What They Cannot Take

Today’s meltdown all started over a cup of coffee. One coffee plus a cake a day is about all my allowance will afford me – or hoard it up and buy something bigger – the way I managed to save for my phone. Anyway, I’d been out for my regular latte and donut and the coffee seemed a bit cold. So I complained and the woman said, ‘people like you should just have coffee at home’. Not pleasant, but on the other hand, not a reason for a complete meltdown. I left the stuff on the counter and walked out. I don’t even remember if I’d paid for it. And now I’ve been here in the closet of my room for the last several hours. ‘People like you should just have coffee at home.’ I should explain that it was the mention of home that got me. Because, you see, I have no home, and never had. Well, perhaps my single mother, whoever she was, had a home when she gave birth to me. I don’t know – although I may find out before too long. But no, otherwise it’s been eighteen years three months in care. With fits of depression and violent ‘outbursts’ over the years, I was classified as ‘difficult’ so never adopted. Instead I’ve moved from hostel to hostel and school to school, never really fitting in. The current hostel – which, having reached eighteen, will be my last – is typical of the style of place I’ve grown up in. Sunnyvale Residential Hostel – then someone added ‘onwards and upwards’ after its name. Whoever thought that one up has obviously not tried living here! Polished bare concrete floors (occasionally heated above TOTALLY FREEZING) – this is the only source of heating. Solid blockwork walls, rendered over in cement and painted. There are various pockmarks in the walls that have been filled in and painted over. No doubt the result of furniture smashed into the walls. The furniture itself – a metal desk and chair. The bed is built into the wall and has a heavy mattress covered in thick plastic. No bedside table, no lamps, no plug points. Anyone with a phone has to ask to re-charge it at reception or take it out somewhere that it can be plugged in. The bathroom has a stainless steel toilet and a stainless steel sink. Only the flush for the toilet and the push-action taps and water spout for the sink stick through into the room – everything else is carefully built in behind the painted concrete walls. The shower is similar and with just a kind of plastic panel around three sides. No shower door or curtain. The lights are recessed into the ceiling – flourescents covered over with thick plastic panels. They come on when you open the door and go off after a couple of minutes. No light switches. You have to keep opening and shutting the door to keep a light on in the evening. The single window to the bedroom has a solid plastic panel fitted across it, pockmarked with burns and scratches. Concentration camp chic. Everything designed to stop you trying to pull it apart and to try to stop you damaging yourself in some way. In short, the only difference between this and a prison is that I have a key – or at least, a swipe card, to open the main door of the room. Then there’s a storage area and a second door into the bedroom. The two door arrangement means that you hear very little of any shouting or screaming that may be going on in the corridors or other rooms. And this closet, behind another heavy door, is more or less completely silent. I’ve hung a little ornament in the closet, like something people might hang on the inside of a window – but I would not want to risk trying to hang it in front of the room window. It’s coloured glass and always seems to have a faint glow of colour to it, even when the closet seems to be pitch dark. Not sure where I got it – I wonder if it might even had belonged to my mother. So this ornament, and the silence, these are my companions, you might say. Silence is the only kind of comfort that soothes me – well, soothes me eventually. I’m finally done crying and see a little line of light in front of my eyes. It registers at last that this is daylight coming in under the door. I struggle to my feet and push the door open to step into the bedroom. I’d changed into my nightgown. I take this off now and stand in my ill-fitting underwear in front of the full-length mirror (a piece of stainless steel bolted to the wall). Even my underwear isn’t really ‘mine’ – all my clothes have been bought for me. But in only a few days’ time I should get my first proper money, backdated to my eighteenth birthday. Meanwhile I look at myself in the cold light of day. This is all I’ve got, I think – this body. But, I’m fit and well. It’s a start, isn’t it? The start of something much better and happier. Maybe one day that word ‘home’ will really mean something. Meanwhile, here I am, at home in my body.