Leaving Home
Image of a spilt bottle of pills, with piece title and author name plus Unapologetic logo which has a drawing of a frustrated woman holding her finger to her temple
By Barbara Bridger
All these pieces of paper, some have my name on. Sometimes they call me Adele Janis Bailey, sometimes Bailey Adele. One is signed by the school's attendance officer and another by Sarah O'Donnell. Sarah was a social worker and, though I can't remember her, she wrote about me and the twins and she had words to describe what was wrong with my mother. Sarah’s notes describe Mam as ‘suffering from a depressive illness', but, as a child, I only knew my mother wasn't there, except in body. That was there alright, solid and loving, but her mind was elsewhere. It had drifted away. I knew, because she couldn't look at me. She looked past me, through me, to something.... beyond. Something.... what? What is it Mam?
Couldn't say, just pressed my fingers against her forehead. I could feel my nails digging into her skin as she tried…. I think she was trying to keep me in her mind. She would hold on to me, as if I was a life raft, or a shield, as if I could somehow come between her and the demons she could see, there, lurking in the corners of our shabby room. I watched her eyes racing round the walls and I walked round the room and tried to find what she had lost. Mam had lost her reason somewhere in that old council house and no-one could stop her looking for it. My brothers and I played 'hunt the reason', but it had gone and she had gone with it and we were left alone.
I think I was about thirteen and I don't know why we were there that day, on the beach, the little ones just playing for once, didn't need me to look after. I was lying close to Mam and she was very still. My mother seemed calm that day, not talking, just listening to the sea. I remember I was so happy, I wanted us to stay like that forever, but then Mam touched my arm and I rolled over onto my stomach and saw it on the towel. She brushed off the sand and said, 'There he is.'
I wondered who? Who was this man in the creased photograph, smiling like some film star? 'Your dad,' she said.
'Is he?' Why is he? Smiling, like a good man whose life is easy for him. A handsome man, 'Yes, good looking,' Mam said, ‘your father was a beautiful man, but men shouldn't be beautiful should they?'
'Shouldn't they?' I said, wondering why not. Mam just sighed and started to put the photograph away.
'Don't, don't put it away, he looks so perfect.' Mam looked past me, towards the sea and said, 'Photographs lie Adele.' And you know what? They do. Photographs lie, because in that photograph, my dad didn’t just look handsome, he looked strong, as if you could rely on him, but you couldn’t, Mam couldn’t, we couldn’t. He left us all, he left me and Mam and the little ones. The twins were only six months. 'Why did he do that?’ I asked Mam and she said, 'There were good reasons Adele,' and then she smiled, so she must have believed it, but I didn't, because she'd already told me, photographs lie.
What I'm going to say now, may seem strange, but it’s important and it explains what happened next. You need to understand that the only thing, the one thing that stayed steady in my life, was school. Through all the problems and the worry, I hardly missed a day. I loved it because, when I got to school, I could leave things behind, with my coat, in the cloakroom. I just took the best bits of me into the classroom and there I let them grow and flower. They bloomed so beautifully that everyone around me could see and admire the colours.
Jilly was my best friend at school and one day she said she had something to show me. She took me to the gap in the hedge. It was our secret place and there, in amongst the dried up twigs and trapped sweet papers, she got out the tenner. It was ripped almost halfway across, but Jilly said, 'It's still got the numbers on, so it's still legal tender.' She was pleased with that. She grinned and said, 'Anyway, I'm gonna stick it with sellotape.'
'What's the story?’
'I pinched it,' she said, 'from Eddie.' Now Eddie was Jilly's brother. He was nineteen and thuggish with it, so I didn't fancy her chances, but Jilly said, 'He was drunk, asleep on the settee, it was hanging out of his pocket. He'll think he dropped it, or spent it, he won't remember.' She said, 'It's for tonight, for us, for the fair.'
I panicked, I said, 'I can't, I've got to go home.' She said, 'Alright.' Just like that and then she started to look over my shoulder, so I could tell she was already thinking who else to ask. That's when I knew how much I wanted to go, so I said, 'I've never been to a fair.' This got Jilly's attention back.
She said, 'What never?'
'Never.'
'On holiday? Didn't you go then?'
'No, we went to the beach mostly, for the twins to play.'
'But in the evening?'
'The twins went to bed, so me and Mam watched telly.'
'On holiday?'
'Don't keep on Jilly.'
'So you're coming then?'
'Alright, just for a bit.'
It was getting dark by the time we got there. The sky was red with dark grey clouds and I kept looking up at it as we walked across the field towards the throbbing music and lights. Suddenly I felt as if I could walk on forever into the darkening sky. I was thinking about Mam and the twins, but I wasn't worrying about them. Suddenly it was possible to do that and I knew I could go to the fair, or keep walking, or do anything. For a moment, I couldn't imagine what worry was like. I just felt excited and I kept laughing until Jilly said, 'Shut up Del, it’s only a fair.'
The waltzers were the best. The way I had to hang on to avoid slinging right over and crushing Jilly, the way I couldn't completely stop myself. The first time I did it, Jilly threw her head back and screamed very loudly. I was shocked, but then we were slung the other way and she was pressed up against me and so I tried it. I let out a bit of a shriek and we both laughed.
It was then I noticed him. He was leaping from one waltzer to another. One minute he was swinging one handed from the pole and the next he was suspended in mid air, arms above his head. As he landed on the back of the next waltzer, he braced his legs and holding on to the pole with both arms, used his weight to push it to one side, making it walz. All throughout, he maintained a very professional air, as if this leaping dance of his was very important, but at the same time, he was completely casual about how skilful and dangerous it was.
I loved that, I couldn't stop watching him. I felt hypnotised by his dipping bum, his flinging arms, his long snaking hair and his dark, weathered face that pushed forwards like a dog's when it runs.
I willed him to come to us and of course he did. Jilly screamed, but when I looked up, he was looking down at me. He bent his legs ready to jump, then leaned over, so his head was next to mine and whispered, 'Fuck you,' softly, as if it was something nice. I could smell his sweet/sour beer breath and something else, something badgery, although I've never been near one, a stink of straw and dirt and smoke together.
Jilly and I went on all the rides and we had pink candy floss and popcorn. We were just circling the booths for the last time, when I felt them walking a few steps behind us, like two dark shadows. I wanted to go home then, but the other one already had his arm round Jilly. I was left with the badger. He looked shorter now I wasn't looking up at him from the whirling booths of the walzer and, when I remember now, it seems to me that Jilly and I were herded out into that field like a couple of animals. As we stepped on the dewy grass, I looked back and the lights of the fair were already in the distance. When I looked round, Jilly had gone. I thought I heard her laugh over there to my right, but I couldn't be sure. The sky was dark purple now with the clouds like pulled threads of grey raveled-up knitting.
Suddenly he was on top of me, his thin legs as hard as iron bars. His hands circled my wrists and he lifted my arms above my head and held them there, forcing me down into the soft earth, pushing me into the dirt. I turned my head into the musty damp grass trying desperately to get away from his sour, beer breath and his badgery stink.
It was about three miles home. I had to cross town and I'd lost a shoe. When I put my hand up to open the door, I noticed my palm was caked with mud and, when I got in, the house was dark. Only the television flickered in the corner.
I put a light on and saw Mam stretched out on the settee with her head hanging down and to one side. I went over and shook her and started to tell her. I was on my knees crying into her shoulder and pulling her towards me, when one leg fell down off the seat. The heel hit the floor with a heavy thud. Then I felt something wet on my cheek. A thread of spit was hanging out of the corner of Mam's mouth and, as I looked at her, I saw her eyes were not properly closed and you could see the empty whites showing under her lashes.
I stopped crying, sat back on my heels and tried to lift her head and shoulders up and away from me, but instead she slumped further, following her leg, sliding off the settee and falling on top of me. At the same time an empty pill bottle slid off her lap and I knocked over a couple of bottles that had been left on the floor. The last thing I remember is scrabbling at her, trying to get her off me and feeling the bottles grinding into my back.
It was months before they let me go home and, when I did, Mam was different. She looked different, she even smelt different. You had to watch yourself, because she looked at you properly and listened to what you said. She was talking too, telling me how they’d helped her at the hospital. How it was a chemical imbalance. How she had these pills to take. How the twins were coming home. How it hadn't been her fault, but she was sorry anyway. She told me all this and waited for my reply. She pinched my arm and said I looked healthy, that I’d put on weight, but I couldn't speak because a big secret was in my throat and filling my mouth.
So you see, I had to leave home. I couldn't stay, because who knows whether Mam's pills were strong enough to cope with my secret. I couldn't take the risk could I? There was nothing for it. I had to leave home. I had to go and soon.
1980
“Barbara Bridger uses she/her pronouns”
