Free Handstands In The Dark: A True Story of Growing Up and Survival by Janey Godley Page A

the winter of that same year, I took a really bad attack of the mumps. They went away, but complications followed and I was petrified I was going to be put in hospital; I was scared of nurses touching me and doctors probing my body. I started being sick and sick and sick and lost too much weight and this, together with the after-effects of the infection, left me very weak. I would lie on a pull-down sofabed in the living room watching television; I loved
The Sweeney
because bad people always got caught and I would try to keep myself from vomiting all the way through the show so I could follow the plot. My Mammy was really concerned and I had many visits from our GP who gave me some health drink which I never managed to keep down.
    On one particular night, I lay in the darkened living room with the smell of vomit on my bed and all I could see were Major’s eyes silently watching me as I tried to make it to the toilet. I could not stand up – it was as if my legs were too thin and shaky to support me – so I crawled on all fours until I made it to the bathroom door. Major slowly walked beside me all the way. I sat at the door and passed out for a moment. When I came round, I was dizzy and scared, but Major sat curled around me on the cold floor. I thought I was going to die. I didn’t care if I died or not, but I felt so desperately weak and ill. I made it to the toilet and crawled back to bed, with Major sitting there all night watching me and whimpering as I hung over the bed to vomit into a white plastic bucket. Occasionally, he would put his paw up onto the grubby candlewick bedspread and get me to rub his head as I lay there waiting for the illness to slowly work itself out of my body. I had always loved Major but never before needed him that much. He was there for me. He knew that I was ill and would hardly leave my bedside.
    * * *
    My brother Mij came to visit my sick-bed with his new, live-in girlfriend Cathy, and my Aunt Rita and Mammy’s Valium pals all came along to make comments about how skinny I was, how sickly I looked and what form of cure I should take.
    ‘Castor oil is what you need …’
    ‘Black treacle will cure you …’
    ‘You should get some good Irish stew down you …’
    Dad also came to see me, as he was now back living in Glasgow and, during my time ensconced in the living-room pull-down bed, I was privy to most of the adult conversations that took place while they thought I was asleep. That was how I heard that Mij’s girlfriend Cathy was pregnant.
Was no one safe from the dreaded teenage mother syndrome?
The pregnancy caused more antagonism between Mammy and Mij. He was determined to make this relationship work, but he did not bank on Cathy being as headstrong and bad-tempered as he was. Their fights were just beginning when I started to come through the illness.
    We now had Cathy staying, pregnant and feeling stifled in our dirty, overcrowded flat. There were seven of us living in two bedrooms and a living room. Then along came my Uncle James – Mammy’s younger brother – with his wife ‘Crazy Katie Wallace’ and their two kids Sammy and Jackie – and then we also had my Dad’s brother Uncle John on a temporary stay in our flat.
    I loved Uncle John – a quiet, funny man with a sparkly character though he had always been a drifter and no one knew much about him. He would look after me and stop Mij from hitting Mammy; I think Mij realised Uncle John was not someone you messed with. He had spent some time in prison when he was younger but, unlike most of the people we knew who had been Inside, he never talked about it at all. He encouraged me to go to school, would listen to all my homework projects and discussed all my written stories. In return, I would steal cigarettes for him from my Mammy. She and Uncle John had a strained relationship. They would circle each other like vicious cats. Mammy would shout at him and accuse him of eating too much or getting in her way; he would