Kit de Waal: My Name Is Leon

“Bloody hell!”

Tina starts shaking Carol and pulling her arm.

“Cal! Cal!”

She looks at Leon.

“Has she taken something? How long has she been like this? Cal?”

Suddenly Carol starts moaning.

“Leave me alone! Leave me alone!”

Tina starts making little slaps on Carol’s face but she won’t fight back or even open her eyes. Leon knows because he’s been trying for days. Tina takes Leon’s hand and backs out of the room. All the time, she’s shaking her head and saying “Christ” or “God.”

They go down the stairs together. Tina picks Jake out of his basket and wraps a towel round him. She picks Bobby up as well. She’s carrying two babies and she’s out of breath.

“Get my bag, Leon. Come with me.”

They go to the phone booth at the end of the block and she makes Leon hold Jake while he stands outside. The door won’t shut properly, so he hears everything.

“Ambulance, I think,” she says. Then she waits for a minute and says his mom’s address. Then she says they will need to get Social Services as well.

She puts the phone down and then says a number to herself over and over while she’s dialing.

“Social Services?” she says.

Tina tries to squeeze the door shut but it won’t close.

“There’s two children that’s been there for a couple of days at least. Yes. Yes. No, it’s been going on a while. Yes. An ambulance is coming. Yes. On the next floor up, 164E, upstairs. I don’t know, nine, and four or five months, something like that. Carol Rycroft. Yes. Leon and Jake. Jake’s the baby. I don’t know. No. Terrible. I don’t know.”

She listens for ages and then she says, “I’ll take them to my house but they can’t stay. No, sorry. Can’t you send someone around? When? Christ. All right, just one night, then. I haven’t got a phone. No. Yeah, 164E first floor, yeah. I’ll be there.”

When she comes out she’s breathing like she’s been running.

“Can you carry him, Leon?” she asks. “If we walk slow?”

Bobby is crying and Jake keeps wriggling but Leon keeps up with Tina, who doesn’t walk slowly after all. When they get back to Tina’s she puts Jake straight in the bath with Bobby and dresses him in Bobby’s clothes. He’s still crying but then she gives him a bottle and halfway through he falls asleep.

Tina keeps saying she’s sorry and she has no choice. An ambulance lady comes to the door and Tina lets her in.

“We’ve got someone downstairs with Mom. You’ve got the children here with you?”

“They are both all right,” she says, pointing to Jake, who is fast asleep, and then to Leon, who is next to her.

“He’s nine and Jake is about four months old. I’ve fed the baby and I was just about to feed Leon. I think he’s hungry, aren’t you, love?”

Leon wipes his face.

“And a bit worried about your mom, eh?” says the ambulance lady. She squats down in front of Leon and squeezes his arm, then his other arm.

“You’ve been hungry for a little while, I bet.”

Leon shakes his head. “No, I’m full.”

When they start whispering about his mom, he wants to tell them that she’s kind and nice but they’re not listening. The ambulance lady goes over to Jake and when she sees he’s asleep she says she’s going back downstairs.

After she leaves, Tina makes him beans on toast and he gets into the bath. He puts one of Tina’s T-shirts on and he has some potato chips in front of the television. The Dukes of Hazzard is on but halfway through Jake starts crying again and Tina puts him on Leon’s lap so he can give him a bottle.

“You’re a good kid, Leon,” she says. “You don’t deserve this.”

“Where’s my mom?” he asks.

“She’s been taken to the hospital, love. You could see she wasn’t well. You should have come and told me. She was like this last week, wasn’t she? I could see it in her face when she walked past me. How long’s it been going on?”

Leon doesn’t know.

“She’s really bad this time, love. Worse than I’ve ever seen. I don’t know what will happen.”

But Leon does.

The social workers don’t come until the next evening. There are two of them; one has black hair with white underneath like a zebra. They all stay in the kitchen for ages talking about his mom. He can hear Tina telling them everything.

“… weeks and weeks, since before the baby was born if I think about it now. She was depressed the first time with Leon but I never knew her then. I think he’s been in care a couple of times. She seemed all right before the baby but she’s just, you know, not right. I mean, some of the things she does… and she dumps the kids at the drop of a hat. With me mostly. And she kept leaving Leon to look after the baby, you know, five minutes here and five minutes there. And he’s been missing school.”

No one says anything and then Tina starts all over again, saying the same things, saying bad things about Carol and pretending that Leon wasn’t looking after Jake properly.

“She’s just got worse without me paying attention,” says Tina. “We had a bit of a row a few weeks back cuz she keeps borrowing money. She never pays it back, either. And I’ve had those two kids more times than I can count. They’re lovely kids, but still. And I just said, you know, enough’s enough. She had a right go at me. So I just backed off and I haven’t kept a close eye. I used to but I’ve got my own family to think about. It all got out of hand when the baby’s dad finished with her. Tony, I think he’s called. Don’t know his second name. She took it bad. I mean really bad.”

“What about Leon’s father? Is he around?”

“Him? Byron? Not him, he’s taken off. Carol said he was supposed to go to court and he couldn’t face it. But even when he was around he wasn’t much use. He’d come and go as he pleased. He’d be with her for a couple of weeks and then he’d be off. Then he was inside for a bit and as soon as he was out they were arguing all the time. And drinking. Both of them drank. And anyway, when she got pregnant by Tony it all just came to a head.”

Leon sees that Tina has left her handbag on the sofa. He leaves the door open but gets her purse and takes out fifty pence. He puts it in his trousers and puts everything back where it was. He tiptoes back to the door of the kitchen.

“Like I said, I’ve really tried. I’ve had them both here on and off for months and, you know, much as I want to help, it’s just got to stop. I mean, she’s had a breakdown, hasn’t she?”

Leon opens the door wide. They all look at him. Social workers have two pretend faces, Pretend Happy and Pretend Sad. They’re not supposed to get angry, so they make angry into sad. This time, they’re pretending to care about him and Jake and his mom.

“I want to get my things,” he says.

They all look at each other.

The Zebra takes him down to his flat. Tina has given her the key. She looks around the kitchen and opens the fridge. She opens the back door and sees all the diapers that Leon has thrown outside. She walks slowly upstairs and helps him pack some clothes for Jake and some clothes for himself but he can only take one bag of toys.

“Whatever you can take in that backpack is okay,” she says. “We can come back for the rest another day.”

Leon has to leave one of his Action Men because he has to make some space for Jake’s toys and everything won’t fit into his red pack. When the Zebra has filled a suitcase they go back to Tina’s. She picks Jake up and wraps him in a blanket. Tina tries to give Leon a kiss.

“You’ll be all right, Leon. I’m so sorry, love.” She bends down and he turns his face to the wall. He holds his backpack in front of him. He can hear her sniffing and crying and he thinks of her fifty pence in his pocket and the candy he will buy.