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Back Before My Actual Heart Breaks Save as PDF
Chapters (48)
  1. Cover
  2. About the Author
  3. Dedication
  4. Epigraph
  5. 2007
  6. 1
  7. 2
  8. 1973
  9. 3
  10. 4
  11. 5
  12. 6
  13. 1982
  14. 7
  15. 8
  16. 9
  17. 10
  18. 11
  19. 12
  20. 13
  21. 14
  22. 15
  23. 16
  24. 17
  25. 18
  26. 19
  27. 20
  28. 21
  29. 22
  30. 23
  31. 24
  32. 1998
  33. 25
  34. 26
  35. 27
  36. 2004
  37. 28
  38. 29
  39. 30
  40. 31
  41. 32
  42. 33
  43. 2007
  44. 34
  45. 35
  46. 36
  47. Acknowledgements
  48. THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING

I wake up every morning to the deafening noise of a deserted hearth. I turn in every night with the ghosts of a life not well lived. If I could go back to being sixteen again, I’d do things differently. Everyone over the age of forty feels like that, you total gom, says my best friend Lizzie Magee. Auntie Eileen advises me to up my intake of sweets. When I was small, she often saved me with barley twists and chocolate limes because there was nothing she could do about the welts on my body.

I never could protect myself. I didn’t even open my mouth when my father gave me away. I thought it was the worst thing by far to befall me until I was taken by force. Those thoughts can drown me faster than black clouds.

To settle the heart banging painfully in my chest, I list the things I do know. I know my father loves me, I know my mother does not. I know that I have to reap what I have sown, it’s only fair. I am the mother to five children grown and gone in the blink of an eye. I am the sitting tenant of one farm, the wife to one husband, the fool to one lover. I have an empty nest, an empty lap, empty arms, a hollow heart.

The wind suddenly barges through the big sycamores at the bottom of my street. The crows rise up in a rage and a flurry of seed parachutes twirl to the ground, God’s confetti. I can see myself walking beneath them when we were all a lot smaller but equally green. They mark the entrance to the river field where the Cloon bends to make its journey to the town ten miles away. If I run, can I catch the little girl that was me and press my face to hers? You’ll be alright, I’ll say, one day. I could point out the holes in the road ahead where she might fall. She fell a lot. Even in this moment of seeing her again she has scabby knees. She’s too thin by far. It’s the week before her First Confession; she has a terrible thing to tell the priest. Stay away from the water, I whisper but she can’t hear me. If I’m quick I can at least hold her hand.

Penguin Walking Logo

1973

THE WIND AT YOUR BACK

3

My big sister Kathleen is leaving me here soon. I will have to sleep alone in the dark at The Hill. Lights cannot be left on to burn perfectly good electricity for stupid little girls who should know that there is only one thing to fear and that is losing the love of Good Holy God and His Virgin Mother. I am seven but she is seventeen so it’s past time she had a proper job and stopped getting under people’s feet, way past time.