The Magdalen (20 page)

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Authors: Marita Conlon-McKenna

BOOK: The Magdalen
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R
ita had escaped! The news had spread like wildfire among the Maggies. It had been at least two years since anyone had managed to break free of the laundry. Two of the orphans had made a half-hearted attempt the previous June and had been brought back by the guards, but, knowing Rita, she would not be careless enough to be caught. She had pretended to sleep all night in her bed and in reality hidden somewhere down near the laundry. Sister Josepha had locked up, not realizing that Rita was still inside. They'd found one of the tall narrow windows in the steam room slightly open and surmised she must have wriggled through it and somehow climbed the yard wall. Sisters Gabriel and Vincent were behaving
like Nazi storm troopers, searching the dormitories and every nook and cranny of the convent and laundry, even checking the outhouses, for the runaway and the possibility that one of the other penitents had aided and abetted her. The women were frightened by the nuns' behaviour, but poor Sister Jo-Jo bore the brunt of Gabriel's anger. The gardener had found a high wooden stool abandoned in the thorny pyracantha bushes near the wall, which made it far more likely that Rita had escaped.
The women ate their breakfast in suppressed silence, feigning interest in the thick gloopy porridge and stale brown bread. Esther prayed silently that Rita had actually managed to break free and get out of this prison to which they'd all been abandoned.
“They'll bring her back,” murmured Maura. “They always do!”
“She's not a prisoner!” Esther protested. “None of us are. They can't force her to stay.”
“But she's run off with a fellah!” guffawed Sheila. “Old Gabriel will just love that!”
Rumours and stories circulated all morning and Sister Jo-Jo kept slipping in and out of the laundry to go up to the office. By midday a further piece of information had been added to the story: a baby was missing from the orphanage. There were rumours of a nun or a fancily dressed woman lifting it in her arms and walking straight out of the gates with it. “She stole a babby!” whispered the three Marys.
“She took her own baby,” said Maura tersely.
“She took baby Patrick!” declared Sheila triumphantly. “Herself and the baby have got away!”
No wonder Rita had kept on refusing to sign the papers to let Patrick be fostered, thought Esther. She must have been planning her escape for ages.
Saranne Madden was called to Sister Gabriel's office. She had started to shake the minute she was summoned. Esther had suspected that she might be involved.
“The nuns'll beat it out of her!” warned Maura.
They all pitied Saranne: like the rest of the orphans, her life so far had been nothing but misery. She had never known a home or family life, or had someone to care about her. Rita had turned her head, flattered her, returned her craving for attention and affection. Saranne did not return for an hour, her thin face swollen with crying.
“Did she hurt you, lovey?” enquired Sheila.
“She strapped me!” whined sixteen-year-old Saranne, holding out her livid red hands; wide welts of bruised torn skin covered her palms. They were too sore for her to bend or use. “She slapped me too. I did nothing! Honest! Rita kept asking me about the orphanage, what it was like growing up there. I thought she were interested in me, not just the babies and the nursery.”
“Rita's a bitch, a selfish bitch!” Bernice spat out vehemently to the group of them. “She could have taken me with her. We could have got my Stephen too, but no, Miss bloody Rita Whatever-her-real-name-is didn't give a damn about anybody but herself, wasn't interested in me or my baby!”
“Ber! Shut up! There's enough trouble as there is
without you bringing Sister Jo-Jo down on us all.”
“I thought she was my friend!” sobbed the distraught Bernice. “Why didn't she take me with her? Now I'll never get out of here. There's no-one in my bloody family going to come looking for me or my baby. I'll be left to rot here and never get out!”
Esther had to steel herself to keep her sanity in the days following the breakout. The Mother Superior, Mother Benedict, had introduced stricter disciplinary measures in both the orphanage and the laundry.
The platter-faced head nun talked to them all in the refectory. “The matter of a woman absconding with a child is not one that I or my fellow-sisters take lightly. Think of that poor child, taken from the care of nuns who are devoted to their small charges, his young life ruined. Mrs. Byrne the social worker and myself had high hopes for that baby. As we speak there is a heartbroken couple who were chosen to be his parents. They were willing to raise him and educate him and consider him as their own son, despite his low background. I had the unpleasant task of informing them of this situation. Now they will have to rejoin the waiting list, along with hundreds of other good couples. What of this child? He is reunited with his mother. What will happen to this innocent babe if she returns to her fallen ways? Who will look after him then?”
The question hung heavy in the air, the women silent, not daring to reply.
 
 
Sister Gabriel blamed Sister Josepha's easygoing ways, and was determined to come down hard on the penitents. They
deserved no trust or understanding. She had a vindictive streak, and had Saranne's hair shorn close to her scalp, making an example of her. Saranne looked like a small scared skeleton, her bruised hands constantly touching her almost bare skull.
“Wait till you see, lovey!” promised Sheila. “Your hair will grow back thicker and glossier than before, honest!”
In the laundry they now had to work in almost complete silence, and at night each dormitory was locked. The women, nervous, had complained about it.
“What if there's a fire, Sister, how will we manage to get out?”
“The window.” That was all the old battleaxe had said. Obviously she considered their lives, their discomfort, nothing in her scheme of things.
The slight trust that had existed between the Maggies and the nuns, their “guardians,” totally disappeared.
“We're like bloody slaves out in Rome or Africa!” jeered Bernice.
At all times the whereabouts of the women were to be known and there was to be no break from routine. Break-times were supervised, and even visits to the toilet had to be accompanied, Sister Vincent arriving unannounced in the laundry a few times a day to check on them all.
“They'll want to put us in chains next, the old bitches!” spat Sheila, her face livid with temper. “A fecking chain gang!”
Esther was glad at least to be working in the kitchen, where Ina was in some ways kind to her. She helped with the washing-up, the table-setting, and clearing the plates when the others finished eating. Scraping nuns' leftovers
into the big tin buckets for collection by Joe, the pig farmer from Rathfarnham, Esther occasionally managed to retrieve a choice piece of meat or a nice soft bread roll, even a slice of unwanted fruit cake which she could share with the others later or savour herself. The last few weeks she always seemed to be starving, and was glad that Ina turned a blind eye, knowing well that scavenging food was one of the few perks of kitchen duty.
 
 
There was still no trace of Rita. Ina reckoned she'd gone to England on the mailboat.
“She's away in Liverpool,” confided Jim Murray over his usual mug of tea at the kitchen door. “That Paul fellow helped her. They were always scheming, more luck to them!”
“I knew that pair were up to something, she was always making eyes at him,” grunted Ina. “She were probably having it off with him!”
Esther blazed, hoping that they wouldn't look over in her direction. Rita would have had no idea of the trouble she'd brought on the rest of them by escaping.
“Joe Reilly went up by his digs yesterday. They were meant to be going to a football match together. His landlady said that he'd just upped and left, didn't even bother giving her notice or nothing.”
“Do you think they've run off together, Jim?”
“Maybe!”
“Of course, when they hear, all the rest of them'll want to escape too,” muttered Ina. “‘Tis always the way. One goes and they all get notions. Sure, where would the like
of the poor craters here be going? Who'd have them!”
Esther attended to her work, washing about a hundred mugs, clinking them together in the Belfast sink in temper, Jim Murray looking over at her, bemused. Business they had discussing the women and girls, belittling them! Everyone looked down on the Maggies, it wasn't fair!
As the days of her confinement grew closer, Esther felt like a prisoner sentenced for a crime she did not commit, like an animal trapped in a tunnel. She knew that the imminent birth of her baby was all that mattered. Her body was more than ready to be rid of its burden, and she herself yearned to finally see and hold her baby. Soon she would be a mother without ever having been a bride or wife. Romance and sexual pleasure, that's what had brought her to this, and yet somehow she had to believe that God intended for this child to be born, and for her to carry it.
H
er labour had started early on the Sunday morning, though her baby was not due for another two weeks. She had woken with deep, heavy pains low in her back.
“You've started, Esther love, that's all!” reassured Maura.
She felt a mixture of excitement and slight nervousness. She had been waiting a long time for this day. The whole convent was freezing at that early hour, the ancient boiler struggling to heat the length of stone corridors, vast dormitories and rows of individual cubicles. She shivered as she dressed quietly, not wanting to disturb her room-mates as most of them were still asleep.
Sister Gabriel had escorted her
over to the mother-and-baby annexe, leading her up the wide stone stairs. She had to stop halfway as a contraction suddenly gripped her.
Sister Bridget had welcomed them. She was a small wiry nun, her veil pushed back to reveal a crown of tight white curls. She wore a large white apron over her habit and had her sleeves rolled up. She bustled with activity, leading Esther to a small room off the main corridor. The walls and floor were completely tiled and it smelt strongly of some kind of pine disinfectant. The three women could just about fit in it comfortably.
“Here you go, Esther, put this on!” suggested Sister Bridget, passing her a washed-out blue cotton gown. Embarrassed, she waited till the two nuns went outside before undressing and slipping it on.
Sister Bridget returned with a strange-looking black trumpet-like instrument. “Lie up there on the bed, girl, and let me take a listen to your baby's heart.”
Awkwardly Esther tried to arrange herself on the high narrow bed, the nun pulling up the front of the gown and placing the black thing against her enormous, almost egg-shaped stomach. Mortified, she watched as the nun pressed her ear to it and listened.
“A good strong heartbeat! That's what I like to hear! Now flop open the legs and let me see how you're doing!”
Matter-of-factly the little nun poked her head between her legs, pushing her hand up inside her. Esther wanted to die with mortification. “You won't be too long till your baby's born,” she announced before disappearing outside.
Sister Gabriel returned, sitting herself down in the leather chair beside the bed. Retrieving her black missal
from the folds of her habit, she began to read.
Esther wished she would go away and just leave her alone. “I'm all right, Sister, if you want to go back down to the others.”
The nun barely glanced at her and just kept on reading her prayers.
Sister Bridget slipped in every so often, just to see how she was doing. The pain in her back was definitely getting stronger, but that was all.
“I think you might need an enema,” suggested Sister Bridget, pursing her lips. “It would definitely help.”
Esther wanted to beg them not to give her one, but she knew from Bernice and Rita that Sister Bridget was a great believer in the power of the enema. Absolute shame and humiliation filled her as the two nuns made her turn on her side and administered the soapy-water enema, running it from a bucket via a rubber tube into her backside. They ran it into her until she felt she was going to burst, and barely made it to the toilet next door where her bowels exploded. They were trying to torture her, that's what it was! Well, she wouldn't give them the satisfaction of crying and screaming like some of the girls did. She was young and fit and well prepared for the birth of her baby. Hadn't she helped to deliver her own baby sister? There was nothing to be scared of, she tried to tell herself; all women go through this, and survive.
 
 
Midday had turned to afternoon. Now the pain had become more rhythmic and stronger, harder to bear. Her contractions were coming in waves, and she felt hot and tired and
rather breathless. She took a sip of water to dampen her dry cracked lips, for despite the February cold she was covered in sweat, her hair damp too. She would have given anything for Maura or Bernice or Sheila to be there with her, to hear their encouragement, to have one of them hold her hand as the pain came. Sister Bridget had checked between her legs again.
“You're just about ready to push, Esther. Sit up a bit more in the bed. Pull those knees up and flop them wide!”
Sister Gabriel had stood up beside her.
She felt like she was going to burst.
“Push!” shouted the nun.
Groaning loud and pushing as hard as she could, Esther tried to follow the pain.
“Again!” shouted Sister Bridget.
Two more pushes and all the pressure disappeared as her daughter slid out into the nun's waiting hands, the long twisting cord connecting them still. Her baby was born easily. A perfect baby girl!
She couldn't believe it. She watched anxiously as Sister Bridget held the baby before methodically clamping and cutting the cord. She then weighed the baby in a basket on top of cream-coloured scales before wrapping her warmly.
Sister Gabriel took hold of the child as the midwife attended to the afterbirth, pressing on Esther's stomach with the palm of her hand. All the time Esther just stared at the baby. Jet-black hair stood up on her head, and her eyes looked almost blue-black. She squirmed, restless in the nun's arms, mewling for attention.
“Let me hold her!” she insisted fiercely.
“Are you sure you want to hold your baby?” asked Sister Bridget gently.
Esther hesitated. Maura and Denise had both told her not to hold her baby if she wanted to save herself grief and pain, but she couldn't bear not to hold her daughter. “Give her to me, please!” she sobbed. Sister Gabriel nodded at the other nun as she passed the child into her waiting arms.
“You have a beautiful daughter, Esther!” said Sister Bridget kindly. “She's as pretty as her mother.”
Shaking, she held her baby daughter close in her arms. She was perfect and beautiful and alive. Greedily she searched every detail of her baby's face, storing every image, her nostrils breathing in that special scent of her own child. She is mine. She will always be mine, no matter what the nuns or anyone else says or does. The baby moved against her, skin touching skin, as if they were one again. The baby relaxed against her, recognizing her. She ignored the movements of the two nuns as they pulled the soiled sheets from underneath her and checked the afterbirth. The only interest she had lay in her arms. She was a good healthy child, with Con's strong black hair and a definite look of Nonie when she was a baby, but her actual face shape was like her own, thought Esther, kissing her dainty little nose. Her limbs were long and well shaped. She would be tall. Gently she caressed the small naked body. “You're beautiful! You're beautiful!” she crooned. “My beautiful Roisin!” Somehow the name just seemed to suit her.
“Here, I'll take the baby now,” interrupted Sister Gabriel, ignoring her protests and scooping the baby into her arms. “You can feed her in a while!”
“Let me hold her! Please! Don't take my baby away! Don't take her away! I still want to hold her.”
The nun deliberately ignored her, turning away and leaving the room.
“Sister!” she begged, feeling almost hysterical. “Tell her to bring back my baby! I want my baby!”
“Shush! Shush now, Esther! You'll see your baby again, by and by. You need to rest now.”
With Roisin gone she felt bereft, empty and scared as the nun helped her to wash, and brought her across the corridor to a room equipped with four beds. Sinking into the starched pillow covers and sheets, she longed to sleep, for her body felt bruised, battered, and torn, her emotions surging between triumph and despair.
 
 
A few hours later she woke to find Sister Bridget had brought baby Roisin to her. She felt exhausted, but was so relieved to have her back in her arms. The baby had been washed, her hair damped down and plastered to her head, and put into a starched white gown and wrapped in a heavy cotton blanket. Esther inhaled deeply, recognition and joy filling her senses. She was glad that Sister Gabriel had finally returned to her normal duties, leaving her in the care of the midwife.
“Are you ready to feed her, Esther?”
“Aye.” She nodded, trying to sit herself up on the pillows. She opened the front of her nightie, positioning the
baby so her dark nipple touched her cheek. Roisin started, her head turning, lips and nose searching blindly.
“Well, you look almost like an old hand, you don't need much teaching.” The nun grinned approvingly.
“My mother fed us all. I often watched her with the young ones.”
The baby stirred, clamping her lips around her nipple as Esther leant forward, squeezing it between the tiny lips, as the first thick creamy drops filled the baby's mouth. Interested now, Roisin sucked firmly.
“That's it!” The nun smiled. “That one's going to be a great feeder, thank God!”
Drink my milk, urged Esther silently. Fill your self with it! I always want to be a part of you, just as you were a part of me.
Holding her newborn baby in her arms, Esther tried to forget that she was only another unwed mother, in the care of the nuns at the Magdalen laundry. Where her child was born didn't matter. For now, nothing mattered, nothing was going to spoil the love and joy that her little daughter had brought into her lonely life.

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