Kit de Waal: My Name Is Leon

On the drive to where the foster lady lives, the Zebra talks all the time but Leon is sitting in the back next to Jake with his pack on his lap and he pretends he can’t hear. Jake has fallen asleep in a special baby car seat and Leon’s glad he didn’t hear Tina lying and the Zebra going on and on asking him questions and trying to make him say bad things about his mom.

In the morning, Leon opens his eyes and listens. He can’t hear Jake crying. Then he remembers. He’s in the foster lady’s house. Last night when they arrived with the Zebra, the lady came to the door, took Jake, and kissed him even though she’d never met him before.

“Bless,” she said.

The lady steered Leon toward a TV room and told him to sit down.

“You can watch what you like, love,” she said but there was only the news on. He could hear the Zebra in the kitchen and even though half of him didn’t want to, he had to listen. The Zebra was talking in a loud whisper.

“… he’s been the carer… baby and mother, yes, both of them… malnourished… failure to thrive… drug dependency… ambulance…”

All the time the lady was saying “Mmm” and “I see” and the Zebra kept going on and on.

“… breakdown… emergency placement… court order… squalor… state of the place…”

And then right in the middle of a sentence, the lady told the Zebra to go home. He heard the front door open and heard her saying, “Yep, Judy, yeah, I’ve got it. Off you go. Yep, we can do all that tomorrow. All right, yes. Off you go. Bye.”

The lady had given him a Jammie Dodger biscuit from a golden tin and asked him if he wanted another one, so Leon had three altogether with some hot chocolate and when he went to bed, he didn’t even dream.

The smell of breakfast fills Leon’s nose and cramps his belly. He doesn’t want to make any noise because Jake is still asleep. He must be asleep because he’s not crying. Leon is in a soft, warm bed and there are black-and-white soccer balls on his quilt. Wooden airplanes hang off the ceiling and turn in a cool breeze from the open window. Even the curtains have got a soccer-ball pattern on them. The wallpaper is made up of lots of soldiers in red army jackets with black rifles and, best of all, Jake isn’t crying. The smell of food is so strong it pulls Leon downstairs. He can hear the lady singing a nursery song and Jake is laughing. He can hear plates and knives and forks clattering against each other. He tiptoes to the door of the kitchen and listens outside but the lady must have heard him.

“In you come, sleepyhead. Bacon sandwich with ketchup. All you can eat.”

Leon sits at the yellow kitchen table and the lady puts a massive bacon sandwich on the plate and cuts it in half. Then she plonks the ketchup bottle down next to him and says, “Dig in, sweetheart.”

Jake is wearing a bib with a dinosaur on it. He looks clean and fresh sitting in a high chair by the window and the lady goes over to him and starts pointing at things in the front garden.

“Bird,” she says. “Bird. Lovely little bird.”

She keeps talking to Jake and he’s trying to talk back, so Leon can eat his sandwich in peace. It tastes like the best thing in the world with soft bread and lots of meat and the sauce that drips on to the plate and he’s got an enormous glass of orange juice that tastes sweeter than Coke and he has a bite of the salty meat and a swig of the sweet orange juice and he keeps doing it until everything is gone.

Then the lady just puts another sandwich on his plate.

“Growing boy like you. Bet you can’t eat all of that.”

But Leon does, with another glass of orange juice, though during the second sandwich he pays attention to the lady and what she is saying. He is waiting for her to ask questions about his mom.

“Now, not everyone would be able to see the resemblance between you two,” she says, folding her arms over her big chest, “but Maureen can.” She smiles and points to her forehead. “That’s me, Maureen, and I’ve got an eye for kids.”

Leon licks the sauce off his fingers and looks around. Maureen’s house smells of sweets and toast and when she stands near the kitchen window with the sun behind her, her fuzzy red hairstyle looks like a flaming halo. She’s got arms like a boxer and a massive belly like Father Christmas. On the kitchen wall there is a giant wooden spoon and it says “Best Mom” and next to that there is a painting of Jesus with all his disciples and he’s showing them the blood on his hands.

“So you’re nine,” says Maureen, taking his plate and filling his glass up with orange juice again.

Leon nods.

“And he’s nearly five months.”

Leon nods.

“And you’re the quiet one.”

“Yes.”

“But he’s the boss.”

She smiles, so Leon smiles back.

“I get the picture,” she says. “Bet he’s had you up and down like a yo-yo. He’d be giving you orders if he could speak, wouldn’t he?”

She goes over to Jake and gives him a plastic mixing spoon. Jake starts banging the tray on his high chair. Leon and Maureen put their hands over their ears.

“Have I made a mistake?” she says and Leon laughs.

“So what’s his routine then?” she asks and she sits down opposite him at the yellow table. She picks up a pad and a pencil and writes “Jake” at the top of the page.

“You tell me what he likes and doesn’t like, so I don’t get it wrong.”

“He gets up too early,” says Leon.

She writes it down.

“And if I’m having something to eat and he wants it, he has to have a bit but only if it’s good for him because sometimes it’s chewing gum.”

“No chewing gum.” She writes it down.

“He likes The Pink Panther but he doesn’t understand it. But I do, so I tell him what’s going on.”

“ Pink Panther with Leon,” she says and writes it down.

“When you put his top on, if it gets stuck he goes mad and starts crying and then you can’t get it on him at all, so you have to wait until he’s forgotten. But sometimes if you have to put him in the stroller, you can’t wait, so you have to just…”

Leon doesn’t know if he should tell her about the times when he loses his temper with Jake and shouts at him.

“You have to just tell him to be quiet?”

“Yes,” says Leon.

“I get the picture,” she says and she writes down “Pest.”

Leon tells her everything. How if you want Jake to go to sleep you have to keep stroking his head or the side of his cheek. How Jake puts everything in his mouth and you have to keep both your eyes on him all the time, so sometimes you can’t even watch the TV. And how sometimes it’s too hard.

Eventually, when Maureen has two pages of writing, she sits back in her chair.

“Thanks, love. You’ve been really helpful. I might ask you one or two things as we go along but I think I’ve got the basics. Now what I’d like you to do is leave me to see if I can manage with His Nibs while you go off and have a bath.”

She takes Jake out of his high chair and kisses him again.

“What a pair of eyes!”

She turns Jake around so Leon can see his face.

“He wants to say thank you, Leon, love. Thank you for looking after me so well. That’s what he’d say if he could speak.”

They all go upstairs together and Maureen pours some blue stuff in the bath and the bubbles come right up to the top, so fluffy Leon can’t even see the water. He sits in the bath listening to Jake shouting and laughing and Maureen telling him the names of all the things they can see.

Sometimes, even though everything is really nice at Maureen’s house, Leon can’t sleep. Him and Jake are in the same bedroom. Jake goes to bed first and then Leon goes to bed after a bit of TV with Maureen or after he’s had a play with his toys. He always has a bath with bubbles and he always has a biscuit and then he has to brush his teeth. He’s never hungry but just sometimes he can’t sleep. Jake is in his cot, breathing soft and low, but Leon stares at the ceiling and the patterns of light on the wall. It gets later and later and eventually he hears Maureen come up to bed after the news. He tiptoes in.