Donal Ryan - The Spinning Heart

ONE AWFUL THING that happened since the recession started was Dell closing. Like, it nearly finished us. They were bloody all Dell. Dad said a few times I had all my eggs in the one basket, but I only told him to shut up and mind his own business, laughing at his little worried face. It does be all scrunched up when he’s worried, the poor little pet. He was right to be worried, though — after Dell closed, I was paying more in wages than I was taking in for about three months — but I was never even close to giving in. You can’t give your time whingeing and blaming, you have to just fight back. I made up a load of flyers on the PC and went to every single door in every single estate on this side of town, and covered a big part of the rest of town as well. I went over as far as Castle-troy and Annacotty. Aren’t they only out the motorway now? I didn’t stop going for three weeks. My rates are the best anywhere. I promised to save people money. I prayed the HSE inspector didn’t call for the three weeks, because my child-to-minder ratio was a bit off while I wasn’t there. I made it back every day for the parents, though. I’m always there for hometime.

One good thing that happened since the recession started is people will work for less than the minimum wage. The minimum wage is a joke, like. Who has the right to tell me what to pay someone? Dad says there’s no such thing as a free market while crazy laws tether employers to big huge salaries for their staff. He says Ireland is regulated into the ground. Like, the red tape! You wouldn’t believe it. So I called all the girls into the kitchen one evening a few weeks ago and I told them straight out they’d all have to take a cut or I’d have to leave two of them go. Nuala, the little bitch, started straight away with the bullshit: You can’t actually, you’re right down to the lowest ratio as it is — we can’t even take our breaks! That one. She spends most of her day on a break. I’d have given her the road last year but I know well she’d have me up in front of the tribunal. So I said, actually Nuala, I’d have to bring in my sister and my mother to help for a while, and you don’t have to pay family members anything , so … And that shut her up.

THINGS ARE GOING great now again, thank God. This free childcare year is going to be the making of us. And better again, I got a Montessori teacher for feck-all — a fella walked in here with his CV and references who has a degree in childcare and a post-grad in Montessori teaching, with my ad in his hand. I know you’d never put a fella with that job, but he’s not very masculine; there’s a real soft look about him, and he has a lovely, gentle voice and nice blue eyes. Trevor, his name is. Imagine, I hadn’t even to pay to put an ad in the Limerick Leader . I decided to give my window-ad a week and it paid off. Once I have his references checked, I’ll let him start. He whispered to me that he wouldn’t expect minimum wage, he’d do anything to be working, he’d take seven euro an hour, cash. I could gross up his wages to look right. He knew the lingo and all. Jesus, he’s a godsend. To top it off, the Trevor fella arrived only two days after a girl called Réaltín called in with a lovely quiet child called Dylan. She’s working in a solicitor’s office inside in Henry Street. It’s a big firm, too, and she said there’s a couple more from there out on maternity leave. Having their firsts . She’ll recommend me, surely. The way things are going I’ll have to start refusing people again shortly.

Denis thinks I’m mad for taking on a fella as a Montessori teacher. But then he realized he used to know your man’s father years ago; he was a dentist or something like that, near where Denis grew up, but they were real bigshots anyway, with a big high wall around their house. I’d say your man just wanted a job where he wouldn’t have to be near manly men, spitting and farting and talking about their balls and making each other feel like shit about themselves. Why do fellas do that? They’re always slagging each other and calling each other queer and trying to outdo each other like fools. Men working together shouldn’t be allowed. Anyway, it’s none of my business, I don’t care what happens, I have my lovely Montessori teacher and I can take on kids for the free preschool year and everything is rosy in the garden.

Sometimes I think Denis is a bit raging that my crèche took off like this. Isn’t that awful? Like, wouldn’t you think he’d be delighted? That’s men, though; they can’t bear to be second to a woman in any way. The time of Dell closing, Denis had nothing going on at all , there wasn’t an electrical job or a carpentry job to be got anywhere, but we lived off the profits I had built up in the crèche account, and it nearly killed him. I felt sorry for him at the start, I suppose it was weird for him, but for a finish I just wanted to slap him and tell him to take the puss off him and just get on with it. He just has to do the small jobs again that he wouldn’t have dreamt of doing five years ago. Hard luck, like. Build a bridge and get over it. God, Denis hates that phrase. He’s some worker, though, I have to give him that. He just pretends there’s no crèche now, we can’t really talk about it. He doesn’t mind the money shoring us up, though. God, like, I have to pick my steps around him these days. Why has he to be so sensitive? We haven’t even had sex in about four months. He better not get any ideas about having a look around for himself. I’ll cut it off of him. I’ll cut it. Clean. Off.

The only thing pissing me off now is that little Nuala bitch. Like, if you saw her, the way she stomps around, acting like she owns the place. I caught her rotten the other week, hissing into a child’s face. Just eat it, just eat it, just eat it, she was saying in a vicious little whisper, with a spoon of food pushed up against the kid’s closed mouth. Jesus, she has a poisonous little temper on her. I pulled her on it and she was as bold as brass about it. What, she said, what am I meant to do? She wouldn’t bloody eat her bloody lunch. Are we meant to let them get malnourished? I told her to never do it again and I was making a note of it and she wanted to know where was the note going to be kept, could she have a copy of the note, what was it going to say, who else was going to see it … For a finish I had to say, look, there’ll be no note this time, but don’t dream of being nasty to a child like that again. So she bested me. Jesus, she makes my blood boil. She had some comment up on her Facebook page one Sunday night a few months ago about going to work the next day, and my friend Liz saw it, something like OMG, sooo hung over, have to go wiping shitty arses all day tomorrow, and she must have gotten nervous because Liz says she took it down again straight away. I’ve been checking all their Facebooks regularly ever since. They all know well, but they can’t very well start blocking me now. Little witches.

WHEN DENIS was really quiet he still went off in his van every day. I didn’t ask him where he was going. He was checking things out, he said. One day I asked him to put in some extra sockets in the kitchen and the nursery and he huffed and puffed and ummed and aahed about it. Can you imagine that? Oh, I said, Jesus, sorry, I thought you’d be delighted with the work! I was bitchy, I admit. Denis can be wicked when he wants. His father was a horrible bollocks; I’d say he gave Denis an awful time growing up. But wait till I tell you, that little bitch flounced in for her break and smoked a fag right outside the patio door, right beside where Denis was putting in a socket and I swear to God I saw the dirty prick looking up along her legs with his tongue hanging out like a dog on heat. And she wearing a little denim mini, which I specifically told her not to wear in work. Oh, it’s so hot , she goes. Can I not just wear it this week? I also specifically told her not to be smoking fags on her break — one or two of the posh mummies have noses for smoke like bloodhounds. But she reckons she has some kind of right to smoke fags as well as everything else. I’ll tell you what she has no right to do, though: wag her little arse in my husband’s face!