Maggie's Breakfast (28 page)

I stepped away from her and sat down on the old armchair and closed my eyes. I tried to look back at the sixteen years of my life with her to see or even imagine her to be any different than she
was this day, standing in front of me in her old and tattered clothes. I was tired and exhausted from arguing and began to accept that I had almost no influence over my mother. She would say what
she wanted and do what she wanted and she’d wear what she wanted. Wanting her to look and behave like someone different was not going to happen. I now had to accept fully that this was my
mother, in all her rags, twines and false teeth. The old dress and the worn-out shoes and the stockings with holes in them was my mother. This had always been my mother even if I never wanted to
believe or accept it. She was from another time and she would neither change nor let go of her past. While I sat back in the armchair searching for some kind of warm emotional connection, the sound
of my mother’s voice brought me back to the present reality.

“Will ya stop actin’ like Paddy Walsh and put the kettle on for a cup of tea!”

The mention of my father meant that my mother was losing her patience with me and perhaps herself as well. Why she always resorted to using my father’s full name was a bit of a mystery to
me. I think in some ways it kept her distanced from him.

I went into the tiny kitchen, filled the pot with water and placed it on the gas stove. I then got two cups and saucers from the wooden cupboard and put them on the table my mother was sitting
at in the front room. As I put the cup and saucer in front of her she looked up at me but didn’t say a word. Having run out of anything else to say I started to walk about the room.

“What are ya lookin’ for now?” my mother calmly asked.

“I left my coat here last night and it’s gone.”

She smiled. “I took it upstairs. It was cold last night in case you don’t remember.”

I ran up the stairs in a hurry and found my coat spread across the bed I slept in.

* * *

In less than half an hour my mother and I got off the bus and headed up Grafton Street. Grafton Street, a five-minute walk from the Shelbourne Hotel. It was also just around the
corner from the Mansion House, the home of Dublin’s Lord Mayor. My mother seemed to be off in her own world as she slowly walked alongside me along the glamorous street with its shop windows
full of luxurious displays, its uniformed doormen, its well-heeled clientele. I didn’t want to disturb her or complain but I felt I had to.

“You’re walkin’ very slow, Ma.”

“Ah, leave me alone and don’t you be bothered with telling me how to walk. Go on. Walk ahead of me if you want,” she said, pulling at the old corset she’d insisted on
wearing.

“If you could walk a bit faster, Ma?” I said impatiently.

“In the name of God will ya leave me alone! I’m doin’ me best! I’m thinkin’ I’ll have to go somewhere else before I go to the hotel.”

“Where?” For a moment or two I thought my mother was going to run away from me. The fear that we weren’t that close to each other again surfaced in my mind and I couldn’t
keep my teeth from rattling. “What are you talkin’ about, Ma?”

My mother didn’t answer but she increased her pace considerably.

When we got to Clarendon Street, a side lane off Grafton Street, my mother decided she had to stop at the nearby church to say a few prayers. I was hoping she’d walk past the church but
she didn’t. She stopped and blessed herself.

“I want to go in here and light a candle for you, son.”

I was getting closer to fainting. I worried that once she entered the church she might stay there all day praying to every saint she had known since childhood. Clarendon Street had twice as many
statues and paintings of Jesus and his apostles as any church in Dublin. It was also my mother’s favourite church to do the Stations of the Cross. She even knew the cleaning women who swept
the floor and polished the marble on the altar. If she got into a conversation with any one of them l knew we’d be late for our appointment. I kept my mouth shut and entered the church with
her.

Inside the church my mother Molly instantly blessed herself and knelt down in subservience. After a few minutes she got up from her kneeling position and walked from painting to painting of
Jesus carrying his cross to Calvary. It was something she had done every day of her life since at least the age of seven. At each depiction of Jesus my mother made the Sign of the Cross and mumbled
a few prayers to herself. She talked and prayed to the paintings as if they were human. She then moved to the image of Jesus where the blood was dripping from his head. A terrible expression of
pain came upon her face. It was as if the man in the picture had come alive and had recognised my mother. This was the man she knew most. The way Jesus shouldered the cross mesmerised my mother.
The admiration expressed in her eyes seemed liberating. The suffering and the depiction of torture seemed reassuring to her as she stared upwards.

I remained seated in the back row while my mother walked up to the altar to light a candle. After dropping a few pennies into the collection box she took a small white candle and lit it from one
that was still holding a flame. The flickering light from the candle reflected off the brown painted robes of Saint Francis of Assisi. My mother looked up into the painted eyes of the saint and
called out something that sounded half-hymn and half-lament. I had never experienced so directly the sense of concentration and commitment she had for the Church and its saints and statues. It was
as though she knew them personally and talked to them as if they were old friends who knew everything about her life. I realised there and then that being my mother was only part of her existence.
She had another family. They had blue, purple and golden robes and they were made of stone. She believed, lived and belonged in this world of devotion. Christ with the thorns on his head and the
blood dripping down his face was an image she identified with. The burden of carrying the cross on his shoulder was a reminder and an inspiration to her. I had not known the depth or meaning of the
religion I was born into.

I had been schooled in the religion of pain and self-denial. If I hurt my knees after falling on the ground or if my lip bled from bumping into a table or a chair I’d try to convince
myself that I didn’t feel the pain. When I walked around in my bare feet in the cold during winter I’d believe that the saints in Heaven were watching me and cheering me on. When it
came to having thoughts in my head, particularly sensual or pleasurable ones, simple and innocent as they might be, I’d slap my forehead to chase and frighten them away. But today when I saw
my mother in the chapel I felt that there was something to my religion that I had not been taught. I sensed a strange peace while observing her losing all sense of her physical self. She seemed
more at home in this house of worship than she did in our own little house in Inchicore. She was at peace. As she moved from each image and statue of the saints and Jesus she talked as if they were
all friends meeting again. In some ways I was proud and envious at the same time. I felt a tinge of jealousy towards the statues and the religious paintings.

After making the Sign of the Cross my mother turned away from the altar and walked down the aisle again towards me.

“You’re blessed now, Gabriel,” she said with a warm smile on her face. She felt better and for the first time in a very long time I began to relax.

* * *

As we stood outside the front door of the Shelbourne Hotel, Molly without notice abruptly turned and ran across the street. I wanted to faint and watched in wonderment and
confusion. My mother had left me again at the time I wanted to leave her the most. I watched her make her way through the traffic as she held her hat on her head with one hand and pointed her way
with the other in the direction of Stephen’s Green. When she got to the other side of the street she walked into the Green. I followed her but she kept walking until she stopped and sat down
on a bench in front of the duck pond. She was staring straight out across the park, not looking at anything in particular. I sat down next to her and kept my eyes on the ducks swimming about in the
pond. I was afraid to open my mouth in case she’d argue with me. I was even more afraid that she’d jump up from the bench and leave me there alone.

The complicated feelings I had for my mother ran through my veins faster than the blood in them. I thought of the countless times she and I had sat silently side by side throughout my life. In
my early childhood she gave me strange looks that made me feel she didn’t really know me. At least half the time I thought she was thinking I had done something bad or wrong. There were times
when I wished I
had
done something that annoyed her or made her angry. I was willing to confess to anything. Even to things I didn’t do or have any part in. I felt if I was accused of
having dropped one of the many holy statues in the house or of making a scratch in her mahogany crucifix that was nailed on the inside of the kitchen door, I’d at least be able to talk to her
and she’d get to know me better. Sometimes, sitting by the fireplace, she’d look at me as if to ask me what I was doing sitting next to her. But, for the most part, whenever I sat next
to her around the fireplace or at the dinner table she appeared not to notice me. Sometimes I thought it was because she didn’t have enough wood or coal to heap on the fire or enough food to
feed the whole family. Or maybe because there wasn’t enough paraffin oil left in the dented tin can to put in the lamps that lighted the house, or any coins to insert into the gas meter to
keep the gaslight on so that we could all see each other’s faces around the table at night and have boiled potatoes for dinner and stale fried bread for breakfast. But deep down I sensed
there was something awry in our relationship.

I don’t know how many times I tried to get her attention and tell her about myself – such as when I sewed buttons on my trousers or stitched a hole in the pocket of my jacket or
brought home the odd turnip and head of cabbage that rolled off the vegetable cart on the street. Whenever I attempted to declare my presence to her I was ignored and my small accomplishments were
dismissed. Occasionally I witnessed my mother complimenting my brothers and sisters and placing an affectionate hand on their heads as if she was blessing and anointing them as her own. At times I
would purposefully sit close to her and hope she’d place her hand on my head and make a connection that made me feel I belonged to her and that our small house and the world outside were safe
places to live in. But she never did. There were times when I even thought that I was an invisible person and didn’t exist at all. When she sensed that I wanted to make contact with her
she’d begin humming a song she knew in her childhood. Singing songs from her youth was a habit she had whenever she felt angry or annoyed at my father. The songs more than likely took her
back to a time when she was young, free, innocent and single. Certainly a time before she met my father and got married. The most frequent thing she ever said to me, and she said it repeatedly was:
“You’re just like him! You’re the spitting image of your father!” Of her ten children – I was the seventh – biology and timing dictated that I was the child who
most resembled my father. Apparently I not only looked like him, I evidently – and unbeknownst to myself – behaved like him as well. Unwittingly I kept alive for my mother what she
considered to be the biggest regret and mistake of her life: her marriage. As far as she was concerned I was too much like the man she married and my existence and presence appeared to impede her
evolving retreat from him. Whatever the dynamics of it all, I had always felt I was born into enemy territory.

We sat there on the bench together without a word, both of us staring ahead at the duck pond. At last I ventured to look at her. She had an expression on her face as if the Sacrament of
Communion was stuck to the roof of her mouth. I didn’t recognise her. I thought she was leaving the world, with everybody and me in it. Her face was so expressionless I got frightened.

I called out, “Ma?”

In a second she was changed again. She had come back from somewhere holy and religious. The devotion she had for the Church had conquered her and it wasn’t going to let her go. She started
to pray again. “Dear Father above, come down and take me from here. I’m not able for it any more. I’m not able for it!” This day like every other day of her life she was
surrendering to the reality of her existence and appeared not to be present in front of me at all. After what might have been the longest minute in the history of my life she spoke again.

“I’m not goin’ in that place. I’m too poor a woman. Don’t ask me, son. Don’t ask me. I’m too poor a woman.”

I didn’t answer. I couldn’t answer. I began to cry. The meeting at the hotel was the most important time of my sixteen-year-old life and I was beginning to think it wasn’t
going to happen. It appeared the world was about to fall in on me at the moment I wanted it to change the most.

“Go over, son, and ask the ladies if they’d mind comin’ over here. Would ya do that? Would ya do that for me?”

I stopped sobbing for a moment or two and began to seek a way to make my mother comfortable.

“Ma, can’t you just come over just for a minute?”

“I’m sorry, son. I’m sorry. Look at me. Look at the ould dress I’m wearing. I’d be better off sittin’ here,” she said, wiping away the tears from her
eyes. She then started to talk without looking directly at me. “I’m sorry, son. I’m sorry! I couldn’t go into the hotel with what I’m wearin’. Look at me. Look
how I look.”

By this time I had forgotten about the old dress and the twine holding up her stockings. Her face seemed open and clear and her eyes were actually sparkling. She didn’t look poor any more.
The old hat on her head actually looked good on her. It had a small bird’s feather sticking out of it and it even looked fashionable. I saw for the first time why my father had married
her.

“You look fine, Ma. Why don’t you come over to the hotel and we can get the meeting over with. Nobody’s going to say a word one way or the other about anything.”