Maison Majella chapter 3: "We're losing lads, Maj"
Can Shem Moran compete with a fridge full of Monster?
Bridget Clancy gives me a look that would freeze piss as she pushes past me outside of Filan’s, a cardboard box of groceries in her hands. She’s too cheap to even buy a bag for life. The Clancys are all the same, tighter than two coats of paint, as my father would say.
I do my best to smile. “Will you take a flyer, Bridget?”
Don Hatton made them up for me on Canva and I got our Transition Year work experience in the school office to print out a hundred when Mrs O’Leary was in a meeting with the bishop yesterday. They can’t finish that Educate Together in Knocknamanagh fast enough. If I have to do one more year of communion prep I’m going to lose my reason, God forgive me. I’m flat out refreshing the teacher jobs pages waiting for those Knock positions to open up. Here I am Lord is a banger but I won’t miss it.
“Nanny wanted three days a week for angel baby,” the text reads and underneath is the cutest picture of Baby Aisling I could find. She’s wearing her “somebody who loves me went to Lourdes” onesie that Pablo’s Abuela Sofia sent her over. I swore I’d never put it near her but I’ll try anything. I cropped out my copy of Coping with a Spirited Child on the bed behind her, just in case it gives off the wrong impression.
“Sorry Majella, I thought you were collecting for something,” Bridget says, doubling back on herself, nosy as anything. “Here give me a look, what’s all this about?”
I hand her the flyer. “Pablo’s mother got some bad news about her health,” I explain, sort of pointing to my chest. “He’s had to go home to Tenerife for a while so I need someone to mind this little one.”
We both look down at Baby Ais, who’s sitting in her buggy gumming on a lump of Liga, two big red cheeks a tell-tale sign she has another tooth coming down. It would explain why we saw every hour on the clock last night. If it wasn’t for Miss Rachel giving me an opportunity to doze on the floor I’d have gone out of my mind and Pablo only left on Wednesday. My mother was able to take her on Thursday and Friday but she’s bringing Tessie Daly to the chiropodist on Monday so I’m really stuck. Plus she says she can only do two days a week going forward.
“She’s a dote,” Bridget says, reading the flyer. “Hang on, you’re looking for a nanny for her? Is your mother not her Nanny? Or is it Granny? She’s not insisting on being called something like “FooFoo” so she doesn’t feel old, is she?”
Aisling was right, I’m already getting pushback on the terminology. She accused me of both trying to sound posh and trying to emulate the Americans by insisting on looking for a “nanny”. We had a tense five minutes over some of Carol Boland’s orange and raisin scones in the mobile home. Ais says people will think I’m looking for someone to move in with me if I persist with “nanny”. As if I’d have space for that. My hob is currently doubling as my dressing table.