Street Kid by Judy Westwater

moment and before another girl could take her place, I stepped forward.
    ‘Anyone want a toffee? I’ve got loads.’ I held out the bag with the confident smile I’d been practising with Susie at home.
    Again it happened. The girls gathered round, drenched me with cupboard love for five minutes, then went back to their game.
    The next day it was the same story; but on the evening of the fourth day, when I got back from school, Freda was waiting for me. As soon as I saw her face I knew what was coming. My first instinct was to run but I stood rooted to the spot, unable to breathe or speak. Freda looked more livid than I’d ever seen her, her face white as chalk and below it a nasty red rash staining her neck.
    ‘Mrs Allen told me what you’ve been up to, you little thief!’ Freda was holding her purse in her hand. ‘If you want it so much, you can take the bloody lot!’ At that, she took a handful of change out of it and threw it in my face.
    Almost panting with rage, Freda grabbed a wooden coat hanger from the table and came at me. With one hand she held the collar of my coat to stop me getting away; with the other she beat me around the head with the hanger. The force of her blows almost knocked my teeth into the back of my head and I tasted blood. The pain of it was shattering and I desperately tried to protect my head with my arm.
    Later on, as I lay on my bed upstairs hugging Susie to my chest, my whole body was throbbing with pain and shock. I felt along the edge of my teeth with my tongue, and it was then that I realized that two of my teeth were broken.Freda must have decided that a beating wasn’t enough punishment for me. So the next day she came to my school and told the headmaster what I’d done.
    If I’d had trouble making friends before, now Freda made it quite impossible. At assembly the next day, the headmaster called for hush in the hall before he spoke:
    ‘I’ve had a visit from a most distressed mother yesterday and I was very disturbed at what she told me.’ At this, twenty rows of expectant faces all swivelled about, looking to see who the guilty child might be, half revelling in the drama, and half worrying it might be them.
    ‘Judith Richardson? Where is she?’ The headmaster scanned our row. ‘Will you please stand up?’
    The blood was thundering in my ears and I didn’t immediately get to my feet. My form teacher then caught my eye and motioned with her hand for me to get up. I felt a hundred pairs of eyes fixed on me as I stood there, dreading what the headmaster was going to say next.
    ‘You repeatedly stole money from your mother’s purse so you could buy sweets,’ He paused and a ripple went through the children in the hall. ‘I’m sure we all agree’, he went on, ‘that it was a shocking thing that Judith did – deceiving her mother in this way.’
    The headmaster was in his stride now and took us through the Ten Commandments, told a parable about a thief, and generally drummed it in that I was a wicked sinner and not the sort of child he wanted in his school.
    I was aching to tell them, I bought the sweets for the others. I never ate a single one. I only wanted a friend.
    From that moment on, the teachers and pupils at Duke Street never let me forget that I was a thief. It was as if an indelible brand had been burned into my forehead. Weeks later, when my form teacher asked for volunteers to collectthe dinner money, I was careful not to raise my hand but she picked on me all the same, saying, ‘I’m glad that you didn’t offer, Judith. We certainly wouldn’t be able to trust you with money after what you did, would we children?’
    Strangely enough, the first friend I had in Wood Street came via my father – the very person who’d made sure I was always friendless. Dad came home after work one day, a couple of months after I’d been sent to Hulme, and peeping out of his pocket was a little puppy that one of his workmates had given him. He called her Gyp.
    Gyp