I Knew You'd Have Brown Eyes Read Online Free PDF

maybe.’
    ‘You gonna give your baby away?’
    She knew the answer to this. She must have seen dozens of girls like me come and go. We were a normal part of her life. She was about forty. Since that time I have always had a soft spot for people with Down Syndrome.
    We had time to ourselves each morning and I took a rest. I liked being in my curtained-off bedroom and having a little time to myself. Before I had entered the convent, I had bought myself the nursing textbook and, by the time I left Holy Cross, I had read it twice.
    One evening at dinner, I was carrying my plate to my table when I ran smack-bang into a nun who had taught me at school.
    ‘Hello, Sister Ignatius Mary!’
    ‘Hello.’ She looked up from her rosary beads and her eyes went straight to my belly. I was mortified; here was a nun who was friends with my mother. We had exchanged letters the year I had been a boarder, when Mum and Dad were in PNG. She knew my respectable family. And there I was in disgrace. I felt ashamed. Once again I had let people down, this time one of my favourite teachers.
    ‘How’s your mother?’
    ‘Fine.’
    ‘Give her my regards.’
    But I didn’t know how my mother was. We hadn’t spoken to each other since I left home.
    One day I decided to call her.
    ‘Hi Mum.’
    ‘Mary. How are you?’ By her tone of voice, I knew she was still angry.
    ‘I’m fine. How’s Dad?’
    ‘Good. We’re going on a trip to New Zealand.’
    ‘Oh, that’s nice. Is Alexis going with you?’
    ‘Yes. Uncle James and Aunty Cath were here last week. They asked after you.’
    ‘Oh, what did you tell them?’
    ‘That you were away on holiday.’
    I felt a pang of loneliness and I told her I missed home.
    ‘Well if you hadn’t got yourself into this mess, you’d still be here, wouldn’t you?’
    I hung up the phone. It was me the girls heard crying in my bed that night.
    In the months that I lived at Holy Cross my thoughts roamed from the fear of giving birth to the unclear future ahead, and my unborn child. We girls had some happy moments tracking the movements of arms and legs across our abdomens as we sat watching television or working in the laundry. We often spoke about our future plans, but never about signing adoption papers. I talked to my baby as I stroked my expanding belly.
    ‘You’re only a baby and life can be tough, but you will be okay.’ It was all I had to hang on to.
    As my pregnancy advanced I didn’t want to be seen outside the confines of the home. It was a sanctuary away from prying eyes and judgemental comments. Outside the convent we had a sign on our heads that read Sinner or, as a man in a bus shouted to us one day, ‘Whores!’
    My elder siblings – Teresa and Charlie – and their partners came to visit one evening. We sat in the parlour.
    ‘How’s Alexis?’ I asked. My younger sister was twelve.
    ‘Toots?’ Teresa said – our nickname for Alexis. ‘She’s cute as ever. She misses you.’
    ‘Does she suspect anything?’
    ‘No, Mum told her you’d gone on a holiday.’
    ‘She and Ken ask after you,’ Charlie said.
    To change the subject I asked Teresa about the hairdressing salon she owned.
    ‘Oh Mary, the funniest thing happened the other day. One of the blue-rinse set came in and after I coloured her hair I took off the cap – and it was green! You should have seen her face!’
    ‘Oh my god, what did you do?’
    ‘I told her the colour suited her dress and then her face went green, the same colour as her hair!’
    We all burst out laughing. We were familiar with Teresa’s exaggerations and her jokes often had us in fits.
    She hugged me as she was leaving and whispered in my ear.
    ‘It’s not fair Mary, that you got caught. I’ve been having sex with Frank for ages. It should have been me, but I went on the pill.’ I still didn’t know what the pill was, but I was so grateful for her words. They made me feel less guilty about having had sex and getting pregnant. Her kind words