Sins of the Mother (10 page)

After a while I noticed a large gathering of children around a doorway at one end of the yard. I was curious.
What are they all doing there?
Before long a lady in a white apron appeared
at the doorway with a big porcelain mixing bowl and a second later she tossed the contents of the bowl towards the crowd of children. A shower of bread rained down and, in that moment, the whole
yard exploded into life. Children dived onto the scattered morsels, grabbing bits of bread, fighting each other for scraps, then running off to the other end of the yard. I didn’t move
– even from a distance I could see that most of the bread was green with mould. In no time at all the bread was gone and the crowd had broken up. Now all I could see were children hunched
over or squatting in corners as they ate their bread. They shielded the bread with their bodies, as if afraid someone might snatch it at any moment.
Like animals
, the thought flashed
through my mind.
They look like animals
.

Three days after I started school, when lessons finished at 2.30 p.m., I was sent to work in the nursery for the rest of the afternoon. One of the other children led me across the courtyard to a
separate building where I was shown up the stairs and into a very large ward. From the moment I walked in, I was assaulted by the noise. The ward was filled with rows and rows of cots – about
a hundred in all – and in each cot was a baby. A crying, wailing, miserable baby. I scanned the room quickly, trying to see my brother Martin and sister Cecily, but the place was too big and
I couldn’t find them.

‘You! Irene! Get over here!’ It was Sister Beatrice. There were two other members of staff and four older children like myself. With so many babies, we were hopelessly
outnumbered.

‘You’re to change the nappies on the babies,’ Sister Beatrice instructed. ‘Every baby needs a fresh nappy and then it’ll be the beds. You have to strip and change
the beds and then clean the floor. Do you understand?’

I nodded but I was struggling to stay focused. All around me little red-faced babies were standing up screaming their hearts out – it wasn’t normal crying either. It was different,
like crying in pain. I went over to the changing table and picked up the first baby that I saw – a ruddy-cheeked boy with strawberry blonde curls in a long white gown. He was beside himself,
bawling his eyes out.

‘Hush now, little one,’ I tried to soothe him. ‘Come with me and we’ll get you all sorted out.’ Strangely, the moment I picked him up he calmed down – it was
as if all he needed was the warmth of another person’s touch. ‘Poor wee man,’ I whispered. ‘You just need a cuddle, hey?’

I laid him down on the changing table and unhooked the pin at the front of the terry-towelling nappy. As it fell away I could see it was heavy with poo. Then the smell hit me. Oh Lord, it was
like he’d been sitting there in his own mess for weeks! The poor boy had such a red, chapped little bottom that when I cleaned him up he bled.

‘Hurry up, girl!’ A voice at my side suddenly made me jump. I looked up to see a middle-aged woman in a nursery apron with a sour face staring at me. Her heavy-lidded eyes were
framed by a mop of short black hair. She had rough-looking skin and thin lips. If it weren’t for her massive breasts, I would have assumed she was a man.

‘I’m trying,’ I muttered.

‘Don’t give me lip, girl!’ she snarled. ‘Just do as you’re told.’

One of the other girls whispered to watch out because this was Bernie, and she was one of the staff that had been brought up in the orphanage. ‘She’s not a nun,’ said the girl
as we emptied soiled nappies together. ‘But she’s just as mean. Sometimes even worse.’

For hours and hours I stood at the changing table, dealing with one bawling baby after another. Sometimes I tried to hold the babies for a little and rock them, just to give them some comfort.
But if Bernie caught me holding them she’d shout at me not to dawdle.

At one point a terrible piercing cry rang through the nursery. Automatically I looked up and around to see where the cry came from. A second shriek drew my eye to Sister Beatrice who had a child
laid down on another changing table.

She was doing something to a little girl, putting something inside her. I squinted to get a better look.
What is going on? What is she doing?
Whatever it was, that child was in terrible
pain. As I squinted, Sister Beatrice looked up and caught my eye. She gave me such a fearsome look that I hurriedly turned back to my work.

I hated it in the nursery. There was something very wrong about the way the nuns and staff dealt with the babies, as if they weren’t people at all. But I didn’t
have any choice – I was sent to work there every day after school and on the weekends too. At the start of my second week in St Grace’s it felt like I’d been there for a lifetime
already, and my hopes of being rescued by Mammy were fading every day.

‘She’d come to get us if she could,’ Agatha reasoned one evening.

‘But what if she’s not allowed?’ I said. ‘Maybe we’ll have to be here for the rest of our lives. I don’t think I could stand it, Aggie. I hate it
here.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Agatha replied. ‘She’ll come for us. You’ll see.’

But by the third week I was desperately unhappy. One morning, I walked into the nursery to be met by the sound of my brother Martin crying with pain. I knew it was him straight away – even
above the ordinary cries of the other babies, I recognized my brother’s cries. I ran over to where I saw Bernie had him on a changing table – my brother still wore a nappy at night
– and then I caught sight of something I didn’t like at all. Bernie had the nappy pin open and there was blood coming out of my brother’s back passage. I didn’t understand
it – why was Bernie trying to hurt my brother like this? For a minute, I just stood there, unwilling to believe my own eyes. Was she putting it inside him? She was! As soon as I’d
recovered from the shock, I started shouting at the top of my voice: ‘STOP! STOP! YOU’RE HURTING HIM!’

She whipped round and gave me an evil look, then she pretended I wasn’t there and carried on putting on Martin’s nappy.

‘That’s right – all done!’ she exclaimed brightly.

She quickly tied up the nappy at the front, put the nappy pin in to secure it then helped Martin off the table. He winced as he moved away but he wouldn’t look me in the eye. I wanted to
ask her what she had done but I was too frightened.

I shook with emotion.
What are they doing to the children here?

It wasn’t right. It just wasn’t right. I knew it in my heart – the place was run by nuns but what they were doing to the babies was ungodly. It was bad and sinful. I knew that
much. Each day I left the nursery with a heavy heart and the sound of the wailing still ringing in my ears. I hated the thought of leaving Cecily and Martin in that place. The nuns and the staff
were so cruel to the little ones who were helpless to stop them. It was bad enough for me and I was six!

The following Saturday morning I was back in the nursery, dashing around trying to get all the toddlers onto the potties. Agatha was also there and we hadn’t been at work long before I
heard her crying.

‘Irene!’ she called out quietly, obviously trying not to attract the attention of the nuns and the staff on the ward.

I scurried over to the corner where I saw she had our sister Cecily on the floor fully dressed except she had one shoe on; the other was in Agatha’s hand.

‘What is it?’ I whispered. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘I can’t get Cecily’s shoe on!’ she sobbed. She held out the little burgundy buckle-up shoe towards me and I took it. I had a go myself but it was soon clear that
Cecily’s left foot was too swollen to get the shoe to fit. Confused, I took off the right shoe then peeled down Cecily’s tights. To my shock I saw that the whole of her left foot was
one big, angry, red blister.

‘It’s burnt!’ I exclaimed. ‘Her foot is burnt!’

Agatha gasped with shock and now Cecily started crying. I could see she was in a lot of pain.

‘Was it the hot-water bottle?’ I asked Cecily and she nodded. The nuns put a hot-water bottle in the cots with the babies every night to keep them warm. Someone had put a hot-water
bottle directly onto Cecily’s foot and left her like that all night long!

‘Please, sister!’ I called out to Sister Beatrice, who was in the middle of the room.

‘What is it?’ she answered tersely.

‘I think my sister has been hurt,’ I said. ‘Look at her foot. It’s blistered and we can’t get the shoe on it. Should I take her to see the nurse?’

‘No, don’t be stupid, child. Just push the shoe onto her. I’m sure it’s fine.’

Then she walked away. Agatha looked at me with despair but there was nothing we could do.

The next day I discovered I was so hungry I had no choice. After lunch, when we were put out to the yard, I went to the doorway to wait with the other children. When the lady
with the bowl came out I made sure I dived headfirst onto a piece of mouldy roll. Then I scampered off to the far end of the yard and pushed myself into a corner, crouching down low so nobody could
see me. I knew the drill. I had seen children snatch and steal pieces of bread from one another so I had to make sure I ate it quickly. There, I tore off chunks of stale bread and gulped them down,
grateful to stop the terrible pangs of hunger that now left me doubled over in agony. Afterwards, I felt strangely numb. I had seen the children do the same thing a few weeks before and I
remembered thinking how they looked like animals. Now I was an animal too.
What is happening to me? What is going on?
Nothing made sense any more.

At the nursery I saw the nuns doing that thing with the nappy pins to more and more children and it made me feel so awful I couldn’t sleep at night. It was the start of a
new week and Bernie called me over one afternoon and ordered me to strip.

‘What for?’ I asked. I didn’t like the sound of this.

‘Don’t argue, girl!’ she snapped. ‘Do you want to be sent to the Mother Superior?’

I shook my head, no. The Mother Superior was the head nun. I hadn’t had much to do with her yet but I had heard how she beat children with a belt. I definitely did not want to go and see
her so I did as I was told. Bernie told me to take off my knickers and dress and lay back on the wide windowsill which was two feet off the ground. Then she put the pin inside my privates. I knew
the pin was open because I felt a terrible sharp pain. A second later she yanked it out again – Oh Christ! It was like she was ripping out my insides.

I screamed in agony and then immediately drew up my knees to my chest and rolled onto the floor, hugging myself and crying in pain.
Why? Why are they doing this to us?
I didn’t
understand any of it. All I knew was I had to make it stop.

The next morning, as the dorm came to life, I rolled out of bed and winced slightly as I felt a soreness down below from what Bernie had done to me. I crawled over to Agatha, who was still
asleep, and nudged her impatiently – I’d barely slept a wink all night from the pain and I was relieved to finally get up.

‘Come on,’ I whispered. ‘Let’s go back home.’

‘What?’ Agatha mumbled, still dumb with sleep. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean it’s not far from here and if we got back home, there’s nothing they could do about it.’

There was a pause.

‘Won’t we get into trouble?’

‘This place . . .’ I sighed and rolled my eyes. ‘You’re always in trouble here anyways! It doesn’t matter what you do. I hate it, Agatha. I can’t stay any
longer. If we get home and tell Mammy what’s happening she won’t make us go back.’

Agatha locked eyes with me then – I saw in that moment she felt the same way and she nodded. We dressed quickly and tried to make ourselves small and quiet so that nobody would notice us.
We went to morning prayers as usual and then afterwards we snuck into the nursery to get Martin.

‘What about Cecily?’ he asked. I shook my head sadly.

‘Her foot is burnt – she can’t walk!’ Agatha explained.

‘Look, we’ll just have to make Mammy come and get Cecily once we are back home,’ I said. ‘We can’t take her now – we can’t carry her all the way
back.’

By now most of the other children were rushing from the church and into the dining hall for breakfast. We followed the line but instead of turning up the corridor which led to the dining hall,
we went straight on, towards the front door that led out to the driveway, the paddock and beyond. There were no nuns around and Agatha and I held hands with Martin, who walked between the two of
us. My heart was hammering like crazy inside my chest but I tried to stay calm. All I wanted now was to go home and see Mammy. Beside me I heard the footsteps of my brother and sister. I heard
Agatha’s footsteps speed up and felt a little tug as she hurried on towards the front door. She was panicking.

‘Just go slowly,’ I whispered. ‘Don’t worry – I don’t see any nuns. Just keep walking and we’ll be out really soon.’

It felt like forever but eventually we emerged onto the driveway we had travelled up almost a month earlier. It had been the worst month of my life and now I just wanted it all to go away.

Once we were out in the open air, I quickened my pace.

‘Come on!’ I urged the other two. ‘Let’s run!’

And the three of us, hand in hand, ran all the way down that long driveway, past the grazing chestnut horse with the white stripe and away from all the nuns in St Grace’s. A few minutes
later we popped out onto the main road. Excited, I turned to my brother and sister and, for the first time since we passed through those gates, we all smiled.

8

IRENE