Free The Skeleton Cupboard by Tanya Byron Page A

grab my bags and climb out of the car. I needed to find the analyst, get my head straight. Turning to open my door, I jumped out of my skin. The naked buttocks of one of the long-stay residents were pressed firmly against my window. I crawled across to the passenger door to get out.
    *   *   *
    The meeting with the analyst that followed was full of clichés. Woody Allen meets Almodóvar.
    I entered a small, dark room with the requisite couch against one wall. Abstract prints alongside postcards from Anna Freud’s house in Hampstead, all dominated by a huge reproduction of a self-portrait by Frida Kahlo, with her complicated and untended eyebrows. Endless books stacked up (very few with the spine broken) on a faded kilim on the floor. It smelled dusty.
    I told him that I needed to skip with Imogen. I asked him how I could persuade the team, especially the nurses who ran the health and safety of the unit, to give Imogen back her skipping rope.
    â€œWhy would they? Won’t she hang herself?”
    â€œNot with the skipping rope. It means too much to her. It’s her voice.”
    Then silence. Interminable silence.
    Just talk to me, tell me what you think.
    â€œAre you asking me for permission?” he asked.
    Oh, so bloody, fucking frustrating.
    â€œNo. I am asking you for your opinion.”
    More silence. And then, finally: “My opinion is that you should begin to value yours.”
    Sod him. I left and marched to the nurses’ office. To my amazement, they said yes and handed me Imogen’s skipping rope, although I did wonder whether it was done with an “OK, then—put your money where your mouth is, girl” attitude. And so I did.
    I found Imogen sitting on the window ledge in the rec room with half-closed eyes, silently counting and twirling her small wrists.
    This was her regular place. She could look out the window at the pond recently dug by the other inpatients and staff. It was a great activity, but one we couldn’t encourage her to join in on. Water was way too dangerous for Imogen, and for us as her caregivers.
    â€œImogen, it’s time for our session.”
    No response.
    â€œImogen, I’ve come for you. It’s our time together.”
    Nothing.
    â€œImogen, I believe this is yours.”
    I placed the skipping rope on the window ledge next to her and after a beat she turned to look at it.
    â€œC’mon, Imogen, let’s go outside.”
    Jelly in the dish,
    Jelly in the dish.
    Wiggle, waggle, wiggle, waggle,
    Jelly in the dish.
    Imogen stared as I sang the next rhyme and continued skipping with her rope:
    Lady, lady, touch the ground.
    Lady, lady, turn around.
    Turn to the east, and turn to the west,
    And choose the one you like the best.
    No response.
    I’m a little Dutch girl dressed in blue.
    Here are the things I like to do:
    Salute to the captain,
    Curtsy to the queen,
    Turn my back on the submarine.
    I can do the tap dance;
    I can do the split;
    I can do the holka polka just like this.
    No response.
    A sailor went to sea, sea, sea
    To see what he could see, see, see,
    And all that he could see, see, see
    Was the bottom of the deep blue sea, sea, sea.
    I had never skipped so hard in my life. In fact, I hadn’t skipped since elementary school, more than a decade ago. Sweat was pouring off me, and my calves and arms ached.
    â€œI’m sorry, Imogen. I have to stop.”
    â€œI was at the bottom of the sea, sea, sea.”
    That was the longest sentence I’d ever heard from this most serious little person with a fading red welt around her neck and her dead sister’s stinky rag doll tightly clamped under her arm.
    â€œWere you at the bottom of the sea, sea, sea, Imogen?”
    â€œI was at the bottom of the sea, sea, sea. In my blue dress.”
    We looked at each other. My heart was racing.
    â€œI didn’t want to.”
    â€œYou didn’t want to do what, Imogen?”
    â€œI’m