by Lily O'Brien
After school, Daisy, Simon and I had to walk home on our own, and off we went and it was great. We all held hands and we skipped along the road, while telling each other all about the things that we had done at school and about what had happened to us over the last few months. Then I asked Simon if he knew what had happened to our other brothers, Chris and Ted. And he said that the nuns had put them into two different houses, that he wasn’t allowed to see any of them and that he didn’t know what houses they were in. ‘Ok’, I said, ‘It doesn’t matter’, and we continued to walk home.
When we got back, we met up with all the other children in our house and we all went into the sitting room and I told everyone about Simon my baby brother; then one of the nuns came into the room and she told us to do some homework. But it was only dinnertime and I could see bread, butter and some jam on the table; so instead of doing my homework, I went over to the dinner table and I sat down and began to eat. But for some reason, one of the nuns came up behind me and she gave me a terrible beating around my head, knocking me off the chair and onto the floor. I got up and I began to cry, and as I looked up at her, she told me to go to my room and to stay there until the next day. But my head was throbbing and I could hear a humming noise in my ears, so I told her what was happening inside my head; but instead of her helping me, she continued to shout at me and then she chased me out of the room and up the stairs until I got to my room. I screamed and I shouted back to her that I had not eaten a thing since breakfast when Sister Ann hit me around the head, and then I slammed the bedroom door shut and I sat on my bed crying.
It wasn’t fair, I thought to myself, I had done nothing wrong, nothing at all. About half an hour later, my sisters and Simon came into the room and we all talked and played until it was bedtime; then Simon got into my bed with me and we cuddled up and fell asleep together, just like we used to back at daddy’s and mummy’s houses. The next few days were all the same; we got up, had breakfast and then we went to school. But one day, one of the nuns told us that we would have to go home for our lunch because we couldn’t stay and have lunch in the convent anymore, as they didn’t have the time to feed us.
So Daisy, Simon and I began to walk home on our own and about halfway home I walked across the road and Daisy followed me, then I turned to her and said, ‘Where’s Simon?’ ‘I don’t know’, she said. So we both turned around and looked for him. He was still standing on the pavement at the other side of the road. I shouted to him, ‘Quickly, cross now while no cars are coming’, but the road was wide and he kept saying no and that he was frightened. ‘Quickly, now’, I said. ‘It’s ok. Quick before it’s too late.’ He looked at me and then he ran, but it was too late and at that moment a brown-coloured car came along the road. I shouted again, ‘Quick’, but it was too late and the car hit him and then the car skidded to a stop.
I looked over at Simon and he was lying in the road and, all of a sudden, the road around him began to shimmer in the sunlight. I walked towards him and, as I got closer to him, I realised that it was a pool of Simon’s blood that was shimmering in the sunlight and he wasn’t moving. ‘He’s dead’, I shouted. ‘He’s dead.’ And then Daisy and I both ran over to him. I looked down at him as he lay in the road and his body was all twisted and he was covered in blood; and as I stood looking down at him, his blood began to spread along the road and around his body. I screamed and I began to shake with panic from the shock of seeing his blood drain from his body. ‘Quickly’, I said and we both ran up towards our house, screaming for help.
As I got to the house, I pounded on the front door and I screamed for someone to help us; and as I kicked the door, one of the nuns opened it. She shouted at us to stop and she screamed at us to be quiet and stop shouting, but I couldn’t stop and I kept shouting and I told her that Simon was dead, ‘He’s in the road dead’. Then another member of staff came out of the house and she told me to shut up, then she grabbed me by my hair and dragged me into the house and I smashed my knees on the steps as she dragged me inside. ‘Sit down and eat your dinner’, she said. I looked at her in shock; I couldn’t believe what she had just said to me.
So in a panic, I explained to her what had just happened to Simon and she told me to stay at the table while she went off to look for him. I got up and followed her to the door and I watched her as she walked past Daisy, who was still outside the house. Daisy looked pale and I tried to go out to her, but another member of the staff dragged me back inside and closed the door, and then she told me to sit down and to eat my dinner; but I couldn’t, I was too upset. So I just sat and waited for the staff to come back and within a couple of minutes she walked back through the door saying that Simon was gone and that someone had taken him to hospital.
I began to cry, saying that he was dead, but the staff told me to shut up and to eat my dinner; but I didn’t want the dinner and I told her that I couldn’t eat it, and with that she turned around and gave me a wallop around the head. She shouted at me that the food was not to be wasted and that she had not spent all day cooking it just for the fun of it. Then she screamed out loud at me, saying that I was an ungrateful child and that I could not see Simon until I ate all my dinner. I felt sick thinking about what had just happened to Simon, and each time I put the food into my mouth I gagged and I had to stop; but she said eat, and with the next mouthful I vomited the food back onto the plate and all over the table. She was furious and she made me spoon the sick up off the table and put it all back onto the plate; then she made me eat it all again, and she stood watching me until the very last spoonful went into my mouth.
Then she told me to get back to school, and as she opened the door, she pushed me outside and I fell to the ground. I closed my eyes and put my face down against the dirt and I began to cry. I knew that I had to be strong for Simon, so I lifted my head and I looked around, and Daisy was sitting on the step next to me and she was still crying. I picked myself up off the ground, I walked over to her and then we cuddled each other and we both held hands as we walked off back to school.
As we walked along the road, I told Daisy that it was just the two of us now and we had to be strong and stick together. But on the way back, we had to walk past Simon’s blood that was still in the road; and as we got closer to the spot where Simon had been lying, some people were standing there and they were talking about the accident. I walked up to the people and I asked them if Simon was ok, but they told me to go away and they just kept talking to each other. I walked back towards Daisy, shaking my head from side to side, and then we continued walking back to school; but we still didn’t know if he was dead or alive.
When we got back to the classroom, I asked the nun if Simon was ok, but she just looked at me and said, ‘Sit down, you have work to do.’ And for the rest of the day, we just had to sit and do our work. We never knew if Simon was dead or alive and it was like nothing had ever happened; the nuns just got on with what they had to do and nothing else seemed to matter to them. They never showed us any feelings and they always made us feel bad if we showed feelings towards each other.
After school, we had to walk back past Simon’s blood to get home and I was shaking with fear as we walked towards the spot of the accident; and as we got closer, I looked down at the road and the blood was still wet and sticky, and it had been splattered along the road, as cars drove through it. And I could see tyre tracks going up and down the road, where they had driven over the blood and spread the blood along the road surface, and I began to cry. Daisy held me tight, telling me that it was all going to be ok and that Simon was going to be at home when we got back, but I knew he wouldn’t be; he had been hit so hard by the car that he was dead. I walked along thinking about what had happened at lunchtime and I wished that I hadn’t shouted at Simon to run across the road, but I had and it was too late to change anything.
I cried all the way home and I was wishing that Simon would be at the door when we got back, but he wasn’t. I walked into the house and I asked one of the staff if Simon w
as dead, and she looked down at me and she said, ‘No, he’s alive and he’s in the hospital.’ I was so happy, ‘I want to see him’, I said. ‘No’, she said. ‘It’s entirely your fault that he’s in the hospital’, and then she began to hit me around my head. Then Sister Ann came into the room and she told the member of staff to go out of the room. ‘I’m in trouble’, she said. ‘It’s all your fault that Simon got run over and now I have to explain what happened to the school governors. Now go to bed as I can’t stick your crying all the time.’
Sister Ann called the staff back into the room and she told her to get me out of the room and to put me to bed. I walked out of the room and up the stairs to my bedroom and it felt like forever walking up the stairs on my own, and I kept turning around to see if Simon was behind me, but he wasn’t. I walked into my bedroom and Karen and Jenny were sitting on one of the beds, waiting for me. I told them both about the accident at lunchtime and then they told me that the nuns had told them that Simon was still alive and that one of the nuns and a priest had gone to the hospital to see him. They said that he had broken his arm and he had hit his head on the road, but he was going to be ok. I was so relieved, I sat on my bed and I put my head down onto my lap. I was so happy, but also very sad because he was all alone again and I couldn’t help him and I began to cry. It would be six weeks before Simon was able to come home from the hospital and in all that time the nuns never allowed us to go and see him and no one ever told us if he was ok or not.
And for the whole six weeks, Sister Ann and the staff told me that I was an evil little girl and that it should have been me that got run over and squashed that day and not Simon. They all made me feel very sad and my sisters tried to stick up for me; but if they said anything to the nuns, they would slap them around their heads with a wooden spoon, and then they would make them miss their dinner to teach them a lesson for butting in and getting involved.
When Simon finally came home, we all ran over to him and we began to examine him; he still had stitches in his head and mouth, a plaster cast on his arm and, in his hand, he had a container full of little stitches that a nurse had removed from a big scar on his leg. He looked broken and his hair had been cut short so that the doctors could drain fluid from his skull, after his head had hit the road. We all surrounded him, giving him kisses, and we told him that we loved him and that we were very sorry for what had happened to him. He just laughed and he said that he was ok, and we spent the rest of the day playing with him and giving him things that we had found around the house and school; ‘little secrets’ we called them, most of the stuff was rubbish, but to us it meant a lot because it was all we had.
CHAPTER 5
The Holidays without Fun
Months passed and eventually I settled down in the house; then one morning, Sister Ann told me that it was going to be the end of school term soon and that all the children in the house, including me, would be going away for the summer holidays. She said that some people were going to come to the house and take all of the children away for the six-week holidays and that we must all be good with the people and behave ourselves, while staying with them in their homes.
I was very excited at the thought of going on holiday as I had never been on holiday before, but we had only been at the house a few months, so the nuns didn’t want to split us up. But they had a lot of trouble finding a family that would take all three of us little ones away together as one family. All the other children in the house had already gone away and we were the last to leave; but eventually, the day finally came and now it was going to be our turn to go on holiday. A member of staff shouted up to me to get my suitcase and to hurry up. I looked over the banisters and a young nun was standing in the hallway at the bottom of the stairs looking back up at me.
I ran down the stairs and towards her, ‘I’ve come to take you away with me’, she said. I looked up at her and I told her that she had to wait as my sisters and brother were coming with me, but she said, ‘No, only you’re going on your own.’ I looked at her and then I ran over to my brother and sisters and I grabbed hold of them, but then Sister Ann came into the hall and she grabbed me by my hands and she peeled me away from my brother and sisters. ‘Please don’t take me’, I said and then we all began to cry and my sisters shouted at her to stop pulling me, but Sister Ann told us to shut up and grow up. Then she told me that I was a stupid child, as she pushed and slapped me out of the house and into the back of a waiting car.
I began to cry and I felt frightened by what she was doing to me, but she was not bothered about how I felt, then she slammed the car door shut, just missing my fingers in the door, but hitting me into the face with it instead. I put my hands up and I held my face as I fell back into the seat, and the nun drove off, leaving Sister Ann standing in the driveway, smiling at me, as the car drove out of the grounds. I looked at the driver and it was the young nun. I shouted at her to stop the car, but all she did was tell me not to worry as it was only for six weeks, and then she would come and collect me and bring me back to the house. ‘I promise’, she said.
She drove for miles and I cried for the whole of the journey, and I kept telling her that I wanted to go home, back to my brother and sisters, but all she kept telling me was that it was a holiday and that I was going to enjoy myself and have fun. After several hours, we eventually arrived at a farm that was in the middle of the countryside; and as we pulled into the drive, the nun told me that the woman of the house had three children all about my age. And she told me that I would be able to play with them every day and I was going to have a lot of fun during my six-week stay with them. We got out of the car and we walked up to the front door of the house, but she didn’t stay with me; instead, she turned around and walked back to the car, leaving me all alone. I looked back at her, but she never turned around, she just got into her car and then she drove off.
I stood looking at the front door to the house, then it opened and a woman came out and she told me to come inside, then she closed the door behind me. The first day was fun and the woman was nice to me, and I played games with her children and, at the end of the day, I went to bed happy. The next morning, I got up and had breakfast, and then the children showed me around the farm and then they told me the names of all the animals they had.
But that night I wet the bed and the next morning the woman and her children all shouted at me and they called me names for wetting the bed. And from that moment on, they all turned nasty towards me and I could tell they didn’t like me anymore. The children stopped playing with me and the woman allowed her children to tease and torture me, by calling me dirty and smelly, and they told me that they hated me.
After I had wet the bed, the woman said that I couldn’t sleep in the clean bedroom anymore and I had to sleep in another bedroom away from her children, and she made me share a bedroom with an eighty-year-old man, who was filthy and smelt bad. She made me sleep at the end of his bed and all the woman gave me to cover myself with was an old army blanket, but the blanket made me itch and it smelt as if it hadn’t been washed in forty years. The man was so old that he could hardly get out of the bed on his own and almost everything in his room was about the same age as him. The sheets and mattress were damp and everything in the room stunk of piss. I could hardly breathe and, at bedtime, I would almost choke from the smell of the piss lingering around the bed and I had to keep my head hung off the edge of the bed just to get some fresh air that was entering the room from a gap at the bottom of the bedroom door.
Scattered around the bedroom floor were pots and jugs that the man had been using to piss in, but no one ever came in the room to empty them, so they would just sit on the floor until he managed to get out of bed. Then as he walked around the room, he would knock the containers over with his walking stick, letting the piss run down through the gaps in the floorboards; and as the piss dried up, it left damp sticky stains scattered around the floor.
I had to sleep in the room with him for the whole of my stay with the family, and
some mornings the woman’s children would come into the bedroom and empty jugs full of cold piss all over the bed and me. Then they would run out of the room as fast as possible, while holding their breath and slamming the bedroom door behind them so that the door slamming would shake everything in the room and wake the old man up; and then the old man would shout at me and tell me to fuck off out of the room. Then the woman would open the bedroom door and laugh at me, while the old man tried to push me out of the bed with his walking stick. But she would make me lie in the damp bed until she said that I could get up, and I would be cold and shivering the whole time and she knew it.
Every morning, the woman and her children would call me names and tease me, by telling me that I would have to sleep in the bed with the old man forever and that I would never be going back home to see my sisters or brother. They would all sit in the kitchen having breakfast, but they would never offer me a place to sit down, they said that I had to go eat with the animals and then they would throw scraps of food onto the damp piss-covered bedroom floor for me to eat, while they made animal noises at me. This went on for the whole six weeks of my holiday and for all that time I stunk of piss and my clothes were constantly wet from it. So every morning, I would go down to the end of the farm and rest in an old caravan just so the sun could shine through its windows and warm me up and dry my clothes out; and while I was in the caravan, I would try and sleep without the smell of the piss choking me. But the woman never once gave me a wash and all the time she said that I was a worthless piece of shit and that I was never going to see my family again.
