He Is Mine and I Have No Other Read online

  I lay under the swing, flat on my back, my arms and legs out like a starfish, and waited for the night to take hold of me. It was like I was a glass paperweight. No, a cut diamond – all sharp edges – gazing up at the cloudless sky. No one came. No one came to find me. Twelve o’clock came and went and I was all alone.

  All the rest of the holiday I sat in my room staring at the walls. Or watched telly in the front room. I felt like I was outside looking in, at this family playing happy families, living on the outskirts of the universe – my father lighting big fires in the evenings, my mother looking younger, sweeter than I ever remembered her. She and Gran taking turns with the one pack of cards, playing endless games of Patience. When Mam wasn’t playing that she was knitting – a tiny white cardigan, which I was sure would be too small for the baby. It was doll-sized. She had beautiful pearly white buttons for it. I have this image of her still, her face bathed in the light from the fire, her feet stretched out in front of her, crossed at the ankles, and the movement of her wrists, plain and purl stitching that little cardigan, the knitting needles clicking.

  Josie, 15

  Margaret is my favourite friend, even though she doesn’t think she is. She is the best in the class and she helps me when I don’t know something. She tried to kill herself once. I might try to do it but Miss Dolan says if you take your own life you burn in hell for eternity. She also says never to point a knife at anyone because it’s bad luck, and that her brother saw a leprechaun once, and that she nearly died but she prayed very hard to Jesus and he saved her. I try to imagine what it would be like to be burning for ever, with the devil standing over you, poking you with his fork. Then I have awful nightmares and wake up all covered in sweat. Margaret says there is no such thing as hell, and anyway we’d be better off there. She doesn’t want me to kill myself, though. She says I should work hard at my school work and then get a job outside of here.

  I’ve only been in the town once. That was on the way to visit the bishop. Mother Andrew gave me money and told me to go into the shop and buy a nice cake for the bishop. I didn’t know what to do. The shopkeeper looked at me like I was a leper. ‘Well, are you wanting to buy something or what?’ she said. Mother Andrew had to come in after me and do it for me. ‘Thank you, Sister,’ the shopkeeper said to her, smiling. She should have said ‘Mother’. Later, when no one was looking, Mother got me by the ear and twisted it until I couldn’t feel it anymore.

  I didn’t know what I was supposed to do at the bishop’s house, until I realised that I was there to help clean. He was having special visitors from Dublin. Not the Pope, but somebody almost as important.

  I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up like Margaret. I can’t say I want to be a nurse like her because she says I am copying her. I don’t want to be a shopkeeper. Maybe I will work as a cleaner at the bishop’s house. He was nice to me.

  I took to eating only Rich Tea biscuits – and drinking lots of tea, lots of milky tea. My variation on a bread-and-water diet. It helped with the emptiness in my head somehow, to feel my stomach empty too. I liked the black spells when I stood up too quickly. And I smoked as many cigarettes as I could cadge or steal at school. They made my head go like a hive full of bees. Mam fussed over me at mealtimes – poor Mam must have been beside herself – but I made such a scene every time she tried to make me eat that she soon learned to just let me be. Mar and I had hardly said two words to each other, except when we were forced to in class, and it was easier to pretend everything was normal than to have the teachers on our backs. Then one morning she arrived into school in a terrible state. We went to the cloakroom at break time that morning, like we used to.

  ‘Eoin rang me last night,’ she sobbed. ‘He said he had too much study to do for the exams and we wouldn’t be able to see each other for ages, so we might as well break up. He said he didn’t want to but what could we do.’

  I put my arm around her, but could think of nothing to say. She was having one of those crying fits where it’s hard to breathe and words come out all wonky.

  ‘He said he loved me,’ she wailed. ‘The fucking bastard! He only said that so he could get into my knickers. And now I think I might be up the duff.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘What do you mean what do I mean?’

  ‘God, Mar, weren’t you using protection?’

  ‘Yeah, but I don’t think it worked. I feel kind of weird.’

  She did look a little pale.

  ‘Don’t worry. We’ll buy a pregnancy test at the weekend. Then you’ll see. I’m sure you’re not.’

  ‘I’m sorry I’ve been such a bitch, Lani. And I’m sorry about you and Leon.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Eoin told me.’

  ‘Eoin told you what?’

  ‘That you’d broken up.’

  Then I felt sick. Really sick.

  ‘That’s a lie,’ I said, my voice jarring in my throat.

  ‘He’s a freak anyway. Don’t worry. You can do better than him. He’s not even that good-looking.’

  ‘What the hell’s that got to do with anything?’

  ‘Everyone knows about him, Lani. About his father.’

  I really lost it then.

  ‘Just shut up, Mar. Shut up, you stupid fucking BITCH.’ I spat at her – right between the eyes. I hadn’t spat since I was a kid. It felt good, getting that little ball of anger out of me. I watched it slowly slither down either side of the bridge of her nose.

  She went all still, her arms stretched out as if she wanted her hands as far away from herself as possible. She pulled a sleeve down and wiped it away quickly. ‘I think I’m going to be sick,’ she said. Then she started to scream: ‘You fucking deserve him, you weirdo freaking creep! You’re like the Mr and Mrs Freak of Freaksville, Tennessee.’

  I remember marvelling at her way with words, even in a situation such as this – one that would leave most speechless. It wasn’t long before one of the teachers came to find out what all the noise was, and hauled us off to the headmistress’s office.

  We told her we’d been just messing. ‘She tickled me is all, Miss,’ Mar said, ‘and I screamed. I didn’t mean to.’

  ‘I don’t know what’s happened to you, Miss Halpern. You used to be such a nice girl. Your grades are going down, and I’m sick of seeing you in this office. I don’t want to see you in here again. And as for you, Miss Devine, I thought you’d know better. Get out of my sight, the pair of you.’

  I hoped Mar was pregnant and would have to leave school and live in a caravan in the woods, all alone, and be disowned by all her family and friends, and have to go on the dole, and spend her days hand-washing cloth nappies. Then she’d wish she’d been nicer to me.

  I knelt at Hermione’s grave that evening and cried. A thick fog blanketed the countryside. I could barely see an arm’s length in front of me. Leon never showed. I did have the feeling I was being watched though. Then it wouldn’t be the last time I’d feel that way. I liked it. He could watch me break my heart over him if that’s what he wanted. I was worn out with it. I stayed there until the cold had seeped right into me, the fog had made its way into my clothes.

  Dinner was on the table when I got home, Mam and Dad both ready to tell me off for being late until they saw the state I was in. I went straight to my room without uttering a word. Mam followed.

  ‘What’s the matter, love?’

  ‘Nothing. I just want to be on my own.’

  She sat down on the bed beside me, right up close, put her hand on my knee.

  ‘Is it the baby? Is it because you had to move out of your room? Because you didn’t want to move out of your room? Because you don’t have to, love, you know. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. We’ll think of something else.’

  ‘No. Just leave me alone, will you?’

  ‘What’s gotten into you, Lani? Is this about Blue?’

  I was crying again. ‘Just leave me alone.’

  ‘Yo
u really should eat something, you know, love. I’ll leave something out for you.’

  She shut the door gently behind her, not clicking the latch so it creaked open again moments later. I stood up and slammed it shut. I didn’t want to be able to hear her and Dad murmuring about me over dinner, and I didn’t want to have to smell the stinking cabbage smell of food.

  Dear Leon,

  What have I done to deserve this? Why are you telling everyone else but me that you’ve dumped me? I need you so much. Don’t you understand? I’m terrified that you think that I didn’t want to be with you. I desperately did. I wanted to give myself to you, but it never seemed like the right time.

  Is there anything I can do to make you change your mind? I’m sure that you can’t have been lying to me that whole time. I know I hurt you. But you hurt me too. Please, please tell me what I can do to make it up to you.

  Love,

  Lani

  He was in the town one Saturday a couple of weeks later. In the hardware section of Tesco. It gave me an awful fright. I had to get the keys from Mam and run out to the car before he saw me. I hadn’t washed my hair in days. It was stuck to my head with grease, all frizzy with split ends. My skin had gone all red and flaky – from not eating properly, I suppose. He couldn’t see me like that. That wasn’t supposed to be how it went.

  He came out of the supermarket with a girl walking behind him who I’d not seen before – about his age, with long straight caramel-coloured hair. It was hard to tell if she was pretty from where I was.

  I sank down into the back seat of the car and watched them walk across the car park towards the same car he’d been driving that time I’d seen him at Christmas. They weren’t holding hands or anything like that. He walked faster than her, even with the trolley. She had to trot to keep up.

  I didn’t even notice Mam knocking on the driver’s seat window for me to let her in.

  ‘Would you ever help me with this shopping, Lani? What use are you to me sitting back there?’

  Mam grabbed my arm as I lifted a bag into the boot.

  ‘What’s the matter with you, Lani? You’re shaking like a leaf. Right, that’s it, I’m making an appointment with the doctor as soon as we get home. I’m not having you carry on like this anymore.’

  I said nothing, though I knew I wasn’t going to see a doctor. She couldn’t make me. I felt cold as anything. I saw Leon’s car drive off, with that girl in the passenger seat.

  When we got home Mam unpacked vitamins, cod-liver oil capsules, garlic pills, evening primrose oil and St John’s Wort.

  ‘These are for you, Lani. And I’m going to call the doctor right now.’

  ‘If you do I won’t eat.’

  ‘You’re hardly eating anyway.’

  I called her a bitch and ran outside, slamming the back door behind me, Mam shouting ‘What did you say? Get back in here, young lady.’

  I turned up Molly’s lane before reaching the graveyard. I knew they wouldn’t think to look for me up there. I’d said often enough I was terrified of Molly’s dog. Which I was. I was hoping for a gruesome attack, something that would leave its mark on me. Something cathartic. My blood tingled imagining its teeth sinking into my flesh.

  ‘She hates me. I hate her. She hates me. I hate her,’ I chanted in my head. ‘I’ll show them. I’ll make them see. I’ll show them . . .’

  The land on either side felt like it was closing in on me. There were rivers of rainbow oil on the stagnant water in the ditches. Molly was in the yard with a bucket of seed, feeding the few chickens she had fenced in at the front of the house. She was almost bent double with arthritis. The skin on her arms and face was dark with sun and dirt, and her thin white hair was like fine doll’s hair. She had on a blue nylon dress, bright green socks over sagging brown nylon tights, and black laced boots. She looked up and eyed me suspiciously. She said something but I couldn’t hear. I was too far away yet to make out her words. I pretended not to see her, pretended she was invisible. She carried on with what she was doing and ignored me. The dog – a fierce-looking Alsatian tied to the inside of the gate – started to bark, straining at the end of its leash. I turned suddenly, and walked as fast as I could back to the main road before she let him loose on me. That’s what she was supposed to do – set the dog on me. That’s what people said she did. Sometimes she even wielded a kitchen knife, I’d heard, and would sharpen it as people walked past. That’s how crazy she was. And she spoke in words that made no sense. Chicken and dog words. My heart was racing. I pulled myself back just long enough for a car to whizz past before I crossed over to the cemetery. There were two people walking down the middle path, hand in hand. I nodded at them as they looked over. They nodded back. The dog was still barking. No sign of my parents out looking for me. Or Leon. I sat down in the same spot under the cross, and waited for them to come and find me. I watched the lights come on in the house across the way, and the watery sunlight melting into the hills that turned the shale I was sitting on to a deep greyish-purple, and still there was no sign of them. There was nothing for it but to go home and wait in the back garden until someone showed up.

  It was still just bright enough outside that I could make my way to the swing at the back of the house without stumbling and making noise. It was darker under there than anywhere else in the garden. The only sound was the fizzing river, and the squeaking of the branches above as I swung over and back, over and back, deeper into the night, over the river, higher and higher. The cold swam through me. The air whistled around my empty belly. I closed my eyes, put my head back and my feet in the air, so that I was lying flat and could no longer tell where I was – near to the ground or tipping the branches. Then the only sound was the whooshing in my ears. I couldn’t stop, though I felt sick. Still they didn’t come for me. Finally I pulled myself back up and wound the ropes around each other, looking up into the branches, until it looked like the tree was moving while I sat perfectly still. I felt hands on my shoulders and screamed, something I hadn’t done since I was a child. Then a face went whirling past in the darkness with the tree, and disappeared. ‘It’s only me,’ it said.

  I was sobbing, choking on my tears, when Mam and Dad found me and unwound the ropes from above my head.

  ‘Are you okay, pet? What’s happened?’

  ‘Nothing. I got a fright – that’s all.’

  ‘What was that?’ Dad asked, peering through to the field. ‘Jesus, there’s somebody there.’

  Mam clung to me, while Dad made his way to the gate and shouted, ‘Go on. If I catch you around here again I’ll call the guards. Go on.’

  ‘It was probably just a fox or something,’ Mam said, wiping away the tears from my face.

  ‘That was no fox.’

  Their faces were blue from the porch light.

  ‘Get into that house now, the pair of you.’

  Mam held me by the wrist, afraid to let me go, afraid I’d be pulled out to the river man. Dad stood at the back door, chest puffed out, peering after whoever it was had dared set foot near our home in the night.

  ‘You see what I told you. It’s not safe to be gallivanting out there on your own at night,’ Mam said, sitting me down at the dining room table then automatically flicking the switch on the kettle.

  ‘I’ve a good mind to call the guards,’ Dad said as he stepped into the room, visibly shaken.

  ‘Please don’t, Daddy,’ I said. ‘It was nothing.’

  ‘Well, I don’t care. That’s it now, Lani. No more wandering off on your own. Do you hear me?’

  ‘Yes, Daddy.’

  I was sure my eyes were like two beacons. I kept them lowered so neither of them would see.

  That night I dreamt that I was over at the neighbours’ with Blue. We followed her trail back over the front lawn, around the side of the house and down to the back garden. When I looked up at the house there were hundreds of Friesian cows, all gawping at us, ready to stampede. I was terrified. Blue barked and barked at them. Her barks made no
sound. Somehow we managed to reach the back door. Inside the house was flooded, all the furniture gone, or what remained broken and floating on the water. Sunlight streamed in the windows. The cows were there too. I fell to the ground or sank, I’m not sure, and some boy, whose face I couldn’t see, stretched my arms up above my head and tickled me. I was helpless to do anything. I couldn’t move from the floor. My clothes were soaking wet. The boy smiled. The cows looked on, moving slowly towards me. The tickling was unbearable. I woke with the pain of it, sweating.

  Elaine, 16

  I was twelve when I came here first. Most of the girls were younger, so I suppose that made me a bit different. They took me out of school when I was thirteen, for biting one of the townies. She was going on at one of the little ones, ‘Lady Muck, Lady Muck, with your scabby, dirty head. Give us a slurp of that cocoa,’ and she knocked the cup out of her hand and scalded her knees. I bit her on the ear and had the shite beaten out of me, and told I’d be off to a reformatory the next time I carried on like that. They needed me in the convent anyway. I’m good with my hands. And they like to keep a close eye on me.

  I used to talk to Angela but her head’s up her arse. She thinks she’s the chosen one because Mother Assumpta wants to put her hands in her drawers. Who is she trying to cod?

  They said I was too big for my boots when I got here first, and they’d have to put manners on me. Mother Margaret put me in a bath with three other girls and stood watching me, ordering me to scrub behind them filthy ears of mine, and down between my legs. And then I was made wear pants made out of flour sacks. And hobnail boots. I’m used to them now. The boots are good for clobbering the younger ones when they’re bold.