About Matilda (33 page)

I know Gabriel thinks she's found a way to get the better of me. She knows the one thing worries me is I'll be sent to Cork.

The laundry is hot and noisy from the big washing machine full of suds and soapy water, and steamy from the big dryers with the glass doors where sheets tumble like dry white clouds. I'm sent to work in the basement where there's a damp smell and Jesus on the cross to keep me company. There's a metal chute where sacks of dirty sheets and towels from the hotels and guesthouses drop from the road above to the cold concrete floor. I empty the sacks into the green bins that one of the old women leaves by the door. Sometimes she nods and I nod back but it's hard to see her face because the room is dim. The sacks are heavy and I have to use my knee to get them to the bin lid and I'm glad when Sister Madeline comes at ten o'clock with warm tea and a ginger biscuit and an elastic band for a ponytail. I sit in the corner on the empty sacks fixing my hair and wonder how Sheamie is. Why hasn't he written? Is he dead or alive? Will he be like our mother and disappear for ever?

All morning, the same old woman comes for the bins. Before lunch, she smiles and I smile back. Sister Madeline brings bread and jam with my tea and biscuit and I sit cross-legged in the corner eating, until she comes for the empty cup
and the old woman comes with the empty bin. I asked Gabriel once why the old women are here but she wouldn't say. I've seen young girls come here to have their babies and leave after a year or two when someone might come and sign them out, but the old women never leave. The only thing Gabriel would say was they're Penitent. It must have been a terrible sin if the laundry is their penance.

The sacks tumble from the chute all afternoon and each one seems heavier than the last, and the harder I work the faster they tumble from the chute and I'm happy when it's time to go home. The old woman waves from the front door and it's hard to wave back. My hands and feet are killing me. That evening I can barely walk to Our Lady's Grotto. I don't race anymore. I just like coming down here to help. Sonny only trains the kids up to under-sixteen. He wanted me to join another club. I wouldn't go. It just wouldn't be the same without Sonny. I wouldn't swap Sonny for all the medals in the world.

Sonny sits on his hands and shifts himself on the wall. He takes a long look at me. Them nuns can be villains.

They can, Sonny.

Not to worry, Matilda. One day the world will be your oyster.

What's an oyster, Sonny?

We sit on the wall talking about oysters and everything and nothing. You can do that with Sonny, and the time flies. Sonny gives me a tube of green ointment he says burns like Hell and stinks to high Heaven, but rub it in your knees and elbows and you'll be as right as rain in the morning, Matilda.

Sonny is right. In the morning the aches and pains are gone and it's pissing from the heavens.

The brown canvas sacks are already tumbling when I go in and when the old woman whispers, Good morning.

I say, Hello, but I feel strange, as if speaking to her somehow makes me part of the laundry.

The chute spits sacks on to the concrete floor all morning and I wonder about the rich people in hotels and guesthouses in the world above, eating Black Forest gateau and oysters while their beds are made by girls from the Holy Shepherd or places like it. The old woman and her bin come to the door as if they're a part of each other. I wonder did she ever sleep in a hotel and eat Black Forest gateau and oysters. Is she better if she did or if she didn't? I'd hate to sleep in a hotel and eat Black Forest gateau and oysters then end up in the laundry attached to a green bin all day. Would it be even worse to spend your life pushing bins and never know about Black Forest gateau and oysters? Either way I pity her. To spend your life pushing sacks full of rich people's laundry is no way to live.

On the third day I'm like Jesus. I've risen up from the basement to the laundry itself. The old woman, whose name I now know is Mary, is sent with me to the pressing and folding room. There are three other old women here ironing sheets and they smile when they see me, and I smile back. Great metal pressers along the wall hiss clouds of dry white steam around them and they spend all day pressing sheets and wiping their foreheads with hands wrinkled from years of water and steam.

At the break, I sit on the step with Mary sipping her tea from the little cup and holding the saucer on her lap, frightened in case she spills any. Across from us is a building with yellow brick around the windows where the old women live. It's between the chapel and the penguins' mansion and Mary shows me her window on the third floor where she looks out at the laundry and the stone wall. She knows me from the chapel and asks about my family, because she's missed seeing
Mona and Sheamie and Pippa in mass. It's sad I spent all those years nervous of the old women, and nice Mary knows who I am. I tell her about my mother and how I haven't seen her since I was four. Mary stares at the wall without talking and her tiny brown eyes seem sad and far away. She looks around to make sure Madeline isn't near, then tells me in her voice that's almost a whisper that long ago she met a boy and got in trouble. She doesn't say what kind of trouble but looks at me to see if I understand. I give a look back that I do and I see how easily it happens – you don't have to talk when you do the same thing with the same people all your life and never hear or see anything else.

When Mary is happy that I understand, she tells me how her family sent her to the nuns to have her baby and she could never go home because of the sin and the shame of it, so she's been living with the nuns and doing the laundry since she was a young girl, and I know by the way she can press and fold sheets without looking she's been here a very long time. She ran away once and slept in a ditch, but the gardaí found her and brought her back. The nuns locked her in her room for weeks and I can't help wondering what was so wrong about what she did.

I look at her beside me on the step, her thin grey hair, her face wrinkled, her old eyes turned downward, scared of everything and everyone. I try to take away the wrinkles and the hump from her shoulder and see her as a young girl in love, but I can't. I want to ask about her baby. Was it a boy or girl? Does she miss never seeing it again? About her boyfriend, what did he look like? Were they in love? Did he ever come looking for her? Did she ever see her family again? Or even if she'd like to leave here? But I know by the lines of washing on her wrinkled cheeks, all Mary knows now is the linen and the starch and how many folds go in a double sheet.

*

In the morning Gabriel tells me Reverend Mother needs help and, when Gabriel says Reverend Mother needs help, you don't ask what kind of help then decide if you want to do it. You go straight across to the penguins' mansion and knock on the door of Reverend Mother's office and when she's good and ready to come out you say, Sister Gabriel said you need help, Reverend Mother. And that's all there is to it.

Reverend Mother locks her office door from the great bunch of keys around her waist. I'm not as scared of her now as I was when I was young but she still manages to make me feel small. I follow the swish of her starched white skirts up the grand stairway to the nuns' cells. That's what they call their rooms. Cells. It makes them feel they're suffering.

The cells are small. Small enough for a single bed and a single wardrobe. Reverend Mother tells me the nuns are starting retreat for two weeks. Start in the morning, a spring clean. All thirty cells.

Yes, Reverend Mother.

I start early. Take the heavy drapes from the windows, the sheets from the beds, carry them downstairs and leave them at the door. I get on my two knees to polish the floors till I can see my face. I clean the windows, frames, ledges and sills. I wax the dressing table. The days go quickly, but November mornings can be dark and I don't like it in the penguins' mansion on my own. They have the best of everything but the living rooms are big and hollow and even my own footsteps seem to creep up behind me when I walk down the corridor past the dead nuns staring at me from the wall in their brown wooden frames.

In one of the cells, in a drawer of the bedside chest, there's a photograph of a young red-faced girl with bushy black eyebrows and braces on her teeth. She's standing on a railway platform with a man wearing a sad face and a soft hat, and
there's an embroidered handkerchief in his top pocket. There's a bundle of letters tied in a bow with pink string and another photograph of the same girl in a habit. I never imagined Gabriel being anything but a nun. I never imagined her with a family of her own. Her photograph makes me curious. I always wondered what I'd look like in a habit. You can't help it when you live in a convent. Sometimes I look at Gabriel and I wonder if the habit makes her how she is. Her uniform shows she's a Soldier of Christ. Is that all she is? What happened to the girl in the photograph? You'd think I'd know her after all these years. You'd think I could sit and talk to her. Sometimes I think I know Gabriel, then other times I can't figure her out at all. How vows come first. Maybe it's like Sonny would say, maybe she's doing her best.

There's a habit in the wardrobe I could try. It's one of the older ones that come right down to the floor. I take it out and leave it on the bed; that way if someone comes in I can say it was in my way cleaning inside the wardrobe. There's a girdle in the drawer and a bra so big that, if I catch one end, I'd have to stand on the bed before the other strap cleared the floor and the cups are so huge Mona and Pippa together wouldn't fill them. I'll try that on first. No one will come in. The nuns won't leave the chapel when they're on retreat but I'll peek outside, just in case. The corridor is empty, only the dead nuns staring at me from wooden frames.

I have to wrap the bra straps around me twice. Maybe if I try the pink girdle it'll fit better. There's a pair of frilly pink bloomers. Might as well keep going.

I get everything on and look in the mirror. The skirts are bunched on the floor, my hands have vanished inside the wide black sleeves and my face is lost inside the crooked veil, yet for some reason I feel strange. The room seems peaceful and holy. The habit is heavy, responsible. You could see yourself
running around trying to save souls, tearing off to Africa and countries all over the world.

How simple everything would be if I became a nun. I'd have no father tormenting me, no worries about how I'll live when I leave. I'd be taken out of the Mad School. Danny would be certain of a good job; the nuns would see to that. I'm just going to see what the habit looks like from behind when I hear the clank of keys. I stop and listen but there's only that peaceful silence. I imagined it. No, I didn't, there it is again. The door opens and the crackle of white skirts is gliding towards me looking an awful lot like Reverend Mother. It has me by the neck, down the stairs and in her office before I'm certain it is Reverend Mother. She stands me in the corner beside the filing cabinet while we wait for Gabriel. There's a painting over the mantelpiece of a nun in a habit from olden times. There's a plaque on the picture frame telling you she's the Founder. She has a face that would crack eggs. I can feel her black eyes on me and all I want is for a slit to open in the carpet so I can slide down into it.

Gabriel is here flicking snowflakes from her shoulders. One minute she's staring at me like she's trying to be certain it really is me in the habit. She peeks, blinks, peeks a little closer, then turns her face to the wall. Reverend Mother's face is a flame. She barks at Gabriel, Is this how you're rearing your children, Sister? Will you just look at this specimen?

Then she turns on me. What have you to say for yourself, rooting through Sister's drawers?

I wasn't at her drawers, Reverend Mother.

You were.

I was at her bloomers.

She springs from her chair holding the stick over her head warning me, Don't you be cheeky with me.

I wasn't cheeky, Reverend Mother, honest. I ah, I just wanted to, ah…

Stop blabbering. Stop looking to Sister Gabriel. She can't help you now.

I was thinking about becoming a nun. And I wanted to see what I'd look like in a habit.

Gabriel lets out a scream and collapses against the table holding her hand over her mouth. Reverend Mother tells her, Compose yourself, Sister Gabriel. Compose yourself. Perhaps this child has had the call. She sits down again and she's nearly smiling at me while she wonders if I've had the call. I look at Gabriel and she looks back as if to say, You're the one who said it. I can feel the Founder's eyes all over me. Like I'm being measured for a habit. Reverend Mother spreads her hands on the desk.

Well, child, have you received the call?

I didn't hear a voice now, Reverend Mother, if that's what you mean.

You wouldn't. That would be the Carmelites. She smiles, telling me what wonderful times lie ahead. I look over at Gabriel again. She's looking straight ahead but I know her ear is cocked and loaded underneath the veil.

Did
you
get the call, Reverend Mother?

Of course, Matilda.

Matilda? She never called me Matilda before. What the hell's going on here?

The Lord called me when I was eleven. I'm surprised it's been so late in your case. But, it seems God has chosen you, Matilda. You will take your vows here with us. Do you know the most important vow, Matilda?

Ah, keepin' away from men?

Reverend Mother gasps and falls back in her chair clutching
her throat. Out the corner of my eye I see Gabriel's hand going up to her face. I don't know what to do. I try folding my arms but the sleeves of the habit are longer than my arms and they flop like flippers. I feel like a fuckin' seal.

Reverend Mother composes herself and sits forward in her chair and knits her fingers together under her chin.

Tell me, how old are you now, Matilda?