School was harder than usual today, I felt uneasy and more on guard than normal. My stomach was doing somersaults, but it wasn’t from the ravaging hunger that tore through it as I had learnt to deal with that. My aches and pains silently cried inside my body, the pressure of the chair on my bruised backside made me feel sick. But it was an over heard argument as I left for school that has put me on edge today, ‘they are onto us’, kept running through my head! You see my parents get angry which makes me live in a very unsettled, non consistent household not knowing what to expect minute to minute.
Just before lunch time a note was brought to my classroom saying I had to go to the headteacher’s office, other kids laughed and called me a ‘stink bomb’ as I walked out of the room. My mind was racing twenty to the dozen thinking what had I done to cause me to be sent there. The secretary nearly pushed me through the door, I looked at the floor confused and scared. I was told to sit down, that a nice lady wanted to talk to me, I was asked questions but I knew not to talk to people, I remember the well rehearsed drill ‘I’m ok thank you’, ‘everything is ok thank you’ and quickly followed it up with the painted on smile. She started saying I wasn’t going home today, that I was going to stay with a nice family, that I would go to the hospital tomorrow for a medical.
I started to shake and stupidly began to cry, she thought I was crying with happiness about not going home, but there are rules about being late home, my parents would be cross and I didn’t want to be punished. ‘Can I please go to my gran’s house?’ I had not seen her for months because my parents argued a lot with her and they said she stuck her nose in where it didn’t belong. But she gave me warm hugs, hugs that didn’t hurt and she never shouted at me, but we moved house and she wouldn’t be able to find us. But the lady said everything had been sorted with the family, but I needed a hug from gran, I wanted gran. My parents said if I was really bad then I would be taken away and given to strangers and the strangers would punish me, I was terrified so much so that I wet my pants. I couldn’t tell the lady what was wrong because I am not to talk about my house to nosey people, I wanted gran as she would find a way to make this better and she would tell the lady I could stay there. The lady promised they would speak to gran and arrange contact, whatever that meant, but I think she might be just saying it for me to go quietly with her.
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