Goodnight, Boy

by Nikki Sheehan

  The van didn’t stop for hours and hours. Not until we reached a big town. I was woken by the sound of the back door creaking open, and I watched as they lifted my sleeping brother out.

  ‘Are you buying gas now?’ I asked.

  ‘Soon,’ the quiet one said. ‘I’m taking James to the bathroom first.’

  ‘I need to go too,’ I said.

  ‘No, you’re older, you can wait,’ the man told me.

  So I sat back down and then the nice man moved into the driving seat and he started the engine and the van pulled away.

  I looked out of the back window but I couldn’t see my brother.

  He had gone.

  We drove for hours. I slept again and when I woke my shorts and the seat were soaked in pee and we were parked in front of a huge building on a busy street.

  On the other side of the window there were more cars and people than I had ever seen before.

  The friendly man opened the back doors.

  ‘It’s time to come out,’ he said.

  ‘Is this where the gas is?’ I asked, but he didn’t seem to hear.

  As I stood he saw my wet shorts.

  I thought that he would be angry, but he still smiled.

  ‘It’s not a problem,’ he said. ‘Come with me into this building. There are nice people there who will give you clean clothes.’

  He took my hand and held it tight as he led me through the front door, down a corridor and into a room crowded with children, all with their hair shaved so close they almost looked bald.

  I looked around for my brother, but he wasn’t there.

  ‘Where is James?’ I asked.

  He looked confused, as if he had forgotten who James was. Then he said, ‘He’s on his way. He’ll be here soon,’ but I began to cry.

  He crouched down to my level. ‘I have to go for a few minutes,’ he said. ‘I’ll be right back.’

  ‘Are you going to buy the gas so you can take us home?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’ll take you home then.’

  I never saw him again.

  I’m tired today. Should we just stay inside? Like we did sometimes when he went to the city?

  Melanie called it a couch day.

  You were there, Boy, you must remember. We watched TV and ate food that came in plastic pots and when it was ready the microwave pinged.

  When he came home we didn’t tell him. She said that he might not understand that sometimes when you’re tired you have to take it easy so you can face the next day.

  I wish we had a couch.

  Oh, you’re asleep again, and it’s still light.

  It doesn’t matter.

  I wish I knew what you dreamt about.

  I wish we could share a dream.

  But we can’t. No matter how much we love each other, we have to go into our dreams alone.

  Boy, wake up.

  It’s morning. We slept the whole day and night.

  It’s hard to believe how tired we can be.

  We’re so lazy.

  What’s wrong?

  Where are you going?

  He’s coming! Boy, don’t go out there!

  Boy, please!

  Boy, I mean it!

  Get away from the fence. Don’t push your nose through the wire. He’s trying to fill the water bowl.

  Please move back. Please!

  Now you’ve made him spill it.

  The water didn’t go into the bowl.

  He hasn’t noticed.

  Please come back in here. Just until he opens the gate.

  Please.

  Please!

  He’s gone. Why’s he gone?

  He hasn’t opened the gate.

  And the bowl is almost empty.

  You did that! He’s gone because you wouldn’t move back, Boy.

  Bad dog!

  Don’t drink all the water, you greedy animal. Leave some for me!

  Don’t wag.

  It’s too late, there’s only a dribble left.

  I wouldn’t just leave you a gritty mouthful, would I?

  I should.

  Why do I look after you? You’re just a nuisance.

  I understand why no one wanted you.

  Sometimes I hate you, Boy.

  Dumb, dumb dog.

  Get off! Stop! You’re even stealing my tears.

  What will you take next?

  My blood? My bones?

  Why don’t you just bite me?

  Boy?

  Boy?

  I didn’t mean that.

  Thanks for the lick.

  I forgive you too.

  That’s what friends do.

  They love each other.

  All you need is that.

  When I was with Oskar he talked. All the time.

  You never talk. But there’s no space where words are missing.

  You make a silent sound.

  So I’m not alone.

  Wake up, Boy. He’s coming back!

  He’s holding a bag.

  Look at me, Boy!

  LOOK AT ME!

  This time you must wait for me to tell you it’s safe.

  Good boy

  Good boy

  Good boy

  Good boy

  Good boy.

  He’s left the bag.

  Now he’s gone back inside.

  What does it mean? Will we have to stay here the rest of the day?

  I’m so hungry.

  I hope there’s food in there.

  NO! Not yet. Not ’til I say.

  Now we can go and look.

  Me first.

  You stay here.

  STAY.

  Sandwiches? Sandwiches!

  You can come now, Boy. He’s left us food!

  He brought us dog food and sandwiches.

  HE BROUGHT US DOG FOOD AND SANDWICHES!

  Don’t worry, I’m just excited. You can come out now.

  Get off my sandwiches! This is yours.

  It says

  LRIEV

  and

  TEPA

  I’m not sure what that means, but it looks like a sausage, so must be some kind of meat.

  No, Boy, the wrapper is plastic, you can’t eat that.

  Let me open it for you then we can eat together. I just have to pull this tag.

  There. You’re sitting so nicely. Like you’re held up with strings.

  It just takes food to make a puppet of you, Boy.

  Food and love.

  Smell how good it is!

  Yes, you like it, don’t you?

  I’m sorry to tease, but I don’t want you to swallow it straight down.

  We might not eat again today.

  Here. Just have half for now.

  And eat slowly.

  Slow-ly.

  I’ve got chicken and mayonnaise. He must have been out. That means he’s feeling better.

  I’m glad of that.

  It’s the best sandwich ever.

  He’s not a bad man, is he?

  Where has your food gone, Boy?

  You ate it all? Even the wrapper?

  Keep away. This is my sandwich.

  I’m so full now.

  You must be too.

  Feels nice to be full.

  Warm, like a hug that reaches from your stomach through to your head and your hands and your feet.

  I’ve eaten one sandwich and now my fingers and toes are full.

  I’m going to lie like a starfish and enjoy the feeling.

  What are you doing, Boy? Why are you making that horrible noise?

  Are you choking?

  I said not to swallow it all at once.

  You didn’t even taste it.

  Oh.

  You’re eating it again? You can’t eat food twice.

  Oh, you can.

  Don’t eat the plastic this time.

  I’m so thirsty.

  Boy, it’s your birthday.

  You can make up birthdays.

  Yours is today.
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  No one knows the date I was born so we’re going to decide it. Melanie said it should be in the summer so that I can have parties in the backyard. She said, ‘How about the 4th of July? Then there will always be fireworks on your birthday.’

  I said, ‘Maybe.’

  I didn’t say yes because I’d know the fireworks were for America, not for me.

  ‘OK, it’s up to you,’ she said. ‘One day you’ll wake and just know in your bones that it’s the day. And that’s the one we will choose.’

  My bones haven’t told me my birthday yet, but I just know that today is yours.

  So, what should we do?

  Would a tummy tickle be good? All right, here goes.

  Flip over.

  Enough? No?

  Enough now?

  Still not enough?

  Why does it make your leg beat like you’re playing a drum? You have great rhythm, Boy. You’re a very musical dog.

  Maybe I should learn the guitar and we can play together?

  Ha ha!

  Right, that’s enough tummy tickling for now. I don’t want to spoil you.

  Come here, you can sit on me.

  You’re heavy for someone so skinny.

  Should I sing Happy Birthday?

  Happy birthday to you

  Your fur stinks of poo

  Your breath is like poison

  But I sure do love you.

  Thank you for that lick. Your tongue is very dry. I think you need a drink.

  I’m so thirsty.

  Let’s forget about that. It’s your birthday, so we’ll make a cake.

  It will have to be a pretend one.

  Go and find the flour. Go on, go on!

  Don’t look like you don’t understand.

  Go!

  Nose down. Search the ground.

  You got some?

  Thanks.

  Now, go find some sugar.

  Try that far corner, I’m sure I saw some there.

  Get lots. I’m making a big cake, and I want it to be extra sweet.

  Careful, you spilled some. Never mind, there’s still enough.

  Now how about some eggs?

  Look up!

  Look up!

  Here comes a bird!

  Get ready to catch.

  No barking, you’ll frighten it.

  Ta-da!

  One egg, small but perfect, delivered from the sky for your cake, Boy.

  Our cake.

  Right, come and mix.

  I’ll help you. Here, put your tail in your mouth, and spin.

  Enough! It’s perfect now.

  Let me try it.

  Yes, mmmm…

  And now for the candles. How old are you?

  You don’t know how old you are? Even I know that, roughly.

  Let’s say you’re five.

  We’ll need five twigs.

  Go and look. But don’t chew them.

  Drop!

  Thanks.

  Oh, Boy, you chewed them! We can’t use bent sticks.

  We’ll have to use fingers like we did at the orphanage.

  Shhh…Stop barking. I know it’s exciting, but you have to be patient. We don’t want him coming outside and spoiling your birthday, do we?

  Ready?

  Watch carefully.

  Snap!

  Just one click of my fingers and they all lit!

  Can you see the red and orange flames at my fingertips?

  Stop looking confused, I know you can. Just use your imagination.

  You can if you try.

  You want to snuff them out?

  Thank you.

  Now make a wish.

  Don’t tell me what it is.

  If you wish for a tennis ball we’re not friends anymore.

  Let’s rest inside a while.

  You’re daydreaming. Your eyes are open but your eyebrows are wriggling like dancing caterpillars.

  I’ve disturbed you now. What were you thinking about?

  Me? Does your big heavy head on my arm mean you were thinking about me?

  I knew that already. You think about me all the time. Even when we’re together you’re watching me to make sure I don’t go.

  And when I leave you, it’s like you’re not you until I return.

  That’s how I feel about you and Melanie.

  I can’t be me without you two.

  I’m thinking about food now.

  Especially cake.

  Cake.

  Melanie said that when we decide on a date for my birthday she will make me a big cake.

  Chocolate, probably. She likes chocolate the best. It will have icing, spread thick like rough plaster. I’ll help make it and then we’ll cover it in candles.

  Fourteen.

  I haven’t had a birthday cake before. Well, maybe I did when I was very young, but not since I left home. Not many kids in the places I’ve lived knew when their birthdays were. It wasn’t important like it is here. A day is a day, and we lived in that day. Not looking forward to one that’s more special than the others, because all days are special.

  When you notice them.

  I was seven years old when the man left me at the Sweet Angel Orphanage, but the woman who shaved my head with a bare razor, scraping my scalp until it hurt, told me that from that moment I would be five instead.

  I didn’t understand why and I was angry. I didn’t want to be five – that was the age of my brother James. I didn’t want anyone thinking I was a baby, like him.

  I acted like a baby though. I cried a lot because the building was crowded with people I didn’t know. Every bed, every chair, every inch of space had someone in it.

  But it was always the wrong someone.

  I missed my mother and brothers and sisters and unhappiness poisoned my stomach until it ached like hunger, and I messed in my pants and felt ashamed.

  The guardians at the Sweet Angel Orphanage weren’t nice like the man who didn’t come back. Not even at first. They shouted and they wouldn’t give me clean clothes, and sometimes they hit me with a metal spoon to teach me not to do it anymore. But nothing seemed to help.

  I still cried and messed myself, Boy, because I wanted my family.

  You understand that, don’t you?

  An orphanage is a place for children whose parents have died. But many of us weren’t orphans. I was sure that my parents were alive, and that the man with the smile and the kind voice would come back soon with his van full of gas and drive me home to them.

  I had a friend called Oskar. He wasn’t an orphan either. ‘I got lost coming home from the market,’ he said. Over and over he told the same story. ‘I bought rope. My father needs it to tether the horse.’ He held the rope close by, as evidence. ‘He’ll be angry and when he finds out where I am he’ll fight the people who are keeping me here. He will cut them with a big knife.’

  ‘My father is coming too,’ I said. ‘He has a machete, and he’s tall and strong and brave.’

  Oskar said, ‘My father is a giant.’

  When someone stole Oskar’s rope he stopped saying his father was coming.

  I loved Oskar like I love you, Boy.

  At night we shared a bed, whispering in the dark, and by day we stayed side by side and settled our arguments by wrestling on the tiled floor.

  With Oskar next to me I didn’t mind living at the orphanage.

  He told me the truth once in the dark of night, when I couldn’t see his face. He whispered it to me like if he said it loud it would be too real for him to bear.

  ‘My mother left me here because she couldn’t feed me,’ he said into the blackness. ‘We were too poor.’

  I didn’t reply.

  ‘My father does have a knife, you know,’ he added.

  ‘Mine too,’ I said.

  When no father with a big knife came to claim him Oskar must have decided that he would have to become as big and strong as a giant himself. Within two years, while the rest of us were still as skinny as saplings, Oskar gre
w thick and solid like a house, and as hungry as a wolf.

  Do you remember the time, Boy, when I left some potatoes on my plate and I went to the bathroom, and when I came back they had gone? I asked you where they were and you slunk off, your body weighed down to the ground with sorries.

  You couldn’t help it, Melanie told me. You’d been hungry once and your brain was programmed to find food and eat it.

  I guess it was the same for Oskar.

  So, at mealtimes anyone sitting near him ate fast and shielded their plate with their arm because, even if he was full, he couldn’t resist snatching food.

  If you become really hungry maybe you never feel full again.

  The Sweet Angel Orphanage wasn’t a place you could stay a long time. It wasn’t a home.

  ‘A family is waiting for you,’ the guardians told us, so every week we would clean up, and be scrubbed down and dressed in clean clothes for the show.

  Visitors were led in by Mr Bodin from the Happy Children Adoption Agency.

  All along the whitewashed walls the babies were sat in chairs like dolls and they watched as we, the older ones, performed songs and dances, smiling for the people who had come to choose a new child: the Parents.

  I believed in it at first. I thought that if I sang well and remembered the actions to the songs I would be taken away.

  But they call my country the Land of a Million Orphans.

  See all the blades of grass out there, Boy? A million is more than that.

  Imagine being one of those blades, waiting for someone to pick you?

  Even when I first arrived the place was crammed with others who were younger and cuter than me. After two years my chances of being chosen were even slighter. I was small, and the guardians pretended that I was seven, but why would anyone want me when they could have a three-year-old with big shining eyes and smooth ochre cheeks? I wanted to stop smiling, stop singing the songs, stop hoping.

  But still, each week when the Parents parked their cars up on the kerb outside I ran with the others to the windows and argued over which I wanted to leave in.

  And while they viewed us as if they were choosing from cows in a field, I would still smile. Just in case.

  The Parents who came in the smartest cars were foreigners. They were white and wore clothes that looked as though the tags had just been cut from them. We all wanted to go home with these Parents because we were told that they were rich, and at their homes we would have toys and endless good food.