CREATIVE WRITING COMPETITION
Short Story Finalist
Support Me
by Kay Smith
Jasmine was wheeled into the teaching area. With calm professionalism staff welcomed her, admiring her neat little suede boots. Maroon, they matched her pink padded jacket and offset her fawn coloured woollen tights. Jasmine was always well turned out. Her mother made sure of that. Like a doll, one of the staff had commented.
Born six years ago with brain damage Jasmine had the mental age of a baby. Her natural development blocked by a freak of nature she was profoundly mentally and physically disabled. That meant the state lavished great care on her. She was after all entitled to it.
She attended a local authority special school where she spent the day being moved from one position to another, from her wheelchair to a foam bed where she could stretch her legs out, to a side alcove where, discretely she would be what the staff called “freshened up.” Without the capacity to take on board the lessons of toilet training she wore disposable nappies which needed changing, twice throughout the school day at the very least. All this movement was carried out with the latest hoist equipment and the latest in handling techniques. The state cared.
Soft music would play and staff would massage her hands and arms with cream – anti- allergy cream of course. Every environmental abrasion was carefully eliminated from her life – her fragile life.
The teacher would tell stories to her and the other five children in the class. Looking for the tiniest signs of a reaction – just the shadow of a smile would serve as a reward for her efforts.
There was the computer as well. Twice a week Jasmine was timetabled for computing. Propped up by the teacher she could watch the coloured graphics and cartoons. One programme was about the weather. Jasmine would be encouraged to choose the right garment to suit the weather – a sun hat to match the bright yellow ball fringed with spikes; an umbrella to match grey clouds dripping with the black dotted signifiers of a soggy day. The teacher would gently lift Jasmine’s hand towards the correct choice. Then she praised her. As she did so Jasmine’s eyes lit up. She did like to please.
At the beginning of the school day, after all the children had arrived via their disability bus transport and they had been freshened up they would be arranged in their wheelchairs in a circle and then encouraged to signal hello to each other by touching a buzzer. It was the same at the end of the day. Except it was to say cheerio, or at least for the staff to say cheerio for them and signal that it was time to go home. No-one liked surprises.
Then one by one they were wheeled out of the brightly coloured room, down the pristinely clean corridors and back onto their disability buses, ready for the ride home.
Helen, Jasmine’s mother sat by her living room window watching for the arrival of the bus. She flicked through the pages of a catalogue of children’s clothing. Jasmine may be disabled, may be seriously short of cognitive and motor abilities but Helen was determined she was not going to be short of stunningly cute colour co-ordinated outfits. It was always the first thing people commented on when they saw her, not her disabilities.
But she had not slept well the night before. As she had not the night before that. But then she had to get up to change Jasmine’s position to make sure she could breathe properly. Jasmine had to be comforted too when indigestion and wind made her cry. Or constipation made passing motions painful. Helen was grateful she did not suffer such discomforts herself but she did suffer from lack of sleep. It made her weary but then it was not Helen who had special needs. It was not Helen who had a co-ordinated support plan. It was Jasmine and it was Jasmine’s needs which had to be met first and foremost. Helen never thought it should be otherwise.
Harry, Helen’s husband, took a different view. He had left the family home when Jasmine was two. He was a successful lawyer and much in demand in private practice. He could not stand the clutter at home – the bags of nappies, the plastic baby mobiles hanging from every shelf to provide a visual stimulus for Jasmine, the lifting equipment, the wheelchair, always the wheelchair.
But mostly he could not stand the fundamental imperfection he believed lay at the heart of it all. This was not the family he had imagined he would be the breadwinner for. From a privileged background, the product of private education, his hopes of an offspring to follow in his footsteps were dashed against the rock of the difficult and dangerous pregnancy and child birth his wife had had to endure. Instead of a carbon copy glory he got a child with a dribble – a glistening line of saliva down her chin.
Taking care not to be seen to be heartless Harry told his colleagues that the marriage had been on the rocks anyway. Jasmine was the straw that broke the camel’s back. And Jasmine – she was just absolutely gorgeous, he would purr.
Helen stared at the frozen pathway of her front garden. It was mid winter – one of the worst in forty years, they said. She had had to cancel her routine of walking round the nearby park three days in a row now. She loved that walk. She could breathe fresh air, not the hot air of her house. It had to be kept warm, very warm for Jasmine – just a whiff of a cold draught could give her a chill. And whilst Jasmine was at school Helen could leave the house without the ritual of making sure her daughter was “fresh.” For an hour or so, out in that park, Helen was a free woman.
Right on time the bus appeared in front of Helen’s house. She threw on her jacket and went out to greet her daughter, taking over the handles of the wheelchair from the bus driver, ready to take on once more the full mantle of responsibility for her care.
“Teacher said mind to look in the home diary,” the bus driver said. “There’s a lot of notices in it today. You know what they are like. She said you haven’t signed the last consent form she sent. They need it signed so they could take the children out on trips. They want to go to that new multi-sensory room at the museum you know. Sounds, great.”
“Yes, I know. She left a message on my answering machine,” Helen replied wearily.
She didn’t feel much like hearing from the school these days. There was so much detail, so many changes. Staff came and went. Appointments with therapists constantly altered. But they wanted her to know everything. It was called parent school liaison.
Once Helen hadfed Jasmine, freshened her up and settled her down on her home foam bed in front of the flickering images of a large flat screen TV, she opened the home dairy. Bits of paper tumbled out. She opened one. This one was different. It was not about Jasmine. It was about parents. Written by the head teacher it acknowledged how isolated parents of children with special needs could become, how difficult it was for them to meet up with parents in a similar position. What the headteacher was proposing was setting up a network for parents – online at first, so they could talk to each other from their own home. Was she interested? Parents from other special schools could join in too. They could share experiences and problems. And then perhaps find ways to meet up. The school would help with that too.
A tear came to Helen’s eye, sweetly piercing her stoicism. It was the touch on the shoulder, it was the question gently asked, is everything all right, that she had yearned for.
“When I picked up a leaflet about the ‘see me’ Creative Writing Competition in Fountainbridge Library on the theme of support I thought this was something I'd really like to write about. I am aware of the excellent education and care provided for children with additional support needs but I wondered what their parents might be feeling and what their support needs are. That was my inspiration. I am really delighted to have been short listed and to have made it through to the final stage of the competition."
Kay Smith