Free Becoming Myself: The True Story of Thomas Who Became Sara by Sara Jane Cromwell

from waking nightmares, which were worsening and becoming more frequent, keeping me in a morbid state of fear. I am not sure if my palpitations were simply as a result of that electric shock, orthe growing tension I felt between my ‘real’, female, self and the young man I was supposed to be to everyone around me. I was beginning to feel more like a freak because my body wasn’t doing what I was expecting it to do, and these feelings grew by the day.
    After some months working at various jobs, having been laid off by Robinson’s, I found myself unemployed, so I called into Weavex on the Kylemore Road and asked if I could speak to the manager. I was led up to Bernard Nolan’s office. He was sitting with his back to me and didn’t turn around when I spoke: ‘Excuse me, mister, do you have any jobs?’
    ‘What age are you?’
    ‘I’m fifteen,’ I lied. In fact I was still only fourteen.
    ‘What’s your name?’
    ‘Thomas Dunne.’
    ‘And where do you live?’ I told him my address and he just said, ‘Start on Monday at eight o’clock.’
    ‘Thank you,’ I said and left the office, before he had a chance to change his mind. I never let on that my father had worked there previously, because, even at fourteen, I wanted to get on in life on my own merit and not have to use other people’s names.
    On my first day in Weavex, I was a cause of curiosity as some of the other staff recognised me as one of the Dunnes and remembered that my father had worked there some time earlier, so I was bombarded with questions. I was told to lift some large boxes and my word were they heavy; so heavy I don’t know where I got the strength to do it, but I had to, it was as simple as that.
    One of my jobs was to be the ‘nipper’, which meant doing the shopping for the staff. I had to make a shopping list andtake it to the shops on Decies Road. I would leave a large order into Borza’s, the chipper, then to the Londis supermarket. I would make my shopping list out on pieces of cardboard, starting in the packaging and despatch department where I worked, then out to the department where they made the warps and quills and where the looms were for making labels; then into the weaving department, or ‘shed’, as it was then called. It was an amazing experience to walk amongst all those looms with their loud repetitive clacking noise, so loud that you could hardly hear yourself speak and so you would have to shout at the top of your voice. It was strange being in the very place in which I used to bring my father his lunch and to meet the same workmates who worked with him and to be asked if I was his son. I was to spend the next five years of my life here: almost my entire adolescent life and entry into adulthood.
    On one occasion when I was doing the shopping I was asked to get Durex! Of course, I hadn’t a clue what they were and so asked the guy who wanted them. He told me they were like a chocolate éclair! I put them on the shopping list and handed it into the girl in the newsagent’s, then left for the chipper. When I returned to the newsagent’s, the girl asked me out loud what I wanted Durex for? I was very surprised by the question and tried to explain that they were some kind of chocolate éclair cake. She said, ‘We don’t sell them here, love. You’ll have to go to the chemist for them.’
    So I did, and much to my surprise, received the dirtiest of looks from the staff. ‘We don’t sell them here,’ they said in scornful tones. When I returned to the factory, I told the guy who’d requested them, but all he did was laugh with his mates: ‘Jaysus, Dunne, you’re such a gobshite.’
    On another occasion, shortly after I’d started in Weavex, Iwas told by one of the fitters to go into the steam house and ask Charlie for a bucket of steam. On this occasion I was certain they were having me on and confidently said, ‘Yis are having me on. There’s no such thing as bucket of steam.’
    But the fitter replied,