Sins of the Mother (25 page)

From then on the house was much quieter, though I found it more peaceful. If Jennifer was lonely at least she was safe. We weren’t big socializers – Matt didn’t drink, which
was the main way of making friends in our area. A naturally private man, he seemed content to keep himself to himself. And I had one lovely friend called Pat across the street who I met at the
bingo. Though Pat was twenty years older than me I felt very comfortable in her company; from the word go we were close. She was a very caring person and I saw her several times a week. Apart from
Pat, we didn’t make friends. It suited us that way – we had spent a lot of time in our past surrounded by others. Now it felt peaceful to be left alone.

The years passed. In the quiet of the night, the voices visited again. I had tried so hard to hide from them, to run away from them. But somehow they always found me. And after
my mother died, they would not leave me alone.

18

IRENE

Reckoning

It was the call from my sister that prompted my return to Ireland.

‘You better come,’ said Agatha sadly. ‘Things are getting bad with Mammy. She’s in the hospice now and the cancer’s spread everywhere.’

Matt was worried for me – he had seen how badly my mother had hurt me in the past and during our years in England, I had finally found peace, away from her.

‘Are you sure about this?’ he asked as I carefully folded clothes into my suitcase.

It was February 1996, Jennifer was five years old and Anna fourteen. Of course, I didn’t really want to leave Matt or the kids, but I had to go for my own peace of mind. I had to give my
mother one last chance to make things right.

‘It’s only a week,’ I reasoned. ‘I have to go see her now. I have to know if she’s sorry. There won’t be another chance to do it.’

‘Well, maybe . . .’ he mumbled, sounding unconvinced. ‘Just don’t expect too much, okay? Some people can’t change.’

I spent a week in the hospice at my mother’s side, returning each night to Justin’s home, where he lived with his partner and her four-year-old child. I loved spending time with
Justin and Katie – they were a lovely couple and very easy to be around. They were clearly devoted to each other. He was eighteen now, working on the trains – I was proud of him,
he’d grown into a responsible and mature young man.

At first, I had been shocked by my mother’s altered looks – she seemed shrivelled and frail in her massive bed, her hair was limp and grey, and her complexion was a sickly yellow
colour. It was so different from how I remembered her – she had always taken great pride in her appearance. But there was something about the eyes that was unchanged; the beady, malevolent
stare was the same as it always had been. If she was surprised to see me when I arrived, she didn’t show it.

‘Are you comfortable, Mammy?’ I asked her each morning. ‘Is there something I can get you?’

‘Get me a cup of tea,’ she’d rasp back. Her voice had deteriorated into a hoarse whisper. There were never any pleases or thank yous – her manners certainly hadn’t
improved in the years I’d been away. Though we talked about Justin, Philip, my siblings and their families, as well as her health, she never once asked me about Matt or the girls.

My father was still living in the house they had shared and I saw him very briefly, twice, when he visited my mother, but we barely exchanged five words. Looking at his dirty, dishevelled state
I felt disgusted. He was like a tramp and he smelled terrible from not washing or changing his clothes.

For the most part, I just sat at her bedside and tried to help make her last days comfortable. Various family members came by at different times to drop off flowers or sit with Mammy for a
while. It was nice when they were there to chat and catch up on all the family news. But when it was just the two of us, the hours dragged by. One day, Mammy got a visit from two nuns. Mammy always
loved the nuns. It was strange – my experiences had been dreadful in St Grace’s but still Mammy thought all nuns were saintly, wonderful people.

I had been outside having a cigarette when they’d gone into Mammy’s room, and when I came back in they were sat on the chairs at her bedside. I almost recoiled in shock when I saw
them. Just the sight of these ancient, wizened little women in their habits made me sick to the stomach. It was like I was being haunted by the ghosts from my past. I sat down in the corner of the
room and some physical memory seemed to rise up inside my body. Without knowing it, I tried to make myself as small as possible so they wouldn’t look at me or talk to me. I wanted to be
invisible at that moment. I heard my mother cackling away recalling some memory from her youth.
Leave. Please just leave!
I willed the nuns to go away. I knew it was crazy but even as a
woman of thirty-seven I felt fear at the sight of a nun.

Each day, I arrived in the hospice at 7 a.m. and left at 9 p.m. at night. Occasionally Ma asked me to put her in the wheelchair to take her down to the canteen for a cup of
tea. She always made me take my purse, never once offering to buy me a cup herself.

‘Mammy you know I came over from England to see you,’ I said one day as we sat in the canteen together. I kept my eyes on her and my voice level.

‘Well you haven’t been over much before now,’ she retorted, looking out towards the hospice garden. She never showed any interest in what was out there, though it was a lovely
place to walk around.

‘But I am here now, Mammy,’ I said quietly, still looking at her.

Silence.

‘This tea is too weak,’ she grumbled. And that was it. That was the closest we got to having an honest conversation.

Ma had medication to keep the pain at bay – I knew now that the cancer had spread to her bones and kidneys – and she spent a good few hours a day asleep. Then I would just watch her,
willing her to say something to me when she woke up. It was so hard to be there with her. I wanted to ask if she was sorry for how she treated me, but it didn’t feel right to prompt her. She
had to
want
to apologize.

My arms still ached occasionally and now I knew why – Frances told me some years before that Mammy had broken both my arms when I was a baby. We had been talking over the phone one day
about our mammy and she remarked off-hand, ‘I never understood why it was always you that got the beatings.’

‘Didn’t she break my arm once?’ It was a vague recollection backed up by regular bouts of pain over the years, which convinced me that something like this had happened.

‘No, it was both arms,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘She broke both your arms.’

I didn’t say any more on the subject. It was too upsetting, so I just changed the conversation.

I examined the flaky skin on Ma’s face and hands, the thin, weak little wrists and discoloured nails, and thought about myself as a helpless baby, lying in my pram with casts on each arm.
What sort of mother breaks her own baby’s arms?

Are you sorry, Mammy? Did you really mean to hurt me?
I wondered. But each time her purple-tinged eyelids flickered open and she looked about her, at first confused and then finally
arriving at a realization of her surroundings, she just stared right through me. No words of apology escaped those tight, dry lips, nothing except demands and instructions.

Finally, the day came when I was due to leave. It was now or never. That morning Agatha and I had gone to see Mammy together. My older sister fussed around, changing the flowers, emptying the
bins, folding clothes and generally clearing up while I sat in the armchair, watching my mother. Eventually, at midday, I picked up my bag and stood by my mother’s bed. She was propped up
against a mountain of pillows, her eyes fixed vacantly on the TV.

‘Right, I’m going home now,’ I said flatly.

‘Yeah, okay,’ she said.
Had she heard me? Did she understand 1 was leaving to go back to Manchester?
Surely she must know this would be the last time we would see each
other.

‘I have to get the plane in two hours,’ I said, my heart breaking. In the whole week I had sat by my dying mother’s bedside, there had been no meaningful words between us at
all. Nothing. It was as if I truly didn’t matter to her.

‘Okay. Bye then.’

I was calm on the outside but inside my emotions raged. I was devastated, enraged and guilty all at the same time. This was my mother, my dying mother, and I knew I should love her and should
feel sad that she was dying. But I couldn’t! I couldn’t feel sad and I couldn’t love her. I couldn’t feel anything for her any more. She had demonstrated her contempt for me
over and over again. I couldn’t afford to throw away any more feelings on her.

Outside in the corridor, I hugged Agatha goodbye and she wished me a good journey. Then she looked back sadly towards my mother’s tiny frame engulfed in the huge bed.

‘It won’t be long before you’ll be back,’ she sighed.

‘What do you mean?’

‘For the funeral. It won’t be long now.’

I held my sister’s gaze as I told her: ‘I’ll never go to that woman’s funeral. Never! I’m not a hypocrite.’

Back at home, Matt was my rock once more as I vented all my anger and frustration.

‘She had her chance, Matt! She had every opportunity and she never said a word to me,’ I railed. He just listened and nodded. He had known she would never apologize.

Two weeks later, we were in the middle of packing and organizing our move to a new house when I got a call from Agatha.

‘She’s in a coma,’ she said. ‘This is it.’

There was a long pause.

‘And?’ I asked dispassionately.

‘And . . .’ Agatha stumbled, confused. ‘And you’re coming over, aren’t you?’

‘Me? No,’ I said. ‘No, Aggie. I have a life. I have other things to do. I’m moving into my new home soon. So no, I’m not coming to the funeral. I can’t
forgive her. I can’t forgive her for the things she did because she never once said sorry.’

There was a long pause then.

‘She didn’t say sorry to you?’ Agatha asked slowly.

‘No. Why?’

‘She said sorry to the rest of us.’

‘What for?’

‘For everything that happened.’

‘She apologized for that?’

‘Yes.’

It was like being punched in the stomach. She’d managed to say sorry to everyone else but me. Eventually I recovered enough to speak.

‘Well, that just about sums the woman up,’ I laughed bitterly. ‘I didn’t think she had the power to hurt me any more – and look, she managed it in a bloody
coma!’

She died two days later. By then we were in our new house. It was still a mess and all our belongings were in boxes but we both loved our little three-bedroom semi. It was in a quiet cul-de-sac
with a big garden out the back and the high school was just a short walk away. Matt had lots of ideas for decorating and building cupboards – we’d discovered that as well as painting he
was capable of doing pretty much any DIY he turned his hand to. He was still painting his own canvasses too and now he had plans to grow vegetables in our garden. When I got the call to say that
she had died, I felt nothing but relief.
It’s over,
I thought to myself.
That woman can’t hurt me any more. Now I can let go of all the hate and bitterness and just live my
life.

But it didn’t work like that. The relief was momentary. I didn’t feel better at all. In fact, the demons that had haunted me my entire life came to visit more often
and stayed longer each time. Now, I recognized the voice straight away. It was my mother’s voice.

You think you can escape?
she rasped in my head.
You think you have it good now? Well, just watch what we’re going to do! None of this is going to last. We’re going to
come and find you and destroy you. You’re a horrible, nasty, evil person. You’re bad luck and you know it. Matt won’t stay with you. Who’d want to stay with you? What sort
of person are you that you think people want to be around you? Nobody can love you. He’ll leave. And when he does, I’ll be here. I’ll be here . . .

The depression came back every few months and when it did I couldn’t control it. My mother’s voice came at me all the time, twenty-four hours a day, and after a few days, I was
wrecked, wretched and ready to throw in the towel. I stopped eating and sleeping. It felt like the sharp voice stabbed at my soul, splintering it into tiny fragments, and it got harder and harder
to put myself back together again. After a couple of years I stopped working, unable to hold down a job for more than a few weeks at a time before going off sick with depression. I couldn’t
concentrate on what I was supposed to be doing and I was starting to argue out loud with the voices, which was mortifying. There would come a point when I just couldn’t leave my bed and I was
constantly exhausted, all the time. Then I would have to stop working. Eventually, the work dried up for Matt too. He found it difficult to concentrate when I was in low spirits and he usually
wound up at home with me, making sure I was okay. The time between each job got longer and longer until he stopped getting work altogether.

Over the years I did my best to keep the voices at bay but my life shrank when Anna left home. Now it was just me, Matt and Jennifer. I didn’t go out any more. There were times I tried to
write my story, but I couldn’t find the words. It was only poetry that seemed to relieve the misery. For some reason I could express in poetry the pain that was locked away in my heart.