My Mother Wore a Yellow Dress Read Online Free PDF Page B

bumbling, McKenna.’
    Then came the words I didn’t want to hear.
    â€˜Come up here … Now!’
    And my fate was sealed yet again.
    I’d cry as I made that harrowing journey, the shuddering sobs making my shoulders rise and fall in jerks of great despair as I trudged to his desk. And all the while his predatory gaze followed me until that moment of dread when I offered up my trembling palms. He took tremendous care in the positioning of them, manoeuvring them to the desired height with the aid of the stick, eyeing the level, angling his feet like a prizefighter for a more dynamic blow. And all the while I wept, and all the while he ignored my tears.
    The first stinging wallops would cause my hands to drop. He’d prod them back into position, and whack again – and perhaps again, depending on how enraged he felt. There was a deathly silence in the room then because everyone felt my terror and wondered fearfully who’d be next.
    The punishment finished, Master Bradley would glare at me as I made my slow retreat to the desk. Only when I’d taken my seat would he return, calmly, to the register and continue the roll-call.
    I’d sit there resting the swollen hands on my lap, the spasms of pain riffling through me from head to toe, my cheeks searing under the tightening wash of tears. And he would not allow me my essential grief.
    â€˜McKenna, if you don’t stop blubbering you’ll get the same again.’
    I’d stop immediately, and for the rest of the day shut down all the accesses to my sorrow, my head pounding with the injustice, the words I wanted to scream and shout stuck in my throat, choking me into silence. At playtime I’d become one of those lost souls I’d seen when in Miss McKeague’s care, the ones in purgatory. I’d stand alone by the school wall and no one would venture to play with me, so fearful were they of inviting the same wrath upon themselves by the sin of association.
    â€˜McKenna’ was all I ever got from him; none of us was ever given the dignity of being addressed by our first name. This was another cruel ploy to further reduce our fragile self-esteem. Some of the boys – whom he loathed more than the girls – didn’t even merit that, but were given biblical nicknames: Isaac, Job, Jacob et al . The Master seemed to find this terribly amusing.
    He was like my father: sombre, remote, disingenuous, with a cruel streak. They both liked to see others suffer.I had the same sense of dread and foreboding at home as I did in school. But at home I had mother to run to. In school I had no one.
    The Master’s hawthorn stick was symbolic of his twisted discontent. Faithfully, each September, he’d select one specially from the hedge that braided the playing field. We’d observe him as we played; he’d study the shrubbery with forensic interest, like a botanist hunting a rare species. For not any old stick would do; it had to be straight, and studded with a healthy rash of thorns, all the better for a more tactile response. Having spotted a suitable specimen, he’d cut it free with his penknife and carry it indoors under his arm. We’d stop our play and watch him go, following him with anxious eyes and accelerating heartbeats.
    During that first week of the new school year, while we covered our books and wrote our names big on the covers, the Master would devote every spare moment to honing and paring the new instrument of cruelty, sharpening the punishing points and reddening them with a marker. In my blameless head I saw it twisted and turned into that crown of blood and thorns, and realised I would have to suffer just like Him.
    For school was largely suffering, and little else. I did not learn much from my oppressor; few of us did. His perversion had succeeded in stalling the learning process. My pencils and rulers became for me instruments of torture; and my books, with their lines of spellings and verses