Dying to Survive (6 page)

At this point, Dr Sweeney broke into my thoughts. ‘What was that like for you, being told that your father was dead?’

‘I remember feeling very sad. But to be honest, I got over it very quickly. I never had a relationship with my da anyway, so I didn’t know what I was missing. I just got on with things, as children do.’

Chapter
3

    FALLING APART

W
hen I told Dr Sweeney that I had got over my father’s ‘death’, it was only partly true. In reality, I was so traumatised by my mother leaving that I couldn’t take it in, and so, like much else in my life at this time, I buried it somewhere deep down, where I thought it couldn’t hurt me. I knew that my nanny was telling me a lie about my father, but I hadn’t the heart to care any more.

I had opened my heart to Dr Sweeney because my life depended on it. I knew that to stand any chance of real recovery, I had to tell him the truth, but more importantly to tell myself the truth, about my life. And so I began to keep a journal, to jot down memories of my life as they came to me. I decided that no matter how painful these memories were, I would write them down, as it really helped me to make sense of them and to understand how my trying to bury them had nearly destroyed me. The most painful of these memories were those about my mother and my life after she left. I felt empty inside and, although I couldn’t articulate it, I was filled with a rage that at times threatened to overwhelm me.

I was eleven years old and, on the outside, I was still the golden-haired girl who loved school and everything about it. Art and music were my favourite subjects. I used to do a lot of the paintings for our local church and on Saturdays I would go to school for piano lessons with my music teacher. But inside I was really struggling to contain my anger and the constant, nagging feeling that I was worth nothing. I was a time-bomb waiting to go off, and as I grew into adolescence all of the ingredients to light the fuse were beginning to come together.

With the adults in my life in and out of the house, there wasn’t always someone at home to keep an eye on me. My grandmother made sure I got up every morning for school and would often see me to the bus stop. She would always ensure that there was a hot meal for me when I came in from school, but because she worked she wasn’t always there. I spent most of my time out of the house, hanging around with my friends on the road, playing games with my friend Mary and her older sister and some other kids from the area. My auntie Jacqueline, who lived at home, would call me in at night or to take my asthma medication.

Then I met Katie, a new girl who had moved into a house just two doors away. We quickly became best friends and her family became my own. Her mother and father—Breeda and James—and her five brothers and sisters had all moved into a three-bedroomed house in Ballymun with Breeda’s mother, Bernadette. After converting the bathroom into a bedroom, they somehow managed to fit themselves into their house. They had very little financially, but they were closely knit together and seemed very happy as a family. I was very attracted to their closeness and I began to spend most of my time there. Their house was always noisy and full of kids.

I loved spending the night at the O’Connors’. Breeda would wake us up for school and we would all sit around the table together for breakfast: this was new to me. Then the kids would kill each other over who got to use the bathroom first. Breeda would make a chore list for the week, and God forbid that you didn’t abide by it. She would ground the kids for weeks, making them do all the housework. I always wanted to be grounded like Katie, but my nanny wasn’t strict with me—she didn’t need to be because I had always been such a good child.

Every Saturday myself and Katie would be sent to do the weekly shopping, giving us a sense of responsibility. We thought that we were great, with our shopping list and trolley. One Saturday, on our way back from the shopping centre, we bumped into Katie’s sister Susan. She was hanging around the towers in Sillogue. I remember her all done up, as if she was going somewhere. Then I realised why. She was with these two young fellas. They were a year or two older than myself and Katie and couldn’t have been more than twelve years old. Their names were Steo and Snarts and it turned out that Snarts was Susan’s new boyfriend.

I had never met anyone who lived in the blocks before and they looked like little gurriers. Steo was pocket-sized, with sallow skin and a pretty face. Snarts wasn’t much taller and looked like the Milky Way kid, with white hair and a dimple in his chin. Myself and Katie weren’t impressed with Susan’s new friends, but as time went on Susan began to invite them to her house and my whole world began to change.

When the O’Connors moved into our street, kids came out of the woodwork from all over Ballymun. A friendly and open person, Mrs O’Connor opened her doors to all of her children’s friends. Nearly every weekend we would have a hop or a dance-off, where all the kids from the area would come to Katie’s house for a disco, or we would have a dancing competition. A new world was opening up to me and at first I wasn’t sure if I liked it. I was painfully shy and I didn’t know how to act around our new friends.

Steo and Snarts listened to techno music that I had never even heard of before. They would arrive at Katie’s, smoking cigarettes and wearing baggy jeans, lumber jackets and Paddy caps. All the kids would gather in the sitting-room, where we would blast the stereo and become more hyper by the minute. I would usually bury myself in a corner of the sofa, dreading that Katie might ask me to show the other kids the dance we had practised earlier or to sing a song that we had made up ourselves. When she did ask me to dance, I would go red in the face and she would say, ‘Don’t be going scarlet. C’mon’. I would reluctantly get up and dance, hating every minute of it and wanting the ground to open up and swallow me. Especially the first time Steo asked me to dance with him to a slow set. I’ll never forget it. I was tall for my age and towered over him and I felt so silly. He gently put his hands around my waist and I put my hands around his neck. We were barely touching each other. I remember catching Katie’s eye a few times and she was grinning from ear to ear. She knew that I liked Steo. ‘It’s ’orrible being in love when you’re 82. I’ve got your picture on my wall, I’ve got your name up on my scarf, Oh it’s ’orrible being in love when you’re 82,’ played on the stereo, as myself and Steo awkwardly swayed from side to side, doing our best not to stand on each other’s toes.

In the beginning I would get really embarrassed around Steo and Snarts, but as time went on I began to feel more comfortable with them. The novelty of going out with Snarts wore off Susan quick enough, so she started seeing Steo’s brother, David. David was the same age as Susan, eleven, and looked nothing like his brother. He was a lot taller, with sandy coloured, tousled hair and he took the role of group comedian. We were becoming like a little gang and it was getting bigger by the day. A new girl moved in between Katie and Mary. Her name was Emer. She was a placid girl, the same age as myself. She was skinny with pale skin and had a big mop of dark coffee-coloured curls on her head. Her parents were young and stylish and had two younger kids. Myself and the three girls, Katie, Mary and Emer, became as thick as thieves and never went anywhere without one another.

My grandmother wasn’t like the other girls’ mothers. Even though she wasn’t very strict, it took her a while to come around to the idea of bringing my friends into the house and I would usually have to sneak them in, depending on John’s humour. But my grandmother became very fond of my three friends, and when John wasn’t there she would let us raid her presses for loads of munchies. My grandmother must have thought that there was going to be a war, because she bought all her groceries in bulk, making sure that I never wanted for anything. For this reason alone, my friends loved coming to my house.

With my grandmother working in Dublin Airport she was making her own money and she wasn’t as reliant as before on John, something which pleased her greatly. ‘I’m telling ye, Rachael, never rely on a man. Get out there and stand on your own two feet,’ she would say to me over and over again. But at the same time as my relationship with my nanny became closer, my relationship with my mother was becoming more and more distant. Although she still visited at the weekend, she had moved into a new flat in Mercer Street with Philip and his father, Mick, my mother’s new partner, who was a soldier in the Irish Army at the time. Mick was a stranger to me then. I can only remember meeting him once before they moved into the flat together, at my auntie Marion’s wedding to Declan.

However, once she was installed in her new flat, I think my mother made an effort to involve me more in their lives, because she began to invite me over to the flat to mind Philip. My brother was only five at the time. He was tall for his age, with chocolate hair and eyelashes that went on for ever. He was adorable, but he was a real handful, always doing the opposite to what my ma told him to do. The flat had only one bedroom, with a separate kitchen and sitting-room, but my mother made it as homely as she could.

My mother had a history of difficult men. Her relationship with my grandfather had never really recovered from her teenage pregnancy, although they had reached an uneasy truce, and my father’s relationship with her had been fraught with violence and stress. Unfortunately, it looked as if history might repeat itself with Mick. One night when I was visiting, my ma and Mick came back from the pub. I was lying on the chair in the sitting-room, pretending to be asleep. My ma came straight in and kissed me on the forehead, then she went back into the kitchen with Mick, leaving a whiff of alcohol and perfume behind her. I lay in the dark, trying to hear what they were saying. They were at loggerheads over something. They argued for a few minutes, then everything went calm. I knew that she was ok. They both quietly went to bed, as I glided off into a deep sleep.

Mick and my mother subsequently had an argument that left her very upset. I don’t know the details but he left the flat in a hurry. As soon as Mick was gone I ran in to my mother. She sat up straight in the bed and reached out her arms to me. She was crying. She held me in her arms, saying that she was so sorry. I became hysterical. She took me by the hand and brought me out to the sitting-room where she sat me down and knelt before me.

‘Rachael, make a promise to me?’ she asked.

I couldn’t look at her. ‘What?’ I said, still hyperventilating.

‘Promise me that you’ll finish school and go to college.’

I didn’t know what she was talking about. ‘Why? Where are you going?’ I asked. For a moment I thought that she was going to die and that was her last wish.

‘Nowhere; just promise, will you?’

‘Ok, I promise.’ At the time I didn’t know what she was talking about, but now I do. She wanted me to have a better start in life than she had, so that I would be able to make better choices. She wanted me to have an education, so that I could grab the opportunities that she had missed and not end up like her, depending on an unpredictable man to get by in life. I wish I had understood her better then.

‘And will you not say anything to nanny about this?’

I looked at her red-rimmed eyes. ‘Ok, I won’t.’ I never did tell my grandmother. I kept my mouth shut for a long time about that row and about others, but the more I kept to myself, the more lost I became. The hurt and fear were simply too much for me to handle, so I buried them. But the strain was beginning to show. My grades in school were beginning to drop. I was losing interest. In spite of my mother’s plea to me, I couldn’t see the value of getting an education, not when hanging around the tower blocks was becoming more appealing. Going home to do my homework just wasn’t an option for me. After all, what was the point, I thought, when I had nobody to answer to, nobody who would take a real interest in me? I guess my family just assumed that I was ok. But it wasn’t long until they found out the truth.

_____

It all happened very quickly, now that I look back on it. I was only eleven, and when I think about this time of my life it just seems like a blur. I remember the first time I smoked a cigarette. All my friends were smoking and I needed to prove to them that I was part of the gang and up for a laugh. The only thing was, I was afraid of smoking in front of Steo and Snarts. I was convinced that I would do it wrong and make a holy show of myself. I thought that they would laugh at me. So I practised smoking until I knew I looked cool enough to stand there with them and take a puff.

The days rolled into one-another and before I knew it I was drinking alcohol and smoking hash as well. School quickly became a hindrance, so myself and Katie started to go on the mitch, spending every minute we had in Sillogue. We would bring a spare set of clothes with us and get changed in the tower blocks. Then we would wait for Steo and Snarts to fall out of bed. We could always depend on them to have a bit of hash. We would usually sit in the sun, slag everyone off and get stoned out of our heads. I began to wonder why people even went to school or work, when they could easily draw the dole, sit on their arses and get stoned all day, like we did.