Living With Evil (21 page)

‘Stay up here, you freak! I don’t want anyone to see you.’

I heard Mammy stamp downstairs, leaving me sprawled on the bed, wide-eyed with shock.

I couldn’t believe I was having a baby and that I was a freak, and my baby would be disabled, whatever that meant.

I thought about singing in school, and how happy I was in my new class. What would happen now? Would I have to stay locked in this room until the baby came, or would Mammy take me to hospital, like she did when Margaret had Theresa? I’m a freak. I’m having a baby. The baby will be a freak. Those words spun around in my head.

I loved babies. I loved all the beautiful newborn babies I had seen, but I didn’t want to have a baby myself. And if I had to have a baby, I didn’t want one who was a freak. It wasn’t fair.

I hardly slept that night, even though Daddy didn’t go anywhere near me. I had scary dreams about ugly monsters. I was trapped in a big witch’s cauldron with lots of scaly monsters, and they were kicking me all over.

The next morning, I went to school as normal. Mammy was fast asleep when I woke up, and Daddy had gone to work, so I sorted out the little ones and took myself to school, with thoughts about the baby nagging away inside me.

I was pleased to be out of the house and happy I wasn’t going to be locked in the bedroom until the baby came. I didn’t know how long the wait would be, and I didn’t want to be stuck in the house for days, or years, or however long it might be before the baby appeared.

I didn’t know how babies were made or how they arrived. Maybe it would be like Mother Dorothy said. Maybe I would go up a lane and come back pushing a pram?

I didn’t tell my friends I was having a baby. I wanted them to be my friends and sing and dance with me and watch my little comedy shows. I wanted everything to stay the way it was before the baby was in my tummy.

From then on, whenever I felt the kicks, I ignored them. If I felt sick, I didn’t say anything. My tummy started to get a lot bigger than normal, but I just put up with it. What else could I do?

I had horrible thoughts about the thing inside me, and how scary it looked. I was afraid it might kill me as it banged about inside me. What was it doing to my insides? Some days, I wondered if having a baby in my stomach was like when you had a bug in your stomach. Maybe it would just go one day, and suddenly I would get better? I thought that would be the best thing.

Mammy would be pleased about that too, because she was very angry about the baby. She was shouting at me all the time, calling me a freak every time she looked at me. I wondered if I was turning into a monster like the baby. Maybe that was why Mammy kept calling me a freak.

She was fighting with Daddy every night too, but when he came upstairs to bed, swearing and cursing after being kicked and slapped by Mammy, Daddy ignored me. It was as if he was terrified of even brushing against me.

It was winter, and when the snow came I wasn’t allowed to go outside, because Mammy said she was afraid I would fall.

One Friday night, all the neighbours and the children off the street were out playing in the snow. I watched out the window when Daddy came home with the housekeeping money. Someone threw a snowball at him, so he went into our backyard and got his work shovel.

Our neighbour was hiding behind his wall, and my dad threw a shovelful of snow over the wall at him.

I saw everyone enjoying themselves, running in and out of the gardens and laughing. It was so unusual for Daddy to join in the fun.

I felt so envious and left out, I cried. I didn’t want to be stuck inside with Mammy. It was as if I was in trouble for having the freak inside me. I didn’t know why Mammy was worried about me falling. She had never worried about me hurting myself before.

I craved milk all the time and kept drinking it, but that night Mammy wouldn’t let me have milk with my dinner.

She told me if I drank milk, my boobs would get bigger and ‘people would notice’. I was so upset I sobbed again. I hated being different, it was horrible. I just wanted to play in the snow and drink milk like all the other children.

After that, Mammy started hiding milk from me, and one morning I felt so desperate to drink a glass I got up early and stole a pint from the neighbour’s doorstep.

On another morning, I crept downstairs early to try to find some milk before Mammy hid it, and was delighted to find a bottle standing on the kitchen table.

I grabbed it quickly and gulped it down greedily, but the second it hit my throat I started to retch. It tasted disgusting, and it was full of big slimy lumps. I staggered back upstairs, retching and heaving, to find Mammy laughing her head off in her bed.

‘That’ll teach you to rob the milk,’ she wheezed. She told me she had hidden that bottle for a week so it would go sour and teach me a lesson. It did, and I felt very ill all day and couldn’t face drinking milk again for a long time afterwards.

I started skipping school because I felt so ill, and Mammy seemed pleased. She never told me off for having days off. I think she liked having me in the house so I could help sweep the floor and wash out the babies’ nappies.

I didn’t look at my body to see what was happening. I had never really looked at my own body. Mammy always told me I was a ‘dirty bitch’ if I looked at her by accident when she was getting dressed. I didn’t want to be a dirty bitch and look at myself, so I never did.

I threw my clothes on in the dark in the morning and took them off in the dark at night, as always. Besides, I was too scared to look.

A few weeks later, Mother Dorothy marched into our classroom with a face like thunder.

‘Cynthia Murphy, I want to talk to you in my office!’ she boomed.

I blushed. Did she know I was a freak, and was she going to shout at me for being so weird?

I dutifully followed her into her office, head bowed and hands clasped across my belly.

‘Are you pregnant, child?’ she demanded. ‘No, Mother Dorothy, of course I’m not pregnant!’ I replied, shocked and insulted by the question. Mammy hadn’t used the word ‘pregnant’. How dare Mother Dorothy say I was pregnant?

Thoughts dashed through my head. Thank goodness she hadn’t asked me if I was having a freak, because then I would have had to lie.

I wasn’t pregnant like Mammy and Margaret got pregnant. I wasn’t a mammy having a baby. I was having a monster, but I wasn’t telling Mother Dorothy that. Mammy had warned me to say nothing to the nuns and had threatened to beat me if I did, so I just denied everything.

Mammy was so keen to keep the secret that she had started telling me to hide upstairs if anyone came to the door. Daddy had been angrier than ever lately too, and had threatened me with a thrashing many times.

I didn’t know why, because he didn’t seem to know about the monster. He never mentioned it like Mammy did. But if I told Mother Dorothy and she came knocking on the door, he would beat me for sure.

My legs already felt sore all the time. I didn’t want Daddy thrashing them with his belt and making them hum with pain. I could never sit down properly for ages after he whacked the back of my thighs, and I wanted to sit down all the time now.

There was no way I was telling Mother Dorothy my secret. ‘No, Mother Dorothy,’ I repeated firmly. ‘I certainly am not pregnant!’ My cheeks were burning. I was horrified.

I would never have told her my secret in a million years. Mother Dorothy had beaten me for having lice in my hair. What would she do to me if I had a freak in my tummy?

‘Then why do you keep wearing that smock coat to school every day?’ she demanded. ‘And why will you not take it off in the classroom?’

It was true. I had been wearing a three-quarter-length smock jacket every day for a couple of months now. I suppose it stood out because it had big buttons down the front, but my own coat didn’t fit me any more.

Mammy ordered me to wear the coat to school every day to hide my tummy, and so I did. I also wore a floaty dress sometimes, because it flowed over my tummy and wasn’t as tight as my other clothes.

My chest was getting bigger now too. Mammy hadn’t given me a bra, and I only had an old vest to wear and felt embarrassed by my changing shape, so I was happy to hide under the coat.

‘Take the coat off,’ ordered Mother Dorothy. ‘Remove that coat immediately!’

I was terrified of Mother Dorothy and what she might do if my secret came out, so I shook my head and refused point blank.

Mammy had told me I had to wear the coat all day, that I was to hide the freak in my tummy. The very last thing I wanted was for Mother Dorothy to know my secret, or for anyone to see the funny new shape of my body.

‘Take off the coat,’ she barked again.

I couldn’t take the coat off. My legs and arms were still skinny like they always were, but my tummy was swollen and sticking out. I knew, I could feel it.

I fiddled with one of the big plastic buttons on the front of the jacket. There was no way I could take the coat off. It would cause so much trouble.

I burst into tears and darted straight out of Mother Dorothy’s office.

I dreaded going to school the next day, and made up my mind that when Mother Dorothy spoke to me again I would say absolutely nothing. It must be a terrible sin to have a monster in your tummy, and I couldn’t face a caning. I had to stay silent.

I sighed with great relief when Mother Dorothy said I was to sit with my back to the rest of the class. I said nothing and just did it, very relieved not to have a scene in front of my classmates.

The next time my friends asked me to go swimming at the pool down at Saville Park, I just said no. I loved swimming and missed our trips there at the weekend, but Mammy wouldn’t let me go and, besides, I didn’t want anyone to see my bulging stomach, so I made excuses. If any of my classmates asked about my smock coat, I told them I had pneumonia and had to stay warm, because Mammy had told me that was what I should say, and it was winter, after all.

Mammy was the only one who really knew what was happening, so I did everything Mammy told me to do. She was my mammy, and she knew about babies. She was the only one who could really help me, so I followed her orders and didn’t complain or ask any questions that might make her angry with me. I needed her to help me, even though I felt very uneasy around her.

She still took me up to the building though. She gave me whiskey or sherry first, to make me ‘feel better’. Sometimes I had so much I felt very dizzy. My mind was spinning and I couldn’t think about anything, but I did hear some of the men talking about my shape.

It was as if I was only half there, but I could clearly hear them saying things about my big chest and round tummy.

They said they liked it, but I wondered why. I thought I looked horrible, because I felt horrible, but they seemed to like it a lot. They wanted to touch me more. I was very glad Mammy gave me the alcohol. I didn’t want to be there at all, and in a way I wasn’t.

Mammy stuffed the bundle of money in her pocket as usual and helped me walk home. My legs ached and my ankles felt squishy and bloated. I wanted to be sick and I wobbled when I walked. I would never have made it home without Mammy. I needed my mammy, but her presence still made me scared and confused. Why was she putting me though all this? I wanted it to stop. Maybe Mammy would make it stop now I was having a baby?

It was Tuesday, 3 April 1973, and I was eleven and a half years old. The Easter holidays were coming up and I was looking forward to getting an Easter egg.

Mammy and Daddy sometimes left eggs at the ends of our beds, and we all gobbled them down as soon as we woke up, knowing that, if we didn’t, somebody else would.

I went to school as normal that day, sitting at the back facing the wall, wearing my smock coat, with Mother Dorothy looking down at me.

I was glad the holidays were coming up, and I wondered how long this thing would go on for. I wished the baby in my tummy would just go away, and then I could go swimming again with my friends, and Mammy would stop calling me a freak.

I wanted to ask Mammy some questions, but I was frightened to. Every time she looked at me lately she scowled and shouted or slapped my face sharply, so I said nothing.

‘My friend is coming over tonight, Cynthia,’ Mammy told me at bedtime. ‘You’re to go in the back bedroom with him.’

Each time I heard those words I wanted the ground to swallow me up. I knew who that was going to be. It was that awful thug.

The last time he came over he punched me in the face and laughed when I cried. He hurt my tummy when he forced himself on me. I was worn out tonight and just wanted to sleep. I always prayed he would stagger in and fall asleep on the bed so I could be left in peace. But he never did. It would be the usual chaos and violence and sheer terror.

I lay in bed panicking. I couldn’t hide behind the door or under the bed like I had sometimes. My tummy was too big, and my legs ached so much I needed to lie down.