About Matilda by Bill Walsh Page B

away and pushes her back against the wall. Pippa lets my hand go and squeezes in beside Mona. Strange faces gather round me and wait for my answer and there’s a cry from the cupboard under the stairs, Let me out, Sister. I won’t do it again. Ah, Jasus, let me out.
    Sister Gabriel tells the girls, These are the Kellys: Mona, Pippa and Matilda. Get on with the work, all of you. I want those stairs to sparkle.
    Yes, Sister Gabriel.
    The girls move away and we follow Sister Gabriel to the top of the stairs where there’s a landing with tall windows rattling in the wind. I can look down to a wet playground and over it to the pathway where we came in with Daddy, but I don’t see Daddy. There is a line of trees on this side of the wall; their leaves have fallen away and blow in circles around the playground. The windows have iron bars on the outside and at the other end of the landing there are more stairs like the ones we walked up. One stair must be for coming up and the other for going down. I bite the corner of my lip and look behind for Daddy but all I see are girls bumping.
    Through a door and we’re in the dormitory. I’ve seen one like it. I was four and there were beds with curtains around them like white walls. I remember we ran, Mum, Mona, Sheamie, Pippa, Danny and me. We packed our bag when Daddy wasn’t there. One bag. Mum said we didn’t have time for more. We took a train a long way away and stayed in a big house by a river with other mothers and children who had run away. We stayed there until Daddy found us.
    The five rows of iron beds stand head to head and almost side by side, with barely room between them to walk. There must be a hundred of them. Tall windows light the room but it’s gloomy from the half-closed shutters. Dark wooden wardrobes as high as the ceiling line the walls and down in the corner a black-haired girl is sitting on a bed. She’s my age. Her bare feet dangle above the floorboards and the stained white sheets hang near her by the open window.
    Sister Gabriel nearly pulls the scalp off me when she checks our hair for lice. Then she makes us undress. Underwear included. Get on with it. We stand naked in the dormitory while she roots around the wardrobes. I’m cold and I want to go home but I’m in prison because of what I did with my uncle and can’t go home until Daddy comes or Nanny says it was a mistake, we never done anything wrong.
    Sister Gabriel hands me white woollen knickers that dangle loose and make my bum itch. She puts our own clothes in a cardboard box for the missions. We’re given old clothes and with a red marker that she takes from her pocket she writes our initials on the square white tags sewn to the inside.
    The three of you get dressed, she says, and don’t forget your slips. There’s dark corner in Hell for girls who don’t wear their slip. It’s shameful and a sin.
    All I can think of is my new black shoes Daddy sent from London. I hope she doesn’t take my shoes.
    She shouts to the girl on the bed.
    Are those sheets dry, Lucy Flynn?
    Yes, Sister Gabriel.
    Make your bed and if you wet it tonight you’ll spend tomorrow in here as well.
    Yes, Sister Gabriel.
    Pippa has big tears in her eyes and, when the light catches her soft pink cheeks, you can see how wet they are, and Idon’t know if she’s crying over her clothes or if she’s like me, hoping Daddy comes to take us home and frightened she’ll wet the bed if he doesn’t.
    Sister Gabriel leads us downstairs and across the rain puddles of the playground to a room like a shed that smells of stale feet and when she opens the wooden closet I want to cry. It’s full of metal hooks and every hook has a pair of worn shoes. Mona has big feet. Sister Gabriel gives her a pair of boy’s brown shoes. Pippa’s are bright pink and her yellow stockings show through the toes. Mine are black painted, and the straps curl at the