Russell

Russell was a friend of mine!’

Small for his age of eleven years, wiry, thin; ‘hungry looking’ dad called him. He tagged along with me everywhere.
He loved my mum. I know this because he told me so. It came as a bit of a shock to me;
not because he did - because my mum was easy to love, I mean I loved her but I had to; she was my mum and she provided sweets and food and bought me cool stuff - it was the way he said it. There was no, ‘Your mum’s great!’ or ‘I like your mum!’ He just came right out with it one day, in the same kind of way that you would say, ‘I think it’s going to rain’; ‘I love your mum!’ When I asked him why? He said, ‘because she is always smiling and happy and makes me feel good!’ That was kind of the same reason that I loved her, apart from the fact that she was mum of course, so I thought that was a cool reason.

Mum loved him too. She would always feed him when he came home with me. Mum always had enough sweets or goodies for two. If Russell wasn’t with me, she would always ask, ‘Where’s Russell today?’ He was nearly always with me anyway, I think that the only reason that he wouldn’t be with me, was if he was kept behind in school for being rude or stupid but he always turned up sometime.

I didn’t think that he was stupid but our teacher, Miss Spencer did and she told him lots of times every day. One day she made him go up to the blackboard after school and write out 50 times; ‘I am a stupid boy!’ She asked him all the time, ‘Why do you come to school, stupid boy?’ Russell told her he didn’t have anywhere else to go and anyway, he thought she was really sexy and would be lonely if he did not get to see her every day. He got slapped for that and put standing in the corner with his nose touching the wall, for a whole hour and kept back after school to write out 50 times; ‘I am a rude and stupid boy!’

I thought Miss Spencer was mean but she didn’t seem to bother Russell.

Russell never brought me around his house because his mum was always at work. He said that his mum was always tired when she came home and she needed peace to sleep. His dad had died when he was little, he said. Different uncles lived in his house but none seemed to stay for very long. Some of them were OK and used to give him money and tell him to go to the cinema but others – like the uncle that was there now - just used to get mad at him for no reason. I think he used to be frightened then.

One day Russell didn’t come to school, which was really unusual because he never missed any time, even when he was sick.

Just before the final bell, the headmaster came into the class and called Miss Spencer out. She told us to read page 25 of our geography books, until she returned. She was gone a long time and when she came back in, she was crying and her face looked really white, kind of like a vampire. Miss Spencer sat down behind her desk, took out a hanky and blew her nose. She didn’t say anything to us, just sat staring at the double desk, which Russell and me shared. She had a weird look on her face, like someone that has just woken up and don’t know where they are.

Thankfully the bell went and we all packed our books in our satchels and made for the door. As I was passing her desk, she looked at me and her eyes got bigger, like she was surprised to see me. Then she said – in a very low voice – ‘That poor boy, that poor, poor boy!’ It made me feel really creepy, I could feel my legs going a bit like the wobbly jelly that we had for dessert some Sundays after dinner. I was going to start running for the door, when I looked up and seen mum standing there; that was another shock, I can tell you!

Mum stopped me and brought me back into the classroom. When everyone else had gone – except Miss Spencer – she told me to sit down because she had some sad news to tell me. Miss Spencer started crying louder now and stuck her head in her hanky, which seeing as how she had just blown her nose in it, didn’t strike me as such a good idea.

‘It’s about Russell love’, mum said. Now she was crying too…