I am twenty years old when my mother first tells me she knows.

Knows what happened all those years ago. 

Just when I had accepted that maybe no one knew. Could finally set my paranoia to rest. 

One less thing to carry in a mind already dangerously brittle. Dangerously silent in its crowdedness. 

Mamma blurts out: What did he do to you? Tell me what that tramp of a man over the old road did to you? 

We huddle next to the turf range, her at the head of the kitchen table, now moved closer to the heat. Me, curled into my father’s empty chair, in the warmest corner in the house. 

Tell me, Mamma says again, her tone casual, yet concerned, like somewhere in the last hours a changeling has entered our house. Replaced my other mother with this one. 

It is not her question, hefty as it is, that does me in. More the sincere timbre of her tone. Some perfect note across which all unsung songs can now be sung. 

You wait so long for something to happen that when it lands, it is both affirmation and trickery.

Mamma leans in. We are three feet apart, but her posture, in her wooden chair, is that of a branch bowing to the child to offer it ripe harvest. She tilts her head. I’ve seen her cock to one side this way with kittens. Give her any feral animal, any newborn thing really, and she will spend her time figuring out the exact angles of approach. Fascinated for hours with every mew and new progression. 

I am her feral thing now. 

Will you tell me, pet?

Pet.

There it is. One tiny expression. Fifteen years of yearning. 

I cannot take it in. 

Instead, my head fills with wind. Picks its tune from the easterly battering the back door. Gathers force in my mind. Ear-popping tides rush in, then back out, draining me of thought and maybe color. 

Pet.

Tell me.

The phrases slip in and out. Real. Not real. Real. 

I want to record them. Write them down. I’m terrified I’ll forget. Then this, too, will be relegated to some terrible vault where the undead go. 

Maybe I have misheard. Have stepped instead into some impossible gap left behind by my father’s actual passing. Not two months since we lowered Dadda into the ground at the new graveyard, and still, the house carries his loss like a gale blowing east to west, back door to front, the bitter drafts through every crack now Dadda’s earthly breath.

I watch Mamma take a pull from her Silk Cut Blue, then slowly exhale, her left index finger tapping some hidden Morse across her brow. This is her smoking ritual. Cigarette in one hand. Brow dance with the other. The smoke curls toward our yellowed ceiling. It brings to mind the incense ’round Dadda’s coffin, how thick the plumes from the thurible as the priest beatified Dadda’s corpse for its Divine interview, then baptized it with fat drops of salty water to make of him a newborn.

Well, Mamma says. Will you talk to me?

She offers me a cigarette. Holds a lighter to the tip while I inhale. 

I cannot seem to find sound footing. I’m slipping in and out of sense. 

Panic starts its inquiry. Maybe I have lingered too long at that gash that death so vividly renders between the planes. Maybe I’m knee-deep in some pilgrimage only the mourning negotiate in search of their beloved. Back and forth. Back and forth. Across the sill of this world and the next. Till the soul of the departed returns, exasperated, with needle and thread and mends, at last, their point of exit. 

Maybe I have tripped right into madness itself. 

I have certainly been searching for Dadda. Unwilling to accept this shut door of his permanent absence. My foot stuck in the gap. Holding it ajar till I have learned the way of the elders, those who easily speak to the bodiless. Journey across the dimensions without difficulty. I’ve figured out many other tricky things. Why not this?

The clock ticks its obligation over the scullery door. The television near the fridge quietens its racket. The kitchen’s stone walls close in and listen. Mamma stares down at her slippers. I follow her gaze, watch her tap one foot, then the other, some quiet dance without music or partner. Is this all we’ve ever been doing? Was there a conversation that preceded this?

Women have gone mad in just this quiet way, slipped from one mental room to the next and didn’t even know they’d swapped locations. 

I squint at Mamma. Command her, with my mind, to look up. 

She does. 

This satisfies me deeply. 

We are now in a world of nuance together. 

It is the closest I have ever felt to her. 

And the most apart. 

My eyes deliver a question: Is this real?

And a warning: Don’t mess with me. I may go simple. 

Instantly, Mamma replies.

I couldn’t draw this down to you till Dadda was gone, God rest him. He wasn’t cut out for this kind of thing. You know that yourself. But I’m asking you now, pet. Please. Tell your mother. Tell me what that tramp did to you? 

Her tone is fused with urgency, like this has been the opportunity for which her true self has waited her whole life. Or maybe just for the last fifteen years. As though she, too, is negotiating some liminal hallway where she can finally unzip the oilskin of all previous performance. Announce herself afresh, to me, her second youngest of six, her youngest girl. 

In my mind, this transformation makes an odd kind of sense. 

It’s only decency for the widow to let the Month’s Mind Mass go by before cracking open fresh habits. 

She lifts her chin like it might prompt my lower jaw to unhinge itself.

Go on, she says, waving her hand, ushering me through some meadow gate wherein we, as a pair, are finally free to rotate our plantings. Talk the easy talk of Americans. Populate ordinary conversations with feelings and such. Air all that embarrassing stuff that usually rattles around inside our own suffocating hovels of the unspoken. Loosed at last from the muzzles previously mandated by Dadda’s heart condition. His well-being the hostage keeper of all household feelings.

I shake my head. 

There are no words. None. 

I’m a little teapot, short and stout, lift me up and pour me out. 

Not a tea leaf with which to even begin. 

I curl deeper into Dadda’s chair, wrap my arms ’round my knees. No amount of squeezing can take away the pain. I have taken to this perch like a calf to the still warm flesh of a dead heifer. Right next to the range. The best corner in the house. Safe from all drafts. The dreaded event now come and gone. Dadda wiped from the flesh. The indentation on the armchair from Dadda’s lifelong tenancy fast losing some of its old edges, the way a footprint loses its shape to the hungry tide. The Irish Press newspaper emptier of daily content now that Dadda’s hands cease to rattle its narrow pages into new folds. The holy water bottles in the candle press less visited now that Dadda’s nightly exorcisms of the upstairs bedrooms don’t use at least two measures of drenching to complete the job. 

I inhale one drag of my cigarette, then another. Purse my lips and watch horizontal chimneys of smoke leave me.

The sight of them pleases me.

This, I can do.

Will you tell me?

Mamma is stuck on that one phrase.

She reaches for a stale cup of tea gathering skin before her. 

A thin ribbon of smoke ascends from her paused fingers, causing her to wink from the sting. I want to laugh. That kind of laugh that starts below your belly button, the sort that augurs its birth place, not as jollity, but hysteria. Mamma, winking at me, after asking me the question I thought I’d never hear. 

From anyone. 

Let alone her. 

Now. 

At this late hour. 

On a January night. Rain pelting the back window with fistfuls of pebbles. Ready to crack the glass with its rage. 

I rack my brain. What has given her this notion? We’ve watched more videos this last month than I’ve watched my whole life. It’s the new VCR I bought for Christmas. My teaching salary found good use, at least with this purchase. Not that we made much fuss about Christmas. You couldn’t draw a breath without thinking of the last time Dadda had seen The Late Late Toy Show. Or the last time Dadda had filled the hallway font or made the turkey stuffing, right from his own head, as he used to say.

The black Panasonic takes pride of place atop the fridge. The video lad from town stops his van every Monday at our gate to rent three new ones to Mamma while I’m at school.

Long ones, she asks him for. Good and long. 

And strong men. Like The Equalizer. Or The Virginian. Or that Seagal lad. Or old films like Seven Brides for Seven Brothers or The Robe or The Nun’s Story. 

I’m inclined to agree with her. Long films are best. 

It gives me time, for the first half hour, to explain who’s who to Mamma, and once she settles into the story and knows where the plot is going, she doesn’t have to be a nervous wreck every time someone new crops up and makes her lose her sense of what’s going on. It’s as though her system wants to have the comfort of the story without the unknowns of its components. I’ve learned to shorthand things for her. That’s the goodie. The baddie. The biddy-gossip. The sly one. The sicko. The mother of the biddy. The father of the sicko. The brother of the baddie. 

Once Mamma can rattle off the network of relations, she takes easy command of who to love and who to hate. Can’t you see the badness in that fella’s face. I’d say he’s the killer. Or, Where would you be going at that hour of the night? She’s only looking for trouble. These young ones. Can’t be led by the sense God gave them. Sometimes she shouts, Get him, that’s the stuff, kill him, kill him again, and growls with feline ferocity. The bloodier the punishment, the better she likes it. This often shocks visitors, how Mamma sings the praises of Schwarzenegger’s wreckage in the name of justice, how her five-foot-nothing frame flies up onto its tippy-toes with pleasure, her recommendation of the film to some relative or neighbor riddled with spoilers that she can’t help but claim as her own victories. Green eyes, just like mine, sparkling from sweet revenge on some specimen of evil toward whom she now streams daily diatribes of venom. 

I can’t think what we’ve just watched. 

My mind is blank. 

I stare at her.

What are you talking about?

My own voice sounds miles away. 

I want to make sure we’re on the same page. I want her to say his name. To let me hear that neighbor’s name. In this kitchen. Finally. After all these years. 

But I need to know first that she’s not talking about some other piece of gossip she assumes I’ve heard. That, too, could be true, couldn’t it? That we could be on two utterly different pages. 

Who are you talking about?

My voice, a notch above a whisper. Barely registering. Silence inbuilt into something never intended for public airing. My own words swallowed by their learned timidity. 

Who over the old road?

Him, she says. 

Him.

There it hangs. That simple word. Almost as good as his name being spoken, but not quite. Every part of that small word now filled with something I have never heard before in Mamma’s voice. On my behalf.

Hatred.

Rage. 

Violence. 

Sometimes, in our days, all three feelings directed at me. Or whoever is closest. Whoever she perceives has broken her trust. Whoever has breached some secret only meant for one set of ears out of her six children. So many plot twists to Mamma’s thinking, you’d be hard-pressed not to do her wrong for slights imperceptible to anyone but her. My own terrain eerily similar but not yet within my grasp. Only the gallop of inherited suspicions that cast out trust as casually as potato peels. Such broken bonding finds me most at ease in my own company now that the college line of nightly pints is gone, depriving me of drunken loquaciousness and mad love for everyone. 

I shake my head. 

This sudden loyalty is too much. And not nearly enough.

This venom-riddled him some tonic that was meant for another disease. An earlier one. 

Mamma fills a glass mug near halfway with Jameson.

Dear God, I think. Has she moved on to whiskey?

The nightly sherries are one thing. But Mother of God, please not this. 

My stomach knots into hardened tangles at the prospect of my only remaining parent now dissolving into an alcoholic mess. Already, my mind trots down the line of imminent futures. Hide the car keys. No stairs without me behind her. Keep her on her side. Stay awake in case she chokes on vomit. Tuck a pillow at her back. Catch a small nap before school. 

Mamma stirs in some brown sugar, tops it up with boiling water from our silver kettle, one of two that have served their lot on our range top since childhood. As she pours, I catch sight of my own skewed reflection. All blur. No feature. The kettle like some creature mapping loss on its sullen surface. 

Mamma holds out the mug.

Drink this, she says. 

From her worried look, I gather I’m in shock. 

The mug feels weighty in my grip. I raise it to my chin, breathe in its sugary medicine. With each exhale, steam caresses my cheeks, some conversation of breath and vapor so pleasing I might just continue with this exact exchange till the mug runs cold. But Mamma stands closer now. Says: Take a sup. Just one. Good girl.

More worry in her tone. It delivers some sensation to my chest, my belly, which, were I to name it in that moment, might be christened pleasure, my vocabulary for such things limited, even with three years of child psychology. More accurate would have been the word care. The heft of a mother’s gaze directed solely on one infant. No dying husband. No gaggle of five besides. No locked door to her own life. Nothing between us but those inches of kitchen mat, her slippers perched right on the edge, and my focus fixed on her rocking motion, back and forth from ball to heel, Mamma, ceaseless in her movement. The weather of our every day from childhood to here tormented by the sin of sitting when there was work to be done—ware to wash, clothes to iron, beds to change, turf to split, rubbish to burn. 

Drink, she says. 

I take a sip. 

Lovely, I say.

She sits. Satisfied I have not fully slipped away.

Instantly, I am sorry. I should have stayed quiet a while longer. Tested the extent of that attention. But the moment has passed. I sip again. And again. Each mouthful less bitter. More welcoming. Softening the plank of my stiffened posture. Loosening my thoughts. Unshackling me from panic. 

Can’t we talk about these things now? Mamma sips from her cold tea. Can’t we let on it’s what we’ve always done?

No, Mamma, I say. I can’t.

Yes, you can, she says. 

I shake my head.

Her face crumples. It is as open a book as I have ever read, and I have read many. It tells me she had placed her stock in my education, certain I would throw open the door to this new form of conversation. That I would know all the right words. Teach her the way. 

Yet, I am still the child, waiting to be saved. Staring at this woman whom I cannot decide if I love or hate. The pain of her expression cuts right through to that spot between my breasts where lately all gales seem to shortcut. Now it is her pain, not mine, I feel. Me, barely over the ditch with the animal of my past self, ready to lay down some unnamed burden, ecstatic someone has landed into the morass of the unprotected and stands, at last, between me and a predator, fangs bared, hackles raised. 

Mamma presses on. 

Can you just tell me when it started? What exactly did he do? To you?

To you.

Such weight in that last word.

You.

As ghastly a scar as the first lash from foreign whip, its desecration on native skin blueprinted into military exactitude by occupying forces versed in obliteration. The savage now shellacked in the proud flesh of her second nature: shame.

You.

A wound so large that Mamma and I could have taken Dettol and TCP to its weeping scabs and scrubbed till our fingers bled, and still, we would not have scratched the surface of our disinfecting task.

I recoil from Mamma’s question.

Some old record has started again.

What is wrong with you?

The actions of him and the actuality of me some terrible braid that renders him circumstantial and me causal. 

Flawed. 

Wanting. 

It sits there now between us, this entity of you that may as well be its own person.

The longer it sits, the quicker language leaves me. 

I rack my brain for ways back in. 

Words. 

Any words. 

I want to have this exchange. I really do. I sprint through empty halls, calling out for all evidence that surely belongs to this moment. All gathered shards of violation, all gutted afters of the parade of befores that had barely found their feet between unspeakable breaches.

But something intrudes. A thunder of hooves. They knew. They knew. 

All opportunities lost by both Mamma and Dadda to intervene at those junctures where I knew that they knew, and they knew that I knew that they knew.

And yet, nothing. 

My hands, now empty of whiskey, curl into fists.

They had known. All along. 

That night when Mamma and Dadda insisted I babysit at the neighbor’s house for his visiting sister’s children. How that neighbor landed home from the pub before his family. Grinned from the threshold. Dadda quick on his heels. How Dadda’s speed of arrival the quarter mile up the lane from the village surprised me. How he must have been standing watch in our porch, waiting for that neighbor to cross over the top of the road from the pub.

My face ready to crack into gratitude till Dadda commanded: You, get home now, his you as clear an accusation as any I had ever ingested. 

I was thirteen. 

Then there was the night Auntie walked me home from her house across the road because that neighbor popped his head into her kitchen, said my father had called for me. How Auntie told Mamma and Dadda, and they shook their heads. Neither had called out. Crackling silence in that kitchen, that winter night, and with its import, the gleaming hope of my saving. 

I was eight.

Part of me relieved. Part of me hysterical. All silence pregnant with one mortifying question: Will they blame me? Beneath that question, terror unfathomable. The prospect of such blame, in that kitchen, an obliteration from which I might never return.

Unmoored from mother.

Unmoored from father.

Unmoored from whatever might be left of sensibility that I possessed. 

So much gushing through the long pause that I sank, that night when I was eight, into the biting shush that followed my aunt out our front door into the nothingness of not another word. 

Can you tell me anything? Mamma pleads now. She sees the years crystalizing into fresh meaning in my features. She wants her words to bridge the gap of such adult impotence in my childhood. 

I look up. My mind assailed by the task of sorting ten thousand flashes into one coherent snapshot.

He destroyed me. 

This is all I have to offer. These three words.

Mamma straightens. Her eyes glitter, now given something she can sort. 

She declares: He did not.

A three-word proclamation meant to sweep all things clean.

Do you hear me? He did not. 

I nod.

For her, this is victory. This new truth she has concocted as our freshly shared history. 

You’re better now, she says, yes?

I nod.

No, my mind screams. I am not better.

She takes my empty mug, half fills it again with Jameson. 

Her yes and my no the north and south of some terrible trouble that has only just begun.