The Name Inside
By Kathy Maclean - 25/02/2008
He stared at the plant. Three green leaves pointing upwards and three straggling, brown and translucent like a parched umbrella over the dust. ‘It’s half dead,’ he thought, and felt sorry for the life ebbing away. Tousel haired, crumpled little Ernest was having his assessment, hastily arranged – just him and a big lady with buttons all the way down her cardigan. The small drab room had a strange stale smell and he felt even sadder than when he’d arrived with the policeman.
She was kind, that big lady from the social. She watched him fidget and waited for him to speak. When, after two minutes, he hadn’t managed to make a sound, apart from a loud sniff, she sighed, ‘Why Ernest, why do you keep running away? Tell me what’s bad about living with your mum. She says she loves you. You’ll have to go back, you know that don’t you?’ And then she smiled. He wasn’t used to smiles. Just couldn’t process them at all. The big lady sighed again causing the row of buttons to stretch in little semi circles, displaying a glimpse of breasts that Ernest wanted to launch himself into. He needed the comfort, but knew he wasn’t to get it today, and not any day soon.
The little boy sniffed again, not a yes or a no, just a sniff. He needed a hanky but there wasn’t one in his pocket. There never was. His sleeve did just as well and he used it before the offered tissues made it across the table. ‘I hate her,’ he said, focusing with empty eyes on the big lady, ‘She goes away a lot and comes home late, with new boyfriends. She makes me wear dresses and pink cardigans when she’s drunk. And then she calls me Ellie. She wanted a girl, see. She gets drunk a lot now, and the pink stuff is in the cupboard at the bottom of the stairs. Everybody stares and I want to cry but I don’t. It’s been bad since me Dad left and me mum started drinking again. Drinks all day sometimes. I don’t want to go back, don’t make me.’ The empty eyes filled up for a second.
The nice lady smiled gently. ‘Look Ernest, now we know what’s happening we’ll watch much closer. We have to take you back home, just to see for ourselves. If things are as bad as you say, we’ll try and arrange for you to go to another home, called a foster home. Try and be brave. Ernest knew about foster homes, he’d already been fostered briefly when his mum was in a centre for alcoholics. He shook his head sadly, resigned to another test, another trial. He’d only just started school, but already he knew that life had dealt him a bum set of cards.
Ernest was five, and standing on his own doorstep he felt like jelly inside, not brave at all. Pauline Brown opened the door and screamed her delight at being reunited with her boy. Bony arms around stiff young shoulders fooled the lady from the social at any rate. Her enthusiasm was impressive but her eyes were empty too. She denied all the suggestions and allegations and pretended that she was, while not exactly a role model, nevertheless a good mother. When the social worker drove off, Pauline cuffed Ernest round the ears, gave him a stale jam sandwich to welcome him back and took the cork from another bottle of cheap red wine. By the next night the empty bottles were lined up in the kitchen and the white loaf was down to a crust. Ernest knew that an Ellie-day in a dress would soon follow the binge. He’d promised himself better than that. He squirmed quietly out of the house with the crust in his coat pocket, round the corner down the dark alley into town - to heaven knows what, but he was past caring.
World-weary at five, Ernest knew his mum would never change. He wandered up the High Street, dark but familiar, seeing no-one. Turning into a side street, he found an entrance leading to a storage area. Eventually he fell asleep, curled up amongst some boxes, insulated against the raw unforgiving cold. Gentle arms lifted him at daybreak as the cardboard pile was being hurled into the recycling lorry. Men arms, strong, hairy ones like his Dad’s. Ernest hated him too, and all his scary friends who came up to the flat when it was dark, and into his bedroom sometimes. Ernest screamed at the arms holding him tight, couldn’t listen as the men lifting the boxes away tried to help him. ‘Go away,’ he yelled, braver now.
This time, the lady at the social, the nice one with the same blue cardigan, listened to him closely. She smiled the same lovely smile. Then she said ‘Ernest, we’re going to help you now,’ and he tried out a smile too, though he wasn’t much good. The little boy spent his first cosy night for a long time with a lady in Chatham. She had a huge bath which she filled with soapy bubbles. He liked it with her but she told him that it could only be for four days until another foster home was available. That was the rule, she told him.
Ernest could never understand how it was that whenever he felt settled, he had to pack up and go somewhere else. It was making him very guarded, he couldn’t trust anyone; never wanted to make friends but he did know about rules. He just hoped that somewhere along the way he might be given a good home, something warm and good to eat, and never be made to wear a dress, not ever again.