The Girl from Ballymor. Kathleen McGurl
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The church was dark and cool inside. There was a stained glass window, depicting St Michael, at the far end above the altar. She slipped into a pew and smiled, remembering how she had gazed up at that window on the day she’d brought her Michael here to be christened.
*
Finding out she was pregnant had been devastating. She’d been not yet sixteen and terrified. Part of her had wanted to hide it for as long as possible, refuse to acknowledge what was happening to her body. If she ignored it for long enough maybe it would all go away, maybe it wouldn’t be happening to her, maybe things would be as they had been, before. But the more rational part of her realised that she could not hide this, and neither could she handle it alone. If it was God’s will that she should have a child then she would have one, and would do her very best for that child, regardless. She’d steeled herself, and told Mother Heaney about the pregnancy early on, before the old lady suspected anything herself.
‘How did this happen, child? Who is the father?’ Ma Heaney spoke with repressed emotion. Kitty had the impression she wanted to scream and shout, but knew that would not help matters. She told her then how the pregnancy had begun, and Ma Heaney grabbed the mug she’d been drinking from and flung it across the cottage smashing it into the fireplace. Kitty flinched in fear, but the old lady’s rage abated as quickly as it had arisen, and she’d slumped in her chair. ‘I’m not after blaming you, Kitty. That monster! Well, what’s done is done, and I will help you with this child as far as I am able to.’
Kitty had knelt on the cottage floor at her feet and laid her head in Mother Heaney’s lap. ‘Thank you. I’m after thinking I’ll need all the help I can get.’
She’d been sixteen by the time Michael was born. He had torn his way out of her as though he couldn’t stand another minute inside, and had emerged red-faced and shouting, leaving her drained and exhausted, although the labour had been mercifully short. Old Mother Heaney had wrapped him deftly and passed him to her. Kitty gazed into his deep blue eyes and ran a finger across his furrowed forehead.
‘Whisht, there, little man. Hush, now.’
And he had stopped crying and looked back at her with eyes full of suspicion and confusion, an old soul in the youngest of bodies.
‘I’m your mammy, so I am,’ she told him. ‘I hope we’re going to be friends, now.’ The baby regarded her as though making up his mind about this, then turned his face towards her, mouth open.
‘He’s looking to suckle,’ Mother Heaney said, and helped her get him latched on. He sucked at her strongly and greedily, and fell asleep immediately after.
‘I think you and I are going to get along very well,’ she told him, smiling. She hadn’t known how she would feel about this baby, when he finally made an appearance. But, as he suckled, and she felt the warm weight of him in her arms, she knew that she loved this child. He was a part of her and always would be, no matter how he’d been conceived.
‘What are you after naming him?’ Mother Heaney asked.
Kitty had not given any thought to what she’d name her baby. She’d spent the first few months of her pregnancy ignoring the signs, praying it wasn’t happening. And then the latter part had been all about fending off the taunts and jibes of the townsfolk, disgusted at her for having a baby out of wedlock. As if it was her fault! ‘There she goes, the slattern!’ women had called after her, spitting as she passed, while men had looked at her with a disconcerting mixture of disgust and desire written in their eyes. She’d done her best to keep working: looking after Mother Heaney who’d put her foot in a rabbit hole and broken a bone, and tending their potato plot. She’d barely paused to consider the idea of actually holding a baby, her own baby, in her arms, and being required to give him a name.
‘Well, girl? Father John will be asking. He can hardly baptise a baby that has no name, can he?’
‘I’ll decide later,’ she said, ‘but don’t worry, I’ll have a name ready for his baptism.’
‘’Tis Sunday tomorrow. You can take him for baptism then, at the end of Mass.’ Mother Heaney bustled about the cottage, tidying up, putting water on to boil to make tea.
She was a good woman, Kitty thought. What Kitty would have done without her these last few years since her parents died she did not know. Mother Heaney had taken her in, brought her up, shared her cottage and potato plot and been like a parent to her. She was a distant relative – an aunt of her mother’s – but it had been out of kindness that she’d given a home to Kitty. ‘Well, if you call it kindness to let someone share your work and look after you in your old age,’ she’d said with an amused snort, whenever Kitty had thanked her for it.
Kitty spent her first night as a mother curled on her straw mattress, with the baby tucked in beside her. Even as she slept deeply, exhausted from the birth, she felt herself still aware of the warm little body pressed up against her. Once or twice she woke, helped him to latch on, and lay quietly, savouring the delicious scent of his soft head, as he fed. He was only hours old but already she felt the deepest, most profound love for this tiny being that she could ever have imagined. Despite the way he’d come into the world, she knew that she would do anything for him, anything at all.
The next day Kitty rose, washed and dressed, fed the baby and left with him wrapped in a shawl to go to Mass with Mother Heaney. Some of the town women who’d spat at her while she was pregnant came now to look upon the baby. ‘No one can resist a newborn,’ Ma Heaney whispered, ‘not even one that has no father.’ Kitty still had not decided upon a name. On entering the church, she gazed up at the stained glass window above the altar. It depicted St Michael the archangel, defeater of Satan, guardian of the Church, the angel who attended souls at their moment of death, to ease their passage into the next life.
‘Michael,’ she said.
‘What’s that you’re after saying?’ Mother Heaney asked.
‘’Tis what I’ll name the baby,’ Kitty replied.
The old lady nodded her approval, and an hour later, at the end of the service, Father John anointed him with oil of chrism and poured holy water over his head, welcoming him into the Catholic Church. Kitty swelled with pride as she watched. Michael kept his eyes open and fixed upon the priest throughout, as though he understood the seriousness of the occasion. When Father John handed him back to Kitty, her eyes had filled with tears. Michael had been born fatherless, but now he had God as his father. He would live a long, good life, she’d been certain of it. And she’d known then that she would do everything in her power to ensure it.
*
Now, so many years later, with that tiny baby almost a grown man, she left the church feeling calmed and uplifted. Remembering those good times – the early days with Michael when she’d learned what it was to be a mother, the support and love of dear Mother Heaney – had eased her soul. Outside, the clouds had cleared and the sun was fully out. There was beauty and peace to be found, even if there was poverty, starvation and death all around. She resolved to try to hold on to that thought, no matter what happened.
She paid a visit to the churchyard, laying her hand on the simple wooden cross that marked where her children were buried. ‘May God rest your souls,’ she whispered. And may Gracie and Michael never need join you here, she thought.
The food stores were further up the high street, past O’Sullivan’s pub, where a few men were standing outside, enjoying the sunshine as they supped their pints. Time was when Patrick would have been one of them, enjoying a pint once a week after work. She nodded to the men and continued to the grain store. There was a crowd outside it. She joined the edge of the crowd and asked the woman standing next to her what was happening.
‘There’s no corn. ’Tis all down at the docks in Cork still. They’ve not been able to distribute it to the towns where it’s needed. Disgusting state of affairs. What are we to do? How are we to feed our children?’ The woman shook her head sadly. Around her, the crowd was becoming angry. Two men at the front began beating on the doors of the store with sticks.