State Ward (2 page)

I’m thirteen and I’m in a cell. A cell. It’s got real bars, up there, protecting that high window. I can jump up and touch them. I’m in a cell.

That door is for real; it’s made of solid steel, and it’s got a peephole. So they can spy on me. But I ain’t gonna bust. I damn well ain’t.

So Charlie spent the first little while self-conscious, and grimly determined, under the eye in the cell door. Sometimes he suddenly shot over to the eye, pushing his own close to it to see if he was being observed. But after several times he forgot about it. Began to be himself. To go deeper into himself.

Soon he sat on the bed, which was attached by metal frames underneath to the concrete block wall, on a hay-stuffed mattress that crackled with every movement. Thirteen and in a cell, it kept coming home like that. The disbelief. The mixture of awe and pride at that fact, and a building despair that this wasn’t what he’d envisaged, except in his worst imaginings. But what kid expects them to come true?

At some stage, it felt like hours, a meal was brought to him; delivered by a boy maybe a year older than him under the command of a smiling Mr Dekka asking him,
“And how are we, Charlie?” As if it was no big deal. So Charlie just shrugging as reply, eyes just as much for the boy, the signals he might give off to Charlie that Charlie could take from. Some hope. Some secret message.

But the kid didn’t hardly look at Charlie. Just came into the cell and placed the plastic tray down on the concrete floor and stood to rigid attention staring into space as Mr Dekka continued on through smiling teeth, but cold eyes. As if nothing he ever said meant what he was saying. Things like, “You get inside yourself in a cell, boy. It gives you strength.” Charlie said nothing.

The food was surprisingly good; stewed chops with chunks of spud and peas and carrots. He left the carrots. There was even pudding, custard and prunes, which Mr Dekka had laughingly said would go through him like a dose of salts, whatever the hell that meant.

Charlie later found out. It had a toilet, a metal one, that had hardly any water at the bottom for some reason. Charlie later figured out that maybe it was to stop some mad kid sticking his head down the bowl and drowning. Saying aloud to himself, “Save him being in the shit — HAHAHAHA!” Feeling good for the moment. Then, inexplicably, felt the tears of his laughter turn rapidly to a continuation of real tears. Of sadness. Self pity. And he slumped on the bed and sobbed his eyes out.

Then he got under the blankets, and lay there for the eternity that time lasts for thirteen-year-old boys in certain situations. But he came round, eventually.

Thirteen, eh, and in a cell. He paced. And paced. Three steps by three and a bit, which was a little catch-up shuffle each
time, one of which involved the bed jutting out so he had to swing wide as well. He established a rhythm. And with it came a peculiar jauntiness, as if in rhythm alone he was rising, ever so slightly, above the cold concrete floor. (Cold, like that foreign fulla’s eyes.) So he was whistling. A series of Drifters numbers, from the repertoire of party songs his parents sang. And sang well, too, for as long as the party stayed happy. Ben E. King, that’s it, Charlie remembering who sang lead in
Armour
and
Save
The
Last
Dance.
So he sang, too; quietly, under his breath, at first, and with a couple of times breaking over to the spyhole in the door to see if he was being watched. But no eyeball (of disturbing blue) to meet him. So his confidence grew. And he loved to sing.

“
And
don
’
t
forget
who’
s
taking
you
home,
and
in
whose
arms
you
’
re
gonna
be.
So
darling
—” Stopping in mid-pace to make an appealing gesture of outstretched arms to the girlfriend — Becky Royal — in his mind. “
Save
the last dance for me
.”

Grinning self-consciously, yet pleased with himself. And he pictured, too, his parents singing the same song together, as they only rarely did.

He was so engrossed in singing another song, this one of hotdogs and French fries and under a boardwalk that Americans must have cos New Zealand doesn’t, he failed to hear the outer door opening, was smackdab in the middle of one of his theatrical gestures of handing a hotdog to the girl in his mind when the cell door sprang open.

And there was Mr Dekka. Giving Charlie, caught and embarrassed, an amused look. Like being discovered having a crap.

“So, we like to sing, do we?”

What to say to that? Charlie went red, turned his embarrassment to the wall adjacent.

“Eyes, don’t forget, Charles Wilson,” came the voice in warning tone.

Charlie forced himself to look back at the housemaster. But he couldn’t hold it, for the blue eyes seemed to be boring into him even though the mouth was fixed in a brilliant white smile. He found Mr Dekka’s highly polished, clumpy brown shoes.

“I must say, you Maoris have very good singing voices.” The tone seemingly genuine. Till he added, “But you all waste it. Hardly any of you go on to make best use of your natural voices.”

“Shyness, sir,” Charlie found himself naturally coming out with.

But Mr Dekka shook his head. “No, not shyness. Something lacking.” With steel in his voice, and his eyes.

Anyway, its meaning missed Charlie. Then Mr Dekka handed Charlie folded pyjamas which had, to Charlie’s astonishment, a pair of slippers on top. For me? he wondered, a bit guarded.

“Tomorrow you might even get a dressing gown. How does that sound?”

He nodded appreciation as he took the pyjamas and slippers, placed them on his bed. (Now what?) Mr Dekka looked as if he wanted to say something, the way he kept staring at Charlie. But then he shrugged. “Oh, well, I guess Mr Davis will take a shine to you with a singing voice like you have.”

Yet he positively glared at Charlie, as though jealous. And Charlie blushed furiously at the backhanded
compliment; he’d only ever had his close friends say nice things about his singing voice.

Mr Dekka paused in the doorway, looking outward for some little time, then he turned. “Sleep tight, Charles.” Paused, and Charlie saw colour flush over his face. Then he added, “And try not to dream of the girls, huh?” Chuckling. “Like most of the boys in here, yes?” (Yes? What’s he talking about?) “You are all at that age, hmmm.” The door closed.

Charlie thought he might have misheard — did Mr Dekka say something about being “horny young men?”

Thirteen, eh, and I’m here. In a cell. Charlie slowly walking his circuit, taking in the smaller details. Initials and dates carved into the thick paint, speckled green and white. He wondered what other boys could have used to etch their initials since the cutlery was plastic. The dates went back to
3/3/60
J.D.
There weren’t a lot, not considering the most recent one Charlie could find said a Chow had been here on the seventeenth of the third, 1967, only a few months ago. “Chow?” What, as in Chinaman? Charlie pulled the skin beside his eyes, and did a shuffle-walk to go with it. “Ning nong ye-yi-yo!” he laughed.

There was a triumphant message proclaiming: “
Yippee! Borstal here I come!
” Date 9/11/65. Borstal, eh, Charlie giving that some thought; remembering a couple of older kids from his neighbourhood who’d been to Borstal, how tough they were — or seemed — how they’d come home and all the kids surrounded them to gaze at their tattoos, the boob dots under the right eye. The letters: B.O.B., abbreviation for “Borstal Old Boy.” Like
an old boys’ rugby team of a certain school. Remembering the status it gave them. How some of the girls were really impressed by them, and the kids said it was a sure way of getting a girl’s pants off, even when the kids hardly knew what they were talking about. Still, sounded pretty neat. And now a boy knew a little more about these things … Well, maybe he could understand why that kid who’d been right here back in sixty-five was looking forward to going to Borstal. Though other stories Charlie had heard about Borstals were they were hard places and only for the hardest of fullas. He wasn’t sure he was that hard. Or even if he wanted to be. Grinning to himself and thinking, “But if I tattooed the B.O.B. on my hand I might still get the girls.” Laughing. And pacing. And finding things.

A name kept cropping up. “
George
.” No dates. Just George. Charlie even found the name etched into the black-painted metal support frames underneath the bed where he’d decided to explore, just in case. In case I find me an escape key, hahahaha!

Instead he found the name George carved several times on both metal angle bar and grooved into the wooden slats. Kid must’ve lain under here on his back to do it. But what if he’d got caught? What would he say?

Charlie found something this ubiquitous George had to say other than his oft-repeated name. It said, “
Kehua
come
.” Followed by a laboriously etched
6
and a
7
. As if the carver of wooden bed slats had a struggling knowledge of numbers.

Doesn’t kehua mean ghost in Maori …? The realisation sent Charlie’s blood cold. He rolled quickly out from under the bed. Got to his feet and adopted a “There’s
no such thing as ghosts” stance. Though the cell had got suddenly chilly. So he dived into bed, still in his clothes but with the slippers replacing his shoes. Then he leapt out at the thought of Mr Dekka catching him in bed in his clothes when he’d been kind enough to bring Charlie not only pyjamas but nice warm slippers, too.

He changed into the pyjamas. The feel so unfamiliar and nice he almost forgot what had brought him to change in the first place. He just stood there, turning, twisting his body this way and that to get the tingle of fluffiness and warmth against his skin; the aroma of cleanliness, nice-scented washing stuff still lingering in the blue-striped garments. Ahhh.

In bed, and snuggled doubly up in the luxury of pyjamas and several blankets, a kid actually felt, you know, not so bad. Considering. He turned inwards, facing the wall, so to close this feeling, this little world of unexpected comfort, further into himself. Just me and my P-jammies, boy. Smiling away. Life wasn’t so bad after all.

When he opened his eyes he got the reminder then.
George.
George had been here in this very spot, looking at this very point on the green and white blobbed wall, before carving his name here. Charlie stared at it. Then he noticed faintly beside it another name. It said,
Hori
. So Charlie thinking again; of the ghost which must have been George’s bad dream sometime in this same year. But what Hori meant Charlie had no idea, except it was an ill-meant reference to anyone of Maori blood at school, as he recalled. Though come to think of it, it could also be used as a term without nastiness. Or why else would the Two
Lakes representative men’s rugby team have a mascot with the name “Hori”? So maybe this George was referring to the same rugby symbol?

Sleep took Charlie before he could give matters much more thought. And when he woke it was morning because light was striped on the concrete ceiling from the barred window down the end of his bed. The first word that came to him was “
Kehua
”. But this time, in the security of daylight and having survived his first night away from home — if you could call it that — it didn’t break him out in the chills.

Then, by habit, he was going over his dreams of the night; trying to see inside them, what they meant. And still no sign of understanding.

Out of bed — Woo! Too cold! Back in to bed. Ahh. Could stay here my whole life. Hands up under his head, a ceiling with interesting change of light to contemplate. Thirteen, eh? And here, in a cell. I could be a gangster, a teenage gangster in the making. Going through his imaginary paces, as always. (Cos that’s how I am. Dunno why. Just am. One minute I’m in the real world. Next I’m somewhere else.)

So when he first heard the voice, he wasn’t sure if he’d heard it for real or not. He stopped breathing.

“Hey, new kid? What’s your name?” the voice from right outside the high window. Charlie sat up.

“What?”

“Ya deaf? Ya got wax in ya ears, boy? I’ll give you waxy ears when ya get out. I’ll
box
your bloody ears!”

If it wasn’t for the stifled giggles Charlie might have got alarmed at the apparent threat. Charlie jumped out of
bed, then climbed back on to it, standing on tiptoe.

“What’s this place like?” He heard his voice more nervous than he expected.

The voice took a long time in answering. “Boy, it’s — hey, I gotta go. Housemaster’s coming. See ya.”

Left Charlie Wilson standing there staring at the shaft of bar-striped light angling itself on the ceiling. And the boy’s voice echoing in his mind, the tone, the timbre, the pitch. He’d remember it.

The click of the outer door sounded. Charlie was sat on the edge of his bed when the cell door opened and another kid entered, this one a white boy who looked about eleven, carrying the tray Mr Dekka had taken out with him last night. Behind the shy youngster stood a broadly smiling woman.

“Morning. I’m Miss Eccles.”

Charlie thinking she looked old enough to be someone’s grandmother. And a kindly one at that. So again thinking this was maybe not going to be so bad after all.