Girl in the Making by Anna Fitzgerald - read an extract

We present an extract from Girl in the Making, the acclaimed debut novel from Anna Fitzgerald.

Jean Kennedy is a gentle, perceptive girl growing up in a very strange world: suburban Dublin in the 1970s and '80s. In the company of her mother, her Aunty Ida, and her little brother Baby John F., Jean experiences love and joy. But home is not a safe place, and Jean is unequal and unprotected. When she speaks just one small part of the truth, she must quickly learn to navigate the dangers and possibilities of a world she scarcely understands.

You've a Thread Hanging from Your Skirt

(from Part 1, 1966-1975)

Momma knew that Baby John F. would have to be our ever- lasting baby. She was a bit sad, because she knew she would not have eleven babies like the woman who was voted Housewife of the Year, whose photograph was on the cover of Spotlight magazine and who was even on The Late Late Show. Looking at the cover of Spotlight, at the woman with her eleven spotlessly clean, smiling children, Momma said she was a wonder and HE laughed over her shoulder and said,'She looks like a horse.’ Momma read out loud to HIM all about the housewife of the year, but he was not listening. So I listened instead:

‘"After an interview and cooking a four-course meal for eight people, Margaret Hughes from Killarney in County Kerry was announced the winner. Her prizes include a cheque for £500 and a luxury oven. The mother of eleven says she enjoys being a keen member of her local knitting circle as well as a number of other hobbies. She volunteers annually in the Rose of Tralee festival."’

‘Well, that’s that,’ said Momma.‘I don’t even play bridge.’ I don’t think Momma had ever got over not even being a runner-up in the Mother and Child competition at Butlin’s. This September evening Baby John F. had fallen asleep in my arms while we had all been watching Top of the Pops, because that was what Tilly wanted to watch and HE said that she was our guest so should be allowed to see at least that one programme every week and after that he and Tom would watch the football. HE did not mind missing the first half. Even Momma wanted to see Top of the Pops that night because Joe Dolan was going to be on and Momma had been to dances before she got married where his band had played. She said that if Joe Dolan had been born in America, he would have been another Elvis, but HE said, ‘Rubbish.’ It was a boring, boring programme and I did not like Joe Dolan and I did not like Jimmy Savile with his gold jewellery and how he kept saying, ‘Boys and girls, boys and girls.’ Uncle Ronnie and his wife had driven over too because they did not have BBC and Aunty Gertie liked Joe Dolan. The room was smoky and sour with the sickly-sweet smell of Mikado biscuits and shop-bought apple tart and custard that had spilled somewhere, and I sat completely squashed up between Tilly and Uncle Ronnie. So I was relieved when Momma asked me to put Baby John F. down in his cot. I was very good at that. Momma said I had the magic touch with babies. I knew just how to put him down really gently and how to slide my hands from underneath his head while hum- ming to him. Even if he did waken a little, I knew just how to get him back to sleep again by stroking his soft, blond, feathery hair and singing the song he liked best,‘Sleepy Little Engine’.Though it is a mistake to sing about trains to a baby boy because they love them so much that they just get livelier and more excited instead of sleepier, this song is about a slow train with a sleepy-sounding whistle. Whenever Tilly sang to Baby John F., he would open his eyes wide straight away because she sang too loud and too fast and she always sang the Casey Jones song, but I did not tell Tilly the trick of this lovely lullaby because I was Baby John F.’s favourite. It was a bit mean of me, I know, but he was very important to me and I really wanted to stay his favourite.

Just as I was pulling up the blankets on him, he stirred a little, so I began to stroke his lovely hair and to sing very softly in the darkened room:‘Slowly through the valley, Baby’s head goes down, gently rings the . . .’ My hand jumped slightly on poor Baby John F.’s head when I felt something hard pressing into my back, pushing me into the bars of the cot. Don’t waken Baby. Keep singing. In that dark, sombre room on that late September evening, I felt the presence of the black demon bird who had stood on the black rock, gaping out to the Irish Sea, which I had foolishly mistaken for the Atlantic. Baby John F. must not see the demon bird. Babies can die of fright at such things. It can affect the heart. So I tried to steady my hand on his soft little feathery head. ‘Isn’t he lovely,’ whispered a voice, the voice of Uncle Ronnie. And then his hand came under my skirt, my school-uniform skirt, and it crept up higher and higher. It was heavy, and hot, and sweaty, and sneaky, moving fast up my leg onto my thigh and into my knickers and then he pushed inside me. It hurt so much and he kept pressing me against the bars of the cot and his breathing was sour and fast and heavy. My hand just kept stroking Baby John F.’s head. But I had stopped singing. I had become a blank.

And then the hand slid quickly and sneakily and sweatily down my thigh, to my knee and out from under my skirt. I felt a little pull on the hem of my skirt. ‘You’ve a thread hanging from your skirt,’ he said. ‘There, that just took a jiffy.’ So that was it. It was not the end of the world at all. It was just a thread hanging from my skirt.

I stood over Baby John F. and I did not stop stroking his head. The heavy, fast, sour breathing had stopped. I stood very, very still apart from the slight movement of my hand on Baby John F.’s hair. My fingers began to ache and tremble from so much stroking, and I think even he was tired of my hand because he turned his poor head away a little once or twice and gave a sweet little baby giving-out moan.

And then I heard the front door close and Uncle Ronnie and Aunty Gertie saying goodnight to Momma.‘Goodnight,’ said Uncle Ronnie. ‘Goodnight,’ said Momma. The door behind me opened very gently then, and I began to sing again softly, ‘Gently rings the church bell . . .’

And Momma whispered,‘Not asleep yet!’ and she pulled the door gently behind her and went away. ‘Shepherd on the hillside gives a friendly wave . . .’ I kept singing until my singing became just mumbling and then a humming with no notes. I stood there, leaning over Baby; the whole room closed in around me and I was in a shoebox, dark with no air holes; tussles of tissue paper enclosed me, pressing against me and making my mouth drier and drier. And I did not try to move because there was no space around me, only cardboard walls and a terrible stillness and a choking quietness and no air for me at all. And I wondered how I had become so small that I could fit into this terrible airless cardboard shoebox.

How am I in this shoebox? How can I move? How will I ever get out of this box? It is like a jail. And my head spun round and round; and even though I had stopped singing and was just hum- ming a kind of nothingness, the song wouldn’t get out of my head. It went on and on and on . . . And I can’t remember if I cried. Do you need air to cry?

Girl in the Making is published by Penguin Sandycove