Play School (I.P.)

He thinks pink curtains brighten the place up a bit, and there’s no denying they’re better than nothing, but what use are any curtains without a window. I can’t wake up in the morning and throw the curtains open to see what the weather is like. Or open the window to let the breeze run through my hair as the blackbird sings his heart out. Sometimes after he’s gone I stand at those curtains, look at the red bricks where a window should be and cry my eyes out. It’s the thought of a real window that keeps me going. Windows remind me of watching Play School when I was just a kid.

“Mum! Mum! Mum!” I used to shout.

“Yes, princess.”

“C-c-c-come a-and have a l-l-l-look th-th-th-through th-the s-s-square wi-wi-window. Th-they’re m-m-m-making swe-sweets at a swe-sweet f-f-f-factory.”

“I’ll be there in minute, sweetheart. I’m just having a cup of coffee and a cigarette.”

Sometimes she was too late. But I didn’t mind. She would sit and let me tell her all about it as best I could.

Speaking was never my strong point. Some called me a dummy. But dummies can’t talk at all. It’s not that I couldn’t speak. I just stuttered really badly whenever other people were there and sometimes I couldn’t get the words out at all. My mum told me not to worry about it; I would grow out of it and mature into a beautiful swan just like the ugly duckling and maybe even end up being a wonderful singer like Shirley Bassey. I loved listening to my mum sing. She ‘d been a club singer before she’d had me and she told me she could’ve been on Top of the Pops if she hadn’t drank so much.

After mum died I had no one to talk to so I didn’t talk to anyone. In the end I was sent away to a special school in the country but I never learned anything there apart from how to protect my face from punches. I spent most of the time just looking out the window and dreaming about my mum. At the age of sixteen I was told to leave and the social services found me a place to stay. After that I never heard from them again.

I could go to the shops myself and sometimes squeeze out a please or thank you but usually I just nodded in case the words never came out. Most of the local shopkeepers got to know me. I often heard them telling other customers that I wasn’t a real spazzie; I was just a bit slow.

When he first came along I hadn’t really spoken to anyone for almost four years. He was a bit different from all the boys I’d met at my special school and a lot older too. He always seemed to know what I was thinking without me having to say anything. Not long after our first meeting we both stopped going to the Cranhill Disabled Group lunches every Thursday. We never really fitted in with those that had real disabilities. Most of the others were in wheelchairs or had a support worker with them. He didn’t seem to have anything wrong with him at all apart from a glass eye which he used to take out and clean just to wind-up the regulars.

He told me he loved me with all his heart and wanted to spend the rest of his life with me but I never really understood what he was talking about. No one could ever love me apart from my mum. Then one day he bought me a silver ring and flowers from Asda and asked me to marry him. We’d only known each other for about three months but I’d seen pictures of weddings and wanted to wear one of those lovely white dresses. I hoped the veil would cover up my face so that no one could see how ugly I was.

I never got a chance to try on any of the dresses I saw in the magazines. We went to visit an uncle of his one night in Shettleston and I ended up drunk after having two glasses of wine. When I woke up I was lying naked on top of an old mattress that smelled of piss and sick. I haven’t left this room since. Not even when the babies came.

He took them away from me every time saying something about knowing a man who knew what to do in these situations. I don’t even know where they all kept coming from. He seemed to know more about them than me. At least I stopped bleeding every month but that didn’t stop him from hitting me. And it didn’t stop him bringing round other men either.

One night after about the fourth or fifth baby I asked if I could keep one for myself in the future. I tried to tell him I was lonely sometimes being locked away for so long while he was out. That was the first time he ever burned me. Until then he’d only punched, kicked and head-butted me. But on that occasion he sat on top of me and smoked his cigarette before burning both my breasts and calling them an extra pair of nipples

After he’s come to my room and done his thing he always has a cigarette and sometimes offers me one, but my mum told me I shouldn’t smoke, so I tell him no. It’s the only time he accepts no as an answer.

So now I can only wonder if any of my babies ever get the chance to watch Play School and, if they do, what they see through each of the windows. I also wonder if they got a new mum who liked her coffee and cigarettes as much as my mum, because if they did, then they would be very lucky children indeed. And maybe they’ll even grow up to be beautiful swans. I’d love my mum to still be here. She would have another cup of coffee and another cigarette, and I would have someone to talk to.