by J.A. Skinner
Chapter 9
Wednesday 14th May
Behavioural symptoms in the early stages include a loss of drive and initiative. You may appear lazy or uninterested in life, spending days doing little or neglecting your personal hygiene or ignoring important thing that need to be done.
‘Do you really think you should carry on with this adoption case, Tommy? It might break your duck,’ says Harry.
Actually it might break my heart with all the contact I’m having with Mags faamily. He is leaning on the side of my desk flicking through the papers I’m preparing for submission to the final adoption board meeting. It’s a legend in my team that I’ve never completed a successful adoption despite years of trying.
‘Got to try for one before my retirement,’ I reply, ‘practice might make perfection this time,’ Shit! He is infecting me with clichés.
Harry thinks it’s my ‘Zen Karma’ not to match a family to a baby or an older child. He truly believes some things are just meant to be the way they are and I mostly think he’s right, but it would be a nice professional accomplishment to complete just one.
I’ve had step adoptions what all went wrong, and potential adoptive couples whose relationships cracked under the strain of the process. There have been pregnant teenager girls who were convinced that they would give up their babies to go back to school or try for university, but in the end blossomed into fantastically competent little mothers.
One of my closest calls was a woman who left her baby in hospital, pre-adoption as arranged, and was at home worrying and fretting for two days before changing her mind, charging into the maternity ward and snatching back her baby minutes before the foster parents turned up.
The result of this kind of track record means that every dodgy adoption case is allocated to me and I manage to put the kiss of death on it. Kate and Phillip could be the exception, the gold star in my copybook. So far it’s going well. They are a perfect ten out of ten, a good adoptive couple;
Young, childless, healthy, non-smoking anti-abortionists. They have also been very patient with the paperwork and willing to have their private lives examined and exposed like an open wound. They waited six years before having the medical checks that only confirmed what they suspected in their hearts, they were never going to have a child naturally. The tests also showed negative for any nasty genetic conditions.
The preparation is certainly going well but unfortunately we don’t have many babies at the moment so it is mostly just a waiting game.
Aileen comes into my office looking a bit fussed, ‘Bunnykins,’ addressed to me, ‘chicken shit Joe is in reception, as usual, wanting see someone.’
‘Please no, Aileen, no I had him last time, please,’ I say.
‘There’s no one else sweetie, and I’ll give you a can of air freshener after.’
Chicken shit Joe, so named because he sleeps in a chicken hut most nights and smells like a nightmare, is a vagrant who regularly visits our office for bits of paper that he needs for the Women’s Voluntary Service or the Sally-Army for a bath and clean clothes. He is clothed, fed and then pointed in the direction of the social security. He leaves behind a waiting room that smells like a slap in the face with a dirty rag, and Aileen frets and sprays for the rest of the day. Sadly, Joe is one of life’s misfits. He is slightly retarded but not retarded enough to be in a hostel for people with learning difficulties, he is also mentally ill, possibly a personality defect but not sufficiently so to be in a psychiatric hospital. He has no family that he can remember, and no possessions. We all feel sorry for him but no matter how many times he is sorted out and given a place to stay he ends up sleeping rough, usually with the chickens. I tell myself there must be a higher purpose to his life, or what would be the point. Harry as usual has his own take on Jo. He believes that Jo is at the end of his earthly sojourns and has chosen a really difficult reincarnation this time as his grand finale. In his Zenlike compassionate way he instructs all us workers to show Jo the utmost respect no matter what he smells like.
I go to the interview room hold my breath, sit beside chicken shit Jo and ask,
‘What do you want Joe?’ I look intently into his eyes to see if I can catch a glimpse of the real purpose there. He is dressed in trousers that are too short with his bony grubby ankles sticking out of the frayed cuffs. He has filthy shoes which look three sizes too big and no socks. He wears several jumpers and two overcoats and still manages to look as thin as a garden rake and his dirty matted hair stands straight out from his head.
‘Food, bath, clean socks please, thank you,’ he replies, curtly, as he usually does.
‘Why are you still sleeping in the chicken hut Joe, you look and smell terrible and anyway, don’t you have a bed at the YMCA?’
‘I like the freedom and I‘ve told you all before, I don’t mind the smell.’ He smiles, showing tombstone teeth,
‘Are you free Tommy? Are you happy?’ I don’t answer this, what can I say, it’s too early in the day for Philosophy. My Mother, a dedicated spiritualist would agree with Harry and say that Joe was an advanced spirit choosing to have a difficult human experience this time round in preparation for graduating to some other level. I’m not too sure about all of that.
I give him his chit for a clean up, clothes and food, and usher him out, regretting the inevitability of it all happening again in a few weeks time. Sometimes you canny win or maybe you just don’t know if you’ve won or not, but as I say, too early for philosophy.
‘Well done pumpkin,’ from Aileen of course, ‘you are now off that rota for a long time. Would you like a wee squirt of Chanel?’
I go back to my office thinking, are you free and happy Tommy? Not really, but I know one thing that would make me happy. I’ve decide to call Mags and ask her out on a date, to hell with the ethics, I can deal with any conflicts, life’s too short etc. etc., I can sort out Mr. Wang and the dilemmas or even dichotomies later. There is always the chance she might knock me back, and I won’t have to say a thing. We will cross that bridge or fall off it, one of Harry’s favourites.