Sins of the Mother by Irene Kelly Page A

hold hands with each other because the nuns said it was dirty, something I really couldn’t understand because it was just holding hands with another girl.
But this? This was disgusting! So each time, I resisted. I struggled and cried and made too much fuss and eventually she gave up and just beat me with the ruler.
    But as bad as it was in school, it was still a million times better than going to the nursery. I hated it in there, I hated all the crying babies and the staff who made it so much worse. Each
day I dreaded leaving school at 2.30 p.m. to go to the nursery. My duties were usually the same – changing the nappies and the beds, changing the sheets, scrubbing the floors and helping the
older ones with the potties. They had a terrible time, the toddlers, when they were learning to go on the potty. The nuns would strap them down for hours at a time. At night I lay awake, thinking
of all those babies and their mammies and daddies, thinking about whether they knew their poor babies were being tortured, day in, day out. If they knew, they wouldn’t leave them there, I
reasoned. If they knew, they would take them away from that place. It tormented me, worrying about those children all the time.
    One day I was instructed to go to the infirmary where they had a clothing supplies cupboard. A two-year-old girl needed new shoes. When I got there I told the sister in charge
the reason for my errand and she ordered me to wait in the corridor while she fetched a pair of shoes that were the right size. Out in the corridor, I leaned against the wall and looked around. It
was light here thanks to large windows along the top of the green walls and polished wooden floors. I wondered who had polished those floors this morning. My eyes roamed over the skirting and it
was then I saw the socket. At that moment, my mother’s voice popped into my head: ‘Don’t put your fingers in the socket. It’s dangerous.’
    It was like something clicked in my head. The socket was dangerous! This was my chance – my way out. Until this moment I hadn’t thought of harming myself. It just never occurred to
me. But now I could see a way for me to escape my painful existence. I didn’t want to be around any more; life was too horrible and scary all the time. I went to sleep frightened, I woke up
frightened. It seemed like there was no escape from the fear and the pain – until now. The white socket seemed to grow as I moved towards it. I couldn’t stop myself – I felt my
hand being drawn towards it like a magnet and before I knew what I was doing I had stuck my little fingers fully inside. Instantaneously, I felt a powerful surge through my body and I flew across
the room . . .
    Then I woke up. For a while my vision was blurry and my head pounded. I felt groggy and disorientated.
Where am I? What happened?
A fuzzy outline sharpened up to reveal a man in a white
coat sitting at the edge of my bed and a nun standing behind him. Everything was white – was I in heaven? The man took hold of my wrist and turned it over, then he counted as he looked at the
clock on the wall. After that, he shone a little torch in my eyes.
No, this isn’t heaven. I must be in the infirmary.
Suddenly it all came flooding back. The socket, the electric
surge. I must have passed out. A deep sadness swelled in my chest – it hadn’t worked! I was still here.
    The man, I realized, must be a doctor. He put away his little torch, sighed, folded his hands on his lap and looked at me with distaste.
    ‘Why did you do a stupid thing like that?’ he said. ‘That was dangerous.’
    I felt a lump in my throat and the tears threatened to fall but I didn’t want to cry in front of him and I wanted him to know the truth.
    ‘It’s because they’re hurting me,’ I said, unable to meet his eye. ‘They’re doing things to me here. And I don’t like it.’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘In the nursery.’
    I paused.
How much should I tell him?
I felt dirty even