A noisome burden, that’s what the child was. An embarrassing accident. A constant reminder of the humiliation she’d endured. The cause of her downfall and the obstacle between her life as it was and her life as it should have been. A wicked child.

If only she had been born a boy, then perhaps the child’s father and his family would have come around. But a girl is useless; nobody wants a girl. Least of all her. She just wasn’t cut out to be a mother. She wanted to be the pampered one, the one who was looked after; she didn’t want to have to do the looking after. It just wasn’t in her. 

Irma, my grandmother, left the child with her mother back in Isernia, moving away from the mountaintop village she was so desperate to get out of to look for work. Her mother, Angelina, had made it clear that the child was Irma’s responsibility and she needed to find a way to feed and clothe her. Being the middle of the Second World War did nothing to ease the burden, making nurturing a child an impossible task, even if she’d had the inclination to do so. So Irma finally got to fulfil her ambition of leaving her hometown, just not quite in the lap of luxury she’d imagined.

In the city, the anonymity suited Irma just fine, no one knew her shame here. For the most part, she could pretend the child didn’t exist at all, and in fact, took every opportunity to forget all about her. It wasn’t difficult for her to do. She was still a beautiful woman and she could still attract a male gaze. Her hopes of securing a comfortable life for herself were therefore far from dashed, and the chances of meeting the right kind of gentleman were so much greater in the city.

But every time Irma started to feel that her life was starting to get back on track, her mother would remind her that she had far greater responsibilities than securing a comfortable existence for herself. Angelina was in her 60s and not in a position to be mothering a small child, no matter how much she adored her.

Finally, Irma decided to take definitive action to stop all the nagging. One day in 1946 when the child was barely four years old, Irma returned to Isernia with a solution. She had secured a placement for the child in a boarding school of sorts, an institution run by nuns who took in abandoned children, boarders and day students. 

Tearing her away from the only mother and home she’d ever known, the child was inconsolable.

“Mamma! Mamma!” she cried incessantly.

How it infuriated Irma. Stupid child. Didn’t she know that SHE was her mother?! 

By the time they’d reached the institution, Irma was at her wits end. She could hardly wait to offload the weeping bundle and finally bring an end to the child’s wailing and, hopefully, Angelina’s nagging.

“She’s a wicked child.” Irma told the nuns as she handed the little girl over. “Be sure to punish her and teach her some manners or you’ll never get any peace.” 

Turning her back on the child with barely a hint of remorse, Irma got on with her life.

For the next seventeen years, the child was virtually an orphan, dominated by a strict and severe religious doctrine of manual labour, sacrifice, prayer and punishment. She experienced little of the joys of childhood, neither the loving embrace of a parent nor the sense of belonging to a family unit. She rarely returned home to Isernia and when she did, it was always with the dreaded knowledge that it was a short lived, almost cruel, liberty. The child was a miserable child.

The child was my mother.

The trauma of my mother’s childhood would not only leave an indelible mark on her psyche but go on to impact her future children as well.

…to be continued…