Invisible Child

by Mary Hayward

  I turned and ran up the stairs to my bedroom and slammed the door as hard as I could. I threw myself on my pillow and banged my fist into it as hard as I could until I lay exhausted in my upset.

  I couldn’t believe that I fell for it; trusted my Dad for a moment—when the whole of my body and mind was telling me he would let me down; and yet within me there was some part of my stupid brain still clinging to the faith in my Dad.

  I was devastated, but worse still was what I had told all my friends at school, that I was getting skates for my birthday! I talked it up to boost my confidence and try to keep the friendships going.

  “I told them, I told them,” I cried to myself. “Why did I let myself tell them?” I tasted that familiar torrent of salt running down my face that burnt into my very soul, each drop of poison slowly killing any hope for my little life. I plunged into a spiral of despair.

  “I won’t make any friends now!”

  I glanced up at the mirror and saw the reflection of my blotchy red face. I burst into tears once more. I jumped onto to my bed and buried my face into the pillow, trying to hide. I just wanted it to all go away. If I could snap my fingers and end it all there I would have done. If someone had given me a pill and told me I could go to sleep for ever, I think I would have taken it.

  Gutted would be an understatement. There isn’t a word that described the shame of it. I had yet to face my humiliation. My life fell apart, like the shattering of a mirror, and in an instant the hurt and the upset rushed into me so suddenly that it felt like I had been shot—so great was the pain I felt inside. How would I face my friends now?

  During my sobbing I wondered if it was always to be this way for me, to be different from my friends at school? It was as if I had some horrible disease that seeped into every part of my life, and no matter how hard I tried to stop it spreading, it always managed to break through.

  The rejection pierced my very bones. My friends would all see me exposed naked and without dignity. It was terribly important to me. I so desperately wanted to fit in and be accepted, yet rejection was still with me and I could not shake it off no matter how hard I tried.

  I had only one choice—and that is the choice I made. I kept it inside—bottled it up and swallowed hard. I kept the secrets.

  I found some roller-skates later in a junkshop that I remember had a ticket for 6/- (6 shillings) and I managed to buy them myself. Of course the shame of not getting them at the time didn’t go away. But at least I had them. That was the important thing I told myself.

  For a brief moment I was happy to play in the street skating up and down until one day, as all the boys and girls did in those days, I wanted more. I wanted to go to Alexandra Palace where they had a roller-skating rink. There was a bunch of us who were all going there and I was so excited that I put them on during the bus ride up there. But when I got there I couldn’t skate. They told me that because my skates didn’t have a rubber stopper at the front, they couldn’t let me use them, which perhaps goes some way to explain why they were in the junk shop in the first place.

  I got used to my life as it kept repeating itself in a continuous cycle of disappointments relieved only by brief moments of happiness. The trouble was that the brief moments of happiness were getting fewer.

  9

  Senior school

  LEAVING ST JAMES CHURCH SCHOOL for my new senior school was a big jump for me, not only because there were so many more people, but also because I had to cross Fore Street, Edmonton—a busy main road between Silver Street and Seven Sisters Road. Even in those days it was full of buses, cars and lorries all making their way from the North Circular Road.

  I was feeling rather sorry for myself; I don’t know why. Mum had been flustered getting me ready on my first day. I was ready, but Mum insisted on finishing her fag, and then after all of that she didn’t come. Perhaps she thought she ought to take me, and then feeling that she didn’t want to be seen by the other parents, she thought better of it.

  She shrank back into the house and then, feeling embarrassed and awkward that she had made me late with all her indecision, she sort of shoved me out, and then promptly slammed the door behind me. I felt as if I had been kicked out like the cat.

  Being late was a regular occurrence with Mum, and it was little surprise that I had to run all the way along Grove Street, arriving in all the chaos of the London rush hour. The roar of the traffic and screeching of brakes were a little unsettling the first time, although I was determined not to show it. I stumbled up to the curb and waited for the traffic lights to change. I had all the feelings of worry and trepidation, and like all the other children I felt vulnerable.

  A trolley bus came in front of me moving slowly, passengers clinging to the platform pole like firemen on a shout.

  Ding, ding.

  The clippie in her uniform was ringing the bell. The passengers, with their umbrellas, their briefcases, were packed in with things I couldn’t tell. A motorbike backfired. I jumped back. I was going to have to get used to this busy stream of traffic every day.

  There was a tall, dark haired lady on my side of the road. She was dressed in a nice white coat and matching hat, and as she stood there; she held firmly her daughter’s hand.

  I stared at her. She looked so beautiful, so fresh, and so clean that I swear I could still smell the faintest hint of her perfumed soap on the air. My mind snapped with hurtful thoughts about my Mum. It upset me. It dawned on me that there were people who couldn’t stand the sight of beauty.

  I forced myself to move away. I couldn’t let myself get too close to the longing. It was eating me away inside. It was enough that I felt forgotten and alone. I felt like an apple with two maggots inside.

  If Mum had been there she would have called her ‘stuck up’, although I didn’t see anything stuck up about her; I thought she was just very smart. The little girl looked a little snooty though, clutching her little wooden pencil case and standing in her nice new black leather shoes. She had pretty girls’ shoes. Not like mine. They were clumsy boys’ shoes: clodhoppers.

  Lost in my own thoughts, I watched how the lady behaved. I found myself comparing her with my Mum; checking, searching and yearning to understand what a normal mum was. Mum was different to other mums, and I wondered if I was different in some way.

  Although Mum had convinced me that the way we lived was normal I knew in my heart that it wasn’t. Yet I just couldn’t stop myself comparing our ways to the ways of others.

  I began to notice more of the world around me as my horizons opened up. The hospital, the Home, and the wedding, all showed me different sides of people. They all stretched the stark contrast between my family and others with whom I came into contact. I knew that some of my neighbours didn’t celebrate Christmas because they were Jehovah’s Witnesses, but apart from that, everybody else at school did; so why didn’t we have Christmas or Easter then?

  Easter was just the same. Life was just as desperate. Nothing changed really, no Easter Eggs or anything like that, except that to some extent I was worse off because I didn’t get the free school milk. Mum would be at home on Good Friday and yet spent most of the day round her friend Lil’s. I didn’t know what they got up to, but I would be left on my own in the house with Jane most of the time.

  I hated it when the teacher asked the class to write about what we did for Christmas. I couldn’t write anything. We didn’t have Christmas like other kids. No decorations, no tree, no presents or anything proper. If I was lucky we had bangers, boiled potatoes with gravy, and tinned Farrows peas. Sometimes Dad might have scrounged a couple of comics for me, Beezer or Topper, but that was about it.

  A large lorry rumbled like thunder and belched out a big cloud of blue smoke. The lady and the young girl were by this time standing next to me. Holding her daughter close, she bent down and gave her little girl a big hug and kiss. She took from her handbag a little lace hanky, and then carefully licking it in the corner, she wiped away the lipstick mark from the girl�
�s cheek. The girl gave a little shudder of protest and tried to push her mother away, pretending she was too grown up for that; she didn’t want all the fuss, especially not in front of me.

  The traffic at last stopped at the lights, and I saw the lady bend down again and give her daughter another big hug. The girl seemed embarrassed, looking back at me; then, pushing her mother away, she confidently walked across the road. I felt she just took her mother’s love for granted.

  Reaching the pavement on the other side, the girl gazed at me. She looked back at her mum as she waved to her, just as if she were putting on a show for my benefit. For a brief moment I felt hurt and I didn’t really understand why. Perhaps it was the realisation that I didn’t have a mum to wave back to, and that I was alone. She had a mum who cared.

  It occurred to me that love for that girl, the little girl I had just watched, didn’t depend on how much food she brought from begging for her family.

  As time went on and I got older, I began to notice grown up people more closely, watching them interact with each other. Every morning I would study them arriving at the school. If the other mums bumped into each other, they spoke, and they chatted about their kids and they seemed to enjoy exchanging embarrassing stories about what their children got up to. Somehow, I knew inside that my mum was very different from other people’s mums. Strange though, I didn’t really question what Mum did. I seemed to accept the way she was, even though I noticed it was different. She didn’t just avoid other mothers; she actually appeared to be hiding from them.

  I told myself I had more freedom than the other kids. My mum didn’t care if I stayed out late, and perhaps it was that that made me feel I was more streetwise; I didn’t really know, although I always felt much more grown up than my friends.

  At Raynham Road School our teacher was Mr Green. Although I felt a bit lost in the new big school, he really helped me to settle in. I not only liked him because he was one of the few people I felt had time for me, but I was also eager to learn and do well. Because we all came from a church school they seemed automatically to put us into the ‘B’ class.

  I was quite a bright young thing and would always chat to the teachers in my class. I thought this would be my chance to make new friends, and for once in my life they wouldn’t automatically know where I lived; they wouldn’t know about the poverty and all that came with it. I thought that if my friends’ mums knew about me they wouldn’t let their children play with me again, so it was better they didn’t know. What little girl would want their friends to see Dad staggering home drunk, or my Mum and Dad shouting and swearing at each other, as if they were on a stage playing it out for the benefit of the neighbours?

  My sister Jane was now old enough to go to a nursery, and soon it was up to me to pick her up after school. I really didn’t want to do it as I was looking forward to making new friends and going round their houses and playing out. It wasn’t as if the Nursery was on the way home from school. I would get out of school at 4 p.m. and have to run all the way to Fore Street and wait for a bus to get me there, pick her up and bring her back home and then, after all that, I would have to babysit until Mum got home.

  Fortunately after six months Jane was old enough to go to school, and she got a place at the local primary part of my school. At least I didn’t have to get the bus to pick her up, so I was pleased about that—although I still had to fetch her from the Infants. She got out of school at 3:30 p.m. and so she had to wait in the school playground covered seating area. I say seating area, although I seem to remember it was just a corrugated roof with a bench underneath.

  Mr Green was a nice teacher and I enjoyed his lessons, and then, six months later I was put into Miss Dee’s class: she was very strict. If we were misbehaving she would come round and smack the back of our legs with her ruler. On another occasion she kept the class behind as long as twenty minutes, until people stopped talking.

  I watched as the clock ticked past 4:00 p.m., then past 4:30 p.m. I was too frightened to tell her that I had to pick up my sister, and I started to worry about Jane being left all alone in the school playground. If I told the teacher I had to pick her up, she may well have stopped Jane waiting in the playground for me, and I didn’t want that! She would have only been about five years old and Mum would have killed me if anything happened to her.

  Eventually Miss Dee let us go and I remember running for all my life to reach Jane’s school playground, just in time to stop Jane wandering in the other direction. I guess she had given up on me and tried to walk home alone. Luckily I was able to call her and stop her in her tracks.

  Staying in the convalescent home made me realise that other people actually had clean sheets on their beds once a week. I remembered how fresh they would smell, all crisp and clean. I never did get used to the dirty sheets on my bed. To me it was horrible. I couldn’t live in that state, and despite my nagging, my mum refused to wash them, leaving them until they were absolutely disgusting. I didn’t know how she could have left me in the filth of it—she just didn’t seem to care that I found it a problem; to her it appeared normal, yet I knew she wasn’t brought up like that. She didn’t seem to understand a young girl’s needs and found it awkward to talk about, until one day as I was going back to school at lunchtime, she just opened the door after I had left and shouted out at me: “You’ll get your periods soon!” Then she promptly shut the door again. I didn’t understand why she said it. When I spoke to her about my periods, personal things and what to do, she just shrugged her shoulders and wouldn’t talk about it, and I was left to figure it out on my own.

  I think we had a lesson at school about periods and things. They showed us a cine film and I learned about it all from that. A friend gave me a Tampax, but without the instructions, so I didn’t know what to do with it. I got a little scared that there was something wrong with me.

  I told my Dad I needed some money. I didn’t tell him exactly, but I intimated that I had a problem. He seemed to cotton on straight away. I didn’t have to explain further. So he gave me some money to sort myself out there and then. I rushed round the chemist and bought a box of my own so I could read the instructions and figure out how to use them.

  That was my Dad. When he was sober he was in tune with me as a little girl, much more than Mum ever was, and somehow I never did understand that. There was a soft caring side to Dad, which softened the hardship and made me love him.

  With this seesaw of support it was little wonder my personal hygiene would come into question from time to time, with my friends at school. As I went through puberty I found, as most girls do, that my underwear needed to be changed on a regular basis. Not only that, but I found I now needed a bath at least once a week, and some deodorants. But it was impossible to get my mum to give me anything, and I soon realised she wasn’t going to help me.

  I used to have to go to the chemist and get Dr Whites towels and Mum told me to bag them up and put them under the bed. When Dad came home one day they had a terrible row. He said I couldn’t just put them under the bed—I had to burn them. So after that I didn’t take any notice of my mum. I bagged them up securely, and Dad showed my how to take them down the end of the block and put them down the rubbish chute. Dad was there for me during this time, but he was like a chocolate soldier in the sun. The help would soon collapse in a little puddle.

  The next day I decided there was going to be no other way of doing it—I would have to earn some money.

  I started to run errands for the lady next door, by taking her washing up to the Chinese Laundry. She was a kindly lady and I didn’t know if she knew how I lived, but she gave me a shilling each time. (Five pence in today’s money.) Determined to do something about it, the very next Saturday I walked up and down Silver Street, and eventually found a modern Launderette that had just opened up. It was just what I was looking for, fresh and clean with a line of modern front-loading washing machines with chairs, tables, and baskets for holding the washing.

  Brilliant, I thou
ght! I would no longer have to put up with the filth ever again. I would be able to have clean fresh clothes all the time. Finally I would be able to escape and live the way I wanted; I wasn’t like my mum, and I wasn’t going to put up with the way the family lived any longer. It was the start of asserting my independence, and I was determined I was not going backwards.

  With my spirits high, I gathered my dirty clothes and disgusting sheets and walked to the laundrette. Pushing open the door, I was struck by the hot strong smell of washing powder, and of bubbles that wafted up from the machines, although I wasn’t sure if bubbles could smell; however, I loved it! The lady supervisor was really helpful: she answered any questions I asked, then showed me how to put my money in the slot and load the machine with powder. She told me all about the various washes and how to sort my clothes out into different piles, depending on the colour, material and temperature to wash them on.

  The shop was bustling, full of people all chatting away like a Saturday market, all sitting there staring at their underwear going round and round in the soap and bubbles. The sloshing noise of the wet clothes in drums, masked amongst the babbling crowd… it was just what I needed, a real moral booster, and I started to look forward to going with my laundry every Saturday morning. Sad, isn’t it? It was like a second home, with all the ladies chatting to me, and taking an interest in helping me. I felt a sense of belonging that I didn’t get at home.

  Despite all the nagging and pleading at home, it was still impossible to get a bath. We had one in the house, with running water and everything, but Mum would complain that she had no money for the meter—again, saying it was all my father’s fault because he had raided the gas meter for his drinking the night before. She told me that if I wanted a bath at home, I would have to give her half a crown. The only way I was going to be able to afford that, was by taking on more jobs.