by Lily O'Brien
Then one morning, the woman came rushing into the bedroom and she told me to get up quick, she said that I was going home and that I had to get ready before the nun arrived. She quickly washed me and gave me boiled eggs for breakfast and then she put clean clothes on me and told me that the nun was coming to get me. I was so happy; for the last six weeks, I had thought that I was never going to see my family again, and this was now going to be my life forever.
When the nun arrived, I almost died with shock, I just couldn’t believe that I was going back to St Joseph’s and back to my family. I was so happy to see the nun that I began to cry, but no tears fell from my eyes. I kept a cold blank face, and I hid my emotions, not wanting the woman or the nun to think that I was weak and pathetic. The nun held my hand and she told me to thank the good family for looking after me so well. I looked at the woman and her children and they all smiled at me and they told the nun that they were all going to miss me and that I was now like one of the family. Then the woman walked me to the car and she gave me a big hug and smiled at me as she walked away.
Once inside the car, I put my face against the window and I looked out at the woman, as she stood waving goodbye, and before the nun got into the car, she looked over at me and she asked me if I was ok. But I never spoke and I just kept looking out of the window; so she got into the car, closed her door and drove off; and as we drove out of the drive, she asked me again if I was ok, but I never replied. Then the nun said, ‘It’s ok. You will never have to go back there again’ and she drove away from the house. It started to rain on the way home, so I looked out of the car window and I could see faint flashes of light in the distance, and I could hear a thunderstorm as it rumbled above the clouds. And it sounded so nice that I wished it would come our way and blow the woman and her children up and send them all to hell.
It was dark in the back of the car and I could hardly see a thing, apart from the raindrops glistening on the outside of the widow. I put my face against the glass and I stuck my tongue up against its cold surface to catch the raindrops, knowing full well that I couldn’t. And the water droplets ran down the outside of the glass like tears and past me like I was nothing, and that was exactly how I felt, and it was as if the rain knew what I was thinking and it was crying for me.
I never spoke a word on the way back, but all the time I was thinking about my sisters and Simon and hoping they would be at the house when I got back, and I wished that I could be with them again. We drove for hours and eventually I began to fall asleep, but then the car stopped and the nun told me to get out. I looked up and I was back at our house, and I could see my sisters waiting for me by the main door of the house. I got out of the car and I walked up towards them; they looked at me and then they ran over to me and cuddled me, but I just stood looking at them. ‘Lily’, they shouted, ‘what’s a matter with you?’ But I said nothing. They turned and asked the nun what was wrong with me and she told them that I was just tired and that I would be ok in the morning. Then she told us all to go into the house and up to bed, and as I walked away, she slammed the car door making me jump. That evening, everyone exchanged tales about what they had done while on holiday, but I just looked at everyone and said nothing, as I was too upset to talk to anyone about my nightmare.
For the next two weeks, I never spoke a word to anyone and my sisters kept asking the nuns and staff what was wrong with me, but they just said that I was exhausted and that I would be ok soon. But I had a sick feeling inside my belly, I had a pain in my head that wouldn’t go away and I was unable to do anything for myself. And each morning, a nun or a member of the staff would come into my bedroom and get me dressed and then they would help feed me my breakfast.
But the nuns were becoming inpatient with me and eventually they told my sisters that if I didn’t start talking soon, they would have to take me away and put me into a mental hospital and no one would ever see me again. And from that moment on, every night when we went to bed, Karen would get into bed next to me and she would talk me to sleep, hoping that in some way it would help me to get better, and it did. After about a month, I started talking again and I began to play with the other children in the house; and for a while, the staff and the nuns left me alone to be happy.
For the next couple of months, life went on as usual around the house, with all of us going to school and Simon sticking to us like glue and especially to me, as if I was his mum; but then the nuns began to hit me again and over time the beatings got worse. Then one day, a new member of staff arrived at the house. She was much older than most of the other staff and she told us that she had been working in children’s homes for most of her life.
And the second she looked over at me, I could tell that she had taken a disliking to me, but I never understood why; and most evenings, when it was bedtime, she would play a game of hers with me. She called it the ‘slapping game’; she said that it was my punishment for being a bad girl all of the time. The game was that if I ran up to bed fast on my hands and knees, I would only get a few slaps around my head; but if I was slow at getting up the stairs and I used only my feet, then she would slap me hard around my head with a slipper, hitting me until I got to the top of the stairs and into my bedroom. All of the staff knew what she was doing to me, but they never once stopped her or questioned her actions, as they were all as bad as each other, in some way or another. All the staff and the nuns had their own games that they would use to get at us, and I think that by hitting us it somehow made them feel good about themselves.
But one of the nuns was especially bad to me, and whenever she walked past me she would pinch me on my arms, while twisting her fingers at the same time so that she could do as much damage to my skin as possible. And once she had finished pinching me, my arms would hurt, my skin would turn black and blue and the marks on my arms would take about two weeks to fade away. You could see that she was getting pleasure out of it and she looked very happy with herself after she hurt me. Then one day after lunch, the new member of staff, who played the slapping game with me, told everyone that she was leaving and going to another home. I couldn’t believe it, I was so happy; after everything she had done to me, she was finally leaving, but I didn’t want her to know that I was happy so I just sat there and said nothing. But as soon as she left the room, we all looked at each other and said, ‘Yes’ and we were so happy that we slapped our hands together with excitement.
However, the day she left, a new member of staff arrived to replace her. Her name was Joan and she was going to be our cook. She was a very old woman and she seemed nice. The first day at the house, she gave us cereal for breakfast, a nice lunch and dinner; but the next day, when we all walked in from school and sat down for dinner, she was standing in the doorway and she was holding a large wooden spoon in her hand. I sat down at the table and I picked up a fork, I looked into my bowl and the food looked disgusting. It was mincemeat stew, but it was just a bowl of hot greasy water with a few pieces of mincemeat floating on the top, and a piece of black carrot floating just below the surface.
I put my fork into the bowl and I moved it through the liquid, making the grease part and then reform behind the fork in what looked like the colours of the rainbow. I was shocked at the thought of having to eat the thing and I turned around to tell the cook, but she was standing looking at me and she was slapping the wooden spoon against the palm of her hand. ‘You eat the food’, she said. I turned back around and I knew that if I didn’t eat the food, she was going to slap me with the wooden spoon. I dipped my fork back into the bowl and I began eating the stew, but it was taking me ages with the fork and I felt like I wanted to vomit. But she was still looking at me, so I picked the bowl up and swallowed its contents as fast as I could, hoping that she would go away and leave me alone.
And as soon as I had finished, my belly began to rumble and I felt awful and I wanted to get up and run outside to be sick; but as I got up, she told me to sit back down and wait while the other children finished the food, she then went i
nto the kitchen to fetch the dessert. I put my head down onto the table and I waited for her to come back, and I was praying that I wouldn’t be sick until I left the table. She soon returned and, as I looked up at her, my belly rumbled and my whole body shook uncontrollably at the thought of what was coming next; and as she put the desert onto the table, I could see that it was stewed, steaming hot rhubarb and nothing else. It looked disgusting and she had not even put any sugar on it. I was still holding my fork, so I dug it into the rhubarb and then I put some of the rhubarb into my mouth. It was nasty and bitter and it hung on my fork like a thick piece of old rope, but she made everyone eat it, while she stood looking over us with her arms folded and the wooden spoon sticking out from between them.
My belly rumbled again and I could hear creaking noises coming from inside my belly and I had to keep my mouth shut to stop myself from vomiting the mixture of oil, water and meaty rhubarb across the room and over the other children. But I couldn’t help myself and I began to laugh and some of the mixture came out of my nose, but I tried to control myself and I managed to hold the rest of the mixture in my mouth, and I sat at the table until she told us to go back to school. I got up and walked out of the house, and as I turned the corner and walked out of sight of the staff, I came across all the other children; and they were all bending over, spitting and vomiting their guts up at the same time. I took one look at them all and then I joined them, and we all kept vomiting until nothing more came out of our mouths and our bellies were empty.
But now we were late for school and we had to run all the way back, and when we arrived the nuns told us all off; we tried to explain to the nuns why we were late, but they didn’t want to listen to us and because we were all such bad children they made us all pray for forgiveness. After school, we returned to the house and our evening meal was no better, but we still had to eat it; and once we had finished, we all got sick again. She had only cooked us a decent meal on her first day at the house, just to impress the head nun; and after that, the food that she cooked wasn’t fit for pigs let alone us, but it was all we had and, after a while, we got used to it.
It was now winter and the nights were getting longer and, as the weeks passed, the house got colder and colder, but the nuns never put the heating on in the house. They said that it would cost them too much money, so instead of heating the whole house and wasting money, they put electric heaters in their rooms only and left the rest of us to suffer in our freezing cold bedrooms. We were always freezing and our beds were made of metal, so if you touched off the bed frame with your body, the cold steel frame would make you shiver, and the nuns only gave us one blanket each, so every night we would have to wrap ourselves tight in our blankets to keep warm, but we were still freezing.
The nuns never gave us coats, hats or any other type of winter clothes to wear and no matter what the weather condition was we still had to walk to school; and for most of the time, they made us walk around in thin cotton clothes. And if we complained about anything, the nuns would just slap us around our heads, telling us that we were the lucky children and without having them to look after us we would all be dead from neglect. Maybe we would be dead, but the way they treated us was no better than being in hell, and most days I wished and prayed that I were dead anyway.
I knew it was going to be Christmas soon, because the nuns wouldn’t stop going on about it and they behaved as if it was the best thing that ever happened to them. Then one night, one of the nuns put plastic figures of Jesus and Mary on the side in the living room, and when she had finished setting them up, she sat us all down and told us all about Jesus again and why they celebrated Christmas. And once she had finished, she told me that I would be going away for Christmas and that I would be staying with some nice people over the holiday season.
I looked at the nun and I thought back to the last holiday that I went on and I began to shake at the thought of what might happen to me. Then I shouted at the nun and I told her that I wasn’t going on my own like last time, and then she told me that my brother and sisters would be going with me. She then smiled and said that we would have a lovely time staying with a nice family, and then she walked away. I went up to my room, I sat on my bed and I began to cry. The next day, I tried to stay out of everyone’s way and I tried to hide from the nuns, I was hoping the nuns would forget all about me and send all the other children off for the holiday, leaving me all alone in the house until they all came back. But it didn’t happen and once the nuns found me, they sent Daisy, Simon and me off on holiday with an elderly couple.
The next morning, the couple came to our house and they drove us away in their car and it took hours for us to reach the village they lived in; and throughout the whole journey, they never once spoke to us. When we arrived at their house, the man and woman got out of the car and walked off towards the house, leaving us still sitting in the back of the car. We looked at each other and giggled at what they had just done. We thought they had forgotten all about us, but they never stopped and they continued to walk away, so we got out of the car ourselves and we walked up towards the house.
As we reached the front door, the couple opened the door and stood next to it as if they were waiting for us to enter. We stopped for a moment and we looked at the house, it was very old and it looked broken. We looked at each other and then we held hands and stepped inside, hoping everything was going to be ok. And as we walked in, we could see that most of the things inside the house were either old and dirty or old and broken. I looked at Daisy and Simon and I felt like I wanted to run back outside, but as I turned around the man stood in my way and he quickly slammed the door shut. Then, without warning, he shouted at us to get under the kitchen table. I grabbed Simon and Daisy and I ran towards the only table in the room and stood next to it, then I turned around and looked back at the man and woman. And the man ran towards us and he kicked us hard in our legs until we got under the table.
Frightened, the three of us screamed and huddled together under the table, but I was shaking so much that I wet myself; then Daisy and Simon began to cry, so I shouted, ‘What have we done?’ and the man shouted back, saying that we were dirty little gipsy bastard tinkers’ kids, and beggars, and that we had better stay under the table or he was going to kill us all. ‘And if you think you’re going to have a nice Christmas, think again. You’re going to get nothing from us, no toys, no presents, nothing at all, not even food. And you better not make a single noise for the next two weeks or you will be sorry.’
We huddled up to each other under the table, hoping the man would leave us alone, but then he walked over towards the table, bent down and spat into our faces; then he walked away, sat down in front of the television and glanced over at us again. So I put myself between Simon and the man, as I thought he was going to come over again, but instead he turned away and began to watch the horseracing on the television. I sat there for hours before I moved, but as I moved one of my legs forward to reposition myself, the man shouted at me and then he told me to kneel up under the table. I moved back and did what he said and he made me stay in a kneeling position for the rest of the afternoon. And once again, he said that he would kill all of us if I moved an inch; so I stayed still, but the pain in my legs became unbearable and my legs went numb from the knees down.
After a few hours, I asked him if I could get up, but he said no, and we had to stay there until bedtime. Then the woman came over to the table and she told us to get up and to get into the bedroom. I asked her if we could have some food, but she said that we didn’t deserve food and that we had to go straight to bed, she would not even allow us to go to the toilet. Our legs were stiff and we couldn’t walk into the bedroom as our legs had gone numb, so we had to crawl along the floor; and once in the bedroom, the woman put us all together in the same bed and it felt nice, we all cuddled up together and we quickly fell to sleep.
The next morning, the woman came into the bedroom and one of us had wet the bed, so she grabbed the three of us by our hair and
she pulled us out of the bedroom and she told us to get under the table again, and to kneel on the floor until she said otherwise. She said that if we tried to sit instead of kneeling, she would kick us all to death, so we did what she said. Then the woman made the man breakfast and they both sat down at the same table, as we were kneeling under, and the woman told us to be very quiet while they ate breakfast. I looked up at her and I asked her if we could have some breakfast too, but the man said, ‘Shut the fuck up, you little bitch’ and he kicked me until I moved back under the table.
He continued calling me names and he said that I had to wait while he ate his bacon and potatoes, and if we were lucky, he might throw us some scraps of food when he was finished. About thirty minutes later, they finished breakfast and the man threw us some fat that was left over from the bacon and the skins from the potatoes. He said that it was all we were getting for the day and that we had better eat it all, as he did not want to see any of it left on the floor. I grabbed the scraps and gave some to Simon, but he couldn’t eat the bacon fat, so I had to chew it for him, and then I put the fat into his mouth for him to swallow and I gave him a potato skin to suck on, so that he got as much food as possible into his little belly. Then Daisy and I shared the remainder of the potato skins between us, as we never knew if they were going to feed us again.
After breakfast, the man and woman both got up from the table and they told us to stay under it, but I wanted to go to the toilet and I asked the woman if I could go. The man shouted at me and he said that I couldn’t and that I had to hold it in all day. I started to cry and I told him that I needed to go now, but he looked at me and said, ‘No, you have to hold it.’ I begged him, telling him that I couldn’t hold it any longer, but he walked away and after about ten minutes he returned and he said, ‘Ok, but you only have ten seconds’ and then he began to count. I got up and ran to the toilet, but I had trouble going and I couldn’t because of the pressure he was putting me under. He had frightened me and he had made me wait for such a long time that I was now unable to relax and I had to run back and get under the table again without going to the toilet, and then I wet myself, but I never told the man or woman. Simon and Daisy were too scared to ask if they could get up and go to the toilet, so they just wet themselves under the table.
