Mary Murphy

Malachí Speaks

1952 (aged 32)

My triumphant survival is due solely to my parents’ unwavering devotion and perseverance. They endured countless sleepless nights to ensure that, one day, their son’s pen could trace untidy black lines across this ivory-coloured parchment.

I am mindful that my straggly scribbling is reminiscent of a hasty youngster, anxious to be rid of schoolwork so that he might join the theoretical recreations beyond the front door, but this is not the case.

It is the absence of three distal joints, of three fingers, on my right hand that beg as the excuse for this discontented penmanship. I pursued the skills to become proficiently ambidextrous when I was fourteen years of age—at the time I lost the digits—but alas, that capability remains elusive eighteen years on, and I remain as I was born, right-handed.

To any observer, I appear an ordinary man, and to some I may even be considered a handsome specimen, though it is not in my nature to particularly care one way or the other. No one would suspect that I, a man of six feet and three inches in height, had been born a scrap so miniature that I could not feed as the preponderance of most infants. The same was true for my sister, Philomena. Instead, we survived those early days by accepting the administration of minuscule droplets of mother’s milk from the pinkies of our parents.

Dervla and Tomás

Malachí’s parents

1920

The wee twins were born close to midnight on Christmas evening, on one of the wild islands off the west coast of Ireland. The chapel bell, announcing the commencement of midnight mass, rang only minutes after the two weak frames lay swaddled in a raggedy old sheepskin rug.

Dervla had not expected to feel birth pains until near the end of March, and as such, chalked up the sharpness deep within her body as a consequence of consuming rich creamed onions and buttery potatoes for their celebratory Christmas Eve meal.

She and Tomás (her husband of four years) had spent the early evening, as they frequently did, reading by low lamp light. Dervla’s book lay propped atop her ever-increasing midsection. Tomás looked toward his wife with adoration and inquired, “Shall I add more turf to the fire? I wouldn’t want that child of ours, who will no doubt one day eat us out of house and home with the rate it’s growin’, to get chilled. The coals are all but passed away.”

“Thanks, but no. It’s off to bed with me, as the stomach is giving me fits.”

Dervla had to confess that the child within her seemed to be growing at an urgently rapid pace and wondered if the babe might end up a ten-pounder like the one Mrs Mulligan had delivered in November. The sheer thought of that possibility made the idea of sleep additionally enticing, and as such, Dervla closed her book and awkwardly rose from her chair.

Tomás winked. “I’d be pleased to join you.”

Dervla nodded, giving him a sideways grin. The two burrowed beneath the bedclothes, Dervla’s back nestled against Tomás’s front. His arm wrapped around her: his hand traced circles around the child within her womb.

Tomás murmured, “I would choose this over sittin’ in front of a fire any night.”

This was how the two fell toward dreaming. Hands entwined in a cave of wool. A broad sheepskin rug sprawled over their feet aided in the acceleration of warmth.

Dervla woke to an intense stomach cramp. Mindful not to disturb Tomás from his deep slumber, she released her hand from his and inched quietly but steadily onto her back, thinking on the creamed onions and vowing not to consume such copious quantities of them again while with child. Sleep stole her away forthwith.

The next stabbing jolt caused her to gasp and clutch her mid-section as a fierce tidal wave of pain swelled in her abdomen and rose up to plough against her spine. Her breath quickened.

Tomás rolled over onto his right side. He was muttering incoherently, trying to release his head from the bunched-up bedclothes.

Dervla forced upon herself slow methodical breaths, willing the pains to be borne out of food and not from the growing fear of potential premature labour. Dervla had already lost three babies in the early stages of pregnancy.

Each had taken its emotional toll, especially the one she had endured at the start of that year—on New Year’s Day. She was feeling rather optimistic since she’d advanced to the second trimester with no complications. Much to her sorrow, however, in the middle of the fourth month the child released itself from her womb.The girl had been fully formed and fit inside Tomás’s cupped palm. The pain of that loss had been so great that Dervla let go of the notion of ever bearing a child and becoming a mother.

However, five months later, the tell-tale signs of pregnancy began to emerge, the most obvious being Dervla’s distaste for tea. She had come to know when there was a child within her, as she would wake in the morning to start the breakfast tea—a ritual she dearly loved—and at her first sip, would retch with the revulsion of it.

Now, at six and a half months on, Dervla’s mind and heart had given way to the joy of possibilities ahead.

Count. She would count backwards from her due date. Perhaps she had miscalculated. Maybe … Again the wave swelled, plunging into the small of her back, and she cried out.

Tomás wrapped the two tiny bodies inside one of his warmest shirts and cautiously laid them in the centre of the sheepskin rug. Dervla’s pre-mature labour had been fast and severe, a waking nightmare of black thoughts and red blood.

Her anguished cries had woken Tomás from a dead sleep, and he had swung his body to face hers, taking her in his arms. His first thought was that Dervla had woken from a bad dream, but her desperate pleading soon brought to light her perilous state. Tomás had fumbled around the side table for a match to light the oil lamp, but knocked a clay cup of water to the floor, sending grey fragments every which way.

Dervla was issuing a cry for help. “Too early. It’s too early, Tomás. Help me! It’s far too early. The baby, I can’t lose the baby Tomás. I can feel it; it’s coming!”

Within a few minutes, a tiny girl child lay limp in a pool of blood, her body covered in the creamy white protective coating from the womb.

Dervla managed to rise up to her elbows. “Is it … alive? Please, Tomás, is it?”

Tomás wiped the child’s face with the edge of his rumpled shirt and leaned down to her, listening for breath or heartbeat. “I don’t know Dervla—she’s—so tiny—so quiet.”

Tomás ran to the bin of cutlery and brought back a sharp knife and one of Dervla’s shoes. Releasing the lace off the shoe, he cut it in two, tightening each piece around two sections of the purple and grey streaked umbilical cord. Retaking the knife, he sliced the sinewy lifeline from his daughter, hoping to force air into the child’s lungs and initiate unchaperoned breathing. A moment later, the girl twitched the index finger on the tightly clenched fist of her right hand.

“Aye, she’s breathin’ Dervla. Shallow and wispy, but breathin’ nonetheless.”

“Go fetch Paddy Ó’Connor, Tomás. He’s helped birth umpteen animals. He’ll know what to do, surely.” Dervla knew there was no point in calling for Monica, the midwife. Monica had gone to the mainland for seasonal celebrations with her brother, knowing Dervla was the only woman carrying on the small island and aware that Dervla was not due for several weeks.

Another mighty contraction brought forth the afterbirth, and with it, directly after, the emergence of a foot.

Tomás had exclaimed, “Dervla! There’s a second.”

“A second what?” she had wearily queried.

“Child.”

As Tomás reached out his hand to touch the extremity, the tiny figure slipped effortlessly from his wife onto the soaking bed sheet, lying as motionless as his sister had, in a swirl of red fluid and white cream. The child’s hands, contrasting with his sisters, were sprawled outward and limp.

The boy lay next to his sister as Tomás performed a repeat procedure to assist the newest child. The girl opened her mouth as if to cry but lacked the strength to do so. The boy uttered a sound, not unlike a newborn kitten, half breathy and barely audible.

One look at Dervla was enough to send Tomás into an internal panic. Her face was ashen, as pale as the moon, and she was still losing blood, so she was. Seizing his warmest wool shirt from a shelf, Tomás swaddled the delicate, small-scale babies next to each other. Wrapping the sheepskin rug around the shirt, the new father lay the children alongside Dervla, who was now in a completely reclined position. “Dervla, here are yer children. I’m off to get Paddy.”

With that, didn’t the chapel bell start to peal, ringing in midnight. “He’ll be at the chapel, Dervla. I know himself and Bernadette were goin’ there tonight.” Relief briefly passed over Tomás’s brow as the chapel was far closer than the Ó’Connor’s house.

Dervla’s lack of response and the fact that the second afterbirth had yet to emerge urged him to move at a demented speed. The rain lashed down in buckets from the heavens upon Tomás’s bare head as he peddled the wheels of his bike as fast as they would spin, water splashing out from either side.

In his haste to be gone for help, he had failed to don a coat or hat. He arrived at the chapel soaked to the skin.

Tomás swung wide the door just as Father McKenna was addressing the assembly with a blessing, his hand raised to make the sign of the cross. Tomás was out of breath and covered with thick black mud which had flung upwards from the earth, polluting his trousers, shirt, bare hands and face.

All heads turned as Tomás slipped upon the chipped tile and fell to his knees, roaring Paddy Ó’Connor’s name, imploring his immediate aide.

“The state of you!” Paddy called, running to him.

“The afterbirth is not disengaging, as her womb is not contracting strongly enough to dispel it,” Paddy said, his brow etched with concern as he looked toward Dervla’s semi-conscious state. Looking toward Tomás, he said, “I’ll have to go after it with the next contraction. It won’t be comfortable, but it may save her life.”

Paddy’s wife, Bernadette, took the babies from Dervla’s side, and Tomás took their place. Taking his wife’s hand in his and raising it to his lips, he whispered, “Don’t leave me, Dervla. Stay with me, for pity’s sake.”

It took three contractions before the second afterbirth finally dislodged. Bernadette Ó’Connor took the reins, changing the bedding and clothing, and heating water to clean Dervla and the babies.

Bernadette and Paddy stood at the front door three hours later, poised for departure, and handed back their empty tea cups. Tomás’s eyes welled, and he shook Paddy’s hand. “You saved her. How can I ever repay you for that?”

Paddy blushed. “Naught a thing to repay.”

“This’s no time to be modest, Paddy. Dervla’s life has been spared thanks to you.”

“Och well, it’s nuthin’ I wouldn’t a done for me sheep.”

Bernadette cuffed her husband on the side of his shoulder. “Yer sheep?”

Paddy’s eyes widened. “Bejeezus, I didn’t mean to imply … ”

The laughter went a long way toward easing the immense tension in the room, and Tomás could hear Bernadette half-heartedly giving out to her husband as they walked away from the door.

Dervla and Tomás endeavoured to coax the babies to nurse, but they were too frail for such efforts. Finally, exhausted to the point of oblivion, they spooned droplets of water onto the tiny lips in hopes of keeping them hydrated.

“We can spoon them your milk when it comes in,” said Tomás as they collapsed onto their pillows. Tomás spoke in encouraging tones, “That’s sure to revive them. If we had … ” but Dervla could not hear him as sleep had overtaken her.

Paddy and Bernadette Ó’Connor knocked upon the door at the first dawning of Christmas day, entering with a small bottle of fresh sheep’s milk.

Bernadette instructed Dervla to dip her pinky into the warm milk. “Now gently bring it to her mouth—that’s it—now wiggle your finger a little—that’s good—there now.” The child had opened her mouth and delicately sucked the milk off Dervla’s pinky.

“It’s highly unusual for us to have a ewe with lamb in winter, but it will serve you well for these babies until your milk comes in, Saint Philomena be praised.” Bernadette’s optimism was uplifting. “Now, your son.”

Thus was how the children gained their first nourishment; sucking sheep’s milk from the pinkies of their parents.

Paddy fed turf to the already blazing fire and asked Tomás, “Should you bring them to the mainland?”

“No!” wailed Tomás. “They’re all far too weak to travel and cross the water in this weather. We’ll have to wait for Monica’s return and hope for the best.” Tomás lowered his voice. “But—prepare for the worst in the meantime.”

Looking at his weakened wife on the bed made him feel helpless and ineffectual. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. It’s all new to me.”

Bernadette laid her hand on Tomás’s shoulder. “Tomás, we have six at home, and we’ve lost three others. All we can do is hope for the best, as some things are simply out of our hands.”

“Are their names picked?” asked Paddy, to the couple.

“Dervla picked them,” replied Paddy. “The girl is Noreen. The boy, Malachí.”

Dervla called from the bed, “Tomás, I’d like to change her name from Noreen to Philomena, the patron Saint of infants. May she watch over them to keep them safe.”

Tomás nodded. “I think we should baptise them as soon as possible. Bernadette, would you be kind enough to call on Father McKenna for us? Have him come today if possible?”

As Bernadette and Paddy made their way to Father McKenna’s, Paddy spoke the words that Bernadette herself had been thinking, but was unwilling to utter. “I’d be thinkin’ that when Father McKenna sees those two, he’ll be baptising and then will no doubt, be administering last rites as well. Poor wee creatures that they are.”

“Their hands are still so cold, Tomás”, said Dervla upon waking. “Perhaps we should lay them near the fire for a bit?”

The children’s skin was translucent, with prominent veins etching their foreheads, arms and legs. Though the birth blood had long been wiped clean, there was still a profound aura of red. It was quite the contrast, the red of their torsos compared with the pale white of their extremities. It was as if they had been too long rubbed upon or exposed to direct sunlight.

When Dervla had reached the end of her fifth month with child, without incident, Tomás had built a cradle, carving the headpiece with two angel wings wrapped around the corners. The wings were darker wood than the rest, thus accentuating their beauty, suggesting the bed’s occupant was framed and embraced in protection.

Tomás had proposed to gift the cradle to Dervla on that Christmas morning but had long forgotten about the thing until Dervla suggested placing the twins by the fire. He fetched the cradle from the outbuilding, and Dervla, weeping at the sight of it, handed the two infants to her husband, who, in turn, placed them inside the sheltering wings.

Three days advanced and retreated. Dervla and Tomás dipped their fingers into fresh sheep milk until Dervla’s own milk poured forth, most of which went wasted and absorbed by linens. While Malachí’s sucking motions were still weak, they were at least consistent, and fluid naturally released itself from his body. His movements were not frequent, but when they surfaced, they were at least energetic for someone his size.

Philomena had been the weaker of the two from the onset of life. Her stomach was becoming noticeably more distended, her lethargy constant. Most of the milk she ingested returned from the location it had been administered.

By that third day, the weather calmed and a local fisherman was able to travel to the mainland to hasten the return of the midwife.

The following late morning, there came the sound of an approaching cart. Assuming it was the Ó’Connors, Tomás opened the door. Instead it was, to his great relief, Monica (the midwife) accompanied by a man as round as he was high.

Monica jumped from the cart and made her way quickly through the wet muck of newly sodden ground. “I came as quickly as I could. The morning looked agreeable for a crossing, so we came posthaste. This is Doctor Fitzgerald, from Tuam proper but working in Galway City. His speciality is prematures. He offered to come. I thought it might be for the best.” said Monica, out of breath.

“God be praised for your return,” Paddy said. “I’ll get the tea going.”