Heaven Eyes (2 page)

“He loved me,” he said. “He must have.”

He showed the blue words his father had tattooed on his arm before he went away.

“See?” he said. “He was worried about me, even though he knew he was going away.”

Then Mouse just cried and cried.

As for me, I didn’t need to play. Maureen said I was stubborn, that if I didn’t change, my heart would harden and I’d be filled with bitterness. Once, when I refused to share my memories with her, her eyes glared, her smile disappeared, her voice sharpened. She told me that if I didn’t change my ways I’d turn out just like my mum. And I didn’t want that, did I?

“Yes!” I spat at her. “Yes! Yes!”

I yelled that she knew nothing about my mum, nothing about her strength and tenderness. I ran out of the room, out of the house, out of St. Gabriel’s. Behind me I heard Maureen at the gate, calling my name, but I took no notice of her. I ran to the river and sat there among the ruins of the past and watched the water flowing toward the sea. I burned with happiness. Despite everything, I burned with happiness. Yes, I know about pain and darkness. Sometimes I go so far into the darkness that I’m scared I’ll not get out again. But I do get out, and I do begin to burn again. I don’t need to imagine my life. I don’t need the stupid circle times. I don’t need to build a stupid Life Story book. My head is filled with memories, is always filled with memories. I see my mum and me in our little house in
St. Gabriel’s. I feel her touch on my skin. I feel her breath on my face. I smell her perfume. I hear her whispering in my ear. I have my little cardboard treasure box, and at any moment I can bring my lovely mum back to me.

I
T’S EASY TO RUN AWAY
from Whitegates. Most of us have done it at one time or another. They’re always telling us that it’s not a prison here, that it’s not their job to lock us up. You just sling your backpack on your back and stroll out and say you’re off for a picnic or something. Mostly we get a few hours of freedom, till hunger or a wet night drives us back again. Sometimes somebody manages a week or more away till they’re brought back in a police car, and they wander back inside half-starved, with bags under their eyes, and with a big grin on their face.

My running-away friend was always January Carr. We’d gone off a couple of times together. Once we spent the night across the river in Norton. We bedded down at the back of a restaurant in cardboard boxes, and ate
cold pizzas we found in a trash bag there. Another time we wandered right up the riverbank toward the moors and slept on the heather beneath the glittering sky. We saw shooting stars and talked about the universe going on for ever and ever. We talked about wandering for years like this, two vagabonds, free as the beasts and birds, keeping away from the city, drinking from streams, feeding on rabbits and berries. No reason why we couldn’t, we whispered to each other. No reason why. We woke next morning with a police dog licking our faces, and a policeman standing there with his hands on his hips, shaking his head.

“Come on,” he said. “Come on, silly kids.”

We use different methods for getting away. Usually it’s just walking. But there’s hitchhiking as well. There are buses and trains. There are cars that can be taken and driven till the tank’s empty. January’s new idea was different, though. Nobody had tried going off on a raft before. Only crazy January could come up with something like that.

He came into my room one morning. He crouched in the doorway, grinning.

“A raft?” I said.

“Aye, a raft. We’ll sail away on the river and leave all this behind.”

I laughed. I thought of the dark deep river, the powerful currents, the danger.

“You’re mad,” I said.

His eyes were wide and excited.

“It’s beautiful,” he said. “I swiped some doors from one of the old warehouses. I nailed them to planks.” He giggled. “I’ve even varnished the bloody thing.”

“You’re mad,” I said again. “It’ll sink. We’ll drown.”

“Drown! Where’s your spirit of adventure?”

I sighed. I could already feel the river running underneath me, pulling me away.

“Imagine it,” he whispered. “Just me and you and the raft and the river. Freedom, Erin. Freedom.”

I imagined it: the moon shining down on us, the city’s lights shining on the banks, the water running through my fingers.

“Wow,” I whispered. “Wow!”

“Aye,” he said. “Just imagine, eh?”

Then Maureen shouted from downstairs.

“January! January Carr! I hope that’s not you I can hear in Erin’s room.”

He stood up quietly.

“Just you and me, Erin, sailing away to freedom. Just imagine.”

He winked and tiptoed out.

For weeks afterward, I felt the river flowing beneath me. I imagined the rocking raft. I dreamed of the journey. I knew I’d go with him.

T
HE
F
RIDAY WE LEFT
, we had circle time again. Maureen had this green silky dress on with white shoes and she held a hand against her face and looked fondly at us all. Fat Kev and Skinny Stu were strolling at our backs. Jan kept grinning when I caught his eye.

Maureen gave us the usual rubbish: how this was a safe place, how we all cared for each other, how we could say anything we wanted and it would go no further.

“We want you to be frightened of nothing,” she said. “We want to heal your scars and wash your cares away.”

She made us do some visualizing stuff. We had to imagine we were in a warm dark place, floating in warm dark water. Our minds and bodies were still. There was no future, no past, no trouble. The water
that I imagined was icy cold and running fast. Moonlight shining down, the raft spinning and rolling. Freedom. Freedom. I opened my eyes and grinned at Jan and saw the river and the moonlight in his eyes as well. Then Maureen told us to bring our minds into the room again. Straightaway she started going on about trouble, about damage, about unhappiness. I looked around at all the faces. I looked at Maxie Ross chewing his fingers and hoping desperately she wouldn’t start on him. I looked at Fingers Wyatt, at her beautiful green eyes, at the scalds and burn marks on her throat. I looked at Wilson Cairns, so fat that his hips spilled down over his chair, who sat motionless, staring blankly at the wall. Wilson. He was one of the few who never tried to run away. He was so fat he could hardly walk, never mind run. He came here carrying a tiny suitcase, a bag of clay and some modeling tools. It was said that he’d almost died at the hands of his parents. Whitegates was a place of safety for him, a place where he could dream, work with his clay and imagine his own astounding world. Maureen had long since given up trying to get him to talk during circle time. He wore thick bottle-bottom glasses that made his eyes look huge. He hardly spoke at all, even to us. But it wasn’t shyness or fear. Behind his glasses, beneath his fat, Wilson roamed the limits of his imagination, and he worked magic with his pudgy fingers. When he spoke at all, it was in an effort to make us
understand his strange adventures, to make us see his magic. I looked at timid Mouse and at January lounging with his legs splayed, chewing gum, sighing like he was just bored with everything. I looked at everyone and thought of the great times we had together: whispering in somebody’s room at midnight, eating pilfered sweets and smoking pilfered cigarettes and swigging pilfered sherry; running riot down by the river in the old warehouses; sitting at dusk in the concrete garden together, whispering our real secrets, speaking our real dreams. We were so different when we were gathered in here like this. It was like Maureen knew nothing about us. Nothing.

“You look anxious today, Sean,” she said.

Sean was the real name of Mouse. He jumped like a scared cat. He blushed, and tears came to his eyes.

“What’s troubling you? Would you like to share it with us?”

“N-nothing,” he said. “N-n-nothing’s wrong.”

She leaned forward and smiled.

“Sean. We know all about your troubles. Come on, tell Maureen and your friends. Is it your dad again?”

Poor Mouse. Such an innocent. I’d told him lots of times: Don’t tell her the truth. Make something up. Anything. Tell them a pack of lies, Mouse. But he fell for it every time, and there he was again, trembling and
sobbing and showing the tattooed words on his arm again while Maureen cooed and pulled the tale out of him and Fat Kev stood behind him scratching his big belly.

“Leave him alone,” I said.

“Pardon?” said Maureen.

“She said leave him alone,” said Skinny Stu from behind me.

Maureen tilted her head and gently clicked her tongue. She composed a smile for me.

“You’re angry today, aren’t you, Erin?” she said.

“No, I’m not. Just leave him alone.”

I looked through the wide window at the buildings outside. The sun was pouring down. I could just see the river sparkling beyond the redbrick houses and the blocks of apartments. I felt the varnished raft beneath my fingers. I tasted sour river water on my tongue. Maureen was watching me.

“You have such a faraway look, Erin,” she said. “Tell us where you are.”

“Nowhere.”

She clicked her tongue.

“I do wish you’d cooperate,” she said.

“Do you?”

“We’re only trying to help you all.”

I shrugged. I smelled the sea on the icy breeze. I closed my eyes. Freedom. Freedom.

“You have to understand,” I heard her say. “Children like yourselves …”

“What do you mean?” I said. “Children like ourselves?”

I opened my eyes. She looked sadly at me. She sighed.

“You know what I mean, Erin. Children who have difficulties in their lives. Children without the benefits and advantages that others take for granted. Children who will have to struggle always to keep up. Children who through no fault of their own …”

She dabbed her lips with her handkerchief.

“It gives me no pleasure to say so,” she murmured. “But you are children who will never be the world’s favorites.”

I felt my body rocking on the raft. I stared at all the faces.

“Look at us,” I said. “There’s nothing wrong with us. We can do anything we want to do. Anything.”

Maureen smiled. You could see what she was thinking: Damaged child, wild mind, thinks she can do anything but she’ll come to nothing. Nothing. Just like that useless mother of hers.

“We’re thinking of your happiness,” she said. I felt the river spray on my face.

“But I
am
happy,” I murmured.

“Pardon?”

“She says she’s happy,” said Skinny Stu.

Maureen pursed her lips. She glared. I saw it in her eyes: How can you be happy? How can you be?

Then she waved her hand bitterly in the air.

“Session over,” she said. “We’ll try again tomorrow when we’re all in a better frame of mind.”

We filed out of the room. As I left, Maureen took my arm.

“Erin,” she said.

“What?”

“Why do you oppose me so much? What’s wrong with you?”

I clicked my tongue.

“What’s wrong with
you
, you mean.”

She pursed her lips.

“You seem so hard sometimes,” she said. “I don’t know how to talk to you.”