Postscript(36)

‘I’m sorry.’

She shrugs. Whatever. ‘They found the cancer when I was pregnant. They wouldn’t give me treatment because it would harm her.’

‘But you started treatment after she was born?’

‘Radiation. Then chemo.’

‘What about Jewel’s dad? Is he around?’

‘I don’t want to talk about him,’ Ginika says, turning to Jewel. Jewel responds by touching her mother’s lips, and then pulling at them. Ginika pretends to gobble them and Jewel giggles.

I straighten the baby mat on the floor beside us. A quilted play rug with mirrors, zips, tags, squeezy things that squeak, and enough to keep her occupied. At the sight of the mat, Jewel becomes agitated.

‘I told you,’ Ginika says, nervously. ‘Honestly, she’ll become a different baby as soon as I let her go.’

I wonder if it’s more that Jewel is picking up on how Ginika’s body has tensed at the idea of placing her down. As soon as Ginika sets her on the floor, the easy and happy-go-lucky beauty transforms into a bomb that instantly explodes and screams with such ferocity that even I want to pick her up, anything to stop the sound and her apparent pain.

I lift her and the crying continues, torture to my ears. Jewel wriggles and pushes, such strength for someone so small, arching her back and throwing herself backwards, practically out of my arms. As soon as Ginika takes her, she quietens, her shaking breaths and sniffles the only giveaway to her ordeal. She buries her head in Ginika’s chest, not looking anyone in the eye for fear she’ll be moved again.

I look on in amazement.

‘Jewel!’

Jewel ignores me. She knows what she’s done.

‘I told you,’ Ginika says, consoling her. ‘Possessed child.’

Which is putting it politely.

‘OK,’ I take a deep breath. ‘So we do this with her on your lap.’

It’s almost 9 p.m. and Jewel is content again but she yaps, babbles, reaches for the paper, the pens, pulls everything within reach to the floor. She rips a page from Ginika’s notepad. But every time Ginika places her down on the mat, the legs-being-sawn-off sound starts up again and it doesn’t stop even when we wait. Two minutes, three minutes, five minutes is our maximum, she is as stubborn each time. I’m no super-nanny but even I know that putting her down and rewarding her with cuddles to silence her is the wrong message. She’s winning every time. She’s a tough cookie, and as much as she’s her mother’s comfort blanket she’s also her weakness. With someone pulling at her physically and emotionally, Ginika understandably can’t concentrate. I can barely think. We finish at 10 p.m., further behind than even my most negative thoughts had forecast. I’m exhausted.

As I open the door into the dark night, I try to keep a positive spin on it.

‘Practise everything we’ve done tonight and go over and over the sounds.’

Ginika nods. There are dark circles under her eyes; she can’t look me in the eye. I’m sure she’s about to cry as soon as I close the door.

It’s late. It’s dark. It’s cold. The bus stop is a walk away. She has no buggy. I long to have a bath and go to bed, hide my head from the scene I’ve just lived. Cringe in private. If anyone had seen me – Gabriel, Sharon, anyone – they would have told me I was fighting a losing battle, nothing at all to do with Ginika’s abilities and everything to do with my own lack thereof. But I can’t close the door on them. I grab my keys and tell her I’m driving her home.

‘Can you drive with that thing?’ She looks at my cast.

‘I’ve found a way to do everything with this thing,’ I say with an irritated grimace. ‘Except cycling. I miss cycling.’

I drive Ginika home to North Circular Road. It takes twenty minutes in light traffic at the late hour. Ginika would have had to get two buses, and be home after 11 p.m. Suddenly my plan of slotting other people in at a time to suit me seems less angelic and more selfish. I’m embarrassed that I’ve asked this trek of her. Though we all have to take responsibility for our own lives, I’m not sure I can allow a sixteen-year-old extremely ill young mother to make these decisions for herself.

I stop at a terraced house, minutes from Phoenix Park, minutes from Phibsboro village. It’s a period-style house but it lost its glory a long time ago. It’s dirty and damp-looking, the garden has an abandoned look, with grass rising so high the building seems derelict. A group of boys hang around the entrance steps.

‘How many people live in there?’

‘Don’t know. There’s four studio rooms and three single rooms. The council sorted it for me. Mine’s the basement flat.’

I look to where the steps lead to darkness.

‘Nice neighbours?’ I ask hopefully.

She snorts.

‘Are your family close by?’

‘No and it wouldn’t matter if they were. I told you: we’ve hardly spoken since the day I told them I was pregnant.’

I had been watching her in the rear-view mirror but now I turn around.

‘They do know that you’re ill, don’t they?’

‘Yes. They said that I made my bed and now I have to lie in it. My ma said it was punishment for having a baby.’

‘Ginika,’ I say, utterly disgusted.

‘I dropped out of school. Hung out with the wrong people. Got pregnant, got cancer. They think it’s God’s way of punishing me. You know Ginika means “What can be greater than God?”’ She rolls her eyes. ‘My parents are very religious. They moved here twenty years ago to give me opportunities and they say I wasted them. I’m better off without them.’ She opens the car door, struggles to pull herself out with the bag and the baby, and as I sit there, stunned, it occurs to me that I should have helped her, but she moves faster than I’m able to with my cast.