by Clare Fisher
Whether they kept on arguing after we started running round the park, I don’t know: as soon as my head hit the pillow, I fell asleep.
What poked a hole in the silence was my mum. There was going to be a visit. The visit would be in a Special Place. Paul and Susie would drive me to this Special Place. Paul, Susie, my mum and me would spend some time together; then just me and my mum; then Paul and Susie would drive me back to their house. It was going to happen in two weeks, next week, this week. Wasn’t I excited?
Almost every day Paul would ask me this. He’d put on a Special Smile when he asked; it stretched right across his face. It must’ve hurt.
‘Yes, I’m excited,’ I’d say, because these were the only words to make the fake smile go away.
‘Good,’ he’d say. ‘Good. Good.’
I couldn’t tell him I was nervous plus something else. Some strange feeling whose name was stuck deep in the silence and which I couldn’t reach, not even if I ran until I had no more breath to run with. I couldn’t tell him that every time I heard the word ‘Mum’, I felt nothing. Saw nothing. It was a scary kind of nothing – the kind which, when you reached out to touch it, would tangle you up in its cobwebs. In the days before the visit, it followed me everywhere I went, even to my desk with all my colouring books and pencils. ‘What, no stories this week?’ Paul said.
I said I was tired. I didn’t know how to say that when I looked at a book, the words and the pictures felt far away – as if that mum-shaped nothing was dangling its cobwebs between me and them.
‘I’ve got a great idea,’ he said. ‘Why don’t we take some of your stories to show your mum?’
I said I didn’t want to. But he said she’d love them. He laid them out all over the floor.
‘See, aren’t they beautiful?’
I tiptoed into a blank patch of floor between them. All around me was colour, texture, strange swirls, jagged lines, wobbling animals and scribbled words.
‘They make me feel strange,’ I said. ‘But shy.’
‘Exactly,’ he said. ‘That’s because they’re beautiful. Now which do you think your mum will like?’
I didn’t know the answer to this because I didn’t remember anything about her. Instead I said: ‘I’ll only show them to her, if I can bring them back.’
‘Oh, silly!’ He half-hugged, half-tickled me. ‘Of course you can.’
So I agreed.
The Special Place was a square red-brick building, surrounded by a car park and beds of waxy green plants which looked fake but were real. ‘What’s so special?’ I asked, as we got out of the car. But Paul and Susie were a few steps ahead of me, talking in tiny voices. Paul was holding my stories, but just before we got inside, Susie grabbed them and stuffed them into her handbag. She’d never been very interested in my stories before, and thinking of them alone, in the dark, with her tissues and her hand cream and her red leather Filofax, was a sad thought.
Inside, it was like a doctor’s surgery but bigger. Everyone was waiting; their faces flickered between ‘worried’ and ‘bored’.
‘Would you like a lollipop?’ asked the receptionist, when she saw me.
The lollipops were red and shiny, exactly as lollipops should be, but I shook my head no because I couldn’t imagine eating one because my throat was clogged with cobwebs.
‘She’d love one, thanks,’ said Susie. Then she squatted down and handed me it and said, ‘It’s OK to be scared, sweetheart.’
Susie never called me sweetheart. She’d never told me it was OK to be anything other than good. I chucked the lollipop at the other bored/worried people and yelled that I wasn’t scared.
The room went quiet then, in a bad way.
‘Don’t worry,’ Paul said, wiggling his eyebrows at Susie, who’d gone bright red. ‘Your mum will be here soon.’
We sat down on some orange plastic chairs. I swung my legs back and forth but they didn’t tell me to stop. They kept sharing looks. Susie kept glancing at her watch and opening her mouth but Paul pressed his finger to his lips the way teachers did to make kids shut up, and so Susie would gulp her words back down but narrow her eyes as if she was no way going to forgive him for this.
Other kids and grown-ups came and went from the seats around me. But we were still there. Still waiting.
‘She’s not here,’ I said.
Paul looked at Susie; Susie looked at the magazine rack.
‘She’s not coming,’ I said.
‘Don’t be silly,’ said Paul. ‘Of course she’s coming.’
‘Paul . . .’ Susie shook her head. ‘I’ll ask.’ She marched up to the reception counter. Her voice rose from a patter to a screech to actual words, like ‘unacceptable’, and ‘forty-five minutes’. And finally: ‘Unbelievable! We’ve known about this visit for weeks. There’s really nothing you can do? No way to contact her?’
My head was all noise, the rest of me cobwebs. Swinging my legs didn’t turn it down one bit. My fingers twitched and then my eyes fixed on Susie’s handbag, which she’d left by her chair. The next thing I knew, I was jumping on it. Kicking it about. Hand cream, lipstick and tissues, some clean, others dirty, flew all over the place. The air was thick with other people’s bad thoughts about me but I didn’t care because I wasn’t in Paul’s silence any more, I wasn’t in Susie’s, I was breaking away from the cobwebs and the noise and everything else; this was so much better than being good. I reached for the Filofax but found my stories first. They were already creased from the way she’d stuffed them into her bag; the paint was flaking and cracked. I ripped and ripped, then chucked the pieces in the air. They floated down on to the orange chairs, like snow too ugly to paint on any postcard.
‘Bethany!’ Paul grabbed my wrist and pulled me towards the door. ‘I’m sorry your mum hasn’t shown. But this has got to stop. And this,’ he waved the ripped-up story in my face. ‘You must never take it out on this. On this . . .’ He gulped, and for a minute I thought he was going to cry. I’d never seen a man cry before and I wanted to see if it was possible. But then he looked up at the too-bright lights on the ceiling and his eyes dried right up. He went on: ‘Breaking things is never going to make you feel better, especially not when they’re your own things.’
‘It’s just a dumb story,’ I said. ‘The pictures are ugly and the writing’s not even good. I can’t spell or do joined up.’
‘Bethany.’ He squatted down so that his head was the same height as mine. ‘That stuff’s not important. What makes this story important is that it’s from the inside of you. That’s the most important thing of all, do you understand?’
I did.
On the car ride home, Susie kept saying things like ‘unforgivable’ and ‘unbelievable’ and ‘what a woman’ but I didn’t care because Paul’s words were still inside me, keeping me warm.
I’d just snuggled back into that after-school silence, with big ideas for a grown-up book with more words than pictures – which Paul had promised to help me with – when I stopped being able to use the bathroom in the morning because Susie was always in there, throwing up. It seemed like she was dying, except I knew she couldn’t be, because by the time she shuffled out in her dressing-gown, she’d be smiling. Paul kept smiling, too. And when I asked him how to spell a word or to read a bit of my story, he’d say, ‘What?’ as if he’d been somewhere far away, like Cornwall or Spain. It got difficult to sleep again, even though they weren’t shouting, they were just talking. I’d crouch at the top of the stairs and listen.
Paul: ‘I’m sure she could handle it. She’s getting better. No doubt she’s probably sensed something already.’
Susie said: ‘I know. But she seems . . . fragile. Like she might explode at any moment. I can never relax, you know?’
‘Well, maybe,’ said Paul, ‘she’s wondering about her future.’
‘She’s seven!’ said Susie. ‘Seven-year-olds don’t wonder about their future.’
‘They want to know they’re safe,’ said Paul. ‘That the
y’re loved for good.’
Susie said nothing.
Paul said, ‘Maybe, we should adopt her. Make a commitment.’
Commitment. I remember hearing this word. I remember sounding it out and imagining what it would be like to write it down. All those looping ms and jagged ts. No wonder no one wanted anything to do with it.
‘I can’t do it,’ said Susie. Her words were joined up by tears. ‘I thought I could but I can’t. I – I’m not strong enough.’
‘Ssshh,’ said Paul. ‘Don’t cry now. It’ll work out. We’ll adopt her, she’ll settle down. She’ll be a lovely big sister! If you just spent some time with her, Susie, I think you’d see . . .’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Susie. ‘I know myself. And. I’ve tried. I have. But I can’t. I just can’t. That’s it.’
It wasn’t long before I was climbing into a white van that would drive me to another family in another part of London. All I took with me were two small bags.
‘You travel light, don’t you?’ joked the social worker, who was supposed to make me feel like this was one big adventure, or something.
When I didn’t reply, she said, ‘Don’t worry, you’ve got a nice new foster family who’s just dying to meet you.’
But I wasn’t worried, not really. I’d lost Paul, but the silence we’d shared and the stories we’d made in it, they were still inside me. No one could see them. No one could take them away. That’s why, despite the years that stretch between now and then, despite all the things, good and bad, that have happened in them, I’m sitting on my bed in my cell and I’m smiling because I’m sharing them with you.
4. Friends you can be weird with
A good thing happened today. It wasn’t even to do with Erika. I was shovelling down the tiny puddle of spaghetti-hoop-topped slop that, unless you’re mates with the servers, passes as dinner around here, when a long speckled arm swooped the plate from under me.
I looked up to see the Lee. I don’t know why she’s called ‘the Lee’ and not just Lee; she just is. She’s been here longer than anyone else; no one bothers her. She shook her round face at me.
The first weeks I was here, I was too scared to talk to the other girls. Whenever one of them tried to talk to me, my heart beat so fast I couldn’t breathe or think or see or feel anything other than bad. I just shut my eyes or turned my head or looked up at the ceiling to stop the tears. So when the Lee came over, I thought, this is it. This is the bad thing I’ve been waiting for. The one I deserve.
Except she didn’t do any bad thing. She pushed my plate into the middle of the table. Then, to everyone and no one in particular, she said, ‘Look at this girl’s plate! That’s not a dinner, not even for a kid. Now, she’s new and she’s scared as fuck. If I can remember what that’s like – how shitty it is before you give in and accept you’re going to be stuck in here for a while – then we all can. Let’s share.’ She scraped a bit of her spaghetti-hoop slop on to mine.
Laughter clattered around her table. Laughter plus a side order of grumbles. I tried to keep my eyes on my plate, as usual, but when you can feel other people’s eyes on you, it’s hard not to look back, and so, for the very first time, I did. I looked the other girls in the eye. It wasn’t as bad as I’d imagined. It wasn’t bad at all. Their faces weren’t hammered up with hate; they were floppy and loose, sad and confused, tired, curious, and every possible feeling in between.
The Lee’s crew each scraped a little brown slop on to my plate.
‘Don’t like the goulash anyway.’
‘Is that goulash? I thought it was curry. Don’t know how you can tell. They cover it all with those stupid hoops.’
‘You’ll get a proper portion tomorrow night, don’t worry,’ said the Lee, as she handed the plate back to me.
The lump in my throat was so big that by the time the words ‘thank you’ wobbled out of my mouth, she was gone.
I ate every drop of probably-goulash. It didn’t taste good but it did taste a lot better than the nothing I’d have been stuck with otherwise. The Lee didn’t say anything else to me that night; neither did anyone else. But I didn’t mind. Just eating food that someone had given me, food that should’ve gone in their bellies rather than mine, it was enough. Enough to stop me feeling like an alien from a 100% bad planet; enough to remind me that I’m human and humans are connected to other humans whether we like it or not.
Being human doesn’t just mean connecting to other humans; it means connecting the human you are now with the ones you used to be. Before tonight, I didn’t believe in now-Beth; how could good things happen when she was locked up? But the Lee’s action filled my head with other Beths. Other times when what started off looking like a small or bad or silly change ended up making a big difference. A good difference.
The person I’m thinking of most is Cal. Cal was the next person I really learned to be alive with, after Paul. We learned to be alive at the age of thirteen, although if you’d said that to us when we first met, we’d have laughed: we were enemies. Or so we thought.
Whenever I started a new school, I’d be good to begin with. At least, good was the word the teachers used, but if I had to pick any word, it would be invisible. I’d concentrate so hard on what other people were doing – was this a school where rolling up your blazer sleeves was cool or neeky? Would you get a detention for not standing up when a teacher walked into the classroom or for standing up without asking for permission? – I’d forget myself. Every school, every area, every foster family had its own set of rules for how to be alive. The moment I learned them was a dangerous moment, because no one can stay invisible for ever; it’s too boring. The only way I knew to make people see me was to do something bad.
A few weeks after I arrived at Cal’s school, our English teacher, Miss Hanley, made us write an Alien’s Guide to Stockwell. The whole class groaned, the way they did almost every time a teacher asked them to do something. Cal stuck her hand in the air and, without waiting for the teacher to say she could speak, blurted: ‘But aren’t we supposed to be doing travel journalism? That sounds like something we did in Year 7. We are in the top set, after all.’
If anyone else had done that, they’d have got in trouble. But not Cal, with her shiny brown ponytail, her huge pencil case, her brain that always knew the answers and got the highest marks. The teacher just smiled at Cal as if she were the joke. ‘We worked on that poetry essay all last month. It will do you all good to flex your imaginative muscles. And who’s to say an Alien’s Guide to Stockwell isn’t journalism?’
‘Right,’ said Cal, and violently flicked the page of her exercise book.
If I’d behaved like that, I’d have got sent out. But there was something about Cal that stopped anyone, even teachers, disagreeing with her. Whatever it was, I didn’t have it, and it made me hate her.
As soon as I started writing, I forgot Cal and how much I hated her. I forgot how hard it was to fit in. I even forgot my new foster mum, Brenda, and how she only asked boring old-person questions – What lessons did you have today? What did you have for lunch? – and how, whenever I dared to bring up something strange or funny or interesting, like how one girl had got a detention for writing all over her friend’s hand in glittery gel pen, she’d shuffle out of her seat. ‘Toast?’ she’d shout, flapping her speckled old hands in front of my face. ‘Would you like some toast?’ She would speak right over whatever I was trying to say. ‘Here’s some toast. Why won’t you touch your toast?’ She’d never keep quiet long enough for me to tell her that I didn’t need toast; what I needed was for someone to listen.
Writing an Alien’s Guide to Stockwell was so much easier than writing about olden days poems or Japanese volcanoes; it was easy because the things I needed to write it weren’t in some textbook or worksheet, they were inside me. Reaching for it made my insides whirl until I ended up at the same still place as when I ran.
I knew exactly what to say to that alien. How to turn their fear and their confusion into a fresh and
funny thing. Don’t worry what the locals think of you, I wrote. They won’t pay you half as much attention as you pay them. I thought of my walk from Brenda’s to school; of the tall, white houses whose polished, curtain-less windows begged to be stared through, and how Brenda warned me to behave myself on those streets, those people were too rich and too fussy, in her opinion – ‘Not that anyone ever asks my opinion, mind you’ – but how the only people I ever saw coming out of these houses were Filipino maids who, struggling with huge pushchairs, piles of dry-cleaning, or tiny yapping dogs, never noticed me. I thought of the estate – ‘It used to be all right but not now. You’ve got all sorts there, now. You’ve got to watch out’ – and how much life there was on its grass: guys on benches, staring at their future, or at their pasts, playing music out of their phones, smoking, sighing, chatting. There were mums who, surrounded by Lidl bags and screaming toddlers, had only stopped to say hello yet were still here, saying other things, an hour later. There were big boys on small BMXs and small boys in big trousers. There were mean dogs and dozy dogs. Words in every language you could think of and a lot of languages you couldn’t. As soon as you got out the other side of the estate, there were Polish shops, Portuguese shops, Turkish shops, Ethiopian shops. Ten minutes, and you’d nibbled versions of life from all over the world.
The locals think they know about this place because they’ve lived here a long time, I wrote. But that doesn’t mean they’re right. In fact, they’re probably wrong. Look at the locals when they reckon no one’s looking at them and you’ll see they’re no different from you; some days, they’re not sure what they’re doing here, other days, here feels like a strange and scary place. But they still find a way to belong and you will, too.