We Won in the End

We Won In The End

It had been twenty four years since she’d last seen it, but the place looked exactly the same.

But like all of us, it had aged. Bricks needed a clean where the rain and damp over time had darkened them. Cream mortar in between was now grey, if there at all. Some of the red bricks had graffiti drawn on them, amazing artwork in bright colours some with the names of the taggers, and of course obscenities too!

So much had happened in the last twenty four years. It was so long ago but in a way felt like yesterday.

Suddenly noises began to bubble in her head – she could hear the balls were being thrown against the walls, these same walls that she now stood in front of. ‘Nebuchadnezzar the King of the Jews bought his wife a pair of shoes. When the shoes began to wear, Nebuchadnezzar began to swear. When the swear began to stop Nebuchadnezzar bought a shop. When the shop began to sell’……

She put her hands over her ears to stop the song, it was going on and on, and around and around, and she needed it to stop. She pressed her hands harder into her ears, trying to push the sound back inside to a place it couldn’t be heard. She sat abruptly on the soft, green grass, her breathing coming in shorts spurts, and screamed out loud “Go away. Leave me alone. I won’t listen to you”.

As she sat rocking back and forth on the ground, the anxiety giving way to calmness, she slowly took her hands off her ears, cautiously, wanting and needing the sound of the song to be gone. And it was.

Her mind was processing what just happened. Taking a deep breath and standing upright she began to process what had just happened - out loud.

 ‘I used to love playing ‘two ball’ against the brick wall but this one day we got into trouble – it was the Sabbath – Sunday. Mrs. Walker came out and yelled at us, then took me inside to her office because I was the oldest and told me I should have known better. Her cold dark eyes glistened with moisture but not tears, she was just really angry. I remember that she grabbed my arm so hard I yelled and she slapped me hard across my face. Pulling me close to her, so close I could smell her breath and see the hairs on her chin, she whispered in a rasping voice, “If you ever tell anyone about this I will slap you until your face is numb. Do you understand me young lady”.

I desperately wanted to cry, but I knew if I did, she would probably slap me again. My face was stinging so badly. The room was chilly and I didn’t move, trying not to breathe too hard, not wanting to remind her I was in the room. A clock was ticking loudly but I didn’t know where it was. Tick, tick, tick tick, it went, the only noise shattering the eerie silence.  I felt cold.

“Now off you go young lady” she said to me as if we had just had a pleasant chat about something impressive I had just done. “And wash your face in the bathroom before you go back to your dormitory”.

Rufus barked loudly and she bent down to pat his wiry coat. He cocked his head to one side and looked up as if to say to his owner ‘I don’t really know what you just tried to explain to me but I see it has made you sad. Perhaps a walk will brighten you up!’

But she wasn’t ready to go just yet.

The chilly wind had intensified and Helen wrapped her coat tighter around her slight frame. Up on the roof of the tall building a piece of metal was banging. She couldn’t see it but could hear the thud – it sounded like tin on some sort of metal. There was a piercing sound, like scraping, and it sent shivers through Helen, like nails being scraped down the blackboard in a classroom.

Holding the dog lead tightly Helen set off for the back of the building. The grass was a lot thicker down the side and the dark green bramble hedges that she remembered as spindly and sharp were now very thick and overgrown. Her recollection of this part of the gardens was of scratches and blood and a lot of crying. Getting picked on was not uncommon but if you didn’t stick up for yourself and fight back, the bullies would push you into the prickly bushes. I would have gladly handed over my pocket money to the bigger, bullying kids but they seemed to relish the idea of chasing us down to firstly hurt us and then to take our few coins that we had earned for the hard work we had to do each day. I was always too afraid to fight back so I always ended up with scratched, bleeding legs and empty pockets. No one would have dared to tell any of the staff – we would have ended up with stinging fingers or backside to go with our sore legs.

On one occasion after an ambush that ended up in the prickles the pocket of my school dress was ripped. I tried to pin it back up but didn’t have much success as the pins weren’t sharp enough to be pushed through the thick material. I stood in the big, bare assembly hall the next morning with my hand placed strategically on the pocket. Mrs Walker walked up to me in front of all the other kids and told me to take my hand off my pocket. As soon as I did this, the flap of material fell down. “My office after assembly” was all she said in her monotone and miserable voice.

I knew what was coming as soon as she told me to shut the door behind me. “You are a wicked girl. No wonder your parents sent you here to us. Shame on you”, and with that her dry skinned hand suddenly came flying towards my face. It connected with such force on my cheek that I felt my teeth bang together. “You will find a needle and thread from somewhere and sew your pocket back on. Do you hear me?”

“Yes Mrs Walker” I managed to get the words out even though the pain radiating from my cheek to my teeth felt as if a tight elastic band was stretched from one to the other – ready to snap at any second, and was making me feel sick. “I’m sorry Mrs Walker” I added but really wanting to tell her just how much I hated her.”

“And remember, came the instruction from the wrinkled and pursed lips, “If I hear about our little ‘talks’ from anyone else, your life won’t be worth living. Now get back to class”.

I didn’t go straight back to class. I remembered sitting down on the cold ground with my back to the brick wall and crying.

I knew how much my mum loved me. On my last day with her before I had to leave I remember sitting really close to her on our green faded couch. She had gotten so thin and her bones protruded from under the collar of her blouse. Mum never seemed to eat much anymore. I didn’t know what was wrong with her. All I knew was that she cried a lot and slept a lot too. Some days when I got home from school she was still in bed. She looked across at me, her brown eyes like liquid chocolate. “Helen, you really need to be brave for me. You know I’m not well but I promise I will get better, and then we can be together again. You will be looked after and I’m sure the people there will take good care of you. Just remember how much I love you”. The tears welled up in her eyes as she hugged me vicelike. My shoulder was soaked from where my mother’s face had rested, her crying escalating to loud sobs. I didn’t want her to ever let me go and I hung on tight as tears rolled down my own cheeks. I wanted to scream out to her that I didn’t want to go and I would look after her and make her better, but as the sound of a car horn blasted outside she told me gently to hurry up as Uncle Tom was here to take me.

I had never met Uncle Tom. I was told that my dad died when I was six months old and I never knew any of his family. Uncle Tom had a kindly face but he didn’t speak. We drove for the four hours in silence. My eyes were sore from crying so I kept them closed and just thought about how much I missed my mum already.

The city gradually turned into the county, blacks and greys and browns became greens and browns and traffic noises dwindled down to almost no noise at all.

It was by now late afternoon and the air had a chill to it. Huge oak trees, hundreds of years old circled the building. Their enormous solid brown trunks were hardly visible on some trees as the multiple branches drooped close to the ground. Helen thought back to when she would sit under the canopy of a tree, shaded from the summer sun. She would read her book and be hidden from everyone. This special place was for thoughts of her mother, and the day that Helen would be called into the office to be told, “Your mother in now well and it is time to go home”.

“Come on Rufus, good boy. Let’s have a seat under this tree”. The dog reluctantly got pulled towards the tree. It was like forcing your way through a hidden door somewhere magical. Once under the thick hanging branches daylight disappeared and it was as if a blanket had been thrown over the sun. Out of the silence, the shrill sound of a bird echoed down towards Helen and her dog, followed by a barely audible and gentle banging. “Oh Rufus, it’s a woodpecker” she told him, pulling him out on his lead from under the tree. She looked up just in time to see the black bird; white spots edged on its tail, fly away and wondered where it was going. Helen remembered once coming out to one of the oak trees only to find a dead woodpecker lying on the hard ground. She gently picked it up and put it somewhere so that later that night when all was quiet, she could sneak out and bury it. But when she came back in the evening to bury the dead bird, another animal must have found it because it’s little feathered body was ripped apart. Angry that she had left it, she consoled herself with the fact that it was already dead.

Helen didn’t have many friends while living here. It wasn’t that the others didn’t like her but she always thought there was no point in making lots of friends when you wouldn’t be there long. One girl she was quite friendly with was named Janie. Her Mother had died when she was seven years old and a couple of years later her father remarried. She told Helen that  as soon as her ‘new mother’ as she called herself moved into the family home, Janie realised that her father, besotted with the much younger wife, was losing interest in raising a daughter. Janie, soon found herself labelled a problem child – simply because her step mother said she was. “I don’t know how to deal with a precocious child Robert. This is really unfair. Why don’t we find somewhere to put ‘her’ where she will be disciplined properly? When she has learned to behave, we can have her back”.

It hadn’t taken Robert long to agree, so with the promise to his daughter of ‘coming back home when you’ve learnt to behave properly’ Janie sadly got dumped.

Helen trusted Janie so she was the one person who knew of the physical abuse Helen received at the hands of Mrs. Walker and cohorts, and other punishments meted out by the bullies of the establishment.

It wasn’t just actual beltings and slaps that were classed as physical abuse, it was the rulers on hands and straps on legs that some of the teachers thought were ideal punishments for trivial reasons, such as forgetting a book, dropping a pencil in an otherwise silent classroom or whispering to the person next to you. There wasn’t much love or kindness under the roof of this building.

The only time Helen heard any news about her mum was when she was called into the office and told “Your mother is undergoing more treatment. I will inform you when she is feeling better. Now off you go”. She wanted to ask what was actually wrong with her mum, but knew Mrs. Walker would find something wrong with the way she asked, and give her a slap.

Time went by. Spring, summer, autumn, winter, another birthday, Christmas, Easter. Whatever was meant to happen annually did. The children sent to this institution just accepted that this was their lot. Some went home after a relatively short stay, while others remained, year after year, like Helen and Janie. Janie’s reprieve was the fact that she was allowed to go home occasionally for weekends – when it suited her stepmother. But Helen never went anywhere. She only ever had her mum in her life.

One winter’s day when the darkness crept around the corner in the early afternoon and the woodpeckers had migrated to a warmer climate, only to return in spring to their beloved oak trees; Janie was called into the office.

“I’m really sorry Helen but I’m going home”. Janie started to cry at the thought of leaving her one and only real friend here.

“Oh Janie” she replied sadly “I will miss you so much but I’ll probably go soon too” she told her friend, not really believing it anymore, but just wanting Janie not to feel guilty about. “Do you want to live with your dad and that woman after all this time?” she asked, thinking that she wouldn’t want to, not after the way they treated her.

“Oh no, she’s not living with him anymore. Dad kicked her out, finally. He saw through her at last. It’s not ideal to go back home – he did have a part to play in me being here all this time, but I don’t have that long to go and I can legally leave home anyway. I didn’t think I would ever say this, but being here has given me a strength and resilience that I didn’t have before”.

Helen did miss her friend. She felt lonely at times. Her one comfort was when she was called into the office and told that her mother was ‘doing well’. Sometimes she wanted it all to be a dream that she would wake up from would wake up – and be sitting near her mother, feeling her soft hair and breathing in her familiar smell. She could still remember it after all this time. But it wasn’t a dream. It was real.

Helen peered into the windows at the back of the building but they were caked with dust and dirt making it impossible to see anything. Over on the right were the outside toilets. The peeling wooden doors were padlocked. She thought of when she first lived here, and having to come outside to the toilets at night, petrified that some sort of monster would jump out and eat her, leaving no trace, and no one would ever know what happened to her. Sometimes if the older kids saw you leave your dormitory they would sneak outside and wait for you to come out of the toilet, putting their hands over your eyes and your mouth too so you couldn’t scream.  Now and then she woke Janie up to come with her. Janie was braver than she was. Eventually toilets were built inside, making nightly visits to the toilet feel safe.

Helen was still afraid of the dark and noises in the night.

Suddenly one of the shutters on a window blew open high above banging loudly against the wall.  Helen screamed, petrified and ran towards her car, dragging Rufus behind her. Reaching the car she rummaged through her bag for her key and finding them, fumbled to open the door, all the time checking that there was nothing or no one about to get her.

“Get in” she yelled at the dog. Slamming her door shut and pushing the lock down, she sat, dishevelled and puffing, perspiration forming on her brow, anxiety coursing around her body.

She had calmed down and her breathing was gradually getting back to normal. Rufus felt it was safe enough to jump from the passenger seat onto Helen’s lap for a cuddle now. She ruffled his course hair.

“Well Rufus. I’ve faced some of my demons by coming here. I know it will take time but it will get easier. I believe everything in life happens for a reason. I didn’t know but Mum was facing some of her own demons. Terrible things I never knew about. It was a difficult road for her and the hardest thing a mother has to do is give up a child, but she persevered and won her battle. I got to go back home to live with my mum. It wasn’t for as long as we both would have wanted but we were back together. We laughed, we cried and we had each other and in the end that was all that mattered.