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

I’d pretend it was a treasure chest, trying on old belts with shiny buckles and cotton dresses with fancy buttons. Everything smelled of dust and made me sneeze. Nothing looked like it went together, some things had stains on and smelled sweaty and musty like my Granny’s long skirts, but it was something to do, and much better than being cold.

At lunchtime, Esther came home. ‘Peter, Cynthia, come on and get your dinner!’ she shouts, daylight flooding in behind her. Her arrival was the highlight of my day. Esther was kind, and I loved her to bits. Sometimes it felt as if Esther was actually our mammy, because she looked after us so much when Mammy was in bed.

She came home every lunchtime on schooldays and at weekends to fetch us bread and cold meat and give us a drink of milk or water. We never went hungry, although usually there was only just enough to go round and you had to be quick to get your fair share.

Peter and I tucked in like a pair of demons, tearing at the warm bread and gobbling up the scraps of corned beef greedily, stuffing it into our mouths with our dirty fingers.

It was an extra treat if we got to go round the corner to Granny’s, because she gave us fruit too. She was great at getting fruit. Some days I went with her to the grocer’s at closing time to ask for ‘spoilt’ fruit and then Granny would chop off the bruised bits and we’d gobble up the guts of a plum or a pear.

Granny was a great storyteller too. ‘Come here and sit with me, Cynthia,’ she would smile. ‘Did I tell you the story about the banshee?’ Mammy and Daddy hardly spoke to me at all, let alone told me stories that made my eyes widen like saucers.

I’d sit on the floor beside Granny’s long skirts for ages listening to her tales. I loved the one about the banshee, who was an old woman with long white hair who came to warn you of death. Granny told me it again and again, but it was one of my favourites and I lapped it up every time.

‘If the banshee howls three times before midnight, then someone in the house will die,’ Granny would say with a glint in her eye. ‘If you happen to come across her yourself, usually sitting on a wall, combing her long white hair, and she throws her comb at you, then you will die instantly!’

I loved my granny. I heard people say she looked pious, but I wasn’t sure what that meant. She looked like a jolly nun to me, with her round face, big red cheeks and shoulder-length grey hair, which was so straight it looked like it had been ironed. She was sweet and kind, and always made me feel special.

‘Be good now, you two,’ Esther smiles after lunch when she leaves us at home again, Mammy still in bed. ‘I’ll be back as soon as you know it.’

Every time I watch my big sister disappear round the corner of our street, my heart aches for her to come back.

Often I sit on the greasy lino under the kitchen table, scratching the bites on my legs. Sometimes I scratch so much I make myself bleed, and then yellow stuff bubbles up on my skin, so I wipe it away with the squares of old newspaper we use as toilet paper.

I scratch my head too. I can feel things crawling in my hair. I try to pick out whatever it is, but I can never tell if I catch anything because my fingernails are black. I don’t think I do, because the itching just gets worse and worse the more I pick.

It seems like I spend hours some days, just sitting there doing nothing, waiting for the bigger ones to get home, wondering how long they will be.

When they do come home, Mammy gets out of bed and lights the fire.

I like the warmth and I like the bustle when the house first starts to fill up, but on some days it feels like living in a big cooking pot. With so many of us around, I sometimes feel hot and bothered, like something is going to boil over at any minute.

One day it does. Mammy suddenly yells something out so loudly it makes my ears whistle. She sounds livid, as if she wants to kill someone. ‘Who did that? How dare you!’ Now she is hitting me with a sweeping brush, bashing it into my back. I have no idea what has caused this particular outburst, but I have no choice but to endure it.

I shut my eyes as tightly as I can, so tight my whole face aches. I can hear my howls and screams echoing round my head, and my bones are rattling inside my body.

I keep my eyes glued together and huddle myself into a ball. I make myself as small as possible as Mammy moves away from my cowering body. I just want to be invisible, so nobody will notice me and I won’t get another beating for getting in the way.

When Mammy’s voice gets near to me again, I hug my knees in closer to my chest, pulling my skirt down to make a tent over my ankles and pushing my forehead into my kneecaps.

Amongst the shouting and screaming I hear the front door open and shut, and I freeze when I hear my oldest brother Joe’s voice. ‘Jesus, what’s up with you?’ he says.

Joe only ever comes round at night when Daddy is in the pub. He lives with my Granny, so I’m not used to him being around much.

I always pray Daddy won’t come in when Joe is there, as any change in routine can set Daddy off on a rant. It doesn’t take much. Any one of us can be the cause of a fight. Drink makes it all