The Fall Girl (31 page)

‘I'm not. I know I've done wrong, Mammy, and I'm really sorry, but it's
my
baby,' I say, laying my hand on my tummy, ‘and I love it already.'

Her shoulders slacken and for a split second she looks sad.

‘I felt it kick last night,' I say in tears, reaching out and touching her shoulder. ‘It was lovely.'

‘Stop it,' she says, pulling back. ‘Stop that snivelling at once.'

‘But –'

‘But nothing. Now, pull yourself together and stop your nonsense.'

‘You've no heart, Mammy, do you know that? You're dead cold. Why can't you be more like Aunty Lily was? If she was alive, she'd be on my side.'

The colour drains from her face and her eyes bloat with fury. ‘Don't you try and tell me about Aunty Lily, you ungrateful yoke. You know nothing about her.'

‘I know she loved me, which is more than I can say about you.'

‘Get out.' She points to the door. ‘Get out of my sight now, Frances, before I say something I'll regret.'

‘I'm gonna keep my baby,' I sob, getting up and heading for the door. ‘You'll see.'

‘If that's your intention,' she shouts, ‘you may leave right now.'

We both know I can't leave – I've no one to turn to – but I don't give up either. Over the following few days, I beg my parents, together and in turn, to reconsider. I even suggest that my mother pretend the baby is hers. Mrs Galvin, a farmer's wife from the locality, had a baby a couple of weeks earlier and she's nearly fifty, which is older than my mother. No one would ever know.

‘That's out of the question,' my mother says.

‘Daddy?'

‘You heard your mother.'

They keep telling me to forget about the baby and get on with my schoolwork. A decent future is dependent on a semi-respectable Leaving Certificate and not on an illegitimate child.

I'm a ball of sensitivity. Every time someone raises their voice to me, or brushes by me in the schoolyard, or sings a sad song, I cry.

‘If she doesn't stop blubbering,' my mother tells my father, ‘she'll give the game away.'

The following evening Nancy knocks on my bedroom door.

‘You're at the books, I see,' she says, smiling.

‘Yeah.'

‘Good lassie. Can I come in for a minute?'

I nod.

She treads lightly across the floor and sits down on my bed.

‘You look a bit peaky,' she says, ‘but I suppose that's to be expected.'

‘I'm just tired.'

‘Your mother says you're very weepy these days. She's really worried about how the whole thing will affect your exams.'

‘She says I have to give the baby up for adoption.'

‘And you don't want to.' She doesn't sound the least bit surprised.

‘No.' At last, I think, someone who understands how I'm feeling.

‘Sit down here,' she says, patting the eiderdown.

Before I get to her, the tears are flowing again.

‘It's OK, love,' she says, putting her arms around me. ‘You have a good cry.'

‘I don't want them to take my baby away,' I sob.

‘I know it's hard, Frances,' she says, rubbing my arm. ‘In my line of work, I've come across dozens of girls in your situation over the years and they've all felt the very same way you're feeling now. No mother finds it easy to part with her baby, but, under the circumstances, it's the best thing to do, especially for the child's sake.'

‘Loads of girls are keeping their babies nowadays.'

‘Aye, and more's the pity. What kind of society will that lead to ten or twenty years down the line? Think about it, love.'

‘I don't care about that. I just want my baby.'

‘Are you still hankering after the father, hoping that keeping this baby might bring youse back together?'

‘No, it's not like that at all. It's nothing to do with him.'

‘You're sure?'

‘Positive.'

‘OK, OK.'

‘I'm seventeen, for God's sake. In fact, I'll be eighteen by the time the baby is born. It's due on the fifth of October.'

‘Yes, so your mother was telling me.'

‘Why can't she accept that I'm old enough to make my own decisions?'

‘Well, if you are, you're old enough to take responsibility for your actions and do the right thing – the unselfish thing – which is putting your baby's needs before your own.'

‘I can give it everything it needs.'

‘You can't give it a father.'

‘Daddy grew up without his
mother
and he turned out OK.'

‘Speaking of your father, what about the shame you'd be bringing on him and your mother by keeping this baby? Have you thought of that?'

‘Of course I have.'

‘And?'

‘I'm sorry for what I've done, but that doesn't change how I feel. If they don't let me keep it, Nancy, I'll just move out and get a flat.'

‘Now you're talking nonsense. How could you afford that, and you at home all day with a newborn baby?'

‘I'd get money from Social Welfare, wouldn't I?'

‘Aye, a pittance. It wouldn't keep you in nappies.'

‘I don't care.'

‘Off the top of my head, I can think of three … no, four women from this locality who have given up babies for adoption. Each of them has gone on to get married and have kids with their husbands. If they'd kept their babies, as sure as eggs are eggs, they'd still be on their own and they'd never have had more children. You need to think about the whole
thing on a long-term basis. A year from now, you could be away at college and doing the things that girls of your age should be doing, not stuck in some poky flat with a baby.'

‘I don't want to go to college.'

‘What do you want to do with the rest of your life?'

‘I don't know. I haven't thought about it.'

‘You're six weeks away from finishing your secondary education and you haven't even thought about it?'

‘I was planning on going to Dublin to get a job, but all I can think about now is keeping my baby. Please help me, Nancy. Talk to my mother; she listens to you. Just ask her to think about it!'

‘I don't see that there's any point.'

‘Then I'm not doing my Leaving.'

‘Don't be so foolish. You have to do it.'

‘Why? I know I'm going to fail. How can I possibly study when all I can think about is them giving my baby away to strangers?'

For a moment, she looks thoughtful.

‘OK,' she says, getting up and walking over to the window, ‘let's say I do decide to have a chat with your mother, will you promise to concentrate on your schoolwork and do your best in your exams?'

‘Yes.'

‘And will you continue to keep your pregnancy a secret for as long as your mother wants you to?'

‘I will.'

She pulls back the net curtains and looks out on to the street.

‘Because even if she does change her mind, it won't happen overnight.'

‘Yeah, I know.'

‘So, you'll stay calm and go along with her wishes for now?'

‘OK.'

‘Then I'll have a word with her,' she says. ‘Not today or tomorrow, mind you, but whenever I think the time is right.'

‘Thanks, Nancy.'

‘Merciful hour, is that the angelus I hear already?' she says, checking her watch. ‘I'd better be off.'

‘You know, I'm really sorry for the trouble I've caused,' I say as she heads for the door.

She mutters something under her breath. I can't be certain, but it sounded like ‘You girls always are.'

I'm the only student in the examination hall wearing a cardigan. My mother has warned me not to take it off because it conceals my now suspicious protrusion. My armpits are seeping and my blouse is cleaving to my skin. I can't stop scratching myself. Since my chat with Nancy a few weeks earlier, I haven't discussed my baby's future with either of my parents, but if the number of times my mother has visited Nancy's house recently is anything to go by, then the matter is being discussed at length, which I'm taking as a good sign. Half-way through my Maths paper, my mind drifts. I can't help imagining Lesley's reaction when she hears I'm having a baby too. If nothing else, it will make her see that she'll have to stop gossiping about me being a lesbian. And who knows, she might even be glad of a friend who's in the same boat as herself.

The Sunday after I finish my exams, my mother tells me I have an appointment at the hospital the following day.

‘OK,' I say, opening my jeans button to sit down.

‘It's in Enniskillen.'

‘Enniskillen!'

‘Yes, that's what I said.'

‘Why there? I thought you hated the North.'

‘I do, but that's where you'll be delivering the baby.'

‘Why will I be going there? What's wrong with Castleowen hospital?'

‘What do you think is wrong with it? If you have it there, all and sundry will know about it.'

‘But I'm keeping it: they'll know anyway.'

‘What do you mean you're keeping it? You're doing no such thing.'

‘But Nancy said she'd –'

‘Nancy is of the same opinion as I am. The best option … no, no, the
only
option is adoption.'

‘But she said she'd talk to you about me keeping the baby.' My lips are trembling.

‘Yes, and she did. She thought it was a ridiculous idea, if you must know.'

‘She said she understood,' I cry, cradling my tummy.

‘Look,' my mother says with a sigh, ‘no matter how
you
feel, you have to do the right thing by your baby.'

‘Nancy led me to believe that there was a chance you'd change your mind.'

‘Because she wanted you to be able to get through your exams. We all did.'

‘So she lied to me.'

‘She was only trying to help you.'

‘She's worse than Lesley.'

‘Lesley! Don't talk to me about that trollop. It was hanging around with that madam that got you into this mess in the first place,' she says, walking through to the kitchen.

‘At least she had good reason to betray me.'

I hear her rooting in a cupboard, then filling a glass with water and popping in two aspirin.

I get up and stand in the doorway between the two rooms.

‘How would you have felt if someone had taken me away from you after I was born?'

She looks down into her fizzing remedy. ‘I … I …'

‘Oh, Mammy, if you have to think about it …'

‘You should be counting your blessings that there's a nice, good-living young couple out there, willing to raise your child as their own.'

‘That doesn't answer my question, Mammy. I want to know how you'd have felt if –'

‘No matter how I'd have felt, I couldn't or wouldn't have kept you if I hadn't been married. It wouldn't have been right.'

‘It wouldn't have been right for whom?'

‘Either of us.'

‘So, you'd have handed me over to a stranger … just like that.'

‘The woman who's adopting your baby is barren. Can you imagine how happy she'll be to get this baby?'

‘I don't a give a damn about her! She's not having
my
child.'

She turns her back to me. ‘Stop torturing yourself, Frances,' she quavers. ‘Just accept that you have to give it up. It's for the best.'

By early July, I can't hide it any longer; even in my baggy sweatshirts I look pregnant. Father Vincent rings my mother to tell her that I'm welcome to stay in a convent in Enniskillen until the baby is born.

‘Everyone will be wondering where she is,' she says to my
father. ‘If it was only for a couple of weeks, grand, but from July until October, how do you explain that?'

‘It's up to you,' my father says. ‘Whatever you think yourself.'

‘I think it's best to wait until September.'

My father's indifference is killing me. Sometimes I feel like lifting up my T-shirt and saying, Look, Daddy, it's your grandchild, but then I know that he'd pretend not to see me or hear me, or even feel for me.

I'm not allowed out. The only fresh air I get is in the back garden. Any time the doorbell rings, I'm shooed upstairs out of sight. One Sunday early in August, my mother arrives home after attending Mass in the village.

‘I've told everyone that you have shingles,' she says. ‘They're highly contagious, so they'll understand why they don't see you out and about.'

When Nuddy Neary hears of my plight, he arrives at the front door with the name of a man who has the cure. I listen in amusement from my bedroom door.

‘He lives up in the Cooley Mountains,' he tells my mother. ‘Everyone swears by him.'

‘Really. Well, thanks very much. I'll think about it.'

‘It's an odious tricky spot to find,' he says, ‘but if youse like, I'll accompany youse on the journey and be your navigator, so to speak.'

‘I don't think so.'

‘He'd have her right as rain in no time. They travel from all over the country to see him. He's dynamite altogether.'

Inside my tummy, the baby stretches its limbs. I'd swear that's a foot pressing down on my hipbone. I lift my T-shirt and watch the contortions underneath my skin.

‘Don't worry,' I whisper, touching my tummy. ‘I'll never sign those papers.'

After an afternoon nap, I wake up with pins and needles in my feet. Across the landing, I can hear my mother humming. As I hobble towards the top of the stairs, I catch sight of her standing facing the mirror on the inside of her wardrobe door. She doesn't normally leave her bedroom door open. Standing with my back to the landing wall, I stop to listen. It's only then I recognize the song she's humming – ‘The Mocking Bird'. Peeping round the corner, I see that she's holding something to her cheek and swaying her upper body. There's a white ball of wool, stabbed with knitting needles, lying on her bedside table.