An Average Life
By Mary Watson
Comments 0
There have been a raft of books giving sad accounts of traumatic childhoods, I have read a lot of them, and have loved many of them. But I am always disappointed when they close at the point of escape. What happens next? There is a consensus of opinion that traumatic childhood leads to difficulties in forming lasting relationships and that you are more likely to abuse your own children or commit suicide. I do not dispute that many victims do, but what of the survivors. Those who can move on, find love and lead fulfilled happy lives. This is my story.
Detailed
Synopsis
Growing up ‘working class’ in the 1970’s was hard enough, but growing up in the ‘Average’ family was, for Milly, a bit of a nightmare. Adopted at the age of two, Milly didn’t fit the Average’s mould for the perfect daughter. She wasn’t blonde, she wasn’t pretty and she didn’t always do as she was told. In fact Mr Average went out of his way to tell Milly how disappointed he was with her, that was until she was eight. Then she did a stint at being ‘Daddy’s little girl’, with all the little games that entailed.
Milly’s diary was her solace, until Mrs Average went snooping and didn’t like what she found. Milly was 17, jobless, penniless and now homeless, she got by through the power of great friendship, and embarked on a search for her natural family.
She found a father who chose a path of deceit, a mother, who seemed to have made all the wrong choices. And then her half sister, and three half brothers, each with their own story to tell.
Finally Milly found her own sense of identity, which had little to do with either nature or nurture, and more to do with love.
Growing up in a dysfunctional family can have a traumatic effect on any individual, and there have been plenty of books about them. But life doesn’t just end at the point of escape, a magic wand is not waved and all that is gone before doesn’t simply go away. It only begins to end when you can look in the mirror and like what you see. It begins to end when you accept that the past cannot be changed only reconciled with the present. It only begins to end when you say it can end and there must always be hope.
Chapter 1
Enter my heroine, Milly-May Llewelyn, born 1st June 1970, she enters life in a maternity hospital bed near the centre of Brum. A close shave, as five minutes prior to entering the world, her biological mother was to be found having a fag on the loo, but the urgent call of nature forces her back to the sterile ward. Milly-May is the third born to this woman. The first born is long since missing in the social system, having been born to a sixteen year old delinquent. The mother had had to run away from the youth institution she was being held in in order to have the child in a normal hospital and she was well aware that she could barely care for herself let alone this poor innocent. Her future was uncertain, as she faced charges for shoplifting, and it being one of a string of convictions, could quite easily see a jail term on the horizon. In her mind the child was better off in care, not with her in some mother and baby unit, behind bars. What happened in the interim is unknown, but now a second born is at that time waiting Mummy’s return in a dirty bedsit in Mosely. Gita Singh is watching over the child anxiously waiting the mother’s return, before she too needs to reproduce her husband’s long awaited son. But having handed herself over to the ‘system’, it is not long after the birth of Milly-May that the police turn up with an arrest warrant for her errant mother. Social services step into Milly-May’s life and …. well read on!
--------------------------------------------------
Let me introduce you to the ‘Average’ family. On first appearances, the ‘Average’s’ add up to; one couple with 2.4 children; a dog and cat; a mortgaged house in a leafy suburb of Brum; a bread-winning husband and a domesticated housewife - good honest folk. But come on, lets take a closer look! They are incapable of biologically reproducing themselves, instead they have been supplied with unwanted children by social services that they can place in their ‘Average’ mould. And what qualities do they have to endow upon these poor unfortunates? Good moral fibre, honest to God values, a home and three cooked meals a day. The children cannot bring with them any baggage, this must be left behind for social services to scrape up, bag up and chuck. It is environment that will make these children into fine upstanding citizens of Britain, not the genes, lying in the garbage disposal.
First comes Brian, whisked from his swaddling blanket at the tender age of 8 weeks old. He lavishes in the luxury of Mr and Mrs Average’s attention, basking in the solitude of single child status. Brian is a quiet placid baby, until that is, he becomes hungry or otherwise distressed. Then his little round face with it’s hooded green eyes, contorts, turns a strange mottled red and the most unearthly noise is emitted, a strange mixture of a yell and scream. Mrs Average has the perfect response for such unwholesome behaviour, and does not take the advice of the day from ‘Dr Spock’. She ignores her sons yelling, wraps him warmly and securely in a swaddling blanket, places him gently in his pram and wheels him to the end of the garden. Peace in the Average house prevails once more, but woe betide the gardening neighbour! The single life of Brian ceases abruptly when the system spits out David.
Three months old, David is a delicate child, with some signs of physical weakness. The Dr insists that the child is lazy, and will no doubt develop in his own time, ‘have patience Mrs Average, you young mothers will make the mistake of comparing your second children to your first, you just shouldn’t do that, I see it all the time. Now if you have any further worries some months down the line, please do not hesitate to come back, but I’m sure that you will see progress soon’. Sufficiently patronised, Mrs Average returns again and again until, the Dr finally gives David a label, ‘spastic’, now known as ‘cerebral palsy’. Anyhow, David is given four years worth of hospital visits, three operations, a regimented routine of physical manipulation, which all being well, will lengthen his shortened leg, prevent his arm from lying rigid against his chest and enable him to live as any ‘normal’ child should live, God willing. Mrs Average would like to have sued the Dr, for having treated her like some neurotic twit for the past 18months, but she lacks the confidence, the money, or the friend in high places. Instead she throws her energies into David’s limbs.
Brian feels snubbed and pushed aside by this complicated new brother. Not only is he largely ignored, but he is not allowed to push, prod or poke his fat little ‘buddha’ of a brother. Jealousy is not a pleasant trait in a three and half year old, and it is with relief, that nursery takes Brian away during part of the day. Another two years pass by before the Average’s household swells once more. This time it is the fair and beautiful, Sarah-Lou who joins the family. Huge blue eyes with dainty features, and everyone smiles at Sarah-Lou, she is worshiped by all, even the increasingly morose Brian.
Social services treat the Average’s as their ideal family and after a further eighteen months are soon begging them to take another child, our very own Milly-May. Mr and Mrs Average hum and hah, they feel complete already without a fourth member. Well, OK, maybe there is just a little more space left, yes the Average’s will squeeze the girl in, she is already nearly two and her prospects of adoption are failing fast. And so there you have it the Average family.
Milly is adopted in May 1972, a month before her 2nd birthday. Her name is altered to Millicent May Average. This is deemed different enough for the Average’s to stamp their own mark on the girl, but not so different as to confuse her.
Late October and a storm cloud hovers dismally over the Average household. Measles and a missed injection and the third of the Average children is struck blind, further horrors follow as complications of a respiratory nature take hold and strangle the life out of the fair and beautiful Sarah-Lou Average.
The house is an empty shell, the laughter has gone with the little blonde giggler. Millicent toddles about trying to make sense of the crushing atmosphere that envelops the family, but she cannot raise a smile, not in the same way her sister had. When Mrs Average starts to clear away Sarah-Lou’s clothes, she thinks of Millicent, and puts them aside for when she grows. There is the odd item that fits now, but when Mrs Average puts them onto Millicent they are wrong, this girl is not the same as ‘her Sarah-Lou’, not just in appearance either. Millicent is dark and brooding, whereby Sarah-Lou had been sunny in looks and nature. Try as she might, Mrs Average could not shake the loss, and secretly blames Millicent for not having taken her sister’s place.
Time goes by and the family struggle for a semblance of normality. David has many trips to the hospital and Mrs Average throws herself into the physiotherapy of David’s limbs. Brian involves himself in a number of extra curricula activities with the school, he enjoys sport and this keeps him away from home. Millicent toddles about viewing the world with disdain, a quiet dark child, content to sit brooding, or so it seemed to an onlooker. Inside the girl is a jumble of emotions, she has been snatched away from all that had been familiar to her in her long term foster placement. She and her older sister Nicole had been together for the last eighteen months, now she and her surrogate parents were gone! She was now in an unfamiliar world with new people to call Mummy and Daddy, and she just did not understand.
Now the darkness of Millicent becomes a questionable thing between Mr and Mrs Average, and as time goes on the girl appears to get darker, heaven forbid, even Asian looking. This is a worry for those who share a rather bigoted opinion on the subject of race and colour …you know, that sort of thing!
“Paki”
“Gupta”
“Dirty Nigger girl”
Words of racism, but from whom?
Chapter 2: ‘The missing link’
Now, let me introduce you to the, so far absent, Average family member, Mr Average. A short, dark bearded fellow, fond of his ice-buns and his three lumps of sugared tea. He is the caretaker of a large all-purpose council building, one of those hastily built buildings, of post war Britain. Built so that the good people of the country could feel safe in the knowledge that dear old Blighty would survive and prosper, no matter what damage the German bombers had inflicted. The building is square and squat, two floors, eight toilets, a boiler room and a roof-top water tank, and full to the rafters of busy white-collar civil servants with very important job titles! Mr Average’s job is to ensure that the building is maintained as a safe environment for all those who serve within her. He takes his role very seriously, disturbed only, by the fact that his fellow co-habitants ignore his very existence, that is until the tap is dripping incessantly in ‘wing 4 gents’. He is excluded from their conversations, of which he hears snatches. Debates, such as the use of the word ‘man’ in certain job descriptions, or whether the word ‘golly-wog’ has any place in ‘today’s multi-cultural society?’ Of course Mr Average has an opinion on such matters, which he often voices to his wife on his return home from a hard day.
“Bloody idiots, why change tradition eh? That’s what it is you know, British tradition. If women these days want to do the boy’s jobs, then …well why should the name be changed? And what about all this black thing? They want to come here, take away all our bloody traditions, our jobs, our houses. Its not right you know, if you ask me, it’s just not right.”
But no-body ever does ask him.
Then, one day, something dreadful happens to Mr Average. On this fateful day Mr Average can be seen in a state of some stress. A request is made for Mr Average to turn into work early. This is to allow the ‘water tank specialists’ access to the roof. Things are going swimmingly until 9am, when a blockage is reported in wing 5 ladies, and a light bulb is out in the conference room, where a high level meeting of the trade union is beginning in five minutes time. Out of breath and aware that the ‘out of use’ sign needs removing from the 2nd floor ladies, Mr Average approaches the task of changing the light bulb with some haste. He forgets to ensure that the safety catch is in place on the stepladders and as he reaches up to the ceiling, is suddenly perplexed to find himself lying in a heap on the floor surrounded by half a dozen men in suits. It is only then that he notices a searing pain through his left shoulder and begins to groan.
Being 1974, the era of Harold Wilson’s labour government, it is early days for the emergence of the ‘personal-injury’ compensation claims. Of course now-a-days, we are bombarded by TV adverts of Mrs Frampton and her tussle with a Tesco’s food trolley which nets her a total of £25,000. The custom of 1974, however, is to retire a person early with an extended pension and sickness benefit, and ‘let us not mention that you overlooked the safety catch on that ladder’.
And now the Average family must adjust to accommodate Mr Average’s new station in life. Not an easy task for anyone. Mrs Average finds having her beloved around all day everyday, a drain, helpful as he may be, it is difficult for her tasks to be delegated to a man not used to a vacuum cleaner or a toilet brush. A routine needs to be established and quickly and routine is Mrs Average’s fortei!
Chapter 3 ‘hard lesson No. 1’
Millicent begins school at four and a half, and immediately falls upon the books that come her way. Her reading ability outstrips many of her peers and she begins losing herself in the stories she takes home with her. Mrs Average is surprised at Millicent’s quickness of mind, it isn’t something Brian or David have been blessed with and this difference only serves to add to the increased ostracisation of Milly from the other Average family members.
As the youngest of the household, Millicent still returns home each lunchtime to have lunch with her Mum and Dad. This is the only time that Millicent is privie to the total, undevided attentions of her parents, even though their attention to her could only be described as scant. Then one day her teacher approaches her and says, “ Millicent, your Mother is so pleased with your progress, that from now on you will have school lunch just like your older brothers.” With a smile she pats Millicent’s head and walks briskly away. Millicent stays put wondering what she has done wrong. Why has she been punished in this way, what has she done wrong?
However, when she returns home that day, walking back with David and one of the older boys who lives down the same road, she discovers that Mr Average is in hospital. After his fall from the ladder some four months ago, Mr Average has been pensioned off sick from work for some time, now he is in hospital to investigate some of the pains he has been experiencing since the accident. Mrs Average cannot drive so she relies on the kindness of the neighbours to get her to and from the hospital. The children stay at home under the care of another neighbour Mrs Hicks, a large verbose lady with penchant for gossip. Things become tense after the first week as Mr Average develops Pleurosy whilst in hospital, a virus which he has unknowingly been suffering from pior to the hospital stay. Mrs Average becomes quiet and morose as the daily trips to the hospital and accepting charity from the neighbours take their toll. The boys keep their heads down and Milly gets a stomach bug!
“ Oh this is just typical of you isn’t it?” sighs Mrs Average as she hussles the boys out of the door. She turns on her little dark daughter weighing up the options of leaving her with a neighbour or dragging her along to the hospital. “You’ll have to come with me today.”
Millicent is duly dragged off to visit her sick Daddy in hospital. Millicent is excited, as she has not seen her Daddy for nearly two weeks. Today they catch the bus and the journey seems to take an awful long time. Mrs Average is moaning all the way about the heat of the day, the fumes from the bus and filth of the other passengers. They have to pass through some of the poorer parts of town and she tut tuts as Blacks and Asians join them on their journey. Millicent is intrigued by the different varieties of colour surrounding her, and when a particularly black man gets on the bus and sits across from her she can do nothing but stare and stare. The man sees her looking and grins a huge white grin at her. His teeth are a sparkling white against the darkness of his skin and Millicent cannot help but giggle at the man in delight. He in turn chuckles back at her.
“ Pretty little girl Missus.” He says to Mrs Average in a heavily accented voice. Millicent sneaks a look at Mrs Average’s face and is greeted with a stern pursed lipped look that says a thousand words. Milly loses the smile on her face and stares down at her shoes for the rest of the journey. The big black man gets off the bus two stops before them and Millicent glances his way as he passes.
“Goodbye pretty girl.” he says with another beautiful grin. Millicent mouths a response with no sound, but gets a dig in the ribs for her efforts. At their stop they leave the bus and Mrs Average rounds on Millicent.
“How dare you embarrass me like that, not only did you talk to a strange man, but a nigger at that, just wait till your Dad hears about this.” With that she takes Millicent’s hand and drags her off.
They stop at a fruit stall inside the hospital grounds and buy a pound of apples for Mr Average. Up to the ward they go. At the ward entrance Mrs Average settles Millicent on a chair outside the main ward area, from her bag she fishes out a colouring book and crayons.
“Now you be a good girl and sit quietly here with your things, I won’t be long.” She turns to go.
“But Mummy I thought I was going to see Daddy.” Milly looks distraught.
“Don’t be a silly girl, they don’t let kids onto the ward, your carrying germs, you wouldn’t want to make Daddy sicker than he already is would you?.”
With that, she disappears on to the ward. Millicent slips off her seat and stands on ‘tippy-toe’ to see into the ward. But the window in the door is too high. A nurse watches her.
“Is your Daddy in there Sweetheart?”
Millicent cannot help herself and tears well up and spill over onto her nice clean dress.
“Ah don’t cry luvie, we’ll let you in to see him in the last five minutes of visiting time OK?”
Millicent cheers up and returns to her colouring book and draws her Daddy a lovely sunny picture. After 20 minutes or so Mrs Average reappears.
“You will insist on embarrassing me today won’t you? Why couldn’t you be good and just sit quiet, instead of making a fuss and now you risk making your Daddy worse than he already is. Its your fault if he gets any worse just remember that, you and your selfishness.”
Millicent is taken into the ward to her Dad. She is shocked at how small he looks in the hospital bed and is struck speachless.
“Cat got your tongue Millicent, I thought you wanted to see me.” Mr Average smiles at his daughter, giving Millicent a little confidence to approach him.
“Hello Daddy, I drew you a picture.” She extends her arm with the picture dangling.
“That’s nice now take it home and let it wait for me there, I’m coming out on Saturday, I’ll look at it then.” He hasn’t even glanced at the bright little family scene Millicent has done especially for him.
After what seems seconds to Millicent , Mrs Average is gathering together her belongings and kissing Mr Average goodbye. Millicent leans down towards her father only to feel the collar of her dress strangling her back.
“Don’t kiss Daddy Millicent, you might pass your nasty bugs to him.”
And with that they disappear through the ward and out into the fresh air.
The afternoon is fading fast as they leave the bus for home, rain clouds are brewing up and a few small spots splash down on them as they walk quickly through the alleys to their home. David, on his way home from school, catches up with them.
“ Hi Mum how are you?”
“Tired David, very tired, but its nice of you to ask me. At least someone cares about me.”
The three walk home in silence. Once indoors Millicent watches her Mother slump into a chair looking utterly exhausted. She wants to please desperately and to make up for making her Mother angry all day. To this end she busies herself with tidying the room, taking a dusting cloth to the telly. David goes to the kitchen to make a cup of tea.
“Oh David you are a good lad, unlike some who take delight in embarrassing me all day.”
Millicent feels the attack and tears spring to her eyes.
“Oh Mum you look so sad.” David goes to his Mum and puts his arm around her, Mrs Average does not respond, but tells him again what a good boy he is. Millicent decides to follow suit and scrambles up to her Mother on the opposite side. She too gets no response, verbally or physically. She gets down to continue her hard work cleaning the house, so her Mother does not have to get back up again on this difficult day.
“Huh is that it.” Says Mrs Average looking at her small daughter with disdain.
Millicent is bewildered, why can she never do anything right for her Mother?
By five ‘o’ clock all the children are home and looking for signs that Mrs Average will prepare their tea. But Mrs Average is still routed to her chair looking drained.
“ Mum whats for tea?” Good old Brian can always be called upon to take the least tact.
“Oh Brian, can you do some jam sandwiches for me, I’m so tired, I’m going for a lie down.”
Brian castes his Mother an exasperated glance and siddles off to the kitchen. He returns minutes later with a plate of four sandwiches, obviously for himself.
“Where’s ours Brian?” David questions accusingly.
“What you want, waiter service.” Brian smirks to himself as though he has said something clever.
The two younger children go to the kitchen where they find sloppily prepared squares of jam and butter. They put them together as best they can and remain in the kitchen to eat.
“Did you see Dad?”
“Yes for a bit, they were scared I might make him ill with my germs.”
“He alright?”
“Yeah, he’s coming home on Saturday.”
“Good.”
Millicent is still hungry after her sandwich, she has eaten nothing since breakfast, as she was too afraid to ask during the hospital visit. Then she remembers the apples they brought back with them from the hospital. Mr Average had insisted Mrs Average should take them home to remind herself that he would be home at the weekend. Dad won’t miss a couple thinks Millicent as she sneaks the bag into her room. She eats two right there and then and takes another two for later. She puts the rest of the apples in the fruit bowl with the other fruit in an attempt to hide the fact that she has taken them.
It’s another school day the following day and Millicent is packed off to school without any enquiry as to how she feels. In fact she does feel better today and is glad to escape her Mothers mood.
On her return, Millicent notices a definite coldness in the air and it isn’t long before she finds out why.
“You thieving little cow, you stole apples from you sick Daddy, I wish they had made you choke.”
The anger and vehemence behind the words is a shock to the 6 year old.
“I was hungry Mummy.”
“Hungry? hungry ? Your Daddy is lying ill in hospital and your eating his fruit, you have no excuse.” Mrs Average is shaking with anger. “Get out of my sight!”
Millicent runs to her room sobbing big hicuppy sobs. What did she do wrong? Why won’t her Mother like her, why does she always upset her?
The boys join in the fun that the afternoons tension has drummed up. Each time they pass by Millicent’s bedroom door, they bang on it loudly and call her a thief. On one such occasion she hears Brian pounding on the door and calling her names, and then he laughs maliciously and says, “your in for it now.” A few minutes later Millicent hears Mrs Average’s approach. The door is shoved open and Millicent is hauled to her feet and frog-marched into the hallway. Mrs Average forces Millicent to her knees and shoves her head towards a pool of sick on the floor. Millicent’s nose is millimetres away and the nauseating smell makes her stomach heave.
“Not content with stealing, now she has to make a bloody mess on the carpet, you dirty little cow.”
Mrs Average’s voice is venomous and her anger, which has been held in check all these long weeks of exhaustive to-ing and fro-ing, is flowing up through her veins and being directed at poor little Millicent. Millicent’s nose has now been dipped none too gently into the offending pool of vomit and as she heaves she is dragged upwards and hurled into the bathroom where she brings up any remnants of her lunch into the loo. Doors slam around the house as the boys join in the fun with their agitated Mother. Then there is silence. Millicent creeps out of the bathroom, the pool of sick has been cleared away and the house is silent, the closed doors appear as a barrier to the wronged Millicent. She makes the decision not to try and put forward her theory had, in fact, been the cats, evidence of which had been obvious at Millicent’s unwanted close inspection. Instead she goes quietly into her room and sobs until she falls asleep.
On Saturday Mr Average makes his homecoming. He presides as judge and jury in the case of Average family versus Millicent May. His sentence, for the crime of stealing and making a nuisance of herself during a very stressful time is; being confined to quarters and sent to Coventry until Mr Average sees fit to end the sentence. This is the homecoming that Millicent has foolishly been looking forward to.
At six years old Millicent has no concept of fairness. Instead she believes that she is truly rotten, and that no-one could ever love a little girl who is as naughty and so horrible as she Millicent May Average so obviously is. And so she takes her sentence seriously, hoping for an early release based on good behaviour.
For a week the only time Millicent comes out of her room is for meals, these she eats alone in the kitchen, whilst the rest of the family are at the dining table in the living room. She takes her punishment seriously and doesn’t question the authority of her father. And so she is most perplexed when she hears herself described as acting weird, and not being normal for shutting herself away in her room. At the weekend she decides her sentence must have been served and rejoins the family. The atmosphere is still shaky between Millicent and the rest of the family, but at least they are now civil occasionally, and as the weeks go by normality is finally resumed.