Because We Are Bad, OCD and a girl lost in thought

by Lily Bailey

  At first Miss Louise doesn’t really believe us, and then she adopts a laissez-faire aren’t-all-kids-a-bit-odd-though? attitude.

  To be honest, I’m not sure. After a week of sleepless nights, I asked Mum about Stanley’s erection. She said not to worry about it; that little boys often get erections. This was news to me.

  “Matteo is foreign. Foreign people raise their children differently,” says Miss Louise. “Maybe he sleeps in his parents’ room? He’s probably just copying what he’s seen them doing at night. . . . I really don’t think it’s anything to worry about.”

  Miss Rebecca protests that if Matteo is trying to tell us that he is being sexually abused, we have a moral responsibility and a duty of care to help.

  “Well, let’s wait and see if it happens again,” trills Miss Louise, breezing off to the other classroom with a cluster of child-led papier-mâché flowers for the “Spring Has Sprung” board.

  Miss Rebecca heads back to our classroom, her forehead still creased in concern. I stand where I am, wondering what to do, because I’m the only one who has been changing Matteo’s diaper. What if he learned this behavior from me?

  Maybe I’ve been abusing Matteo, and I don’t even remember it?

  It happens several times more, and each time Miss Rebecca and I report back to Miss Louise.

  On the fifth time, she realizes she probably has to do something, and promises to take action.

  I am waiting to be summoned for rigorous questioning; for fingers to be pointed; to stand in the dock as the accused. It will come out that we haven’t been following protocol around here, and that I’ve been changing Matteo by myself.

  “I remember she once asked if anyone will supervise her,” Miss Bianca will say. “If only I realized then she was asking to make sure no one would catch her. It is so sad.”

  My life is on hold as I stand braced for something awful to happen.

  But the days turn to weeks, and no one so much as mentions my name.

  It feels like I have gotten away with murder.

  I sit in front of Dr. Finch, crying, telling her that I got it wrong: all this time I was worried about doing something that would make someone mistakenly think I am a pedophile, while the truth is, I actually am one.

  “This boy, Matteo,” levels Dr. Finch. “Do you actually remember abusing him?”

  “No!” I say, sobbing.

  “Then what makes you think you have?”

  “Because I’m the only one who has been changing his diaper. . . . I need to quit my job to protect all the other children, and then I need to hand myself in to the police.”

  “We know that people with OCD often become obsessed with the idea that they’ve committed a crime and they don’t remember doing it. We know that worry that they’ve hurt someone becomes an intrusive thought that they fully believe in. Do you think maybe that might be what’s happening here?”

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s too much of a coincidence, after what happened when I was younger, that suddenly there’s this child who I’ve spent time with by myself and he’s acting like he’s been abused.”

  “Maybe the coincidence is what’s making it such a powerful fear?”

  “No. No. No.”

  “Do you think a real pedophile would get this stressed about having abused a child?”

  “I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. I can’t be around children.”

  “Okay. I don’t want to feed into this by giving you too much reassurance, but you know that that isn’t the sort of thing you would do, and that children are very safe around you. I would be more than happy to let you babysit my children.”

  Back at the nursery, I have seated the children from Miss Rebecca’s class round the plastic table. They each have a few biscuits that we baked earlier this morning in front of them, along with some gold wrapping paper, stickers, and ribbons.

  The biscuits are Mother’s Day gifts. We want to involve the children in wrapping them up to enhance their “knowledge and understanding of the world” and keep everything child-led, but it’s quite fiddly, so essentially I’ll wrap and they’ll slap on a few stickers. Miss Rebecca told me to do this, so although it counts as lying, I will try not to write it down, because I can mark it as a less important item.

  I dislike wrapping presents because I panic that I’ll put something inside that could get me in trouble when it gets opened. As I’m wrapping today, I worry that I’ve slotted a confessional note in with Matteo and Stanley’s and cyanide in Phoebe’s, and, weirdly, that I’ve eaten all the biscuits in Minnie’s and just wrapped up air, crumbs, and a handwritten note saying “yum;)”. I console myself that when the children have gone home, I’ll unwrap the presents and check what is inside.

  Minnie tells Izzie that her wrapped biscuits look nicer than Izzie’s, and Izzie argues the point for a few sentences before she runs out of comebacks and starts to cry. She stretches her arms up to me for a cuddle and some comfort, but I don’t trust myself to pick her up without hurting her. Without giving a cuddle, it takes over five minutes to calm her down. I add this to INCOMPETENT, which is my newest category, under the heading: COULD NOT CALM IZZIE QUICKLY.

  Miss Bianca heads to the far corner of the room and shouts at Jamie and Tom for making a mess of the Messy Tray. This seems like a slightly unfair accusation, but since I am closer to that area than any other member of staff, and I didn’t tell them not to splash, I also slot this failing in INCOMPETENT.

  Later, when the children have gone home and we are packing away in exhausted silence, Miss Louise utters a blood-curdling shriek.

  “Please tell me this is not what I think it is,” she wails, brandishing a pair of grown-up scissors in the air in one hand and clutching her chest with the other like a panto princess in shock. “These were in children’s scissor drawer!”

  I absolutely know I would not be that careless. I absolutely know it wasn’t me. I am absolutely sure.

  Or am I?

  No. I am not absolutely sure. I bet I did it on purpose, hoping that one of the children would find the scissors and hurt themselves.

  My career in child care is not looking promising. I simply cannot foresee a future where every day is spent worrying so much about having hurt a child. I resolve to not work here past the end of the school year, and to find something different to do with my life. But what?

  · 27 ·

  Journalism

  I used to want to be a journalist. So I apply to various magazines and papers, hoping that they will offer me an internship. At first I don’t hear from any, and I worry that I will be unemployed for the foreseeable future.

  But then a local magazine gets back to me, offering me two weeks of work experience over the summer.

  I jump at it.

  The guy I have been corresponding with about the placement is Doug. He peppered his e-mails with elaborate turns of phrase that were supposed to look casual but didn’t and kept harping on about an interview he’d recently done with Vince Cable. When I imagined him behind the keyboard, I saw a balding, slightly plump fifty-year-old man, probably wearing a knitted tank top.

  But Doug, who meets me in the entrance hall, is not fifty. Doug is about twenty-five, has surfer-blond hair, electric-blue eyes, and skinny jeans. He is, quite frankly, probably the most attractive person I’ve ever seen. He introduces himself and leads me upstairs to “meet the team.”

  It is not glamorous. The software is stuck somewhere in 2005; the blinds don’t work and are missing half of their slats; the carpet, I am told almost immediately, comes from a Dumpster. But there is something warming about it anyway: the promise of sparky, creative people, hammering stories out at their computers; photoshopping and designing page layouts and constantly popping out for cigarette breaks.

  Which is why it is all the more aggravating that my head won’t shut up.

  My first task is to research a piece about local vintage experiences. Doug tells me to trawl the web f
or the best way to go retro in Surrey. It is cheesy and old hat, but it’s also the sort of piece I know I can do. It’s essentially a Google-and-bullshit job; I just can’t get to the bit where I open Google.

  Every interaction so far has been like watching a vase shatter into hundreds of tiny pieces that can’t all be picked up; everything I do sets off a chain reaction of words. And I can’t keep going to the bathroom to write them in my notebook, because I don’t want to be remembered as the nervous intern with the shits.

  So I will do what I did at nursery. I will wait until lunch, when I can go somewhere private for a scribble fest. In the meantime, I will hold the words in my head. But I’m terrified I’ll forget some. What is the point of writing a good piece, if I do awful things that I can’t remember (but which everyone else can)?

  It takes about forty-five minutes to identify the words I need to hold, during which time I continuously type, delete, and retype the ultimately crap sentence “There are many ways to go vintage in Surrey,” hoping I look so busy that no one will notice my private chaos.

  I use a ballpoint pen to write down the first letters of words on my hand so I have some cues for later. I haven’t done this since I was in the hospital. This is a bad thing to start doing. But I want this work experience to go perfectly, so everything has to be remembered.

  “Does everything have to go perfectly?” Dr. Finch says loudly, as though she is in the room. “Is perfection ever truly attainable? And, say it were, would it be desirable?”

  “We do have notepads, you know! We’re shabby, but we’re not that shabby!” calls Doug from his desk.

  Shit.

  Brigitte, the French production manager who has been sitting behind me, spins around.

  “Ooh la la!” she exclaims. “Your hands are so red! You should not be writing on them! They must be agony! Here, have some hand cream.”

  “Thanks.” I blush. “They’re, uh, they’re a bit sensitive, yes. Thank you,” I say, massaging in the cream.

  Sensitive?

  Liar.

  Liar.

  Liar.

  I turn back to the computer. The seven words generated from that interaction demand my full attention. I spend a couple of minutes sorting them before opening Google, knowing that I urgently need to start going vintage in Surrey.

  I lift my hands, poised to type.

  Any second now I will start typing.

  Any second.

  But I can’t.

  I am gripped by the sudden fear that I’m about to start Googling lewd things.

  Vintage cock rings.

  Retro dildos.

  Reclaimed crotchless pants.

  Secondhand XXX videos

  This is too much.

  “I need a brew,” announces Doug to the room. “Lily, do you want to help me do the tea run? I can show you where everything is.”

  “Uh . . . Yeah, sure.” I smile.

  Doug rounds the room, sweeping mugs off people’s desks and putting them on a grimy silver tray.

  “You can make the tea,” he says. “I’ll do the coffees. Tea bags there, hot water there, milk in the fridge. Sugar in that pot.”

  I have four teas to make, two of which must be sweet. I worry that instead of spooning sugar into them, I’ve pulled some rat poison from my pockets and sprinkled it in. There is a toilet coming off the kitchen. This is unhygienic. I convince myself that I’ve quickly whizzed in there when Doug’s back was turned and pissed in the mugs.

  People cannot drink these teas. It’s not going to happen. I tip three of them down the sink, quickly, before Doug can stop me (I’m not concerned about mine being contaminated, because you can’t go to prison for poisoning yourself, especially if you’re dead).

  “Why would you—”

  “Doug,” I say, preparing to fill up the IDIOT category, “I don’t think I’ve made the teas how they wanted them. Can you make them, and I’ll watch so I get it right next time?”

  Doug raises an eyebrow and laughs.

  “It’s tea, not rocket science!”

  Great. Sexy work guy now thinks I’m a total moron. I resolve to get out of all future tea making. I don’t care if it’s a rite of work-experience passage. No one is going to die on my watch.

  Bill, the editor-in-chief, calls me into his office.

  I sit in the swivel chair across from his desk and try to keep as still as possible to minimize wrongdoing.

  “I’m very impressed with your vintage piece,” says Bill. “I think we’ll run it next month.”

  “Thank you.” I try to smile the right amount—enough for him to know I am pleased by the compliment, but not so much that I look deranged. I do not tell him, or anyone, that I wrote the vintage piece at home, as I did everything else I was set this week. Away from prying eyes, with all lists in order and only Tubby for company.

  The next comment takes me off guard.

  “Would you like a job?”

  “I . . . uh . . . Yes! I would love a job!”

  Idiot.

  Idiot.

  Idiot.

  “How are you with websites?”

  “I’m not great. But I could learn.”

  The vintage piece needs images to go with it. I manage to get some beautiful sketches of 1960s outfits on mannequins from the owner of a nearby shop I’m featuring. They’re perfect—but they’re original hard copies, and Brigitte says we need digital versions or they can’t be laid out on the page.

  The sketches are too big for our scanner, which means I need to go to the photocopy shop and get them scanned there. Brigitte says it’s close—if I get the bus, I can be there and back in less than an hour. I place the sketches in the giant plastic folder they arrived in and set off.

  The flood starts before I’m even out the door. The things I’ve done wrong this morning take center stage, and I’m so engrossed in them that it takes me by surprise when I find that I have arrived and walked into the shop. A man comes out from behind the counter and shows me what to do. Each page gets scanned and whizzed onto Brigitte’s memory stick. I pay and leave. Simple. Job done. But—

  I still have to sort out all the stuff from this morning. Dazed, I get on the bus and try to smooth it out. After thirty minutes I’ve not gotten anywhere with it. And wait—none of this looks familiar. Where am I? I ask the driver. He says I’ve taken the bus in the wrong direction. So off I get, panicking that it’s now going to have taken me longer than Brigitte said. Never mind, I’ll go back in the other direction, and while I’m doing that I’ll sort the stuff in my head out. Wait, where am I now? I’ve taken the wrong bus entirely. Oh shit, oh shit, shit, shit. I’m going to be so late. I’m going to ruin everything. I get off the bus and look at the bus map. My lists are fizzing, demanding proper attention. Okay, I’ll stand here and sort them out, then I can concentrate properly. But that just makes me lose another ten minutes, and I’m no closer to fixing them. I look at the bus map again.

  There’s no space in my head for it. It might as well be in Spanish.

  I’m going to run, I’ll just keep running, one foot in front of the other, until the list goes away and—

  I don’t want you to have to deal with this on your own, said Mum. I want to help you, but you need to let me in.

  My hands do my thinking for me. I take my mobile out my pocket and press the green call button. Mum answers after a few rings.

  “Hello?” The line is funny—echoey, like she’s in a big cave. I hear the rhythmic plod of a distant ball going back and forth—the squeak of sneakers on a vinyl indoor court.

  “Help me!” I wail. “I’ve gotten two wrong buses and I’m late and I’m going to fuck it all up! Please come and get me and help me find my way back to the office!”

  “Darling, hi, I’m at my tennis lesson. Are you okay? Slow down, what happened?”

  I try to explain, but I’m finding it hard to breathe.

  “Okay,” she says. “Okay, I’m coming! I’m in Fulham, though. I may take a little while. J
ust stay calm. Stay calm!”

  I see a National Health Service hospital up ahead. I find myself walking through the doors and taking a seat on a plastic chair in the waiting room. I text Mum and let her know where I am.

  My phone is ringing. It’s Mum.

  “I’m here!” she says. “Come outside! I’m just on the left.”

  There she is sitting in the silver Beetle—her accomplice, the loyal witness of our woes. I get in next to her. She’s in full tennis whites—a sweatband round her head, sporting a spaghetti top and a tiny Adidas tennis skirt.

  “Did you really want to go to hospital?” she asks.

  “I just didn’t know what to do. I was scared.”

  “Do you want to go back to work?”

  “I think so.”

  “Okay!” She hammers the address into the satnav and starts to weave through traffic.

  It doesn’t take very long.

  “Darling, it was pretty much round the corner!”

  She parks on the opposite street, and I feel my courage fail me. I feel extra stupid, knowing how close we were.

  “I can’t go in,” I say.

  “You can! It won’t be as bad as you think, I know it.”

  “You go!” I’m five years old again, seeing the world from behind the pillar of a parent’s leg. “You have to! Explain to them that I’m really sorry, but I can’t do it.”

  “Me? Like this?” She gestures to her outfit.

  “Yes!”

  “No!”

  “Yes!”

  “All right! All right. Fine!”

  As I see her stand up to go, the ridiculousness of how it’s going to look hits me full throttle.

  “I’m Lily’s mum,” she’ll say, as the whole office turns to gawp at her bare legs. “I was just playing a spot of tennis when I received a call from my distressed daughter, to tell me that she couldn’t work out how to read a bus map . . .”