Grandma and Mum didn’t get on, or why Mum was only able to deal with life at all when she was separated from reality by a haze of cannabis smoke. I do know that I was very difficult as a child. At least, that’s what Mum always told me, and I have to assume it was true, because I was certainly ‘difficult’ a few years later. Even so, maybe it’s something no child needs to be told, and certainly not repeatedly.
Growing up knowing that your mum is having a horrible time and hating every minute of her life is bad enough. Believing that it’s all your fault can provide the momentum that keeps the vicious circle of stress and bad behaviour spinning. It didn’t do much for my confidence or self-esteem either. What made it even worse was the fact that I can’t read or interpret people’s expressions and body language, which meant that, as a child, I simply accepted whatever I was told as fact. Taking everything literally can be confusing at any age, but particularly when you’re a child trying to make sense of the world for the first time. So, as far as I was concerned, I was difficult and I was the sole cause of all Mum’s frustrations, disappointments and anger. Otherwise, why would she have said I was?
Fortunately, after we moved out of Grandma’s place and into Cora’s other property, Mum made friends with a couple who lived in the flat downstairs and who enjoyed smoking weed almost as much as she did. The fortunate bit about it, for me, was the fact that they were happy to help her look after me. Someone who’s pretty much stoned from shortly after her first cup of tea in the morning until she falls asleep at night does need some help taking care of a two-year-old child and, as it turned out, three pot-heads are better than one.
It wasn’t long, though, before our flat had become a doss-house for numerous alcoholics, drug addicts and petty thieves. Having grown up in the 1960s and 1970s, Mum saw it as a sort of hippy commune, which, to her, was something positive. And it did have some positive aspects. But, even taking those into account, it wasn’t a good environment for any child to grow up in, for lots of reasons.
Despite all the pitfalls and potential dangers, however, everyone was very nice to me and I was never abused or neglected while we lived there. Mum’s friends might have been doing irrevocable damage to their own lives and mental health, but they were mostly more ‘peace and love’ than intent on kicking anyone’s head in. So the atmosphere was usually quite relaxed and there was rarely any aggression – as there might easily have been with so many dysfunctional, ultimately self-destructive people living together in one room.
Having so many people dossing in the flat also meant that on the many occasions when Mum was too stoned to remember she even had a child, there was always someone who was clear-headed enough to be able to put me in the bath, get me a drink from the kitchen or take me out to McDonald’s and buy me something to eat.
From the little I know about Mum’s life before I was old enough to understand things myself, I think she was already quite heavily involved with drugs by the time I was born. She told me once that she stopped taking speed and ecstasy when she was pregnant, but that she still smoked a lot of weed. I remembered that recently, when I read something about smoking weed in pregnancy possibly having a negative effect on the development of the baby’s brain and behaviour. I wonder what my life would be like now if I hadn’t grown up believing that all my behavioural problems – and the frustration and distress they caused Mum – were my fault.
After we had been living at the flat for a while, some of Mum’s friends started getting addicted to more serious drugs. I think it was because they were stealing to feed their habit and then got involved with petty criminals and drug dealers who had their own, financial, reasons for wanting to get them hooked on something harder than cannabis. I think that was why things began to take a darker turn at the flat. There was certainly a period Mum has never wanted to talk about. Although I was very young, I have a clear memory that must have been during that time of climbing up on to a man’s knee and not being able to wake him up, then hearing Mum telling someone later that he had overdosed and was actually dead in the chair.
I was too young to understand any of it. So I am not consciously aware of any bad memories associated with that time. Maybe I wasn’t always happy there though, because I tried to run away on at least one occasion. Apparently, I managed to drag my bicycle down the steps at the front of the house and on to the pavement without anyone noticing. Then I cycled to the corner shop and sat with the shopkeeper for a whole hour before he realised no one was coming for me and took me home.
The flat had one bedroom and a high-ceilinged living room that was always full of people sleeping, smoking and drinking. Everyone made a mess and no one ever cleaned it up, except to wash a plate or a cup on a strictly as-needed basis or to scrape up the occasional congealed mess of vomit after someone had been sick in a corner of the room. I didn’t have a bed of my own, so I slept in a drawer until I got too big for it, then in Mum’s bed or on the sofa in the living room, or wherever else I happened to be when I fell asleep amongst all the prostrate bodies.
I thought everyone lived like we did and just accepted it all as normal. I didn’t know anything else, and as none of Mum’s friends had children of their own, I didn’t have any other child’s life to compare with mine. In fact, I had just one friend at that time, a little girl called Judy, who lived a few doors away and was probably 11 years old when I was four. But as her mum was a serious drug addict, my life seemed pretty good compared with hers. Despite never having been looked after in any practical or emotional way herself, Judy took care of her little sister almost from the day she was born, and often fed and played with me too.
Eventually, when I was five, Cora got fed up with her flat being used as a doss-house and told Mum she would have to find somewhere else to live. And as Mum had recently started seeing a guy called Dan, we moved in with him.
The fact that Dan was an alcoholic would have been enough to make him an unsuitable stepfather for any child. But he took the place of the dad I didn’t have and was always good to me. (I always called him my stepdad, although he didn’t actually marry my mum.) Despite his drinking, he was still managing to hold down a job – as a sort of cowboy builder – when we moved in with him. So at least someone was bringing money into the household.
At Dan’s house, I had my own bed at last, in the basement. More importantly though, I had stepsiblings. Dan had two daughters, aged seven and eight, and three sons in their teens, although only the two younger ones ever stayed overnight. Even with my problems interpreting social interaction, it was clear to me right from the start that Dan’s children didn’t like me. Looking back on it now, I suppose they had enough troubles of their own, having to cope with being dumped at irregular intervals by one alcoholic parent on the other. So I must have seemed like a cuckoo in their already overcrowded nest. But I was too young to understand that at the time. I thought it was for purely personal reasons that they would push me down the stairs or wrap me in a blanket and sit on my head until I became hysterical with breathless panic. They may have disliked me too, of course. But, whatever their reasons for bullying and teasing me, I know I was easy prey.
When Dan was at work, Mum usually went out as well, leaving me in the house to be looked after by the other kids, who, when they weren’t tormenting me, took me shoplifting. I imagine all children want to be liked; I was the sort of child who wanted it desperately. And, like any other desperate need, that made me vulnerable. Add to that the fact that I was gullible, naive and totally lacking in social awareness, and you can understand why I was like putty in their hands.
When the adults were out and my stepbrothers took me into town, it was my job to distract the shop assistant in whichever shop they chose as their target for the day. Having been well instructed and rehearsed, I would peer over the counter and say, in my sweetest, most innocent-sounding voice, ‘Excuse me. Can you help me, please? I want to buy a present for my mum.’ Then, while the shop assistant’s attention was focused on helping me, my stepbrothers would be helping themselves to whatever they wanted off the shelves. Surprisingly, perhaps, we didn’t ever get
