Attic Little sister came along in the mid 1980s. Nina went to a foster home and met her, she laid in a crib and Nina felt like she should spend more time with her before they went home but the other children in the foster home wanted to play chase so that seemed much better. The story is that Nina named her little sister. She disagrees. Nina remembered liking a girl at playschool called Debbie and asking Mum about calling the baby Debbie. She also thought this would be nice because she had a cousin called Debbie. Mum didn’t like this name. A while later they were watching a soap opera together and Mum said, “What about C for a name?” Nina said “Yes”. But this is one of the many situations where Mum and Nina remembered things very differently. Nina keeps this memory close as it was the first time she recalled having her opinion disregarded, and not being believed because adults know best. Up Nina went into the attic. Nina does not remember much about the attic other than the view from the window was of a graveyard, and in the distance a hospital. Nina thought this hospital was a college because it looked like a ceramic ornament she had that she thought was a college. Teenage Nina learnt that the ornament was a narrow canal house. Adult Nina learnt it was a generic building. At all ages Nina wanted to go to college. Big House Change came again in the late 1980s. The family moved into the big house, and Nina started her first school. She doesn’t remember much at the time from the big house, except that Mum was always changing it around. First the pantry went, then the utility room, then the outhouse and it was replaced with an annex for Grandma. Mum told Nina and her sister that she invited Grandma to live with us because we asked her too. Adult Nina thinks Mum had already decided by that point. Grandma used her sadness to be mean to Mum; and Mum started thinking she wasn’t loved by Dad. This wasn’t true. But like most people her confidence had been knocked so much that she believed the negative things. It didn’t help that Dad was made redundant and told Nina he was “going to the knackers.” Lots of things felt upsetting to Nina at that point. But what was worse was Mrs Fraser. On her first day in school Nina was given a jotter to draw in. She drew a house and then joined a queue to see the teacher at her desk. At Mrs Fraser’s desk everyone was given an exercise book and Mrs Fraser had written a letter at the top of every page. She told the class this was their dictionary. Nina stepped up to the desk and Mrs Fraser wrote “My House” under Nina’s picture. She didn’t give Nina an exercise book to use as a dictionary. Nina went back to her desk and started to worry. So she joined the queue again so she could ask for a dictionary. Mrs Fraser said “I already gave you one. You have lost it.” Nina said she hadn’t. The teacher asked her what could have happened. Nina guessed, but couldn’t explain. There was another girl called Lisa who was the same height and had similar features to Nina, the only difference was Lisa had more freckles. Throughout the next ten years a handful of teachers would get Nina and Lisa mixed up. Nina missed the opportunity to join the netball team because when she put up my hand to volunteer another teacher put Lisa’s name down. Lisa luckily wanted to play netball. Every week without fail Nina would need to know how to spell a new word. But she’d join the queue for Mrs Fraser’s desk. Mrs Fraser would chastise her for losing the dictionary and tell her she wouldn’t help her until she found her dictionary. Nina didn’t learn any new words that year. She drew a house every day and wrote “My House.” Every now and again Mrs Fraser would make Nina search the school for her exercise book; she’d even have to look in the secretary’s office! Mrs Fraser told Nina’s Mum and Dad that Nina lost her dictionary. Nina tried to explain what had happened to her parents but they didn’t listen. They believed Mrs Fraser. Nina got so anxious she couldn’t eat at lunch, but people thought she was just misbehaving. After one lunchtime Mrs Fraser told Nina to stand up in front of the class and eat her lunch, because the dinner ladies had reported home that Nina wasn’t eating. www.edge-zine.com
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