Mum came with me that first day, but she didn’t stay.
“Please be a good girl and you’ll be home in no time,” she said.
I grabbed her arm and begged her not to leave.
“This is only because we love you,” she said.
Parents always say things like that—like “this is going to hurt me more than it hurts you,” but how can that be true?
That night I heard them lock my door. And every couple of hours someone came along the corridor and looked through a hatch. I couldn’t turn the lights off even if I wanted to. The next day I kicked off at one of the nurses and she threatened to handcuff me to the bed. I didn’t believe her, until she waved the cuffs in front of my face.
That day they gave me all these different tests, showing me pictures and shapes. Some of them were just images flashed onto a computer screen and I had to press either a red or green button depending on how the picture made me feel. I assumed the red was supposed to symbolize anger and green was calm. I tried to throw the results out by pressing red on the pictures of puppies and green on the pictures of riots.
My therapist was called Vernon and he asked me if I ever touched myself. I tried to think of what Tash would say. “Constantly. I use cucumbers, candlesticks, anything I can get my hands on.”
There were group sessions with other girls. Never boys. Some of them were anorexics or bulimics or were suicidal or into cutting themselves. The therapists were never specific in the group sessions. It was all about “feelings.”
“You want my feelings—I feel pissed off about being in here,” I told them. That lost me TV privileges for the evening. I told them I didn’t give a fuck about the TV, which lost me dessert privileges for a week. I lost a lot of privileges. I can’t even tell you what they were because I lost them before I had the privilege.
They gave us each a work roster. We had to set the tables or clear away dishes, or help in the kitchens. Our beds had to be made and rooms tidied. It was like being at boarding school because even our socks had to be folded in a certain way.
“Don’t knot them together—fold them with a smile,” the matron said.
“Mine are smiling like the crack of your arse,” I told her.
That lost me games room privileges.
At least they let me write. It was encouraged. I had to write lists of things I liked about myself and the things I disliked. The way I looked, for instance; my swearing; my temper; the fact that I’m crap at math…
I was allowed to make one phone call every week to Mum and Dad. I begged them. I cried. I tried to guilt them into letting me come home. My father’s voice would start to shake, but Mum would grab the phone from him before he broke down.
I didn’t have a mobile. I couldn’t talk to Tash or find out what had happened to Callum or Aiden. Days stretched into weeks. A month. Two. There were more therapy sessions and lectures on drugs and alcohol.
My parents thought I was a drug addict—or well on the way. I was “heading down the slippery slope,” they said.
After eight weeks they let me go home. They didn’t tell me until half an hour before my parents arrived. Even then, the matron just said, “Pack your suitcase.”
Mum came to the reception room. Dad stayed outside, standing by the car. That was it. We drove home in silence and I went to my room. I looked at my computer and at my mobile. I didn’t call Tash. I didn’t email anyone. I pulled out all my old toys and played with them. My Barbie dolls. I combed their hair and changed their clothes. I hadn’t done that in years.
Miss McCrudden, my English teacher—the one who loves my stories—always told me not to have passive characters when I wrote. They have to make things happen, she said, not just have things happen to them.
That’s when I realized what she meant. I was a passive character in my own life, letting things happen instead of forging my own way, finding my own path.
Not any more, I decided, never again.
23
The caretaker is easy enough to track down. He hasn’t covered his tracks or crawled into a deep hole. Nobody is far from the surface these days—not with emails and Facebook pages and Twitter accounts. They leave an electronic trail behind like mouse droppings in cyberspace.
Nelson Stokes works as a street cleaner for Oxford City Council, pushing a barrow in the pedestrianized precincts and laneways too narrow for the machines.
Thirty-eight, with long hair and an angular face, he’s wearing a plaid wool shirt and a reflective jacket. His barrow is propped outside a shoe shop while he rolls himself a cigarette. Inside the shop, a young salesgirl is standing on tiptoes, putting boxes on a high shelf. Stokes is watching her thighs and rump flexing beneath her short skirt.