‘The Bockety Woman’ by Deirdre Sullivan

When my mother’s father was a child, he lived in a cottage that became a shed when Grandad got the farm. It had gray walls when I was small and the roof was corrugated iron. I never saw it differently to that, so I felt sorry for my little Grandad, growing up in the big dank shed with hay on the floor and plywood in the windows instead of glass.

There were three of them, and their mother and their father in the house. There was a granny too, who lived upstairs. Her face didn’t work properly, and they didn’t like going up to her because she’d want things from them and they wouldn’t understand and her eyes would fill up angry in her nightdress in the daytime.

It was a small shed, and dark and there were spades on the walls and a big thing like a pliers for making bullocks out of little bulls. When I was little. When they were little, things were different. It was a house back then, with fields around and stones and neighbours close but not too close for comfort. I always liked my space when I was small. I like it now. When people want too much it makes me nervous. To look at you. To touch you. To say things and to hear things and to listen. To eat you up like sandwiches at funerals. Dry and soft and not the thing you want.

My great-grandmother was very beautiful and she always had a scarf and a brooch and she wore lipstick too sometimes as well. Everyone thought she was elegant and my great-grandad was mad about her. Marriages in those days weren’t always about love so they were lucky in their little house. And children can be hard. Not to mention Granny in the attic, needing cleaning, needing feeding. Needing talk. The one of her was not enough to do all of the woman’s work accruing. She needed help. He went and got her help to make her happy.

You could get a person from out of the workhouse then to help you if you wanted in your house.

They didn’t have a hoover or a washing machine, they had to sweep the floor and beat the rug out on the washing line and they washed the clothes in the stream and got water from the well for cooking and washing up the dishes. That’s a lot to do.

It’s hard for a woman to admit that she needs help, especially an elegant woman. They’re supposed to be unruffled, get things done and not bother anyone. Keep the head down and get on with it. Be peaceful and beautiful and streamlined and in motion. Like a dolphin through the water, not a heifer loping down the road.

My great-grandad was running the farm and didn’t want to make my great-grandmother sad with all the housework but there wasn’t time for him to do it for her and the children were steps-of-stairs-small so they couldn’t really help. Granny in the attic was a list of jobs all by herself. He bought her a sewing machine. And that was something. She needed more. And so he bought a person. It makes sense in a way. We package ourselves so people choose us. Squeeze dead-eyed into bras before we’ve boobs. Looking down, you’re scared that they will come but still you want them. All we want what everybody has. And maybe more.

I don’t know how you went about choosing who would help you from the workhouse. Like a job interview or a hiring fair or what. But great-grandad came back with this bockety little woman who looked like she’d be no help. Her legs didn’t work, she’d been born that way, so she kind of snaked around on the floor to get where she needed to go. Her arms were fine. She could do anything with the arms.

I don’t know what my great-grandmother thought of the bockety woman, or if she had a hand in bringing her inside their house to mind the things and children. She liked her later on. Pretty women often like women who aren’t threats and sure who’d run off with a bockety woman.

Farmers like the land, you see, as well. So there was that to keep him, that and love.

Some people who are bockety like to sit down and complain about how bockety they are and that’s no good to anyone. She wasn’t like that. She didn’t talk about their ‘two good legs’ the way their mother sometimes did so pointedly beside her. She was fun. She’d plough down to the stream and wash the clothes, baskets on her back or pulling them with teeth. She must have had good teeth for all her poverty.

I don’t know how people open bottles, pull at plastic floss. My teeth are soft chalk, crumbling, all give and no resistance.

They loved the bockety woman and my mother would tell me the story and she would tell me how many legs I had and that I’d the use of them and list the jobs to do around the house. They didn’t have a hoover or anything back then. She had to scrub. Down on hands and knees. Or hands and legs. She was always down on hands and legs. And never up.

She loved the children. She loved their little faces. Loved to look at them. She can’t have been all good. If I were bockety, it would make me cross. It would make me angry. Angry at the things my body couldn’t do. I get that way already. Looking at the television, all the slender women. Rail thin. Nothing poking over their elastics and I worry I’m too much and not enough at the same time. And haven’t I two good legs? And shouldn’t I starve? Shouldn’t I starve myself to be as good as them. Imagine if. Imagine if her legs would work, if she could just be selfless and renounce things. Biscuit crumbs on jumpers. Brush them off, they work into the fibre. Smell them later hungry on the bus.

Did she never rage I never asked. Did she never hate my great-grandmother and her husband and her kids and little scarf. Did her mouth fill up with blood from champing down on angry, lonely tongue?

When mother tells it, Delia is a saint. That was her name. But women are not saints. Not even saints are. All of us have anger. Burrowed in the marrow of our bones, running up our spines and tensing muscles. Anger pulses through. How do you live through days where nothing seethes?

How do you keep on dragging on the grass, your little gut all wet from dew and panting with the effort of it all, you’re strong, they couldn’t do what you have done and you only do these things because you have to. What if there were other ways to be. Did she never want to die from how it was? Did nothing hurt her?

People talk a lot about resilience. Offering things up. Offering it up. My mother offers me up like a sacrifice a lot. Looking at my mouth and thinking ‘eat’ and thinking ‘eat’ and when I eat she’s analysing bites and I. am. Trying.

They had nothing back then. Nothing. But they kept on going. Delia kept on going. She had to for the children. I don’t know what they paid her. If they paid her. Probably in roof over her head. In food and bed and water. She had to work. She had to work to stay she had to please them. Love grew though. With children love can grow so easily. They’re soft. The world hasn’t carved pores into them and filled them up. Hasn’t etched the stretches on their thighs. Hasn’t butter filled them fat with soft.

Eat. She says. And softly. For fuck’s sake. She thinks it is a thing I do to her. On purpose. Sometimes she is right. But not entirely. One bite on the plate of this is spite. A little sprig of greenery. A cherry. It’s me and her. The two of us. I’m all she has. All she has is me. And I have so, so many things. There’s such a lot of things for me to do. And I am tired.

What happened to the bockety woman, Mam, I ask. To Delia. She looks at me. An apple rests between us. I slice a sliver off. Push it through the maw. When I was little, I was all for stories. Hated food. Even then I always hated food. One more bite she’d say. And then I’ll tell you. I can hear her think it. Up my spine. I hear it up my spine and work my jaw.

They all got sick and she got sick as well. My great-grandmother caught it. And so did Delia. And the pretty woman died and on her deathbed asked her to mind the children and the bockety woman lived. So she did. She was loyal and hard-working. Apple taste is soft and artificial in my mouth. Golden Delicious. I like a little sharp beneath my sweet. The mildish pulpy texture feels like rot. We all begin to rot. Food inside your stomach rots as well. It hastens things. But you can still outwit it.

My great-grandmother buried in the ground and in the cottage just a man and Delia and the children. It wasn’t right but still it wasn’t like she could get married. Who would have her? Who would have anyone at all? We’re all so human. Delia on the floor, curled up on the hay, a massive hairless cat with apple cheeks. The children there. The children were her reason for it all. And then they grew.

You feed things and they grow. Up and out. Soft fat of the apple meat. The bony little pips I’ll shit out later. Apples. Milkless tea. And sometimes toast. One slice. Crusts off. No butter. I know it’s bad but I keep wanting things.

Not many things. But her. She had a fat brain. Sliding through the mud like slug to beer. I cannot stand the broken things around me. They pad and fumble through. They offer things to gods and carry on. I want things offered me. I want an altar. For my sacrifice I want an altar. Look at me and love me. Don’t come closer. In a church, there’s places not to step. You can’t go there I’ll say. It’s mine it’s mine. And they will leave me fruits and eggs and loaves and I will leave them rot and be replaced. I want so hard to matter. My mouth. My two good arms.

The children ripened. They were fresh. They married and they moved. Her work was done. Come live with us they said. Come be a person. Crawl out of the story of the martyr. No she said. They didn’t ask again. People do not give you second chances when they’re used to taking. Hard iron of the handle of the bucket. Splintered wood. Cold water.

The colder you are, the more it burns your skin the more the padding wears. If you want to lose weight, leave your coat at home don’t bring a jumper. I was walking home and it was cold one day and I was hungry. I sat on the side of the road. Beside the stone that has the yellow square with squiggle-writing. I opened up my book. And pulled and plucked and wadded shoved and ate. A journey’s worth of chewing in the paper. All you need’s three leaves, rolled and curled and wadded. And you put them in your mouth and chew and chew and chew and feel so guiltless.

And after Grandad came home with this bockety woman, didn’t she work very hard for them for years. And when my great-grandmother died, didn’t he fall in love with her? And she stood up. Uncurled her twisted back, her little nape and wiggle-stretched her toes and scratched her ankles. True Love she said. True love was what I needed all along. And he said will you dance with me my darling and the children were so thrilled with their new mother that they didn’t miss the old one but a little. And she was small and finely built, even at her full height.

And love is what it takes to fix us all.

She died back in the place they got her from. They never saw her after she said no. I brushed the grass-wet off my two good legs and took the long way home for cardio. My heart. My heart. My heart.

From issue #1: autumn/winter 2015

About the Author
Deirdre Sullivan is a writer from Galway. Her poetry and fiction has appeared in The Dublin Review, Mslexia and The Penny Dreadful. Her most recent books are Tangleweed and Brine (Little Island) and Perfectly Preventable Deaths (Hot Key Books).