Falling out of Heaven. John Lynch
‘Mammy,’ I would say. ‘Mammy.’
Her eyes would glaze over, the look I used to see in the eyes of fish I caught, as they lay on the riverbank and death passed over them. Her head would move from side to side and a film of foam would cover her lips. I would hold her hand and squeeze it until my knuckles whitened. I felt as if I was holding on to her as she dangled above a steep drop and that I was her last hope.
Then I would feel her leave me, it passed through her body and into mine, the feeling of absence, of flight. She was no longer mine; she was beyond me. She had passed into trance. Then the noise would pour from her. Words half known, bastardised and tangled, child words, woman sounds, all fell from her lips, and God, always God, the word that kept coming, kept shining through like a flame on a dark hillside. It would last for minutes sometimes, her mouth working, sweat forming in the small well between our clasped palms.
I knew better than to say anything, I just kept my head bowed and waited for the storm of words and emotion to pass. Then she would fall silent, her body flopping forward as if she was a puppet whose strings had just been cut. The first time she did it, I panicked, thinking her dead. I had grabbed her, pulled at her white face and tugged at her hands.
‘Mammy, Mammy, I’m frightened.’
Then she would sigh and open her eyes and regard me. I would see myself reflected there, I looked so small and scared.
‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘The Lord is with us…All these things, son…All this pain…It’s sent to try us…’
‘Yes, Mammy.’
‘God sees it all…Remember that…There is nothing He doesn’t see.’
‘Yes, Mammy.’
I wanted to tell her that I understood even though I didn’t. As I knelt over her like a doctor tending a patient I remember wondering why I couldn’t see what she saw, feel what she felt. Why was I different, why had God excluded me?
‘Don’t tell your father,’ she said. She always said it.
‘I won’t.’
‘Promise?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good boy.’
‘What’s it like?’
‘What, son?’
‘That. The…praying.’
‘It’s like…’
‘Does it hurt?’
‘No, son…It’s beautiful.’
‘Do you see angels?’
‘Well, not really…I see light…I see the light…’
‘What light?’
‘It’s hard to explain.’
‘Try.’
‘Well…I see…I feel the power of God’s love…It’s like the summer sun on my face, only it’s forever, not just one season, or one day…And deep down in my heart I know that everything happens for a reason…That all the good things and all the bad things they all enter our hearts for a purpose. I suppose I feel safe…Like I’m on a big white cloud.’
‘Is Daddy there with you?’
‘Sometimes…’
‘Why only sometimes? Does God not like him?’
‘Don’t talk like that, son…God loves all his creatures, bad, good or otherwise.’
‘Does he like him even when he…’
‘When he what?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘What are you trying to say?’
‘When he does really bad things?’
‘Son, that’s when God loves him most of all.’
Code, that’s the way we live, tapping out cloaked messages to the ones we love. We never say it, the thing of something; we never tear the secret from its cave and lay it at the feet of the ones nearest to us. All those years ago as I sat with her she told me that God was by us, that He knelt with me. I felt the rage rise in me, and I wanted to tear down her belief, smash the altar of her faith. I wanted to stand and tell her that God didn’t exist and that if He did He was more like the devil than anything else. How could He be all love? How could He love the pig man who ruled our house as if he was an agent of the damned?
‘You can either do it yourself or I will have to do it for you. It’s your choice.’
I say nothing but hold her with my eyes. I am in a bathroom of some kind but it is more industrial than personal, all chrome bars and wide porcelain sinks. I am sitting on a small folding steel chair. I am still wearing my white gown and I can see the goosepimples on my exposed arms and legs.
‘Hygiene is very important,’ she says.
I don’t feel as alone as I did, maybe it’s the long sleep or the fact that I am getting used to these people who surround me every waking hour telling me that they only have my best interests at heart. She is pretty this young girl in front of me and her face is open and rounded. She has a small plastic basin full of soapy water.
‘My name is Naomi.’
I know she’s trying to get me to speak, but it’s so long since I have that I’m not sure if I can.
‘I know that this is difficult…That you feel alone…But you are in good hands…This is a good place, you must trust that…’
She gently takes my feet and puts them in the basin. I feel the warmth spreading up my legs. She begins to move the sponge along the line of my calves.
‘You’ll feel better for this, you’ll see.’
Her hands are small like a child’s and I watch as they slide up and down my shins.
‘You’re from the North, aren’t you?’
Still I don’t reply but look at the suds forming in soapy rings on the hairs of my legs.
‘It’s great what’s happening up there now. Let’s hope it holds. It must have been tough for you all those years, all that violence…I’m from Waterford. I think sometimes that we had it very easy down here. You know, what you don’t see won’t hurt you…Now I’m going to put this mat on the floor and I need you to stand on it so I can give the rest of you a good scrub. That’s it…Who’s a good boy?’
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