I go to my room and half an hour later she comes and asks whether I’m in the mood for a puppet show before tea and she gets her finger puppets and puts on a small show. Afterwards, she dances and she sings and moves around my room as though she is alone, nobody watching. But I’m watching and the way she moves reminds me of something I saw in a film once: a beautiful lady alone at night in a swimming pool with blue lights in the water.
A week later, on the way home from school, I stop on my path, about two hundred feet before the doll in the tree. There’s a cow, asleep or dying, lying across my path. I kneel down and look at her. She is still breathing and her eyes are closed.
I hear hooves stomping further out in the field and there is a cow, alone, running. It runs as fast as I’ve ever seen a cow run, and then it stops near the boundary fence. I look down at the dying cow and then I hear the hooves again; the same cow is sprinting back to the place it took off from and, when it stops, it looks at me.
I don’t know what I should do with the sick cow whose breathing is shallow and pained. I stand and walk around her, to get a better view of her whole body, to see if there are any wounds or if she is pregnant. I prod her stomach with my boot. The sprinting cow is no longer watching me and I feel freer; I can do what I think is best. But I don’t know what that should be.
I kneel again and look at her. If she is dying and if she’s in pain, then the vet will probably put her to sleep. I don’t want to leave her here on my path to die. I take my anorak off and put it over her face. She doesn’t react. I will need to sit on her to put her to sleep. But I can’t do that. I move my anorak across her face to make sure the lining, which is made of wool, is not touching her eyes, in case it sticks to her.
I sit facing the sprinting cow but it has decided to eat grass instead of looking at me. I sit for a while and the dying cow does nothing. I say, ‘It’ll be all right soon. You’ll be asleep soon.’ I don’t know what to say, but not talking to her seems rude.
I’ll go now. I’m very cold and the icy wind is pushing its way up under my jumper. I’m hungry, too. Later the farmer will find her and he can take her out of my path and bury her, if she dies. I take my coat from her face and say, ‘Goodbye.’
I leave for school early the next morning and walk quickly in case the cow is lying across my path, but when I get there she is gone, and there is no sign of her. I should have counted the herd last night so that I could know if any were missing. I look towards the boundary fence at the cows huddled together but none of them looks back. It is as though nothing at all has happened. But something has happened. I have a pain in my stomach, down low, and it’s a feeling almost like an emotion but I don’t know which kind, which one.
During class, I sit forward in my seat and lean on my desk, my chin on my hand. My bladder is full and I’ve been hanging on since before breakfast, and now it is nearly midday. I want to see how long I can hold on, how much I can make my body follow my orders. I like the sensation, the stinging and the pressure. I hang on until five minutes before the bell and then I realise I’ve waited too long. I jog my leg up and down as fast as I can but my piss is about to come out even though I’ve told it not to, even though I’ve tried to make it wait.
I put my hand up, but something goes wrong. My bladder opens without me telling it to. It feels good, briefly, to let go, and I tell myself that letting out this trickle of urine is deliberate, that I can stop the rest.
But I can’t stem the flow. Hot urine floods my trousers and spreads around my backside. The backs of my legs are saturated too, and I am sitting in a warm puddle.
I want to put my hand up and ask to be excused for the toilet, but it is compulsory to ask in Irish. I wait until I have the words clear.
‘An bhfuil cead agam dul amach, más é do thoil é?’
‘Can’t you wait?’ says Miss Collins, who faces the blackboard and keeps her back to the class and doesn’t even know who is asking.
‘No, miss,’ I say. ‘I need to go to the toilet now.’ She pretends not to hear me because this time I’ve used English instead of Irish.
I must keep the urine a secret, but I don’t know how, since it runs down my legs and into my socks and shoes. ‘Please, miss,’ I say. ‘May I be excused?’
Miss Collins turns from the blackboard. ‘John, can you not wait till lunch?’
I stand, and the urine sloshes underfoot and the smell rises up to meet me.
‘No, miss. I need to go now.’
The slope of the floor carries a small trickle of urine towards the front of the room.
Miss Collins doesn’t notice the piss heading towards the blackboard, nor the stench, but Jimmy the red-headed boy with the desk in front of mine notices.
‘Oh, miss!’ he cries. ‘John’s wet himself.’
Everybody turns to see what I have done.
I have my hand in the air, as though waving at a bus that has already sped past. Miss Collins walks towards me with her mouth open, showing her underbite and the stained and crooked teeth of an old dog.
‘Oh dear,’ she says. ‘You’ll need to see Sister Bernadette about getting something to clean yourself up.’
Sister Bernadette will take me to the district nurse’s room, which is in the convent next door. I don’t want to go there.
I run from the classroom, down the corridor, past the coat rack, past the other classrooms and out the front door and I keep running until I get to the laneway and the darkness and privacy and stillness of the fir trees, and then my skin begins to sting from my wet trousers rubbing together and chafing my legs.
I want to get into my pyjamas and I want to get into bed and destroy time. I want to sleep, then wake to the smell of tea and sausages, to find that what has happened has been erased.
I don’t think I can ever go back to school.
I sneak through the back door and tiptoe to my room. I take my wet trousers off and change into clean, dry ones. I go to the bathroom, run a sink full of hot water, and scrub my trousers clean.
My mother is coming down the stairs. ‘Hello?’ she calls.
‘Hello,’ I say.
She comes into the bathroom. ‘What are you doing home?’
I felt sick, I tell her, and Miss Collins has sent me home.
She asks me why the school didn’t call. ‘I would have come and got you.’
When I lie, I feel heavier and when I try to move it is as though my legs are filled with hot water. The lie moves through every part of my body, like sickness.
They rang twice, I say, but there was no answer. I use fewer words, just in case they get stuck in my throat, besides, my voice is tighter, almost squeaky. She asks me why I’m washing my clothes and I tell her I vomited on them.
‘Again?’ she says. ‘More lying?’
‘I wasn’t lying.’
‘I didn’t say you were. You jumped to that conclusion all by yourself.’
She smiles now and I wonder if I have been caught out.
‘Oh,’ I say.
She holds my hand up and feels my palm. I’m not sweating, if that’s what she’s checking for. Most people sweat when they lie. But I don’t.
‘Smiling stops the gag reflex,’ she says. ‘Did you know that?’
‘Da already told me that.’
‘Well, he’s right. And you’d better get straight into bed if you’re sick.’
I sit on the bed and wait for her to come to see me for a chat, but she doesn’t. I hope she’ll go to the kitchen and make me a toasted ham sandwich or get me some biscuits and a cup of cocoa, but she doesn’t.
I listen to her go up the stairs to her bedroom, and then I hear my father.
They are talking in loud voices. Something falls on the floor, and then they are silent.
I lie under the covers for a while, and think of a funny thing to tell my mother. I wish that she’d come to me.