(3 of 9)
To the children of the city the message is clear: Keep behind your lines; stay with your own people. In effect, the war has caged them. They have limited freedom of movement, little freedom of speech and, in some cases, no freedom of childhood itself.
Bernadette Livingstone, for example, cannot leave the house much these days because her mother has commanded most of her attention since Julie's death. Julie was 14, a year younger than Bernadette when she was killed last May by a plastic bullet fired from a British army Saracen. It happened during a protest demonstration involving mostly women.
"One of the hunger strikers had just died—you know? Francis Hughes, I think it was. Yeah, it was. And Julie and her friend had just come out of a shop. And there was the bangin' of the lids [garbage can lids—a signal of mourning and anger]. Suddenly people started running. And the army Saracens came down the road—you know? Six-wheeler Saracens? And Julie dove. But when her friend tried to pick her up, she couldn't move. She was still conscious on the way to the hospital. But she wasn't all there, like, when we left her. Mommy kept ringing the doctors all night to see how she was. The thing they were afraid of was the blood leakin' into her brain."
Bernadette is a fifth-former in the Cross and Passion Secondary School—all girls—in Andersonstown, a hard-line Catholic area. The school is located next to a brewery, and the sidewalk out front bears burn marks where a car was set afire in a riot. Inside, all is composed and pleasant. Nuns shush the light chatter. The girls swish by in their green-and-yellow uniforms; their heels click on the linoleum. On the wall of the room where Bernadette sits is a Pope John Paul II calendar and a poster with the words GOD IS NEARER TO US THAN WE ARE TO OURSELVES. Bernadette holds her hands clasped below her green-and-yellow tie, except when she brushes a wisp of blond hair away from her eyes. The eyes are at once soft and stubborn.
"My mother will never get over it. She had Julie late in life—you know? My father doesn't express his feelings. I think that's worse. He used to do a bit of singin', but he doesn't sing so much any more—you know?"
You don't know, of course, but this is the way most Belfast kids tell stories. Each statement of fact is turned up at the end like a question. It isn't as if they are asking you anything that requires an answer. The statement carries the assumption that you probably already know what they have been telling you. That she and Julie didn't get along—you know? That Julie was the nervous one. That Julie was the youngest—you know? "Now I'm the youngest."