Unnatural (Braided Essay)
This essay was first published in The Lowell Review, 2023.
For more of Áine's published writing and teaching information, visit her author website.
© Under U.S. copyright laws, it is illegal to copy or re-use this text without the author's permission.
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Unnatural
The Aran jumper is a style of jumper (sweater) that takes its name from the Aran Islands off the west coast of Ireland . . . The Aran stitches have a multitude of interpretations and symbolic meanings. 1
In that tiny room, Sister G. said, “Now, I’m really worried about you two.”
As she said it, I could smell the nun's breath—that sugary, confectionary smell that, every lunchtime, wafted from the kitchen windows of that small-town convent in south County Mayo.
It was 1976, and “you two” were my best friend Pauline* and me. At 14 and a half, I was a year-plus younger than all of my convent-school classmates. Now, standing there in her navy-blue school uniform, Pauline cocked her chin and said, “Why, Sister? What are you so worried about?”
Sister pushed her hands into the space between us, then wove her fingers together.
“You’re all tied up in knots with each other. There’s … there’s something going on between you two. Something unnatural.”
Once we were dismissed and back out in that tiled school corridor, I whispered to my friend: “What does she mean?”
“You know,” Pauline hissed, “You. Know.”
I didn’t know. But whatever I was meant to know, I prayed that it wouldn’t get reported home to our house in the village.
In that house, which sat across the street from Saint John’s Parish Church, I often lay upstairs in my and my sister’s shared room trying to imagine what it would feel like to be cuddled and hugged. I didn’t imagine Pauline’s arms around me. Nor any of the Chistian Brothers School boys on the yellow school bus. Nor any of the parish men who drove their tractors past our house or who sat along the bar in our village pub.
Instead, my fantasy cuddler had long hair (a ponytail?) and he whispered my name in a foreign, cultured accent—something south Dublin or Anglo Irish. Or, actually, let’s go for full-on Anglo here. His clothes were something between Beatle, Beatnik and high-culture Irish (A collarless shirt? Yes, please). He was a writer or a poet or a musician who, like me, had read and adored the novelists stashed beneath my bed, two of whom--Edna O’Brien and John McGahern--had had their works banned in Ireland.
The (Aran) trellis stitch reflects the small, dry stone-walled fields created to shelter islanders from the Atlantic’s strong winds. 2
The week after Pauline’s and my tribunal, Sister G and the other Sisters of Mercy launched their blitzkrieg. Without warning, they assigned every girl in our class a new desk and a new desk-mate. Some of us had to sit with girls we didn’t like. Or a few prim town girls had to sit with one of us country kids.
“Why?” Everyone asked between classes.
We shook our heads and shrugged our shoulders. Who knew? Except Pauline and me. We had our suspicions.
These suspicions were confirmed when, during subsequent weeks, we got called up for imagined classroom infractions. One lay teacher said Pauline and I were always laughing at her. Weeks later, when we scored the exact same percentage grade on a proctored French test, another teacher said that “you two” must have been “cogging” (cheating) from each other.
“But Miss, now we sit at opposite ends of the room from each other,” said Pauline, while I just stood there, still wondering how much of this had been reported to my mother.
That year, Ireland was exactly a decade into our free secondary education and busing system. Since 1967, thanks to the O’Malley Education Act, we girls could now get the post-primary (high school) education that had been denied most of our parents whose own families either couldn’t afford the fees or didn’t have an extra bicycle to get their children from the farm to the town for school.
So here we all were in our navy-blue uniforms. And, every 45 minutes, when our lay or religious teachers swept in for the next class period, here we all stood to bless ourselves and pray.
However, if history tells us anything it’s this: It takes much longer than a decade to dismantle a deeply engrained and post-colonial classism—the kind of classism that clearly favored town girls and that forbade us farm kids (I had a good singing voice, so I had actually asked!) from auditioning for even the smallest part in the annual school musical.
In their Aran stitches, the islanders used to depict … many elements of their surroundings, such as landscapes, cliff and roads. 3
In the late afternoons, we country girls lined up outside those convent walls, where we paced and waited and gawked up the road to check for that yellow bus. “Magoo,” our grumpy and bespectacled school bus driver, worked double time as a farmer and a driver, but there was always that wild hope that this evening, Magoo might get finished with his cattle and farm chores early.
Afterward, as the Christian Brothers boys yelped and squabbled in the back of the school bus, I counted the three-and-a-half miles and the minutes until I got dropped off in the village.
I say “village” here, but ours was little more than a stripe of tarmacadam road that ran between 14 detached and mismatched buildings, including our two pubs and shops, a post office, the priest’s house and the church.
Three miles to the south sat the real village of Cong, where the houses were actually stuck together, and where tourists went because, in 1952, John Wayne had played the “yank” in the iconic Irish movie, “The Quiet Man.”
Three-and-a-half miles to our north sat our market town with its shops and pubs and banks, a weekly cattle mart and the Sisters of Mercy and Christian Brothers Schools.
The town. The school. The village. By or before my 15th birthday, they had become a trifecta of sufferance.
By my 16th birthday, I knew what Sister G’s “unnatural” really meant. But I didn’t know that knowing is not the same as understanding. For example, I knew that, every night, the moon rose behind the clouds or above the yew trees next to the village church. I also knew that, in 1969, Neil Armstrong had walked on that moon. But how could my young brain or heart ever imagine or understand what it felt like to step out of a space rocket?
The Tree of Life stitch is used as a symbol of strong and protective parents, represented by the roots, and healthy children, the branches, overall signifying the unity and harmony with the family.4
Before my 10th birthday we had lived, not in the village, but in a thatch-roof house that sat in a hollow behind the village, on my mother’s ancestral farm. For most or all of their marriage, my father worked double time as a lorry driver and a farmer. So on weekdays, we rarely saw him until about an hour before bedtime, when he arrived home hungry and road-weary. Or, some weeks, there he suddenly was, the man at our Saturday breakfast table.
Once we moved up to the village, we were a house of girls and women. By the summer of 1978, my older sister and my two brothers had already left for work or college. With few front-door visitors and no household telephone, we rarely or never had outside company.
After our mid-afternoon dinner, we girls were supposed to sweep a floor or mow a lawn or paint a trellis or a gate. Or, when it rained, I baked bread or apple tarts or I sewed something on my grandmother’s old Singer sewing machine. Was it that summer when I converted a set of old drapes into a slipcover for our saggy leather couch?
During all my chores, I mentally transported myself from that house and village to the big university in Galway City. In my Mitty-esque (as in, Walter Mitty) mind, there I stood: dressed so groovy and drinking red wine at the college literary and French clubs.
And there was my long-haired, cuddly man. Naturellement, he spoke fluent French and Yeats and, when he discovered that I did, too, he fell madly in love with me.
The lucky honeycomb stitch is intended to be a wish for good luck and a great catch. 5
That July afternoon in 1978, which is when the love thing actually happened, how did I hoodwink my mother into letting me ride my bicycle into town? Needing to buy tampons usually worked--though only once per month. Changing my library books also worked—but depending on the day and the mood.
By now, my reading tastes had turned foreign. We had read Guy de Maupassant at school. I loved Taylor Caldwell, the British-born American novelist. I had just “met” William Trevor, the Anglo-Irish short story writer and novelist. Pauline had lent me paperbacks of James Herriot’s novels. I devoured the Galway-born author Walter Macken, and I remember lying in my twin bed weeping softly over his book, “Rain on the Wind.” Amid all these, I stayed staunchly loyal to my Edna and my McGahern.
That summer, I had convinced my mother to let me attend a few of the Friday night dances in the town hall—but only when Pauline’s father drove us there and back.
Once I escaped the house, the afternoon bicycle trip to town was just long and free and gleeful enough to set the Mitty-esque mind wild enough to mentally retrofit myself and my long, windblown hair into a femme fatale. And wild and fanciful enough to photoshop that town into a place far grander than it ever was.
Between the garage and the barber’s shop, I dismounted my bike to wheel it down Main Street between the street’s terraced houses and shops. I walked past a religious goods shop and its window display of ceramic Blessed Virgins and plastic Irish colleen dolls. Next was a drapery with its window-full of summer blouses and packets of high-waist panties and nylon support stockings. The next place sported touristy Aran sweaters that were rumored to be discounted seconds from the Gaeltarra knitting factory over in Tourmakeady by the lake.
Half-way down Main stood Mrs. M's, where the summer mannequins were still in their winter woolies. Some weeks, a mannequin's plastic head was flopped sideways or forward, as if the poor thing had just been shot.
Also, if you pinged that drapery door open at the wrong time—as in, while Mrs. Murphy was still on her knees at her midday rosary--she yelled out from her kitchen to just stand there at the counter and wait.
That Thursday, I parked my bike outside Murphy’s and then crossed the street to McCormack’s Shoes, who always had the grooviest summer sandals.
“Hi there!” The 20-something man called out to me as he closed the stretch of footpath between us. Dark hair. A clean, brand-new Aran sweater in natural, báinín wool. Levi’s jeans.
American. Not British. Not fancy Dublin. Not French. But hey, foreign was foreign. America was Taylor Caldwell.
As we chatted and flirted, my American with the monosyllabic name (Chad? Thad? Todd?) asked: “So, what’s there to do around here?”
Nothing. Nothing unless you count the Wednesday cattle mart. Or the annual town musical and the Saint Patrick’s Day céilí, both of which are chaperoned by the nuns.
On that footpath, I blathered on about our two trout-fishing lakes and our Quiet Man movie village and Ashford Castle, built in the 13th century, and once home to the Guinness family.
“And, of course, there’s the seaside at Westport,” I said, with a swish of the hair, while I already cast and saw us there—he with his Aran sweater tied around his Levi’s waist, and me in my long hair and peasant-styled skirt as we strolled, hand in hand, along Clew Bay.
He asked, “Yeah, but how's the night life around here?”
“Well, we've the dance in the town hall. Every Friday night!”
A smirk. “Is … that where you go?”
“Oh, yeah. Every single Friday.”
“Will you be there this Friday, like tomorrow night?”
Tilt the head. Make him wait for your answer. That’s how the Dublin women on TV chat shows do it. “Ye-ees. I will.”
“--Cool! See you there!”
The local folklore states that the pattern one’s family used was so distinct that, if a fisherman happened to die at sea, he could be identified by the sweater he was wearing.6
We south Mayo women excelled at stealth surveillance—at watching the dance-hall door while looking like we were not watching that dance hall door. The first tactic: Beeline it to the Ladies toilets to comb the hair and to check out the competition. Next tactic: After the toilets, snag a good, high-visibility spot along that wooden bench on the left-hand side of the hall. Third tactic: Whether it was rock or pop or old-people’s country, jig along and pretend to be enjoying the band and not watching for a man in a brand-new, Aran sweater, so shiny clean that he’d be dead easy to spot or identify.
That July Friday, the town pubs were still open and serving, so not many men came through that door—or none you’d ever want to be seen with. Some girls were dancing with each other, their faces dappled in the dance hall’s colored lights.
11:30. Pub closing time. Any minute now.
11:45. The men were starting to dribble in. By midnight, more men pushed and jostled through, then stood along the right-hand side, just like in Trevor’s “Ballroom of Romance.” Women on the left. Men on the right. In between us stretched that dance-floor wonderland.
I needed to pee. But if I returned to those bathrooms, into that fog of hair lacquer, wouldn’t my American think that I’d stood him up?
The men were beginning to cross that floor. From my bench, maybe I should make eye contact with one and, if asked, accept a dance from a local. Then, when my American finally arrived, he would have to wait. Or he’d have to cross the floor to claim me. Then, we would sneak out that dance hall door, hand in hand, like illicit lovers in the French Résistance.
Outside, I would lead him downtown to a shop doorway—not the religious goods shop with the peering statues, and not Mrs. M's, with her decapitated mannequins. We needed someplace romantic and discreet where he could wrap his arms around me and where I could lay my cheek against that Aran sweater and where we could get all tied up in knots with each other.
Then, after just one kiss, he would declare that, to heck with the rest of his tourist’s driving tour through Ireland. He would just stay here, in south Mayo, with me.
The band played on. The last of the older men staggered in. The dance floor was crowded with couples sweating and jiving; a head on a shoulder; a hand under a blouse.
Any minute now, I will look up to see him standing right here.
The music stopped. The band unplugged. The hall lights went up, harsh and florescent against those dance-hall walls with their acne of black mildew.
When a (knitting) mistake is not too far away (say, a few stitches or rows back), one option is to unknit back to the problem. You don’t have to take your knitting off the needles, or worry about your knitting unraveling.7
Eight months later, in the spring of my final school year, Sister D, the career guidance nun, summoned me to her room. Sister D did double duty as an Irish language and career guidance teacher.
She had also taught us religion.
A year earlier, I had reduced this nun to tears when I raised my hand to interrupt and argue against her recitation about the one, true, apostolic church.
Based on her hypothesis (I said), we Catholics were supposed to be the lifelong, 10-to-one favorite in every horse race (my father loved the thoroughbred races).
“And sure, that’s logistically impossible, Sister,” I added, watching the tears fill and her bottom lip quiver. “Sure, there’d have to be loads of days when all the others, the Jews, the protestants, the Muslims, et al, would, at a minimum, become the short-odds bet or even the high-stakes favorite? Sure, how can we Catholics always be the one to race past that winning post, like, into Heaven?”
Now, in the career guidance room, Sister inquired about my plans for college and life. I said I was thinking about English and French (and drinking wine) at the big university in Galway. Pauline was going there, too. Or, actually, I had read about this University of Limerick degree course on international marketing. International marketing. In that room I said it so grandly, relishing her puzzled, clueless expression.
At last Sister said, “Whaa-at? Oh, God no. Not for a girl like you.”
Then, she presented the real choices and paperwork: nursing, a secretarial course and a small, teacher-education college in Dublin. The college was run by the Sisters of Mercy, and, just to snag a bilingual (Irish and English) entrance interview, you needed high grades and a good singing voice. Plus, this was where my mother wanted me to go, and getting in there would make the school look good.
That afternoon, when Sister D pushed the teacher-ed application into my hand, my 16-year-old heart knew that an issue had been decided. No, not decided. Settled.
If the knitting mistake was made a long time ago, and you need to correct the mistake, you will have no other option but to rip out your knitting to that place. 8
Three years on, I graduated into high-unemployment Ireland (some of our rural areas saw a 20% unemployment rate) to eventually land a job in a tiny midlands village that sat about 40 miles south, or on the lee side, of the then-Northern Irish border.
One year, I had 42 first and second grade children jammed into my classroom with its shiny green blackboards and rows of old, broken desks.
In an island nation, some of my little students had never seen the ocean. We had no special education services, and, when the winter winds blew underneath those windows, I wore both a lambswool and one of my hand-knit sweaters.
By now, all my grandiose, Mitty-esque daydreams had crashed and stalled. By now, in a school with no staff bathroom, the only thing I excelled at was holding my pee.
Pauline and I drifted apart. Decades later, it was rumored that Sister G, our “something unnatural” accuser, had quit the nunnery and someone claimed to have spotted her in sunny Florida.
One December afternoon in 1986, I joined one of the very long queues in the Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS) processing room at JFK Airport, New York. Most of us in those queues were 20- or 30-something Irish. Most of us had country accents. I had been warned about the New York winter, so I stood there in one of my hand-knit wool sweaters. In the broiling heat of that INS room, the sweater made the sweat trickle down between my breasts.
The heat, the fear, the slow-moving queues—they all felt inevitable, as if leaving our own country was the most natural thing in the world.
1 Wikipedia
2 -6 10 Aran Stitches You Need to Know. Tara Irish Clothing Blog
7-8 How to Fix Knitting Mistakes: Three Stress Free Solutions
*The name is changed to protect the subject’s privacy.
For more of my published writing and teaching information, visit my author website.
