Page 6 of Statistically Speaking
I try to keep that Margie-inspired smile alive as I run up my fourteen stairs and into my flat. Today is the first day of class at the school where I teach. Some of my new students will only be sixteen years old—babies who think they’re all grown up. The same age I was when I gave birth.
The same age I was when I first met Geoff with a G, the hospital social worker. The same age I was when I said goodbye on the same day I promised I was forever hers.
I go over to my phone, put my Get Up and Go playlist on shuffle, hoping to knock myself out of the bittersweet mood that is haranguing me. No such luck—it hits on The Clash with “Should I Stay or Should I Go.” The story of my life, and yet another random reminder of the past. I only startedlistening to The Clash because of Geoff—the first time I met him, I noticed he was wearing a band badge on his jacket lapel, as if he was trying to cling to the interesting life he had outside the confines of his work.
I’d been sent to the emergency room by my school after fainting and coming to on the classroom floor, the teacher looking concerned and one of the boys whispering that he could see my knickers.
I still vividly remember it now, that entire day. Telling the nurse who was assessing me that there was absolutely positively no way I could be pregnant, outraged that she was making this assumption based on prejudice—that because I was a foster kid, I’d become yet another statistic. That I would be too dumb to even realize if I was pregnant. The sense of horror when it turned out that her assumptions were based on years of medical experience, not on prejudice. That she was right, that I was predictable as well as stupid.
I’d had the urge to tell her that I’d only done it once, that we’d used what was clearly the world’s crappiest condom, that my periods were always unreliable, that I thought I was putting on weight because I was eating too many packs of Wotsits to cope with exam stress... I said nothing, of course. I’d already learned by that point in life that staying quiet was usually the best course of action.
I was already past the date when “other options” would be available, so I was sent to Geoff. I remember sitting there in front of him, counting the tiles of linoleum on the floor, noting how many pencils and pens he had on his desk. The first thing I asked was whether I’d be able to do my history exams, which I immediately regretted, as it implied I wasn’t taking in the full gravity of the situation.
I knew I was under scrutiny—I always was, and I hated it, the way my life was laid bare for the alphabet soup of concerned professionals to poke and prod at. I’d had people ticking boxes about my welfare for a long time, and as my mother was not a woman who was on intimate terms with the real world, I was more aware than other kids of how easy it was to be judged and found wanting.
He was kind, though, Geoff; he promised me he’d do his best to make sure I managed all my exams. He made me a mug of tea, and talked to me about specialist accommodation, and asked whether my mother would be able to help. I snapped at him that she was “off her head,” and was washed with a sense of shame for saying that.
She wasn’t off her head. Technically, she suffered from rapid-cycling bipolar disorder. I can look back on it more clearly now as an adult—but then it was hard. Impossibly hard. She spun from being hyper and happy to being paralyzed by depression, combined with drug use and a whole lot of drinking, which started when she was much younger and had no idea about bipolar and just needed something to make all the bad stuff go away. Sometimes I felt sorry for her; sometimes I just detested her. But, pretty much, I always avoided being around her when I needed help, because I was scared of stressing her out. Stressing her out never ended well. She’d done her best, but I was in care because everyone thought it was better for me—including her, and including me.
Geoff didn’t react to the anger—he was always good like that. Now, as an adult, sitting here on the edge of my bed and getting ready to head out into a fresh day of doing a job I love, I can calm myself. I can surround myself with a sense of security, with privacy, with protection. Back then, I wasone enormous exposed nerve. I sat there in his cubbyhole office, my hands against my belly, still shocked by the idea of there being another living creature in there. I didn’t know if I saw it as a parasite, or a cool and beautiful thing I’d done by accident. Part of me wanted to imagine that I’d create my own little family, that I could love it so much that nothing else would matter—that I would never feel alone again.
Part of me thought it’d be a disaster, that I’d pass on all my own messed-up genes and I’d end up resenting us both, and she’d end up hating me.
It was when Geoff started talking about mother-and-baby placements and family support teams and doing a pre-birth assessment that reality started to take hold. I was so sick of being defined by other people back then, by their assessments and acronyms: I was a “looked after child,” I had an “independent reviewing officer,” and I was surrounded by jargon—at risk, safeguarding issues, lack of suitable care within the parental environment. I felt like I was nothing but a giant file, and I didn’t want that for any child of mine.
I felt everything closing in on me, my whole life mapped out and swallowed up by this one mistake. I knew I could love a baby—but I also knew that my mother loved me, and in the real world, babies need more than love.
I look around at my lovely little flat, with its pretty balcony, and views across the sea, and nice schools nearby. I think about my job, and my perfectly adequate bank balance, and the sense of stability I’ve worked hard to build. If I’d had any of this back then, things would have been different—but, of course, I didn’t, and as I haven’t yet invented a time machine, there is little point imagining that alternate universe.
I close down my thoughts and, instead, open my sock drawer. I have almost an hour before I need to be at work, and nothing calms my mind more than counting socks.
This is a new academic year. It is the year when I could be her teacher. It is the year when I need to start letting go.
Chapter 4
Two Engagements, Eighty-Two Students, and One Bringer of Joy
I carry a little photo around with me in my purse, folded up and creased and faded now. It’s from over a decade ago, when I graduated from university with a degree in history and education.
These days, it looks like an exhibit from a museum, an actual photo on an actual piece of photo paper, and I have taken copies of it digitally as well, in case my bag is ever hit by lightning or stolen by a magpie or, you know, I just lose it.
It is only a photo, a moment frozen in time, but for me it is an essential part of the puzzle of self: I am smiling, a real smile full of joy and, that rarest of beasts, pride. I had achieved what nobody expected me to achieve, including myself, and it felt good. I was wearing that cap and that gown with complete confidence because I knew I’d earned them.
At one side of me is Geoff with a G, grinning almost as much as I am. I stayed in touch with him for a few years after Baby was born, even though we both knew it was maybe a bit weird, and certainly not what he would normally do. But Geoff, I realized then and even more so now, was not normal—he was much better than that. He stuck by mefor as long as I needed him; he encouraged me; he was my cheerleader. But, thankfully, without the little skirt and pom-poms.
On the other side of me is my mother, much shorter than me, made entirely of bone and sharp angles. Her hair is scraped from her face into a ponytail. She is attempting to smile, but simply looks frightened. One of her hands is blurred, and I remember her habit of constantly clenching and unclenching her fists, the way she used to dig her nails into the skin of her palm when she felt unstable. A patchwork of tiny half-moon-shaped scars was left on the creased flesh, a testament to her struggles.
She had been in prison for six months before my graduation—not her first time, but the longest spell, and it had clearly taken its toll on her in many different ways.
That day was the last time I ever saw my mum in person, which was more her choice than mine. We spoke a few times afterward, but I always got the feeling that I worried her, unsettled her somehow. I reminded her of things she didn’t want to be reminded of. It’s complicated, and sad, and sometimes I think we should start again, but I’m not even sure where she’s living now. The last time I tried to call her, the line was dead. Her illness and her addictions were so twisted up in each other that things got tougher as I got older. It was as though once she knew I was safe with Audrey, she could give herself permission to stop fighting her demons and descend into her own personal hell. I always sensed that she was relieved to stop even trying, to stop failing, to stop despairing and just to accept who and what she was.
Working with teenagers now, I see the importance of support—of having someone at home who makes sure thatthe clothes are washed and the food is on the table and the Wi-Fi works; that all the niggling problems of being are taken care of. The million mundane things that go on in the background of a child’s existence to ensure that they have the luxury of a boring life—the things that allow them to come into school refreshed and ready to learn.
Not everyone is lucky enough to have that, and it doesn’t always come in the traditional shapes and sizes. For some, it isn’t a mum or a dad; it’s a granny, an aunt, a sibling, or even the parents of their friends.
For me, it came from a variety of places—and I couldn’t have gotten my degree without it. Without teachers who believed in me, without Geoff, without Audrey, whom I lived with from the age of fourteen until I was eighteen, without my case worker. I got the feeling I was something of a gold star for them—a planned and completely unmessy adoption, getting through all my exams while I was the size of a house, staying in education, going to university. Afterward, I used my leaving care grant to set myself up in my own small flat and became a model citizen. I know it wasn’t the usual narrative they had to deal with.
I was proud of myself, but I also knew I owed a lot to others—and that’s one of the reasons this small, creased photograph is so precious to me. It reminds me of what I have gained, what I have lost, what I have managed to become and how. It also reminds me of why I do what I do.
