Kathleen
To you, on vellum
Step it out Mary
If it were silent, it would twist your head right off your shoulders. The aural chaos dulls the visual senses as you decipher the stock conversations from the vocal hiccups caused by sheer excitement. You wade through the crowds in search of the white thatched cottage on wheels. Micro in construction but not in personality. Across its façade is The Rambling House in large green font. I see it, I see it, hurry!
It’s a landmark of the fair, as good as any signpost or audio announcement. To its left is a plywood dance floor, boarded off with a low fence from which to spectate. Blending in with the crowd is the assembled patchwork of musicians. There’s clear panic on the floor as the band begin to warm up, starting up like courting robins in spring. With the rise in tempo so does her heart beat, beating to the drum of the wishing song. The room spins while her hands fade from rose to cream, gripping on for dear life. It’s a thrill being on the edge of two worlds, cheeks aching. Y’up to the bridge, it’s a build up the tingle in your collarbone of sheer excitement. Bouncing, about to crack maybe, or even spring them up into the air. Their feet now drumming on the water balloons in the sky.
On the cusp of the end.
They descend with a crash on the final beat, sweating and feeling better. Almost free. I wondered if they were hammering the devil back to hell or knocking on his door, asking for more of his water to fill their cups.
The cigarette hung anchored between the tightened lips of Kathleen’s smile as she half sat on Michael’s lap for the photo. The picture depicts two people I spent my early childhood in close proximity to, and I would have said I knew them well before seeing this photo. Odd flints of the captured Kathleen shine through but she has never been fully refurbished. Kathleen had a fracture in her façade, eroding to a gaping hole. She was, and in many aspects still is, an ungoverned energy.
The flash of the bulb, a sensor, an intruder, the camera never lies, does it?
It’s coursing through us. Maybe that’s why I can’t not believe, why I can’t refuse suspicion or ill feelings. I am most permeable to spiritual temperatures. I wonder what secrets she keeps and whether it will ever be the right time to ask. Would she laugh at me or finally reveal all? She’s different from the women I read of. You know, the Irish female in despair. Helpless, second class, second best, a provider to many, receiving nothing in return. Maybe she is a woman before her time, held back by the traditional anachronisms of the country she resides in. Was she unconsciously coerced, knowing no different, contradictions at every turn? Is she my guardian angel, my protector, or worse still, a temptress of the clouds?
These are thoughts that pass through my mind every time I think about Kathleen. And I ask you, is it okay to never know the answer? Regardless of age or experience there is always hope, always imagination and with this I would like to introduce you to the wishing song. The wishing song does not consist of a tune, lyrics set in stone or as many would argue, in existence at all. It is a tune which takes the mold of the moment, of the emotion of its maker and can have good intentions or bad. The following story of Kathleen would be, by no means considered a wishing song, if you were to ask me. Mainly because I wouldn’t wish the following on anyone but also due to the complication of Kathleen’s nature. She requires time and the space in your head that you might access on a Sunday. To daydream and imagine what the answers may be. She’s hard to figure out, I’ll give you that. You’d question her sanity, as often as I question my own.
You see, I observe Kathleen within the white cube of the gallery space, isolated, narrowing the senses to see her.
Oh Kathleen, what is troubling you?
Untitled
5ft x 3ft x 2ft 1936
The life of Kathleen, as I see it.
Dirty Old Town
She rests on a bale of hay.
She is nauseous.
The yeast rising from the Dirty Old Town doesn’t agree. It is leaking you see, from one essence to another, flowing from diviner to witch, from human to creature. It is the boundary breaker, the final push. It is the dismantling of routine, of lives, of division from the outside and in. She gets to work looking after the babes she fosters. I can’t even imagine the little bump.
Scrub me now; my hood to blood, my love.
Her body is polluted. Not with her child, but with clarity. The open body, liminal in space loses control over boundaries. The outdoors and indoors amalgamate. “The door is always open,” she says as the grass creeps its way up the concrete steps. Flooding in the doorway it runs loose about the house, an uncontrollable carpet. It tickled my feet as I drank my Ovaltine after school.
Oh, how reliable you are, old friend; and you like dancing too? Oh how wonderful! Yes don’t worry I’ll fix it all, there’ll be no more yellow raggies about turning our lovely friends copper from the inside out.
The babe within knows not of the walking babe but of the blackcurrant jam she eats. It bubbles, boiling. Larger than life bags of sugar, Our Own Sugar. All potted as presents to herself, a pleasant surprise to find more in the press, more jam, more blackcurrant jam.
antiviral
antitoxic
antiseptic
anticancer
Purified by the fires of the maternal; through the open breast she shares herself even more, the witches’ milk, sharing her fears and anxieties.
I see it from the brow of the hill. Its tall neck with a yellow umbrella. It shouts at me, “Sorry, I would have called but…”
It is an oblation, an abdication for the lovelies, the darlings. The sweet venom from the rag is seductive, a safety blanket so toasty you remain in an alternative state of consciousness. You’re golden like its tone now, copper piping for veins, your heart of harps.
SNAP SNAP CRACK CRACK
Y’up again, we have to go, come on now for God’s sake, just get in the car!
She watches the cow give birth on a small T.V. in the apprentice’s room. CCTV of a miracle. She doesn’t struggle nor does she go to comfort her. There is a line between her and the animal. Once the calf is born, she is down snatching it from the mother.
Snatch Snatch Snatch all spring.
Spring forward into a step, no stumbling now, keep up, keep up.
To divide and conquer, isn’t it? Conquer nature, conquer natural maternal instincts. She lets the calf’s sandpaper tongue suck on her middle fingers until raw, bound only by the foaming spit on removal. The empty spirit latches to the closest maternal being by the rubber teat. The keening mother and the banshee’s scream soon forget her babe, her body a mere servant. Removing the portals, the outdoors come in before the evening cleanse upon which the divide shifts and the separation of the doors is restored. She becomes the anti-mother, the separator of beings, of ideas and facts. She is the goddess bound to the diviner and entwined in the need for control. Just because this is normal doesn’t mean its natural. Their night time cries that leak in my bedroom window is verification.
Her skin is becoming thin on her shoulders, weighed down by the tugging of land, of babe, both animal and human. Yes, it’s true her copper veins shine through, slowly gaining their green sleeves after the doors are re-hinged and her white washed skin is restored. This fence won’t do, it is called The Rambling House for a reason and she is in heat. Eat it quick, the ragwort, before they do. What an awful shame if they got sick.
“Your land is filthy. How did you let that happen?”
It’s everywhere, it seeds and flies. My back is banjaxed from that sprayer. It is a surrendering of the self in every aspect, inside and out. Rest, a day of rest but only a minute on the couch waiting for dinner. Life carries on, nature doesn’t wait, who’s your favorite mam? it’s me, isn’t it? You’ve served your purpose, but you still tune in to channel one; she’s doing great. This is the lifestyle that she is passing on to the next; how dare you say you’re not interested. He will love you for it. He told me.
Motherhood Motherlove
Motherblood
The carcass of a crow hangs by the feet and sways in the wind tunnel the shed provides.
It is a method of defense, a warning.
The carcass acts as a house alarm, warding off surviving crows. Like many burglars, the crows quickly realise the defenses flaws, all smoke and mirrors you could say, and they never forget a face.
Sheela Na Gigs and the hanging carcass share foreboding purposes. A Sheela is a stone monument which is largely associated with the Catholic Church. Ireland has the highest population of the monuments in the world. Sheela has her lady bits on full display and is the bouncer between our world and theirs. She keeps out the demons and bad spirits which is fair enough, they’ll only ruin the innocent craic we’re all having anyway.
The Sheela’s gaping genitals were said to be the fruit of an unbelievable misogyny and were to be visual representations of the church’s teachings. Their appearance varies from rib showing hags to busty long haired goddesses (temptation comes in all forms, shapes and sizes, I guess).
To fear women? (maybe) or sex? (probably).
Found in the gaping holes of the countryside you stumble upon them, vulnerable and alone.
Ah God Help You Gossin.
Upon the Hill of Tara from the dome left behind by her first born, grew a nettle that called for its family nearby. The new inhabitants uprooted the stone base of the Sheela and thus Kathleen was born. Her stone legs grew long as she trekked down the river to the patch where she settled with the diviner. Under the protection of Patrick, the rest of the offspring were sent to the Hill under its protective arch and spiritual stone borders now infiltrated with Catholic associations. Patrick was plucked from his mother’s teat and left at the Hill for safety. Dressed in white, Patrick was blessed with the Ghost, the Holy Spirit and the divine powers of his parents, part diviner part witch. Next to the High Kings, The River Boyne and the burial sites he would remain safe from harm thereafter. Growing older, Patrick and his siblings remained under the watchful eye of the Churches’ brothers and sisters upon the hollow ground.
Motherhood . Love . Blood
She is what I believe to be a real-life Sheela, Kathleen doesn’t suit her at all really.
Equally loyal to the church as herself she bore five children and reared none, achieving but a business relationship with her eldest son.
She is the matriarchy at the head of the table but feeding the men before herself.
I call her Misses
Madam and The Dowager.
A verbal deviant.
Today, Kathleen’s lips are thin, blending into her cupid’s bow, nearly unnoticeable. The desert skin is tacked together till the opportunity arises to air her sharpened tongue. Flaring from the cream envelope, it leaves its mark. She no longer smiles to tighten her lips but enforces their closure.
An impenetrable stone.
Expressed milk
Expressed milk from a rubber teat
Expressed milk from a rubber teat as she fell she fell to her knees she fell to her knees and wiped
wiped the sweat from her brow, a waxy texture
She fell to her knees as her left side began to slide
her left side began to slide
It was lemon yellow, the top she was wearing that day. Cut off under the rib by a tight band of elastic from the waterproof trousers, distorting her body’s proportions. Her hands shielded by blue latex, she lugged white buckets of milk. The never-ending journey to the babes.
It’s an infectious noise they make, like sucking spit through your front teeth.
Banishing her Evil Left, He was calling her. He was calling her through the rubber teats, through the astronomical vagina of the Sheela, but she’s always been so stubborn. The light became more blinding, pulling the visor down in Dot’s car. Unrecognisable without her Evil Left, I stood confused witnessing a dying medusa through a crack in the hospital door. It was a balancing of the equilibrium, of the duality of life. I would never have described Kathleen as balanced; but definitely not unbalanced. Physically, without her Evil Left she leans, slouching in the chair as the sheep hide fails her. It becomes weak as her Right becomes stronger. Time is passing, nothing waits, we are progressing. Balanced to me is symmetry, of an even scale, but Kathleen fluctuates in this sector, jumping from one position to the other with confidence that would assure you it wouldn’t change again. He took her Evil Left to give her the purity of her Right, to give her rest, to remove the darkness of night. This is what she prayed for, for purity and forgiveness.
Who knew wishing songs came true?
We brought her down the country to a healer, the cure of a different kind. The overgrown trees on the laneway to the cottage were darned with pendants, bows and wishes. The Angelus is quickly silenced as the engine is turned off.
DONATIONS ONLY the box at the door stated.
Kathleen, knowing all too well how things work, scrawled ink onto the cheque book leaf and slipped it into the box. The rest of the immediate family were to go into the back room where an old woman in a cinematic setting requested family members to pray. We kneeled on the cushioned pews arranged in the center of the room, facing the fireplace and surrounded by display cabinets full of religious memorabilia. The small window to our right, let little light through the lace curtain which streamed onto the floor. For a moment we could hear nothing but the natter of other hopefuls in search of a cure outside the house, when suddenly, with her eyes closed the old woman began the prayers. We were there for quite a while. So long in fact that the line of hopefuls began to diminish, and my stomach droned in accompaniment to the prayers.
“Sín an sceal,” the woman says, and that’s it.
Out wheels Kathleen as if leaving a regular check-up.
She won’t reveal what happened between her and the healer but sometimes I feel an exorcism would have been more beneficial.
Do any of us believe?
I have my doubts about Kathleen. I witnessed the dip in her faith with my own ears and with the same breath was called a heathen for not partaking in the weekly practice.
What was she expecting? Was she expecting anything? It worked you see, in a strange way that her facial droop was restored. Back in fighting form. She doesn’t need physical ability in her left side to scold anyone.
“Why did he do this to me?” she asked.
Perched on top of a cushion on her new mobility chair.
Not a time for humor, Not a time for laughs.
We didn’t discuss her disability at length by any means, mainly because at that time her speech was largely affected but also so as not to dig a hole for myself, aware she would bury me in it.
As time went on alterations were made to her surroundings. Her artifacts hung at her concluding eye level, an exhibition of her in objects. The house was now re-constructed specially for her.
The house which she would argue was hers prior.
Moon dance at Twelve
The single-story house is a frontier. Facing the road, it acts as the perfect shelter for what lies beneath. Acting as the watchtower, the driveway slopes into her dowry buried in the trenches of the landscape. Its proximity to the main road exudes confidence, an open book. However, this illusion is quickly materialised by the false front door that greets foreign visitors. Its white walls chewed in sections by the teething plants at its base. Its insides are skewed, down its throat and into its stomach. The floors are slanted, pictures tilting accordingly. So much so it is a wonder as to what her idea was with an upright bullock or a floor facing goose, complete with a bonnet. There are scratches on all of the door frames as if a wild animal with teeth on either side of its body was passing through. Some unnecessary steps leading to solid brick walls and a table with a glass top which is always out of sorts. The lino doesn’t fit the floor and the place is generally dirty with flies swarming in from the yard.
It’s wrong, it is not how it is supposed to be. What if someone comes to visit? Yes, her home has quirks, but it is not in the dismay which is depicted. However, from the singular position of the active space, I can see how things accumulate in her mind. They build up from a tickle, to an itch that can’t be scratched,
“come over here now, will you? I’ve been asking for this to be done for days and it’s still not done, it’s driving mad, absolutely mad, and that cleaner is awful at her job, she’s just awful.”
We may assume that true religion, true ethical sense, enables the human spirit and directs it toward something higher, affords comfort in adversity and will reduce the danger of insanity. Does her true religion really make her exempt from mental adversities? If that was the case, would she fish for information in my mouth? Would she sit me down with tea and scones to gently wedge open my tightened jaw only to pull my tongue across the table to look into the dangling crystal ball at the back of my throat. Would she see that it is not as she sees it?
What differs from the existent will strike the existent as witchcraft.
Nothing but the Ticking of Gerry’s Clock
As the weeks passed, she sat in front of the window bathing in the sun. She didn’t know she was budding, a magical adolescence in the final chapter. From both sides of her ribcage grew a shoot. Usually this would be dealt with. Burned off before it rooted to the bone. It was out of control and grown before we noticed it. Maybe she would have been easier to deal with if we had kept an eye for such things. The sprouts grew towards the sun, spreading. Rooted infecting her vacant Left, down her spine sprouting twins from her under thigh. As they grew, she became elevated from the cushion of the sitting room armchair, her white hair dusting the ceiling. Things were changing, she was growing out of the clothes, out of the house, out of the body she’s inhabited for so long.
That’s just the way she is, the way she always was, coming to light.
I think about the ragwort seeding in her fertile stomach for all those years. Lying dormant only to be woken with a bucket of ice cold water tapped into her copper veins, bursting through her skin in search for air.
In black and white oils is a cropped depiction of Gustave Caillebotte’s Interior; Woman at the Window. She did a fairly good job of it to be fair, hence my tone of disbelief.
The portrait of a woman looking out of the window was the only remaining aspect of the Caillebotte. The female character in the painting is said not be of any major significance in the painting and is to represent a mistress of Caillebotte. In a strange coincidence, you can find Kathleen in a similar posture, fossilised hand to the kitchen windowsill as she spectates and critiques the movements of her dowry. There was a bitter truth in her inability to do nothing about what was out of her control, much like her relationship to Him after the escape of her Left side. I say escape as I imagine the female figure in the painting leaping from the Parisian balcony to flog the future endorsing public below.
Kathleen granted the mistress life, reinventing her position within the Caillebotte. Allowing her to fulfil her potential in the frame, whilst depicting her own reality. The mistress is centre stage; no longer a mistress but the dowager; possibly even a spinster by choice. Change is happening and we don’t like change why try to reinvent the wheel? if it’s not broke don’t fix it. She is beside herself, so proud of the change she has made for the poor mistress but not for herself. It is the witch as artist, gaining autonomy in a new frontier. The Parisian silhouette is a wish, a dream, a memory. This dark other shares the boundary of the house, never leaving but for exhibition, a day out, to a garden centre, maybe. It hangs above the corridor radiator, next to her Sunday coat and an aerial photo of her kingdom. Her response to losing control was a side effect which wasn’t considered.
It was easier now but also with new difficulties. Sudden, unexpected and unconsciously desired. Reflected in Kathleen’s eyes are the snapping spines of change and an over-ruling on her part. She is nuanced in her approach, no longer anti-kingdom she is the Queen, protector of her own. She no longer defies the capitalist constructs but cashes in on her maternal connection to the fruits of the land. She places herself on the ladder not for herself but for her daughters, granddaughters and sister alike.
She’s face-down on the kitchen table when I see her.
I hold my breath.
Both arms hanging from her shoulders as the dead crow hung in the shed. Nose flattened by the pressure and embossed with newspaper ink, she rose. With a release of breath, I smiled and laughed.
“Did you think I was dead, did you?
You auld bowsey laughing at me.”
For a moment, yes, I did, and it was terrifying. Did she make it all the way there? Was she now in purgatory? God forbid, surely. It was not a release of genuine laughter that came from me at that moment but of disbelief. Of course, she’s not dead, she’ll never die. She will forever haunt and whisper to her darlings, swing the carcass of the crow on the stillest of days and keep the devil busy when The Rambling House arrives in town. She will assure a generation of women who will dismantle the ladder and rebuild their own. They will have rooms of mirrors to see her in. A tight ship we will run in honour of the diviner and the witch.
Weile Weile Waila
At the kitchen table Kathleen leans her elbow into the pressure point of her arm. Rising her protracting claws, she supports her head. Her hand clamps her jaw tightly, her claws tuck themselves into the folds of her skin, say goodnight. Turning comfortably towards the corner of her mouth, her eye now exposed. It is in their dreams that the phone calls with a hope to communicate with others, others like her…
“Sure, we’re all the same,” she would say with confidence and a dash of disregard. Knowing they are sharing a boat but not knowing who can row who can get them to the island where the armistice is not a temporary period but the final destination for flourishing beings.
I’m teaching her to play solitaire on her Dell laptop when chatter from the kitchen radio catches my ear. The prosecution of a man from Tipperary who is said to have sold a Sheela Na Gig on the black market.
I have an image in my head of a man running through hilly Irish fields in the wind and rain in an aged eighties jumper and jeans with the small stone figure tucked under his arm like a rugby ball. Her face is covered by the hideous jumper, its cavernous vagina sticking out the back like a flag.
She looked at my confusion and began to laugh, maybe she had a similar image in her head.
Turns out you can get a fair penny for a Sheela on the black market but look at us being sold as a material once again.
I wished he was from a family of boys who received their inheritance but couldn’t find women to bare their heirs. For him to be shut down with Tuberculosis and put on the farming blacklist. To be messing with the dark spirits and for Sheela to call in sick that day or to be so protected by Sheela that he wished his placid mother was still alive.
His face archived by the remaining eye of the swinging carcass.
Have you had relations with the devil?
I think she had.
I think the doctor she was so loyal to for all those years was the devil. He was the man who injected my upper arm as a toy gorilla screamed at me from the opposite side of the room. I think it was supposed to be a distraction but only added to the stress of the situation. It was He who pressed down on my broken rib before sending me home with muscle pain and a physio appointment. He said he would be with her till the end of her days. She liked that, the reassurance. The exit of her Evil Left meant the exit of him also, not keeping his word he retired.
She recalls to me in a reminiscent moment upon the arrival of the news.
“I remember being in the small waiting room with ye as kids, in for one of those check-ups they do, and old Mrs. Kelly, little frail old woman she was at the time was small sitting in the little chairs and in he came through the glass door and picked up Mrs. Kelly and put her over his shoulder like a sack of spuds. Right, now Mrs. Kelly he says leaving the room and all I could see was her smiling gummy mouth as the door closed behind them… well I didn’t know where to look.”
She now complains that she can’t get a house call from the doctor, used to the service He provided. “They don’t do that anymore,” I say to her but sure in one ear and out the other.
The Buggers in the Depo Didn’t Know the Tune
A new face is getting his five minutes of fame on the nine o’clock news. The conditions are twisting his face as his eyes tunnel through the T.V screen.
Are you watching mammy?
“Gardaí acted on information from a psychic diviner in search for Bobby Ryan. Garda Kieran Keane told Lorcan Staines SC, for the defence, that Gardaí sent the sub aqua unit to Ardmore, Co. Waterford after a water diviner said the body would be found there. He said his understanding was that the diviner uses ‘psychic powers’ using two rods over a map. He told prosecution counsel, David Humphries BL, that he did not believe Gardaí went looking for the diviner but that they came into possession of the information.”
They didn’t go looking for the diviner?
Down with the hammer and so the crack of Kathleen’s tongue off of the concrete floor of the dairy.
“Ah yeah, he’s there alright.”
What do we do when our system fails us? When the doctor decides to retire, and God takes your Evil Left? When your neck begins to stretch, and trees grow from your bones. Who is really in control?
This life is no longer discursive in its totality. It is the clarity of the subconscious which defines us. You hear of body’s tempo, your body clock, your maternal metronome.
“Jesus I wouldn’t go telling her that anyway,” said the farm advisor to the diviner after disclosing the news of the Ryan case at the bottom of a jar.
Kathleen feeds him raw mints to attract the flies whose spawn will surely devour the hex from within.
“Maybe I should take him for the cu--.”
I’m writing this on vellum
We are in the conversation seat; women’s aisle, second row to the back under the stained-glass window and by the holy water feature of wall condensation.
“Jesus! He’s after shooting up, isn’t he? That’s Kay’s son, you know Kay? She was the woman in the yellow car when I used to collect you from the school below.”
Ignoring the conveyor belt of information beside me, I see the diviner slip in the side door of the men’s aisle. He’s grey toned and trembling more than usual as he slips into the closest pew.
Jesus Christ she has that man tortured.
We only have our arses back on the seats after opening the portal to Jesus himself when the whispering starts, and like clockwork my head is fired backward by the tug of my ponytail. This is healing. As the water was poured over me as a babe, so do the droplets from the ceiling splat against my heaven facing forehead…
Why do I always end up in this position?
It was The Three Women.
They have not achieved clarity, although one could be fooled by the thickness of their lens. Stripped from a young age of their character, The Three Women know not of themselves entirely. Dulling one temptation with another. You are God’s reflection echoes through the church and burrows into my bones. I wonder did they hear it? Or are they after finding out the diviner’s involvement in the Ryan case from their gulps of my cerebral fluid. As their ladle tongues exit my ears I am released from their hold into the freedom of my own body.
One thing I am certain of, is that The Three Women and Kathleen were cut from the same cloth. The undeniable feature of their wrinkled necks is evidential. Stretched from travelling from house to house, mouth to ear to mouth. They have an amazing ability to be in full conversation yet appear totally angelic from the altar. An ability to discuss the weekly digest of news and gossip without moving their jaws, imagine that? The only noise being the Morse code rattling of their rosary beads. They come to be forgiven for their sins in the cyclical nature of the weekly mass. They are forgiven as quickly as they sin, and from what I’ve seen, sometimes simultaneously.
So, what are they here for? To be healed? To be healed is to get better, to assume you were sick to begin with. What if you’re not sick but are told you need to be healed. What are we healing then?
“I’ll light a candle for you.”
“Say a prayer for me.”
“You heathen.”
We’re at its mercy. This is the hen befriending the fox, only for the fox to turn slowly with a silent creep towards the hutch. It holds not just the cure but the poison Spray it, kill it, purify it now; bless us and save us.
Kathleen is at the rear of the watchtower, tending to the grave of recent loss. She reaches towards the ground from the chair with jarring instability. With a deep breath her neck extends, stretching the folds in her skin protruding like a threatened goose. Her thin lips crack open as her forked tongue rolls out in a red carpet fashion, the grass dancing to her whispers. Growing under her wishing song, green blades darn its way up the legs of her chair. Her tongue, the instrument echoes as her neck stretches above the evergreen hedging. A crow’s eye view of the river, the babes and nests spotting the shed roofs. Balancing her weight, the grass sways the chair from side to side as warm rain fell. It is her friend. A support she capitalises on. Above all which surrounds her, she counts her gold.
Her tongue drifts down the grass platform tickling the roots in ragtime. Time for me to go inside now darlings, onto the text job, the next the next and then, and then…
Slowly returning to earth she brings the angel thoughts with her, it’s almost time.
We stand around them yearly, usually in the height of summer. We are equipped with waterproof gear that extends to the floor, brushing the polished granite at our feet. We have stools and make sure we’re all well fed before leaving the house. It’s always long, longer than it needs to be.
The Blessings.
The Blessings are an act of healing. More effective on the living than the dead, its purpose is to pray for those in purgatory. The mention of purgatory makes me giggle as ‘The Seven Roots of Sinfulness,’ only increases my enticement by Kathleen. The souls of the faithful departed are wholly responsible for the mid-summer torrential rain on the same day year after year. Maybe they are suffering, crying down upon us making my heart blue in grief, it’s contagious.
Complete with mic and hi-tech sound system The Three Women lead the rosary; no gossiping now, this is serious business. Annnnd they’re off--
“Hailmaryfullofgracethelordiswiththee.Blessedartthouam ongstwomenandblessedisthefruitofthywombjesus.”
That God does not grant you a proper end
Stay a While is engraved into the diviner’s stone, but this is a chore. At the halfway house the living and the dead are equally displaced, torn between one world and the next. Escaping to The Rambling House for momentary freedom, a snap of a cigarette for a laugh, to wish that god would save you. It is a vocation of a different kind twisting the mind and body with a focus on purity. Purify your soul, your maternal being and your laneways of ragwort. This is your duty, your employment, your short straw. It is what you make of it. Make of it, make with it, make through it, make dinner, make cakes, makes dresses and drapes, be the depiction of feminine if the rural conditions will let you. Your perm is now electrified standing on your head, your face chilled to a waxy cream, your blue eyes crying in the rain. You, you there, your place is in the home where are you off to at this hour? To the crying room, so casual, does your church not have one? Stay a while till you’re red in the face scratching at the door. “How’s her temperament? Will she bite?”
Yes, she will, but you won’t know you’ve been bitten till the dead of night when you’re staring at your naked ceiling studying the scene. What did she mean by that? Stay a while to understand the changes she made and her reasons for doing so. Listen to her wishing song to see she is not hopeless or in despair but a modern-day amazon. She is defiant, split in half she becomes what she is afraid of and exceeds its position. An impressive specimen to be feared and respected. Timeless in her growth her adjoining arms and legs seed. They float in my bedroom window and germinate in my mouth. This is conflicting, contradictions at every turn, but I want you to hear it, the life of Kathleen as I see it.
Special thanks to Laura Edbrook, Alice Bain and Colin Herd for their patience, feedback and the immense time they donated to editing throughout the project. To my peers in the inaugural year of the Mlitt Art Writing course for their knowledge, inspiration, support and friendship.