Dear Miss Brown

Dear Miss Brown,

You were my first teacher, big, soft and kind, smelling of face powder. You played the piano in assembly, and it was wonderful and sad, and made me dance. You said it was Beethoven’s Minuet in G and that Beethoven was not much older than me when he wrote it. When you sang the hymns in your rich Welsh voice, your mouth went over sideways and I tried to do it too. In class, when we recited our times tables for you, all together, it felt so safe. You told us what good children we were. I didn’t know I was good. Mummy said I was naughty. She tried to get rid of me when I was in her tummy, pushed the pram with my sister in it along the beach, trying to shake me loose, she said.

On Mondays, we could tell the class our News. The other children told about their weekends, family trips to Virginia Water. I didn’t understand. Mummy said it was because they’d got cars. When it was my turn I couldn’t think what to say so I said “my sister’s naughty sometimes.” At home, when mummy cross-examined me about my day, she was angry and told me I was the naughty one. I must never talk to anyone about what happened at home.

I kept falling asleep during lessons so you got a bed for the classroom, but I couldn’t lie on it with lots of children there. They might jump on me when I was asleep like my sister did, press the pillow over my face so I couldn’t breathe, kneel on my chest and whisper to me how they’d cut me with scissors, laugh when I cried. Mummy shouted at me when I cried: “Be quiet. Your sister will have a fit.” It was my fault she had fits, because she didn’t want me to be born.

You chose me to wear a sari in the Christmas play. I was so happy, but then I was ill. Mummy made me stay in bed. You sent me home a cake and some tinsel in a paper bag, so I knew you were thinking about me. I tied the tinsel round my bedpost. It was green and sparkly like the sari.

When we went back after Christmas, in the playground, mummy said you were dead. “You’ll have a new teacher. Stop crying. Don’t be such a baby.” The playground was very big. My sister danced around me singing, “Miss Brown has been cremated, Miss Brown has been cremated.” She was still singing it after school, all the way home.

At home, I couldn’t find Susan, my doll. Mummy said, “You don’t want that dirty old thing. I’ve thrown it away.” I begged her to get it out of the bin, but she said it was gone for ever. You can’t get things back once they’ve gone.

I miss you, Miss Brown. I never told you how much I loved you.