Free Sins of the Mother by Irene Kelly Page B

witch.
    ‘Irene, this is your new teacher, Mrs Lawley,’ the nun mumbled and then immediately left the classroom. Mrs Lawley was very tall and her long thin form towered over me.
    ‘You’re new here – who are you?’ she asked, peering over the tops of the glasses that were perched right at the end of her nose.
    ‘I’m Irene Coogan, miss.’
    ‘Right, Irene, take a copybook and a pencil from my desk and go and sit down over there.’ She waved her hand towards the back of the class.
    I sat down and tried to follow Mrs Lawley’s instructions. We were copying the letters of the alphabet that she had written on the blackboard at the front of the class. Normally, I was fine
with my letters but Mrs Lawley had a funny way of writing. The letters were all curly and strange. I tried hard but as Mrs Lawley came down the row of desks she peered at my copybook.
    ‘That’s not right,’ she snapped. ‘Do it again.’
    So I tried harder this time, being very careful to make the letters curl in the same way hers did on the blackboard, but I couldn’t do it very well. Mrs Lawley was soon behind me
again.
    ‘No!’ she said in a stern voice. ‘No, Irene. That’s not good at all. No wonder you’re here. You’re stupid. Come up to the front.’
    I was shaking as I eased myself out from behind my desk and followed her up to her desk at the front of the classroom. She sat down then behind her desk and pulled out a long wooden ruler.
    ‘Hold out your hands!’ she instructed. ‘Palms up!’
    Trembling, I did as I was told and . . .
Thwack!
She brought the ruler down hard on both my palms. Oh God. The pain exploded over my hands in a white hot flash. Tears stung my eyes.
Thwack!
She did it again. And again. By the time she was finished I was sobbing really hard from the terrible, throbbing pain.
    ‘You’ll learn to do things my way in my class,’ she trilled. ‘Now go back to your desk! And stop your snivelling!’
    I ran back to my desk and sat down, clasping my poor, hot palms in my lap.
    ‘Hey.’ I heard a little whisper from my left. Gently I turned my head to the side and I saw a little girl next to me with dark eyes, pale skin and freckled round cheeks looking at me
earnestly.
    ‘Don’t cry,’ she whispered.
What? Why is she telling me not to cry? I’m in agony!
    ‘It gets worse if you cry,’ she whispered. I looked at her again, confused. She just shook her head.
    It was all so hard, so confusing. I still didn’t know what we’d done wrong to be sent to this place or how long we were going to be here before our mammy came to get us.
    After school finished at 2.30 p.m. I returned to the main orphanage and was given a job for the rest of the afternoon. I was handed a bucket and a rag and told to scrub the hallway and the
corridors. I nodded obediently and immediately got down on my knees and started scrubbing. In some ways, it was a relief. For a while I could just concentrate on this small task and not worry about
all the other people in this place and the endless rules and praying. I worked hard, concentrating on just a little bit of the wooden floor at a time. It seemed like I disappeared into my own world
because the next thing I heard was Sister Beatrice’s voice.
    ‘That’s not right!’ she said crossly. I looked up, terrified she was talking to me, but then I saw she was addressing the girl who was working in front of me.
    The girl had been scrubbing away at all the skirtings but now she stopped and just kept herself very still, her head lowered and her rag in her lap.
    There was silence for a moment and then a massive clang as Sister Beatrice kicked over the girl’s bucket of dirty water. The grey water spread out everywhere, all over the floor we’d
both just cleaned.
    ‘Now do it again,’ she sneered and she turned and walked away.
    That night, I lay awake thinking about home and whether our mammy was missing us all. I wondered where they’d taken Peter and Cecily and how long we