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drowning.

She drank mo re and more on days like these. W e would be sent to our rooms with a cup of warm milk or chocolate (laced with small amounts of sleeping pills) to ensure we would not wake up during the night. A gain our doors would be bolted tight , and each of our bedrooms had a potty in the corner should we wake up and be in need of the toilet. Jake , being a little younger than me , around six at the time, had taken to rocking himself to sleep as he too was frightened of the dark . I t was his only way of coping . Then our mother would put on her makeup , get dressed , and leave us home all alone while she went out for the evening.

I hated it when she came back d runk in the middle of the night. She deliberately start ed banging on my door , calling me names , and shouting at me that I was nothing and never would be. I was petrified of her when she was like this as she became so unpredictable. I loved her and disliked her. She was my mother , so I knew I had to love her, but I could not make sense of how she made me feel and why. I felt so bad about myself every single day, but I felt it was deserved for some reason because my mother told me it was.

Jake and I took solace in the fact that we had each other . W e were very close and looked out for each other all the time. W hen things got really crazy , we knew if we tried to tre at our mother like a princess— offer to do the housework , played very quietly, o r even kept Jenny amused— then we would get a reprieve for a very short while from her temper , which was worth its weight in gold. We learned how to detect one of our mother’s episodes, and sometimes this helped us escape a lashing or two, as we would stay out of her way or practically behave like her slave. It was exhausting most of the time. I could bare ly concentrate at school, and there was always so much going on at home it was impossible to focus.

I did enjoy school and discovered very early on that I had a knack for reading and writing , and soon enou gh they became passions of mine. T hey were the two things I loved to do most. The amount of schooling we missed because we would be pulled out for one reason or another and placed into care was colossal. However , the time I was at school I threw myself into my lessons in a way the other kids did not. T his was a deliberate act on my part , because I never knew when I would be taken away again, and I wanted to make the most of it as much as I could. Life had been very unkind to Jake and I up until that point , and I did not see it getting any better in the foreseeable future either.

Each day became more and more of a struggle, so much so that we were to o scared to go in to the kitchen if our mother was cooking and in a bad mood , as she would slice the carrots l ike they were being slaughtered. K nowing how unpredictable she was , we were never entirely sure whether or not she would one day use the kitchen knife on us. So this was a cleverly thought-out move on our part, and we always stayed clear of the kitchen when she was cooking.
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The A rrival of Susie
    Mother announce d her fo urth pregnancy. I felt fear and dread run cold through my veins; to me this meant more work , more bea tings, and more responsibilities. I was only just eight years old and already carrying the burden of an adult. The weight that was put on my young shoulders was far too much to bear at times. I knew once this baby was born that life was going to get a whole lot worse for us all . Money was sparse , and during her fourth pregnancy we were once again placed in to care , but this time it was foster care not Colton Hall.

They were not bad foster parents, but not particularly nice either , as they were quite strict and slight ly removed from the job in hand. But I guess they had to be , because get ting attached would make it too hard for t hem to foster, knowing they would have to say goodbye eventually . It was so hard being shi