Alone

Everyone laughs and claps. Mary is such a show-off. She’s practising for the talent show that’s on next week in the school hall. They all gather around her. She’s bowing and blowing kisses and everything. When she bows, her ponytail swishes around her face, her hair is all shiny and silky. Then she looks up and sees me watching her. I know what’ll come next, so I turn around and run. I can hear my shoes smacking against the cobbles and then all of their shoes together, getting closer. My heart is beating up in my mouth and I think my stomach has dropped out of my body. Suddenly the ground leaps up to meet me and I whack my face against the curb. For a minute the world tilts up and down. Everyone is laughing. Then they stop because Miss Sweeney is walking past. Everyone says that she thinks she’s too good for the rest of us. I think she’s beautiful. She always has shiny hair and a nice coat and new shoes. She lives in a house near the end of the row by herself. Some of the bigger boys walk behind her, with their heads up and moving like she does. No-one is looking at me anymore, I get up as quick as I can and keep running til I get to the back alley. I can taste blood and my knees and elbows are cut and they sting a lot. I crouch down near the wall and look at my knees. I have to spit on my finger to rub away all the blood. It’s getting dark. I get up and go home. I go in the back door. It’s always open anyway. The kitchen light isn’t on.
I jump when I see my mother sitting at the table, in the nearly-dark. She’s looking down into her cup. I know she heard me come in, but she doesn’t move or look up or anything. Even though the light isn’t on I can still see the colours getting darker on the side of her cheek. Under her eye is all purple and blue. I think there’s still some yellow there, leftover from the last time. I can see little shiny wet lines that go from her eyes all the way down past her mouth to the edge of her face.
I’m hungry. Near the sink there’s some bread and I can see some slices of ham that must have come from next door 'cause our plates aren’t that nice. These ones have little purple flowers on them. The people next door are Very Nice. The mammy sometimes passes us things over the back wall, like the ham or sometimes a bit of chicken, or once even some of the cake from her daughter’s wedding. When I see her outside she always stops and says hello to me. Sometimes she opens her mouth like she wants to say something else but then she doesn’t. I slice off some bread and take a piece of ham. I try to bend the bread around the ham to make a sandwich and the knife slips out of my hand. It clatters really loudly on the tiles. A horrible freezing feeling fills me up. I can’t move. For a second there’s silence. I start to think that maybe he’s not at home yet. Then I hear him. He’s calling me. I think about very quietly going back out the door. But then he’ll come into the kitchen, I look at my mother. She still doesn’t move. She just keeps staring into the teacup. Very slowly, as slow as I can make my feet go, I walk into the sitting room.
The light isn’t on in here either. For a second I wonder if it’s because there wasn’t enough money for the bill again. The curtains are open, but the blind is almost all the way down. He’s sitting on the sofa. I can smell that Smell again. The one that’s in the pub as well. I hate going to the pub. I think he must have knocked over the bottle because it’s so strong that I almost cover up my nose with my hand. I stand at the door. Maybe he’s fallen asleep again. Sometimes that happens. No, he calls me again. I walk over to him. I try to make my feet take little baby steps, but I’m getting closer and closer and then I’m there and I can smell whiskey and cigarettes and sweat. He stretches out his arm and tries to grab my wrist. I don’t mean to but I move back. It was an accident, I didn’t mean to do it. My legs did it without me telling them to. He stands up now. His eyes are all dark and I see his hand go up, really high. I decide to go away. I walk over to the other side of the room, and look out the window and think about living in a house by myself and having new shoes because I don’t want to see what’s happening to the little girl with the brown hair. Later I come back. I’m sitting on his knee. I don’t remember how I got there. He tells me I’m a good girl. He rubs my hair and my back. Then his hand goes down onto my leg. I want to pull my dress down more but I’m afraid to move. I’m all hurting. He looks at me, then at the door. It’s closed. His hand moves up and down my leg, then more and more up and then under my dress. I know what’s going to happen so I leave again. I go outside and look at the other children playing and I don’t think about the little girl with the same colour shoes as me who’s in there with that man.

I like the dark. When it’s night and everything’s black I can pretend that I’m hidden away, that no-one can ever find me, that I’m not even real. I can go under the blankets and pretend that I’ve disappeared. Gone forever. I remember in school Teacher read us a story about a boy who turned invisible and could do all the things he wanted like eat sweets for dinner and stay up late and go wherever he felt like.
If I could be invisible I’d go far far away and I’d stay invisible forever so that no-one would ever find me ever again. I close my eyes. I want to go to sleep, every time I move it hurts. I dream that I’m flying. A big crashing noise wakes me up. I curl up really really small under the covers. I can hear them screaming. She’s crying too. There’s more crashing noises, then a thump. I can hear him come out into the hall. I squeeze my eyes shut tight and bunch up my hands and ask God not to let him come up the stairs. I know about God. He had a son called Jesus. He’s on a cross above the blackboard at school. I think that Jesus must be cold up there by himself without a coat. Maybe Jesus had a Dad who drank too and that’s why there was no money for a coat.

He doesn’t come up the stairs. The front door bangs open so hard that the windows all rattle. There’s quiet now. He’s gone.

I tiptoe out of bed and go to the top of the stairs. She’s sitting on the bottom step. The front door is open and all the cold is getting in. I go slowly down the steps and sit down beside her. She’s not crying anymore, she’s not doing anything. I put my arm around her as far as it can reach. He’ll come back, just like every time and drink and hit and just like every time she’ll cry. And one day I won’t be here anymore, I’ll be in my own house with no men in it and I’ll have shiny hair and a nice coat and new shoes and I won’t care what anyone says about me.