Foster

After I came back from the well, soaked to the skin, the woman took one look at me and turned very still before she gathered me up and took me inside and made up my bed again. The following morning, I didn’t feel hot, but she kept me upstairs, bringing me hot drinks with lemon and cloves and honey, aspirin.

‘’Tis nothing but a chill, she has,’ I heard Kinsella say.

‘When I think of what could have happened.’

‘If you’ve said that once, you’ve said it a hundred times.’

‘But –’

‘Nothing happened, and the girl is grand.

And that’s the end of it.’

I lie there with the hot-water bottle, listening to the rain and reading my books, following what happens more closely and making up something different to happen at the end of each, each time. I doze and have strange dreams: of the lost heifer panicking on the night strand, of bony, brown cows having no milk in their teats, of my mother climbing up and getting stuck in an apple tree. Then I wake and take the broth and whatever else I’m given.

On Sunday, I am allowed to get up, and we pack everything again, as before.

Towards evening, we have supper, and wash and change into our good clothes. The sun has come out, is lingering in long, cool slants, and the yard is dry in places. Sooner than I would like, we are ready and in the car, turning down the lane, going up through the street of Gorey and on back along the narrow roads through Carnew and Shillelagh.

‘That’s where Da lost the red heifer playing cards,’ I say.

‘Is that a fact?’ Kinsella says.

‘Wasn’t that some wager?’ says the woman.

‘It was some loss for him,’ says Kinsella."

"We carry on through Parkbridge, over the hill where the old school stands, and on down towards our car-road. The gates in the lane are closed and Kinsella gets out to open them. He drives through, closes the gates behind him, and drives on very slowly to the house. I feel, now, that the woman is making up her mind as to whether or not she should say something but I don’t really know what it is, and she gives me no clue.

The car stops in front of the house, the dogs bark, and my sisters race out. I see my mother looking out through the window, with what is now the second youngest in her arms.

Inside, the house feels damp and cold. The lino is all tracked over with dirty footprints. Mammy stands there with my little brother, and looks at me.

‘You’ve grown,’ she says.

‘Yes,’ I say.

‘“Yes”, is it?’ she says, and raises her eyebrows.