MY LITTLE GIRL was born on 5 August 1919 at the county hospital in Cork City. They say first children come slow and hard, but not mine. A few hours, that’s all. Susanna had warned me I wouldn’t get stitched afterwards – punishment wherever it could be found was encouraged for the girls from Sunday’s Corner, even at hospital – but the midwife who attended me was kind. She had green eyes and freckles that reminded me of my mother and Colleen. Nothing in the way she treated me indicated she knew where I’d come from, though certainly she did know, from my short hair and grey uniform, not to mention the desperation with which I reached for my child, as if I’d never be allowed to hold her again.
‘What will you name her, then?’ the midwife asked, so gently I could believe whatever name I chose would stand forever.
‘Genevieve,’ I whispered, running my fingers down her tiny nose, flattened from her battle into the world. We memorized each other’s faces as she nursed for the first time. A mother is a mother still, the holiest thing alive.
‘Will you send a letter for me?’ I whispered to the midwife. At the same time sifting through my options since Sister Mary Clare’s letter to Finbarr hadn’t worked. My mother. Megs or Louisa. Aunt Rosie.
The midwife’s face darkened with sadness. ‘Hold your baby, sweetness,’ she said, by way of saying no. ‘Give her all the love you can.’
And so I did, all the ten glorious days I lay in at the hospital. There was a cot beside my bed, but Genevieve didn’t occupy it a single time. Instead, we slept cradled together, the scent of colostrum and then milk wafting from her lips as she exhaled her tiny, contented breath across my chin.
You might be thinking: those ten days were my chance. There was no iron gate. At night I wasn’t locked in. Of course I did think about an escape. But these thoughts led to images of myself, out on the road in the dark, clutching a helpless newborn. Not a penny to my name. My hair and clothes announcing my identity to the world, begging me to be returned to the convent, or some place even worse.
So I bided my time obediently. I returned to the convent, lying on my bed in the dormitory that first night while Genevieve lay unreachable in the room below. I thought I’d known what the other girls experienced, hearing their babies cry while unable to go to them. I thought I’d been sharing in their grief. But I hadn’t known the half of it. If I could have made my way out a window and scaled down the wall to the nursery, I would have. Instead, I held my rock-hard breasts, determined that not a drop be released until I could get to her. But then a cry would come through the floorboards and I’d know it was Genevieve, and the milk would let down without my baby to catch it.
‘Such a good nurser,’ Sister Mary Clare cooed, in the morning, as Genevieve gulped with desperate relief, her little cheeks hollowing out with the effort, her face flushed red and sorrowful from her first night away from her mother.
‘Please,’ I begged the nun, ‘you’ve only one night attendant. Don’t you need another? Couldn’t that be me?’
‘It’s not usually new mothers who get that job,’ Sister Mary Clare said, dubious.
‘Please. I’ll work so hard. I’ll be so good. I promise you.’
‘I’ll see what I can do.’ She chucked my chin, eyes alight with fondness.
That night I lay in bed, desperately needing to sleep but only able to listen to my baby cry. I got out of bed and went to the door, rattling the knob despite having heard the key turn hours earlier. It stood firmly locked against me.
‘It’s no use,’ Susanna whispered from her cot. She was due any day now. Years later when I was pregnant the second time, married to Archie, I would sleep with no fewer than five pillows, propped all around me. Susanna lay on her side, the thin pillow meant for her head clutched against her belly.
I perched on her bed and gently rubbed the small of her back, thinking she’d shoo me away but instead she sighed with relief. Closing my eyes, I saw the difficult but preferable future I’d scuttled by coming to Ireland in search of Finbarr. The one where I’d taken my grandmother’s wedding ring and run away with its shining virtue on my finger. Boarded a ship to America, given birth in New York City, or San Francisco, as a war widow. I could have been anybody except the girl who’d put her own and her child’s fate into the hands of foreign strangers.
In the morning, Sister Mary Declan escorted me and the other nursing mothers to our babies to feed them before prayers. As I settled on a stool with Genevieve, Sister Mary Clare marched in, a triumphant smile on her face.
‘I’ve done it, Nan,’ she said. ‘The Mother Superior has given her permission. You can be a night attendant, starting this very evening.’
I clutched Genevieve tightly enough to unlatch her. Her eyes blinked open in frustration, and I saw they had changed from the steel grey of a newborn to the shocking, layered blue of her father’s.
‘There, there,’ I said, wiping the dribble from her chin and bringing her back to drink her fill. ‘Did you hear that? We’re going to be all right. We’re going to be together.’
I refused to sign the papers Sister Mary Declan thrust before me, agreeing to let the Church put Genevieve up for adoption.
‘Is that what you want, then,’ Sister Mary Declan scolded, ‘that she should grow up in an orphanage? If you truly loved her, you’d let her have proper parents.’
‘She has proper parents.’
Sister Mary Declan gave me a lash with her strap for that but it was half-hearted. She still had enough humanity to feel sorry for me. Looking back on any kindness the nuns showed me, I feel a fury. It was those small kindnesses – as if refraining from beating me were a kindness – that kept me there too long.
I was so grateful for small favours. Like Father Joseph walking by me without a second glance. Like being allowed to stay up all night long, tending Genevieve and the other babies in the nursery. Any time a baby cried I would think of its mother, listening upstairs, and cuddle and rock the poor thing until there was quiet. After my night duty I would nurse and bathe Genevieve, go to prayers and Mass, then up to the dormitories to sleep until our midday meal, then return to work scrubbing floors or washing clothes until evening.
Sister Mary Clare continued to sneak extra food to me. ‘Don’t worry,’ she would say, placing a biscuit or a boiled egg into my hand. ‘I’ll keep Genevieve hidden for you. Nobody will adopt her, I promise you that. Your young man will arrive any day. Pretty as ever, I told him you were. You’ll be one of the lucky ones. I know you will.’