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

Mammy was blazing with fury now, dragging me brutally down the lane while I cried hysterically, trying to pull away from her with all my might.

‘Let me go back and get my baby! Please, Mammy, let me go back and get my baby!’

‘No, Cynthia,’ she wheezed. She had a bad chest and was coughing and spluttering with the effort of dragging me along.

‘It’s for the best. You will never have to suffer again. It is all over now. Once the baby is found it will put an end to it.’

She was talking about Daddy and all the men who hurt me and what they did to me, I was sure of it, but I didn’t care about the men right now. All I cared about was my baby.

‘Please, Mammy,’ I pleaded. ‘I have to go to her. Let me go back and get my baby, I beg you.’

She slapped me hard across the face and I slumped to the ground, exhausted and weak with pain, and sobbing uncontrollably.

A man came walking towards me and asked if I was OK. ‘She’s a gypsy and has been drinking,’ I heard Mammy say in a pitiful voice.

He left us alone and went on his way. I had to get back to that lane, I just had to be with my baby.

‘Mammy,’ I sobbed. ‘Nobody will find the baby where you left her. Why don’t you let me put her in a more open place?’

Mammy thought for a moment, then agreed. She pointed to a streetlamp in the distance, told me to put the baby under there and meet her on the main road.

I felt very alone and frightened walking up that dark lane. As soon as I felt the bag in my hands again I knew I wasn’t going to put my baby under the streetlamp. It was what Mammy had told me to do and I didn’t want to obey Mammy any more, but I did want my baby to be found. I hated the thought of her lying there alone in the dark.

Maybe I could put her on the main road? No, it seemed too dangerous.

Something told me to look inside the bag again, to say goodbye. I started opening it and reached gently inside, because I wanted to touch her when I said goodbye. I felt her inside the bag, and it was such a shock. She seemed so cold. She needed to be wrapped up warm.

I walked back along the lane to get some newspapers to wrap her in. I’d seen them in the lane earlier.

I gathered them up and went back to the bag. I started to place the newspaper around her as gently as I could.

As I did so, I heard something fall out of the bag. It was a knitting needle. I gasped, and then something else in the bag caught my eye.

It was the bloody lump that came out of me after the baby. It looked disgusting, and it terrified me. There were sanitary towels in there too.

I wanted to say goodbye now. I wrapped the newspapers around the lower part of my baby’s body and I said it, my heart aching with sadness. ‘Although I have to leave you alone in this lane way, I will take you with me in my heart.’ I said the words in my head, and I told myself that I would pretend that I had picked her up and taken her with me in my arms. I wrapped the bag up as I had found it, bound up like a parcel. I didn’t want Mammy to know I had opened it again.

I held the bag to me tightly, trying to cuddle my baby through the plastic, and then I sat with her for a long time, crying and talking to her. I told her that, someday, no matter how or when, I would get my Mammy for what she had done to my baby.

As I cried I kept asking the same question over and over again: ‘How could you do this to me, Mammy?’ I tried to peel myself away from the bag, but it was breaking my heart.

How could I leave her there alone? And what if she was never found? Would she lie there alone for ever?

I’d have to hide her now and come back for her the next day. ‘I’ll come back for you tomorrow,’ I whispered.

Mammy would get impatient waiting for me, and she would punish me severely for taking so long. I had to go now, so I told the baby I was not leaving her for ever, I was just leaving her there for the night. I would come back and get her the next day, and take her home with me.

I decided to go back to the alcove and push the baby in the bag under the gateway to hide her. First I picked up the bag and the knitting needle and then put a few more newspapers on top of the baby to keep her warm.

When I saw the needle in my hand I shuddered. I felt sick at the thought of putting it anywhere near the baby, so I poked it into another bag of rubbish that was left beside the gateway.

My bag wouldn’t fit under the gateway now, so I threw it over the wall and then felt instantly afraid, because I hadn’t done exactly what Mammy had told me.

I looked up at the sky and noticed it was getting bright and the birds were singing. I panicked and ran out of the lane, hoping Mammy would not be too mad with me.

I ran in the direction she had told me to, and it brought me out opposite the Dun Laoghaire police station.

Mammy was nowhere in sight. I was angry that she had left me on my own, and I started running down the main road, calling out ‘Mammy’ until I spotted her in the distance.

She was furious I had taken so long, and I remained upset she