reading it — I could never afford good shoes for my kids. I don't put all the blame on him, either.) My kids never complained though, and they would have if they'd been really cold. That's one of the good things about living where we live; you're never alone, there's always someone as badly off as you — there are plenty. Now and again it would be nice to see somebody worse off, but I only get that comfort from the telly, the reports from the Third World on the News. The pictures from Sarajevo were very bad but they all seemed to have good warm clothes. I always piled the socks on the kids, two pairs; they liked that. Nicola always liked two different colours so that the inside pair looked like a stripe; it looked very nice. John Paul always made sure that the inside socks were tucked well inside the outside ones, so they couldn't be seen. That's the difference between girls and boys.
There were no surprises at home; there were never any — even at Christmas. We knew what we'd be getting, the present from Santy and our Christmas clothes. I wanted a surprise once — because my best friend, Deirdre, was getting one. I was eight or nine, I think. I let Santy know that I wanted a surprise but I also told him in the letter what I wanted it to be, because Mammy had hinted at what I'd be getting and I didn't want to be wrong. There were no surprises, never any rings on the doorbell or faces in the kitchen window. What was left of Sunday's meat with boiled potatoes on a Monday; shepherd's pie on a Tuesday; I don't remember what there was on Wednesdays and Thursdays; cod on Fridays, with chips from the chipper — we'd have hated the fish without the chips; stew on Saturday. Ice-cream on Sundays; rice on Monday — when I woke up in the morning I knew exactly what was going to happen. I had my bath on Saturdays; I had the water after Carmel, me and Denise in the bath together. Mammy scrubbed, Daddy dried us.
—He didn't.
—He did, Carmel.
—Not me.
—Ah Carmel; he did.
—Uh uh.
—Didn't he, Denise? I say. —He did.
He dried us; he made us disappear inside the towel and pretended he couldn't find us. Half-twelve mass on Sunday, halfway down the aisle on the right side. Daddy wore his blue suit. Mammy ironed his shirt on Saturday night, only his shirt. She did the rest of the clothes during the week, in the afternoon, listening to the radio. Daddy got his Sunday Independent in The Mint after mass, and the ice-cream. In the summer we went to Skerries or Bray after dinner. Bray was the best. I loved the long walk along the seaside and the railings. I didn't like swimming. I didn't mind getting wet but I hated having to get dried. We had picnics on the sand. We never had one of those rugs, the nice checked ones with the woollen frills around the sides; Mammy put all the picnic things on a cardigan or a jacket. I remember it like it's now, biting into sandy bread. It would have been disgusting at home or anywhere else but it didn't matter at the beach. I remember once we had our picnic in the rain.
—We'll stop if it gets heavy.
That was my mammy all over. Daddy went along with her. We were the only people there.
—Can we not go to a shelter?
That was one of the boys, probably Roger, the oldest.
—You heard your mammy.
We got Ninety-Nines or chips before we got on the train home, one or the other, depending on the weather. We all had to have the same, to stop any arguments. A bag of chips between two of us. Daddy made sure that we divided them fairly.
—Your turn. Now yours. That was a massive one he got so you're to get two small ones.
That was the type of tiling
Charlo loved doing as well, playing with the kids like that. He was really great at it when he was in the mood.
We only ever went on holidays once. I checked, and Mammy says I'm right. We couldn't afford it, she says. We could have gone some years but it would have meant doing without things, and Mammy and Daddy didn't think it was worth it. They began to go more often later, when I was gone and married and most of the others were gone too. They went together to Spain the summer before Daddy died. Courtown was where we went for that holiday. I was thirteen; 1969. I loved it. We had a caravan for a week. We all fitted; the beds came out of nowhere. Mine and Carmel's was on top of the table; it came out of the wall and landed on the table. It was great except for having to go out into the dark to the toilet. The toilet was a big cement block in a corner of the park. The floor was always wet and uneven. They cleaned it every day but the smell always hung on. There was a section for women and a section for men. The boys said that the man's section was woeful. You washed there as well in the morning. There were four sinks in a row. You had to queue up. It was always cold in there. There were no windows, just a bulb hanging from a thick, crooked wire. I loved watching the women washing themselves, the way they could concentrate and talk. I never saw Mammy doing it. She always went in after us, after we'd ali been fed and were gone. She wouldn't let us hang around the caravan.
—Go out now and get some of God's fresh air.
That was what she always called the other side of the door, God's fresh air. She still does. She isn't religious or anything — big into religion, as Nicola would say. Daddy never said it. She must have picked it up before she met him. There was an emergency toilet in the caravan but Daddy said he'd kill us if any of us tried to use it. It was only a bucket with a fancy lid on it in a cupboard all of its own. Roger was determined that he was going to piddle into it before the end of the week. He didn't say anything; we just knew. He nearly made it. He had the lid up and his willy out when Daddy caught him. We didn't warn Roger. Daddy dragged him over to the toilets in the dark, and the ground was wet and muddy. Swing boats, bingo and chips. I remember a hill above the harbour and long grass and walking through it. I made a friend called Frieda. She was in the caravan three down from us. Her mammy was real nice; young and lovely looking. She lay on the beach all day and let Frieda do what she wanted and gave her far more money than I ever had. Frieda was an only child. Her daddy wasn't there. She said he worked in South America. I believed her then but I know better now. She lent me her blouse but took it back when I got chocolate on it. We met these two boys from Belfast. I can't remember my one's name; I got the second best. The other one was called Liam. He was sixteen and tall and I thought was he gorgeous. I couldn't understand a lot of what he said because of his accent but that made him even nicer. He was mysterious; God love me. Frieda told me later that she'd felt his thing leaning against her when they were kissing, behind the Crock O' Gold; it was pressing into her. I didn't ask any questions. I only liked my fella because he was Liam's friend. We found out later, after I'd let him put his hand on my breast — on top of my jumper — that they weren't really friends at all. They'd only met just before we met them. They had a fight two days after; my fella beat Liam. It was the first time I'd let anyone feel me. They were real breasts — only boys said tits. I had them before I left primary school. I didn't like him touching me but I felt great after it. I thought I'd grown up a bit; I'd got something out of the way. I liked kissing. He hadn't a clue; he just kept pressing his lips into my face. I had to get my tongue into his mouth and go round his teeth and then he followed me. He gasped; I remember it. The trick was stopping before your mouth got too sore, stopping and starting, giving your mouth a rest. Frieda got two love-bites. I didn't get any. My fella wouldn't have known how to give me one. Much more importantly, my mammy would have murdered me.
Carmel admits it: she loved Courtown. She was old enough to go to the dances. I remember her climbing into bed.
—What was it like?
—Brilliant.
—What was the music like?
—Brilliant.
—Any fellas?
—Mind your own business.
Everyone could hear everything in the caravan.
—Go to sleep over there.
Denise has her own caravan now. They have a site near Courtown. They even go there in the winter. I'd love that, somewhere to go. She's never offered; I've never asked. It's not Denise; it's her husband, Harry. He's a bit of a creep. Even Denise thinks that; it all comes out when we're out together.
—Show us your diddies! Paula! Paula!
That was Roger and his pals behind the hedge; probably not Roger himself because he knew I could kill him if I wanted to.
—Show us your diddies!
I kept walking. I made sure I didn't look anywhere near the hedge.
I had my breasts in primary school, in sixth class. Only two of us in the class had them, me and Fiona. We hung around together for months, leaving everyone else out, just because of that — we had breasts. I was dead proud of them after I'd got over my mammy looking at me. It was after my bath on Saturday night; I was standing on the towel, shaking, pretending I was cold. Mammy was rinsing Denise's hair. I started to dry myself. I never rubbed the towel all over me or up and down my back; I hated that. I did one arm first, then the other, then a leg, all the way down to the foot, then the other leg. Each bit had to be dry before I went on to another bit. I never rushed. I saw Mammy looking at me, at my chest. Then at me, my face. I couldn't understand her expression. I thought she was going to lose her temper. She looked away when she saw me looking back at her. Then the part that killed me: she was blushing. She was panicking, it seemed like, the way she dried Denise's hair; she made Denise cry. Because of me. She didn't look at me again.
—Stop fussing, she said to Denise. —You're alright.
She left us in the bathroom.
—She's a bitch for doing that, said Denise. —Isn't she?
—Yeah, I said. —She didn't mean it.
—She did.
—She didn't.
—It still hurt.
I'll never forget it, the look on my mammy's face. It left me feeling like I'd done something terrible to her; I'd hurt her badly and I didn't know how, just that I'd done it.
It was better a few days later.
—Now, she said. —We're going into town, the two of us.
Just the two of us, no sisters, no brothers; I loved it. She didn't tell me why but it didn't matter. I knew from her mood that it wasn't the dentist or doctor or anything bad. I remember one thing that happened on the way into town. I was looking out the bus window at a woman slapping her little young lad. I turned to show the woman to Mammy and it was raining on the other side of the road. I looked back and it was still dry on the woman's side. She'd stopped hitting the child. I didn't understand it then. I thought it was some sort of a miracle or sign; it started to worry me. Then Mammy told me that it was only a sun shower. I can still make myself feel the way I felt when I saw it; it's like missing a last step in the dark and walking into nothing.
We went to Clery's and she bought me two bras. Then she took me into a restaurant and she got me a jam doughnut and a Fanta. She told me not to squirt the bits of doughnut from my mouth into the Fanta because only kids did that and I wasn't a kid any more.
—And you've a bra to prove it, she said; she whispered it, leaned into me, the first time she ever did anything like that. She nudged me. She laughed nicely at me blushing, then I laughed. She looked at me as I shoved the last lump of the doughnut into my mouth.
—The first time ever, she said. —No jam on your clothes. It's all happening.
She was grand when my period came; she explained it all before it happened. The facts of life, they were called in those days. Those days; Jesus. She kept me home from school and gave me all the facts. We sat in the kitchen drinking tea. Why I'd bleed, what to do, how long it would last, the pain if there was any. She told me not to w
orry about any mess, there was nothing that couldn't be cleaned.
—Be ready, she said. —That's our motto.
She gave me a note for school on Monday that said I'd been too sick to go back on Friday after dinner. But I told my friends what had really happened. I was walking a new way now. The Facts of Life. We used to giggle about them; we tried to find them in our dictionaries. We knew it was about things going into holes, and babies and blood. But we never mentioned the blood. We concentrated on the things and the holes. We couldn't imagine it, not really. I still can't sometimes, four children and more than twenty years of sex later. We giggled and laughed and we were scared. Now, in the school yard, I was the first person to have really heard them, the Facts of Life. I'd got there first. The first time I'd ever won anything. It was one of the best things ever to happen to me. The girls standing around me, pretending they knew all about it but some of them looking at me with their mouths open. I said the word Penis like I'd said Desk or Road. Erect. Menstruation. Vagina. Tampon. Headache. Great words; I frightened the shite out of them.
It's one of the only bad things I can remember from my childhood, that expression on my mammy's face in the bathroom, like I'd done something absolutely dreadful, terrible to her. I understand it now though, perfectly. It was just bad timing, mat was all; she hadn't wanted me to see that look, I'm sure of that — I'd just been too quick for her. She'd been robbed — that was what she'd thought when she saw my breasts starting; her little girl had been taken from her. That was exactly how I felt when it happened with Nicola, before I copped on and made sure that I kept it to myself. I had a good cry by myself; it was really, really upsetting, thinking of so much of Nicola's life being over, but at the same time I knew that I was just being an eejit. I brought Nicola into town too. Not for a bra, though; the blood came before the body in her case. We went to an over-15s film; I wanted her to feel grown up. Dirty Dancing. I chose it because I thought it would have some nice sex in it; the camera going down the bodies — from the side, no hair — maybe the woman on top for a bit, no grunting; love. She loved it, and so did I. I bought her the tape with all the songs from the film on it. She'd seen it all before, of course, on telly and in videos but this was different, me and her sitting in the dark watching it on the big screen. I nudged her every time Patrick Swayze came on and, after a while, she started nudging me back.