Dying to Survive (7 page)

I was having the time of my life and I never wanted it to end. Especially when Steo asked me to go off with him. We had become the best of friends and I was so impressed with how cool and laid-back he was, saying all the right things at just the right time, making everyone in awe of him. But I was the one that he wanted to be with. I felt special. My confidence was sky-high. I was no longer this shy and reserved little girl who shrank when someone looked at her. Especially when I smoked hash. I was the life and soul of the party, willing to do anything for a laugh.

I now had a boyfriend, my body was going through so many changes and I was beginning to wonder about sex. All my friends were talking about it and I would play along, pretending that I knew what they were talking about. But I was completely in the dark.

‘Did Steo try anything on you?’ Katie would ask me when we were alone.

I got embarrassed at the thought of it. ‘No. Why? Did Snarts try anything on you?’

‘I wouldn’t fuckin’ let him if he tried.’

Myself and Steo were spending more and more time together. We would lie on his bed and I would tell him all about my family. He would hold me in his arms and make me feel like the most important person in the world. We had been together for two years before he tried anything at all.

_____

One day, I lay on my bed staring into space, smoking a joint and listening to Cat Stevens’ ‘Wild World’. The words of the song, ‘I’ll always remember you as a child, girl,’ made me feel empty inside, as though I were missing something. For some reason I thought about my father. I vaguely remembered him holding me on his lap, singing and playing with me. I thought about my christening photograph. Him with his hand gently touching my head. Thoughts of the man in Finglas, who had called my name and who looked just like my da, surfaced. Was my da really dead? I thought. Have they being lying to me all these years? I felt butterflies in my stomach and a flicker of hope being born. I wondered what he’d look like now. Whether he had more kids or not. Would he recognise me if he saw me on the street? Would he hold me tightly in his arms, like any dad would, promising to protect me from this wild world? There and then, I made the decision to find out the truth about whether he was alive or dead, once and for all.

Chapter
4

    I’LL ALWAYS REMEMBER YOU

‘O
nly one more flight of stairs to go,’ I said to Katie as I struggled to catch my breath and dragged myself up to the top floor of the tower block. We had run all the way from my grandmother’s house up to the eighth storey of the flats after we’d stolen bottles of Black Russian vodka from my uncle Laurence. Just as I was about to take the cap off our prize possession I heard a door open and close. ‘Hide it, hide it,’ Katie urged as I shoved the bottle into my jacket. I held my breath as I heard footsteps coming towards us.

‘Alright, girls?’ said this rough-looking lad with a heavy Dublin accent. He looked down at my jacket. ‘Wha have yiz got there? Don’t tell me yiz are drinking, are ye? Ah, don’t worry, love, I won’t tell your da,’ he said, grinning and looking me straight in the eye.

‘Why, do you know me da?’ I asked, puzzled by his comment. ‘

Ah, yeah. You’re Con Geraghty’s daughter, aren’t ye?’

‘How d’you know that?’ I asked, hanging on his every word.

‘I know your da and his bird, Marion Carey, fuckin’ years.’

‘Would you be able to tell me where he lives?’ I tried, feeling like my heart would burst through my chest at any given moment.

‘Give us a sup of your drink and I’ll tell ye,’ he smiled.

I glanced at Katie who sat motionless beside me and then handed over our bottle of vodka. I watched his every movement as he opened the bottle and slowly took a swig from it. Then suddenly he made a dash down the stairs, taking two and three steps at a time, and after peeling my jaw off the floor I chased after him. But it was too late. He was gone.

I stood alone, looking up and down the desolate street, as the reality of my father being alive sank in. ‘Where’s that other bottle of vodka?’ was all I could say to my friend when she finally caught up with me.

‘Oh my God, did you hear what he said about your da? And the gobshite robbed our drink,’ she said, gasping for air.

My head was spinning and I couldn’t think straight.

_____

It was a night for getting in out of the cold and getting drunk. I could feel the warmth of the fire as I entered our new hideout, a basement shed under the eight-storey block. The sound of UB40 came from the stereo, while Steo and Snarts and some other friends sat on crates, skinning up spliffs and laughing amongst themselves. Steo’s face looked soft by the light of the fire. He looked at me and smiled as I snuggled into him for comfort. Before I knew it I had forgotten all about my da. I could no longer understand what people were saying. Everything was becoming a blur. But it didn’t matter—I was with Steo and no-one could hurt me.

_____

I felt paralysed. I could hear Steo crying, people shouting and dogs barking. My clothes were wet and somebody was dragging me from one place to another. My mind was racing, but I couldn’t move my body. I felt a burning slap to my face. ‘Wake up, Rachael!’ I opened my eyes and realised that I had blacked out. I was lying on the floor of the shed with my top up around my neck and the shed was flooded.

‘I thought you were dead,’ I heard Steo say as I tried to focus on my surroundings. But all I could do was vomit. Everything became a blur again until I felt a tube being forced down my neck and into my stomach.

I finally came to my senses, but I had no idea where I was. And then the memories of the night before came rushing back to me as I stared at the bunnies painted on the wall in Temple Street Hospital. I remembered that I had drunk a bottle of vodka and smoked some hash, and the rest is a blank. Then I saw my mother. She was sitting beside my bed, pale and stoney-faced. I wished I hadn’t woken up. I closed my eyes, telling myself, ‘Never again.’ Perhaps it was just finding out about my da that had set me off, I rationalised.

But in fact, ‘never again’ was just the beginning. I was twelve years old and quickly becoming more and more disconnected from my family. Hanging around freezing cold tower blocks and mitching from school was becoming the norm for me. Nobody seemed to care about what we got up to, either our families or anyone else. We could light our bonfires and drink our illegally purchased flagons of Scrumpy Jack without anyone blinking an eye. Every so often we would get a visit from the gardaí: ‘5.05.0,’ somebody would shout, warning us of their approach, giving us barely enough time to stash our hash and our alcohol.

On one occasion the ‘blue bottles’ snuck into the block and caught us red-handed with our joints and lumps of hash. Before I knew it I was being marshalled away from my friends, out to the front of the block. It was broad daylight and all I could think of was, what if somebody saw me standing here with this guard? They would definitely think I was a rat.

‘Well, what’s your name?’ asked the garda.

‘Rachael Keogh,’ I replied, anxiously looking around me, hoping that no-one was watching.

‘What are you doing hanging around here? And why aren’t you in school? You’re going to end up in trouble if you keep hanging around here, d’you realise that?’

I didn’t respond. I had been well trained never, under any circumstances, to talk to the gardaí. ‘Tell them nothing,’ I was warned by my friends. ‘They’re only scum.’ So I just nodded my head at the garda, shuffling childishly from side to side, feeling like an ant in comparison to this man who was built like a tank.

‘I have a daughter and she looks just like you,’ the garda continued. ‘Now, if I catch you around here again you’re in trouble, ok? So go on. Go home,’ he demanded.

But I didn’t go home. I hid in another block until they were gone and off I went back up to my friends, completely unfazed by what had happened. I desperately wanted my friends to like me and I was willing to go to great lengths for their approval.

My need to be liked and accepted became my motive for everything I did. So much so that I began to steal from my grandmother in order to buy hash for myself and my friends. I kept this a secret from everyone, knowing well that what I was doing was wrong. But it was worth it when my friends patted me on the back, saying, ‘Nice one, Rach, fair play to ya.’ I was definitely part of the gang then. My friends needed me. They could depend on me to do anything. I was intelligent and clever, but I was quickly becoming devious in my ways, telling nobody anything and holding my cards close to my chest where my family was concerned.

I was getting bored with Sillogue, so myself and Katie began to hang around with two girls we went to school with. They seemed up for a laugh and when they told me that they sniffed air-freshener and got a great buzz off it, I was really curious. Within a few hours I had a bottle of Glade in my hand, sitting in my grandmother’s kitchen. ‘Just put the bottle in a plastic bag, put it up to your mouth, spray and inhale,’ the girls said.

I was afraid. But I couldn’t let the girls know this. So without saying anything I went into the toilet and did as I was told. All it took was one blast. The air-freshener rapidly worked its way into my mouth, down into my lungs and up into my brain. ‘Ha ha ha, are ye alright in there, love?’ I could hear someone say outside the toilet. I felt fuzzy inside and the room began to spin. Reality was becoming dreamy, and before I knew it I was hallucinating. My hands were bound together with twine. My whole body was being controlled by what seemed to be a black cat. He wore a luminous yellow bandana and he spoke to me in a computerised voice. ‘Getting down to the limit. Getting down to the limit,’ he said, as he pulled on the twine, dragging my body down to the floor. He then put glue on my ear and stuck my head to the toilet bowl and there I stayed for I don’t know how long.

‘What the hell is going on?’ The toilet door swung open and there stood my grandmother. ‘What are you doing?’ she screamed, a look of disbelief on her face.

I still felt as though I were dreaming. ‘I’m stuck. I’m not able to move,’ I told her. ‘What do you mean, you’re stuck? Get up off the floor,’ she screeched and stormed off into the kitchen. ‘Come on, get out,’ I heard her say to the two girls. The fear of facing my grandmother gave me the ability to peel myself from the toilet bowl and without saying a word to her I ran out the front door.

The rest of the day became a haze. After sniffing more air-freshener, we decided to take a walk into the city centre. I was struggling to keep up with the girls and I kept drifting in and out of reality. Before I knew what was happening, my friends had disappeared. It was the middle of the night and I had no idea where I was. I was beginning to panic, but I had completely lost control over myself. Once again, I blacked out. Eventually I woke up, but somebody was carrying me. It was a man who wore a white coat. He lay me down on the pavement and vanished. It was morning time and suddenly my friends were there. ‘Where did you go? We were looking for you everywhere.’ ‘I don’t know where I was. You just left me on my own,’ I spat. I stood up and realised that my hands were black with the dirt and the front of my shirt was ripped. I felt like I had been living in a nightmare. I was just relieved that it was over. But I knew that I had another nightmare to face when I got home.

I was getting into more and more trouble at home as my behaviour began to spiral out of control. Either I would be drunk, high on air-freshener or hash, or stealing from my grandmother. I became increasingly aggressive and stroppy and I took most of my aggression out on John, whom I adored. One day, when I had just started using drugs, John lost his temper. It was dinner time and when I arrived up the garden path, stoned, he smashed a plate of food in my face, disgusted at the state of me. I was so enraged that I fought back and managed to shove him through the front window. There he lay on the front lawn, hair covered in curly kale.

It seems almost comical now, but it wasn’t then, as my family became increasingly worried about my behaviour and unsure what to do about it. My grandmother had a lot on her plate: John, her children, her job and me and, although she was aware of what I was up to, perhaps it was easier for her to think it was ‘just a phase’ than to acknowledge that it might be something more serious. Fighting turned to stealing, first just small stuff here and there, but eventually anything that wasn’t nailed down. And I became a seasoned liar, making up stories to get my family’s attention. Once I pretended the house had been broken into, and I called my auntie Jacqueline when my family were having a meal in my auntie Marion’s house, begging her to come back home. Looking back, I was crying out for some attention from my family, some recognition of the fact that I existed. I would ultimately get all the attention I wanted, in all the wrong ways.

_____

Joanne was a quiet young girl who lived in the same area as me. She had milky-blonde hair, with pale skin. She always seemed to be on her own. So, when I saw her hanging around Sillogue with my other friends I was quite surprised. She seemed really funny and down-to-earth and we got on with each other straight away. She told myself and Katie that she had a boyfriend from Poppintree. ‘He’s a bit older and he goes to all the raves,’ she said. Myself and Katie were intrigued. Raves were new to us. ‘There’s a rave on this weekend called The Pavilion,’ she continued. ‘If you want, you can come with me. I’ll introduce ye to me fella and his mates,’ she said, with a glint in her eye.