The World at My Feet

by Catherine Isaac

  I stayed up with my parents until 2am on my birthday. There were times, amidst the blur of wine and the come-down from my adrenalin, when it almost felt cathartic. It was only as I began asking questions about Romania that I realised how many you accumulate when you refuse to talk about a subject for years and years. I concentrated mainly on the parts I knew I’d like hearing about, such as that hug with Dad. It was the first time I’d embraced a grown-up in my life. They weren’t my parents then, of course, just Harriet and Colin, two strangers with pale skin and kind eyes, speaking softly in a language I didn’t understand.

  My parents did most of the talking, Mum in particular. Her recent trip to Bucharest for the Observer – to write about Romania thirty years after the orphanages hit the headlines – had brought back memories for her too. She travelled, initially to Ias¸i in the east of the country, then to Bucharest, with a British charity who are doing incredible work with an all-Romanian team of social workers to ensure as many vulnerable children as possible end up in loving families, rather than institutions. ‘Perhaps you could read the piece when it’s printed?’ she suggested, though I didn’t reply to that.

  Mainly, though, we didn’t talk about what Romania was like today, we talked about what happened all those years ago, as questions began to bubble up in my head faster than they could keep up with. What did I look like? How did we communicate? And finally: why me? Why, of the six hundred children in that orphanage, did you choose me?

  It didn’t surprise me that, in the rush of American and Western European couples to adopt in the years after the orphanages were uncovered, babies would be top of the list, not children who were eight years old like me and who already bore so many emotional scars. I can’t imagine there was anything unusual about me, anything that made me stand out beyond the fact that my friend Tabitha had found a home and I hadn’t. I suppose that made them take pity on me, rather than on anyone else in the place. But that didn’t make me special, only lucky.

  I could just as easily have been left behind. Plenty of children were, including one whose unknown fate has caused me to feel more anguish in my life than I’ve ever been able to come to terms with. I lie back into the soft folds of my bed and, for the first time in a long while, when my thoughts drift to Tabitha, I don’t fight them. I don’t push them away. Instead, I let them billow up and settle in my mind: memories of my first friend, someone I loved in a world in which love simply didn’t exist.

  Chapter 28

  I don’t recall a particular moment when I first noticed Tabitha in the orphanage. Like me, she had simply always been there, as much a part of it as the rotting mattresses we slept on and the mould that clung to the walls. I knew we’d both started off in the basement though. That was where you came from when you’d never had a mother, or at least not one you’d ever known. It was there that the babies lived, often in darkness, nearly always in silence. I don’t know why they didn’t cry, but I must have been the same. There was no point, I suppose.

  I have almost no memory of being down there, beyond knowing I was terrified about the move upstairs to be with the bigger children. Even when I got there, things remain hazy. There are swathes of time that I’ve either lost because I was too young, or actively blocked out. Despite this, I still remember not merely the general nature of life there but also – though more rarely – odd details or conversations that have survived like single scenes in a damaged reel of film.

  I could tell you what happened my first night on the second floor, for example, because I woke up warm and soaked with urine, before the soles of my feet were thrashed as a punishment for wetting the bed. I didn’t do it again for weeks, then one night it just happened. I couldn’t help it. That time, one of the educators, Felicia, stepped in and saved me from a beating. She was soft-natured, a sweet woman who was treated with suspicion by the other staff. I’d seen her successfully intervening before, on that occasion to protect a boy. ‘He’s got a heart condition, you’re going to kill him!’ she’d gasped, though I’m fairly sure that particular child died a couple of months later anyway. Quite a lot did. We were constantly sick.

  There were certain things I accepted simply as part of life that now, from the comfortable position of hindsight, I see rather differently.

  The smell, for example. This was one of the things that Dad told me later had hit him like a ton of bricks the first time they entered the orphanage, yet oddly, I don’t ever remember being bothered by it. I know there was excrement on the walls and in the latrine of course; I recall the urine-soaked sheets and the fact that ‘washing’ meant simply dunking them into the same freezing bath water as the children. It must have smelled horrific, but that’s not something that stands out in my memory.

  Hunger is another thing it’s hard to fully reimagine, at least the intensity of it. But then it is, by definition, a transient force. I do know that our bellies were never fully satisfied though and that eating the sour boiled cabbage we were given was simply a question of alleviating the pains in your stomach.

  The point I’m making is that the worst thing about the place really wasn’t the squalor or cold, nor the sickness and hunger. It was the casual, day-to-day violence. The older kids fought constantly. They’d beat each other up or brawl over pieces of cheese or bread, but smaller children were their favourite target. When they were caught at it by staff, the punishment was further assault: kids were ordered to hit each other. Failure to do so resulted in the hardest whack of all, from the educators themselves. Looking back, everyone seemed to be hurting each other and some hurt themselves. One girl when I moved upstairs would bang her head against the wall every night.

  I didn’t have it worse than anyone else, I do remember that. We were all beaten, it was just the way things were. And when another child hit you, you hit them back because you had to – even me, a natural born weakling. These small atrocities were part of our lives and we were collateral in an atmosphere of humiliation and cruelty. I hated it, I feared it, but I also assumed this was how everyone lived.

  This is all hard to make sense of now I’m an adult, in particular the behaviour of the staff. My impression from memory is that, while I think there were one or two genuine sadists, most of those who looked after us were simply crushed by a pitiless, inhumane system. Some, such as Felicia, did have empathy but any expression of this would result in their own punishment by the crueller, more ‘experienced’ workers.

  Whatever the case, I was not a fighter by nature. I kept my head down. I tried to be noticed as little as possible. In this sense, finding Tabitha in the next bed to me was a disaster.

  She had always drawn the wrong kind of attention and was constantly being smacked across the head or face for giving cheek, for being late, for fighting or taking too much food. But she managed to give the impression that it was all water off a duck’s back. The first night she ended up in the bed next to mine is one I remember with startling clarity. Perhaps my imagination has filled in the gaps. Either way, I recall trying to avoid making eye contact with her. She was having none of that.

  ‘Hey!’ she said, as I pretended to sleep, my back turned to her. ‘What’s your name?’

  I froze, refusing to acknowledge her.

  ‘Hey you!’ she repeated, prodding my shoulder. She tutted when I didn’t respond. ‘You mustn’t want one of these then?’

  I heard a crunch and rolled over, screwing up my eyes to see her in the half-light. She was eating.

  ‘Shh. Don’t tell anyone,’ she said. ‘You can keep a secret, can’t you?’

  ‘What… is that?’ I whispered. She reached under her pillow and pulled out a rag, glancing at the door before she unwrapped it. With a grin, she displayed three biscuits, stacked on top of one another.

  ‘Where did you get those?’ I said, in disbelief.

  ‘Who cares? Want one?’

  I stared at the biscuits. I could smell them and I felt saliva gathering at the sides of my mouth. I shook my head.

  ‘Suit yoursel
f, but after dinner today you’re going to die of starvation. Your arms are like sticks.’

  I looked at them and frowned. As far as I was aware, my arms were no thinner than anyone else’s and what happened at dinner hadn’t been unusual. The cleaner on duty had got around the fact that pieces of cheese were numbered for each child by splitting them in two. She took the larger chunk for herself, leaving us with half-portions of an already meagre offering.

  Tabitha wouldn’t drop the subject. She yammered on about the scumbag cleaner, about the rest of the staff and about my arms, until in the end I accepted half a biscuit. The sweet, grainy crumbs dissolved in my mouth and I was torn between wanting to savour it and needing to chomp it down before we were discovered. Then she moved on to the gossip from the boys’ dorm where, she told me, the supervisor had last night broken up a fight and as a punishment ordered those involved to hit each other. And although part of me wanted her to go to sleep, certain she was going to land us with a beating of our own, another part of me was mesmerised.

  ‘How do you know all this?’ I asked.

  ‘Friends in high places,’ she grinned.

  After that first night, we went from being virtual strangers to barely out of each other’s presence. She had a tough, animal quality that made me feel braver, just for being around her. She was my superpower: when she was around, I could get through anything. Also, I recall – rightly or wrongly – that she made me laugh. I don’t ever remember either laughing or even hearing laughter until that point, yet afterwards I have memories, as clear as day, of the two of us suppressing giggles after dark.

  One night as the moon shone outside and the echoes through the dorm room had died down, she handed me one of her biscuits just as another girl appeared from nowhere. She tried to snatch it out of my grasp, but Tabitha leapt up as quick as a panther, grabbed the biscuit and shoved the girl so hard that she fell backwards onto the floor.

  ‘Do that again and I’ll strangle you,’ Tabitha snarled.

  The girl snorted. ‘Who’d want to be Visinel’s pet anyway?’

  Things started to slot into place after that comment. Visinel, the caretaker, did treat Tabitha like his pet, as if she was somehow under his protection. She had hardly taken a beating for months and he, I was now sure, was the source of the biscuits. I was also aware that some of the other kids were jealous, though she was far from the only one to be singled out. A couple of the older girls had attracted his attention too. And, although this was all vaguely unusual, I hadn’t thought much of it until he started taking Tabitha and those older girls into a room and locking the door. There were a couple of times when the night supervisors banged on the door and told him to open up, but it never stopped him. I don’t know whether I knew then exactly what was happening behind there, or whether I’ve just worked it out since. But it wasn’t long before neither Tabitha nor I liked the taste of the biscuits, no matter how hungry we were.

  Chapter 29

  The Italian couple who applied to adopt Tabitha looked and sounded like nobody I’d ever come across before. They were tall and sleek and beautiful. The woman’s lips and fingernails were painted rose pink and her long hair swept into a smooth, dense knot at the nape of her neck. Her husband’s eyes were the colour of the sky on a hot day. They paid three or four visits to prepare for Tabitha’s departure to Italy and each time they brought toys – dolls and teddies that she refused to share with anyone but me – and sugared almonds with smooth, coloured shells. Tabitha called the woman Mamma Giulia. The man was simply Papà.

  She could not believe her luck. Neither could anyone else. Although a stream of prospective parents had started coming to the orphanage within weeks of the television cameras arriving, all anyone seemed to want was the babies. ‘They think you’re a character. Don’t knock it,’ Felicia had said to her, as she brushed Tabitha’s hair before one visit. She had been told to put on a pale dress, pink cardigan and a pretty pair of unscuffed shoes – clothes that only ever appeared on such occasions.

  ‘I’ve asked them if they’ll adopt you too,’ Tabitha told me. ‘They say they can’t because there isn’t room for two children, but if you’re adopted too we can visit each other and write letters. Mamma Giulia says they teach you how to do that at school.’

  Some of the girls in our dorm told Tabitha that in Italy they cut open children’s heads and fed their brains to monkeys. Tabitha told them to shut up, but I could see that the thought worried her. ‘They’re being stupid,’ I reassured her. ‘They’re jealous, that’s all.’

  ‘Are you jealous?’ she asked me. I shook my head, because even then I knew that that was what she needed to hear.

  ‘Well, you don’t need to be,’ she replied. ‘I just know you’re going to get a mother and father too.’

  What I hadn’t realised at that point was that my world had already started spinning on a different axis the day two strangers called Harriet and Colin had walked through the doors of that orphanage. I only found out months later that they wanted to adopt me. My reaction was one of wild disbelief – and hope. If I had reservations about going to live somewhere different from Tabitha they were minor, because the truth was we had no idea how far England was from Italy. We imagined visiting each other at weekends, writing to each other every day. The days of sleeping in beds next to one another would be over, but we would still be in constant contact and any temporary periods of separation would all be worth it.

  I don’t know how long it was before Tabitha was due to leave that she was told about Mamma Giulia’s illness. Her departure had certainly felt imminent. Her new mother, we were informed, was now in hospital and may not ever leave. She was too poorly to make the journey back to the orphanage and in no fit state to look after a little girl. Just like that, there was no new mother and the adoption was off. Tabitha was distraught.

  ‘If I could just get to them,’ she whispered to me desperately one night. ‘I could tell them that I wouldn’t be any trouble. I could be a help to Papà while she’s in hospital. I could look after him, then when Mamma Giulia is well enough to come home I can nurse her too.’

  But weeks went by and, while my own adoption was progressing, the decision about Tabitha seemed to be final. I would go. She would stay.

  She started fighting again, getting herself in more trouble than ever before. Without the scrutiny of her prospective parents, Visinel began to summon her to his room again. Most of the time she went without arguing and would emerge flat-eyed and sullen. But once, when she refused, he took a stick to her backside, leaving angry welts rising from her skin that she showed me later that night.

  I wished above anything else that Colin would just come for another visit. Everything could be solved then. He’d been a few times with the other teachers from his school in England and when he next did I planned to tell him that I simply couldn’t leave without Tabitha. He would have to adopt her too. He and Harriet were so nice that I was certain he’d agree. But he never came and I started to worry that perhaps Harriet was sick too and my own adoption was off, which would’ve torn me in two but at least meant I didn’t have to leave Tabitha here by herself.

  ‘You don’t need to worry. They’re coming for you,’ she told me. ‘I know it. You’re going to be fine.’

  The night Tabitha escaped through the window of the dorm, part of me had been expecting it. Kids were always running away. They ended up on the streets, stealing, begging – surviving in whatever way they could, something I knew from the tales we heard when the police brought the odd one back. What was a surprise was how she did it. Our dorm was on the first floor, too high to jump from. Nobody had ever even tried it.

  Much of my time at the orphanage remains hazy, my memories like looking back through the murk of an aquarium. I genuinely have no idea if some of them are real or imagined. But I recall the night Tabitha ran away with crystal clarity. It happened exactly as it did in every dream I had about it in the subsequent years, right down to the way her small face appeared at the si
de of my bed, her dark eyes coated in a film of frightened tears. I could feel her breath on my skin, but when I opened my mouth to ask her what was going on, she just raised a finger to her lips and shook her head. She hesitated long enough for me to see the pain in her expression, before she stood up and walked away, tiptoeing past the end of each bed as she crossed the long room.

  By the time she pushed open the window, I had already guessed what she planned to do. I wanted to scream, so loudly that it might tear my lungs, but I couldn’t in case I alerted one of the educators. Instead, I was forced to watch, deafened by the boom of my own heart, as she climbed onto the sill.

  It took only a few short moments after she leapt for chaos to ensue. For girls to scramble out of their beds, staff appear from nowhere and for me to run to look too, certain that she would be dead. But as I pushed my way to the window, I caught sight of a small shadow stumbling across the street, making her escape.

  In the weeks afterwards when the cops hadn’t brought her back, I felt lost. The ache in my gut was bigger than loneliness or fear; it was closer to a bereavement. The days stretched ahead of me. Night involved fractured sleep. I couldn’t quite believe or accept that she was gone. And although my heart told me she’d done the right thing – the idea of her staying in the orphanage while I left for England was unthinkable – I couldn’t reconcile that with just how much I missed her.

  Oddly though, of the plethora of emotions I felt at that time, it didn’t occur to me to be afraid for her. She’d been tough. She could handle anything.