by Lemn Sissay
Before settling down with Grandma, Granddad would often get mad drunk in Lochinver and jump on his motorbike and ride up the treacherous cliff edges like a hurricane. And now and again, I’d catch glimpses of that wild Highlander. The cottage had a little stream (a burn) that we used to bathe in. And we’d go down to the bay with him to get salmon, trout and mussels. I’ve loved mussels ever since.
He was a rugged, left-wing free spirit, and he’d ended up in Bryn, of all places, and there was something about me being ‘other’ and him being ‘other’ that gently brought us together amongst the nodding tomato plants of his green-house. I liked nothing more than standing there, clearing away weeds while he clipped the tomatoes and told me stories.
From seven to twelve Mum would send me to stay alone at my grandparents’ home in Bryn. Grandma made me mop the floors, polish the furniture, sweep the yard. I can’t remember any of my brothers and sisters being sent away. It’s only at the time of writing that I realise it was just me. I didn’t mind. I enjoyed chores.
My grandma was so overweight it would eventually kill her. She ruled over my mother with a rapier tongue and a cynical withering look, which could reduce Mum to tears. Grandma Munro was the queen of the chessboard. She surveyed the world like its aim was to take her out. There wasn’t space for grey areas in Grandma Munro or self-reflection. There was a pathological need to be right about things. There was little time for reflection. There was good and bad, right and wrong, heaven and hell. All of this clarity would belie the murkiness.
I can still hear the emptiness of the school song mocking and echoing down the corridors of the asylum.
All things bright and beautiful,
all creatures great and small.
All things wise and wonderful,
the Lord God made them all.
Was there something cruel in this family, a strong undercurrent threatening to drag me out into the wide ocean? Was there something about this family that locks its damaged children into places they can’t be seen and then punishes itself for the guilt it feels?
CHAPTER 8
Shadows plunder me
Beneath the sun and moon
The undercurrent under me
The electric bathroom
When my hands touched the tap, electricity surged through my body. It terrified me. I stood, naked in the bathtub, and screamed. Dad rushed in. Dad tried the tap with his hands. Nothing happened. Mum walked pensively into the bathroom. He asked me to do it again. I did and electricity shot through me. Again I screamed. Mum was standing behind him. ‘Again,’ she said. Dad tried it again. Nothing. And nodded that I should do it again. I pleaded with them and saw the disbelief. If they were thinking that my reaction was false, what were they thinking about me? I slowly drew both my hands to both taps. It happened again, electricity twisting my insides. It felt as if a layer of skin was being pulled from my body in the way a tablecloth can be pulled from a polished table. My mother looked more and more horrified. And this time she nodded for me to put my hands on the cold and hot taps.
Once again, Dad tried the taps. Nothing.
‘Grab one tap,’ she said.
By now I was crying, but they were both looking at me as if I was possessed. My dad nodded to me. My hands clasped the taps again. And again, my arms, fingers and teeth were pummelled by the electric current. I look at my mother and her face was full of disgust and dismay as if to say, ‘What is inside you?’. I thought, What have I done?
‘The water! He’s in the water!’ My dad was a schoolteacher. He lifted me out of the water and hugged me to him, tighter and tighter. ‘He’s in the water,’ he said.
This memory was so clear in my mind that I thought it must not have been a memory at all.
This is how it was reported in my files:
I was nine. All the information in the reports was first curated by my foster mother and then presented to the social worker. In the report Sarah, my sister, is in the bath with me. But she wasn’t. We did bath together but not this time. Not in my memory. So why would they say she was?
I was alone with the electrocution. Little misinformations in the report make invisible people appear to prove that it didn’t happen just to me. The black eye also mentioned in the report was another little misdirection. The black eye was from being beaten up by racists. My quick mouth could outplay any racists but not my fists. And it was simply a matter of numbers.
CHAPTER 9
Look what was sown by the stars
At night across the fields
I am not defined by scars
But by the incredible ability to heal
Mum was a state registered nurse. She took a professional interest in our pain. At the hint of a scratch, a graze, a bruise, a bump, a cut or an itch she’d sit me down at the kitchen table and draw the medical kit from the top of the kitchen cabinet. Out came the witch hazel, the bandages, the scissors the plasters, the Savlon, the gauze, the medical tape and the smelling salts. I loved it. I am not sure I ever felt as close to her than when she’d say, ‘This is going to hurt,’ before dabbing my grazed knee with a pinch of cotton wool soaked in witch hazel.
It’s because she was a nurse that she had the comb. Each morning before school I’d stand by the heater in the kitchen. The comb was a strip of metal with barely visible slits. I stood facing away from her and she stood behind. Mum dragged the comb through the roots until my skull felt like it had been dipped in acid and was pouring with blood.
‘You have hair sore,’ she’d say. Apparently ‘hair sore’ was a medical ‘condition’ that made the hair sore when it was ripped through with a thin comb. It felt as if the skin was being ripped from my skull. Tell a child you’re his parent for ever and he will believe you. Tell a child he has hair sore and he will believe you. I believed her. I had ‘hair sore’.
Then, on a spring day, Mum got me up in my best shirt and trousers. I was going to meet a pop star. Errol Brown was the lead singer of Hot Chocolate. They had a massive hit with ‘You Sexy Thing’. Mum took me to an apartment in Winstanley. I remember there were bowls of nuts and crisps and it wasn’t even Christmas. Errol Brown chatted to me about school and stuff. He was black like me. I was very subdued, slightly nervous and intrigued all at the same time. And then, he left the room and came back with a present for me. I stared at the strange and elegant genius of design and style: an Afro comb. ‘Your very first Afro comb,’ said Errol Brown.
He had been visiting a newborn child of a family friend at the hospital. Mum was the midwife on call and I guess they must have got talking about me. Maybe she showed him the thin-toothed comb she’d used. Maybe he winced behind a smile and gritted his teeth to stop himself saying, ‘What in hell’s name do you think you are doing with this boy? Huh? You think asking me about the comb after eight years of tearing out his hair is okay? How come you are only deciding to find an Afro comb now? Why now? His hair is Ethiopian hair! Ethiopian hair is VERY particular! Just like your hair is very particular. Why did you not get this boy an Afro comb from the day he had hair? Why not?’
He didn’t say those words but any Caribbean or African (especially a parent) would question the unnecessary violence of ‘hair sore’.
CHAPTER 10
Secrets are the stones
That sink the boat
Take them out, look at them
Throw them out and float
19 April 1978
Why would the social worker, Jean Jones, say that my mum and dad ‘are seen by Norman as his parents’? They told me they were my parents for ever. Why would I think anything else? But why would she make the comment now? In two months’ time they would send me away for ever as if I were a stranger.
As with most brothers close in age, Christopher and I fought like snakes on each other’s territory. Christopher always, even in the midst of thrills, betrayed a fretfulness, as if the edges of his world were beginning to shake and his mum could see it. He was an introvert. I had no idea that Mum thought it was my fault. We
raced each other home from school every day, and every day I beat him.
I waited in the kitchen by my mum. He dived into Mum’s arms and said, ‘Mum, I beat Norman, didn’t I?’ She stroked his head and said, ‘Yes, you did.’ And then she looked at me. ‘Yes, you did.’
Over the past few years I had begun to sense that I had done something wrong and yet didn’t know what it was. There were times when Dad was charged with punishing me in the front room with the cane. He asked me to yelp so that it sounded like I was being punished. Other weird things started to happen.
I was ten, and we were off to a wedding in our new clothes. Chris, Sarah and I were on top of the world. Sarah looked pretty as a picture in her blue floral dress and flower basket. Just before leaving the house, Mum looked at me for a second; something pinched her features. She said, ‘Take them off and give them to him.’ I didn’t understand. I took off my trousers and gave them to my brother. These moments stuck in my memory. It was the sense of an underlying unkindness that stayed with me.
CHAPTER 11
How Darkness runs
From melting shade
How bright the sun
How unafraid
1973
I have only two school reports from my infant and junior schools, which tell me something about who I was.
Character and temperament:
Norman is a carefree and happy child and, with the common sense he shows, he is an asset to the class. His lively personality makes him popular with the other children with whom he works and plays well. He gets on very well with his younger brother and often seeks him out in the playground.
At eight years old in 1975 the social worker scoffs at any idea of my having educational aspirations.
7 September 1976
To put it simply, my social worker and my foster parents considered that the school commenting on my ‘normal’ behaviour was purely down to my race. I should explain this. My mother told me that I got undue positive attention because of my colour. This comment on my ‘normal’ behaviour was seen as undue positive attention. It was a no-win situation because I clearly got undue negative attention because of my colour. What they wouldn’t see is that I got positive attention because I was a positive child and I got negative attention because of racism.
7 July 1978
The social worker, foster parents and I were wondering which upper school I would attend.
11 July 1978
Junior school report in full. Eleven years old.
Child’s general progress:
Norman is an enthusiastic worker. Unfortunately he lacks the concentration to follow through his ideas.
Conduct:
He is co-operative and eager to please.
Character and temperament:
A cheerful happy boy.
Relationships with staff:
Very popular and extremely sociable. Norman is amenable to discipline.
Participation in school activities:
He has an amenable approach to all school activities but lacks perseverance.
Cleanliness:
Always clean and tidy.
General progress:
Norman is a most likeable boy – a ray of sunshine.
12 July 1978
The social worker’s response to the headteacher:
CHAPTER 12
Leave alone the heartless
The landlords of decay
Light breaches darkness
Every single day
December 1978
The social worker reports that ‘Mrs Greenwood had a daughter’. Her name was Helen. It was an unexpected pregnancy. The household now had four children and two adults.
Between November 1978 and the following report there are no visits and two phone calls from the social worker. This is partly due to the social worker’s illness in January and February. The next phone call is on 13 May 1979 – eight days before my twelfth birthday.
The more Mum tried to beat me, the more I would run to her for a hug. I was sent to live with my grandma for a month and returned on 16 June 1979.
Home was now hell. I couldn’t do anything right. The better I did, the worse I was treated. I was deceitful. I was tricking everyone into thinking I was a good kid. For the life of me I didn’t understand. A Danish filmmaker – Katrine Riis Kjær – captures the exact confusion I felt in the dinner scene of her documentary about the international adoption industry called Mercy Mercy. In this scene, two adoptive Danish parents examine their adopted child at the dinner table. She is in trouble. She looks confused. The adoptive mother speaks to the father under her breath: ‘You keep an eye on her. You have to keep an eye on her.’ She can clearly hear it. The young Ethiopian girl does not know what is happening. It gets worse for her. They ask her questions when her mouth is full and berate her for not answering. It gets worse. Much worse. The scene encapsulates what it feels like to be hounded by the people you have been trained to love.
16 June 1979
I didn’t threaten to murder the family. I have no history of threatening to murder people. Full disclosure: I probably said to my brother, ‘I’m going to kill you.’ Brothers say things like that in the heat of the moment. But I don’t believe that my eight-year-old sister said, ‘Mum, Norman has threatened to kill the whole family. Except Helen.’ I was twelve! And I had just started at high school. Jean Jones, the social worker, disappears. The following report is from 2 November 1979, days before they would send me away for ever.
The only report from my high school is from the summer of 1979. The reports for children in care were different. This was called a ‘periodic school report for child in care’. Here is the report in full:
Child’s general progress:
Good progress within his form.
Conduct:
Well-behaved in lessons.
Character and temperament:
Pleasant.
Relationships with staff and other children:
Always keen to please and has many friends.
Participation in school activities:
Always willing to participate.
Cleanliness and tidiness:
Very good.
General progress:
Good progress. Noman has settled down well in his first year at this school.
Signature of headteacher:
Keith Allen
I felt like I’d done everything to show them that I loved them, and I’d done everything to show God that I loved Him. I still had to ask God for forgiveness. And they were still my parents for ever, right? I was still her only sunshine.
On 1 December 1979 the report records that Mum called the social worker to take me away.
Norman Mills, my new social worker, has since told me that he informed my foster parents that having made a commitment to me as their parents it was not right for them to demand I be taken away. So I didn’t go.
Mum had said time and time again, ‘You are defying us deliberately because you know there’s somewhere you can go: to children’s homes.’ She said it so many times that I couldn’t deny that I didn’t know about them. But even though I knew there was somewhere to go I didn’t want to go anywhere. They were my mum and dad. This was my family. They had said they were my mum and dad for ever. I couldn’t imagine anywhere else. How could I? So when she said to my uncles and aunts, ‘He knows he can go somewhere. He uses it against us,’ I couldn’t deny it.
There are two sure-fire ways you can have a child put into care. You can say this kid might come to harm if he is not taken away or you can say the child might do harm to others if he is not taken away.
CHAPTER 13
He lost touch at night
Their fingertips withdrew
Nobody touched him, light,
Except you
It was the end of December 1979 and I was excited when I entered the front room for the family meeting. I was excited because the family meeting was just me and Mum and Dad. Just me. No brothers and sisters. I felt impo
rtant. I sat at the table and my mum looked at me intensely.
‘You don’t love us, do you?’
I said, ‘Yeees, I do love you.’
‘We want you to spend the next day thinking about love and what it is. Read the scriptures and give us your most honest and truthful answer tomorrow.’
That was it! It was a clear instruction from Mum and Dad. I studied the question for a day and a night, I prayed to God, and I read the Bible to see if a passage would answer the question. It was a question to which I already had the answer. Of course I loved them. Mum had always said that love was never in question. I started thinking all over again.
If they were asking me whether I loved them or not, and if they were the ones who taught me about love, then maybe I didn’t love them, otherwise they wouldn’t ask. This led me to the answer I thought they wanted me to get to. They wanted me to ask God for forgiveness and through Him I would learn to love them. His love would shine through me to them. And in the Baptist faith a sinner must ask forgiveness for his sins. The theology was perfect, the timing unquestionable, and the answer as honest as a sinner could get.
The next day came and I said it with pride because I thought I had found the answer they wanted me to find. ‘I musn’t love you,’ I said. I looked at their faces to see if I had said the right thing. ‘But I will ask God for forgiveness . . . and learn to love you.’ This was the perfect answer. Seek and ye shall find. This is what they wanted me to seek. And this is what I had found. I had found the answer.
