The scullery is Mum’s domain, where the infernal boiler powers our house, heats bath water, dries laundry to crisp cocoons pupating on the ceiling rack. Glow Worm Model B33 demands daily devotion from her acolyte. She forces Mum onto painful Sunday knees to coax sparks into flames, to empty the overflowing ash pan – whose glowing cinders give off diabolical fumes – forces her to lug scuttles of anthracite from the bunker, to graze knuckles on its concrete hatch. In the domestic division of labour Dad regards this all as women’s work. He excuses himself from these essential chores, citing his recent heart scare.
Mum acknowledges my burgeoning hormones with reluctance, arranges for brown paper bag packages to be smuggled into the scullery for disposal. She draws the lid off with the handle and the furnace roars as Dr. White’s stained hammocks feed the boiler goddess with my menstrual blood. Sister Joseph of the Incarnation is delegated by Mum to inform me about periods with her booklet My Dear Daughter – handed to me in embarrassment – to indoctrinate me that there is something not quite nice about my monthly flow. Dad, of course, isn’t to know as men need to be protected from female matters – yet any impure thoughts I might have must be confessed to a celibate priest in a darkened wardrobe on a Saturday.
With Women’s Lib in the ascendant, we three sisters congregate in front of the boiler to make a votive offering. We cackle like Macbeth’s hags, while Mum giggles at our daring. I dangle my pink gingham 32 A First Bra over the orifice, drop my sacrifice into her sooty yawning hole. It catches well, flares, then melts as Dad comes in to see what all the fuss is about just in time to witness the triumphant flames.
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