Kit de Waal - My Name Is Leon

“All right, love?” says Maureen. She goes back into the kitchen and the door clicks shut.

Leon dashes upstairs faster than a cheetah. He slips the fifty pence under his mattress. He’ll move it later. He comes downstairs so quickly and so lightly that he’s out of breath again. But he lands in his seat and leans on a cushion in twenty seconds. He can’t hear anything from the kitchen but the droning of the two women. He shuffles over in his seat next to Salma’s leather bag so he can be nearer the door but it’s no good. Nothing. All Salma’s files are sticking out of her bag, brown folders with white paper inside. These are the files that the social workers hold whenever he asks about his mum. They look through their files and check dates and addresses but they never let him see for himself. And he’s a good reader. He flicks through the corners of the files. He sees his name and his birth date. He sees Jake’s name and birth date. He sees his mom’s name and her birth date. He squeezes his hand between the pages and pulls.

Due to Carol’s itinerant lifestyle and mental health issues, it has been difficult to make a full and detailed assessment. Carol was given the opportunity to attend a weekly access visit to Leon and Jake to assess her commitment and capacity for caring for her children. She failed to attend these appointments without explanation. She has also failed to attend access visits arranged at the foster carer’s house on four separate occasions, again without explanation. Carol Rycroft did attend the Family Center without appointment, where she stayed for twenty minutes speaking to the Duty Social Worker about her new life and plans for the future, which did not appear to include caring for Leon and Jake.

The most recent psychiatric assessment of Carol Rycroft undertaken by Dr. Ann Mulroney (attached) concluded that Carol Rycroft has an emotionally unstable personality disorder which presents in maladaptive behavior that has formed the background to her mental health problems. She presents with a range of behaviors including anxiety, restlessness, stupor, and transient mood swings into hypomania. She reports previous episodes of mild to medium clinical depression following the birth of her first child, Leon, who has consequently spent several short periods in various foster care short-term placements. She also reports that her mother and maternal grandmother both had psychiatric disorders but this could not be verified. She is unwilling or unable to provide any details of either child’s biological father although limited information has been obtained from Tina Moore (see later).

Carol Rycroft’s current condition is complicated by her dependence on prescription drugs and alcohol use. Her personality disorder is also manifest in Carol’s high level of self-interest as opposed to the interests of her children. The Psychological Assessment concluded that Carol Rycroft is unlikely to be in a position to care for either child unless she is willing to undertake further psychological input for a period of no less than eighteen months.

He tucks the paper back whereit was and opens the kitchen door.

“When am I going to see my mom?”

Salma puts her face up close to Leon and smiles.

“Remember we talked about this, Leon? Remember we said—”

“Why do I have to wait all the time?”

“Well, it’s because—”

“I’m hungry,” he says.

Salma smiles again and rubs his shoulder like he’s fallen over.

“Course you are.”

Salma goes back to sipping her coffee while Maureen takes the lid off the biscuit tin.

“Tea’s in half an hour,” she says.

Leon nibbles the biscuit and stares at them.

“What?” says Maureen, folding her arms. “You been listening at doors again? You’ll hear something you won’t like one of these days.”

She touches his cheek.

“Not today, though. It’s all good today. Go on, off with you. Half an hour of TV and I’ll put the tea on. Sausage and mash. Now hop it.”

She closes the door after him and he sits down by the papers that say horrible things about his mom. He knocks Salma’s bag over with his elbow and when it falls on the floor everything spills out and he kicks it with his foot so that the papers get jumbled up. He stands over the mess and dribbles the soggy biscuit from his mouth onto the papers, a brown sticky mess with crumbs in it. Then he gathers them up and puts them back in Salma’s bag.

When Leon wakes the next morning the house is very quiet. Outside, there is a car running its motor in the avenue and far, far off, he can hear a train on a track. Leon’s never been on a train but he knows they can take you all over the country faster than a car. He saw an ad about it. One day, he’s going to get on a train and find his mom.

He can hear the trilling of a bird in the tree next door. There are birds that trill and birds that coo and sometimes Leon would make bird noises for Jake and Jake would pull Leon’s lips like he was trying to grab the sound before it came out. Jake was always touching something — if it wasn’t Leon himself it was his cars and his toys, and when Jake was going to sleep, he would hold on to Leon’s fingers. Sometimes, thinking about Jake makes Leon feel sick.

Even before he opens his eyes, he can tell that Maureen is still asleep because his room is above the kitchen and the first thing she does in the morning is make a cup of coffee. She calls it “witch’s brew” and once she let Leon taste it and he agrees with her. She has to put three sugars in to make it taste nice.

But the reason Maureen is still in bed is that there is nothing to get up for. Jake used to wake them up every morning and, without Jake, Maureen has been staying in bed later and later. She says it’s because of her chest but Leon knows what it really is. The empty sound in the house is louder than Jake crying for his bottle. It’s louder than his laugh. Louder than his baby drums. And if Leon turns round and looks at Jake’s cot in the corner of the room, he knows that he will get angry with Maureen, so he picks at a scratch in the wallpaper and puts the pieces in his mouth. They taste of fish sticks.

Leon goes downstairs and still Maureen is in her room. He makes some Weetabix and eats it in front of the TV with the sound down low. He has the room to himself and he can watch what he wants, he doesn’t have to have the baby programs on and Jake isn’t screaming or trying to pull his hair. He makes some more Weetabix and sprinkles it with masses of sugar. Then he eats three of Jake’s special yogurts without bits in. Maureen comes down and tells him to clear up his mess but when he goes into the kitchen she grabs him and snuggles him until he wants to cry.

“Right, mister,” she says as she tidies up, “what’s me and you doing on a miserable Saturday?”

Leon shrugs.

“We got that Dumbo video for later,” she says, “and I’ve got some shopping to do but that won’t take long. Shame it’s raining.”

Maureen stands in the doorway with her special pink hearts mug of coffee.

“Tell you what, we’ll go for a little bus ride,” she says. “We’ll go and see Sylvia. Haven’t seen her for ages.”

Maureen’s sister lives very far away and they have to take two buses. The first one stops on a busy road where there are lots of shops and too many people. Maureen holds his hand tight and people will think that Maureen is his mom. She’s fat and her hair is too orange and he doesn’t want anyone to think that his mom isn’t beautiful, so he tries to get his hand back and put it in his pocket.

Maureen keeps stopping to look in shopwindows and saying how expensive everything is. The only good shop has lots of toys in the window— Clash of the Titans figures with Charon and Calibos — but Maureen won’t wait, because they have to find the second bus and that takes forever. They pass factories and shops and enormous houses that are broken down and boarded up. Eventually, they get off the bus and stand at the bottom of a steep hill. Maureen looks up to the very top, shakes her head, and takes a deep breath.