An empty space without a window
by Mel McEvoy
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You are
chasing me
around the shed
at the bottom of the garden.
Never quite catching me
just over my shoulder
getting nearer
then I run faster
that's how Mam remembers
standing in the doorway
pregnant with Una.
You were trying to get me in
out of the meteors of hail stones.
With my hands on my head
I cried: ‘the dash is getting me'.
You got fed up trying
ran in and bolted the door.
I'm forever caught
in that dash
of hail stones stinging
these thoughts of you.
A pane of glass
has a transparent unity
like a vulnerable promise
of what tomorrow holds.
Behind the cracked glass
there's no one watching
over us playing.
In our house
Novembers' are never hopeful
as the dark roams around
looking for mischief
in the early evenings.
A kitchen bulb is the only arm around us.
Kathleen is eight
tasting the sweet
poisoned importance
of being mother.
You're playing Cinderella
in a frilly gauze dress,
twirling near an open fire,
curtain as a headdress:
as the clock strikes.
Sentenced
the newspaper forever
puts us in the room together.
In the shadow letters,
it said were playing a game,
I've removed the fire guard
I'm throwing paper on the fire.
I'm nearly three and you are four.
Pages twisted tight
a bag full of jumbled words
opening slowly as if to speak
igniting words like 'burnt'
and 'tragic accident.'
Behind a whispered locked thought
dad made up the story to avoid prison
but never escaped the sentence
condemned to search every day
for that place where
it never ever happened.
He said he had to do the weekly shop
but had taken the two older boys with him,
an hour away, to replace a broken window.
Mam can't see you from her hospital bed having Una.
There has always been
a vague image of seeing you
reaching for something up on the mantelpiece;
it must have been our tomorrows.
Kicked a stone of thought through the years
asking questions for the details,
to mend the broken glass of madness.
There was always an emptied look
a hushed conspiracy
until this found me:
but who would know?
There was no one looking after us.
The dress started to smolder
as it brushed near the hot coals in the grate.
Kathleen heard you from the kitchen
the small red glow began to spread
quickly melting the gauze.
she grabbed and ran out with you
straight into the face of a merciless wind
having been told: ‘Any trouble go to Margaret's.'
Dad, the crucified one,
sat at your bedside for 12 days
forever carrying a pane of glass up a hill.
Tell me how do you break into heaven
for an explanation
or fuck and blind to provoke retribution?
Dad couldn't put sentences together
to tell himself or God what happened.
Asked Margaret the neighbour
to come in and tell Mam in hospital.
She looked at dad then kathleen,
“I'll do it but don't you ever blame her,
just remember those burnt hands."
It burnt a hole
in every kind of promise.
In the emptiness
no one remembered Una
being brought home.
In the numbness
where the sun can't reach,
there are no pictures or tales
about her big nose or first smile.
Mam who was never sick
laid on her single bed
brought downstairs
opposite the fire.
Once, I came down
the big stairs one at a time.
Pushed the door open slowly,
ready to run, waitng
to hear the roared chorus:
'Get back to bed!'
But nothing, walked into
where the adult tries to interpret:
a molasses of emotion,
a body laid for a wake.
From the grate a dark brownish light,
flickered shadows
of her darkest thoughts
on the wall beside her bed.
She wouldn't answer me,
a lifeless limb
a lifted and dropped look,
kept staring into the fire,
watching you from the doorway
chasing me around the garden shed.
Una, fast asleep at her breast.
On an either/or morning
she got up,
dressed Una,
put her in the pram
and went looking
for a place along the river Mersey
to step off and find you.
Somehow, found a womb
reassuring place
where you must have been
at the back of a quiet church
where an ease descended
asking for faith
in the ambiguity of death.
In the innuendo and arguments
Kathleen bore the blame.
At school she vanished
into places where
she felt the warmth
of brightly painted flowers
on large sea smoothed stones.
Started nursing
but could see you
in her room at night
refusing to talk.
At nineteen
admitted to a mental unit
to see if drugs and ECT
would make you leave
or bring you back.
She went looking for you,
in the places you use to be,
cycling around the estate
in a night dress.
Making a house
in the allotment shed.
Drugged to forget
spent hours sweeping
the same stain on the carpet
in the hospital day room.
Five years as an inpatient
fighting fires
with an 'if only' thought.
Forty years later
Kathleen smothered the flames.
At the moment dad died
and we were gathered around
the hospital bed
watching and waiting
as he faded to find you,
she broke a window
with a stone of a sentence:
'He made me lie to the police.
There was no fire guard around the fire.'
Like the madness
of rising from the dead
Una's eight year old daughter
who had never asked about you
said: 'What was the girl's name who died?'
At the crematorium
we all felt your presence
trying to say don't leave me out
of important family occasions
he is my dad as well.
Kathleen urgently insisted that
me and Una had to go to the cemetery
to stand above you.
Into the silence between us
She told you:
" Shush now.
It will be alright.
Dad will be home soon."
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