Jacinta Takes a Walk
Copyright© 2025 by BarBar
Chapter 22: Visual Checks and Bee Stings
Grace parked the car outside a fairly modern looking two storey building. It had a small, neatly kept, section of lawn out the front. In the middle of the lawn was an isolated section of low wall with big lit up lettering to form a sign. The sign said, “Saint Helena Open Residences for Teens.” It was getting late in the evening but there were lights on, both upstairs and downstairs.
I grabbed my schoolbag and one of the garbage bags while Grace hefted the other bag and led me up to what was obviously the main entrance. She pressed a buzzer next to the door and said her name into an intercom box. A moment later, a distorted voice said, “Come on in. First door on the left.”
The door buzzed to announce that it was unlocked and Grace pulled it open.
Grace again led the way into the entrance and then through the first door on the left. That led into an office where a tall thin man sat at a desk. He looked like he was maybe in his late 20s and was wearing his long dark hair tied at the back of his neck in a ponytail. He had a closely trimmed beard, and wore a check shirt and blue jeans. He had two screens in front of him. One looked like a standard computer screen, the other was showing a grid of different camera views. On the other side of the office was a glass window, opening into the interior of the building. It had a sliding section of the window that could be opened to talk to someone on the other side.
The man stood up and came over to me with a smile on his face.
“Hi, my name is Max. Put all that by the wall for now. We’ll sort it out in a moment.”
Once my hands were free, he shook my hand. “Hello Jacinta. Welcome to SHORT. Is Jacinta okay? Do you have a nickname you’d like us to use?”
I shrugged. “Jacinta’s fine.”
He nodded to me, then looked at Grace. “Hello Grace. Good to see you again. What have you got for me?”
Grace opened her folder and handed over a copy of the form she’d been given at the cop shop, as well as another document I hadn’t seen before.
Grace turned to me. “I’m going to leave you in Max’s capable hands. I’ll see you tomorrow for that court date. I’ll get a message to you in the morning about the time, once we can get it scheduled.”
She turned and walked out. Max ushered me into a chair at his desk. I glanced over my shoulder at my things. Frodo was sitting next to them, and watching me intently. I relaxed a bit when I saw him there.
There was a buzzing sound and Grace’s voice emerged from a speaker. “Door please.”
Max reached over and pressed a button, without saying anything.
Max looked at the form in front of him and started typing. “Purely to make sure I’ve got the right paperwork, are you Jacinta Mells?” He read out my date of birth.
I nodded.
“You’ve probably had a long day,” he said. “So I’ll go through this as quickly as I can. I have a bunch of questions for you. First up, are you currently in any pain? Are you injured in any way?”
“I’m fine. The cops already asked me that,” I said.
He grinned. “There’s no harm in asking again. Do you feel well? Any dizziness? Trouble breathing? Nausea? Thirsty? Cold? Hot?”
“I’m fine, more or less. I guess I’m kind of numb. But no, to all of those.”
He nodded. “A bit of shock is normal. Are you hungry? How long is it since the last time you ate?”
I shook my head. “I had some dinner a while ago, I forget when. I had a good lunch. I’m not hungry.”
He smiled. “That’s good. In that case, let’s move on.”
He took me through a series of questions, related to medication, known allergies, known medical conditions, food intolerances, medical history, personal history, and so on, making entries on the computer after each of my answers. I was feeling a bit overwhelmed but he was being so calm about the whole thing, I could just let myself get swept along.
Half-way through his list, there was a buzz from the speaker. He broke off from talking to me and glanced at one of the cameras. I could see two faces peering into the camera on one of the little squares, but from my angle I couldn’t see much detail.
A slightly tinny female voice sounded through a speaker. “Hey, it’s Maya and Jana. We’re back.”
Max spoke into a microphone. “That’s great. How did it go? Did you have a good time?” The two girls responded cheerfully. Max pressed a button which resulted in a distant buzz. The two girls disappeared from the view of the camera as they entered the building.
Max opened a different window on his computer and made a note. A moment later, I saw movement through the glass window as the two girls walked into the interior of the building and then turned and moved out of sight. In my brief glimpse of them, they appeared to be dressed nicely, as if for a party or something. I saw movement in another little camera square as they appeared to be going up a set of stairs. Max ignored what was happening on the cameras and focused on me.
He asked what school I’d been attending. When I told him he smiled and made another entry.
He talked while he typed. “Excellent. We have a number of our residents who go there. There’s a bus stop around the corner for the number 18 bus, which goes down Dingham St, and has a stop right outside the front of your school. Do you have a valid bus pass?”
“Yeah.”
“Maintaining your attendance at school is a high priority for us. We’ll talk more about that later.”
I shrugged but didn’t respond.
“Tomorrow is Sunday. Do you attend church of any sort? We’re on the same property as the St Helena, so that’s a 2 minute walk away if you’re Catholic. We have a couple of residents who are Baptist and one of us runs them up to the local Baptist church each Sunday in the minibus. There’s a Uniting Church just around the corner, it’s only about 5 or 6 minutes walk away. Up until two months ago, we had a pair of brothers who were Sikh so we regularly took them up to the temple in...”
“I’m not really a religious person,” I cut in, worried about how long of a list he intended to recite.
“That’s fine,” he said. “No pressure. Just so you’re aware, we get government funding, and we’re also supported by the Catholic Church, specifically St Helena, but we’re not here to recruit you. If you do develop a desire to attend a church service of any denomination, we’ll do our best to support that. But if you’re not interested, that’s okay too.”
He made a note on his computer and turned back to me.
“Do you have employment of any kind?”
I told him about my cleaning job and the occasional warehouse job.
He smiled happily and typed the details into his computer. I had the phone numbers in my pocket so I could give him those as well.
“Excellent,” he said. “I would encourage you to keep up those jobs, provided they don’t interfere with your schooling. Having that extra bit of income will give you more independence. And having work experience will set you up for a better future, post-care.”
He opened a drawer on his desk and handed me a couple of copies of a card.
“This is our address and contact number,” he explained. “You will need to let them know of your change of address as soon as you can. I slid the cards into the pocket of my windcheater. Do you have your own phone?”
“No.”
“Ah. It would make things easier if you had one. If you’d like me to, I can put in an application for a phone for you. Sometimes we get donations that are intended for exactly things like that. I won’t make any promises but we might get lucky. In the meantime, give them the number on the card. We’ll pass on any messages for you. And you can always use our phones to talk to them, obviously.”
“Okay.”
“Right. We have some rules. Mostly they’re common sense. No drugs. No alcohol. No fighting. Don’t damage our facilities. Leave other people’s belongings alone. Be respectful to the staff, and to the other residents. Do your assigned chores. The boy’s dorm area is strictly out of bounds for you. Consequences for breaking the rules can include extra chores, loss of privileges, fines, things like that. If you do something illegal, we call the police. If you do things that are too extreme, we punt you back to DCP and they find another place for you.”
“Okay.”
“If you get into some sort of conflict with another resident, or a staff member, first step is to try to deescalate it yourself. Being able to do that is a valuable skill. We will help you develop deescalation skills as a part of Group. If that doesn’t work, we’ll try to mediate.”
He shifted on his chair and looked me in the eyes.
“Flare ups happen. It’s understandable. You’re all teenagers, living closely together, and you’ve all experienced difficult circumstances that landed you here with us. In other words, every resident has shit they’re dealing with. Some are dealing with it better than others, but everyone has issues. All we can ask is that you try to be tolerant of someone if they’re not handling things so well. And we ask you to try not to take out your issues on the other residents. We have group counselling sessions twice a week and we’d really like you to attend. They honestly do help.”
I shrugged. “Okay.”
“Do you have any questions?”
While he was waiting for me to think of a question, he took out an empty cardboard folder, printed my name on the outside top corner and slid the two documents he’d gotten from Grace inside. Then he added the folder to a tray on his desk.
It took until he was finished doing all that before I thought of a question.
“Um, how many people are here? I mean residents.”
“With you, we’ll now have nineteen. Eleven girls and eight boys. Our maximum capacity is twelve and twelve. We have two residential staff, myself and my partner Roseanna. She would normally be here working with me but she’s off tonight dealing with some family issues. We live here full time. We also have four other staff members who live off site. You’ll get to meet them all sooner or later.”
“I was expecting nuns,” I said.
He grinned. “I know, right? Everyone knows that Catholic orphanages are run by nuns. But nope. Not a single one of us is a nun. We’re simply people employed by the board to manage and run this place. Between the six of us, we have a range of skills that we can draw on. We used to have a pair of nuns who volunteered here, but one of them passed away, and the other moved into a retirement home. Also, technically, this isn’t an orphanage. Only some of the teens are here because they’re orphans. The rest are here for other reasons. All the residents are in the care of DCP.”
“Okay.”
“Right.” He stood up and rubbed his hands together. “Let’s keep moving. We have a bit more to do to get you settled in.”
He walked over and picked up my school bag and one of the garbage bags. He pointed his head to indicate I should grab the other one, so I did that. Then he led me out of the office, and out into the open area that I’d seen through the window in the office. It had various types of seating, some tables, and a big TV on one wall with a range of comfortable chairs and couches in front of it.
Two teenaged boys were lounging on a couch with their feet up as they watched something on TV that was showing a frantic car chase. They were both wearing loose shorts and tshirts with printed designs. They ignored us as we entered the room and stayed focused on the TV. Max glanced at them and then ignored them and focused on me.
Max waved a hand and said, “Social area and eating area. It’s also used for homework and for the rare occasions when we have a whole team meeting.” He kept pointing in different directions. “Through there is the kitchen. Stairs on that side go to the girls’ dorm area. Stairs over there go to the boys’ dorm area. Your out of bounds area starts where the sign is at the bottom of the boys’ stairs. Don’t go up the stairs. Don’t even sit on the stairs. There’s a big sign. Don’t even pretend to not understand that rule. The boys have a similar rule. There is a lift, don’t use it without direct permission from the staff. It’s not a toy. At the moment, we have one boy in a wheelchair and two other boys on crutches. They get to use the lift. Everyone else uses the stairs.”
I could read the sign at the bottom of the girls’ stairs from where I was standing. “No boys beyond this point. No exceptions. No excuses.”
Max continued with his whirlwind tour by pointing in different directions.
“Downstairs toilets are over there. The downstairs toilets are unisex. That way leads to a bit of a gym, it’s not much but it’s better than nothing. Beyond that is a quiet area for study, homework, reading, whatever. We encourage you to help each other with homework and study as much as you can, but if you are working together, you do it out here. The quiet area is a place you can go if you want to be left alone. There’s also a bit of a library, more like a couple of shelves, really, with some books that have ended up with us. Feel free to borrow what you’d like. Just put it back when you’re done. If you’ve brought books here with you and want to add them to our collection, we won’t object.”
I was thinking I’d need someone to repeat all of this in the morning, as it was all going in one ear and out the other.
Max turned and pointed down a hallway. “That way are staff quarters, where Roseanna and I live, plus offices, counselling rooms, private meeting rooms. The door to that hallway is locked after hours. If nobody is out on duty and you need one of us for any reason, there’s a call button right there next to the door. Technically, we’re available 24 hours, but if it’s 3am it better be a real emergency because we need our beauty sleep too. The senior residents are pretty good at handling most things in the dorms during the night.”
“The external doors are locked each night from about 8pm, through until about 7am. If you’re out after 8pm you’ll need to buzz to get in. If you’re likely to be out late, let us know in advance. Don’t leave the building after 8pm without checking in with us first. Opening the external doors from the inside when they’re locked sets off various alarms. During the daytime, you can come and go as you please. We have a visitor area at the front near the main door. No visitors are allowed to come through into the main area, except on special occasions.”
He led me through some glass doors and into a big laundry with four washing machines and four dryers. Two of the sets of machines were extra large.
“Normally, you wash your own clothes. We provide a non-allergenic soap powder. If you want something different, you supply your own. There are clothes lines out the back through that door. Hang dry your clothes as much as possible. It’s better for your clothes and it’s better for the environment. The dryers in here are for when it’s raining, or for situations like tonight when you need something washed and dried in the one evening. Tonight, we’re going to put all of your clothes through the wash. It’s procedure to wash all clothes coming in.”
“A lot of my clothes were clean already,” I protested.
“Doesn’t matter. We wash everything. Don’t take it personally. It’s simply policy. We had a number of kids come in who were too embarrassed to admit their clothes were dirty and that caused problems. This way, we know all of your clothes will be clean.”
He grabbed a couple of baskets, from a stack and put them on the floor in front of me. He glanced at my two garbage bags and opened the doors to two of the machines, one of the bigger ones and one of the standard ones.
“Two machines loads should be more than enough, but it’s no problem if it ends up being more. This left machine is industrial size. It will take more than double the load of a normal household machine. Sort your clothes however you want and load up the machines. If you have anything that needs dry cleaning, put them aside in one of these baskets. If you have woollens, or anything else that needs a gentle wash or a cold wash, put them together in the smaller machine. There’s a stack of bags for delicates in that little tray on the bench. Things like bras and delicate undies, and pantyhose go in a bag, zip up the bag, then the bag goes in the machine. That way nothing gets knotted up with other clothes or stretched out of shape. Are you okay with sorting your clothes, or do you need me to walk you through it?”
“I can do it,” I said. Did he think I’d never washed clothes before?
“Other items that don’t need washing, like mementos and so on, can go back in one of the garbage bags for now. If there’s anything in your school bag that needs washing, like PE gear for instance, don’t forget to dig that out and throw it in with the wash. I’ll leave you alone for a couple of minutes while you sort out your clothes. When I come back, I’ll show you how to put the soap powder in and start the machines.”
He stepped out of the room and left me to it. I upended my bags into the baskets and then started putting the non-clothing items back into one of the bags. There wasn’t much. I didn’t have anything that needed dry cleaning, so that made things easier. Even the jackets I owned could go straight into the wash. I loaded my clothes into the two machines. His guess that two loads would be enough turned out to be accurate.
I was throwing the last shirts into a machine when Max returned with a little pile of some sort of clothing in one hand. He was trailed by two slightly older girls wearing pyjamas. They looked at me curiously. I’d guess the girls were 17 or 18. He saw what I’d done and gave me a smile.
“Great.” He pointed at the two girls. “Jacinta, this is Maya, and this is Jana.”
They each said, “Hi,” so I said “Hey,” back to them.
Maya was my height but a bit more filled out. She had long dark wavy hair and wore glasses. Yana was taller and thinner with very blonde hair and pale skin.
Max showed me how to slide out the little soap dispenser tray and add soap and then select the appropriate wash cycle and we set the machines going.
“When they’re done, I’ll swap them over into the dryers,” said Max. “It’ll all be dry and waiting for you in the morning. I’ll leave everything in baskets on this bench for you to collect whenever you’re ready.”
Max turned to me. “Now, unless you’ve come to us straight from hospital, which you haven’t, we have to do a visual check on you as soon as possible after your arrival. Normally Roseanna, or another female staffer, would do this but it’s Saturday night and I’m the only one on duty. You have a choice. We can either get you out of bed later when Roseanna gets back so she can do the check, or I’m allowed to have senior girls like these two do the initial check. Are you okay with the girls doing it?”
I shrugged. “What’s a visual check?”
Maya cut in. “They have to know if there are any obvious signs of injuries or abuse, like bruises, cuts, grazes, significant swelling, and so on that might need immediate medical attention. You strip everything off, and we have a quick look at you, all over. Or Roseanna does it, when she gets here.”
Jana nodded and added. “We don’t touch you. We don’t look at you with a magnifying glass. We don’t take photos. We’re only doing a quick scan for anything obvious. If we spot anything, you get bundled off to the doctor or the hospital straight away to get it looked at properly.”
“I don’t have anything like that,” I said.
Max smiled. “Cool. That should make this part easy then.”
I shrugged. “Okay, we can do that now. Whatever.”
Max dropped his handful of clothing in a basket, before handing the basket to Maya.
“You may as well have a quick shower while you’re at it. The girls will show you where the upstairs bathroom is.”
I frowned. “I had a shower earlier today. I should be okay.”
Max pointed. “You have mud on your leg.”
I looked. He was right. There was a long smear of dirt up the side of my left leg.
“Oh,” I said.
I decided that must have happened when I was struggling with the cops. Then I remembered some of the things I’d done since the shower I’d had that morning.
“Maybe a shower would be good,” I admitted.
“Should we check her hair?” Jana asked Max.
“Please,” said Max. “If Jacinta’s okay with that. Make sure you explain why.”
Max turned to me. “We’re done down here. I’ll look after your washing this time. From now on, you do your clothes yourself. We do the sheets and towels in the big machines. Take the rest of your belongings up with you. Once you’ve had your shower and been checked, the girls will show you to the room you’ll be using and set you up. Try to get some sleep if you can. Breakfast is between 7:30 and 9:00. I’ll see you then.”
He turned to the two older girls. “She’ll be going into 2G. It’s the only room with spare beds. Let me know if you have any concerns coming out of the visual check, otherwise I’ll see you in the morning.”
I picked up my school bag and the garbage bag containing my meagre collection of possessions. The two girls led me up the girls’ stairs and into a large bathroom which was dimly lit. They flipped a switch and the lighting in the bathroom went from dim to bright. Inside, was a row of three toilet cubicles, and then a row of three shower cubicles. The cubicles all had nearly full height walls and doors, just low gaps at the top and bottom. The entire opposite wall was a bench, with wash basins at regular intervals, in front of a mirror that ran the whole length of the wall. There were several sets of power points above the mirror, and there was a wall mounted hair dryer/hand dryer at each end.
We put my things down on the bench and the girls led me to a shower stall and followed me inside. It was divided into a wet half and a dry half with a half-wall between. There was a small bench in the dry half with two hooks above it for hanging towels or clothes and a non-slip mat on the floor.
“Do you mind if I check your hair and your scalp?” said Maya. “If you don’t let us check, you have to use the strong shampoo to kill any creepy-crawlies in your hair. If we see creepy-crawlies, you’ll have to use the strong shampoo anyway.”
“Oh,” I said, understanding. “You’re checking for lice, and things like that?” I shrugged. “Go ahead.”
Growing up, I’d had lice in my hair a couple of times, it was gross at the time, but it seemed like something that happened to every girl sooner or later. But that hadn’t been a problem for the last few years. Maya gestured to me to sit on the bench, so I sat and she started looking carefully through my hair, lifting it so she could check my scalp.