Monday 16 October 2017. As dawn breaks over Brighton, I‘m unprepared for an extraordinary event about to unfold and what it would disclose. I only know I feel unsettled by ‘something’. Radio 6 babbles on about Borders, and Brexit. It’s 14 months on from the schism of that vote. There’s a questioning tone about ‘British-ness’ and who belongs, reminiscent of a past, I thought, long gone.
Feeling stuck and irritated with myself, my face is a stormy tempest as I enter the kitchen for a late breakfast.
“Must we listen to Radio 6?” “Can’t you tidy up a bit?”
My long-suffering husband PJ bears the brunt of my munch grump.
Its early afternoon. As the kettle whistles and steams, I notice the sky slowly darkening. An eerie, mustard-coloured haze, spreads across the sky-scape. Staring out from the inner sanctum of our home, everything seems in silent pause.
Anticipating a deafening boom, followed by a deluge, we wait and wait as the darkness grows, creeping soundlessly as a black cat over our streets.
Even with the house- lights turned -up bright, we cannot dispel the dimness. Yet, not a drop of rain falls, no thunder roars. Just loud silence.
Now, provoked, street - lamps glow on the mustard mood hovering above.
Stillness…. My mind returns to all the things I’ve decided I will drop.
Yet, my stomach tightens, as I fret about loss of purpose, of status, colleagues, friends. I may lose myself …
“Who will I be now?” “What am I Worth?” A muted question It seems I’d always ask;
It started in the orphanage where I and thousands of girls should have received care. But you left with no history, no map of an ‘I’ or ‘me’, feeling as brittle as cracked glass. Kathy, a de-legitimized child and my informal guardian in the institution, took her life. While I was lucky to survive. Unlike my friend, at aged 14, I had a home and a father to which I could return. There was something I could not name or claim, till I first heard Nina Simone sing, “I ain’t got no- I got life” she expressed the pain.
Clocking-in at the clothing factories at aged 15, I, an ‘only’ Black woman, in nylon overall and headscarf, joined in the laugh and crack. Disguising my padded amour, covering up an unsteady gait, as if fending off an unspoken shame. 'That Darky,’ and worse, you overheard. ‘We should stick to our own kind,' they said. Then it had no name; the ghost that relentlessly defamed. The 15-year-old I, stuffed it away in a shed somewhere in her head.
for 15 years, till as faded as those old blue jeans. I’d been.
So jaded by the daily humdrum of the sewing machine,
I barely noticed something growing in me.
Yet there, bulging at the seams into the fabric I’d weaved
My secretly whispered, copious hopes and dreams.
Until one day opportunity called: ‘Hey You!’
‘Who Me?’ I said, with a raised brow and wide eye.
Still brittle as glass, I found myself amid and English, blue- eyed, middle class
In places where there is no room for feelings. No space for experiences to be met.
No room in the house for the unspoken white lines between us.
Except, a tacit voice said;
‘Something with you is wrong.’ 'Fit to my norm.’ ‘Do not storm.’
‘What, I?’ I may have said, ‘This woman of African and Indian heritage, from a mining town in Scotland?’ ‘The one who is sunk and depressed by something unaddressed?’
But I was too lost and well, too compliant. It took time before I laid claim to Nina’ Simone’s; ‘Mississippi - Goddamn’ kiss-my-ass! defiance.
Letting go of trying to let go, my tears fall as I allow myself drift, to meet this part of myself in the darkness. I think about the walls I and we put up in ourselves. What happens to our humanity when we banish our own or others’ feeling experience? When the impacts of injustice, on all ‘vulnerable’ creatures and our earth is unaddressed
Tuesday morning unveils a glorious Red. - Indian sun. As I step out, mist has not quite lifted and quietness still pervades the streets. Clouds part to reveal a blue window. Crimson star- shaped dahlias in a window box, flirt. I can smell the earth in the autumn air where workmen have dug a pit on part of the pavement. My mind feels as fresh, as I wander and wonder..
How far I’ve come from that barren place: the first half of my life, that wore my sense of self thin, that can rear itself still, with its disrespect and internalised oppression. I’ve learnt not to put up walls to loneliness, to acknowledge the unaddressed in myself, to wake up to my own strengths and responsibilities of being a citizen; to challenge myself to make no one a migrant or stranger in my own heart to, work together with community on growing awareness in action
Letting go of who I ‘should’ be, allowing my hair be kinky and free! I step into being the writer I am; to tell the story, to make the unspoken speak, to make the invisible visible.
Mother Earth cried out in the darkness of that Monday 16 October 2017 for robust awareness of our interdependence. To bring life affirming hope to future generations. It’s time to address more deeply: ‘What really matters and how we live what matters?’
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