Juice: The O'Malleys Book 1, contemporary Adult Romance (33 page)

“As I said to your teacher, Mrs. Flynn. I am here today to talk about your first confession. This children, is a vital part of your first holy communion. You must release your sins and then you can be pure and free to meet our lord on May fourteenth. Hands up who knows what a sin is?”

Liadh watched as Caroline Murphy raised her hand.

“Yes, Caroline.” Mrs Flynn, said. “Please tell Sister Geraldine what a sin is.” Caroline looked at sister Geraldine and spoke softly.

“A lie, miss.”

Whack! “My name is sister Geraldine not miss, you will address me and me alone girl.”

Caroline clutched her hand and whimpered as she stuffed it into her armpit and bit her lip. The tension in the classroom thickened and started to envelop Liadh. She looked over at her friend Rian O’Malley for comfort. Liadh’s eyes met his and he nodded to her grinning. Liadh smiled back at him.

“You girl.”

Biting the inside of her lip, she tasted blood. She chanted ‘
not me, not me, not
me,’
over and over in her head, but she knew. She just instinctively knew, that it was her turn. Drawing in a noiseless breath, she looked to sister Geraldine who was staring at her stone-faced apart from a slight upward turn at the very corners of her mouth.

“Liadh O’ Neil, stand up and answer sister Geraldine.” Mrs Flynn couldn’t disguise the catch in her voice which made her sound helpless and afraid.

Liadh raised her head and pushed her chair out as she stood up. The metal legs of her chair squeaked on the floor and sister Geraldine’s lips become a thin line. A sneer.

“Come to the top of the class, Liadh O’ Neill.”  Liadh walked behind her all the way to the top and turned to face the class. She caught the eyes of some of the other children. They stared at her their own eyes wide and scared. Something was going to happen. Something bad.

“Children, when you commit a sin you become a sinner. And a sinner can be forgiven if they repent their sin. Remember this and learn it well. You can forgive the sinner but not the sin. Repeat it.”

“You can forgive the sinner but not the sin.” The class repeated the line, quietly at first.

“LOUDER!” The cane cracked down on the table in front of Mrs Flynn. Liadh watched as her teacher jumped about a foot off her chair and put her hands to her face. She cradled it softly between her fingertips.

“YOU CAN FORGIVE THE SINNER. BUT NOT THE SIN!”

Sister Geraldine turned her head to Liadh slowly and pointed her cane in her direction. The tip touched the side of her chubby cheek.

“And this girls and boys. THIS, here. Is the sin.”

Liadh heard a soft intake of breath and made eye contact with Julie Byrne, her best friend. Julie lowered her eyes and looked away. An urge to wet herself came over Liadh as she felt her knees start to shake. She understood from that moment that this whole lesson was designed specifically with her in mind. 

“This child, Liadh O’Neil was created in sin, born of sin. Her mother is a whore. As a whore, she did what all whores do. She lay with a man before she was 16 years old. Unmarried in the eyes of the church and the Lord. She ruined a boy. Tempted him into her body and corrupted him with her lies and want. She then was sent away. Away from this town and it’s good people, its Christian people. Away from the church and its followers. Do you know where she was sent for her sins boy and girls?”

No one raised a hand.

“To St Patrick's in Dublin, that’s where. In a home filled with other sinners who wanted to repent and expel these sins from their bodies. Stand children.”

Each child stood and stared at Liadh,  a mixture of pity and relief crossed their faces like waves of sunlight through a window. Pity for the one who was in the firing line, relief that their mothers had not laid with a man. That their mothers had not had to expel their sins in a mother and baby home in Dublin. Like Liadh O’Neill’s mother. One of so many young girls who got ‘into trouble’ around the towns and villages of Ireland. Returning home with their heads bent in shame, leaving the burden of their sin behind them. Little neat blue and pink bundles, of shame and loss.

“I want each of you to walk up passed the SIN and using God’s voice, I want you to tell her that she is a sin.”

“Sister Geraldine,” Mrs Flynn started to stand.

“Sit down woman, this does not concern you. Unless you would like a visit from Father Murphy to talk to you about your position within the school.”

Liadh looked at Mrs Flynn her eyes pleading with her to intervene. She closed them eyes tightly when she saw the teacher turn her back and walk towards the window. Lidah followed her gaze and wished that she too were outside at the hurling match that the bigger boys were playing in the field. She couldn’t even blame her teacher for it. Everyone knew that the church controlled the appointment of the teachers in the school. Mrs Flynn had a family to feed, she needed the job. Liadh turned her face back to sister Geraldine and waited.

“Come children, make haste.”

Each child in the class lined up and one by one each walked passed Liadh and whispered
sin
into her left ear. Some, like Liam O’Brien seemed to take a kind of pleasure from it. He had smirked and said the word loudly as his breath caressed her ear. “SIN,” he breathed.

“WAIT,” sister Geraldine roared.

The children stopped in mid motion and looked to the bottom of the classroom, in the direction of where sister Geraldine’s cane was pointing. One lone child sat staring straight ahead.

Rian.

“You boy. What is your name?”

“Rian O’Malley, Sister.”

“Stand up and move into the line.”

“No sister. I will not.”

Liadh closed my eyes and started to pray for an intervention of any kind. If just once God would actually listen and do something. She looked at Rian and tried to meet his eyes, but he just stared straight ahead. And Liadh loved him for it, but feared for him too in that moment.

Sister Geraldine walked straight-backed to the desk and leaned down until her face was inches away from Rian. Liadh watched as his little jaw tightened and he looked her straight in the eyes.

“What did you say to me, boy?”

“I said no, sister. I won’t be doing that to Liadh. She is not a sin. She is just a girl.”

Children murmured and gasped as sister Geraldine dragged Rian out of his chair by his hair and launched him in front of her. She pushed him on the back, half thumping and half dragging him along the length of the classroom. Liadh looked on in fright as Mrs Flynn moved passed her to the classroom door, she ran down the corridor to the principal’s office. She heard her banging loudly on a door and shouting for Mr O’ Leary, the school principal.

“Conor, come quick. Come quick!”

Liadh didn’t remember much else, except the sound of the cane. The noise of it as it flew through the air. A beautiful sliding sound, a whoosh and then Thwack! Thwack!

Thwack! Over and over again against Rian's back, shoulders and face.  He stared at Lidah silently, his eyes locked with hers. She watched as he grimaced with every blow. He never cried or called out; he just stared into her eyes. A look of pure defiance in them. Liadh started screaming then and looked down at her feet. A pool of water grew bigger on the floor; she watched it flood down her legs. Looking back on that day she couldn’t really remember what had happened next, it all seemed disjointed somehow. The next thing she remembered was being brought home by Mister O’Malley and his kindness to her.

Lidah waited in the car outside her house, as Gearóid O’Malley went in to talk to her mother. She had watched her mother cry at the doorstep. It was the first time she had seen her like that, her body wracked with sobs. Her lovely mammy had committed the worst crime of all; she had brought her little pink bundle of sin home with her.

Caoimhe O’Neil had refused to leave Liadh behind in the mother and baby home to be brought to a new family, a new life. Instead she had brought her home and had gratefully moved into a ramshackle cottage with her bachelor uncle, Neddy.

Old wonderful Neddy, who had taken them in and told her mother not to listen to the shite-hawks of the town, her own parents included.

Neddy who cared nothing for convention. Neddy who refused to attend mass and was a quiet man with a lively and sincere nature. Neddy was gone now, too. He had died last year peacefully drifting away in his sleep. Not an ounce of pain or illness in his life at least that was something.

Now Neddy’s cottage was theirs and life was looking good. Her mammy had work cleaning in the O’Malley’s farmhouse and Liadh had Rian too. Rian sat beside her in the back of the car, his small hand covering hers. Even at seven he was a head and a half above Liadh and always seemed bigger and stronger than the other boys. She cried softly beside him, heaving every now and then from the shock and humiliation of it all.“Shush Liadh. Hush now. It’ll be over soon. She will never hurt you again.”

She looked at him, confused. He was the one that was hurt, great welts already swelling across his face and arms but as usual he was worried about her. Mr O’Malley opened her car door and looked at her sadly. His eyes were soft and concerned and Liadh liked him. He knew she had wet her pants and hadn’t mentioned it. Instead he had simply taken a blanket from the boot of the car and wrapped it gently around her shoulders. She knew the O’Malleys treated her mammy well too. When her mammy had worked at Liam O’Brien’s house, she had been sad. Until the day she had come home early and never gone back there.

Liadh had heard Neddy fighting with Mr O’Brien. She had been hiding beneath the stairs when she heard old Neddy telling O’Brien to keep his damn hands to himself. Mr O’Brien told Neddy that her mammy was a bitch and a whore. Liadh didn’t know what it meant, but she knew it wasn’t a good thing. And if it wasn’t good, then it wasn’t true. Because her mammy was good and kind and lovely. She would read to Liadh and kiss her goodnight. Her mammy smelled like roses from the fancy soap Neddy and Liadh had given her last Christmas. They had chosen it together, in the pharmacy in the village.

Her mammy had cried when they had presented it to her, her hands shaking as she opened the fancy gold and red wrapping. The nicest present anyone had ever given her, she had told them. And Neddy had smiled too and muttered about not understanding women. Later that night they had all sat around the fire stuffed to the gills with turkey and ham. Neddy had played Spancil hill on the accordion and Liadh and her mammy sang along. Her mother had a beautiful voice and when she sang her face lit up and Liadh thought she was the most beautiful woman she had ever seen, her yellow hair long and straight.

“Out you pop liadh, there's a good girl.” Mister O’Malley helped her out of the car and waved at them both as he drove off. Liadh saw Rian as he appeared at the back window of the car, He held his hand up in a silent wave to her, she raised her hand too and kept looking until the car turned the corner of the lane and out of sight.

Her mother cradled her tight and whispered into Liadh’s hair. “She will never hurt you again my Liadh. Never again. None of them will.”

The next day they packed up their small amount of belongings and moved out of the town. Mister O’Malley had friends in Dublin, her mother would have work there and never have to come back to this town; this town that had taken so much from her already. Liadh never got to say good bye to Rian, that hurt the most. All that Lidah and her mammy left behind, were tiny footprints in the heart of the town. And all Liadh took with her was the memory of a boy who cared for her, once.