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

My leg was cut and bruised and very sore, but I was more worried about my sandal, which was lying below the iron grate, about three feet down. I knew I’d get into terrible trouble if I didn’t get it back, so I lay down on the grate and stretched my right arm through the bars. My fingertips didn’t even nearly touch it, but I wasn’t about to give up. Come on, you can reach it. Come on! I couldn’t bear to think about what Freda would do if she found I’d lost a shoe. So, again and again, I ground the side of my face down onto the bars in a frenzied attempt to reach my sandal.

When at last I stood up and looked down at my bare foot, I realized that my dress had got dirty from lying on the ground. There was nothing more I could do, so I went over and sat on the steps, where I remained for the next two hours, stiff with fear and awaiting my fate.

When I heard Freda unlock the door, I tried to creep in without catching her eye, but she saw the state of me at once.

‘What the hell have you been doing, and where’s your shoe?’

I just stared back at her, too terrified to say anything.

She grabbed my arm, pinching it viciously. ‘You answer me, damn it! Where’s your bloody shoe?’

She yanked my arm and pulled me outside and down the steps. I pointed at the iron grate.

‘You little swine. Didn’t I tell you not to move? What the hell were you doing throwing your shoe down there?’ She poked my forehead with a finger, jabbing it at me so hard my neck snapped back.

Then she went back inside and a minute later I heard her trying to open the cellar window. It was stuck. A moment later, she returned.

‘Right, Missie, you lie down and get it!’

I tried to tell her it was no use my trying, but she wasn’t listening.

She pushed me down and forced my arm between the bars, though she could see perfectly well that it wasn’t nearly long enough to reach the sandal. She put her foot down on my shoulder and pushed. The bars were crushing my chest, making it impossible to breathe.

After a while she dragged me back inside and looked around the room for something long enough to reach the shoe. Finally she stood on a chair, took down the curtain rod, and unhooked the curtain from it. ‘Don’t you dare move!’ she said, taking the rod outside.

A couple of minutes later she came back with the shoe in her left hand. In her right, she held the rod. She whacked me hard across the face with the shoe, making me reel back with the shock of it.

‘Get upstairs, damn you,’ she snarled. Her eyes were dark slits in her white face.

But as I turned to scramble up the stairs and out of her way, she went for me with the rod, savagely beating the back of my legs. I crumpled to the floor and continued up the stairs on my hands and knees. I felt her black snake-eyes on my back as I turned the corner to my room.

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