Ladies and gentlemen, the letter of the day isM.Mis for massacre.
ThegoldendayswhenI believed in magic, luck, fairies, and dragons ended early in my life. One night changed everything. I had no choice but to grow the feck up, fast. Not only was nothing ever the same again, but it kept getting worse and worse and worse.
In my first five years on Earth, Mum and Da were so in love that when they were in the same room, even I, their wee baby, would blush my head off. But Da wasn’t around much because he worked in the docks, where he often got temporary jobs on ships that took him far away. Mum used to tell me he was her pirate and that one day he’d buy a ship and take us with him to sail around the world. My only concern at the time was if I would get seasick or what we would do to survive storms. Whata fucking idiot I was, waiting for our trip, craving for us to be together, dreaming of not having to miss him anymore while traveling through many oceans to different countries.
To make ends meet, Mum worked in a small gift shop in the touristy part of town, and in the offseason, she’d bring me with her to work. While she attended customers and organized the shop, I'd lay down on the carpeted floor behind the register, drawing and coloring. I thought I had made friends with her boss, Mrs. Burnette, since she gave me a candy every day. She was a thin old woman who always wore a loose bun and big thick eyeglasses. Her demeanor and clothes always gave me a vibe of an expensive elegance, as if she didn’t really need the shop; it was just something for her to do.
For my sixth birthday, Mrs. Burnette gave me the toy monkey with the red- and yellow-striped suit that wound up to play cymbals. I had been obsessed with it since the first day I visited the shop and thanked her many times for it. Even into the late night, I played with it as if it’d hypnotized me. I liked the noise of the cymbals, the colors on the clothes and investigated how it all worked. But months after when something went missing, she blamed and fired Mum. At the time, I didn’t understand why Mrs. Burnette had gotten so upset or why she was yelling at us.
“I’ve done nothing wrong. I swear!” Mum said.
“Take your all your stuff and your bastard out of my shop. After everything I’ve done for you.” She looked like an unrecognizable monster when angry. All her wrinkles deepened, her eyes bulged, and her eyebrows stiffened into these wrinkled dark lines curving inward. It scared me, and the yelling hurt my ears. I wanted things to go back to the way they’d been the day before, amicable and peaceful, so I did what any kid my age would do and cried for my mum while tugging at her skirt to get her attention.
My cousins explained she’d accused Mum of stealing and what that meant. It was a common theme in the town to accuse people like us, Irish Travellers, of crimes without any evidence, they’d explained. We were the usual suspects for anything gone bad. It was confusing because Mum was not a thief. I knew her to be the most beautiful person in the world.
Some days later, Mum returned with me to pick up her paycheck, but Mrs. Burnette spat in Mum’s face, and Mum slapped hers for it. It was too chaotic and loud for me. Again, Mrs. Brunette looked nothing like herself. I was scared she would hurt Mum and also missed the old her. The chaos signaled loss of control and danger to me. When I failed to get Mum’s attention, I hugged her leg. With all the yelling, I couldn’t even understand what they were saying. I wished to leave. So, I stepped between them while crying, “Mommy” and extending my arms for her to pick me up. Without even looking at me, Mum grabbed me. I hugged her, but their altercation got even louder, stabbing at my ear drums. I covered my ears, hoping to relieve the pain, but it didn’t work. As they continued arguing, Mrs. Burnette crowded us, slowly forcing Mum backward toward the door which opened outward.
Feeling unsafe, the fear kept mounting inside me. “Mum, let’s go home,” I whined, and wrapped my tiny arms around her neck, wishing they’d both stop being so angry. Once Mum’s back was up against the door, Mrs. Burnette pushed us out so hard that we fell not through the glass but with the door opening, Mum lost her footing. Since my face was over her shoulder looking away from the interior of the shop and Mrs. Burnette, my forehead collided with the ground outside. I remember seeing stars burst and a pain reverberated through my head like lightning. It wouldn’t stop hurting. Then a thick, warm liquid streamed down my temple and cheek. I tried wiping it away, only for the red to dirty my palm. What was that and why was my head hurting somuch? I was so confused as to why more and more kept coming out. “Mommy... I’m making a mess.” The more of it that dirtied my hands the more I worried. Mum didn’t like it when I spilled stuff over myself. That’s when all the yelling stopped. I snapped my gaze to Mrs. Burnette when she gasped. Her mouth formed an opened O. “Oh my God. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“Killian! Oh no. Killian... Are you okay?”
“Mommy... It hurts.” I placed my palm on my head, but it got drenched.
“I’ll call an ambulance,” said Mrs. Burnette as she turned and walked to the cashier.
The headache and sensation of the liquid pouring over me—my clothes, hands, and face—it all had me panicking but I wasn’t crying loudly. For the first time in my life, I cried silently, because releasing the tears somehow helped the throbbing headache. An exhaustion started taking over me and my eyes got heavier and heavier. The look of horror and panic on Mum’s face signaled how scared I should be. Everything started swerving. Like in the mornings when I would wake too tired to remember anything, confusion overwhelmed me.
“Don’t go to sleep baby...”
I woke in a hospital bed with twenty-four stitches and a headache that drummed with every heartbeat. Everytime I moved my head the world swirled and the people surrounding me with it, triggering my need to vomit. A steady stream of family came and left through the days I was there. The doctors only allowed me to go home when my dizziness went away and I promised I’d keep bedridden.
At the time, I didn’t realize my headaches wouldn’t be the worst of it. The worst part—Mrs. Burnette never gave Mum the paycheck. I learned the hard way what that meant. Days passed with me lying on the couch, doing nothing but watching TV, in and out of sleep, only getting up to grab snacks from the kitchen.
“Killian, stop eating everything so fast, we need to stretch the food out as much as possible… Roger’s wedding is soon… I’ll bring some extra food from that, but for now… try not to eat unless you’re super hungry,” Mum had warned, but I didn’t understand what she meant.
The food ran out quickly. Within weeks, I went from being oblivious, to my tummy hurting from hunger at night, to it hurting all day. I’d fall asleep early to avoid feeling the cramping of my stomach eating itself.
The situation only declined. With the hunger, the headaches intensified. The constant pain stopped me from being able to sleep. I lay in bed awake, waiting for some magic fairy to drop a snack under my pillow, even if it was just one biscuit. It pulled tears from me, but I didn’t want to worry Mum, so I tried my best to stay silent, to hide how awful it was for me. Then a terrible weakening sensation slipped into my body, making it heavier and impossible to return to my usual activities before the fall, like jumping, running outside, and dancing with Mum. I just wanted one more snack, yet no matter how many times I opened the fridge or the cabinets, they stayed empty. It didn’t take long before my pants started falling from my hips.
No magic existed to save me from one missing paycheck. No fairy appeared for me to wish the poverty away. I’d always known we were poor because I only wore my cousins’ hand-me-downs, we always struggled to pay the rent, and in the cold winter nights, Mum would roll out my mattress in the kitchen so the open oven could keep me warm. Despite all that, this was the first time I experienced the pain of poverty down to my bones. Every night, I prayed Da would walk in with food in his hands, and every morning, I would be shocked to find just Mum and I alone in our home.
Mum tried hard to stretch every piece of food so I’d have some for the next meal. I also noticed she’d only eat two bites and giveme the rest of what she’d put together for dinner. That’s why I never complained. I knew she was doing her best, searching for another job, borrowing money from family, and counting the hours for Da’s return. The situation really scared me when one early morning, I was lying half asleep on the couch, Mum kissed my forehead where it wasn’t band aid and whispered, “I’ll be back soon, baby. I’m going to the foodbank to see if they’ll give us something, anything.”
A few hours later she came back home. The grim look on her face stopped my breathing and hurt my heart. I’d never seen Mum so pale and with tearful eyes. Instead of asking her if they’d refused us, I raised my arms and she rushed to me. She needed the hug even more than I did. While hugging, Mum’s tears wet my face. “What are we going to do, Mum? Why not tell Nana that we need food?”
“No. It’s okay. Umm... I’ll take you to Nana’s and you can eat there. You’ll be fine.”
“But what about you, Mommy?”
Mum’s side of the family was big, but Da didn’t like her asking them for help. A few times before this, I heard her telling Da, “Pride doesn’t fill your son’s stomach, you know?”
Even at my age, I knew everyone had their own problems. Aunt Gloria could talk to Mum for four hours straight about all of hers, and when Mum would get together with her other sisters, Mary and March, they would talk about what was happening with everyone else for even longer. I’d sometimes eavesdrop on the conversations and try to solve the riddle of their situations in my head but failed.
There was also some rift between Mum and the elders that took me a while to notice. “Why do the elders look at Mum like that?” I asked Cousin Delaney days after the food bank rejected us as Mum stormed out of Grandpa’s house. Cousin Delaney wasalmost a teen, so I knew she’d understand what I was talking about.
“Oh, it’s ’cause he didn’t like your mum getting together with your da. She disobeyed them. My mum said it’s not okay for yours to be asking for help when everybody warned her.”
“So, they’re not gonna help us?” I asked.
