Sins of the Mother by Irene Kelly Read Free Book Online Page A

eyes filled with tears as I slunk off to the large ceramic sink filled with dirty dishes.
Don’t cry,
I told myself over and over.
Don’t cry.
    And don’t bloody start your feckin weeping again!’
    Mammy groaned. ‘Jesus, you drive me mad, you really do!’
    I tried my best but the tears wouldn’t listen and I started to cry again. All I wanted was to love her and for her to love me. But she didn’t love me. She really didn’t and she
didn’t make any attempt to hide it.
    Now I sighed and got to my feet – I knew I’d have to go back inside to say the rosary at 6 p.m. or I’d be in really big trouble. So I dusted my dress down and walked back into
the flat. Luckily, nobody seemed to notice me as I came in that evening. They were sitting on the bed, talking. There was Frances with her thick, curly chestnut hair which hung down her back. She
was the pretty one. Next to her on the bed was Agatha, who was well built with wiry, strawberry blonde hair and on the end, Peter with his mop of dark brown hair. He was a handsome lad but he had a
quick temper and was always ready to defend our mother. I was hoping they might have left some bread and dripping for me and luckily there was a slice left on the chopping board. I looked around
before I took the hard hunk of bread and started gnawing on it.
    At 6 p.m. on the dot Mammy made us kneel to say the rosary with her – she’d been brought up by the nuns in the convent so she was very religious, making us say our prayers every
night. It always made my knees sore but I never complained – none of us ever complained. We just got on with it, racing through the words as quickly as possible in order to get up off the
cold floor and into bed: ‘I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth; and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord . . .’
    Afterwards, I crawled under the covers of the bed with the rest of my siblings, all of us huddled under a big pile of coats for warmth, and fell asleep to the sound of their soft breathing.
Sometimes, after a long day, my arms would ache. It was something I’d had all my life though I didn’t know why they ached. Mammy always joked that I was lucky to be alive and
she’d tried to throw me out of the window when I was a baby. The way she said it, it was to make other people laugh, but deep down I could never really tell if she was joking or not. That
nasty little laugh at the end.
Did she really try and throw me out of the window?
I tried not to think about it. Instead, I closed my eyes and told myself: ‘Tomorrow will be better.
Tomorrow my real mammy and daddy will come and get me. And they’ll never call me names.’ I smiled to myself then and let the fantasy take me completely.
    A couple of months later, just after my sixth birthday, we were given a new house in a council estate on the outskirts of town, again just opposite the River Liffey Moving day
was frantic – lots of the local families helped us put our furniture on a cart to get it across town. Compared to the tenement block, our new home was paradise. It was very clean and enormous
– there was a living room, scullery, a separate toilet, bathroom, and upstairs there were three bedrooms. The front bedroom had two double beds and a single bed in it – that’s
where all us children slept – the middle room had a double bed and a wardrobe for my mother and the smaller room also had a double bed in it. The place wasn’t decorated but it was
large, clean and, best of all, there was a big back garden which led onto farmland.
    On that first day I spent hours wandering through the fields at the back of the house, exploring my new environment. I loved being out there in nature, listening to the sounds of the birds and
the frogs. Out in the open air, away from the clamour of the house and the constant shouting and thumps, I felt free and happy. Here I could talk to myself, sing to myself and just be myself. It
was wonderful.
    At home,