Authors: Jayne Olorunda
Chapter Forty Seven
Gradually we settled into the estate, our immediate neighbours were an elderly couple and we grew very fond of them. Directly behind our house was the back of another house. As this house was elevated slightly more than ours, it meant that its residents could see into our bedrooms with ease. As our house was lower than theirs we could only see into their kitchen and gardens. We tried not to look, the same way we tried to ignore the residents hiding guns in the manhole and the comings and goings of shady figures in the night.
This was going on right across the estate, right across the town right and right across the country. In light of the enormity of such dealings, Mum warned us all to ignore anything we had seen or heard. It was like living in a gold fish bowl and like goldfish we would have to have very short memories if we were to survive here. Yet I knew Mum was seething; if pride comes before a fall then she must have been the proudest of them all, for she had certainly fallen not just once but over and over again. Everything my Dad had aspired to, every dream he had, Mum was unwillingly doing the opposite.
To make matters worse, a thousand times worse Mum's kindly grandmother, Dad's main champion, began to take ill. She started to become confused and disorientated and no one needed to tell Mum that she was suffering from dementia. The symptoms grew and grew until she no longer recognised her family. Within two years of their onset she had died. I was young at the time so don't remember much about Nanny taking ill I just remember how upset Mum was and that she cried and cried.
Every month when Mum exchanged her month's punts into sterling, we would watch what looked like a decent salary fade to a pittance. We were still being pursued by the bank on what was left of the mortgage and found that many other bills were falling behind. This was when I remember Mums shifts really increasing. Now that we were all a little older Mum nursed around the clock. To access Mum these days it was easier to phone the hospital because when she was at home she was so tired she just slept. When I asked Mum about those days she says she was angry, angry that we were growing and just as in our early years she was missing out on us. She would watch other woman working normal hours if working at all and she grew bitter. She was working so much she barely had time to live; she worked to support us the irony being that in supporting us she never saw us.
It was in those early days that I remember having my first thoughts on my weight. I began to worry about my normal body shape and in some sort of dysmorphic mind-set I saw myself as obese. I started to skip the occasional meal; after all who no one was ever there so no one would notice. As long as I had the dinner ready and the house tidy no one was around to see if I ate. Besides which I had more important things to deal with than food, I had to make sure we kept afloat.
Mum used to allow me to go and cash her salary cheque, this was especially essential when she worked nights. When I cashed the cheque I dished out the money to the various creditors and would spend hours trying to work out how to make it elastic so it would stretch until the end of the month. It was a puzzle I never solved.
Maxine at the time was getting in with a bad a crowd, I remember Mum trying her best to dissuade her, but with the hours she worked she just wasn't there long enough to check up.
Alison now 18 had shunned the academic route and travelled down the route of beauty. She entered beauty contests province wide and even made it into the finals in Miss Northern Ireland. She had started courting a young man from the country and when not posing for the camera, she spent all her free time with him.
It would have been hard on two parents having three teenage girls but for Mum she had to exercise the role of both mother and father and become a tight disciplinarian. That was when she got the time. I'm sure she needed support in these days more than ever, a husband, someone to help her with us. She says that she was painfully aware of our dad's absence during our teens. All we were painfully aware of was a presence rather than an absence; the stick! Mum had introduced her childhood nemeses to us in order to retain control.
Chapter Forty Eight
After years of working full time and then some, Mum grew tired of nursing she simply had nothing more to give. Once she had compassion and respect for each and every patient, but now she viewed them all as great big time consuming
lumps
. She began to resent her patients and feared that they resented her too. She did her best to plaster a smile on her face when she was treating them and for the most part it worked.
Mum often told me about the day when she finally had enough. She had been asked by a colleague to draw blood from a lady in the hospital. Mum had always been expert in finding veins, where none seemed available. If any of her colleagues had difficulty in extracting blood they would call her. After struggling to find a vein in the old ladies paper like skin, the young nurse whom Mum was on duty with called for her assistance. Mum tied the lady's arm and for the first time in almost 20 years of nursing failed to find a vein.
She apologised to the patient telling her that she would try her other arm. The woman was old and the situation could be seen as traumatic for her, so she was as gentle as she could be.
Just as she was tying her other arm, the woman said:
“I'm not surprised really.”
“Oh?” Mum said, not really listening to her, so intent she was on not hurting her.
“Sure you can do nothing right,” the woman said.
“Pardon?” Mum was all ears now.
“You couldn't even have children right; didn't you end up with three black bastards?”
Mum dropped everything and turned her back on the horrible woman. She didn't care if they had to enlist Count Dracula himself to take her blood. In fact she hoped they did. Her colleagues were also disgusted and the woman was despatched to a different ward where Mum wouldn't have to see her face again.
Of course Mum had had racist jibes before, especially working in the small towns in and around Strabane, but never had they made her want to pack the whole thing in. If it wasn't for our dire financial mess, she would have turned her back on nursing there and then but unfortunately she couldn't. She was tied to the job, to big
lumps
forever, it seemed.
Even with all Mum's hours our cupboards were still bare, Mum still didn't have any friends it seemed her life revolved around work and rest. I felt sorry for her then as to me she was so pretty yet she never had any fun or even a fragment of a life; all she had was worry.
Alison helped as best she could but her low wage barely skimmed the edges of our debts. She was at secretarial training college and got paid a trainee wage enough to get her to and from work. Maxine was in her final year at school and I was only 13. We were useless to Mum. I used to tell her how useless I felt and she would say even if we were millionaires she would not expect anything from her children. All she expected from us was for us to be happy. If only she knew that with the situation as bleak as it was, we never could be. How could we be happy when she was so sad?
Maxine and I didn't have any clothes and shopping became a distant memory. Mum began wearing her uniform even on her day off. One of my saddest memories was Mum dividing one beef burger, all that remained in our freezer between four and serving it up for dinner. No one complained, this was just how it was. We all lived for the end of the month, when we could stock the cupboards again.
We fell into a feast or famine pattern, when Mum got paid she would stock up the cupboards, heat the house and even get us small gifts. The result was that for three weeks out of four we had no food, no heat and often no electric. Things appeared so grim that I feared Misery returning. Mum pre-empted her though and went to the doctors who instantly increased her drugs
I was now 14 and I remember Mum buying the Belfast Telegraph more often than usual. I guess she was assessing our current predicament, she seen that she didn't have any friends or money, in fact the only thing that held her to the town was her job. She contemplated what she was doing there after all she hated it and we hated it. It was then she realised that nothing, absolutely nothing was holding us there. Mum made a decision then, a decision that pains me most of all because it shows me that Mum tried, she wanted happiness and she wanted a chance. There was still something in her then.
She had been happy once, she had been happy in Belfast. Mum would chase that happiness and put this gloomy town behind her, she would return to where she once had a life. We would all be happy; we would blend in more in a city. Mum reasoned that it was 1993, and the world had moved on from the 1970's, racism was generally condemned and we could make a fresh start. By now Belfast would have changed, Mum was sure that by now it would be home to more families from different ethnicities. Our family would no longer stand out; we would no longer be oddities.
All the horrible incidents of Mum's past were firmly placed on her shelf; she had a glimmer of hope on the horizon and we were all swayed by her enthusiasm. I was not so keen on moving to Belfast but Mum's optimism was contagious and at last for the first time in my life it seemed Misery was a friend Mum wanted to dump. To me Mum was filled with hope; her new plans may just make the disposal of Misery possible. It was therefore settled that we would all move back to Belfast.
Chapter Forty Nine
We moved to Belfast in March 1994, we began our time in the city full of hope and gullibility. For Mum the move heralded a new start, just what her family needed. Just as 20 years before the big city lights beaconed to her once again.
Mum didn't have any friends in Strabane she had resolutely stayed away from the townsfolk and once again was on bad terms with her family, so we had few goodbyes to say. I would be surprised if apart from my school friends at the time and Mum's colleagues that anyone even noticed our absence.
Mum's now thoroughly blackened credit rating ensured that buying a house was out of the question, the Housing Executive had nothing available on its transfer list so the only option we had was to find a rental. Every day we scoured the Telegraph for something within our measly price bracket. Mum was astounded to find that we were priced out of South Belfast area. The rents there were alarmingly high. Even if she worked non-stop, her wallet would just not be big enough.
This didn't discourage her though; instead she said we would have to consider new unknown parts of the city. We knew form the daily news bulletins that the West was predominately Catholic and the East predominately Protestant. Coming from a small town that was entirely Catholic Mum wanted to live in a mixed area. She said she couldn't cope with the thought of a religiously segregated area again. Where segregation existed bigotry was bred. So we took a risk and went with the only other part of Belfast that was left, the North.
It was a fun time as we searched for houses; we would scroll through the small print of the Telegraph's classified and put a big circle around the houses that we could afford. Then we would phone the landlords and ask questions about the smaller details, what type of heat it had, were pets allowed etc.
It didn't take long before we found a house that seemed ideal, it was a good price and the landlord claimed it was in a quiet family area. Google didn't exist in those days so Mum went on trust; he seemed a genuine man. Over the next year he would be working on a series of repairs, but for now it was clean and comfortable. When he assured her that the house would be a long-term let and that we could have it for as long as we wanted it she was sold. Rather than make the two hour journey to Belfast to view Mum took him at his word and signed all the relevant paperwork from home. She wrote a cheque for the deposit, a month in advance and the next month's rent. She paled at the amount of money it had cost but all the furniture was included and we had nothing to do but move in. We could sell our current furniture and gain some of the money back. In that respect it could be viewed it as a saving; she would just have to find a job as soon as we arrived to ensure further rent instalments were made. Within five days the keys arrived in the post and we were good to move.
Naivety was always one of Mum's strong points and on seeing the new home she knew her strong point had not let her down.
I will never forget it; it was the most dilapidated house I had ever seen. Before we even set foot in the door I knew that Mum had made a huge mistake. I think she did too I knew by her face which was clamped into a tight frown. I wanted to run back to the grim council estate but even then at 14 I knew it was too late. Anywhere would be better than this ramshackle excuse for a house.
As the removal men moved what little furniture we had brought in I cringed, this was Mum's good clean furniture, furniture that I remember her struggling to buy. After a week in here it would surely be destroyed. The windows were paper thin, some were even cracked. If I had applied any pressure to them I knew they would shatter. The walls were decorated with little blue black splodges that could only be damp. On opening the kitchen cupboard I encountered an army of ants.
We were all horrified, but there was nothing for it we were here now, so we got stuck in and began to help Mum attempt to clean the place up. As soon as our phone was connected Mum called the landlord and told him of her concerns that his house was not as described. He reassured her that he knew there was work to be done and that it was his top priority. Mum called him every week at the start, soon she gave up.
The move meant that I had missed a considerable amount of school and I was keen to escape the damp house. I asked Mum if we could find a school over the next few weeks, she agreed and together we sat over a map of Belfast to find the nearest grammar. Low and behold it seemed that we were within a mile of a school, we called it and they were happy to see me. An appointment was made for Mum and I to attend an enrolment interview a few days later. Even now when I remind Mum of that day we laugh, what we thought would be a simple interview turned out to be a little more.
We arrived at the huge âHogwarts' style school on the nearby Cliftonville Road. As neither of us were familiar with the building I think we were both a little surprised by the sheer scale of the school. On entering we were surrounded by history, lines and lines of former headmasters and pupils pictures glared at us embodying a sense of academia that neither of us had witnessed in our parochial schools. Mum was met by the head who wore a sweeping black cape intimidating for most but not for her. Then Mum was still a brave woman and little phased her. She was escorted away. A few minutes later I was taken by my potential form mistress. Each of us were interviewed by a panel of relevant teachers. Our respective interviews must have gone well for within two weeks I was ensconced in Belfast's oldest grammar, Belfast Royal Academy (BRA).
There I had my eyes opened, I had come from a small close knit country convent school where I had been surrounded by children I had known my whole life. All of a sudden I was faced with a school with over a thousand pupils and things I had never encountered; boys and Protestants. I can honestly say that prior to BRA I had spent my life surrounded solely by Catholics, Protestants were few and far between where I had grown up. The school meant that I mixed with people from all walks of life and religions and I found that this was a good life lesson, back then I believed it was the only thing I can be thankful to the school for. In those first few years I hated it, I hated the uniform a long sweeping grey ankle length skirt, I hated the pretentiousness and I hated the city children with their mature ways. The school had a certain coldness to it and from my perspective seemed to value the more affluent children.
I knew I wanted to go to university and to facilitate this I knew I would have to be at school. Reluctantly I spent four years in that school; most of which involved polishing up my maths skills as I counted down how many days I had left before I could leave. Yet when I did leave I was a changed person I had met and associated with people I would never have met without the schools non-denominational policy. I had friends from a variety of backgrounds and knew that more people existed in the world than white Catholics and Protestants. Most importantly I knew that despite the bigotry that consumed many that we were all equal and it was possible for us all to live together. On the downside I also knew that my life was so very different from that of all the people I had I met along the way. My mother was not right. She was ill.