‘Call me Julie,’ she whispered, trying to smile. I smelt a waft of sweet flowery perfume and looked at her, wide-eyed. It was a high-pitched giggle, like a little girl. I felt very uncomfortable, and still said nothing. Then she said, ‘Your mother told me you’ve been asking to meet me for months – but I didn’t know you were coming today.’
I tried to take this in. I hadn’t said a word to Barbara. I never said anything to her about my real mother – I was just told all the time she was a ‘slut’ and a ‘whore’. I looked at her hair: it was dyed so platinum it looked like dolls’ hair. No sign of the dark locks or shiny bluish black hair that I had. Julie looked at the people around the table and decided to do something – she took me by the hand and introduced me as ‘Louise’ and ‘a friend’. She told me all their names. They said ‘Hi’ one by one, and then went back to eating. So I was a ‘friend’, not her daughter?
She found me a chair, sat me down and put some things on a plate, like a sausage roll and some crisps, and left me to it. I wasn’t hungry – for once. I just sat tight-lipped and watched all these people chattering away to each other. I wanted to die. I felt totally out of place. I knew I looked grubby while all of them had nice trendy clothes on. They were laughing, smiling, happy. There were two younger people there, in cool clothes, and Julie moved over and chatted to them, putting her hands on their shoulders and touching their hair. I worked out after a while that they were connected to her – were they her children? Then I realised the big man at the party – tall with silver hair – must be her husband, as he kept touching her on the shoulder and asking her things.
As I watched, a whole scene unfolded of a family life I knew nothing about. I felt like an alien who had landed on the lawn and been taken in and given a sausage roll. I couldn’t eat it. I just sat and wanted to cry. Eventually the man who was with Julie came and sat next to me.
‘Hi, Louise,’ he said. ‘How are you doing? I’m Brian.’
I couldn’t say anything. I just burst into tears. After a bit he went away and I just sat by myself in silence, digging my nails into my palms, willing myself to disappear. I waited all afternoon for her to take me aside and say, ‘Hi, I’m your real mum’ or ‘Tell me all about yourself’, but instead she just kept saying, ‘Call me Julie,’ and doing her high-pitched giggle. I watched her shaking her bracelets, tossing her hair, flirting with all the men. Nobody knew who I was or why I was there. Nobody cared, and definitely nobody wanted me.
Barbara arrived in the early evening and we made our awkward goodbyes. We drove in silence most of the way back. I realised that Barbara had somehow found out there was to be a party at Julie’s house and had taken it upon herself to get there – she had crashed the party on a whim. I shut my eyes and a vision of Julie in pink floated up. Was she a ‘slut’ and a ‘whore’ as I had been told my whole life? Barbara made no attempt to explain anything, and I was too crushed and distressed to ask. I just looked out at the sky and watched the clouds change shape and disappear behind trees, houses and hoardings.
Why had Barbara told Julie I wanted to see her? There was I thinking that Julie wanted to see me when she so obviously didn’t. I longed to see Sean so I could tell him what had happened and try and make sense of it all. If this was my real mother, did she want me? It didn’t feel like it. She hadn’t told anyone who I was, so no one welcomed me into the family. Was that going to happen later? Who were all those people? Was Brian my father? Were they Jewish? I was none the wiser, and much more confused than I’d ever been before we went. It seemed I really was nobody’s child. So nobody would help me with what was to come.
14
From Bad to Worse
Things got worse after this trip to Julie’s house. I didn’t dare ask Barbara anything about her or what would happen next. I really wanted to know – would I see her again? Would I become part of her family? Would we visit or would she come and see us? In my memory the colourful party assumed the status of a dream, and Julie’s world was one of laughter and smiling people, nice clothes and plentiful food. I decided that she had been so surprised to see me that she wasn’t quite ready to welcome me into her life, but that would surely happen sometime soon.
In the meantime, Barbara was in a fury, stomping about, banging doors, snapping at everyone. She picked up her air gun once or twice and aimed at pigeons in the garden – I hid in the shed until it was over. Then her new game became darts and she bought a dartboard, which she hung on the end of the airing cupboard on the landing outside my room. If the mood took her she would come up to the landing and throw the darts from one end to the other, and they would land with a thud on the board. If I was in my room I had to hang back until she had finished. I didn’t dare go out and get caught in the crossfire. Barbara wouldn’t stop for me to come out and go down the stairs; she’d made that clear. She would make an animal-like grunting sound as she threw the dart, and she had a lot of strength for a small wiry woman.
One day I really wanted the toilet and I started coming upstairs from the hall. Barbara was on the landing playing darts and I waited for her to throw them all. I asked politely, as always, if I could come up and go to the toilet.
‘Have you finished the washing up?’ is all she said in reply, as she pulled the darts off the board. I answered yes, and then started walking past her, to the toilet. I didn’t make eye contact with her, as I knew it was safer to keep my head down and look at the floor. Making eye contact could lead to accusations of ‘rude bitch’ or ‘what are you looking at me like that for?’ So I kept my head down and scuttled past. However, just as I got to the door to turn the handle, I felt a sharp pain in my back. I shrieked and turned around. Barbara was standing at the top of the stairs, two darts still in her hand. Suddenly a dart dropped out of my back and fell at my heels.
‘Pick it up,’ she snapped at me. ‘Give it to me.’
My back was throbbing. I gave her the dart, shaking, and then scurried to the toilet. Afterwards, in the bathroom, I took off my top and I could see blood oozing out of a hole beneath my right shoulder blade. It was painful and sore, but what hurt more was the cold, calculating way she threw the dart to hit me in the back. When I left the bathroom she was gone. I hung around for a while, not knowing what to do. Then, when I went downstairs, she was in the kitchen crashing about and nothing was mentioned about the dart. She didn’t even look at me, pretending that nothing had actually happened. I knew better than to say anything. Inside I was quivering with fear and worried what she might do to me next. The next day, Kevin and Mark were playing darts on the landing and I heard her say, ‘Be careful, or you will hurt someone – I don’t want to be driving up the hospital.’ I, on the other hand, was fair game for target practice.
I was soon going to move up from middle school to secondary school, which I felt very nervous about. I had enjoyed quite a lot about middle school, although I was still way behind in my education. Barbara had kept me home for so many days and weeks that I was forever trying to catch up. I had huge holes in my knowledge, especially of maths, geography, history, science and English, as I was always dipping in and out of class, and not able to follow what was going on.
Art was still my favourite lesson, and I longed for the hours in the week where I was free to make lovely pictures on clean white paper with charcoal or pencils, ink or paint. I was good with my hands and loved making collages or cutting out shapes, or sewing or using clay or even plasticine – anything where I had to use all sorts of materials and let my imagination roam free. I loved colour, and the paint and materials brought a huge amount of joy and happiness into my life – which seemed to be mainly grey and beige the rest of the time.
The only really nice times outside of school were when I was sitting in Sean’s caravan eating some lovely crunchy bread or a Ruffle bar, with him telling me colourful stories about his life working as a navvy on the railways around Oxford or on building sites. He always had stories to tell, and he might put on some Irish music on his little radio or get out his tin whistle and play. I would sit with him and imagine things as he unravelled his memories. I would look at his cloth caps hanging in a row on the caravan wall, or his crotched cushions in rainbow colours. He loved to laugh and he would tell stories and roar with laughter, and I would laugh too. I didn’t always understand the whole story, but it felt warm and safe in the caravan and I loved just to sit with him as he opened a bottle of Guinness and supped.
He would give me a little sip, saying, ‘This’ll do yer good, girlie, loads of iron in this.’ I would take a gulp of the dark brown liquid that tasted like earth, but I liked the fact he shared it with me. He would sing, ‘I’ll take you home again, Kathleen’ in his deep, fruity voice and a tear would come to his eye. But he would smile again after and say, ‘?’T’is lovely,’ or ‘?’T’is life,’ and I felt calm with him.
I never once felt unsafe with Sean. He would hug me or pat my head and feed me and make me laugh. But I felt a new strange experience with him: respect, care and love. I just dreaded tiptoeing back to the house afterwards and creeping upstairs to my bleak, lonely bedroom.
One day I had a brainwave. If Julie knew I had won the art competition, would she love me then? Would she come and get me? So I wrote to her using the address in Barbara’s kitchen notebook.
‘Mum does not no abut [sic] this letter – it is secret. I’m not happy… you never come to see me… I can’t get on with Mum, can you help me?’
I stole stamps from Barbara’s purse, posted the letter and waited. I then wrote to my social worker, also telling her I was unhappy at home. I waited and waited, but in vai
n. What I found out much later was that Brian, Julie’s husband, had already written to the social workers to say that they didn’t want anything further to do with me. I didn’t know this; all I knew was that my pleas for help were falling on deaf ears.
After this I would spend hours throwing a ball up on the garage roof and waiting for it to roll down so I could catch it – over and over and over. I would be shouted at in the end by Barbara, who would tell me to get on and do something useful. I would go upstairs to my room and watch other people going about their lives, observing my neighbours in the garden with their children, and listening to the sound of children playing or singing, or lawnmowers in action. I would see a mother walking down the road holding hands with her child, chatting. I loved to see this. I wondered what it was like. I tried to push the idea of Julie out of my mind. But I would go back to the summer’s day, the garden, the chatting, the people, and wonder what they were doing. What did they think of me? Would I ever call her ‘Mum’? Meanwhile, I had to work out how to live with the one I had – who was forever shouting, kicking, hitting, being grumpy and treating me harshly.
The problem for me was I longed to be loved by Barbara, for her to want me and to care for me. But all I got was punishment and hate. I was dependent on her and I needed her, yet all I got from her was violence and put-downs. Now I had met Julie, it was a huge disappointment. I’d been led to believe by Barbara that Julie wanted me. It was very clear she didn’t. While Barbara was harsh and strict, Julie seemed silly and uninterested. I found myself imagining being whisked off to a beautiful house to live happily ever after with her, while I knew, deep down, that the longer I waited for a response to my letter, the less likely this was to ever happen. There I was, with two mothers, and neither of them wanted me or cared about me.
I hoped that when I went up to secondary school the bullying would finally stop. It was as if the other kids saw ‘kick me’ written all over me when I walked into a new school. I still thought about William and wondered where he was. Did he remember me? Was he okay? Was he alive? I was still hungry all the time, still pulling out my eyelashes and still counting to get through the difficult times of the day – and night.
I was desperate to go to a school with people I already knew. There was a comprehensive nearby, which was friendly and near my middle school. I knew it did a lot of arts, drama and music, and the pupils didn’t have to wear stiff uniforms. It was famous for having a great mix of boys and girls and nice liberal teachers and parents. I wanted to go there.
However, there had been an incident with a boy that had turned Barbara dead against me being at school with boys. She was always talking rudely about men anyway, and at school I had become friends with a black boy from Africa called Ayo. He was very sweet and gentle, and he taught me African games and dances. He wasn’t mean to me and didn’t judge or bully me like the others. He smelt differently, too, which I liked. The white boys were often pongy, but he smelt nice when he was sweaty. I was curious about him: he had big brown eyes and lovely skin and he treated me like a friend. We didn’t have many black children at our school, and I made a beeline for him. He was also bullied, and we helped each other stay safe.