Brides of Frankenstein we called them but not

all bad, like I say, just cold, most of them, like when

you’re not getting it and deep-freeze sets in.

What did they expect when Curtis wrapped

me in his arms on Blackpool Pleasure Beach 1959?

It were so windy he said I’d fall into the icy sea

if he didn’t shelter me in his too-tight tweed jacket,

handed down at St Andrew’s Home for Boys.

They’d never had a lad so tall until him,

son of a black GI, six foot three and broad of back.

And why didn’t we go down to where the boats

were moored, he said, find an empty one, never

had a cuddle before. He were only fifteen,

but I could smell his manhood. You see the nuns

hadn’t offered sex education classes –

got sent to the coal hole for touching a boy

let alone kissing if someone reported.

After I’d done what I wasn’t really sure

I was doing with Curtis,

we had a go on the Grand National Roller Coaster,

but it was still hurting between my legs

in between my laughter, roaring

Isn’t this fun! Isn’t this great!

Wasn’t that I felt unloved like other whingers

who had two parents, a brother and a sister,

a home, hearthside fire, Sunday roast,

birthday cards and a pet rabbit.

I was unloved, proven fact, no parents,

just a house full of frustrated elderly virgins

what hadn’t a clue how to love the seventy-odd

waifs and sad strays at their mercy.

Come from a long line of fallen women, me,

so had to uphold the family tradition, didn’t I?

No one had to tell me my mother was

unmarried, underage, wayward bad,

but they did like to remind me I was born

into stigma and got my own stigmata

’cos Terry was so stubborn he had me

screaming thirty-two hours, a scar across

my stomach when he should have slid out

in sixty minutes I were that young and wide of hip.

And when I held him for the first time I cried

at how my own mother could’ve dumped me.

Couldn’t leave my Terry for a minute, breastfed him

till he was four years old. You see no one

taught me mothering. I wanted him by

my side all the time. But he never listened to me, my

Terry was a disobedient teenager, tall

like his dad, wanting to go out playing

all the time like he didn’t have family, like

he didn’t have a home to go to, like

he didn’t understand he was the first thing

that was all mine ever in my life.

Curtis was banished to a home in Birmingham,

me to a house for unwed mums in Nottingham.

My child up for a good Catholic home, they said.

Who me? My baby? Only thing I owned