Becoming Myself: The True Story of Thomas Who Became Sara (4 page)

We did our weekly shop in the Elephant supermarket on Le Fanu Road. There we would buy thirteen sliced pans, along with all the other bits and pieces. We would live on this food for a few days, but there would often not be enough to last the week. So we had to get by on bread and jam. And that included sandwiches for work, which often amounted to nothing more than bread and margarine. Not much for a young boy expected to work twelve hours a day. And if we
expressed our frustration or the fact that we were still hungry, our mother would make us feel guilty by calling us a ‘shower of ungrateful bastards’. This was often accompanied by smacks across the head and face.

As children we thought nothing of exchanging our clothes for toys, as toys were hard to come by after Christmas. Every few weeks the Travellers would come round in their Ford vans or the horse and wagon. They had all kinds of toys, including cowboy hats, balloons, guns and holsters, planes to throw, wind-up helicopters, whistles and sometimes footballs and beach balls. It was so exciting when they came but, of course, our mother refused to allow us to exchange our clothes for toys; no surprise there, especially as our clothes were all hand-me-down and -down and -down again, but, on the rare occasions that we were allowed to exchange clothes for toys, there was so much pleasure to be had. Even then, I was disappointed that I couldn’t trade clothes for girls’ toys and had to settle for boys’, but it was better than nothing.

The Ballyfermot I remember was new and bright, with rows of six houses, small front gardens and slightly larger gardens at the back. Wrought-iron railings separated each house and in the early years, no-one really bothered with putting up walls or fences. They weren’t considered necessary then. The walls were pebbledashed, and everything looked the same. That changed over the years and, it has to be said, not for the better.

Every second week, Farmer John would come round with his large drums on his wagon to see if we had any waste food for his pigs. He had a small farm beside the canal. It was very exciting when he would allow us to climb up onto the wagon and travel along with him. Sometimes, he would let me sit up
front and at others he would allow us to stay on all the way up to the farm. The Johnston, Mooney and O’Brien van was another visitor to our streets. It would stop across from our home and when the bread man pulled up the shutter, the aroma of fresh bread and cakes filled the air. Again it was rare, but every now and again my mother would buy shortbread fingers, chocolate éclairs and cream slices or batch bread. Those were the days when bread actually tasted like bread, so fresh it was still warm when buttered.

As we were poor, my working life started at a very early age. I was made to do a lot of the household chores from as young as I can remember, about seven or eight years of age. When I was around nine I would go up to Young’s Bar on Le Fanu Road and mind the cars for the customers. When they went to their cars I would walk over and say, ‘Excuse me mister, I was minding yer car for you.’ I normally received a few pennies, or a sixpence; sometimes as much as a shilling.

At other times I would go out on Saturday and Sunday mornings to work with the milkman. He would pay me sixpence but sometimes as much as one or two shillings. I would nearly always spend the money before going home because I knew my mother would take it from me and I would never see it again. When I would ask her where my money was, she would tell me to stop annoying her, or she would clatter me across the face and tell me to, ‘shut up or I’ll break your fucking neck’, and if it wasn’t threats, then it was reminders of how ungrateful I was for all that she had done for me.

S
chool started for me when I was just five years old. I went to the Dominican Convent boys’ school on Ballyfermot Road. It was such a strange place and very imposing to a young child. There were scary statues and long corridors with polished floors. The walls were painted a mixture of the usual institutional cream or yellow on top with blue or green on the bottom. The classrooms seemed very big and contained large press units where all the books and chalks were kept and there were long blackboards and sloping desks with wooden bench seats attached.

The strangest thing of all for me were the nuns with their long habits and serious, unfriendly looking faces. The other thing that was strange to me was sitting with so many boys. Where were the girls? I felt completely cut off from everyone and everything familiar. I had a strong sense of not fitting in with my classmates and they weren’t slow in recognising this. Nothing made sense to me. Because of the isolation, I found it very difficult to learn and at no time in my school life did
I feel natural as a boy, despite all my best efforts to fit in.

My mother was told by one of my teachers that there was something wrong with me: I should not be writing with my left hand and I should be discouraged from doing so, and that I was extremely sensitive for a boy. In those days, being left-handed was a sign that you were backward in some way. In school I would be shouted at if I was caught using my left hand, or I would have my hand slapped until it was too sore to hold a pencil. At other times I was made to stand in the corner with my face to the wall and to listen to the teachers and classmates calling me a dunce.

When I went home and told my mother that the teachers had slapped me, she would tell me I must have done something to make them hit me, so she would hit me too and tell me I was, ‘nothing but a fucking troublemaker’. I was still just a child and I found this kind of treatment overwhelming. I learned from the earliest age that I was to have no refuge from the very people who were supposed to be my guardians, my protectors, my nurturers.

As I was left-handed, mealtimes, too, were a complete nightmare. If I was caught using my left hand, my mother would shout at me to use my right hand. I tried, but it was just so awkward and I had no coordination or strength to use it, so, I would quickly put the fork or spoon back into my left hand, only to have my mother or my father come over and beat me over the head and shout at me, calling me a ‘cheeky little bastard!’ or, an ‘awkward little fucker’. While at other times my mother would grit her teeth and call me, ‘nothing but a fucking antichrist! I’ll break your hand if you don’t stop using it’. This was extremely hard to cope with and I started to withdraw further into myself. It got so bad and mealtimes were becoming so stressful I was unable to eat properly.
Instead of chewing my food I would swallow it, in order to get my meals over with as quickly as possible to avoid getting into trouble for using my left hand. But my mother would shout at me: ‘Chew your food and don’t swallow it.’ Or it would be my brothers and sisters squealing and telling her: ‘Mam, Thomas is using his left hand’, or, ‘Mam, Thomas is swallowing his food’.

My mother’s difficulties with me grew worse after she was told by some teacher that I was ‘mentally retarded’ or ‘remedial’. Back then there was no real distinction between the two. They both meant the same thing to an uneducated parent and siblings. I had to be taken to the doctors in Thomas Street and the St John of God hospital so they could check me out and get me to do different tests to assess my mental abilities.

I was able to do them okay and I was given a bag of sweets by the doctors. But at home and in school I was treated as anything but normal. It got out that I was supposed to be retarded and this led to years of bullying. I was frequently referred to as the ‘retard’, the ‘spa’ or the ‘head case’; all serving to remind me that I was abnormal. To add to my woes at this time I was taken out of my class and placed in a special class. The teacher was a kind, elderly lady and she would give me sweets if I would go to her classroom, but, conscious of the fact that I would be bullied on my return, I did everything I could to resist and remain in my old class, but it was to no avail. I cannot remember her name, but I do remember her gentleness and kindly nature; a very rare experience during these years. She never shouted at me or called me names and that felt really strange at the time. I won a set of rosary beads while in her class; the first thing I’d ever won. I had to attend elocution classes where I learned to say: ‘This, That, These and Those, That’s the way the TH goes.’

Being told I was retarded then has had an horrendous effect upon my life ever since. It was used by so many people to put me down and to make me feel completely inadequate as a human being, that my life was useless and worthless and simply not worth the bother. It worked exceptionally well and served to hold me back for most of my life. So much so that, by the time I was sixteen, I was already contemplating committing suicide, or, at the very least, leaving home and changing my name. These feelings were to permeate my life, and stay with me for the next thirty years.

As a result of these feelings and the damage they caused, I spent most of my life trying to prove to myself and to everyone else that I am just as ‘normal’ as them. I thought that by working really hard, by spending my money on my family and so on that I would convince people that I was worth loving. But it never seemed to work, so I just worked harder and harder in a completely futile pursuit of approval. It was like climbing Mount Everest on my bare hands and knees. Every setback was perceived as yet another confirmation of how useless and unwanted I was.

At school we had to ask in Irish for permission to go to the toilet. We were often refused permission to go, which resulted in some of us wetting our pants. On one such occasion, when I was six, I asked for permission:
An bhfuil cead agam dul amach, más é do thoil é?
I was refused, but I told the teacher that I really needed to go and that, if I didn’t, I was likely to go in my pants. She told me to sit down and stay quiet. I couldn’t hold back any longer and excreted into my pants. This was humiliating, but it was made worse by the fact that it was diarrhoea and was running down the legs of my short pants. I stood up and told the teacher, who, without saying
anything, left the classroom. While she was out my classmates were laughing at me and calling me names.

The teacher returned to the classroom and called me out. ‘Thomas, you are to go home with these girls.’ She pointed to the two older girls she had brought back with her into the classroom. They looked like teenage girls. They had a pram and told me to sit into it, which I did. They pushed me along Ballyfermot Road and up the street where I lived, all the while laughing at what had happened to me. I reached home and was put into the kitchen sink, not the bath upstairs, by my mother. Nana and Aunt Nancy were in the kitchen with my mother and they all thought my predicament was something to laugh about. I was told to strip and get onto the draining board. My mother proceeded to wash me in front of my nan and aunt. I was mortified and humiliated. Try to live that one down.

It was around 1967 or ’68 when I first went to the De la Salle boys’ school. Our special class was the last to move across and we were broken up into other classes. I arrived with some others in to Master Mullally’s class. I was sent straight to the back of the class and left there. Any pupil who was thought to be slow was left behind. This led to me withdrawing more and more into myself on the one hand while desperately trying to fit in on the other, but I just didn’t know how. I hated being in school, especially as this is where I experienced so much bullying. There was nowhere I could turn for refuge when trouble came.

Matters became so much worse when word spread that I was supposed to be retarded. People thought I was an easy target, and they were not wrong. When my classmates wanted to have a laugh, they would tell me I was ‘nothing but
a fucking spa!’ Or, ‘Dunne, you’re a bleedin weirdo.’

Mr Mullally has stayed in my memory because he wore odd shoes and socks. The worst thing I could say about him was that he seemed almost completely indifferent to me and to the rest of the boys. This was better than those teachers and brothers who had no compunction about treating us harshly and humiliating us in front of our classmates. My left hand was frequently slapped by teachers and brothers until it was so painful that I could not hold a pen or pencil, never mind actually write with them. On other occasions, they would belt me across the back of the head or clatter me in the face, or pull me up by my ears and shout insults at me:

‘You’re completely stupid, Dunne, what are you?’

‘I’m completely stupid, Master.’

‘Say that louder, Dunne, we can’t hear you.’

‘I’m completely stupid, Master.’

‘And why are you stupid, Dunne?’

‘I don’t know, Master.’

‘Because you can’t even use your right hand, isn’t that it, Dunne?’

‘Yes, Master.’

‘Can’t hear you, Dunne.’

‘Yes, Master.’

‘Now, get back to your seat.’

‘Yes, Master.’

At this age, I was frequently kept back from school to clean the house. I also cooked for the whole family, dressed my younger brothers and sisters, changed their nappies, bathed them, took them out in their prams etc. And so, I would be slapped for missing school, because I’d been kept at home, and would be made to stand in front of the class until I came
up with a believable excuse. The longer it took me to come up with something, the more I was slapped. Then there were the times when I would not be allowed to go to school until my work was finished. When I finally did turn up I would be slapped, clattered or given lines to do:

Passing the girls’ school was particularly difficult as it made me feel that I should have been on the other side of the wall and be attending the same classes as all the other girls. It was a deeply lonely experience.

There were many occasions during my schooldays where my mother’s favouritism and, in particular, her dislike of me, were brought home to me, but I remember one incident above all others. I had been begging to go to see
The Vikings
, with Kirk Douglas and Tony Curtis. My brother Fred and I were promised faithfully by my mother that we could both go and see the film after school. I had to do a load of chores in order to be allowed go. On the day of the film I was hardly able to concentrate due to the excitement. I couldn’t wait to go home for lunch and get the money to pay for my ticket and maybe a few sweets.