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

didn’t react, but just pulled my sandal back on my foot.

      I was feeling frayed to the point of tears by the time we arrived in the playground of the big red-brick school. Every few steps, the girl behind me had trodden on the back of my sandal, tripping me up. I stood there and our crocodile of kids seemed to dissolve all of a sudden, leaving me alone in the playground. I ran to the door I’d seen the crowd of kids disappearing through and made my way after them. Everybody else seemed to know exactly where they were going.

      I didn’t think to ask anyone where to go. Instead I wandered the corridors until I found myself a classroom. I saw an empty desk and sat down at it. So far so good. At least I hadn’t had to ask anybody for help.

      ‘What are you doing here?’ The teacher had stopped what she was doing and was looking at me.

      ‘I’ve come to school,’ I whispered.

      ‘You’re in the wrong class,’ she said. ‘You’d better come with me.’

      I followed her, feeling thirty pairs of eyes on my back.

      There was a certain comfort in having my own wooden desk and the teacher was nicer to us than the nuns. But I still didn’t have a clue what I was meant to be doing, which book I was meant to be using, how to sharpen my broken pencil, or what to do when it was break time. I felt horribly confused.

      At lunch time, when we were due to go back to the orphanage, I panicked again.

       Where are the St Joseph’s kids? I can’t remember what they look like. What if they leave me behind?

      Then I recognized the pinched-looking girl I’d walked to school with in the otherwise unfamiliar sea of faces, and went over to her. I felt completely exhausted, but knew I had to walk back, kneel in chapel, eat dinner, and do my chores before being allowed to go to bed. It seemed like the most interminable day of my life.

      Things began to get a little better as I became used to the daily routine; and at school, over the following months, I was taught how to read. It made a wonderful difference to me, being able to read books in the girls’ room in the afternoon and after supper. It became a precious way of escaping and I lapped up any stories of rebellious heroes I could lay my hands on, such as Richmal Crompton’s William Brown.

      Although I eventually got the hang of them, however, I hated the orphanage rules and never ceased trying to act independently – always the lone wolf. That often got me into trouble with the nuns, especially Sister Bridget, who was a bitter woman and often very cruel.

      Every item of clothing had to be put on the chair beside our beds in a certain way, with our cardigans neatly wrapped round the back. If I got so much as the smallest detail wrong I would be hit with Sister Bridget’s cane. Then there were the kitchen duties: washing and putting away the dishes, laying the table, peeling the vegetables, sweeping the floor; and the cleaning of the bathroom and toilets. If you so much as put a spoon back in a kitchen drawer the wrong way round you’d be for it. At five years old, it was impossible to get every tiny thing right.

      Many of the rules at St Joseph’s seemed pointless. When I heard Sister Bridget locking the door to the toilets outside in the corridor, after we’d gone to bed, I thought, What on earth is the point of that? What if someone needs to go to the toilet in the middle of the night?

      One morning, Sister Bridget heard one of the new girls in our dormitory crying. She went over to her, said something, then stripped the sheet and blanket from her bed.

      ‘Look at this wet bed!’ she said. ‘There’s only one way to make disobedient little girls learn the rules. Hold out your hand.’ She took a small cane out of her habit and whacked the girl’s hand.

      As soon as Sister Bridget had left the room, a couple of the older girls came over to comfort the girl.

      ‘Don’t worry. If it happens again we’ll nick you another sheet from the cupboard,’ one of them said, kindly. ‘We can smuggle the wet one out under our clothes and dump it in the canal. We’ve done it before!’ This produced a trembling smile from the girl.

      ‘In the boy’s dormitory they do it in their boots and tip it out of the window!’ the older girl’s friend said.

      Something made me rejoice in this piece of rebellion. It was refreshing to find that not everybody obeyed the nuns like sheep. I resolved then never to let them beat me down. I sensed that a child could easily lose the sense of who they were in a place like this.

       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