Wallpaper

My mother straps me into the dreaded potty chair. I see her face big as the moon frowning with concentration, her hands busy. "You stay there," she says, "until you have been a good girl."

She leaves me in the bedroom and goes about her business tidying my brother's room. But I don't want to just sit here. The chair has wheels so if I shuffle my feet it moves with me. I can see my escape route now I'm near the top of the stairs. It looks a long way down but I would rather be there than up here.

Mother reappears, her arms full of sheets. When she sees where I am she shouts my name, drops the sheets and grabs hold of the chair just in time to stop me tumbling downwards. She unstraps me, scoops me out and checks the contents of the potty. Nothing.

"You haven't been a good girl have you?" She is not pleased but I don't really understand what I have, or haven't done, wrong. "Right, you go in your cot and stay there."

She heaves me into my high-barred prison and closes the door. I scream for a while but she doesn't come so I pull myself up and study the wall. I scratch at the paper where there is a little loose corner and I pull and tear and it feels good and soon my cot fills up with bits of paper in all different sizes and shapes. I study the newly-patterned wall. Bare in parts and coloured in others. I like the way it looks and I like watching how the paper strips drift into my cot in slow motion as my fingers release them. My legs are tired now so I flop onto my bottom and begin playing with the paper pieces, gathering handfuls, throwing them in the air and watching where they fall. When one piece lands on my head I chuckle.

Until I get bored with this game and start crying for my mother again, this is all there is. Just me and the bedroom wallpaper.