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

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       Chapter Five

      Mealtimes would often be difficult at the orphanage. Sister Bridget always broke out in a rash of irritation with me at my refusal to eat anything milky and slimy, a hatred which must have stemmed from Mrs Epplestone’s force-feeding me porridge. One lunchtime, I sat with my bowl of rice pudding in front of me, nervously moving it around with my spoon. I’d tried to get some of it down, but it was no good. Every time I put some in my mouth I began to retch, so I’d had to give up. Sister Bridget was sitting next to me, watching me like a hawk.

      ‘Judith, will you stop this nonsense this minute,’ she said. ‘I won’t have you wasting the good Lord’s food.’

      I tried again but couldn’t help gagging.

      ‘Eat it now! We will not have waste here.’

      She watched me a moment then snatched the spoon out of my hand. ‘Open your mouth!’

      She shoved the spoon in my mouth. I felt immediate and violent panic and had an instant and terrifying flashback to the time Mrs Epplestone had held my head back by the hair and almost suffocated me shovelling porridge down my throat.

      I began to choke violently, my eyes streaming. Then I gave one mighty heave and threw up all over Sister Bridget’s arm. There was a moment of absolute quiet in the hall. You could have heard a pin drop. The children sat, frozen in horror. Then Sister Bridget stood up sharply, breaking the silence, and grabbed me by the hair.

      ‘Look what you’ve done, you filthy child!’ Her voice was almost a scream. ‘What have you to say?’

      I had absolutely no idea what I had to say and couldn’t speak anyway as I was still gasping for air.

      Sister Bridget then repeated, ‘What are you going to say?’ and tugged my hair.

      I shook my head and this seemed to make her anger boil over even more.

      ‘Grateful!’ she shouted. ‘That’s what you must say, “I must be grateful.”’

      She then turned on the other kids. ‘Why can’t any of you ever be grateful?’

      With that, Sister Bridget dragged me out of the room by my hair and down the corridor to the chapel.

      ‘You’ll stay there until bedtime,’ she said. ‘And you’d better ask God’s forgiveness. He doesn’t like ungrateful little girls.’

      I was left alone in the cold, musty chapel with its dark pews and scary painting of Christ, pale and bloody on the cross, eyes rolling back in his head. I sat there waiting for a thunderbolt to strike me.

      After this, I was desperate to get out of the orphanage. I longed to visit the shop. In my imaginings, Auntie Gertie would be at the counter, or stirring the ice cream, when I came in and would look up and smile. Then she’d wrap her comfortable arms around me and call me her poppet.

      Two days later, as soon as lunch was finished, I slipped out of the orphanage grounds. I felt I could breathe again. But when I entered the shop, that good feeling drained away. There was no Auntie Gertie smiling a welcome. Instead, a strange woman I’d never seen before was behind the counter. I stood for a moment, staring at her. Then she said ‘Yes?’

      I turned and ran out of the shop and down the street. As I slipped through the gate of the orphanage grounds, I felt even more lost and hopeless than before.

      There was a group of us at St Joseph’s who were known as the ‘forgotten’ children. We were the ones nobody ever came to visit, and on those Sundays that were visiting days it was particularly hard for us. Those kids with parents or relations who came to take them out for the day were in a fever of excitement for days beforehand. After chapel, they’d go and sit bolt upright in the visitor’s room, washed and scrubbed and smart as new pins in their Sunday best.

      Some of the women who visited in their flowery dresses came with soldiers in uniform. There was a lot of laughing and perfume and kissing and then, as the room emptied out through the morning, there was a sad hour or so when one or two kids usually remained, uncollected, the excitement having leaked out of them bit by bit. It was worse for them; at least us forgotten kids weren’t expecting anyone, so our hopes hadn’t been raised and dashed cruelly in that way.

      In my second year at St Joseph’s I got to know a boy called Tony. He was a forgotten kid like me, but his mum must have sent the odd message to St Joseph’s because on the day I first spoke to him he was sitting on the steps outside, waiting for his mother to arrive. It was nearly teatime when I saw him there in his Sunday best, trying to look unconcerned. It was clear to everyone that his mum wasn’t going to come that day, but Tony wasn’t going to give up.

      I went and sat next to him. I didn’t normally choose to go near the other kids, preferring to keep a wary distance. But now I felt an urge to comfort the boy which was strong enough to override my natural fear of people.

      ‘What are you doing?’ I asked. I knew the answer, but couldn’t think of anything else to say.

      ‘Waiting for me Mam.’ Nothing else was said but I sat there for a while with him.

      Tony and I didn’t have much to do with each other at St Joseph’s as the boys and girls were separated at all times, but we played with each other when we were sent away on our summer holiday, and delighted in inventing stories in which the nuns had their comeuppance and the kids were the heroes.

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