Let Me Tell You a Story by Renata Calverley

Author:Renata Calverley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2013-03-25T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

January 1944. Skierniewice State Orphanage

There was a lot to learn at the orphanage. Rule number one was don’t trust anyone. There were one or two children, such as Cesia and Basia, who I thought I might be able to trust but even with them I had to be careful. If you told on someone else’s wrongdoings, you got a reward, like extra food. I soon realised that the children were always telling lies about each other just to get more food. If you cried or showed that you were unhappy, you were told off as it might make other children think they were unhappy too. If you were kind or tried to help another child, you were told off as well. I quickly realised that it was best not to say anything at all and to keep out of everyone’s way. I decided to copy the other children and keep myself to myself and then days went by without me saying anything at all to anyone.

The other children also scared me. I was terrified by the way they behaved; some acted more like frightened animals than children, making strange sounds and trying to hide themselves even when there was nowhere to hide. Others just stared ahead as if they were asleep with their eyes open. But the worst of the lot were the children who kept hurting themselves over and over again. I couldn’t understand why they kept on wanting to hurt themselves so badly and make themselves even more miserable.

I was scared and jumpy being surrounded by so many children who acted in such strange ways. I knew that I could not get away from them. But then I would remember Babcia and her stories and how we used to leave the living room at home and fly to the places inside my head. So I thought about those stories, and the ones Aunt Adela and Marynia had told to me, and those that I had read myself. And I found I could still ‘fly’ and so I left the horrible orphanage and the scary children to join my story-book friends in my head and share their lives instead. I told my friends my problems and they always tried to help even if they didn’t know what to do. I tried to copy their behaviour when they had been in difficult situations like when people were being cruel to them or when they were frightened. If I felt miserable scrubbing stone corridors with a scrubbing brush too big for my hands, or carrying buckets of water which were too heavy for me, I would imagine myself as Cinderella working in her stepmother’s kitchen. At times when I felt a bit better, I imagined myself in a beautiful land full of fairy godmothers and happy children, loving parents, where knights in shining armour were waiting on big white horses to rescue beautiful damsels in distress. While struggling to swallow the orphanage food, I sometimes pretended that I was eating

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