After I ran away, the staff began to give me other things. I was told they were tablets for depression, to help me sleep and to calm me down. They were tablets to 'take the edge off the way I was feeling.' I was not mad. There was never anything wrong with me. I was just reacting. I was angry and upset. I had been sexually abused and I had been beaten, battered and bruised for years.
One day I was to have tablets to keep me up and the next day I would have tablets to keep me down. It was like being in a sweet factory, though the pills were not one bit sweet.
Things were happening around me and I could have no part in them. People were there but I could not reach or touch them. The drugs made me feel like I was floating on the ceiling and when I was asleep my dreams were full of demons and voices. Whilst I was awake, I was paralysed by tiredness that me indifferent about whether I lived or died. I would cry for myself and for Mary and for Liz and Doreen, wherever she was, and for dead Emma. Why were there nowhere for us to go?
It sunk in a few weeks later what I had said to my mother, and I cried for her. She was lovely and I loved her so much. I wanted to be in her arms, to be hugged and to be held close.
I lost Liz. August twenty-third. I couldn't find her. She was gone.
September came and it was the first weekend of the month when I was called for. I stumbled down the corridor and realised again how much hated this place, permeated with the smell of stale urine and disinfectant and drugs.
There was a new psychiatrist. She was funny and bubbly. Most of the kids liked her and she was good to us. Mary told me not to trust her and since her and Liz had been right at most things, I didn't. But I knew she was good. I liked her.
One Monday morning, there was a new arrival. He was twelve years old and he had come from another home. His name was Johnny and he was wild and funny. He became close friends with me and Mary and we stuck together as a little group.
About a month later, someone broke into the shop in the hospital. It was a little shop that the older patients would use to buy their cigarettes and newspapers and sweets from. For some reason Mary and I got blamed. We didn't do it. Nobody would listen to us. The head nurse said, "We know you did it so you might as well confess. You will be punished anyway."
We said we didn't do it but she was convinced we were responsible. Johnny was accused too, because he was found with some sweets in his pocket.
"Off you go," she said. "We will see how you like going down to work at the gate for a few days."
Mary looked at me.
"We didn't do it," I said quickly. "We didn't go near that shop. It's not fair. And I didn't take anything from it."
Johnny got called in and was told he would work down at the gate.
"I don't mind working."
The nurse said something threatening, telling us next time we won't be so eager to lie to her and we left.
We werein the laundry room and we were sat on the white machines.
"I am going," I said.
"I am going with you," agreed Mary.
Johnny looked at us both before saying, "I'm not going with you. You two can go on your own."
"Well, we are not working at the gate. You can if you want," I said.
"What will we have to do? Clean up and sweep. I don't mind doing that. I did it back on our farm."
I just looked at him blankly as Mary said, "You lived in a farm?"
He nodded and started to answer but I butted in telling him he had no idea what working on the gate meant.
He just shrugged his shoulders as if to make out he was big and hard.
I started to explain to him what would happen.
"You go down to the thing that looks like a big shed. The male nurse goes with you to open the big steel door. You go and sometimes there's some one lying in there."
"So?" Johnny said.
"So…" I held on to the 's' making it sound sharp. "It's the morgue. How would you like it when you have to wash and dress the people even though they are dead?" I raised my eyebrow at him.
There was silence.
And then he said, "I'm going with youse two."
We climbed out of the laundry room window and ran down the backfield. When we got to the end of the field we sat in the grass and Mary and I started to laugh. We were rolling around in the grass laughing in ecstasy at the thought of Johnny changing his mind. He was the first one out of the window.
"You bitches," he said. "I knew you were only joking."
"We're not."
"Then what are you laughing at?"
Mary told him, "We are laughing at you because when we told you what was at the gate you were out of the window right away."
"You really aren't joking then."
"We're not," Mary said. "First time down there, Sara wet herself."
It was true. The morgue was a dark building surrounded by trees. Inside there were five slabs where the bodies were laid out before they were taken away. I was sent there with Doreen and a girl called Jessica. She had raven hair and she was the personification of sleek. I was made to wash the body of an old woman with a bucket of water and a cloth. I was so scared of the white, cold and stiff woman that I peed myself and then again when I heard the steel door slamming as the nurse locked us in. we ran to the door and banged and screamed until he came back.
For days I could not get that dead woman out of my mind. I had seen my father's body, but it was just different. I kept picturing her there lying still, not breathing and yet I expected her to jump up at any second and come after us. Her eyelids were closed. I had never seen skin so pale or so taut. It was drawn tightly over her cheekbones and almost transparent. Her sliver hair was long and tied in a bun. Her face had a noble look; everything about her character was written there. She looked like an old Indian squaw that I had seen in a picture book. What was most striking about her was the lack of movement. It was the stillness that screamed.
"So did you." I continued. "And sometimes they lock you in and leave you there for hours. Isn't that right, Mary?"
"Yeah, I remember Liz was sent there once will Molly and Mol's went mad because the nurse locked her in and she was left over night. They had to give her the needle to calm her down."
After we told Johnny the story, we decided to move on and went over the wall and we walked for ages and then we sat up on a big wall next to a bus stop. We had been chatting for some time before a police car pulled up and two men got out. It was like Tweedle Dumb and Tweedle Dee. Policeman Plod and Policeman Prat.
"What are you three doing out here?"
"We're waiting for the bus so we can go home," I said, smiling.
The taller of the two men then asked us were we had come from.
"My Aunt's," I told him.
"How are you getting home?" he asked.
"On the bus." I said, again smiling. If it was any one else I would have been sarcastic. If we were sat at a bus stop, how else were we going to get home?
"Where do you live?" He was really starting to annoy me. I didn't know where we were but Mary answered him.
"Are you sure you haven't runaway?"
The three of us said, in perfect unison, "No."
"I think you have. We got a call from the hospital up the road saying that three children were missing. Two girls and a boy. Aged thirteen, twelve and ten."
I was shocked. I was ten. I hadn't realised.
"I think that's you three. Down you get and we'll get this sorted out."
We got down. Before I followed Johnny and Mary in to the car, I took one last long look at the road that stretched out.
"I know what you're thinking, missy. Don't even think about it."
Mary and I had to be interviewed by a fat, tall officer with a china plate face, mustard hair and beetroot cheeks and dirty, congealing olives for eyes. Johnny got a separate interview.
I was bored. I let Mary answer most of the questions; until P.C. Jolly and Plod Policeman asked me something directly.
"Do they do any bad things to you, Sara, or do they touch you?"
"How do you mean bad things?" I asked.
I was drawing a repetitive figure of eight on the grey table with my index finger.
I knew what they meant but I didn't want to say anything. So far in my life, whenever I told the truth about had happened to me, it just landed me in a deeper circle of hell, so I figured it was safer to lie.
"Well, do they put their hands up your clothes?"
It had happened once.
"No, they don't."
"Are you sure about that?"
"Yes."
"Okay, then someone will collect you shortly."
He left. Mary looked at me, with evil eyes.
"What did you do that for? They were going to help us."
"Don't be stupid, Mary. They don't give a damn."
I left it there and I didn't speak to her for twenty minutes. I would have been longer, except I was passed out. The doctor and nurse had come and they give us an injection in the neck, which made me so dopey.
I got another one the next day.
I loved it.
It gave me ease.
It made me feel very calm and I felt like was floating.
It made me feel so defenceless and safe at the same time, like everything was going on around you and you were powerless to do anything about it, but it didn't matter.
I found out it was 'ketamine'.
x
