The Cat Who Came Back for Christmas

by Julia Romp

  It wasn’t easy, of course. George didn’t like all the people and I had to work out what he could and couldn’t cope with. Going on the Tube was just too frightening, but we just about managed if we went in the car and I let him hide when the place we were visiting got too busy. George never talked about what we saw but I knew his favorite place was Windsor Castle because his eyes would open in wonder when we went in winter and the castle walls shone as the huge lights were turned on at dusk. Water, shiny things and lights were his true obsessions.

  So although George wasn’t getting on at school, I knew he was intelligent. He showed that he picked up on everything that went on around him by the things he did. When Mum mentioned in front of him one day that my nan used to throw salt over her shoulder out of superstition, he started doing the same; and when something interested George, whether it was Windsor Castle, trees and birds or water and fishes, he couldn’t get enough of it.

  But all his teachers seemed to see was a little boy who wouldn’t do as he was told and was disruptive, not interested in learning and sometimes aggressive. In a class of about 40 children, they just didn’t have the time to spend on him and I was worried sick that George would never get any help. That’s why I agreed to see two counselors when I was asked to go back to the clinic where George had had his hearing tests, because the second set had also come back normal and someone somewhere had obviously decided that George’s problems were down to me.

  For the first few sessions with the counselors, George came with me and would hide behind my chair as they talked.

  “What do you do when George lies on the floor and won’t get up, Julia?” the women asked, all soft voices and knowing looks.

  What did they think I did? Drag him up by his hair?

  “Do you tell him ‘No’ when he smashes a toy?” I was asked.

  Did they think I was afraid to say a word when he bashed up Buzz Lightyear?

  “Why do you think he doesn’t eat with a spoon?”

  “How is George’s relationship with his father?”

  “Do you have a boyfriend?”

  There was one word for those women and it’s this: patronizing. All they saw was a single mum with an out-of-control child, and it didn’t matter what I said to try to tell them any different.

  “Why don’t you talk to the school?” I’d ask again and again. “They can tell you more about George and all his odd behaviors. This isn’t about discipline. I know there’s something more.”

  The answer was always the same. “George is still very young, Julia. This is an assessment and it takes time.”

  So I’d go into the school and ask them why they couldn’t do something more for George.

  “You’re being assessed, Julia. It takes time.”

  I wanted to bang all their heads together, because the longer this went on the worse it was getting, and I felt even more frustrated when I was sent to a group for parents whose children had behavioral problems. It was the first time that I thought I might go to the top of the class because the advice was so basic.

  When your child’s been put in the box marked “naughty,” it’s hard to get anyone to see past it, and sometimes I wished the school could just let George be a bit. For instance, he was still very specific about what he would and wouldn’t eat, and while he didn’t tell me in words, I realized over time that he couldn’t eat food that touched: he liked eggs, he liked baked beans, but if they were together on a plate he would just stare at them. It was as though George had the Berlin Wall of food inside his head because things always had to be divided. So I started giving him everything in separate bowls when I realized that it was the only way he’d eat.

  He also had food phases—first it was just crackers, then squeezy yogurts and then custard creams—and I knew it wasn’t just fussy eating because George got really anxious sometimes as he stared at his plate and breathed deeply. So I gave him what he wanted to calm him down enough to eat. It was during his jam sandwich phase that I wished the teachers might let him alone a bit. George’s sandwiches had to be very particular because he wouldn’t eat them if there was butter peeping out of the side of the bread; and even when I made them right, he often ended up chewing the sandwich before spitting it into his lunchbox. The teachers didn’t like that at all, and although I explained that I’d seen a dietician who’d reassured me that George would be fine as long as he had milk, yogurt and bread each day and that I would sort out his lunchbox when he got home, they wouldn’t listen. I felt drained by it all. Why did people keep asking questions? Why didn’t they just do something to help?

  Part of me said I had to keep trusting the doctors, who told me that George was still too young to be diagnosed with anything if there was something wrong with his development, the counselors, who told me to count to three, and the teachers, who kept saying that children learned at different speeds. Another part wanted to tell them all to just do something, anything, as one year at school turned into two and then three. After going on his first school trip, I was told George couldn’t go again because he wouldn’t sit on his coach seat; when he went swimming—something Howard had taught him to do that he loved and was really good at—the teachers said he didn’t listen and almost stopped him from going until I pleaded with them; and when I picked him up from school and was told he’d fallen asleep in class again because he’d hardly slept the night before, I’d see the questions in their eyes. George spent more and more time out of the class sitting in a long corridor at a small table with a teaching assistant by his side; it seemed as if it was a case of out of sight, out of mind.

  I couldn’t be sure, of course, but I wondered if George was picking up on it all, because while he’d always hidden away from people, he seemed to feel more and more that they were actually against him.

  “He’s watching me,” George would say as we walked past a man on the way to school.

  “No, he’s not, love,” I’d tell him. “He’s just walking to work minding his own business.”

  Or George would pull down his Pokémon baseball cap and tell me the sun was watching him or the clouds were following us. Getting him to the dentist was so hard that I had to take him to hospital for an anesthetic when he needed teeth removed and he’d told me that the doctor had tried to kill him when he woke up.

  I think that’s why I tried to give him as much love as I could when we were at home, so that he’d at least feel safe with me when the world frightened him so much. But however much I gave him, George never expressed any love back, and even though I had a child, at times it almost felt as if I didn’t. I’d find myself staring at other kids running out of school to give their mums a kiss and longing for George to want to hug me, but he never let me touch him or showed any emotion toward me. It was almost as if it was the first time he’d seen me when he woke up each morning and I struggled with it every day, sometimes even wishing I could meet someone and have another baby just to know how it felt to be a mother to a child who loved me back.

  The only time George would let me touch him was when we rough played and he pretended to be a Power Ranger as we sat together in one of the tents I’d put up all over the flat because he liked them so much. I had even put one up on my bed, hoping he might sleep in it, because George could sit in a tent for hours on end. Most days I’d climb in with him for anything up to three hours at a time and that was when we’d play fight. As George climbed on to me, I would hold on to him for a few seconds as I felt the chubbiness in his legs or his skinny little chest. I loved those moments together because otherwise George didn’t let me touch him. He did not really speak to me either: he still only talked about very specific things like Power Rangers and Buzz Lightyear. Often he spoke just single words or would chant phrases over and over again.

  “Oh and the plane, oh and the plane,” he’d cry a hundred times before moving on to something else.

  I tried to distract him with puzzles or pots of paints but George would scream if he got anything wrong, which made it hard to p
lay because everyone makes mistakes when they’re six. One of the few things he liked, though, was playdough, which he’d squidge in his hands as I made things for him to look at. So one day I bought him a plastic figure of a man with holes in his head to push the playdough through to make “hair.” At first George smiled as he watched me do it but the moment I picked up some scissors to cut the hair, he started screaming. Throwing himself on the floor, he went stiff with rage as he roared. His shouts were so loud and sudden that I wondered if he’d somehow hurt himself and I knelt down beside him.

  “George,” I pleaded with him. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

  But I never did find out because George didn’t tell me how he felt. How could he? George didn’t even seem to know who he was. When I’d stood him in front of a mirror one day, he’d cried so much that I’d had to take down all the others in the house. So how was he ever going to explain emotions that poured out of him in tantrums that still came out of the blue? George was like a mystery I couldn’t solve, a puzzle whose pieces fitted together to make a picture I didn’t quite understand, however much I wanted to.

  Chapter 5

  Did you know that a leaflet that drops through the door on an ordinary day can start something big? I didn’t when one fell on to the mat about a year after I moved to the new estate. Ever since giving up the Knowledge and getting our new flat, I’d wanted to go back to work, because living off benefits made me feel a bit useless. So after George started school, I got a job in a pub, where I did the cleaning before going into the kitchens to help out the cook. I loved being out and about with people again, but slowly I realized that I couldn’t keep working outside my home because I was exhausted most days after another night without sleep and I kept getting called into school about George. It took more than a year to accept that I needed all my energy to look after him, but in the end I had to give up work because he was such a full-time job. So that’s why when the residents’ association for the flats dropped a leaflet through our doors asking for mums to join I thought I’d give it a go, because I like to keep busy.

  Now I can’t say the association was the most exciting thing I’d ever done, because listening to someone from the council talk about where they’re going to put speed humps just isn’t that interesting. But something came out of it as I listened to people talk, because I found out that the piece of land beside the flats had once been a community garden. It got me thinking, because ever since moving into the flat and getting a balcony, I’d been growing things with George. He liked looking after plants and throwing mud around so much that our balcony was now full of pots of herbs, tomatoes, sunflowers and hanging baskets of flowers. His favorite thing was watering: George would fill everything to the brim, the flowers would struggle to stay alive and Michelle’s balcony below would get covered in muddy water, which ruined her clean washing over and over.

  So when I heard that the land by the flats had once been a garden for everyone to enjoy, I decided to see if we could bring it back to life. One of my neighbors, who’d lived on the estate for years, had pictures of how things once were and I wanted to try to make the land like that again. There were four blocks of flats on the estate with 50 families in each, so there should be enough of us to get something done. When I asked the residents’ association for a grant, I told them that a gardening club might do a lot of good, because our estate had a bit of a past and maybe doing something that everyone could join in with might help. Things had changed over the years on the estate and ours, like many others, had become a real mix of nationalities. But the difference was that a few riffraff white people hadn’t liked that and before I arrived an Asian family had been harassed. I didn’t know for sure, but I thought that was why people had put up barriers to protect themselves from each other. Everyone kept to themselves and didn’t encourage their kids to mix, which wasn’t exactly good for community spirit.

  Now some might say I’m simple, but we’re not alive that long, so what’s the point in fighting with each other? We’ve all got the same heart, whatever our differences, and while there were some bad types on the estate, most people weren’t like that. There’s always much more good than bad in any neighborhood and I was right about the gardening. When I got the grant from the residents’ association people were ready to help. Dads came up to do the heavy work and clear the bit of grass next to the willow tree that we wanted to plant, while mums and kids helped Michelle and me with the planting.

  After getting enough money to buy four benches, some equipment and a few rose bushes from the local pound shop, the gardening club soon became a weekly event. Old people arrived for a chat while children had a go with a trowel as I showed them how to dig in a plant and pack the soil down tightly around the roots to encourage them to grow or water the roses and take off the dead heads so that more buds would flower.

  As time had passed with Michelle, Ricky and Ashley, George and I had started to go out a bit more with them. The kids would ride their bikes as Michelle and I chatted or we would go out to play on the green. So when George came with me to the gardening club, I was secretly hoping it might encourage him to mix a bit more. Although he stayed on the sidelines watching, I was glad if he just picked up a spade for a minute because it was a start and at least the gardening club was something for us to do together every week through the spring and summer. Most important, though, it sparked something inside Michelle and me, for we soon started thinking about what else we could do. Once we’d had stair rage; now we had community spirit fever.

  So the next Easter, we decided to do an egg hunt for all the kids. I thought it was a great idea because one of my most fantastic childhood memories was a hunt I’d done as a kid. It was at my cousin Sally’s house, which had a garden backing on to the River Thames, and Mum had put me in my best dress for it. It was magical to be there with all the posh boats going by as we hunted for eggs in the shrubs. My Aunt Rita was a very educated woman who’d done well in life and I remember thinking what a different life Sally led compared to mine. Even though I cried after finding so many eggs that Dad had told me to share them out, I never forgot that day, and those kinds of memories were what I had always tried to give George, because they’re the ones that make you feel loved, aren’t they? If some of the kids on my estate didn’t have the best kind of life, maybe an egg hunt might give them a good memory.

  Michelle and I didn’t get any money for the Easter hunt from the residents association, but we saved up a bit to buy some chocolate and make posters letting everyone know about it. The hunt was fixed for midday, and so many kids turned up that as Michelle and I sent them off two by two I hoped there would be enough eggs for everyone. All sorts came: the good ones and the ones who were a bit naughtier. They all got as excited as each other—even Georgia, a girl with great big glasses and beautiful blonde hair who ended up jumping up and down underneath a tree turning the air blue with her swearing as she tried to get an egg down from the branches.

  Community spirit can be in short supply these days, but I learned when Michelle and I did all those things on the estate that while you might not be able to change the adults who want to sit in their flats drinking and watching TV, you can encourage their kids out a bit more. In the years that followed, Michelle and I carried on doing things, and although she used to tell me that half the people thought we were stupid and the other half were sure we wanted something from them, I didn’t care. That’s just how I am and I think my mum and dad made me like that.

  You have to break down the barriers if you can—just as we did after causing uproar when we decided to take down the washing lines outside the flats for a few hours one day to put up badminton nets for the kids instead.

  “What are you up to now?” people cried when they saw what Michelle and I were doing. “Our whites need airing.”

  “Won’t be long,” we shouted.

  Their smalls could wait a few hours. I’d played badminton as a kid and Dad had held my hand to help me. Now Michelle and I did the same as
we got the kids to bat the shuttlecocks. As we played, I saw a little girl standing on one of the balconies. She was only about six and I could tell from looking at her that she’d been told not to come down, because she kept looking away when I tried to catch her eye. So the next time we played badminton, I knocked on the door of the flat where she lived and told her mum that I didn’t have any certificates and I couldn’t take her child all day but I hoped she’d let her girl come down. The mum didn’t say a thing and I was a bit worried she might think I was a busybody. But she obviously didn’t, because after that the little girl was sent down to play with us.

  The best thing of all that Michelle and I did was start up a bats and balls night—although it got off to a rocky start. We’d got a bit cocky by then, what with the gardening and the badminton, so we decided that we wanted everyone to join in our bat and balls evening—even mums and dads. To spread the word, we used our secret weapon: the local gossips. You know the ones? Mouths like the Holland Tunnel and the time to stand around chatting for hours. I casually told them about what we were planning and knew they’d spread the word. But on the first night of our new club, Michelle and I took George, Ricky and Ashley down to the green and found just our friend Sharon waiting for us with her kids and a couple of old ladies. The gossips hadn’t done quite as good a job as we’d hoped, but we had to carry on because people were watching from their balconies, staring at us and wondering what the nutters were up to now.