‘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.’