A Rare Glimpse of Victory! - Excerpt 13

Friday:
The last working day before I start high school on Monday - with no school uniform, and Theresa woke up with a brilliant idea. She asked Mammy if she could spare the old blue skirt she used to wear to work. Theresa said that she would take the skirt apart and then cut it, pleat it, and make it into a skirt for my new uniform.

She said she learned enough sewing to make a pleated skirt, and that she should have enough material left over to make my tie. The shade was lighter than what I should have, and the cloth was old and worn, but at least it was blue. She said that although I needed a white shirt, I could wear my old cream shirt from primary school for the time being. Mammy thought it was a good idea, I thought so too, but was still feeling raw about yesterday and everything else.

“Instead of sewing it with yuh hand, I could send she to Barry’s wife in the scheme to ask if you could use her sewing machine,” Mammy said, flicking her thumb in my direction. ‘She’ ‘You,’ and ‘That One’ had always been Mammy’s names for me, there was no question that she meant me.
Theresa said that that would be even better, and that we had to do something now, we couldn’t wait any longer for my mother to show up.

I went up to the scheme to Mr. Barry’s wife, with a note that Mammy had dictated for me to write, asking if we could come on Saturday morning to sew my skirt. She said, “Of course, why not?”

I took my time walking back home, I knew this could be bad, but it was nice being out of the house, after eight weeks of ‘school holidays’ being locked up indoors and feeling watched all the time. I felt good and free, even if it was just a walk back home past the smelly Back Dam trench.

I looked for the cat but I didn’t see him, maybe someone took him in like Theresa had said.
When I got close to the house, I noticed Mammy’s head pop out of the window, I saw her face and knew straight away that I was in big trouble. When I walked through the door, she said to me, “Go take off yuh clothes, you getting licks.”

* * *
The projector coughed, the desolate screen stumbled to life, and this scene played:
My heart is pounding and my head feels wrapped with new elastic bands. I’m chewing on my finger nails to keep from fainting. I walk into the Mammy’s bedroom and start to take off my clothes. When she’s getting ready to do a nasty beating, Mammy insists I get naked - completely. I don’t know why, since the licks are really painful even with my clothes on.

I take my tee shirt partly off, but I leave it hanging round my neck to cover my chest because I have a tiny little booby. Just the one so far, and I don’t want anyone to see it.

Mammy comes into the room with the stick and she’s screaming at me because I’m still wearing my clothes. She rips the tee shirt off me, so hard it bruises my face, and I’m left standing there with my little, tiny booby pointing at her.

I start to cry, but it’s more from my shame than from fright. I need to cover up my body, so I put my arm on my chest, partly shielding the sharp ribs which are barely covered by my stretched skin. She hits my arm with the wood and commands me to take the rest off. She stands there and waits. I am crying as I take my shorts off but I don’t want to lose my underwear too. It’s the lone piece of the precious rags left to cover up my cowering frame. I’m growing up you see, and don’t want anyone to look at me.

I break down.
I can’t take my underwear off.
I can’t.
But by then I’m crying too much to do anything else. She gets really angry, she doesn’t like to wait.
Mammy never waits, not for anyone.

Now she can’t wait for me to undress anymore so she starts to beat me all over, the only place on my body that escape without licks, is my head.
In all the riot and pain, I keep holding on to the thought that keeping my underpants on means that I’ve achieved my only, precious, towering moment of victory.

I feel like a chewed up, spat out cherry. I know I’m bleeding somewhere but I can’t look now, the licks are too bad.
Much, much too bad.
She sees the blood too, some of it spills on wall and she glances at it. I think she’ll stop, I know she can’t bear to have any stain on her bedroom wall. I cry, but I can’t scream, I’ll get more licks if I do, and I’m am ashamed of the children next door hearing. She stops and now she is dragging me by my hair into the kitchen, the pain of each strand, etching her fury into my scalp through to my brain. She imprisons me by the hair, while she takes down the jar of salt from the shelf next to the kitchen window.
Salt!
Blood rushes fast to my head and I feel my throbbing belly suddenly knot inside me, protecting itself, waiting . . .

I wriggle to get away but she’s very strong and very powerful - stronger and more powerful when she is angry. She opens the jar with her mouth and pours salt into my cut, which I then realise, was on my leg. Five million grains of salt feel like ten million angry bees, stinging! Stinging!
Stinging!
I could hear her grind her teeth as she rubs the salt in.
I scream.
Once.
“Next time,” she hollers, releasing me, “I’ll pepper you parts!”
But does she know I’d won?
Does she?

THE WOMAN IS ALWAYS RIGHT? RIGHT?

So, for some insane reason my husband’s parents decided that they want to take the kids off our hands for 5 days – all three of them!

The kids have got a week off school for their half term break, and so have I (my husband has only got to go in for two half-days), so you could say we now have a week to ourselves.

We’ve optimistically planned various days out, including a visit to a manor house and gardens. Little did we know that the heavens would do the splits in the fashion of an overweight, out of practise ballerina, which would prevent me from spending time in my own garden, let alone the carefully manicured grounds of some big shot’s property.

Ah, I tell myself, the perfect time to do a bedroom make-over. No, don’t laugh, I can handle it, honest. When the kids were babies, and I was at home with them, painting and decorating was how I gainfully ‘employed’ myself. I have laid paving, administered gravel pathways, mastered the arts of filling holes in walls, stripping wood-chip wallpaper, tiling, laying laminated flooring, and even the odd electricity job.

Back then my husband John toiled at finishing his PhD and his full-time work, while I breast fed at home - baby in one hand, paint roller, in the other. The abstract art dried on the canvass I painted earlier, the baby’s nappies were changed, and the toddlers were put down for a nap, with enough time left over to make the curtains for the newly finished living room...

Then we sold on our homes for healthy profits and moved on.

So, now with the PhD sorted and kids in school, a bit of painting and re-decorating is a breeze for these old work-weathered hands. Stripping the bedroom - no problem. As the kids were away, we could sleep in their room and let my design juices marinate freely between spates of going out together and planning trips.

Terracotta would do nicely on one wall, I thought, and it would be easy to change the old torn light shade for a sparkling new one. I could dye the old curtains, instead of buying new ones. The kids might be away, but hey, they’re not gone for good, saving money when I can is still important this week. I’d visit Ikea, get a fabulous rug and some matching storage boxes and Bob’s your unc… but wait, didn’t we have an old mosquito net somewhere? Ah, I could drape that over the bed and carve a few Japanese characters on the wall as a border. I took some classes in that way back when, but I think I can still remember how to inscribe ‘love’ and ‘peace.’
Terracotta, earth brown, some white, and a spot of green – natural colours – those are the colours our bedroom needs to add a bit of warmth to it. It’s the only room in the house that my itchy hands haven’t had a go of yet.

So, I slipped on my old yard shoes and went out to the shed to mix the paint. Well, you don’t expect me to go to the store to buy some? I’ve got pots of pastel, off white and wheat coloured shades of unused paint in the shed. I’ve got to buy that rug remember, something nice and good looking, you don’t expect me to buy the paint too. Don’t worry, I’ve done it lots of times before, it’ll be a breeze. A bit of that wheat coloured one, mixed with a portion of the white, a blob of red, and a spot of charcoal should give me just the shade.

John came back home from work while I was still putting the paint on the dull, white wall. It will be a welcome change from the tripe that had been put there by the previous owners. The entire house was covered in wood-chip wall paper, which in turn were covering up walls that had been hacked out, abused, and bored into seemingly just for fun.
“That’s different. It’s nice,” John said.
“It is,” I replied, somehow I felt a ‘but’ coming. John is gentle, and in order for him to say he didn’t like something, he would first say how much he liked it. Wait, that doesn’t make sense. Does it? What I mean is that, well… he wouldn’t just shout out, “What on earth have you done to our bedroom wall woman?”
“Why is it so pink?” he asked.
“It’s not pink.” I said. As you may have guessed, I’m not so gentle, I shout out things like, “What on earth have you done to our bedroom wall woman?” and other suitable quotes.
I stepped back and took a look for myself. Oh my word! It’s really pink!
“It’s not pink.” I said again. Freaking out because it was so pink!
“Looks pink to me,” John said.
Me too! “It’s terracotta.” I answered with a straight face, wondering how much charcoal I had left in the shed.
“Want some tea?” John asked.
“Please.”
So he went downstairs to make me some tea, but not before taking another quizzical look at the terracotta wall, probably thinking that the ever popular mid-life crisis he’s expecting must be arriving at last with the onset of acute colour blindness.
Meanwhile, the power of suggestion had got me in a strong-hold. I didn’t want my husband to have to sleep in a little girl’s pink bedroom. I obviously had to change it.

Ten minutes later I’d finished the wall and my word, was it pink or what. I went back to the shed, and another ten minutes later, after a good dollop of more charcoal paint and enough stirring to make my arm ache, I left the shed with a beautiful shade of terracotta (real this time) which I tried on a bit of wall in there, and it was the most perfect boudoir shade you’ve ever seen.

It was cinema night that night, and after putting on a couple more coats of paint, John and I went out without having to secure a baby-sitter (though he did try to check on the kids before we walked out the door). Harrison Ford was just as good in ‘Indiana Jones And The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull’ as he was in ‘Temple of Doom,’ and Cate Blanchet’s accent was to die for.


Now two days later, the paint is all dry, the old mosquito net has been restored, and the dyed curtains have come out a fabulous shade of terracotta. So great, that I’m really happy I didn’t buy those new curtains I picked up (but put down again) in Ikea the other day. The kids are going to be pleased. Tonight is our slap-up dinner night, and would you believe, we’re going to a wonderful Moroccan restaurant.

I get this nagging feeling that I’ve done all this work on redecorating our bedroom, so that the kids would have a surprise when they get back home. See, even without them here, the parent inside me can’t stop trying to make them happy.

And John, oh, he’s happy with the new colour. After all, he’s got a brand new boudoir without ever having to lift a paint roller. And the best part is, it’s not at all pink.