by Kit de Waal
Jake isn’t even wearing a diaper anymore because it smelled terrible and all the new ones are gone. He had to sit Jake on a towel in his basket and put some toys in with him but he can get out now and roll all over the place and looking after Jake is getting much too hard. And they’re both hungry all the time these days. Jake has been crying all morning and Carol won’t do anything.
Every morning, it’s Leon who has to go and get Jake and pick him up and move him around a bit until he stops crying. The way his mom is behaving, you would think she was deaf.
Leon has shaken her and he has begged her and he has pulled at her arms but nothing happens. Even though she’s awake she won’t talk or eat and she won’t get up. That was yesterday and the day before yesterday, and now, today, Leon has got to do something. He goes upstairs again into her bedroom. Pink light sifts through the thin curtains and the air feels heavy and quiet, like someone’s holding their breath. One of Carol’s hands lies on the sheet. Leon touches it with the tip of one finger. She doesn’t move but her papery lips pucker over and over, like she’s a goldfish in a bowl.
“Mom?”
Carol turns her head to the wall.
“I’m hungry, Mom.”
He realizes that the whole room smells like Leon’s diaper and that his mom has wet the bed again. He opens the window but only a little crack in case Carol gets cold.
If Leon can go to Tina and get some money then nobody needs to know that Carol is ill again. Leon can make her better if someone will give him some money. The last time things were like this he had to go and live with a lady and her husband and their cat and they kept taking him to church and making him sit still and it was horrible, so he will look after Carol and Jake, he will make her some tea and toast, and help her sit up and take her pills, and he will put a clean sheet on her bed and he will pretend. Jake starts crying downstairs, so Leon goes down and gives him a kiss.
“You stay here and play with your toys. Stop crying, Jake.”
He leaves the door on the latch and goes upstairs to the next floor. He rings Tina’s bell.
“All right, love?” she says.
“My mom said have you got any money?”
Tina looks along the landing and then over the railings.
“Where is she, Leon?”
“She’s asleep but she wants me to go to the shop.”
“Have you been to school today?”
“No, school ended last week. She said have you got a pound?”
Tina keeps looking at him and then she goes into her flat. She comes back with Wobbly Bobby and her handbag and closes the door.
“I’ll pop down and see her.”
Leon follows her and hopes his mom is awake and dressed and hopes that Jake has stopped crying. But when Tina walks through the door and he hears the sound she makes, he knows she will find everything out.
She walks into the kitchen and shakes her head.
“Christ,” she says.
She walks into the sitting room and puts her hand to her mouth. She looks at how untidy Leon has been and how he has sat in front of the TV and eaten his cereal by putting his hand in the box. How he hasn’t put Jake’s diapers in the trash. How he should have opened the window like Tina does in her house and made everywhere smell of baby lotion. Leon sees what Tina sees. Why didn’t he tidy up before he asked her for any money? Tina goes back into the hall.
“Carol? Carol?” she calls. She puts Bobby down in Jake’s playpen and then runs up the stairs. Leon follows.
“Bloody hell!”
Tina starts shaking Carol and pulling her arm.
“Cal! Cal!”
She looks at Leon.
“Has she taken something? How long has she been like this? Cal?”
Suddenly Carol starts moaning.
“Leave me alone! Leave me alone!”
Tina starts making little slaps on Carol’s face but she won’t fight back or even open her eyes. Leon knows because he’s been trying for days. Tina takes Leon’s hand and backs out of the room. All the time, she’s shaking her head and saying “Christ” or “God.”
They go down the stairs together. Tina picks Jake out of his basket and wraps a towel round him. She picks Bobby up as well. She’s carrying two babies and she’s out of breath.
“Get my bag, Leon. Come with me.”
They go to the phone booth at the end of the block and she makes Leon hold Jake while he stands outside. The door won’t shut properly, so he hears everything.
“Ambulance, I think,” she says. Then she waits for a minute and says his mom’s address. Then she says they will need to get Social Services as well.
She puts the phone down and then says a number to herself over and over while she’s dialing.
“Social Services?” she says.
Tina tries to squeeze the door shut but it won’t close.
“There’s two children that’s been there for a couple of days at least. Yes. Yes. No, it’s been going on a while. Yes. An ambulance is coming. Yes. On the next floor up, 164E, upstairs. I don’t know, nine, and four or five months, something like that. Carol Rycroft. Yes. Leon and Jake. Jake’s the baby. I don’t know. No. Terrible. I don’t know.”
She listens for ages and then she says, “I’ll take them to my house but they can’t stay. No, sorry. Can’t you send someone around? When? Christ. All right, just one night, then. I haven’t got a phone. No. Yeah, 164E first floor, yeah. I’ll be there.”
When she comes out she’s breathing like she’s been running.
“Can you carry him, Leon?” she asks. “If we walk slow?”
Bobby is crying and Jake keeps wriggling but Leon keeps up with Tina, who doesn’t walk slowly after all. When they get back to Tina’s she puts Jake straight in the bath with Bobby and dresses him in Bobby’s clothes. He’s still crying but then she gives him a bottle and halfway through he falls asleep.
Tina keeps saying she’s sorry and she has no choice. An ambulance lady comes to the door and Tina lets her in.
“We’ve got someone downstairs with Mom. You’ve got the children here with you?”
“They are both all right,” she says, pointing to Jake, who is fast asleep, and then to Leon, who is next to her.
“He’s nine and Jake is about four months old. I’ve fed the baby and I was just about to feed Leon. I think he’s hungry, aren’t you, love?”
Leon wipes his face.
“And a bit worried about your mom, eh?” says the ambulance lady. She squats down in front of Leon and squeezes his arm, then his other arm.
“You’ve been hungry for a little while, I bet.”
Leon shakes his head. “No, I’m full.”
When they start whispering about his mom, he wants to tell them that she’s kind and nice but they’re not listening. The ambulance lady goes over to Jake and when she sees he’s asleep she says she’s going back downstairs.
After she leaves, Tina makes him beans on toast and he gets into the bath. He puts one of Tina’s T-shirts on and he has some potato chips in front of the television. The Dukes of Hazzard is on but halfway through Jake starts crying again and Tina puts him on Leon’s lap so he can give him a bottle.
“You’re a good kid, Leon,” she says. “You don’t deserve this.”
“Where’s my mom?” he asks.
“She’s been taken to the hospital, love. You could see she wasn’t well. You should have come and told me. She was like this last week, wasn’t she? I could see it in her face when she walked past me. How long’s it been going on?”
Leon doesn’t know.
“She’s really bad this time, love. Worse than I’ve ever seen. I don’t know what will happen.”
But Leon does.
The social workers don’t come until the next evening. There are two of them; one has black hair with white u
nderneath like a zebra. They all stay in the kitchen for ages talking about his mom. He can hear Tina telling them everything.
“. . . weeks and weeks, since before the baby was born if I think about it now. She was depressed the first time with Leon but I never knew her then. I think he’s been in care a couple of times. She seemed all right before the baby but she’s just, you know, not right. I mean, some of the things she does . . . and she dumps the kids at the drop of a hat. With me mostly. And she kept leaving Leon to look after the baby, you know, five minutes here and five minutes there. And he’s been missing school.”
No one says anything and then Tina starts all over again, saying the same things, saying bad things about Carol and pretending that Leon wasn’t looking after Jake properly.
“She’s just got worse without me paying attention,” says Tina. “We had a bit of a row a few weeks back cuz she keeps borrowing money. She never pays it back, either. And I’ve had those two kids more times than I can count. They’re lovely kids, but still. And I just said, you know, enough’s enough. She had a right go at me. So I just backed off and I haven’t kept a close eye. I used to but I’ve got my own family to think about. It all got out of hand when the baby’s dad finished with her. Tony, I think he’s called. Don’t know his second name. She took it bad. I mean really bad.”
“What about Leon’s father? Is he around?”
“Him? Byron? Not him, he’s taken off. Carol said he was supposed to go to court and he couldn’t face it. But even when he was around he wasn’t much use. He’d come and go as he pleased. He’d be with her for a couple of weeks and then he’d be off. Then he was inside for a bit and as soon as he was out they were arguing all the time. And drinking. Both of them drank. And anyway, when she got pregnant by Tony it all just came to a head.”
Leon sees that Tina has left her handbag on the sofa. He leaves the door open but gets her purse and takes out fifty pence. He puts it in his trousers and puts everything back where it was. He tiptoes back to the door of the kitchen.
“Like I said, I’ve really tried. I’ve had them both here on and off for months and, you know, much as I want to help, it’s just got to stop. I mean, she’s had a breakdown, hasn’t she?”
Leon opens the door wide. They all look at him. Social workers have two pretend faces, Pretend Happy and Pretend Sad. They’re not supposed to get angry, so they make angry into sad. This time, they’re pretending to care about him and Jake and his mom.
“I want to get my things,” he says.
They all look at each other.
The Zebra takes him down to his flat. Tina has given her the key. She looks around the kitchen and opens the fridge. She opens the back door and sees all the diapers that Leon has thrown outside. She walks slowly upstairs and helps him pack some clothes for Jake and some clothes for himself but he can only take one bag of toys.
“Whatever you can take in that backpack is okay,” she says. “We can come back for the rest another day.”
Leon has to leave one of his Action Men because he has to make some space for Jake’s toys and everything won’t fit into his red pack. When the Zebra has filled a suitcase they go back to Tina’s. She picks Jake up and wraps him in a blanket. Tina tries to give Leon a kiss.
“You’ll be all right, Leon. I’m so sorry, love.” She bends down and he turns his face to the wall. He holds his backpack in front of him. He can hear her sniffing and crying and he thinks of her fifty pence in his pocket and the candy he will buy.
On the drive to where the foster lady lives, the Zebra talks all the time but Leon is sitting in the back next to Jake with his pack on his lap and he pretends he can’t hear. Jake has fallen asleep in a special baby car seat and Leon’s glad he didn’t hear Tina lying and the Zebra going on and on asking him questions and trying to make him say bad things about his mom.
6
In the morning, Leon opens his eyes and listens. He can’t hear Jake crying. Then he remembers. He’s in the foster lady’s house. Last night when they arrived with the Zebra, the lady came to the door, took Jake, and kissed him even though she’d never met him before.
“Bless,” she said.
The lady steered Leon toward a TV room and told him to sit down.
“You can watch what you like, love,” she said but there was only the news on. He could hear the Zebra in the kitchen and even though half of him didn’t want to, he had to listen. The Zebra was talking in a loud whisper.
“. . . he’s been the carer . . . baby and mother, yes, both of them . . . malnourished . . . failure to thrive . . . drug dependency . . . ambulance . . .”
All the time the lady was saying “Mmm” and “I see” and the Zebra kept going on and on.
“. . . breakdown . . . emergency placement . . . court order . . . squalor . . . state of the place . . .”
And then right in the middle of a sentence, the lady told the Zebra to go home. He heard the front door open and heard her saying, “Yep, Judy, yeah, I’ve got it. Off you go. Yep, we can do all that tomorrow. All right, yes. Off you go. Bye.”
The lady had given him a Jammie Dodger biscuit from a golden tin and asked him if he wanted another one, so Leon had three altogether with some hot chocolate and when he went to bed, he didn’t even dream.
The smell of breakfast fills Leon’s nose and cramps his belly. He doesn’t want to make any noise because Jake is still asleep. He must be asleep because he’s not crying. Leon is in a soft, warm bed and there are black-and-white soccer balls on his quilt. Wooden airplanes hang off the ceiling and turn in a cool breeze from the open window. Even the curtains have got a soccer-ball pattern on them. The wallpaper is made up of lots of soldiers in red army jackets with black rifles and, best of all, Jake isn’t crying. The smell of food is so strong it pulls Leon downstairs. He can hear the lady singing a nursery song and Jake is laughing. He can hear plates and knives and forks clattering against each other. He tiptoes to the door of the kitchen and listens outside but the lady must have heard him.
“In you come, sleepyhead. Bacon sandwich with ketchup. All you can eat.”
Leon sits at the yellow kitchen table and the lady puts a massive bacon sandwich on the plate and cuts it in half. Then she plonks the ketchup bottle down next to him and says, “Dig in, sweetheart.”
Jake is wearing a bib with a dinosaur on it. He looks clean and fresh sitting in a high chair by the window and the lady goes over to him and starts pointing at things in the front garden.
“Bird,” she says. “Bird. Lovely little bird.”
She keeps talking to Jake and he’s trying to talk back, so Leon can eat his sandwich in peace. It tastes like the best thing in the world with soft bread and lots of meat and the sauce that drips on to the plate and he’s got an enormous glass of orange juice that tastes sweeter than Coke and he has a bite of the salty meat and a swig of the sweet orange juice and he keeps doing it until everything is gone.
Then the lady just puts another sandwich on his plate.
“Growing boy like you. Bet you can’t eat all of that.”
But Leon does, with another glass of orange juice, though during the second sandwich he pays attention to the lady and what she is saying. He is waiting for her to ask questions about his mom.
“Now, not everyone would be able to see the resemblance between you two,” she says, folding her arms over her big chest, “but Maureen can.” She smiles and points to her forehead. “That’s me, Maureen, and I’ve got an eye for kids.”
Leon licks the sauce off his fingers and looks around. Maureen’s house smells of sweets and toast and when she stands near the kitchen window with the sun behind her, her fuzzy red hairstyle looks like a flaming halo. She’s got arms like a boxer and a massive belly like Father Christmas. On the kitchen wall there is a giant wooden spoon and it says “Best Mom” and next to that there is a painting of Jesus with all his disciples and he’s
showing them the blood on his hands.
“So you’re nine,” says Maureen, taking his plate and filling his glass up with orange juice again.
Leon nods.
“And he’s nearly five months.”
Leon nods.
“And you’re the quiet one.”
“Yes.”
“But he’s the boss.”
She smiles, so Leon smiles back.
“I get the picture,” she says. “Bet he’s had you up and down like a yo-yo. He’d be giving you orders if he could speak, wouldn’t he?”
She goes over to Jake and gives him a plastic mixing spoon. Jake starts banging the tray on his high chair. Leon and Maureen put their hands over their ears.
“Have I made a mistake?” she says and Leon laughs.
“So what’s his routine then?” she asks and she sits down opposite him at the yellow table. She picks up a pad and a pencil and writes “Jake” at the top of the page.
“You tell me what he likes and doesn’t like, so I don’t get it wrong.”
“He gets up too early,” says Leon.
She writes it down.
“And if I’m having something to eat and he wants it, he has to have a bit but only if it’s good for him because sometimes it’s chewing gum.”
“No chewing gum.” She writes it down.
“He likes The Pink Panther but he doesn’t understand it. But I do, so I tell him what’s going on.”
“Pink Panther with Leon,” she says and writes it down.
“When you put his top on, if it gets stuck he goes mad and starts crying and then you can’t get it on him at all, so you have to wait until he’s forgotten. But sometimes if you have to put him in the stroller, you can’t wait, so you have to just . . .”