Chapter Ten
Ascending the Clouds Skywards
Ruhuna Michelle Mary Anne is nose diving fast, until, at the final second, sensing great disaster, ascends through clouds to safety. She requests a list of feminine names to choose from to provide her with a new identity. She pops her head into the staff room letting go a continuous stream of verbal harassment. Puppy dog following its master, continuous questions, each time gaining in cheeky confidence. I can’t object to that, but the boundary into my personal life is getting a little pushed.
“But you called me honey. You did Richard, I heard you!” Tricia’s close by and say to her, “Anna Michelle Nadine Maxine Yvonne says I called her honey.” All mellifluous and sticky tacky words through her dirty teeth, “and Tricia it’s not true. I don’t like the use of such names.” She’s moved from the ambition of becoming a policewoman, “I’d be good at that”, to becoming an “Olympic athlete. I’ve made up my mind Richard. I’ve taken notice of what you’ve said. I’ll apply myself.”
“What type of athlete?”
“Juggling!”
“But juggling isn’t in the Olympics yet.”
“Yes it is”, she insists.
“You’d have to train every day and dedicate your life to your chosen sport. You’d have to live like a nun, none of your messing about, nothing but total dedication, getting fit and taking hormones, probably worse.”
“That’s right”, she replies, “I can’t win. You always knock me down.”
The mountains of her Himalayan homeland matter greatly to Lucy, especially now she’s changed her name - definitely. Each time the students talk to her they have to think carefully how to address her. It’s helluva subtle strategy to stop them calling her Ribena. After two years they’ll be so confused, or programmed, they’ll simply refer to her by number. During her computer lesson she works on her Himalayas project and in caring detail captivates flowered fragrances and rushing wild clouds obscuring massive peaks. Her imagery of colours, and of her family, come alive, albeit briefly for she wipes the damn work off the computer. I can’t help thinking it’s symbolic of the remains of her own life, tattered someplace where Buddhist bells jangle and tinkle in the breeze and Mill Hill suburbia. I’m completely uncertain what to do with her. I talk to the counsellors about Jonanna Anna Danella’s request for a psychotherapist who suggest we leave the issue on hold until we see how her counselling progresses. It may be sensible to take the slower, moderate route, only time will tell. Katerina Xotial Zandra Beverley is getting more assertive - she’s pushing against other students as much as possible, testing what they can take. Probing how much she can get away with, sometimes successfully, sometimes with a rebuffel. Rightly so.
Dean has taken to Katerina Dvina Mary because she allows him to shake a fist at her with impunity, rather than getting a slap across the mouth as others might do. He’s also developing a sense of dawning strength from within. His laughter’s becoming deeper and his sense of fun more involved and sophisticated. Minute, but significant, movements. Anna Michaela Christina Flora running along the corridor, chasing Dean, childish games relived, hide and seek, catch me if you can. Then the Buddhist bells ring, the wind howls and the snow smothers summer shadows.
“Richard can you tell them to stop laughing at me”, she pleads, “can you tell them to stop calling me names. Richard, please tell them to leave me alone.” My answer is, increasingly, “No, I can’t help you. You need to learn to fight your own battles.”
“But I can’t win with you.”
“Yes, but you can learn not to lose, which is more important.”
“You don’t listen to me. I’m going home”, and she duly walks off, only to return a few minutes later, lost and apologetic, throwing out the same words as usual. “I’m sorry. I’ve been thinking, I must do something. I’ve decided.”
“Ah yes”, I reply, “but what have you decided?”
I’m infuriated by her lack of desire to focus on what she’s chosen to do. By the caretaker’s office, where it’s relatively quiet, we lean on some upturned boxes conspiratorially chatting whilst staff, with their own concerns, drift past. I throw everything back at her, emphasising her life’s her own and everything her choice. She’s two years at college to learn how to better her life, to gain confidence.
“I know”, she says, immediately reprising “but I can’t win with you”, as her do nothing mantra.
She personalises everything, refusing to talk details and facts, hiding her life as the great clouds of the Himalayas obscure peaks ready to be conquered if only they were visible. Confidence boosting chats and frenetic discussions are one thing, but silence when questioned hemorrhages will as her life force drains away. Snow melted into streams and rushed somewhere else. “I can’t go on. I’ve had enough”, she mantras withdrawing in her habitual manner. Her voice is subtly different, slippery, cold, a child sliding across ice, deprecating and self-loathing. I listen to each new intonation, quicksilver moving through numerous topics in the time it takes to change words betwixt brain and mouth. Avoiding college to feeling persecuted because of her name, joining the police or becoming a famous film star. Each a subtle dynamic cast from a rod fly fishing to catch salmon. I’ve been caught, I’m trapped, now listen to me. Her complexities foxing and bedazzling. I try to ignore her, suggest we talk some other time and I turn my back on her. She glares at me saying loudly in front of Mike and a group of students he’s with, “You always ignore me. Always!”
I turn it on her. “Always means forever, on each and every occasion. Am I doing it now? I’m not, I am listening to you, aren’t I? But what I am saying to you is I can’t give my time exclusively to one student, I have others. We talk when necessary and I never turn away a student in need.”
“I can’t win!”
“Yes you can, but first you have to think you won’t lose.”
2
All in Monday’s work, the weekend little remembered as students wind up for the week ahead. A small team of the less able, kicked sideways and rejected, becoming more able and willing to tackle what they should have done, encouraged to do, years ago - work. An infectious enthusiasm is slowly building. It must be the effects of the end of the first term, a time to reflect and feel reasonably pleased about progress made. Students taking more control of their lives, yet Paddy, the doe eyed lost child still gives me cause for concern. I speak to him during a computer lesson. “You can’t keep messing about and changing floppies every few minutes, especially when you’ve not checked your work with me. I want you to work, not prat around!”
“OK, Richard!”
That’s the standard response, but I’m not going to let the little bugger get away with it. The Microspecial has a ‘Paper-round’ programme where the player has to plot the most efficient way to deliver four newspapers in a maze using co-ordinates and estimating the number of steps required to navigate the route. I hear his voice call out, “I can’t do it!”
“I can hear, honest I can, but I’ve something more pressing at the moment. Read the instructions, think and do it again”, I shout over.
Every one’s working. Paul’s taking an interest in green politics and we discuss a few points he wants to insert into an already developing article. Annie Mai-Lise Gabriella Marsha is working hard on the Himalayas. Sunil’s working on a trip he did last year to Delhi and Lee’s conquering the Dart programme to produce some amazing shapes. Paddy’s still shouting, louder now, cursing the world. I guess he still can’t master the paper-round and must be stuck in the maze figuring co-ordinates. Chung and Tricia are deep in thought in the corner. They seldom do much in this session other than
ruminate in dark conclave which disappoints me. I walk up to them. “Can I join you? What’s going on?”
“We slept with each other at the weekend”.
“Well, nothing like honesty”, I reply.
I’m taken aback by their candour. I’m thinking of something deep and meaningful to say. Maybe I shouldn’t. I don’t want to risk stupid questions. Was it nice? Did you enjoy it? Gordon Bennett - did you take precautions? We had a pregnancy last year. Please mother of God not another one this year.
“You must have supportive parents if they let you sleep together.”
“I have”, replies Tricia.
“I got shouted at”, says Chung and see fear in his face. When they speak each sentence, each utterance, appears thought out. Each word seeking consciousness. They hold each other tight.
“Tell you what”, I say, “why don’t you write about it”.
Tricia, ever the enthusiastic one, jumps at the suggestions.
“Right, c’mon Chung, let’s get started.”
Paddy’s getting fidget mode ready to leave his chair.
“Shall we start the programme now?”, I ask, moving towards his station.
“I don’t understand it”, he repeats.
Some papers fall from his briefcase and he stretches to pick them up.
“Let’s go through it together”, I reassure him. We do, but not before I go to the staff room and collect an old compass. We then examine the screen, reading carefully the instructions. I can see his mistake, he’s gone the long way around the maze and given incorrect compass bearings. We spend fifteen minutes going over the instructions. The mood of concentration persists, just as when I left the room to collect the compass - that of work and effort.
“Look, Richard, I’ve done it!” screams Paddy, looking at me, ecstatic, achieving something he thought he never would.
I check on Chung and Tricia. Words are appearing on their screen. “We spent the night together,” Tricia tells me, “Chung was very good. He told me he learnt it watching blue movies.” I leave them to it.
3
The assertion training, cancelled last Thursday, because of Julia’s illness, is about to take place. We’ve been able to slot an extra session in next term, but right now the group looks apprehensive; what’s assertion written large over their faces. Julia takes control, aided and abetted by Mike and myself. She takes a whiteboard marker and throws it at a student. “Tell me who you are and write your name on the board.”
She throws until all the students have their names displayed. Each does a nervous fumble, a cack handed catch, before moving awkwardly to the front. Chung’s signature is no longer the tiny “I can’t see it myself so I don’t have to write big scrawl”, rather a complex flourish that shouts, “I’m getting to be special.” Sunil no longer turns his back to the group, but straight forwardly introduces himself. We discuss the meaning of assertion and grapple with how to apply it to our lives. More than a few vague and lost expressions. Paddy begins to tap his briefcase. We split into twos, each pair taking a sheet of flip chart paper and a felt tip. Chung and Tricia, Sunil and Elizabeth Regine Rose Ulla Anna, Dean and Lee, Paul and Paddy and Mike and myself.
Julia begins to write on the white board, ready to remove what’s already on it.
“Oh my God, don’t!”, I shout, “can you leave this morning’s message on.”
“Pardon?”, she enquires.
I explain I’m doing a project on the power of words. It started when I wrote my first message, “Today the world will end at 3 p.m.” Of course, it didn’t. Then I wrote, “The world will end tomorrow at 8 a.m.” Ditto. Now the message simply reads, “The world ended this morning at dawn. Who’s to blame?” I write first thing in the morning and students are beginning to think I’m a little strange.
“It’s OK, Julia, just leave the ‘who’s to blame’ bit on please. Thanks.”
Julia’s headings, ‘submissive’, ‘dishonesty’, ‘aggressive’ ‘assertive’, writ large and bold, vie with my words. She explains we’re to brain storm in pairs. Nods of approval as they fathom out their words to write beneath the headings. After five minutes of contemplation we commence and soon the flip chart paper is filled.
Under ‘submissive’ is written:
It’s like being angry
I want to fight or hit them
You can’t tell them how you are feeling
Being quite shy
Having headaches
Hanging your head and hiding your body
Not being yourself
Not wanting to show who you really are
Not wanting to say or do what you want
Under ‘dishonesty’ is written by various hand styles in gloomy colours:
Pains
Pain in the neck
Headaches
Breakdown
Cowardly
Sneaky
Half-hearted
Lacking in confidence
Letting others do and say what you should do and say yourself
When you don’t want to come out and with it
Because it’s too hard to say
Responses continue as they read the comments pinned on the wall. Sabine Paloma Gertude Dolly Anne refuses to work any longer with Sunil and the group’s angry with her. She’s broken the mood and momentum of the others and begins to pace up and down the room, walking out, to quickly return. For ‘aggression’ Shelley Nadine Mabel Mary Anne wrote in her own fair hand, “when you’re feeling aggressive you want to cry and you feel under the weather. Sometimes you want to tell them you are down because they don’t know how you are feeling.”
One liners continue in a tidal wave of special needs consciousness: punching, bullying, angry, breakdown, happy, depression, smacking, upset, violent, rage inside, lacking in love, feeling weak and angry without knowing why, pushing people around and telling others what to do and think. Assertive was the least responded to and only Madelaine Odine Marlene Alice Anne adds anything of substance, “when you want to speak out how you are feeling and don’t want to bottle it up inside.” In small yellow felt tip writing she adds, “fed up”.
We take a break. Reconvened we discuss the comments in turn beginning with ‘aggression’. Lee, in his soft spoken voice begins, “I know how to stop being aggressive.”
“Tell us Lee.”
“Instead of me hitting people and getting angry I should let them hit me. I’m strong and don’t feel pain”.
“Don’t be a wally, that just hurts you”, shouts Tricia.
“But I feel myself getting mad and I shouldn’t hit anyone, should I?”
“Aren’t there other ways of showing aggression?”
“Yes!” shouts Dean, “smacking them.”
“Do people think that’s right?” I ask.
“No!”, intervenes Sunil in full scream force.
“Lee”, I continue, “remember last week when you came into the room and told Eunice Henrietta Sarah Ursula Violet about her taxi?”
“Yes, when I burst in.”
“That’s the word,” I continue, “but can you remember how you said it?”
“I told her about the taxi,” he repeats.
“Yes, but how did you say it?”
“Oh, I shouted.”
“Yes you did, didn’t you?”
“And what happened?”, I turn and ask the group.
“People listened to him.”
“Yes they did, didn’t they,” continuing, “sometimes just talking firmly and with authority gets people to take you seriously and not think you’re a push over.”
“I always carry an alarm,” pipes up Angela Marilyn Aurelia Matilda Sara.”
“Why?”
“As a protection.”
“What does it do?”
“It keeps people off.”
“How?”
“It just does.” The great unspecific speaker sowing confusion on her slushy syntax is getting rattled.
“Explain”, I demand.
“Oh, Richard!”
“Yes, come on Sarah,” the group replies, “tell us how it keeps people away.”
No response.
I try a different tack. “O.K., what precisely does it do?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well,” I begin, “how can an alarm protect you? It can’t biff to the ground a mob of raging lunatics. It can’t say, stop, I am an alarm you must obey me and go away, can it?”
“No, it can’t.”
“It makes a loud noise though, doesn’t it? It wakes the dead and makes the living take notice. It was the same when Lee came looking for you. He took a deep confident breath and told you your mini-cab had arrived. Sometimes speaking like that is good protection.”
Dean’s head is hanging low on the table, slumped, dough like, flesh flattened on the melamine, thinking of all the reasons he wrote ‘smacking’ on the sheet. I wonder how many of the group bears the temporal scars of smacking. Lee’s already decided he can take the pain of thumpings because he’s had to. He’s never fought back to express anger, preferring the security of self-effacement. The small words of day to day aggression directed at them, bullied, beaten and kicked, a holy triumvirate of the meek and the weak, magnifying into self loathing. And Lee thinks he can cope with such inflicted pain? And the rest? Weaknesses, long suffered headaches, being submissive. Accepting fate, prolapsed consciousness knowing to fight means rebuke, knowing to express feeling is to scorned and mocked. We raise the subject of our ‘inner-selves’ and what it means to possess one. Paddy assertively declares he hasn’t got one, whilst Paul, beneath his thick spectacles, declares he has. Chung’s uncertain, and Dean still slumped upon the table, is barely breathing.
Ruhina Samantha Amanda Venus informs the group these mighty topics are not easy to discuss. We listen to her but can’t understand what she’s trying to say. The more she continues the more the group appears to respect her, but the substance passes jumbled through her mouth. She drones on not being able to cope and we studiously listen, though the central meaning of her monologue has slipped from our grasp. She abandons ship at this point, by which time lifeboats have disappeared over the horizon and class ends.
Thursday’s our next session with Julia, but she arrives twenty minutes late. She tells us to walk around the room - prevents us from asking her why she’s late I guess - and mingle. Ordering us to walk submissively, to walk assertively, greeting people in these moods. This is difficult, they complain of being tense when they walk assertively and complain of doing nothing out of the ordinary when they stroll and mingle submissively. Warmed up we split into twos and write down situations where they’ve felt aggressive and angry about something, I work with Paul who complains about his mini-cab being late this morning. “But it wasn’t his fault,” he continues, “he got caught in the traffic.”
“But Paul, what would you have liked to have done?”
“Phone up the town hall and make a complaint.”
“How did you feel about it?”
“Angry, upset and frustrated.”
Sunil joins forces with Adelaide Marylou Diane Yvonne who, after a few minutes, leaves the room. He joins Paul and myself to describe the traumas at school in Wembley; beatings, robberies, racial abuse, continuous threats, feeling powerless. “It was no good telling the teachers,” he informs us, “they’d did nothing. Anyway, the kids would only beat me more than ever.” We write this down on flip chart paper.
We report back. Lee’s first, talking about his incident with Max, Sunil and Dean. He reveals his feelings of anger and weakness, his lack of power being kicked on the floor. Sunil reports what he’s written. The group listens, apart from Paddy - who fiddles with a magazine advertising video tapes.
“What could you have done differently?”, Julia asks.
“Hit them back!”
“I couldn’t, they were much bigger than me.”
“I would,” affirms Tricia.
“I’d punch them,” chimes in Susan Cynthia Camilla Megan.
The rest are silent, Dean especially so. His parents are talking about leaving London and that depresses him. No more college, no more friends.
I break the ice, “Life’s risky for teenagers.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s risky being young. Acts of violence, unsure how to respond to feelings, easily being taken over by them and reacting in an extreme and aggressive manner.”
“I’d still hit them”, replies Anastasia Augusta Francine.
“And what happens if they have a knife?”
Una Rachel Claire Sarah now gets down to her real business. Nobody understands her life, nobody understands how difficult it is for her to cope and no one in the world listens and helps her. She, on the other hand, is the good doctor, the proverbial Samaritan helping others with their problems. The students listen intently and seriously.
“People get angry with me and tell me to get lost.”
“I wonder why?”, shoots back Tricia.
The group’s warming up, Julia and I sit back.
“I don’t know”, she replies hurt.
“I’ll tell you,” Tricia continues, “you never leave us alone. All the time you come over to us uninvited and give your opinions and interfere in our affairs. I don’t like it!”
Pauline Roxanne Melissa looks perplexed.
“That’s right, nobody listens to me, you all ignore me,” she intones in hurt innocence.
“That’s rubbish.”
“We’ve listened to you for twenty minutes talking about yourself, so somebody listens - right”, Tricia blurs back.
“But you don’t. None of you care.”
“Are you saying we lie to you?”
“Yes!”
“Thanks a million!”
“You do.”
“So, no matter what we say to you, you disbelieve us?”
“Sounds to me you want to lose all the time.”
“We’re telling you we do listen and do want to help, but you say we lie.”
“She’s crazy”.
“Yes, she is Dean.”
Quixana Corozon Emma Jade turns her back on her fellows inflaming further passions.
“You should apologise. I think you should say to all of us, by name, that we do listen to you.”
“That’s hard to do Richard.”
“So is listening to you. You take up everyone’s time but give nothing in return,” adds Chung.
“I really mean it. It’s hard, I can’t cope.”
“And we can’t cope with you,” adds Dean quietly.
“What do you want me to say?”
“That we do listen and take notice of you.”
“Say it seriously.”
“She doesn’t mean it!”
Slowly and haltingly she begins to say her lines to the group. Her smile gradually fading from her mouth as she works her way around the room. The group’s taken over, asserting their feelings with the one student who places herself in the frontline of her own and others’ emotions.
3
Friday’s the sponsored table tennis. Many of the second years who planned the event are missing. Derek’s no place to be seen and Bart the dog man is AWOL too. The first year’s contrary as ever, turn up in force instead and the local press, after promising they would, don’t. Nor do we start at 10 a.m. prompt. Nobody has informed Gerry, the transgender cleaner, about it. The tennis tables have no nets. We can’t find the bats and balls, and quickly discover one of the tables has a habit of collapsing when the play gets heated, the slipstream draught too great for its ricketiness to cope with. Nevertheless, the game goes well and Janet, the local representative from the Guide Dogs for the Blind, arrived with her dog. Peter and myself are invited to their next committee meeting to hand over the raised cash. All we have to do now is organize the disco.
Alan talked to the vice principal who does not see any difficult over Tricia and Chung holding hands, but doesn’t intend to see Emrhys for fear of inflaming the situation. Meanwhile Tricia and Chung are looking increasingly worried having long counselling sessions with Julia.
