Free The Fall Girl by Denise Sewell

same. But then I don’t see her again for several weeks and I don’t win ‘Spot the Ball’.
    I’m not sure what exactly is wrong with Aunty Lily, only that she’s sick. And because my mother is helping Xavier nurse her, she can’t always stay with me during my Irish dancing lesson. But that’s good, because I get to play with Lesley. When I tell her that my aunty’s sick, Lesley says that she’s probably up the pole.
    ‘Don’t forget your night prayers,’ my father says when I bid him goodnight. ‘And offer one up for Lily.’
    ‘Is that because she’s up the pole, Daddy?’
    He shouts at me not to be so impertinent and threatens to give me a clip on the ear if I don’t get out of his sight.
    At school on the Monday morning, I tell Attracta Reilly that I think my aunty is up the pole and she tells Master Fitzgibbon in front of the rest of the class.
    ‘My mammy said her aunty has cancer and had one of her tits cut off,’ a sixth-class girl says from the back of the classroom.
    When I burst into tears, Master Fitzgibbon takes me out into the corridor and says that, as far as he knows, my mother’s sister has had an operation and is recovering well, but why don’t I talk to my parents about it? But I don’t because if I say ‘tit’, I’ll surely get a telling off. Besides, my mother says that as soon as Aunty Lily is out of hospital, we’ll go to see her together, so I’ll know myself soon enough if the tit thing is true or not.
    My legs feel like mush as I climb the stairs on my way up to see her. She’s propped up in her bed, her hair combed back and tied in a ponytail. Her knees are bent and the blankets are pulled up under her armpits so I can’t see her shape. When I sit down beside her, she holds my hand and I play with her rings the way I always do when she comes to Mass with us in Crosslea chapel. She asks me how I’m getting on with my dancing and I offer to do a reel for her.
    ‘Not today, Frances,’ my mother says from the bedside chair.
    ‘Let her dance away,’ Aunty Lily says, waving a dismissive hand at my mother, so I slide down off the eiderdown andstart one two three-ing around the bed. The floorboards are creaking underneath the carpet and my mother insists that I stop before I knock the chandelier off the sitting-room ceiling below.
    ‘I couldn’t care less if the stupid thing smashed to smithereens,’ Aunty Lily hops off her. ‘I’d rather see her dance.’
    From Christmas on, I see less of my mother and more of her friend Nancy, who looks after me until my father comes home from work. There’s talk of doctors’ visits, hospital appointments, holy water from Lourdes, miraculous medals and green scapulars. But, despite it all, they’re still frowning, whispering or pulling handkerchiefs from their pockets. And it’s those quiet things that bother me most.
    I don’t ask if Aunty Lily is dying. Instead, I think of reasons why she couldn’t be. She’s way too young for starters. All the people I know who’ve died are old. Hasn’t my mother dragged me to all their funerals? She rarely misses a local funeral. We have a drawer full of in memoriam cards in the dresser to prove it.
    I take them out and examine them one by one –
Aged 72 RIP
and a horrible wrinkly face to prove it,
Aged 79 RIP
and looks like a skeleton,
Aged 82
and not a hair on his head,
who died on 3 February 1970
; no age given here, just a face that tells you – I have all my living done. Then I think of Aunty Lily’s face and smile.
    After I go to bed, I hear my father make a call to Australia to tell my grandfather that Lily’s suffering will be all over in a matter of weeks.
    Better in weeks! Sure that’s no time at all.
    It’s a Saturday. I’m surprised to see my mother coming in the hall door to collect me after my dancing lesson. I’d been expecting my father. She sits at the end of a bench and doesn’t speak to Miss Jackson. I take down my coat from its hanger and walk over to