Foster

The woman stands behind, not seeming to mind each breath coming back, as though they are hers.

‘Taste it,’ she says.

‘What?’

‘Use the dipper.’ She points.

Hanging over us is a big ladle, a shadow cupped in the dusty steel. I reach up and take it from the nail. She holds the belt of my trousers so I won’t fall in.

‘It’s deep,’ she says. ‘Be careful.’

The sun, at a slant now, throws a rippled version of how we look back at us. For a moment, I am afraid. I wait until I see myself not as I was when I arrived, looking like a tinker’s child, but as I am now, clean, in different clothes, with the woman behind me.

I dip the ladle and bring it to my lips. This water is cool and clean as anything I have ever tasted: it tastes of my father leaving, of him never having been there, of having nothing after he was gone. I dip it again and lift it level with the sunlight. I drink six measures of water and wish, for now, that this place without shame or secrets could be my home. Then the woman pulls me back to where I am safe on the grass, and goes down alone. I hear the bucket floating on its side for a moment before it sinks and swallows, making a grateful sound, a glug, before it’s torn away and lifted.

Walking back along the path and through the fields, holding her hand, I feel I have her balanced. Without me, I am certain she would tip over. I wonder how she manages when I am not here, and conclude that she must ordinarily fetch two buckets. I try to remember another time when I felt like this and am sad because I can’t remember a time and happy, too, because I cannot.

That night, I expect her to make me kneel down but instead she tucks me in and tells me I can say a few little prayers in my bed, if praying is what I ordinarily do. The light of the day is still shining bright and strong. She is just about to hang a blanket over the curtain rail, to block it out, when she pauses.

‘Would you rather I left it?’

‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Yes.’

‘Are you afraid of the dark?’

I want to say I am afraid but am too afraid to say so.

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"‘Never mind,’ she says. ‘It doesn’t matter. You can use the toilet past our room but there’s a chamber pot there too, if you’d prefer.’

‘I’ll be alright,’ I say.

‘Is your mammy alright?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Your mammy. Is she alright?’

‘She used to get sick in the mornings but now she doesn’t.’

‘Why isn’t the hay in?’

‘She hasn’t enough to pay the man. She only just paid him for last year.’

‘God help her.