‘Inbox: 6’ by Doireann Ní Ghríofa

Subject: two
On 25 Jun 2015, at 23.42 <ashoneill1985@gmail.com> wrote:

It’s 11:15 Mam, and as usual there’s nothing on except reruns and repeats. I was just sitting here, flicking from channel to channel while my work played in a loop from the laptop on my knee. I lingered on a replay of that documentary where the old Minister for Finance speaks about the collapse, his face all yellow with exhaustion and disease. You always liked him, didn’t you? Called him noble, a gentleman. I wanted to ring you as soon as I saw him, tell you to turn on your telly. He was talking about going to Brussels as everything fell apart, about finding himself alone at the airport and looking at the snow gradually thawing and thinking to myself: this is terrible. That phrase kept repeating itself to me until I typed it out, and then I knew I needed to send it to you. An email will have to do. I couldn’t keep watching his pained face so I came back to this screen, to my last editing assignment, footage of the aftermath of 1916. It’s sort of addictive, seeing all these familiar streets looking so different, all the gutted buildings and charred rubble. I pause, zoom in on a barricade, one of those clots of debris that coagulate like scabs on the old cobbles. In it, I can make out the edge of a wrought iron bedhead, a hatstand, and a table that might have stood for decades in some maiden aunt’s drawing room. Behind the barricade, shadows huddle, guns hoisted.

I’m distracted, as usual, doing three things at once – emailing this to you while glancing between these two screens, from the Minister’s face to the shattered black-and-white windows of Liberty Hall. On Sackville Street, a wall falls and a scrawny carthorse staggers under broken wood salvaged from a barricade. Blinkers, Mam. Blinkers. I watch the wall falling, rewind it until it’s intact, then let it fall again. A huddle of long-dead bystanders stand nearby, hands on hips, watching the wall tremble, then crumble at their feet, over and over. My eye remains on the destroyed city, but my mind lingers on that man – broken, ill, alone, waiting to be lifted into the sky.

I think-talk to you all the time but this is the first time I’ve written to you. I must be really losing it. They say that can happen after a baby, don’t they? Depression, delusions … it’s all the same, I suppose. Madwoman syndrome. No shortage of that in our gene pool. Haha.

Subject: only me again
On 31 Jun 2015, at 22.12 <ashoneill1985@gmail.com> wrote:

I’ve ripped through most of what you left me already. I’m flittering away my days in this flat, while your life savings drip away month by month, on rent, supermarket deliveries, bills, takeaways … I’ve spent it on running this cocoon suspended high over the city so I can mope and fuck around on the internet and continue to work on a project I’m not even being paid for. Are you ashamed of me? Are you mortified? I’m a mess. I am. I know if you were here you’d say Everything will be grand, but I’ve made such a mess of things this time, I don’t even know where to begin.

Start at the start they say, so… here’s your only daughter, sitting in a dark flat, lit only by the constant loop of the past on a laptop. I still feel like I’m just a daughter, I don’t feel grown up enough to be anyone’s mother. At your removal, all your friends – Jacinta and Annie, Marian, even Sheila! (I know, she has some cheek to show up after what she did) – they all lined up in the funeral home to grip me by the elbow, hissing that it was Terrible sad, that She’ll be missed, that She was so proud of you, Ashling. I knew that, you always told me after a few drinks, all slobbery kisses and hugs and best daughter ever ever. You hid it well enough though, always nagging and bitching at me until I escaped the dole queue to scraps of freelance work and this tiny flat. It wasn’t much of a jump really and you made sure I never forgot that – no security, no safety net – but I knew you were secretly proud. I knew. Once you left, though, there was no one to make proud anymore. So maybe this mess is actually all your fault for leaving me.

The first time I viewed this flat, it was filled with August sunshine and the river below gleamed blue and free. Chic city living, the estate agent said. Now the river is a slow, murky sludge, hauling itself under the same bridges day after day. Remember how you called my flat The Tenement and mimed holding your nose whenever you visited? If I could go back, maybe I’d slap you for all the times you insulted me. You always knew how to wind me up, didn’t you? Oh, Mam.

Subject: confessions
On 19 Jul 2015, at 01.42 <ashoneill1985@gmail.com> wrote:

Plural. Five of them. May as well be honest now that you’re gone. So, my confessions:

1. I got fired. It was my own fault, I should’ve kept my mouth shut.

2. I shouldn’t be wasting my days tinkering with edits, polishing dissolves between scenes that will never be used. I don’t know why I keep working. I miss the job more than I thought I would, and it’s not just the small things that I miss – the banter, Friday drinks, the copper jangle of change in my pocket. I miss the person I was in the office. I’m starting to think that’s what being grown up is all about, an awful combination of blurting out words you can’t take back and then longing for all the lost things you can never get back.

3. I slept with my boss. Once, puking up my hangover in a toilet cubicle, I overheard the part-time receptionist call me brazen. Bitch. She said I only got away with my carry-on because John, the boss, liked my face almost as much as he liked my arse. What a cow. Still, she was sort of right, I did go off the rails a bit after the funeral … nothing too serious, just some pills, some wilder nights than usual, but it’s true that you wouldn’t have been proud of me or my carry-on at work. In fact, you would have probably agreed with that bitch in the bathroom and you could have both torn strips off me together. So yeah, I went a bit crazy for a while, but I still did my work well. On my last project, Women of 1916, footage was so scarce that I had to focus on fading jumpy scraps of old newsreels into photos of female Volunteers, that sort of thing. John said he appreciated my instinct for timing, and then, with a slow wink – when to cut, and when to move on. He was pretty much as you’d imagine Mam, a bit of a prick, married, paunchy, closer to your age than mine, but still with enough swagger for a quickie every couple of weeks. I don’t really know why I liked him, it was something about the way he looked at me, like a bag of chips at 2 a.m. He called an emergency meeting a fortnight after our team had begun working on Women of 1916 and just before he binned the whole idea, he went over the group’s work one by one. I’d only done a little bit of the work at that stage but he still praised my edits, especially one shot, dissolving a photo of a woman’s face into stock footage of a street scene that showed a stout lady with a big black pram bumping over broken cobbles. He had this way of stroking his chin when he spoke,

‘Ah, good old Cathleen Ní Houlihan striding into modern Ireland, with what was  probably a pram full of looted spuds, hmmm?’

The others laughed but my smile turned sharp and my hands tightened into fists under the table.

‘Listen, we need to change our angle. Focusing on the women approach feels … stale. It’s boring. We need to liven it up and focus more on the action, you know? Let’s cut what we’ve done so far and perk things up …’

Everyone nodded, shrugged, hummed agreement. I don’t know why I felt so angry, it wasn’t like I wouldn’t be paid for my hours on the edits I’d already done.

‘It’s not boring, John, the women’s experience of the revolution is so different from what’s taught at school.’

‘Don’t be daft, we can get a much more exciting angle.’

‘Ah John, think of what they gave, carrying the next generation onwards. And think of all they lost, all their partners killed, and all those lost pregnancies from the trauma of the Rising. It’s what you always say John, a story that hasn’t been told.’

‘No, no, the doomed romance angle, tearjerker, babies, it’s so … corny.’

He mimed a yawn (told you he was a prick) and turned back to the group.

‘Anyway, fine, fine, objection noted from Miss O’Neill. Anyone else?’

I cleared my throat, shook my head. I couldn’t let it go. I wish I could go back and slap myself, shut myself up, there had been talk of letting people go for weeks.  I can hardly type this without cringing, Mam – 

‘John. Come on. We can make something of this.’

I felt myself redden as those words left my mouth. When everyone stared at me, I understood that they all knew about us. John just raised an eyebrow, so I stood up and walked out, even slammed the door. I thought he’d come after me, I really did, but I walked home alone, with all the files and footage still on my laptop.

4. Technically, I stole that footage. Not that it mattered really, they had it backed up in the office. The letter came the following day.

As you’ll be aware,                    recessionary cutbacks                                         regret            inform you               dissolve our professional relationship.

5. We were never exactly a couple, so I could never have just told him that I was pregnant. I’m not proud of myself, but… it is what it is. And no, I still haven’t told him. Even the thoughts of telling him make me want to throw up. So now here I am, sitting in my flat day and night, my laptop whirring as I stare at these women’s faces. I tinker, cut and fade. I imagine the shape the story might have taken.

Subject: an autobiography in selfies
On 21 Jul 2015, at 02.17 <ashoneill1985@gmail.com> wrote:
Attachments: 6 x .jpg

You know what’s weird Mam? I spent all day yesterday glancing at my email tab expecting a reply from you, and getting really angry at your silence. You never really got the hang of email though, did you? God, I wish I had your password so I could nose around, read your whole Sent folder. I wonder if anyone else still writes to you … Dunnes Stores loyalty emails, maybe, or porn spam, or unread emails from a secret lover who thinks you’re ignoring him. Or is it just me, changing the digit on your inbox from (3) to (4)? It’s probably just me. Just me.

Here’s all you’ve missed since you died:

~ selfie with The Fear ~ selfie with shots and smeared lipstick ~ selfie with tayto crumbs ~ selfie with pee-drenched plastic stick ~ selfie with laptop working working working ~ selfie at 4am with screaming infant ~ selfie as I fall ~ selfie as I fall apart ~

Subject: Tears
On 02 Aug 2015, at 22.10 <ashoneill1985@gmail.com> wrote:

I tore when the baby was born, a second-degree tear from vagina to anus, the doctor said. I was alone, so a midwife held my hand as they sewed the wound, whispering, the stitches will dissolve, it’ll all be absorbed into your body, everything will be fine, just fine. It took weeks for my body to mend itself, webbing over the wound to heal me, and the next morning I was still limping as I got ready to leave the hospital. A young nurse lifted the baby from my arms. You have her wrapped all wrong. Here, look. She folded her tiny body in a triangle of blanket, neat as an envelope. I bawled, of course, hot, raw tears. The nurse glanced at the clock. Shush, now. No need to upset yourself. It’s just the baby blues. It’ll pass, you’ll be grand.

Grand. I wish you were still here. It’s so much harder since the baby came, I miss you even more and I hate you for not being here to get me to cop on. Since the birth, I dissolve everywhere – in supermarket queues, at the ATM, on buses. I try to stop but it always wins: the rough throat burn, the prickling tear ducts, the itching nose, the trembling lip, the snivelling gasps. Saltwater corrodes me like those old ladders that lead over a pier: rung to rusted rung to crumbling rust down to a vast rolling ocean of nothing. I can’t handle the stares my wet face bring, so I just avoid leaving the flat. It’s not as strange as it sounds, I can get almost everything I need delivered, and you’re footing the bills. The only time I feel like myself is when I’m at home, working instead of thinking. I know you’d tell me to forget this project, delete it, move on, but I can’t. The Women of 1916 file increases every day, a silent growth.

Oh, I named the baby Lily, after Nana. Remember how you used to say that she was in her Mammy’s tummy in the Coleraine Street tenements during the fighting of 1916, and that the belly shook so much she always swore that she felt Dublin being torn apart? I think you actually believed that, you were always so bloody gullible. My little Lily is a dote, Mam, you’d be mad about her. She has blue eyes and a little dimple in her chin. I order her these little dresses online, she must be the best-dressed baby in this whole apartment block. Hah! When she dozes, her little fingers grip my thumb like she’ll never let me go …

A minute ago, Lily started to stir in her cot, so I fed her and watched this screen darken. Through an opening in the curtains, a sliver of light spilled in. I saw us then, reflected in the empty black screen of the laptop. We looked different, together.

Subject: Attachment
On 01 Sep 2015, at 11.34 <ashoneill1985@gmail.com> wrote:
Attachment: 1916.mov

Last week, Lily learned to laugh. It’s a burbly gurgle sort of a sound, like a stream rolling itself into a river. The first time it happened, the sound was so new that it made me jump, but now when she laughs, I can’t help but laugh with her. Every day her face grows, it grows more familiar. I’ve started to see a streak of you in her eyes.

Last night, I turned away from the screens and instead of working, I slept. In my dream, barricades were being dismantled and stacked into bonfires. Since I woke, I’ve been imagining them on fire, unravelling themselves into wind-sparks.

I know what to do now, I’ll send the 1916 file to you. I’ll attach it to this email and let you take it away from me. Maybe it won’t bring anything back, but it’ll be a start, Mam. It’ll be a start … and maybe then I’ll turn off the computer for a while, let it whirr itself into silence.

From issue #2: spring/summer 2016

About the Author
Doireann Ní Ghríofa is a bilingual writer whose work has appeared in The Irish Times, The Stinging Fly, Poetry and elsewhere. Her most recent book is Clasp (2015). This piece was commissioned by Cork City Libraries and Arts Office to commemorate the centenary of 1916.