Judy Westwater - Street Kid - One Child’s Desperate Fight for Survival

After a while, I thought I’d better go home – it must have been mid-afternoon at least, and I was always careful to get back to the yard in good time. But when I looked for the gate I couldn’t find it. I began to wander further and then started to panic. I skirted the big, grey stone wall of the building in the centre of the garden, thinking that if I went round it I might find my way back to where I started. Then, as I came round the corner, I was met by a curious sight.

Groups of children in grey uniforms were playing on the grass in little groups. Moving about amongst them was the strangest looking person I’d ever seen. She was wearing a long black dress that flapped as she floated along the grass, and her hair was completely covered with black cloth too. She was gliding along as if on motorized wheels. It was my first sight of a nun.

I watched for about ten minutes, and then a loud clanging noise almost had me jumping out of my skin. One minute it had been quiet and peaceful, the next a huge bell was ringing right above my head. I crouched by the big stone steps, frozen in terror and certain that it was telling everybody where I was. I thought I might have stood on something and set it off.

My fear grew even worse when the groups of children starting coming towards me. They came over to the steps and lined up in pairs. I was crouching down between a shrub and the side of the steps, watching the children as they went up, hand in hand. About ten pairs went by without seeing me, but then I must have made some little movement. My eyes met those of a little girl. It was clear she’d spotted me: she began to tug on the nun’s sleeve and said something to her while looking back at me. Then the nun turned and glided over, her big black dress flapping as she came.

‘What are you doing here? What is your name?’ I knew my name but I couldn’t say it. I couldn’t speak to her.

‘Come with me.’ I couldn’t move. When someone said ‘Come with me’ it always meant only one thing. I was certain the nun was going to beat me for being in her garden.

She took my hand and beckoned to the little girl who’d seen me. ‘Josephine, I’d like you to take her to the kitchen.’ Her tone of voice wasn’t particularly warm, but at least I wasn’t getting beaten yet.

The girl took my hand and we both went up the steps together. It felt like I was entering a huge mouth as we went through the great doorway. I’m going to get swallowed, I thought to myself. We walked through the hall, which smelled of polish, to an enormous kitchen with a long scrubbed wood table in the middle. The only things that brought brightness and colour to the stark room were the copper pans hanging on the walls. Everything else had a sober black and white formality, and even the older girls who were preparing food on tables around the sides of the room in their white dresses looked austere. I was told to sit down and one of the girls brought me a slice of bread and jam, which I devoured hastily, despite my apprehension.

The woman in black came in and began asking me questions again.

‘Where do you live? Just tell me your name.’

I looked at her, still unable to speak.

She was huffing and puffing, quite irritated now. She left the room but returned a few minutes later with a group of girls and boys.

‘Do any of you know this girl? Have you seen her before?’ No one answered.

The nun appeared even more exasperated and turned back to me.

‘Come on, we’d better go and see if we can find where you live.’

She took my hand and we went out of the kitchen, back through the hall and out into the sunshine again. We went through a different gate to the one I’d come in by. It was bigger and led onto the main road, with the canal opposite. I told the nun that I knew where we were and made to go; but, to my horror, she kept hold of my hand and began to march me up the street towards the door of the shop.

But I can’t go in the front! Don’t take me in that way! The panic was rising in a swift tide and washing over me. Don’t take me in that way! I’m supposed to be in the yard!

The bell tinkled as the nun pushed open the shop door. Freda was looking over from the counter at the back.

‘Is this your child?’

Freda said that I was and thanked her very sweetly for bringing me back. Then, as soon as the nun had left, she took me into the back room and closed the dividing door.

‘Don’t you ever dare go out again.’ she screamed. ‘Never, ever come in the front, and never ever leave the yard. Do you hear what I’m saying? I’m going to tell your father when he gets back.’

Then she began to lay into me, punching and kicking. She boxed my ears, which she’d done before, only this time the pain was more excruciating. It felt like sharp daggers in my head. I heard a pop and a horrible kind of rushing sound. Freda stopped hitting me and stood, breathing quickly, hands on hips, glaring down at me.

‘Get up to your room,’ she hissed. ‘I don’t know why I bother to look after you. You disgust me.’

It was only after I’d got upstairs and crawled under the blanket that I realized I was completely deaf in my right ear.

The next morning Freda recovered her energy and as soon as I’d crept downstairs, heading for my hiding place under the table, she grabbed me and began shouting at me again, calling me a little piece of vermin. She hadn’t told my father: I knew she wouldn’t, because she would only have got in trouble herself. If he was crossed, he could get extremely vicious; a cold brutality came over him which even Freda, who usually gave as good as she got, was scared of. My dad was always paranoid that someone would pry into his business. He’d come up against the welfare board before, and he didn’t want anyone poking their nose into his life now.

Freda grabbed me by the hair and threw me at the back door. She then opened the door and gave me a kick, which sent me tumbling down the steps. I gashed one of my knees against the step, and when I picked myself up at the bottom of the steps I couldn’t put any weight on it at first, it was so painful. Then I looked down and saw blood trickling down my leg. I gave a little whimper, but not because of the pain. My dress had got blood on it from the gash and I was suddenly sick to my stomach with terror, knowing that Freda would punish me for getting it dirty. I’d already been beaten by her for losing my bobble hat, and I knew that she’d seize any excuse to beat me.

I hobbled gingerly across the yard to the outside toilet, where I took a square of newspaper from the bundle that hung from a piece of string. Dipping it in the toilet pan, I tried desperately to scrub the blood off my dress with the sodden paper until my arm was shaking, but the blood wouldn’t come off.

When Freda let me in later, she looked at my tear-stained face and I knew it made her want to beat the hell out of me. When she saw the state of my dress, stained with blood and spotted with little bits of newspaper, she snatched up the cheese triangle that was sitting on the table and said, ‘Right, for that you won’t be having any tea, my girl.’ As I hadn’t been out of the yard that day, I hadn’t managed to scavenge anything from the bins, so I was sent to bed with hunger pains gnawing at my insides.

It was only two days later that I once again fell foul of Freda in a big way. It was a sunny day and I was playing in the yard, walking carefully on tiptoe from bar to bar of the iron grate that covered the cellar window. All of a sudden, I slipped and fell, saving myself with my arm. However, my foot had fallen between two of the bars and my leg was dangling in the gap between grate and window. When I tried to pull it out, my knee was in the way; so I tugged and tugged at it, trying to yank it free, becoming more and more panicked that Freda would find me wedged there later when she opened the door. But I couldn’t see how I was going to free myself. I was totally trapped and unable to work out why my knee wasn’t able to slip back through the way it had gone in. After several minutes of frenzied pulling, my knee got past the bars, but then I found out that my foot in its sandal couldn’t get through. I struggled with it until finally my foot came free, but by then my shoe had come off and fallen through the bars.