Big Girl, Small Town
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Synopsis
“Darkly hilarious . . . Wildly entertaining.” —The Guardian
Meet Majella O’Neill, a heroine like no other, in this captivating Irish debut that has been called Milkman meets Derry Girls
Majella is happiest out of the spotlight, away from her neighbors’ stares and the gossips of the small town in Northern Ireland where she grew up during the Troubles. She lives a quiet life caring for her alcoholic mother, working in the local chip shop, watching the regular customers come and go. She wears the same clothes each day (overalls, too small), has the same dinner each night (fish and chips, microwaved at home after her shift ends), and binge-watches old videotapes of the same show (Dallas, best show on TV) from the comfort of her bed.
But underneath Majella’s seemingly ordinary life are the facts that she doesn’t know where her father is and that every person in her town has been changed by the lingering divide between Protestants and Catholics. When Majella’s predictable existence is upended by the death of her granny, she comes to realize there may be more to life than the gossips of Aghybogey, the pub, and the chip shop. In fact, there just may be a whole big world outside her small town.
Told in a highly original voice, with a captivating heroine readers will love and root for, Big Girl, Small Town will appeal to fans of Sally Rooney, Ottessa Moshfegh, and accessible literary fiction with an edge.
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Print pages: 320
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Big Girl, Small Town
Michelle Gallen
Her ma’s voice was coming from the hallway. Majella pulled the duvet over her head, balled it in her ears and closed her eyes.
— Ma-jell-ah?
She could still hear her ma’s oversize monster slippers slapping closer on the stairs. Joke slippers were item 10.4 on Majella’s list.
— MAJELLAH? Are ye STILL lying in yer pit?
Majella took her hands from her ears and began to flick her fingers to distract herself. She flinched as her ma cracked her sharp knuckles on the bedroom door.
— Majella? D’ye not have work tae go til this evening?
Majella had work to go to, just as she had done every Monday for the past nine years. And Majella knew that her ma knew that, because her work schedule and weekly Mass were the only routines their lives revolved around. She didn’t know why her ma was asking her a question that she already knew the answer to. So she didn’t reply.
— Am ah standing here talking tae myself? Am ah just some eejit wasting her breath talking til her daughter’s door? Is there nothing that—
Majella needed her ma’s voice to stop.—Ah’ll get up when ah’m ready. Ah’m not in tae six.
Majella lay stiffly in bed as her ma stood outside the door for a few moments. She slowly relaxed when she heard her shuffling away and flopping back down the stairs. Majella waited until she could hear the telly chittering, then she swung her feet to the ground and stood up. She unlocked her bedroom door and trudged to the bathroom and locked the door behind her. She sat on the plastic toilet seat and began to pish. She pished for thirteen seconds, which was a good long pish, made possible by the two liters of Coke she’d drunk before bed. She’d read in one of her ma’s Your Health! magazines that Coke was a diuretic. The magazine highly recommended diuretics to its readership, to reduce bloating from excess water. But the Your Health! team weren’t fans of Coke—they recommended an all-natural organic dandelion tea that readers could purchase from their magazine or website. Majella had been impressed that scientists had proved that dandelions were a diuretic. At school everyone’d called dandelions “Pish-the-Bed” because they said when you picked one you’d wet your bed that night. Majella knew this wasn’t true, but in school, she watched the big boys in the yard pick on the wee-er weans, forcing them to pick a dandelion, then jeering at the child for the rest of the day. Some children wet themselves in class before ever getting near their bed, earning a scolding from the teacher, who would then dress them in the classroom-accident pants. Majella didn’t like the classroom-accident pants: the same washed-out pair had served both boys and girls for years unknown in St. Jude’s Primary School. Majella had only been got once by the dandelion gang. The big fellas had surrounded her in the school yard one break time. As soon as she’d understood they wanted her to pick a dandelion, she walked straight over to the nearest bunch, plucked the biggest bloom she could see and presented it to Charley Daly, the ringleader, with her blank face (the one she used when her ma and da or the teachers were shouting). Charley Daly had been pure raging. He’d knocked the dandelion to the ground and mashed it into the tarmac with his foot. Then he’d shoved Majella so hard she fell back on her arse. Majella had sat where she fell, watching him and his gang walk off behind the prefab classroom, then she picked herself up and went back to sitting on the step of Mrs. McHugh’s classroom on her own, where she’d hidden her hands in the cradle of her skirt, flicking her fingers and humming until the bell rang.
Majella stood up and went to the mirror. It was spattered with flecks of toothpaste from where her ma’d brushed her teeth the night before. Majella couldn’t brush her teeth with the mirror like that, so she turned on the electric shower and stripped off as she waited for the hot water to kick in. Her da had installed the shower in 1988. It was the last home improvement he’d done. The last home improvement that had been made in the house in fifteen years. The grouting was now black with mold, the shower head leaking from a warped seal. The white tiles around the bath clashed with the patterned tiles that had covered the rest of the room ever since the seventies. Her da’d promised to rip the old tiles down and fit the whole room with plain tiles—he’d even bought enough tiles to finish the job. But when his brother Bobby died, he’d lost all interest in the bathroom and had left the tiles sitting where they still sat, locked in his shed in the back yard. Majella remembered him that autumn after they’d got the news. The way he shrank into a dark place inside himself. Things were never the same after that.
Majella watched the steam rise and clot on the window, then she climbed into the green bathtub. The water was as hot as she could bear and she stood under it for a long time, until she felt sure that the smell of too many years of chip grease, fish batter, burger meat and sausage fat had been washed from her burning skin. Afterwards, when she was toweling herself dry, she thought she could catch the tang of incense from the funeral last week. She didn’t know how to wash that away.
Majella listened to the creak of each stair as she made her way down them. Ever since she was wee she had loved these sounds. She loved how they sounded different depending on whether you were coming up or down the stairs, and the speed at which you were traveling. She did not love the way the fag smoke drifting from her ma in the living room clashed with the fresh after-shower smell of her skin. She went into the kitchen, where she flicked the kettle on before dropping four slices of white bread into the toaster. She grabbed her soup mug and spooned three sugars into it, then went to the fridge. There was frig all in it, as usual: a carton of skimmed milk, a tub of spreadable margarine and twelve mini-bottles of her ma’s probiotic yogurt. She poured some of the anorexic milk into her mug, then closed the fridge. She dropped two round spoonfuls of SPAR Value instant-coffee granules on top of the milk, careful not to lose a single granule. Majella hated the way her ma scattered coffee around her when she made a cup. The kettle was grumbling its way to the boil. Majella checked the time on the kitchen clock: 5:05 p.m. Her shift started in fifty-five minutes, so she had plenty of time for breakfast and telly. The kettle switch flicked up and the toaster popped at the same time, sending a surge of pleasure through Majella, and she flicked her fingers to release the tension. Her da had liked it when the toaster and kettle stopped at the same time. Sometimes when she was wee he’d sing to her when the toast was near ready to pop and the kettle about to boil and, every now and then, he’d get the timing just right and the toaster and kettle and pop would happen simultaneously.
Half a pound of tuppenny rice
Half a pound of treacle,
That’s the way the money goes
POP goes the weasel!
Majella spread an even layer of margarine over the top of her toast, then smeared each slice with MACE raspberry jam, which bore the claim of being 20% real fruit! Majella knew the other 80% included glucose-fructose syrup, citric acid, acidity regulator (sodium citrate), gelling agent (pectin) and that the sugar content of the jam was noted as being 65 g per 100 g. She did not know why the jam was not called sugar jam (65% highly processed sugar!). They did not buy the jam based on its fruit or sugar content, nor for taste. They bought MACE raspberry jam because it was the cheapest jar on the shelf. Majella took a moment to survey her breakfast, then nodded to herself in satisfaction before carrying it through to the living room. The local news was coming on, so her ma turned the volume up. Majella did not like the local news, but her ma loved it. She sat up in her chair for the reports of car accidents wiping out four members of the same family on Christmas Eve, stared mournfully at the pictures of smiling children who’d drowned on their first foreign holiday, shook her head at the night-time footage of fishing boats searching for three generations of men for weeks, for months, while the fishes and crabs feasted. When a bride and groom crashed on their way to the airport for their honeymoon, Majella’s ma first sucked up the misery on BBC Northern Ireland before switching to UTV for a slightly different angle and camera footage. If a tragedy was of sufficient magnitude to feature on the Free State news, she’d try to catch it on RTÉ too. Majella stared out through the grey net curtains to the drizzle outside. Throughout her childhood, the local news had been a litany of deaths, explosions and murder attempts. Things only got worse after peace broke out. Reporters who’d worked internationally on terrorist atrocities were now reduced to covering record-breaking attempts that usually featured children or vegetables.
Police in the small village of Ag-gee-Bow-gee . . .
The reporter’s mispronunciation of her hometown caused a shot of pain to lick down Majella’s back. She didn’t understand why reporters from Belfast couldn’t pronounce Aghybogey. They were as bad as the Brits.
. . . are calling for public cooperation in . . .
Majella’s ma scrabbled at the + volume button. Majella braced herself before the TV boomed.
. . . reporting the latest developments in a story that has gripped and shocked this small, close-knit community . . .
Majella eyed the podgy reporter in a beige coat who was standing in the center of Aghybogey to cover this shocking and tragic story.
The Police Service of Northern Ireland have made it clear that the DNA testing and fingerprinting of males aged between sixteen and sixty will be selective, that samples will only be used in connection with this case, and that all samples will be destroyed once the police have ruled out the suspect. Police have also confirmed that the death early last week of eighty-five-year-old Mrs. Margaret O’Neill is being treated as murder. Local residents have given a cautious welcome to the new developments.
A series of people Majella knew flashed up on the screen.
. . . well on behalf of the local community and my constituents I would like to condemn this senseless act of violence that has resulted in the death of a well-respected elderly woman. The PSNI are doing their best to apprehend the assailant and I would ask for the cooperation of all local people . . .
. . . well you know I don’t mind what they do so I don’t as long as they catch him so they do cuz it’s not easy so it isn’t tae sleep in yer bed at night so it’s not when that beast’s out there so he is prowling after weemen and childern and it could as well be yerself next other than anyone . . .
. . . well all ah can say is he’d better hand himself in like cuz ye know ah wouldn’t like tae be him and get caught by someone else if ye know what ah mean cuz some a the local boys is wile angry and ah sort ah agree it’s hard tae hold people responsible if things sort ah just happen like . . .
The reporter signed off, sending his audience back to the newsroom in Belfast. Majella held her breath as her ma pushed the “–” volume button on the remote control. She sat still, chewing her mouthful of toast to mush, unable to swallow. Her ma dropped back in her chair, shaking her head.
— Well now. Ah’m sure yer Aunt Marie had wind of this for long enough before the reporters got tae it. And she didn’t break her neck running over tae us til warn us about it.
Majella said nothing, her toast lying thick on her tongue.
— Ye’d think maybe even a phone call. But naw. We had tae find out over the telly. PissNI doing DNA testing! And ah bet ye every frigger around us knew before they went to the telly. Bertie Daly and the Shinners and the whole fucken shower of them.
Majella let the wad of toast slide down her throat, then she took a mouthful of coffee.
— Ach poor, poor Maggie. Never wan for the limelight but her now thrown in tae it again at her age and her not out of it even now she’s dead and buried. Twas the shame that kilt her in the end, not what that baste did tae her.
Majella eyed the rest of her soggy toast, her appetite dead. Her ma stared mournfully at the christening photograph above the mantelpiece, where she stood sulking in a miniskirt despite a biting November breeze, aged just seventeen. On one side stood her mother-in-law Maggie O’Neill, stiff-backed and formal in a navy suit, her steely hair pinned tight underneath her hat. Majella’s aunt and godmother Marie looked decades older than Majella’s ma, despite being a year younger. Only Majella’s father looked happy, as he stood there, flanked by the three women in his life, cradling his baby girl. He looked cozy in his brown velvet suit with his extravagant flares. Her uncle and godfather Bobby wasn’t in the photo. He hadn’t been arsed to stand outside the chapel waiting for the photographer to get the camera set up, so he’d pissed off to the pub. You couldn’t see Majella in the picture: she’d been half-smothered in the blankets her granny’d wrapped around her.
Majella got up and went to the kitchen, where she dumped her remaining toast into the pedal bin, then washed her plate and cup in scalding water before leaving them to dry on the draining board. She lifted the plastic bag that contained her overalls, walked down the hall and opened the front door. She could hear her ma on the phone in the living room, complaining to someone about the DNA testing.
— Ah’m away.
She shut the door without waiting to hear if her ma said goodbye.
• • •
Majella let herself in the side entrance of the chipper. Marty stepped past her, whistling.
— Bit early the day, are ye not, Jelly?
Majella glanced at the clock, then shook her head. Only Marty was allowed to call Majella Jelly. Other people might roar it at her in the street or say it to her face, but only Marty was allowed. He’d started that craic in the early days of them working together. She’d hated the nickname in school and she’d hated being hefty. But Marty liked big girls so the way he said Jelly was different. She also let him off with the slaps on the arse he’d give her when she was rummaging about in the chest freezer for another batch of chicken burgers. The slaps didn’t do much for Majella, mind, but they cracked Marty up, so Majella didn’t see the harm in letting them by her.
— Ah seen that bit on the news about yer granny. Shower of fucken eejits them PissNI. Like that baste’ll walk up tae the door of the barracks and open his gob for them tae have a wee scrape at it?
Majella was climbing into her light-green overalls in the darkness at the front of the takeaway. The interior walls were a light blue. Mr. Hunter’s wife (joint proprietor of A Salt and Battered! Traditional Fast Food Establishment) had sponge-stenciled luminous pink fish onto the takeaway walls. When the fluorescent lights were on and Majella was tired, she felt like she was swimming along with the fish.
— And who else will walk up there tae hand their DNA over tae the cops? Destroy the samples after identification my hole. We all know what went on with the fingerprints.
Majella tugged the zipper at the front of her overalls up and over the swell of her chest, wondering what had gone on with the fingerprints. Marty was watching her. She guessed by the set of him that she was supposed to react, so she shrugged. Shrugging, she’d learned, was a useful response to a lot of questions and statements. Marty pressed on.
— Y’see, they have tae be seen doing something. And what they’re doing is making a meal of yer poor granny-God-rest-her. If they have their way, they’ll soon have us all on wan big computer over there in London. The cunts.
Majella was silent, her mouth now full of hairpins. She watched her reflection in the shop window as she fixed her hair under a nylon hairnet. She wanted Marty to stop talking, so she tried saying nothing—another good trick. The silence stretched on until Marty broke it by slapping his hand on the counter in resignation.
— Ah frig them anyway. Ah’ll stick these fryers on, eh, Jelly? We need tae be ready for them fuckers outside.
Marty jerked his head in the direction of the shutters: through the slits Majella could see the O’Donnell and O’Doherty weans already queuing up. Majella knew they’d been to the pub straight after school to scrounge or lift money from their parents so’s they could get a bite to eat. Marty said they put themselves to bed, which in fairness Majella and Marty had done themselves from no age. But their parents were usually sitting downstairs watching telly, not off down the town drinking. Majella recognized several families celebrating dole day with a takeaway. She spotted the builders who’d made it back to the town early from their jobs in the Free State, starving. Majella pulled her hat down and fixed it to her hair with the last of the clips. She scratched her arse through the rough nylon of her overalls, then began to empty the bags of change into the till, enjoying the click-clack of coins dropping into place. When she was done she looked over at Marty.
— Are ye right there, Jelly?
Majella nodded, so Marty ducked under the counter and walked whistling to the chipper door. He unlocked the door and wedged it open with the rubber stopper, then ducked back behind the counter. He flicked the switch to raise the security shutters. Majella hated this bit. She braced herself as the shutters screeched, feeling the noise feed down from her ears and into her teeth. Before the shutters had ground a quarter of the way up, the wee O’Donnell cub scooted in under them and landed up to the counter with a proud look on his face. Majella looked down at him.
— What can ah get chew?
— Big bag a chips with salt ann vinegar ann red sauce please.
Majella tingled with satisfaction as she heard the crackle and spit of the first basket of chips going down.
Majella shook the chips in the fryer to make sure they would get cooked all the way through. She liked this bit. Marty wasn’t as particular as her about the chips being done evenly, which bugged her. He shouted from the counter.—Three more chips for the McHughs there, Jelly.
A minute later, he sidled down with what she had learned was his gossipy head on him.
— Now don’t turn and gawk, will ye, but take a look at who young Breda Farren’s in with.
Marty dandered past Majella, and she waited ten seconds like he’d taught her before turning to glance into the takeaway. She guessed that the only girl in the shop, the wee thing with a man old enough to be her father, was young Breda Farren. Majella knew that after they were gone, Marty’d drop by to fill her in on the latest scandal. Majella wasn’t like Marty. He knew everyone in the town. He knew who was fucking who, who had fucked who and who wanted to fuck who. He knew who was drinking, smoking, swallowing or injecting what, and he often knew the where and when. He always had an opinion on the why. Majella eyed the chips. They looked done, so she raised them up and shook the worst of the oil back into the fryer. She bagged up the order and brought it to Marty at the counter. He rang up the sale while keeping up a flow of chat, something Majella could never do.
After they left, Marty leaned on the counter and put one hand on his hip.—Ye probably don’t know yer man Duffy, now. Works out in the bank across the bridge?
Majella shook her head to allow Marty to continue.
— Course he says he’s just dropping Miss Farren off home after babysitting and getting a takeaway for the wife . . . but did ye notice he got young Breda her supper too? Ah bet ye his wife’s chips get coul while he’s gettin hot in the back of that nice new Land Rover!
Majella didn’t know how Marty could tell all of this from serving chips to two strangers standing in the shop for ten minutes. She didn’t care if he was right or wrong, for what did those two people mean to her? But she wondered what he told other people about her. About her ma. Her da. She’d sometimes wondered if he knew where her da had gone. For all she knew, the whole town knew where he was, and it was just her and her ma who didn’t. That was often the way of it.
Majella thought of wee Róisín Murphy. She’d always come into the chip shop after the bingo on a Thursday to get a battered sausage supper for her old mammy, Mary Murphy. Marty’d always try to slip a free sausage into their parcel. And after they left he’d comment yet again to Majella about what a shame it was that the child didn’t know that her “Mammy” was really her granny and her “sister” Rose was actually her mammy (and the town prostitute), for Rose had had Róisín so young that her mother had stepped in to rear the baby as her own. The whole town knew about Mary and Róisín and Rose, except for Róisín. Majella didn’t understand all this pseudo-secrecy, the stories people told. She liked things straight. But things weren’t like that in Aghybogey. It was a town in which there was nowhere to hide, so people hid stuff in plain sight.
Majella was eyeing the Connolly cub. He was sitting on the bench beside the war memorial, hunched up inside his hoodie. She knew he was waiting until the chipper was empty to run over. He was funny like that. She served the McHugh woman standing in front of her.
— There you go. Three fish suppers, a battered sausage supper, anna extra portion of chips ann onion rings.
Mrs. McHugh swung the plastic bag off the counter and walked out, leaving the chipper empty for the first time since opening. Majella caught a whiff of fag smoke over the fat fumes; Marty having a break out the back. Iggy Connolly seized his opportunity. He mooched over, hiding his face in his hoodie. He opened the door about thirty centimeters and slid himself in without triggering the buzzer. Majella had wiped the counter clean of the spills of salt and vinegar.
— What about ye, Iggy?
— Ah’m all right. What about you?
— Grand. Surviving.
Majella threw the J-cloth into the sink and put the tap on. She lifted it and rinsed it through several times and then wrung it out. She liked a clean cloth. When she turned back to the counter, Iggy was standing close to the till, his hands deep in his hoodie pouch.
— Was thinking of heading over tae the shop. You looking anything?
Majella nodded, reaching for her purse. She pulled out a list and a tenner.—Some sweets and crisps. And a bit of bread and stuff. That all right?
— Aye. Gimme it here, sure, and ah’ll be back up in a minute.
Iggy slid himself out the door. Majella wondered if he knew she didn’t like the buzzer or if it was something he avoided for himself.
Marty came in, rubbing his hands together to warm them up.—Fucken nippy out there these days. We’ll have tae get the oul thermals on soon enough, eh, Jelly?
Majella didn’t wear thermals, but she nodded all the same.
Marty frowned.—Maybe this year I’ll hibernate. Or move tae California!
Marty started into a song about California. He was a woeful singer and the noise went through Majella. She threw the wet J-cloth at him and he caught it just before it slapped him in the face.
— Fuck off. You’re just jealous, Jelly. I could’ve been a fucken superstar, me.
— Aye. And instead you’re that cunt Jamie Oliver.
It was rare enough that Majella cracked a joke, never mind a funny one, so Marty stared at her open-mouthed for a few seconds before laughing.
Majella glared at the floor.—Go away and earn yer keep will ye? Get into the back room and count out a dose a chicken nuggets, for they’re getting scarce.
Marty plodded into the back room, humming. Majella didn’t mind the humming so much, for it was absorbed by the bubbling fryers. Iggy had been gone four minutes, so Majella threw on a small portion of chips and a couple of battered sausages, then hauled herself up onto the food-preparation counter to rest her feet. She would love to have a stool that’d make it easier for her to take the weight off her feet, but Mrs. Hunter wouldn’t allow it as she believed it would encourage idleness. What Cunter didn’t realize was that a stool would make no difference to the fact that Marty was a worker and was only happy when he was buzzing around at something, while Majella had her own pace. She was no chef, but the chips never burned, the oil never caught fire and they never ran low in stock when she was on the ball. She liked to clean, so she kept the place gleaming. Marty didn’t like to clean. He’d said that he could barely be bothered to wipe his own arse, never mind the counter.
The door opened again. Majella slid down from the counter and raised Iggy’s chips out of the scalding fat. Done to a tee. Perfect timing.
— Salt ann vinegar on yer chips?
Iggy nodded from inside his hoodie. He pushed a plastic bag onto. . .
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