Margaret Atwood - Alias Grace

Our three dead children did not have stones but only wooden crosses. They must be all overgrown by now.

When I reached the age of nine, my older sister Martha left to go into service, and so all the work that Martha used to do around the house was now on me; and then two years after that, my brother Robert went to sea on a merchant ship, and was never heard from again; but as we ourselves moved away shortly thereafter, even if he had sent word it would not have reached us. Then there were five little ones and myself remaining at home, with another on the way. I cannot remember my mother when she wasn’t in what they call a delicate condition; although there is nothing delicate about it that I can see. They also call it an unhappy condition, and that is closer to the truth — an unhappy condition followed by a happy event, although the event is by no means always happy. Our father by this time was fed up with it. He would say, What are you bringing another brat into this world for, haven’t you had enough of that by now, but no you can’t stop, another mouth to feed, as if he himself had nothing to do with it at all. When I was quite young, six or seven, I put my hand on my mother’s belly, which was all round and tight, and I said What is in there, another mouth to feed, and my mother smiled sadly and said Yes I fear so, and I had a picture of an enormous mouth, on a head like the flying angel heads on the gravestones, but with teeth and all, eating away at my mother from the inside, and I began to cry because I thought it would kill her.

Our father used to go away, even as far as Belfast, to work for the builders that had hired him; and then when the job was over he would come home for a few days, and then be out seeking another piece of work. When he was home he would go to the tavern, to get away from the squalling. He said a man could not hear himself think in all that racket, and he had to look about him, with such a large family, and how he was to keep their bodies and souls together was beyond him. But most of the looking about he did was at the bottom of a glass, and there were always those willing to help him look; but when he was drunk he would become angry and begin cursing the Irish, and abusing them as a pack of low useless thieving scoundrels, and there would be a fight. But he had a strong arm, and soon not many friends left, as although they were happy enough to drink with him they did not want to be at the wrong end of his fist when the time came for it. And so he would drink by himself, more and more, and as the drink got stronger the nights got longer, and he began to miss jobs of work in the daytime. And so he got a reputation for not being reliable, and the jobs of work became few and far between. It was worse when he was home than when he was not, as by this time he was not confining his rages to the tavern. He would say he did not know why God had saddled him with such a litter, the world did not need any more of us, we should all have been drowned like kittens in a sack, and then the younger ones would be frightened. So I would take the four that were old enough to walk that far, and we would hold hands in a row, and go to the graveyard and pick weeds, or down to the harbour, and scramble among the rocks on the shore and poke at stranded jellyfish with sticks, or look in the tide pools for whatever we could find.

Or we would go out on the little dock where the fishing boats tied up. We were not supposed to go there because our mother feared we might slip over and drown, but I would lead the children there anyway, because the fishermen would sometimes give us a fish, a nice herring or a mackerel, and any sort of food was badly needed at home; sometimes we did not know what we were going to eat from one day to the next. We were forbidden by our mother to beg, and we would not, or not in so many words; but five ragged little children with hungry eyes is a hard sight to resist, or it was in our village then. And so we would get our fish more often than not, and go off home with it as proud as if we had caught it ourselves. I will confess to having a wicked thought, when I had the young ones all lined up on the dock, with their little bare legs dangling down. I thought, I might just push one or two of them over, and then there would not be so many to feed, nor so many clothes to wash. For by this time I was the one who had to do most of the washing. But it was only a thought, put into my head by the Devil, no doubt. Or more likely by my father, for at that age I was still trying to please him.

After a time he got into doubtful company, and was seen about with some Orangemen of bad reputation, and there was a house burnt down twenty miles away, of a Protestant gentleman that had taken the side of the Catholics, and another one found with his head bashed in. There were words about it between my mother and father, and he said how the Devil did she expect him to turn a penny, and the least she could do was to keep it a secret, not that you could ever trust a woman as far as you could throw her, as they’d betray any man as soon as look at him, and Hell was too good for the lot. And when I asked my mother what the secret was, she brought out the Bible, and said I must swear on it to keep the secret too, and that God would punish me if I broke such a sacred promise; which terrified me very much, as I was in danger of letting it out unawares, because I had no idea at all of what it was. And being punished by God must be a terrible thing, as he was so much larger than my father; and after that I was always very careful about keeping the secrets of others, no matter what they might be. For a time there was money, but things did not improve, and words came to blows, although my poor mother did little enough to provoke them; and when my Aunt Pauline came to visit, my mother would whisper to her, and show the bruises on her arms, and cry, and say He was not always this way; and Aunt Pauline would say, But look at him now, he’s nothing more than a boot with a hole in it, the more you pour in at the top, the more it runs out at the bottom, it’s a shame and a disgrace. My Uncle Roy came with her in their one-horse gig, bringing some eggs from their hens and a slab of bacon, for our own hens and pig were long gone; and they sat in the front room, which was hung about with drying clothes, because no sooner would you get your wash done and spread out on a sunny day in that climate, than it would cloud over and begin to drizzle; and Uncle Roy, who was a very plain-spoken man, said he didn’t know a man who could turn good money into horse piss faster than my father could. And Aunt Pauline made him say Pardon me, because of the language; though my mother had heard much worse than that, as when our father was drinking he had a mouth on him as foul as a running sewer. By now it was no longer the little money our father brought into the house that was keeping us alive. Instead it was my mother and her shirt sewing, at which I helped her, and my younger sister Katey too; and it was Aunt Pauline who got her the work, and brought it and took it away again, which must have been an expense to her because of the horse, and the extra time and trouble. But she would always bring some food with her, for although we had our little potato patch and our own cabbages, it was by no means enough; and she would bring leftover pieces of cloth from the shop, out of which our own clothes were made, such as they were.

Our father was long since past asking where such things came from. In those days, Sir, it was a matter of pride for a man to support his own family, whatever he might think of that family itself; and my mother, although weak-spirited, was too wise a woman to tell him anything about it. And the other person who did not know as much about it as there was to know was Uncle Roy, although he must have guessed it, and seen that certain items vanished from his own house, only to reappear in ours. But my Aunt Pauline was a strong-minded woman.