Sisters of Mercy

They took my hair. They took my clothes. They took my name. They took my daughter.

Standing at the gates to the Magdalene asylum where I had been incarcerated for twenty years, I've come back to exorcise the ghosts of those who died here within this austere architecture of confinement.

The decaying complex of buildings stands completely devoid of life. Approaching it, the windows glare at me like the eyes of an empty soul, the grand door gives me the impression that it is the gateway to Hell. And it was. Ivy gnarls its way through broken windows, twisting its leathery stems throughout the laundry. The putrid stench of damp and rot clogs my nose, making me wretch. All around me weathered mortar sheds off, like a moulting snake. Generations of spiders had decorated the peeling walls with cobwebs of delicate beauty, though now even they are in disarray. Fragments of plaster lie over a long untrodden tiled floor, their only purpose to soak up unfettered rain whilst water seeps through rotting, blistered window frames to feed the mold and mildew.

Cautiously, I ascend the rickety stairs to the dormitory where I had slept. All that remains are the rusting iron bed frames. I walk warily over to the only window, haunted by what happened there. That window gave us light when all was dark, but had its own dark, dark secret.

Lucy hadn't stopped crying for her baby since she arrived. Her pain was raw and savage and it just kept growing like a beast inside her. So desperate to see her son, in a bid to escape, she fashioned a rope by knotting sheets together, one end tied to her metal bedpost, the other flung out of the casement. Clambering out, Lucy swung down; I held my breath - the sheets didn't stretch far enough. We were six stories up - she fell the last three. I heard the sickening thump as she hit the ground. Looking down we saw her lying there like a broken doll, crimson blood streaming from her head staining the virgin snow. I saw it all; I heard her terrible scream. For months it echoed in my dreams and the image of her there stays with me today. We didn't go to her funeral. The nuns didn't talk about her at all, save to say that she was a temptation to her Grandfather, that she made up wicked stories about him and that she was a sinner. We didn't believe them; Lucy wouldn't lie. Her name was never mentioned again, but I'll never forget her. Not ever.

Tears trickle down my cheeks. How could God let this happen? Anger and sadness mix together, bubbling and boiling in my brain. Why did we have to endure such abuse? Why?

The days took on a punishing routine. Get up, kneel by the bed for Morning Prayer, wash, dress, go to the chapel for Mass, eat a breakfast of bread and dripping, scrub the convent, then to the laundry to slave there all day in enforced silence. Dinner of cabbage and potato or maybe a watery stew, and back to chapel for more prayer. And the cycle would start again. The days leaked into weeks, months, years. We had no contact with the outside world. It was the sixties: the Beatles had released "Sgt. Pepper", the USA was embroiled in a bitter war in Vietnam and Neil Armstrong had taken his one small step. We knew nothing of it living an isolated existence in a hybrid between prison and workhouse, each of us with shorn hair and clothed in dour grey calico dresses. Gradually, I lost any sense of my identity.

I hurry into the refectory with my head bent, expecting a beating from Sister but none comes. Looking up I realise no one is there, only the long wooden benches and tables.

Sitting down in my usual place, number 53's place I suddenly recall seeing Mother Superior's face as she violently and relentlessly laid into a girl who remained unresponsive to her beating.

Rushing outside I try to banish images of Lucy from my mind but I'm confronted by a line of yew trees with boughs twisted like contorted ligaments writhing in a silent scream. Below them lie cold grey stones, each marking a dwelling place in which no one is home. Row upon row of tombstones stand erect in silence all around me - a sea of the dead. Each stone simply says 'A Penitent'. No name, no age, nothing, just 'A Penitent'. And that was what we were. Or so the nuns kept telling us.

The order of nuns that 'looked after us' were the Sisters of Mercy. There was nothing merciful about them. I think they liked seeing us in pain. When I wasn't crying in agony, I was crying inside. I cried for my newborn wrenched from my arms before I could even kiss her, for my friends and the life I had known. They never called us by our names, just our numbers.

I can't leave without entering the mother and baby room. It was there I had laboured for hours to bring my only child into the world. There was no pain relief, no epidural, no mask of gas and air, not even an aspirin. But the pain of giving birth was nothing compared with what I felt when she was ripped from me, taken away forever to what they said would be a better life.

Finally, the Taoiseach has apologised to those women who had been confined in Ireland's Magdalene Laundries acknowledging the harrowing physical and psychological abuse they endured there that led us to a lifetime of hurt, loneliness and shame.

After a long time and all the stigma I can say, "Yes, I was  Magdalene." No more guilt, no more shame. Not for me. Not for Lucy.

They took my hair. They took my clothes. They took my name. They took my daughter.