Living With Evil by Cynthia Owen (ap literature book list txt) 📗

got home Mammy held out her hand for the scraps of change and told me to write in it myself: ‘Happy Birthday to Cynthia.’ She’d made me do that before and I never thought too much about it. This time I stared at the words blankly. They meant nothing at all, except how little my mammy thought of me.

Daddy went mad the moment he got home. ‘Who’s been at the certificate box? Get here, you!’

I was wearing a knee-length skirt and ankle socks, and before I even saw it coming Daddy’s leather belt was splitting the skin open on the backs of my legs like they were ripe tomatoes bursting in the sun.

‘Please stop! Mammy, tell him to stop,’ I panted, scrabbling at the sofa to stop myself hitting the floor. Mammy just laughed.

‘Why should I?’ she asked coldly, watching with her arms folded as Daddy shoved me to the ground when he’d finally run out of breath.

I looked at the card above me on the mantelpiece and cried. It wasn’t worth it, it really wasn’t.

My Confirmation was coming up. It was a huge occasion in every Catholic child’s life, but I found it impossible to look forward to it. I never got my hopes up about anything any more.

The Bishop of Dublin was coming to the village. I got new socks and a new dress - the first since my First Holy Communion - but my heart barely fluttered when I tried them on.

My head felt thick and heavy, like it did after I drank the cider. I had nasty thoughts and images invading my mind all the time. In my mind’s eye I could see Daddy’s black fingernails. I could see him coming closer to me in bed, and I could see myself wrinkling my nose when I smelled his foul sweat.

The images popped into my head at school and in church, and when I played with my friends in the street. Why did he do that to me? Why did he hurt me so much?

Things always went wrong for me. They always turned bad. I always seemed to end up in tears. It was best not to build up my hopes, so I didn’t get excited about my Confirmation.

Peter and I were to be confirmed together. I was pleased about that, because we had to go to the altar in pairs of boys and girls holding hands, and it would be less embarrassing holding hands with my brother than with another boy.

Before I made my Confirmation, I had to take ‘the Pledge’, which meant I promised hand on heart never to drink alcohol.

I wondered if I should confess to the priest that Mammy already gave me cider, but I immediately thought better of it. Instead, I stuck to the same invented confessions every week, telling fibs about stealing and cursing, and then being chastised by the priest and Mother Dorothy for my fictitious sins. I actually came to enjoy seeing the pair of them explode with rage at my repeated audacity.

It was all very confusing. Mammy and Daddy drank every day, yet they were ‘good Catholics’. At least that’s what Mammy told me, and they must be because they had a picture of the Pope on the wall and holy statues on the mantelpiece. Drinking alcohol couldn’t be that big a sin. Mammy even put whiskey and sherry in the younger kids’ bottles to get them to sleep at night.

I took ‘the Pledge’, then went home to witness Mammy drinking glass after glass of sherry, forcing me to drink cider before she sent me to bed and ranting at my father when he came stumbling in from the pub.

It didn’t really make any sense. Grown-ups seemed to live by a separate set of rules to us kids. Maybe now I was getting older I would start to understand their rules more. Maybe that would make my life a bit better? I hoped so but, deep down, again, I didn’t really believe it.

Chapter 9

Scarlet Ribbons

I loved it when Granny came round for a cup of tea. She came at 4 p.m., and it was my favourite time of day.

‘Mammy, Granny’s here! Have you finished makin’ the beds?’ I shouted up the stairs. Mammy was still in bed, but that was my secret message to her to warn her Granny was here and she needed to come downstairs.

While Mammy threw on her dress and a pair of saggy ankle socks, Granny and I drank hot, sweet tea. Granny had brought me a juicy pear and cut the black bits off for me, and I gobbled it down in three mouthfuls. I sat by her legs and begged her to tell me the story of how the Black and Tans used to knock on her door for a meal. It was one of my favourites and I knew it off by heart, but I got Granny to repeat it.

‘Well, Cynthia, the Black and Tans brought me food, and then I would use it to prepare a lavish meal for them,’ she explained patiently. ‘To tell the truth, the food had probably been stolen from a local store, but I never let on I knew anything about that!’

She leaned her rosy cheeks down towards me, and I could see her blackened teeth as she spoke. ‘D’ya know what, Cynthia?’ she whispered. ‘I hated the Black and Tans, but they always left us plenty of food after those dinners! We were so poor, and our children so hungry, that I would pray to God to send them knocking on our door!’

I laughed and laughed, and when we’d finished our tea I begged Granny to let me walk her home so I could be with her longer. Sometimes she let me come in, and she played me her accordion or showed me how to do an Irish jig.

‘Mammy, is it OK if I walk Granny home tonight?’ I asked hopefully.

‘Not tonight, Cynthia,’ Mammy said. ‘I need you to help me finish the beds.’

I