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James
is telling his wife Jane about his early life for the first time
– a conversation triggered by her suggestion that it was
time for his koala bear, Sydney, to be thrown away. Last month
James and his brothers Simon, Richard and Paul experienced being
in care for Christmas.
After
Christmas a lot of other kids came back from home leave and everything
was much busier and noisier. The big kids all went back to school
and I started to go to playgroup with a couple of staff kids.
I had never really had anything to do with kids my own age before
and I certainly had never been with a whole group of them.
I
both loved it and hated it. I loved the toys and the stories,
but when I saw how the others played together and knew each other
and were friends with each other I hated it because I felt left
out. I didn’t know anything about the things they talked
about and I had never had anything to share. The staff were good
and helped me to join in better, but I have always had this lingering
feeling of being outside, watching what other people were doing
and not quite understanding and not quite fitting in.
That’s
how it felt when I first went to meet Jane’s family. They
were a big jolly group and made lots of jokes and teased each
other, and I was the only one who didn’t understand and
didn’t know what was going on and was watching from the
outside. Of course it got better and, now that I am soon to be
the father of their long awaited grandchild, I feel thoroughly
accepted and at the heart of things. I intend to make sure that
our children always feel they belong.
When
I told her this, Jane just squeezed my hand. I could see she felt
sad for the little boy on the outside of everything. But I also
knew that she was not at all happy that I had kept such a lot
from her. I wanted to stop, but I thought that might only make
things worse. She would always be wondering what else she did
not know and looking at me with doubt in her eyes.
So
I carried on with our sad story. Soon after Christmas one of the
people who had taken us away from our mother came to see us. We
all sat round together. Simon was trying to look grown-up, Richard
had what was becoming a permanent sneer on his face. He kept yawning
and scratching and muttering “Waste of time” under
his breath. Paul smiled whenever anybody looked at him, but did
not seem to be really listening. He was actually watching something
going on outside the window.
He
was always watching and listening. Sometimes it was useful, but
sometimes he got the wrong idea and he got blamed for causing
a lot of trouble by starting false rumours. Then he got picked
on and had a rough time. So then he just used to watch and listen
and not say what he knew. This finally proved to be fatal for
Richard.
But
that was some way off. Today the social worker had come to talk
to us because it was time for a case conference, she said, and
she wanted to know what we all thought. How did we see things
working out? Simon, Paul and I were all reasonably happy where
we were. We liked being well fed and clean. We liked going to
school or playgroup. We liked having things to do. Most of all
we liked having someone to take care of us, who wasn’t suffocating
us with hugs one minute or bashing us the next. We liked having
grown-ups in our lives who behaved like grown-ups. True, we missed
mother, a bit, but there were days when I never even thought about
her, I was so busy being three years old.
So
we all said we liked it and wanted to stay, but perhaps we could
visit mother sometimes. We all hoped nobody suggested she visited
us again. The last time she had been right out of it and the staff
kindly hid her with us in the staff room as much as they could,
rather than inviting her to eat with us in the dining room with
everyone else, like most families did.
Richard
of course said he hated it. The staff were idiots, the other kids
were retards, the place stank, the food was pig swill, the clothes
were rubbish and we were expected to do things “which our
mother would never allow”. He claimed our mother was the
best mother ever and we should all be back there with her tomorrow.
A
lot of people came. Simon, Richard and Paul all saw their teachers
from the schools they used to go to – sometimes. They talked
for a long time and then the social worker and one of the staff
came to talk to us. They had decided, and mother had agreed, that
she was not well enough to take care of us at the moment, so we
would be staying at the assessment centre for a while, while they
tried to find a place for us to go all together, ‘long-term’
if necessary. We were to find out that long-term could mean a
lot of different things. Of course they said when (or was it if?)
mother gets better, we would be back with her as soon as she was
ready.
Apart
from Richard we were all happy enough about this, although we
would rather have been told we were going to stay there together
for as long as we needed to. Later that night when we were talking
in our bedroom, Simon promised us that as soon as he could leave
school he would get a job, get a flat and have us all to live
with him. No crying that night. I went to sleep telling Sydney,
“We’re all going to live with Simon”.
So
life rolled on. It seemed that finding a place for four bright
boys aged between nearly sixteen and three years old, at least
one of whom showed some worrying behaviour, who also had a mentally
ill mother prone to turn up or phone up at all hours, was not
easy.
We
had a few people visit the assessment centre to try to get to
know us. Richard usually managed to pull a stunt which meant they
didn’t rush back. Despite him we even got as far as visiting
one or two places, which was when mother intervened. Once she
turned up out of it and rolled around outside shouting abuse.
The next time she was more cunning. She looked OK and even got
herself invited in for tea. But after a short time being polite
was too much for her and she went off to the toilet, snorted some
coke and tried to get into the trousers of our prospective foster
father. Poor man. I think he and his wife might have managed an
ill-assorted group of boys, but not our mother as well.
In
the end the best deal that came up for us was that Simon went
to some posh people whose own family had grown up, gone to university,
gone away to work or whatever. They had the sort of house and
did the kind of things that maybe our mother would have done if
he had not been born too soon in her life. But I remember him
crying, yes big grown-up Simon crying, when he was leaving.
He
was crying because he had got close to some of the staff, but
he had been there long enough to know that next week his bed would
be filled and the best he could ever do in future was to visit
and be on the outside. He had seen it happen so many times in
the months we had been there. Staff had to cut free and move on
to the next kids who need them.
He
was crying because he was leaving us and he had promised to look
after us. He had tried to get Mr and Mrs Brown to take us as well,
but there were too many of us and I was too young. I would have
been like a grandchild to them and I suppose they were sensible
to say no.
He
was also crying because he was leaving his girl friend. Her name
was Paula and she had arrived soon after us. She was blonde and
beautiful, but she had so many problems which I didn’t understand
when I was three. It was inevitable that she and Simon would get
together, in that house I suppose, although there were rules about
boy and girl friend relationships.
Paula
sometimes tried to mother me, but really I felt more like a doll
she was hugging for her benefit, rather than a child she was comforting.
Strange she was never there when I did want someone to comfort
me. She usually wanted to hug me when I was busy doing something
I enjoyed. It was dear old Sydney who was there for me.
I
expect Simon was also crying for himself, because he was going
off into the unknown. Oh yes, he had visited the Browns and spent
time with them. He liked them and their house and was looking
forward to what they could offer him. No doubt they would make
sure he got to university, or at least have good job prospects.
But can you ever really know what living with other people will
be like? What if it didn’t turn out right? Would he come
back to the assessment centre? Not very likely the staff had told
him. So had he broken up our family for nothing?
Richard
was there of course, with helpful comments. Mother would not approve
of the Browns. Mother would not want Simon to leave us behind.
We hadn’t heard from mother for weeks, so what right did
she have to be interfering? When Paul suddenly said this, we were
all stunned. We didn’t know he had been listening –
as usual.
What
made it worse for all of us was that a couple of weeks later Simon
came back to visit us, but he also visited Paula. One of the staff
found them in her bed together and Simon got banned. Of course,
I did not know this at the time and just thought he was busy and
then that he had forgotten us, like mother. After one of the staff
found me crying about this one day they fixed up some visits for
us, but always away from the centre.
It
was so hard to know what to do or say. Sometimes we were in an
office with hard chairs that were too big for me. After about
ten minutes of what happened at the centre that week and news
of Simon’s exams coming up what was there to do or say?
Sometimes we went to a family centre where at least I fitted the
chairs and there were some toys for us to mess around with. Not
much to do but mess around, because most of them were broken,
or had bits missing. Sometimes we went to a café, where
Simon tried to play ‘father’ and told us how to behave
at the table and how people were watching us, so we had to be
on best behaviour. All pretty miserable really.
To
be continued next month.
