Free No One Wants You by Celine Roberts Page B

jealous and thought why do I never get them? Soon after my chat with Sister Bernadette I had to start queuing myself. When you had heavier periods you had to turn the pad upside-down as the nuns wouldn’t give you any more. You’d wrap it in the toilet paper but you were only allowed two squares of toilet paper at a time so it was very difficult.
    Sister Bernadette went on to tell me that the ‘monthly cold’ led on to the ‘things boys do to girls’. She started talking about babies. Her description of what happened in such situations was couched in prissy, descriptive names. When I joined in, saying men at home did that to me, she looked shocked and horrified. I told her about the ‘purple prick’ and how it could hurt you, and she began to realise that I knew many words to describe in detail what she was having trouble talking about. She visibly flinched at some of the words that I used. As far as I was concerned, they were all normal words, used every day in my foster-family home. By what I was saying, Sister Bernadette learnt a lot about the goings-on in my foster home but she chose to do nothing about it.
    In a low voice, she finally said to me, ‘I think that you already know what I am trying to tell you.’ I could not tell by the tone of her voice whether she was disgusted by my knowledge or concerned for my future. I thought that the interview was coming to an end. But I was wrong. All the previous talk was just leading up to what she was about to tell me next. What she said next began with a very simple statement. But it was to upset me for the remainder of my stay at the orphanage. Up to this point, in comparison to the life of abuse and degradation that I had lived with my foster-parents, my stay at the orphanage was bliss. But I was to be unsettled emotionally for 30 years by what Sister Bernadette told me next.
    She told me that I had a mother and father. She also told me that I had a grandmother.
    I was shattered. When my foster-parents said that nobody wanted me, I had not really understood the exact meaning of that statement. But it became clear to me very quickly on that sunny afternoon, in the rose garden with Sister Bernadette.
    She said that my father’s family lived in Limerick City, close to where I was presently living. The other family, which included my maternal grandmother, lived in County Limerick, but not too far from the city itself. I immediately became excited. I was jumping up and down with joy. I had always envied some of the other children at school, as they seemed to have the one thing that I did not – parents. Quite a few of the children at the orphanage had either one or both parents. Sometimes the parents even visited their children. I was always envious of them, as I never had even one visitor, never mind a parent.
    I asked the nun, ‘When can I see them?’
    She did not answer my question directly. She told me that my father could not be told of my existence. She said that he did not even know I was alive. She said that two of his sisters were ‘Mercy nuns’ in Cork and that they would be embarrassed beyond belief, and would be sent to the missions in Africa, if it became public knowledge that I was related to them.
    The mystery of my ‘auntie nuns’ was now finally becoming clearer to me. I began to realise that they were part of my family. They were my father’s sisters. It was a concept that I had never allowed myself to explore. It dawned on me then that I really did have a family.
    There were also three priests in my father’s greater extended family and if the scandal of my existence were to become known, they would suffer untold consequences from their respective bishops.
    She said that my father was a lawyer, and was highly respected in the community, as well as in, and far beyond, Limerick City. She also said that my father was now married and had a large family. If my father found out about me now, it would break up his marriage and his large family. He