Every Time a Bell Rings. Carmel Harrington

looks a little like you,’ Joan says to me. She looks down to the doll and back up to me again.

      I look back up to Jim. ‘Joan said to me that I was black just like Dee-Dee.’ He doesn’t say a word and I’m glad.

       Black. I don’t understand what she means. That word panics me. I don’t want to get into trouble. The whole way over to Joan’s house, my social worker warned me not to get dirty. I’d been so careful.

       I must have gotten messed up somewhere along the way to their house. I look down at my hands and fingers, but they are spotless, even my nails. I’m a good girl. I stayed clean. I don’t know what she is talking about.

       ‘She’s so beautiful, isn’t she? Daniel got her on one of his trips to the US. Her name is Dee-Dee.’ Joan tells me. ‘You should keep her.’

       I look at Dee-Dee and cannot believe that she is mine. I pull her in close to me and I smile my thanks to Joan.

       Later that night, I can hear my foster carers whispering outside my bedroom door.

       ‘It’s probably the first black doll she’s ever seen. Nice for her to have a doll that looks like herself.’ Daniel tells Joan.

       Dee-Dee looks like me?

       Do you Dee-Dee?

       I pull the red dress off Dee-Dee’s plastic body and then lift up the sleeves of my pyjama top. Are we alike? I can’t understand why they call us ‘black’.

       ‘You’re brown,’ I realise suddenly. And Dee-Dee smiles back, agreeing with me. ‘So are you,’ she says. ‘We’re both brown.’

      I worked it out eventually, what they meant.

      ‘After that day, I’d hear people call me black all the time. I used to look at the other kids in school or on our street, searching to see if anyone else had the same colour skin as mine.’

      ‘And is your mother black, then?’ Jim asks me.

      I shake my head and sigh. No. She’s not. Blonde and white. She couldn’t be more different to me if you tried.

      ‘I have one picture of her,’ I tell Jim. ‘Do you want to see her? My mother?’

      Jim nods. So I run to my bedroom and take it out of its secret place, in my favourite book, The Faraway Tree, right at the back of the bookcase.

      I feel a little shy showing it to him. I’ve never shown it to anyone before. He looks at it and then at me and agrees we don’t look alike.

      My mother looks up at me from the picture. Her face is smiling, but it’s one of the fakers. Her blue eyes are dull and without any mirth. Her mousy-blonde hair is tied back in a low ponytail. It’s fine and straight, again the complete opposite of my afro hair.

      ‘Maybe you look like your father,’ Jim says.

      ‘Ooh aah Paul McGrath,’ I joke, but there’s no merriment in my words and they fall flat between us.

      ‘I asked Mrs Reilly for a photograph of him, but she got all weird and did that thing with her voice.’ I say.

      ‘All high, like she’s being squeezed tight?’ Jim asks and I nod. I knew he’d get it.

      ‘She kept putting me off, but then when I pushed her, she told me that they didn’t have a record of who he was,’ I say.

      ‘That sucks,’ he tells me. ‘I don’t know who my father is either. My mam always starts to cry when I ask her about him. I’ve given up trying. Who needs a father anyhow? Losers.’

      ‘Yeah. Losers,’ I agree.

      A tiny bit of me feels jealous of Jim, though. I know his mother is cracked, but at least she comes by every now and then. I think of mine and feel a pain in my heart.

      ‘Does she ever call you?’ he asks.

      I shake my head no. ‘I wrote to her a few times. I was real careful to make sure it was perfect, with no mistakes,’ I say.

      I was so proud of those letters.

      Shame floods me now at how stupid I was.

      ‘You have good writing. Better than mine,’ Jim says. ‘I bet they were great letters.’

      He’s not wrong about his writing. He mixes up his ‘b’s and ‘d’s all the time and his letters are way too big. I’m going to have to give him some lessons, because he’ll get in trouble at school if not.

      ‘I got Joan to put a picture of me in the last letter I sent, so she could see what I looked like now. I put on my best dress and stood in the garden by the rose bush for it. Joan had one of those Polaroid cameras,’ I finish softly.

      ‘What happened?’ Jim asks, his voice so quiet I can barely hear him.

      In our cocoon, made of white-and-blue cotton sheets, I suppose the sound of my silence is his answer.

      He doesn’t break my silence, doesn’t question me any further, but reaches behind him to his stash of treats and hands me his Club bar. I know he’s been saving this one till last; he loves to suck the thick chocolate off. So I push it back towards him. I can’t take it. But he gives it to me again, insistent.

      Neither of us say a word, we just sit there sucking our chocolate bars, lost in our own thoughts of absentee parents.

      For weeks I would run to the postman, check through the piles of letters and when I saw a white envelope my heart would soar in hope. But it was never for me.

      No reply. No card. No phone call. Nothing.

      I look at Jim and hold up Dee-Dee. ‘Until you came, all I had was Dee-Dee. She was my best friend.’

      I take a deep breath. I want to tell him something, but I’m afraid that he might laugh. ‘I’m glad that I have you now.’

      He looks embarrassed and starts to push his Spider-Man truck up and down the walls made of sheets. But he doesn’t laugh and I catch him peeking at me. I think he looks pleased with what I’ve said.

      And even though he doesn’t say it back, I know he thinks it too.

      ‘Why did you leave their house, if it was so good there?’ he asks when he turns back to me a few minutes later.

      ‘I had no choice,’ I admit. ‘Joan and Daniel left Ireland.’

      ‘Oh,’ he says and his eyes are wide.

      ‘I begged them both to take me with them. Daniel had gotten a job in the US, in some place called the Silicone Valley. They said that they couldn’t take foster kids with them,’ I say.

      ‘Oh,’ he repeats and his face is like one of those comic books, when it freezes into a shocked look at the end of a chapter.

      I wonder what he’d say if I told him about how I pleaded with them the night before Mrs Reilly came to take me away. I feel a flush of shame overtake me again as I remember how much I begged and begged, but how it made no difference whatsoever. I still had to go.

       ‘You could adopt me,’ I whisper to them. ‘Then you can bring me with you. I wouldn’t be a foster kid any more. I’d be yours. And I’ll be so good. I promise I’ll be good.’

       I hold my breath as they look at each other. Daniel looks uncomfortable and starts to fidget and Joan won’t look me in the eye.

       I don’t wait for them to answer me, I just get up and walk out of the family room. I know the score. I ignore Joan’s anguished cries that she wishes things were different.

       ‘Our hands are tied,’ Daniel shouts at my retreating back.

       And even though