Getting
to know the locals
It was the mid-sixties and Mother and
Father had been in London for a year, which was just long enough
to get used to the strange ways of the locals. The drinking, the
swearing and racial abuse introduced them to a different England
from the one painted by the colonists in Lagos.
Father worked three jobs - I remember now how he
only really started talking about them when we returned to Nigeria.
On those hot, moist nights he would tell us how he worked in the
post office in the day and washed dishes in a hospital by night.
Mother worked in a factory that made women’s clothes somewhere in
Hackney. Her memories were of harsh winters and damp bed-sits that
smelt of stale laundry and the food they cooked. Winter snow dissolved
in spring showers, which paved the way for summer, and I arrived
in early July. My parents worried about raising a baby in the little
flat and friends advised them to look for a ‘nanny’. In those days,
young Nigerians who came over to work and study often sent their
children to live with English ‘nannies’ and their families in the
suburbs, while they tried to make a living in the city.
My parents tried a couple of places outside London.
It must have been quite far away from London, because in one village
the locals were so annoyed that they had dared to venture out of
London that one individual chased them off his property with a gun.
In another they were escorted to a potential nanny’s house by a
pack of skinhead teddy boys hunting prey on motorbikes -
the equivalent of today’s ‘yobs’, jobless youths intent on amusing
themselves by inflicting pain on others.
One on occasion they managed to find a woman who
was prepared to look after me. She was rather reluctant about it,
at first, which Mother said was a little strange - considering she
had advertised her services in the paper and down at the social.
Mother said a couple of weeks’ advance helped her make up her mind.
They agreed to come back after a week to see how I was getting on.
Mother said that they left a healthy baby with
this woman on the Saturday and returned the week after to find a
sick one. They were horrified. I was covered in sores and vomit.
My nostrils were jammed with slime, my nappy oozed with faeces and
my clothes were caked with baby food. I was too sick even to cry.
Mother snatched me and demanded to know what had happened.
The woman burst into tears and called for her husband,
a little, timid, mouse of a man, for back up. That didn’t help her
much because he scurried upstairs, quite content to let her do the
talking: she had tried her best to look after me but I had been
unsettled and irritable, refusing to eat and sleep. I had cried
like a banshee into the night and that couldn’t do, because of the
neighbours, and because her husband needed his sleep. He was a busy
man.
Eh? What about a bath for baby?
My mother demanded answers. The woman said she
didn’t know what kind of soap to use on a black baby so she had
washed me once in the kitchen sink with some warm water and Lux
soap. They bathed weekly every Friday themselves.
Once? You bathed my baby once in seven days?
My mother said she had wanted to slap her so hard
that it would have registered ten generations back, and the woman
started shaking and called for her husband, who stayed upstairs
and threatened to call the police if we didn’t leave. He didn’t
want trouble from any darkies. His wife had been getting strange
looks in the town when she took me out in the pram and he didn’t
want the local ‘teddies’ to cause any trouble for her.
So we left for London. In the next couple of weeks
they took turns to look after me in between work and study. A friend
told them about a couple in Brighton that another friend had recommended
as being really nice. My parents were sceptical at first, but they
were getting desperate and needed help.
That weekend they got me ready and went down to
Brighton. This family had four children but the first two had left
home. The house was white, with a green door, and it opened to reveal
the woman and the family I was to bond with for life. Prepared for
cold stares and tight lips they got a warm welcome and grins all
round as they were ushered in to cups of tea. The two teenagers
of the family took turns to cuddle me and make me welcome.
My parents had made the right decision. Forty-odd
years later I am so glad they took that trip to Brighton.
Me, my hair and school
My foster mother said that one day when I was older
I would be happy to look so different, every one wanted to be darker
- they went on holidays to get a tan. Sometimes I would stand in
the front of the mirror and pull at the thick, woolly clumps on
my head. I wished I could wake up and look in the mirror and see
sleek curls that I could sweep back into a ponytail or flick over
my shoulders, just like the ‘Supremes’ and the ‘Three Degrees’.
My hair was short, stubborn and grew in
painful, knotty tangles. It was wild, like the back of our neighbour’s
garden. My foster mother, bless her soul, didn’t know much about
black hair and therefore I had to wait for Mother’s fortnightly
visits with The Comb. I called it The Comb because it was shaped
like some kind of torture implement from the medieval ages; and
having Mother in my hair was certainly torture. It was metal, had
sharp teeth, and attacked my tight curls, forcing them against their
nature. No matter how much I cried, Mother would pull and tug the
hair until it surrendered.
First she would wash the hair with Lux, dry it
with her fluffy pink towel, and then proceed to pull the curls into
segments. She would comb them out - even more agony - rub in a little
Morgan’s pomade, and start plaiting with black thread. Hours later
and I would be almost unconscious with pain. Long plaits stood out
at right angles all over my head. Any attempt to push them down
increased the pain so it was best left alone. People had said I
was an alien; now I really looked like one, with my hair drawn back
from my face, forcing my eyes into an upward slant.
Once, in the playground, a group of girls crowded
around. They were laughing, teasing, prodding and cursing.
“She’s got twigs all over her head.” Someone pulled
one and my eyes watered. I lashed out, kicking the tallest in the
shins.
She screamed, “I’ll get you for that. Right, let’s
see if this monkey has a tail….”
In the scuffle they pulled up my dress and I could
have died with the embarrassment as the kids whistled and jeered.
I remembered wondering if they were clean. My foster mum was always
on about clean underwear – supposing you got knocked down and
they had to take you to hospital…
Then someone wanted to find out if I had red blood.
I didn’t wait around to find out how they planned to do that experiment
so I ran off to tell my teacher the Whole Sad Story. Maybe that
was a mistake. She decided to handle things in her own way.
“I want you to sit here…right under my nose,” she
said, leading me to the front desk occupied by an pale, overweight
boy with greasy skin.
I don’t want to sit there”
The teacher was resolute, “It’s for the best.”
So that was how I came to share a desk with The
Smelliest Boy in the School; the walking stink bomb. Word had it
that he ate his bogies, never bathed and was always picking away
at some part of his body. After sitting with him for a morning I
realised that he more than lived up to his reputation.
My foster mum brought me loads of books. She taught
me the endless joy you can get from reading – I was reared on Ladybirds,
‘Peter and Jane’, Enid Blyton’s ‘Famous Five’ and on the fairy tales
of the Brothers Grimm. I read Dickens, the sagas of Crusoe, and
searched in vain for a black princess, heroine or adventurer, so
I made up my own stories in my head – daydreaming in class about
becoming a writer some day.
My foster mother told my mum that I was going to
be a writer.
“She needs to improve her mMathematics,” said my
mum
“She got A plus in English.”
My mother laughed, “She was born in England. What
else is she supposed to get? Let me see her Maths book.”
I went on to hate Maths all through primary and
secondary school – only improving a little when I later read Business
Studies. Yet ,English literature remained my true love; and that
is something that will never change.  |
