by Andrew Birch
Jesus motherfucking Christ.
The scream. The tears as Diane’s face shattered and exploded in blood. She collapsed instantly, and then Alicia had hold of me and had smacked me in the side of the head. Skinny as I was, I didn’t go down. When I was cornered, I was as ornery as a junkyard dog, and I turned to face and head-butted the fat dyke bitch in the face as hard as I could. Then my world exploded in pain, and I blinked to get rid of the sight of blood in my eyes. I knew Diane had gone down, and I suspect Alisha had too. I didn’t know about the other bitch Diane kept close to her. Then something else hit me, hard in the back. I tried to turn, but there was another blow, this time in the legs. Then I knew the guards were on me. No longer a sweet smiling feline, now I was the spitting, scratching alley cat. I didn’t have long nails, but as he sat astride me trying to snap the cuffs on, I scratched his face as hard as I could with what short nails I did have.
I knew I couldn’t fight him. Or the others. They were shouting, who whole room was shouting, all I could see was blood and everything was chaos. Law of the jungle. There was a new tough alley cat in town. Me. I could still hear Diane whimpering. She wasn’t dead. I was kind of glad of that, I didn’t want to kill her, as harsh as her treatment of me had been. But she would know my fucking name. When she saw me, she would keep her head to the floor and lick my fucking shoes. The big guys on top of me managed to finally get my nails from off the guards face and into the waiting handcuffs. I felt them close around my wrists with the mechanical clicking sounds. That was it. I’d done what I intended. I knew there’d be repercussions, there always were. But you gotta work out if doing the thing is worth the repercussions. I had a long time to spend in here. I wasn’t gonna be spending it not in control or being somebody else’s slut. Fuck that right now. They lay on top of me for a while as they got cuffs on my ankles. I smiled to myself. A skinny little blonde skank like me, barely 22 and I’d taken down the top dog, her dyke gorilla and had made it so they needed about four guys to take me down. It made me smile.
I guess it was later. I dunno how much later. My face still felt sore, and my wrists and ankles were still cuffed, and I was in a small cell.
Solitary
I guessed that was where I was. I wondered where Diane was. There was no furniture apart from a small mattress which I lay on, and a tiny toilet and that was it. I closed my eyes, and despite the pain from my nagging head, I slept
Sometime later I woke, only fitfully. I was in a medical room, being washed and checked out. From my groggy consciousness, I heard them say I was fine. The guards flanking either side of me were watching me like a hawk, but I was in no fit state for fighting. Then I blacked out again.
I awoke some time later, still in solitary, but in a fresh jumpsuit. My fetters had gone, as had my shoes and socks. The concrete floor felt cold to my bare feet and I huddled on the mattress. The headache had died down, and I curled in the corner like an animal. Nothing to be done but to wait for the aftermath to begin. It had been worth it. Nobody would fuck with me again. I gripped my arms together tight around my body to fight the cold in the cell, and rubbed my feet together. I figured that was mean, taking my shoes and socks away. I fell into a slumber.
***
Chapter 4. Remembering
Lol was tall for her five years, with pale blonde hair cut into an untidy short bob, with her bangs cut high above her forehead. She was pale, and desperately thin. Often bullied by the older ones, Lol was withdrawn and silent.
She queued up with the rest of the kids. Here in this building were the joys of life in the “City Municipal Children’s home”. The little kids had been playing out all day in the yard and on the steps of the surrounding buildings where they were allowed to hang out. Now going dusk, they had to come in for dinner. It was always the same ritual. Queue up in the foyer near the big cupboard, each kid had to take his or her shoes off, put them in the big cupboard before walking through to the rest of the house in their socks. The home was poor, and desperately needed locks on the doors and bars on the windows to keep the kids from escaping during the night and walking the streets. But they couldn’t afford any of that, so the volunteers had hit on this solution. Confiscate their shoes when they were inside, and then if they did jump through a window to get out, they wouldn’t get far walking the streets in their socks before giving up and coming home. The skinny blonde ten year old wasn’t happy with the idea of giving up her green sneakers. All the other kids had gone through to the dining room before she sulkily kicked them off, and they were locked away in the cupboard. Defeated, she padded through to the dining room like the rest of the kids, trapped.
Dinner was like slop, consisting of a brown meat like substance, watery gravy and yellowy potatoes mashed to almost water. Laurence, or Lol as everyone called her, was thin, and hardly ate any of this. Nobody seemed to notice or care. She stood up from the bench, moved her plate to the sink, dutifully washed it and padded out of the room. Lol barely spoke to any of the other kids, didn’t even know their names, and couldn’t have cared less. She had arrived here as a baby, some cops had apparently found her abandoned. She was a solitary, sulky child, who ate little and refused to play with the other kids or even speak to them.
Lol sat on her bed hugging her feet. Her once white socks were now grey and a huge hole had come in the bottom. Desiree would mend that for her. Desiree was Lol’s friend, perhaps the only friend Lol had in the world. Desiree was a volunteer at the home who only came on Thursdays. She was black as the night, and had the kind of figure that men found beautiful. Skinny in the right places and curvy in all the other places, with her hair hanging in long ringlet about her face. She’d arrived at the home after being sentenced to community service, but had stayed on for beyond ten years now. All the kids liked her. She was the only home helper that Lol would speak to. Thursdays were fun. But today was only Tuesday. That meant a whole day before her favourite day of the week.
Elsewhere the other kids were playing after dinner, in the TV room, or on the stairwell. Tanner, the home manager was in the kitchen finishing the dishes with Marianne. Tanner was from the city council. He wasn’t young, yet hadn’t as yet hit the crushing disappointment that would be his middle age. At one time he had been ambitious, but lately seemed to have reached a plateau caring for these nasty dirty little ingrates that called him Uncle Will, and wanted things from him that he couldn’t give them... Will tanner didn’t do bedtime stories; he didn’t like to talk to kids. He preferred to talk to equals, rather than dumb things down to a kid level. Marianne on the other hand was middle aged, and had volunteered in the home for many years. She’d seen these kids come and go; one or two escaped the dreary reality of life on the poverty side of the city to get jobs. Okie, one of her favourites, was now a city bus driver with kids of his own and a nice little rented home. But for most, she only saw one thing, a downward spiral of drugs, alcohol and either jail or death. There was nothing for these little ones that nobody wanted. And so Marianne cared for them as best she could. She didn’t overwork herself. She’d seen it all before, you couldn’t get too connected to them, it would be too heart-breaking when you saw them as adults, broken and beaten down by the world that haven’t cared for them or wanted them, and so she tried to keep her distance.
“I noticed that young Laurence didn’t eat her dinner again”, Tanner remarked finishing off the dishes. I think maybe she’s filling up on treats before dinner?”
“I doubt that”, said Marianne quietly, “have you seen how thin the kid is. I can almost count her ribs.”
“Hmm”, he continued, “maybe sickening for something. Maybe I’d better call the doctor in. I’d hate to have another one die so soon. Then we’d all be in trouble.”
Marianne was silent. She didn’t bother about little Lol too much. Lol was sulky and silent, and Marianne had her hands full enough with the kids who wanted her love, to spend much time with one that didn’t. She didn’t like how skinny Lol was, but what could she do, when there were
dozens of other kids to look after. Maybe Tanner should’ve got the doctor, but probably Lol would disappear when she knew he was due. The kid was like that. Always quiet to a point of being withdrawn, sometimes the little blonde girl looked listless and so desperately unhappy, while other times she seemed sneaky, and with the kind of evil hard look of an alley cat. Only the part time helper Desiree seemed to get the kid animated, usually ignoring all the others in the process.
By the time the other kids arrived upstairs to bed, Lol was already curled up under the covers, still fully clothed apart from her shoes that were locked away in the cupboard. Tanner didn’t call the doctor in the end, he decided to risk it, though he was still worried about his career should the little blonde girl die of malnutrition. But young Laurence Taylor, as was the name on her birth certificate, didn’t die that night. Lol was a survivor. She ate her breakfast, some of it, in silence at the table end, and then asked for the cupboard to be opened so she could play outside. Tanner would be glad when the little urchin was at school later in the year, they would knock some sense into her. School of life, he smiled. By the time he looked up, Lol had put the green sneakers on that she always wore and was gone outside. She walked around the side of the building to the shed where the bikes were kept. Lol was too small for a bike, and had fallen off when she had attempted it. She had a little trike that she used to ride on, a rusty old red thing that she was able to get down to the end of the street on and back without too much fuss, and without crossing the street which she wasn’t allowed to do. That hadn’t stopped the little Lol in the past, but the older kids always ratted her out and told on her, and she would get in a row. And so she stayed on her side of the street. Of course the row would usually come anyway. When the big kids finished their breakfast they would come and play on their bikes before school. They would usually drag Lol off the trike and lock her in the small shed, leaving her to holler on the door to be set free. The little trike would have been kicked into the mud behind the shed. Today was no different. Lol had pedalled the small trike to the end of the street where the newspaper dispensers were. She was watching transfixed as the money went rattling into the slot as the morning commuters went about their day, taking a newspaper as they hurried by, most of them not seeing the skinny little urchin playing. That night, as Lol would come wandering inside, the newspapers, or their remains, would lie scattered in the sidewalk waiting for the man to come sweep them into the trash. And the next day the cycle would begin anew. Anyway, Lol had just reached the corner wall of the home, when a big kid with a large pair of boots on kicked the side of the trike, sending it skittering into the road on its side, with Lol underneath it. She felt her elbow graze on the tarmac, and was picking herself up and beginning to extract herself from the tangle of pedals and chain, when big hands roughly grabbed her and pulled her to her feet.
“Aw”, the big lad said, “Poor baby has fallen off her trike again”
Lol was silent.
“Bus is coming Mikey”, lock her in the shed again” said the other lad whose name was Allie
“Nobody will come for you”, Mikey said to her menacingly, “spiders will eat your rotting corpse.”
Lol struggled silently, but they held her thin arms firmly and dragged her to the shed, pushing her roughly inside. Mikey kicked her hard on the shin, and Lol fell over, suddenly crying out in pain.
“If you tell on us” Mikey said, we’ll lock you somewhere else where they’ll never find you.”
“Yeah”, sneered Allie, “weirdo”
They pushed the door of the shed closed and she felt the padlock click. Locked in. She heard them drag her trike round the back and push it into the mud. Normally, Lol would now begin to holler to be set free from her makeshift prison, but today was different. It still wasn’t Thursday, her best day. It was only Wednesday. Maybe, she thought, if I just stay here, someone will come find me. Maybe it’ll end up Thursday and then it’ll be ok. Maybe I’ll die in here, and then Mikey and Allie will be sorry and get into trouble. And so Lol, for once, didn’t shout. She stayed in the tiny shed. After what seemed like hours, but in reality was only about twenty minutes, she grew bored of just sitting there, making patterns in the dirt with her fingers. She idly wondered what the other little kids were doing, probably having their morning milk. Lol didn’t have milk, so they weren’t surprised when she didn’t show. She began to poke about the small shed to look for something to do. Most of the boxes were either full of tools, bits of crap Lol didn’t recognise, or just slugs and spiders. A couple of boxes held magazines and newspapers. The newspapers were boring for her, so she ignored them, but the magazines were ok. There were a mixture, some were old car magazines, some were for posh ladies, or had been years ago, now they were yellowed with age, and some others had trains in them, little toy trains on every page. She read them for ages, mainly looking at the pictures for the words about gauges and scales meant nothing to her, the few words she could read anyway. She was amazed at how some kids had such fantastic toys. At the home, they had toys too, but they were all in a cupboard for ALL the kids, nobody had ownership rights to any toy. Lol had a little doll which nobody else liked, but she rarely took it out of the cupboard. She knew that if the big kids caught her playing with it, they’d take it and smash it. It was like a Barbie doll, but had hardly any hair left and the top of its head was caved in, and an arm was missing. It was damaged. Lol liked that. She liked damaged things, broken things. Sometimes the little girl felt broken herself, watching the other kids playing and running, often, Lol would sit on her trike and just watch quietly, unable to smile, laugh or join in. She just liked to watch. She didn’t know why. She didn’t know what she wanted, but it wasn’t this. And it wasn’t those fancy toys that the kids in that train magazine had, or the cheesy picture with the dad with his arm round his son while they sat round the Christmas tree watching the train going round. Lol had never known that, and for that reason she couldn’t miss it, and didn’t want it.
Just then the door opened,
“Oh honey what are you doing in here! We’ve been looking everywhere!”
It was Marianne, who swept Lol up in her arms and examined her, taking note of her bruised shin and grazed shoulder from where they had knocked her off the trike.
“Who did this, honey?”
Lol shrugged,
“Just fell off” she said.
“Hmm”, said Marianne doubtfully, “well never mind that now. What you reading there?”
“Dunno”, replied Lol, “just old stuff”
“You want to take one in the house”, asked Marianne, “sit and have a nice read?”
Lol nodded, and Marianne grabbed a handful of the old magazines, and carried them and Lol into the house. After taking Lol’s shoes off and putting them in the cupboard, she dressed the wounds. AS Lol was wincing with the pain of Marianne’s treatment, tanner walked in.
“What’s happening here? How did she get hurt?” he asked.
“Dunno”, Marianne replied, “My guess is it was Mikey and Allie bullying her again.”
“As long as we’re not liable for anything dangerous, that’s the main thing”, Tanner mused.
“Marianne shot him a look, but was silent.
The rest of the day Lol spent either lying on her bed reading the musty old magazines, or sat in the kitchen watching Marianne. The kid was even cajoled into helping with the baking, along with a couple of other little kids. As usual, Lol would remain quiet, but Marianne was glad to see her take her turn eating the baking when it was ready and even smiling slightly when she was helping to stir the mixture.
Thursday came, and Lol’s favourite day. The day Desiree came. Lol hadn’t touched the trike since, though Mikey and Allie had kept well away from her, since that evening, on their return home from school, Marianne and Bill had read them both the riot act. After breakfast, she returned to her room to await Desiree.
To Lol, Desiree as like a ray of sunshine in the house. She stood in the hallway and sho
uted,
“Now, I wonder where my beautiful blonde princess is hiding.”
As usual, Lol wouldn’t say anything, or even move from her room, but she had butterflies in her belly, as she knew Desiree meant her. Then the dark skinned woman’s face popped round Lol’s door,
“Here’s my little honey pie!” she said, and flung herself onto Lol’s bed and hugged the life nearly out of the little girl.
“Have you had your breakfast?” Desiree asked with her voice now serious?”
Lol nodded.
“Speak up honey, if I want nodding, I’ll go see my cousin’s donkey.”
“Yeah Desiree, I eat this morning” answered Lol.
Desiree felt the girl’s ribs. She hadn’t eaten much; the little girl was still far too skinny. She gave the girl two chocolate bars.
“Well good”, she said, “now eat these up while I find you some pretty clothes. My Aunt is coming to lunch today and when I told her I work in a children’s home, she said wouldn’t it be nice if I could bring a very special child to eat with her today? She don’t have no kids of her own. Would you like that honey?”
Lol was going to nod again, but thought better of it,
“I’d like that, yeah”, she said, “Do we have to go on the bus?”
“I think we better”, answered Desiree, “it’s a little far to walk on your little legs.”
She fussed in the cupboard for a dress for Lol to wear. Lol hated wearing dresses and frocks, but she didn’t know how to tell Desiree she was happy in pants. Desiree flung a not too shabby frock down on the bed, and threw down a pair of brand new socks she’d bought for Lol on top.
