About Matilda (17 page)

I'm eleven. I'm standing at my bedroom window looking down at the empty playground wondering if I should help Sheamie escape. He'll never find our mother and I'll end up losing a brother as well and I'll never have a family. The sky is black. No moon, no stars. The air smells of rain and thunder snarls in the distance. The playground light is on and there's enough light to make out the tin roof of the green sheds and the long shadow of the swings stretched along the ground. My father didn't visit this summer and I don't know how I feel about that. I just know I feel as lost as I did when I first came here.

Somehow, I expect to see my mother coming around the corner. I open the window to the cold September breeze and look down. Sometimes I really see her there smiling up at me and I can't help wondering what it would be like. Would we be strangers or be as if she was never gone? I never let myself think about it for long though. Maybe that's why I'm scared of helping Sheamie. It scares me she wouldn't know me, or wouldn't want me. In my dream I just see her coming to take us home because then I'd know for sure she wanted us. We'd have a house with a chimney and at Christmas I'd pretend I was a child again waiting for Santa. I'd make myself believe in him, just so I'd know what it feels like to try and sleep so the hours will pass quickly but wanting to run downstairs with every toss and turn to see if he'd been. I have it planned. Everything will be simple. We'll have a house on stilts. A sitting room with a glowing fire and a big white shaggy dog
called Spot wagging his tail on the rug. He'd roll over when he'd see me and lie at the end of my bed at night to keep me safe. Maybe she'll come tomorrow.

Gabriel comes in carrying a new grey uniform and tells me I'm starting a new school tomorrow.

Why? Where?

Never mind why or where.

But… Mother…

But nothing. Come away from that window and take that mournful look off your gob. If God sees you with an expression like that he'll make you wear it for ever. Say your prayers, thank God for your blessings, and go to bed. Goodnight, Matilda.

Oh, goodnight.

What?

Goodnight, Mother.

In the morning Gabriel drives me in the mini-bus to this new school on the Mall. It's sunny, just a little cold, and I'd rather walk but Gabriel says she needs to speak to the principal, Sister Joan. This must be her flapping down the corridor toward us like a big black mother hen.

The two nuns whisper to each other in the corner. There's a girl in a wheelchair coming down the corridor and I wonder is she lost? She stops halfway and turns into a classroom and the corridor is empty again. Sister Joan comes bearning over and when she talks she clucks like a hen too.

Oh, Matilda, how delighted I am to have you here. Sister Gabriel has explained everything, but don't worry. I'm certain you'll be excellent now you are here with us. I'm putting you in classroom five. It's the last door on your left at the end of the corridor. Miss Brown is your teacher. Do you know your left from your right yet, Matilda?

Of course I do.

That's a great start. Remarkable. You can go on up on your own so, while I finish here with Sister Gabriel.

When I walk in I want to die. Miss Brown is standing by the window playing an iron triangle. She tells me to come in and close the door. Instead, I turn and run back the way I came. Some of them are in wheelchairs. A boy in the front row has twisted hands and can't wipe the snot that trickles. Some have little bodies and big heads or mouths with thick lips and make gaga noises from the sides of their heads because that's where their mouths are.

I search the corridor for Gabriel, but it's empty. I'm goin' to puke. I try to find a bathroom. I feel tears coming but I have to hold them too because if I let go I'll be sick right here on this empty wheelchair. I run to the front door and bang at the glass to Gabriel as she's driving away. The red lights at the back of the bus come on. I pull at the front door but it's locked. I bang at the glass again but Gabriel drives on; she only stopped to roll up the window. I run again. I find a door but it's a closet with sweeping brushes and a mop in a plastic bucket. I bend over and hold on to my stomach and run again until I find the bathroom door across from the stairs. I close the cubicle door and pull the clasp across. I throw up in the toilet bowl and sit on the floor wiping the tears from my cheeks. My father must be right. I must be stupid. Why else would they send me here?

Sister Joan comes in. I know it's her because I can see her black skirts under the cubicle door.

Are you in there, Matilda? You're not being sick?

No, Sister Joan.

I hear her at the sink washing her hands and humming to herself and I wish she'd go but she raps on the door again.

Don't be long now. Miss Brown will wonder where you are.

Coming, Sister.

I'm afraid to look in the mirror above the sink. Afraid I'll look like them. My hands shake and my knuckles are white when I turn on the taps. I look up a little. I see the grey V-neck of the jumper, the grey tie. I'm wearing them but I don't belong in them. They belong to them. The Mad People.

I wash my mouth out under the tap. The water is cool and takes away the stench of puke. I know I have to look at my face now or I never will again. I look in the basin, white and hollow. The black plug on a silver chain. The plug-hole, where everything washes away and I can believe it never happened. I wash my face and with the water still in my hands I look up. I see my hair on my shoulders. It's black. It's mine. I see my chin, small and dripping wet. My small mouth. My eyes, blue, just like my mother's. That's me in the mirror but there's something missing. This is the worst thing that ever happened to me. Worse than my mother leaving. Worse than our grandmother turning her back on us and being sent to the convent. I can't hide this. I can't say this isn't real. Not when it's staring me in the face.

I go home to the convent and tell Doyler. She turns to the sink and says it's out of her hands. She wouldn't have any say. Gabriel waves me away and says I'm going and that's all there is. You go where you're told. Your father is in full agreement.

What's my father got to do with it?

She doesn't answer.

No matter what I say they won't answer so I stop talking to them altogether.

I pray to every statue in the convent. St Joseph. St Theresa, the Little Flower, St Bridget, the Madonna, Our Lady of Knock, Our Lady of Lourdes, Our Lady of Fatima, Our Lady of the Rosary. I go to the chapel and pray to Jesus suffering up there on the cross for the sins of the world. But the statues aren't listening.

I do what my father says. I stand in the playground looking up to Heaven talking directly to God. I climb the wall to the nuns' garden and talk to the trees and the plants till I realize if I'm seen I'll be carted off to the asylum where I'll go insane from looking at white. None of it matters. God's not listening.

I'm ashamed of the grey uniform. I smuggle my own clothes out in my schoolbag and change in the toilets under the chestnut trees before I go out on the road, then change back to the grey uniform when I get to the Mad School. I sneak to school through back lanes hiding in doorways and behind parked cars so nobody will see me and report me for not wearing a uniform or, worse, figure out I'm hiding it in my schoolbag because I'm a retard, a spa.

I won't do anything for them in Mad School. I won't sing their songs or listen to their stupid triangles. I'll cause so much trouble they'll kick me out and I'll be sent back to my old school. I sit behind Mad Michael in the wheelchair eating his snot from the back of his hands and I stick pins in him because it's the Mad People's fault. If they weren't born then there wouldn't be a Mad School.

I can cut him like two pieces of a jigsaw with the pin. I start behind his right ear then go down in a straight line to the knuckle at the top of his spine. Then keeping just to the left until I'm halfway down his back then out in a half circle to the cheek of his arse. It's a waste of time. I could stick pins in him till I'm an old woman of thirty. He never fuckin' budges.

Miss Brown struts around the classroom with her model walk and her infant teacher's voice wanting everyone to play triangles.

Listen to the triangle, boys and girls. Listen to the different sounds, everyone. And how many sounds did you hear, Matilda?

None. I'm deaf.

Now, now, Matilda, we know you're not deaf.

What?

Matilda doesn't want to play today. All right, Matilda. Maybe tomorrow?

I feel like telling her to shove her triangle up the highest part of her hole but that wouldn't help either. They'd say I was being disruptive, part of my condition. Condition. That's how they talk in a Mad School.

Doyler comes up to my bedroom looking over her shoulder to make sure Gabriel isn't behind her. She sits on the bed with me and asks why won't I talk? She stares at my lips so she'll understand everything I say, but I won't talk to her.

It's a terrible thing what's been done to you, Matilda. That father of yours coming in here complaining about your education every chance he gets hasn't helped. Reverend Mother rang to tell him your bad results and he agreed you needed help.

What results?

With Mister O'Donovan.

The fella with the purple head and the bricks?

That's him. I'm trying my best to get you out of that place but I have to do it quietly. Try and put up with it for now.

I can't, they're all screwballs in there.

I'll talk to Gabriel again. Maybe she'll talk to Reverend Mother. God knows, I can't. No matter what I say she'll do the opposite.

How come you stay here, then, Doyler? Why don't you just piss off? I would.

It's my job.

You could get a proper job. Like in a hairdressin' place.

Hairdressing? What would I know about hairdressing, Matilda?

That's the first sensible thing Doyler's said and I have to
straighten up to look at her. Now we're staring at each other like we're both deaf.

But that's what you are, Doyler. A hairdresser. Isn't it?

What on God's earth gave you that idea? I'm a social worker.

Doyler puts her arm around my waist and I put my arm around her shoulder and it's a strange feeling sitting beside a grown-up smaller than you. We both start to laugh and for a little while I feel better. I don't even know why we're laughing. I ask Doyler what a social worker is and she falls back on the bed rocking and laughing like a woman gone insane and stays like that for five minutes till she can't laugh anymore because of the pain in her back. She sits up, dries her eyes with a corner of the bed blanket and holds her hand to the pain.

Well, Doyler, what is it?

In here, she says, it's someone who cuts hair. She lets out another wail of laughter. At the stupidity of it all, she says.

It's all right for Doyler to laugh, she's not going to the Mad School tomorrow. Still, I'm happy she came to see me. That she noticed me. There are so many nights I wish Gabriel would do that. The nights I can't sleep. The nights there are no stars. Just come in and see how I am. Sit on my bed and ask if everything is all right. Did I need anything? Are you happy, Matilda? I'd tell her I was so she wouldn't think I was a burden looking for things I couldn't have. Maybe she'd give me a hug and say she knows I'm not stupid. I'd hug her back too. Just so she would see how easy I am to love. I know she doesn't notice me. How do you notice one more broken heart in a place like this?

At Christmas, the mother hen herself ambushes me in the school corridor just as I'm coming in the front door. Matilda, she clucks. I hear you're a great one for the Irish dancing.
Would you like to dance for the school in the Theatre Royal? All the school will be represented. Oh, Matilda, I just know you would. I'd really like to put on a play, but, as you might imagine, it's a little difficult this year.

She can't be serious but she is, so I say I will, otherwise Gabriel will keep me locked in till I do and I'll have to give up running and I'll end up with asthma and a big chest like Pippa, getting caught by every spotty faced youngfella in Trinity Park when we play kiss-and-chase and if I ever find the sneaky bitch who told Sister Joan I could dance I'll throttle her.

Four nights before Christmas, I'm in the Theatre Royal with the smell of sweat and make-up everywhere. I'm stuffed at the back of a cramped dressing room with Robin Hood and his Merry Men. Three Blind Mice, all ears and whiskers falling over the Seven Dwarfs singing, Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to work we go. Mother Hen is flapping over me like I'm her little chick. Oh, Matilda, she clucks, your costume is only beautiful. Oh, aren't the colours amazing? Oh, I've never seen a dress like it. You're a credit to the Holy Shepherd and Saint Mary's Special School. Indeed you are. Be sure to thank Sister Gabriel for loaning you that dress.

I will, Sister Joan.

She's off her rocker because she spends too much time around Mad People and that's what happens when you spend too much time around Mad People. But she's right about the dress. It is beautiful. Black skirt cut above my knee and white lace hem. Green lace top with embroidered harps and musical notes of silver and gold that sparkle.

The lights are blinding when I walk on to the stage, the crowd cheering before I even start. I can't see them but I know they're out there whispering along the rows, There she is, there's that little retarded girl now. God love her.

Sister Joan is below me in the pit. She's telling the man with
the accordion I'm doing a reel. I stand in position in the centre of the stage. Right leg forward, toe pointed. The audience cheer and when I dance they clap to the music and I'm mortified on the stage of the Theatre Royal. I dazzle around the stage and when I'm finished they go wild. Sister Joan's face is beaming brighter than the stage lights and I'm sorry I ever agreed to come here. I should have let Gabriel keep me in. I should have given up the running, given up the raw eggs and chased every youngfella in Trinity Park myself to save them the trouble, because I know they're not cheering the way I danced. They're cheering that I could walk out here. That I could stand, let alone dance. If I fell flat on my face they'd applaud. If I tumbled off the stage and landed head first on the beaming Sister Joan they'd bring the fuckin' house down.