The Life and Rhymes of Benjamin Zephaniah

by Benjamin Zephaniah

  I don’t know how she fitted it in with nursing, but around this time Mum found a part-time job at the local cinema. Every now and then, if a film was suitable, she’d take us to see it. Mostly it was really boring stuff like The Sound of Music but there’d also be westerns. The first western I remember enjoying was True Grit, starring John Wayne. For once he had a woman as his sidekick. Usually he would be slapping a woman one minute then kissing her the next. I didn’t care about him; we liked the gunslinging.

  One night there was bandit action closer to home. We came back from the cinema and found we’d been robbed. In those days, low-level burglars were looking to rob gas and electric meters. Ours were in the cellar. A few weeks later, we were all in bed and they came again. And my dad caught them! He put them in the living room, then said to me, ‘You watch them’, while he went to fetch the police. Can you imagine me, a little kid, sitting there with two big burglars?

  As soon as he left, one of them jumped straight through the window, glass and all. The other one stayed, though, and Dad came back with the police and they nicked him. The next day the cops returned and said to my dad, ‘We’re going to drive around. Would you be able to spot the other one?’ Less than an hour later Dad came back and said they’d got him. In those days burglars looked like burglars, and because he’d gone through the glass he had all these cuts on his face, which he’d covered with plasters. It was like something from the Beano.

  As I grew up, I started to become aware that something was wrong in our house. It began early one morning. It was a school day but I was woken up much earlier than normal by noises downstairs. I went to see what was happening and there was my mum in the kitchen crying and rubbing her head. I’d never seen my mother cry before; in fact, I’d never seen an adult cry. I thought it was something only kids did. I asked her what had happened and she pointed to my father and said slowly, ‘He hit me.’ Then she pointed to the floor, where there was a frying pan, and said, ‘He hit me with that.’

  I looked at my mum crying, then looked at my dad in utter shock. My dad had made my mum cry . . . in my young head this was a declaration of shock and a question all happening at the same time. I was trying to process it and I couldn’t.

  This moment has stayed with me all my life. It’s not very often you’ll see a frying pan on a floor; it’s a strange place for a frying pan to be, unless you’re camping or something like that, and even then the frying pan is usually on something. But if I do ever see a frying pan on a floor I get a flashback straight to that morning. It happens from my child’s eye view: I see my mum crying and my dad looking angry, then that frying pan on the floor, looking out of place. And then I hear my mother saying, ‘He hit me with that.’

  6

  NEW BEGINNINGS, OLD PROBLEMS

  It’s 1968 and we’ve all moved to a new council house. Mum is expecting everyone will be happier here, as we’ve now got an inside bathroom and toilet. We’re in Fentham Road, back in Aston, and Mum and Dad are saying it’s like moving back to Jamaica. The smell of Caribbean and Asian food fills the air, the houses are colourful, and we hear bluebeat and ska as we walk past them. The best thing is I’m going to a new school, with colourful pupils and colourful teachers, called Deykin Avenue.

  Now I’m a bit older I have to be organised and responsible. As the eldest I’m the leader of the pack. We have to get up early, eat breakfast then walk to Witton Road to get the number 5 or 7 bus. We all have to carry our biscuit money and bus fare, and if anyone messes with us I beat them because I’m the big brother and this is the big world where feral kids and highwaymen can nick your biscuit money, or so I’m told.

  I love Deykin Avenue School. I make up poems in the playground and perform them for friends. I even read poems in school assembly and get a kiss on the cheek from one or two of the teachers. That’s how different this school is from the horrible St Mathias. Kiss chase is even more popular here, so I can earn kisses in accordance with my creative output. I’m collecting girlfriends. I’ve got seven of them. One day, a couple of weeks ago, I was playing football and a boy told me to look around and all these girls were lined up in the playground, and all looking cross. I’d made Valentine’s Day cards for them and they’d been talking.

  ‘You can’t have this many girlfriends, Benjamin,’ one shouted at me. ‘It’s not fair.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said another. ‘You’ve got to pick one of us.’

  ‘I like you all,’ I said. ‘I’m not going to choose. You’re all nice. But right now I’ve got to play football.’

  As well as having lots of girlfriends, I’ve also had to protect my brothers and sisters a few times, so I’ve already gained a reputation as a good fighter. In fact, I’m now declared ‘cock of the school’, which means I’m someone to be feared, and for a while I enjoy the notoriety.

  But nothing stays the same, and one day a new boy comes on the scene. His name is Mervin Francis and he has a bit of a reputation. Rumours circulate about his strength and the speed of his fists, and there’s talk that he could take me on, and possibly take me down.

  One day, I’m tired of hearing rumours. I push out my chest and go and find him playing marbles in a corner of the playground.

  ‘Alright, Mervin Francis, if you think you’re bad. Come den.’

  The whole class and some of the older years have gathered around, all chanting, ‘Fight, fight, fight’, and some of them are betting on who will win, but he won’t fight! I push him and dig the toe of my shoe in his side and say, ‘Whassup, you scared?’ But still he won’t react. I call him names and kick his marbles away, but still no reaction, and the crowd gets bored and the kids disperse.

  I’m now declared undisputed cock of the school, the guns, the champion of champions, and now is my moment of triumph. The truth is I’m actually glad he didn’t react, because I’m not sure I could have beaten him. I go on to admire Mervin Francis for not fighting. He tells me straight that he can see no reason to fight, and he isn’t going to fight simply to see who’s best.

  But it’s me who has the glory now, and if there’s ever any problem with my siblings or friends, then other kids run to me and I sort it out. As long as it’s a problem in the under-elevens category, ’cos that isn’t serious stuff; the serious stuff is happening at home.

  School is cool, but family life is beginning to fall apart. My father has started losing his temper more, and Mum is becoming unhappier. After that first incident with the frying pan in Farm Street, there hasn’t been any more physical violence but there is always tension in the air. Then things suddenly change; it’s as if my father has decided we are now old enough to see the violence for ourselves.

  I’m always amazed at how something small and insignificant ends up in domestic carnage. Sometimes he comes home from work and beats Mum because his dinner isn’t ready, or because she’s spent too much time shopping, or too much money shopping. The other night she was ironing his shirt when he demanded a cup of tea. She said she would do it after she finished the shirt, but he demanded she do it straight away. When she told him she needed a minute, he hit her.

  This is the only marriage I’ve seen up close and it’s not like the stories I hear about adults being in love. I’m scared when I think about the future and what’s going to happen. I’ve also started to realise that some of the wars I see on our black and white TV are real wars, and the suffering is happening to real people. There are children around the world who are going really hungry – not just the hungry I feel when dinner is a bit late. The news talks a lot about black people in the United States fighting for something they call civil rights and people are dying because of it. I keep hearing the names Martin Luther King and Angela Davis. There’s war in Vietnam, and there’s war at 35 Fentham Road.

  The other day I went to this kid and asked him, ‘What do you do when your dad hits your mum?’

  He said, ‘My dad doesn’t hit my mum.’

  So I said, ‘I know, you’ve got one of those hippie families. What about wh
en your mum hits your dad?’

  Then he said, ‘My mum doesn’t hit my dad. They don’t fight. You should go to the police. He’s a Bad Dad. Some Bad Dads do that.’

  Now I’m confused. Now I know that not all families are like mine. There are lots of families where the dads don’t hit the mums, but I don’t want to go to the police.

  Around this time the UK was becoming more colourful and people were trying out new fashions and ideas. Pop music was exploding out of radios and things didn’t seem quite as stuffy and grey as they had been. I remember our old neighbour Maria O’Reilly paying us a visit, saying, ‘Cat Stevens is in the Top Ten’, and being really happy about it. She explained the pop charts to me.

  I was watching things on TV like The Avengers. I loved Emma Peel! When I saw her wearing her catsuit I started thinking, Is that what they call sexy? Later on I was excited by The Man from U.N.C.L.E., and at some point I got a The Man from U.N.C.L.E. set for my birthday. You got the briefcase and the pass into the secret bunker.

  The only time I would watch TV with Dad was when Muhammad Ali, who had previously been known as Cassius Clay, was in a big boxing match. That was an event! But he never really spent time with me. We never sat down and watched a film together or had those father/son good times in the park. He was chatty, but there were never proper conversations.

  My uncles would come round and all the men would sit in the front room and drink rum. Jamaicans wouldn’t normally socialise with ‘Bajuns’ (Barbadians) back home, so these gatherings were unusual in Caribbean cultural mixing. Sometimes they’d give me some booze – enough to get me a bit wobbly – and they’d call me ‘Cock’. They’d get me to do something that was a bit difficult, such as hand me a full glass and say, ‘Walk ’cross the room wit dis, Cock.’ They’d watch me wobble and falter and then they’d laugh and there would be much hooting and thigh-slapping. This was probably the happiest and most animated I saw my dad.

  He worked a lot and started to grow his own veg – sprouts and cabbages – which we ate, and this made him quite proud. I can’t remember him passing on wisdom or talking to me about life, though. I remember my uncles doing that, sometimes taking me aside and saying, ‘Hey boy, you gotta watch out for that one’, and that sort of thing.

  There was violence against my mother, and then there were the beatings that we all got – the kind of punishment many Caribbean kids used to get often for being naughty, rude or for making an adult vex. This is one of those culturally sensitive areas, as almost every Caribbean elder I’ve met of my parents’ generation thinks there’s nothing wrong with giving children a beating every now and then. In fact, it’s not simply called a beating, it’s ‘a damn good beating’, and they really believe it’s good for the person taking it.

  Almost every beating I ever received is stored in my memory. We were never given the luxury of being grounded as a punishment. We weren’t told that we would miss our dessert after dinner or asked to go to our room . . . we were told to get the very belt that we were going to get the beating with. We had to bring it to the beating place (which was always a long, slow walk) and then beg for mercy as the belt (sometimes with buckle) was thrashed against our backsides.

  I always felt that my dad had it in for me because my beatings seemed much harsher than those he gave the others. I thought this was because I defended my mother more than the other kids did, or simply because I was the big brother, so I should have known better. Whatever the reason, I resented being beaten, and I will defend the right of any child not to be beaten, just as I would defend the right of my mother, or any woman, not to be beaten.

  Things came to a head one day. Dad was lashing out at Mum for some reason. My brothers and sisters had all run for cover but I had run to help my mother. Instinct took over and I tried to defend her. There was little me, kicking at my father’s ankles and punching his knees. He was that big, and I was that small. I couldn’t really hurt him but I did just enough to give Mum a chance to escape. She ran for it and I ran with her. Dad shouted, ‘Where do you think you’re going?’

  I called back, ‘You hit me too. I’m going with Mum.’

  Everyone else stayed with my dad, even my twin sister. Dad tried to stop me but I got past him and escaped. It was very frightening. It was also the beginning of my nomadic existence, moving from place to place with my mum. At first we tried going to women’s refuges, but they wouldn’t take us. The women running these places said stuff like, ‘We want to take you in, but it’s the rest of the women here . . . they’re not used to people like you. They won’t be able to accept you. There might be trouble.’

  The GPO took care of the post, telephones, telegrams and every other form of public communication back then, so my father’s job meant he had access to all sorts of organisations. With his connections he could track down my mum any time she tried to do anything official, like claim child benefit. He would phone the social security, get her details and come looking for us. There was no data protection or privacy laws then; certainly none that applied to us.

  When Mum went shopping it was my job to hold her hand and look the other way, keeping an eye out for my dad. So she’d be looking one way and I’d be watching her back. It was a really strange thing to do, as if there was a ‘Wanted’ poster of my dad imprinted on my mind. A couple of times I did actually spot him and would say, ‘Mum, quick, it’s Dad!’ And we’d slide away, leaving the shopping where it was. But there was another time when we bumped right into him. He jumped on her and started to beat her. I cried for help but, although there were many people looking on, no one did anything to assist. I had a little knife in my pocket, a miniature penknife. In those days you could buy them from a newsagent for six old pennies. It was quite pretty, with a pink handle. I jumped on top of my dad and started stabbing him.

  As I was on top of him I recalled something I’d heard in the playground about the temple at the side of the head being a weak spot, and that if you stabbed someone through there you could kill them. So I tried to stab him in the temple as hard as I could. The blade folded back on me, so all I did was cut my own hand. I did cut him a little, but not enough to do any real damage, and not in the right place. To make things worse, when the police arrived they held me while my dad simply walked away. Once I was in the station, and they understood what had happened, they decided to let me go, but not after some tough interrogation.

  There was another incident when he found Mum walking on Dudley Road in Edgbaston. It was the kind of incident that would be like slapstick if it wasn’t so tragic. He’d somehow got hold of her address, so he waited for her to come out; when she did he grabbed her and started hitting her. As he tried to drag her away, Mum tried to calm him down but that wasn’t working. A shouting match began. I started yelling, ‘Leave her alone!’ and my father was shouting, ‘Come with me, you wretch!’ and my mother was saying, ‘No, no, no, let’s talk about this. Let’s calm it all down.’

  I didn’t know it at the time but Mum had a plan. She stopped resisting and gave him the impression that she was willing to go with him. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Let’s go this way.’ He wouldn’t take his eyes off her, so as she was talking she led him down the road, eventually walking him right into Summerfield Police Station. He didn’t realise until it was too late, and when he tried to make a run for it the cops grabbed him and detained him. Mum and I left straight away. After reassuring the cops that this was a one-off, that he was an upstanding member of the community and that the woman had pushed him into it, he was let out.

  We would live in many places in Birmingham – and also in other cities – over the coming years. We stayed in some places for such a short time that I once went to school in London for just one day. It was Kennington Boys’ School in south London, the only all-boys school I ever went to, and I’m glad it was only for a day. They went on and on about how life would be different if they had girls in their school. Every school I’d been to had girls; it was no big thing. But these guys would be going crazy an
d getting excited every time they saw a girl.

  While we were on the run we rented a series of small rooms. They would have a bed or two, a paraffin heater and, if we were lucky, a wardrobe. We would have to share bathrooms and toilets with other people, and use of the kitchen was limited by either space or time and sometimes both. It was all very basic but I didn’t care much. When we found a new place I would get instructions from Mum on what my new name was, and what I was to say if anyone asked me where I came from or asked about my dad. Once all that was done, my only concern was where to find new friends to play football with. The love of football and other physical pursuits kept me going; the church kept my mother going.

  7

  MOVING IN WITH THE CHURCH

  Mum had always been religious but it was during this time that she started going to church to find solace. Like a lot of people, she found friendship, peace and happiness there; it took her away from the dreariness of life, especially when she was being hunted by my father. The church was her escape, her refuge.

  Black-led churches were springing up all over the country back then. It was one of the only things that gave people meaning in their lives, and a sense of community. This was the generation of Jamaicans who had answered the call from the Motherland for help, only to find that the Motherland was at best difficult and at worst hostile.

  Most didn’t have their own church buildings so they used the houses of members of their congregation. The churches did have names, though. Ours was the Triumphant Church of God, and it had branches in Bristol, Burton-on-Trent, Cardiff, London and other towns and cities where there were black communities.

  Our church was at 55 Bevington Road, Aston, a place I’ve been back to many times, and on many of those occasions I’ve had a film crew or radio producer in tow. The last few times I’ve been back a Bengali family has been living there. They’ve got so used to seeing me with my various crews that one time I could hear them saying, ‘Oh, it’s him again’, or words to that effect.