Foster

The woman takes me to the draper’s where she buys a packet of darning needles at a counter and four yards of oilcloth printed with yellow pears. Then we go upstairs where the clothing is kept. She picks out cotton dresses and some pants and trousers and a few tops and we go in behind a curtain so I can try them on.

‘Isn’t she tall?’ says the assistant.

‘We’re all tall,’ says the woman.

‘She’s the spit and image of her mammy. I can see it now,’ the assistant says, and then says the lilac dress is the best fit and the most flattering, and the woman agrees. She buys me a printed blouse, too, with short sleeves much like the one she wore the day I came, dark blue trousers, and a pair of black leather shoes with a little strap and a buckle on the front, some panties and white ankle socks. The girl hands her the docket, and she takes out her purse and pays for it all.

‘Well may you wear,’ the assistant says. ‘Isn’t your mammy good to you?’

Out in the street, the sun feels strong again, blinding. Some part of me wishes it would go away, that it would cloud over so I could see properly. We meet people the woman knows. Some of these people stare at me and ask who I am. One of them has a new baby in a pushchair. Mrs Kinsella bends down and coos and he slobbers a little and starts to cry.

‘He’s making strange,’ the mother says. ‘Pay no heed.’

We meet another woman with eyes like picks, who asks whose child I am, who I am belonging to? When she is told, she says, ‘Ah, isn’t she company for you all the same, God help you.’

Mrs Kinsella stiffens. ‘You must excuse me,’ she says, ‘but this man of mine is waiting and you know what these men are like.’

‘Like fecking bulls, they are,’ the woman says. ‘Haven’t an ounce of patience.’

‘God forgive me but if I ever run into that woman again it will be too soon,’ says Mrs Kinsella, when we have turned the corner.

We go to the butchers for rashers and sausages and a horseshoe of black pudding, to the chemist where she asks for Aunt Acid, and then on down to a little shop she calls the gift gallery where they sell cards and notepaper and pretty pieces of jewellery from a case of revolving shelves.

‘Isn’t your mammy’s birthday coming up shortly?’

‘Yes,’ I say, without being sure.

‘We’ll get a card for her, so.’

She tells me to choose, and I pick a card with a frightened-looking cat sitting in front of a bed of yellow dahlias.

‘Not long now till they’ll be back to school,’ says the woman behind the counter. ‘Isn’t it a great relief to have them off your back?’

‘This one is no trouble,’ Mrs Kinsella says, and pays for the card along with some sheets of notepaper and a packet of envelopes. ‘It’s only missing her I’ll be when she is gone.’

‘Humph,’ the woman says.

Before we go back to the car she lets me loose in a sweet shop. I take my time choosing, hand over the pound note and take back the change.

‘Didn’t you stretch it well,’ she says, when I come out.

Kinsella is parked in the shade, with the windows open, reading the newspaper.

‘Well?’ he says. ‘Did ye get sorted?’

‘Aye,’ she says.

‘Grand,’ he says.

I give him the Choc-ice and her the Flake and lie on the back seat eating the hard gums, careful not to choke as we cross over bumps in the road. I listen to the change rattling in my pocket, the wind rushing through the car and their talk, scraps of news being shared between them in the front.

When we turn into the yard, another car is parked outside the door. A woman is on the front step, pacing, with her arms crossed.

‘Isn’t that Harry Redmond’s girl?’

‘I don’t like the look of this,’ says Kinsella.

‘Oh, John,’ she says, rushing over. ‘I’m sorry to trouble you but didn’t our Michael pass away and there’s not a soul at home. They’re all out on the combines and won’t be back till God knows what hour and I’ve no way of getting word to them. We’re rightly stuck. Would you ever come down and give us a hand digging the grave?’

‘I don’t know that this’ll be any place for you but I can’t leave you here,’ the woman says, later that same day. ‘So get ready and we’ll go, in the name of God.’

I go upstairs and change into the new dress, the ankle socks and shoes.

‘Don’t you look nice,’ she says, when I come down. ‘John’s not always easy but he’s hardly ever wrong.’