Sr Theresa looked up at the Mother Superior for a bit of
direction. “Ah, sure another bastard child died last night. What will I do?”
“That’s the one from the illegitimate whore I expect.”
Mother Superior replied dryly.
“ What will I do with the bag of bones that’s left?”
“ That is left Sr Theresa.” Mother Superior corrected as
proper diction was one of her strong points. “Throw the wee thing into the ould
septic tank.”
Sr Theresa hated the job. It was the air you see and even
once she peered inside. She would never look there again, throwing the skeleton
bodies in with shut eye thereafter.
The rancid smell of the other 700 and more infants decaying
and decayed bodies was heaven within, for many battalions of insects with their
families had set up permanent camp in the tank. There was the larger feeders
about: rats, cats, and foxes that found their way here by that sweet scent of
death. Some of them did not make it out of the tank either for gluttony killed
a few here and there, while many more robust rats bred within the hollow stomach
walls of the dead children. It was survival of the fittest as the only reward
for second prize was death.
Sr Theresa busied herself for someone had to do the job and
knew she was doing God’s work. She knew too other infants did not die quick enough
in this place over the years work for starvation can be a slow process, so the
other nuns and her improvised. Drowning was quick, a pillow quicker, and
throwing them over stairwells was the quickest of them all. But she was irked a
bit recently for it was said the sound of crying was coming from the septic
tank, babies crying.
And the talk of it was growing.
So one night she waited to find out for herself. She crept
tip-toe from the convent hall to the tank without telling anyone. The wind
picked up as she waited in the darkness under a tree. Then the rains came. She
craned her neck, pricked her ears until her whole body was a satellite dish
wired for sound. Then she heard it and sounded as clear as her conscience. She
heard it again and could formulate at last the words: “Mama, Mama.” Her heart
missed a beat.
Then she saw it: Two cats in mating frenzy; one wanting and
the other not. She threw a stone at them and another as they scurried in full
retreat. She fell back relived. That was all it had been she thought. She
turned to go back. By the first step she heard the crying again and this time
it was louder. One part of her told her to run and the other was a promise to
herself that this must not happen again.
She was not a superstitious nun and talk of ghosts was
irrational which drove her forward to open the septic tank. In the almost total
darkness inside it looked like everything moved. A heaving mass of pulsating
animals feeding and gorging only on death and within its vortex the sound of
crying started again. Its plaintive tone grew, it’s pain with it. The panic started
with the throbbing of her temple and then Sr Theresa felt something gnawing at
her foot. A large rat was not for letting go for the frenzy of his hunger did
not part the living from the dead. Her eyes widened in terror but the utter
horror was yet to come as the wind howled around her lifting her from the
mantle of the septic tank to drop her within the grey and dark liquid of decay
and bone. Her black habit dragged her down and the last thing she ever saw
before she hit the bottom of the pit was…………..
By Barry Clifford
In memory of the 796 infants whose bodies were found in a
septic tank in a Mother’s and babies home for profit run by the Bon Secours
nuns in Tuam Co Galway. Many of the mothers of the children were buried on the
grounds of this prison that closed in 1961. They were classed as whores
and their children as bastards, and all this murder was done under a quasi- legal
pact between Church and State that were inseparable even within its constitution.
May they rest in peace.
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