Chapter 63
CHAPTER 63
Bernie
Getting back on the train in Belfast is a different matter than boarding in Dublin was. A lot has changed in the space of a few hours. We are not the same women we were when we left our capital city this morning. We departed Dublin as mothers, daughters, sisters, and friends, and we return as lawbreakers. It fills me with anger to think that contraception, so easily accessible for our peers in Northern Ireland, is illegal for us. I’m so full of rage I want to kick something. I lift my leg and draw a swipe at a bright red postbox. My toe throbs instantly and I cry out.
“Are you scared?” Maura asks.
“I’m angry,” I say.
“But are you scared?”
I swallow. “Yes.”
“Me too.”
We climb aboard the train and the banter and excitement that fueled us on the way to Belfast are replaced with silence and nervous anticipation. Almost every woman sits with her handbag on her knees, subconsciously guarding it. I’m no different. Every so often I open my bag and peek inside. Each time I find a box of condoms staring back at me, and it snatches my breath. The train rattles and trundles through scenic countryside. Green fields stretch for miles outside the window like an emerald patchwork quilt. The train seems to move faster on the way home, as if it can’t wait to spit us out in Dublin and tell tales of our unsavory behavior in the north.
We’re pulling into Drogheda Station before Teresa crumbles and begins to cry.
“Oh Jaysus, not more tears,” Geraldine says, rolling her eyes.
“I’m scared,” Teresa says.
“We all are,” I promise her.
“Speak for yourself,” Geraldine says. “I’m not scared. I’m not scared of anyone.”
The shrill pitch of her tone contradicts her. There is not a woman among us who isn’t worried about the reception we face back home. Teresa has every right to cry. And I have to try mighty hard not to join her.
“Hide in the loo, if you’re that worried,” Geraldine suggests. “When the train gets into Dublin, hide. No one will notice and you can come out when the guards are gone.”
“Oh God. Oh God. Do you really think the gardai will be there? Will they arrest us? I don’t want to go to jail.”
I want to tell Teresa not to worry, that everything will be all right. But the truth is that maybe the gardai will arrest us. They’d have every right. We’ve broken the law. It’s a stupid, antiquated, disgusting law, but it’s a law nonetheless.
There is silence for the rest of the journey. We are all lost in our own thoughts. I worry about my girls. What will life be like for them when their mother is all over the news? Their friends in school, their teachers, our neighbors—they may all treat them differently now. I should regret boarding the train. I should regret the laughs and moments of honest-to-God happiness I felt as I walked the streets of Belfast next to my best friend. But I do not. I do not regret a single moment of this journey. And if I had the chance, I would do it all over again.
Teresa lets out a wail as if she’s in physical pain when the train slowly rolls into Connolly Station. The door opens and we all stand up. Time ticks by in slow motion. It’s a minute, maybe more, before anyone takes a step forward. Nuala is the first to move. Then Sharon. And soon others follow.
“Let them through. Let them through. Let them through.”
Chanting and cheering echo around the station. The noise of it all hits us in the face as soon as we set foot on the platform.
“What’s happening?” Teresa says, terrified.
A small number of gardai are trying to keep a large group of supporters off the platform.
“Stand back,” a garda shouts. “Step back.”
“Let them through. Let them through. Let them through.”
The crowd carries homemade banners and placards, much like the ones we fashioned ourselves. I read as many as I can. CONTRACEPTION IS A HUMAN RIGHT. WELCOME HOME. NO BANNING FAMILY PLANNING .
“What are they saying?” Teresa asks, cupping her ear.
“They’re telling the police to let us pass. They’re supporting us. Everyone is on our side,” I say.
My heart races. I feel a hand around mine. Maura squeezes. “We did it,” she says.
“Quick, quick. Take this.” Nuala pulls the tablecloth banner from her rucksack. She takes one corner and Sharon takes the other. “Hold it up. Let them see.”
The cheering grows even louder as soon as people spot the banner. The gardai struggle to confine folks to the end of the platform.
Maura, Ger, and I lift it in the middle and all five of us walk behind the long banner. I look over my shoulder to find Teresa behind me. She hasn’t run away to hide in the bathroom. She is smiling. The remainder of the women are in a line behind us. We stand together; we walk together. We are brave and we are one.
At the end of the platform, we are guided to one side, where we are told customs are waiting. Uniformed officials stand behind tables, just like the ones from a school classroom, and insist that we open our handbags.
“Fine,” Nuala says, shaking off an official who has cupped her elbow. “But you won’t like what you see.”
The uniformed man with a peaked cap and small, beady eyes shoves his hand into her bag and rummages around. I gasp at the indignity of it all. Nuala doesn’t flinch. She stands with her hip jutting out and her arms folded.
The official pulls out the condoms first.
“Are you aware these are illegal?” he asks.
“They shouldn’t be,” Nuala says.
She reaches into her bag and pulls out the bag of small white tablets.
“I bought these too,” she says, with a wide, gummy smile lighting up her whole face.
The man attempts to snatch the plastic bag from her grip but Nuala moves quickly, distancing herself from him. He remains confined behind the table.
“They’re mine,” Nuala says. “I’m not giving them to you.”
The crowd cheers. There’s some pushing and shoving. The gardai are losing the battle to hold the people back. I watch a guard hit a man on the head with his baton.
“Now, ladies, take the pill now,” Nuala shouts, and her voice sounds as if it could carry for miles.
Every woman on the platform opens her handbag and takes out a single white tablet. Our aspirin. But customs doesn’t know that, and the satisfaction I feel is shared by every last one of us.
“One. Two. Three,” Nuala says. She opens her mouth wide and tosses the tablet in. All forty-six others of us do the same. Cameras snap. Their flashes blind us. And I’ve no doubt that we will be on the front cover of every newspaper in Ireland this evening.
We stand and wait. We wait for the gardai to turn their attention away from crowd control and onto us. We wait for customs to instruct that they arrest us. We wait for our fates to be dished out. But no one comes any closer. Customs doesn’t open another bag and the gardai don’t take a single step toward us.
“Let them through. Let them through. Let them through.” The chanting nearly lifts the roof off the station.
“Can we go? Can we leave? Just like that?” Teresa asks.
Nuala nods. She snatches her bag off the table and says, “I’ll be taking that,” and then she breaks into a run. We all follow.
I spot Dan and the girls in the crowd and I’m racing toward them when I feel a hand on my shoulder. I turn.
“Mrs. Stitch!” I say.
Maura is by my side in an instant. All the noise fades to nothingness and suddenly it is as if we are the only three women standing on the platform, the only three women in the world.
“Well done,” Mrs. Stitch says.
“We’ve put you out of business,” Maura says, unable to look at her.
“It’s a business I never wanted to be in,” she says. “I guess this means contraception must be sort of okay now, doesn’t it?”
“Well, Mrs. Stitch, I don’t know,” I say. “Maybe. Hopefully.”
“My name is Bernadette. Bernadette Brighton. I don’t think there is any need for Mrs. Stitch anymore,” she says. “Thank you.”
I hold her gaze for some time. Somehow I am certain Josie is on the platform with us, and both of us can feel it.
By then, Dan has reached us. I fling myself into his arms and hug him as if I have been separated from him for one hundred years. I hug my girls, too, and tell them how much I love them.
Outside the station there are yet more folks gathered. Some are family and friends of the women on the train. Others simply heard about it and have come to offer their support. I spot Maura again to my left. She stands next to Ger and Teresa, and they are blowing up condoms like balloons, tying knots in the ends, and tossing them into the crowd.
Teresa’s laughter is youthful and contagious and I wonder if she will remember all of this as the best day of her life. I hope so.