New Daughters of Africa

by Margaret Busby

  For my mother, Africa was an open secret. The word Nigeria would pop up occasionally. She told me when I commented how much I loved the large, cushioned, wicker chairs that furnished the Victorian-style gallery of my great aunt’s Port of Spain house that they had come with my grandparents from Nigeria. I remember looking at them differently, as if they had landed from the moon. I remember, too, the surprise I felt to learn that my mother was an African by birth. It was hard to understand why she was not very much darker, but even more incredible to me was that her two younger sisters were also African by birth when their skins were the colour of porcelain and their hair hung loose like any white or Indian person’s.

  They never had much to say about their Nigerian childhood. For the youngest daughter of this Edwardian Caribbean family the memory lay too deep in her infant subconscious. Her older sister preferred not to remember because the threat of having her tongue cut out for uttering a single word of her childhood language stayed with her. But my mother, a reluctant rebel because of her brown skin and dry, unruly hair, was the one who clung to that sense of coming from somewhere else. She never concealed that she came out of Africa, but somehow I knew it was not something I should broadcast widely, if at all.

  In 1921 when my mother was born, Nigeria and Trinidad and Tobago were part of an Empire in which free movement of people was a reality. My grandfather, who worked in the highly prestigious railways, was recruited by the British to go to Nigeria around the start of World War I to be involved in the management of the expansion of the railways there. In 1920 he returned to Trinidad, married my grandmother and set sail to Liverpool, where they changed ships for Nigeria. He was posted to northern Nigeria, first in Zaria, where the two older girls were born, then to Ilorin, where the youngest was born in 1925. West Indian godfathers were chosen for all three daughters as new friendships formed, although upon returning to the Caribbean easy and fast travel between islands was impossible and friendships faded.

  In 1927, my mother’s grandfather, born of privileged English-French parentage dating back to 1645 but whose first marriage to her mixed-race grandmother got him disinherited and not allowed re-entry, despite a second more acceptable marriage, was on his deathbed and my grandparents returned home with their elegantly clothed little princesses from whose mouths a now inadmissible language would occasionally emerge. They were considered beauties, but the language they sometimes spoke was not. All foreign languages were unwelcome among the multi-ethnic arrivals in this British colony where the King’s English had to be the standard, and an African language was especially unacceptable. Any admission of a link to Africa by a person of colour was to open oneself to disadvantage.

  In the 1920s, slavery had been abolished fewer than a hundred years earlier in the English-speaking Caribbean and was only about sixty years in the past in Cuba. Ideas of racial inferiority and superiority were the norm. Each shade of skin colour indicated a natural place in the hierarchy for jobs, schooling and personal advancement. The closer to Africa, the further away from God, one might say, in a society where whiteness was taught as being “next to Godliness”, where kinky hair and every darker hue of skin stigmatised one as being less far from barbarity. My mother’s natural advantage of a fierce intelligence and a world-class operatic soprano voice was neutralised by her physical features that clearly revealed her mixed ancestry.

  As the effect of the economic crash of the 1930s made itself felt all over the Americas, including Trinidad and Tobago, my grandparents travelled to Venezuela to work in the administration of the oil industry, leaving behind their three daughters in the care of their mother’s extended family. It was then that my mother and her siblings learned about race and opportunity. Her younger, very pale-skinned sisters soon recognised that they were more valued, and my mother learned of cruelty, becoming their Cinderella. She was often made late for school by being sent to run errands, only to be physically punished by her teachers for tardiness. Her unruly hair lacked the careful handling that it needed and led to her being unfairly chastised by teachers and to play truant as a result.

  She was the sister called upon for household duties and deprived of playtime. Her wellbeing went unnoticed so that she had no help in dealing with the sores from mosquito bites on her calves that stuck to her woollen socks. One morning she was pulled from her bed before dawn and marched into a cold, outdoor shower that caused pneumonia and a near-death experience. Deeply stressed by the physical and emotional violence, she took to biting her nails down to the cuticles, for which she was made to eat chicken droppings, to kneel on a grater and to suck bitter aloes. Memories of happy days in Africa soon faded. She hardly remembered what pure, innocent joy might be.

  This beloved but lost daughter learned that she needed guile to divert the worst of her suffering: she resorted to telling untruths when necessary and hiding her real thoughts and feelings, she set traps to hurt those who made her life a misery, but she endured and focused on her escape: she shone at her convent school and once her miraculous talent for singing was discovered she became the musical showgirl of the Catholic nuns.

  Her adult life followed a similar pattern. The success of her professional life contrasted with the difficulties of a personal life that was full of injustice and disappointment, but she remained defiant, resolute. I sometimes call her an African warrior. The toughness and the lightly veiled anger frightened me when I was a child. Today, that indomitable core is undiminished, and I must find ways not to let it dwarf me.

  None of this is visible to the outside world, for my mother is the sweetest, most poised and elegant little lady this side of the Atlantic.

  When television news reports from Nigeria appear I say, “There, Mum, your countrymen.”

  To which my mother often replies, “I’d love to see Africa again.”

  I tell her that she would not recognise it nearly a hundred years later and that she should be content knowing she is the oldest Nigerian in Trinidad and Tobago, possibly the Caribbean.

  In “Baa Baa, Black Sheep”, Rudyard Kipling’s autobiographical short story for children published in 1888, the author describes how as young children he and his sister were sent to England from India to live for five years with a retired ship’s captain, his wife Auntie Rosa and their bully of a son, Harry. Auntie despises the boy and calls him Punch; she dubs his sister Judy, but treats her warmly. Soon Punch becomes known as Black Sheep and can do nothing right. He is beaten constantly and tries to avoid the violence by telling lies and committing small acts of vengeance. In his tale Kipling constantly referred to his new abode as the House of Desolation.

  Kipling’s story of an unforgivable episode in a child’s life always seemed to echo my mother’s. The ordeal marked him and her forever. “Baa Baa, Black Sheep” ends with Punch setting a test that happily proves the love of his mother, who returns and saves him, and he asserts that from now all will be different. But Kipling is not sure:

  Not altogether, O Punch, for when young lips have drunk deep of the bitter waters of Hate, Suspicion, and Despair, all the Love in the world will not wholly take away that knowledge; though it may turn darkened eyes for a while to the light, and teach Faith where no Faith was.

  My mother’s eyes have always tried to focus on the light, and as she approaches a century of life and experience, Faith has slowly dimmed the sharp memory of loss.

  Sapphire

  Moving to New York in the 1970s from California, where she was born, she became involved in the Slam Poetry movement, writing, performing and eventually publishing her work. She is the author of two collections of poetry, Black Wings & Blind Angels (1999) and American Dreams (1994), and of the New York Times bestselling novels The Kid (2011) and Push (1996), which was the inspiration for the Academy Award-winning movie Precious. She has performed her work in venues in North America, Europe, Africa and South America. She has said of her work: “A major focus of my art has been my determination to reconnect to the mainstream of human life a segment of humanity tha
t has been cast off and made invisible. I have brought into the public gaze women who have been marginalised by sexual abuse, poverty, and their blackness. Through art I have sought to center them in the world.”

  From Push

  I was left back when I was twelve because I had a baby for my fahver. That was in 1983. I was out of school for a year. This gonna be my second baby. My daughter got Down Sinder. She’s retarded. I had got left back in the second grade too, when I was seven, ’cause I couldn’t read (and I still peed on myself). I should be in the eleventh grade, getting ready to go into the twelf’ grade so I can gone ’n graduate. But I’m not. I’m in the ninfe grade.

  I got suspended from school ’cause I’m pregnant which I don’t think is fair. I ain’ did nothin’!

  My name is Claireece Precious Jones. I don’t know why I’m telling you that. Guess ’cause I don’t know how far I’m gonna go with this story, or whether it’s even a story or why I’m talkin’; whether I’m gonna start from the beginning or right from here or two weeks from now. Two weeks from now? Sure you can do anything when you talking or writing, it’s not like living when you can only do what you doing. Some people tell a story ’n it don’t make no sense or be true. But I’m gonna try to make sense and tell the truth, else what’s the fucking use? Ain’ enough lies and shit out there already?

  So, OK, it’s Thursday, September twenty-four 1987 and I’m walking down the hall. I look good, smell good—fresh, clean. It’s hot but I do not take off my leather jacket even though it’s hot, it might get stolen or lost. Indian summer, Mr Wicher say. I don’t know why he call it that. What he mean is, it’s hot, 90 degrees, like summer days. And there is no, none, I mean none, air conditioning in this motherfucking building. The building I’m talking about is, of course, I.S. 146 on 134th Street between Lenox Avenue and Adam Clayton Powell Jr Blvd. I am walking down the hall from homeroom to first period maff. Why they put some shit like maff first period I do not know. Maybe to gone ’n git it over with. I actually don’t mind maff as much as I had thought I would. I jus’ fall in Mr Wicher’s class sit down. We don’t have assigned seats in Mr Wicher’s class, we can sit anywhere we want. I sit in the same seat everyday, in the back, last row, next to the door. Even though I know that back door be locked. I don’t say nuffin’ to him. He don’t say nuffin’ to me, now. First day he say, “Class turn the book pages to page 122 please.” I don’t move. He say, “Miss Jones, I said turn the book pages to page 122.” I say, “Motherfucker I ain’t deaf!” The whole class laugh. He turn red. He slam his han’ down on the book and say, “Try to have some discipline.” He a skinny little white man about five feets four inches. A peckerwood as my mother would say. I look at him ’n say, “I can slam too. You wanna slam?” ’N I pick up my book ’n slam it down on the desk hard. The class laugh some more. He say, “Miss Jones I would appreciate it if you would leave the room right NOW.” I say, “I ain’ going nowhere motherfucker till the bell ring. I came here to learn maff and you gon’ teach me.” He look like a bitch just got a train pult on her. He don’t know what to do. He try to recoup, be cool, say, “Well, if you want to learn, calm down—” “I’m calm,” I tell him. He say, “If you want to learn, shut up and open your book.” His face is red, he is shaking. I back off. I have won, I guess.

  I didn’t want to hurt him or embarrass him like that you know. But I couldn’t let him, anybody, know page 122 look like page 152, 22, 3, 6, 5—all the pages look alike to me. ’N I really do want to learn. Everyday I tell myself something gonna happen, some shit like on TV. I’m gonna break through or somebody gonna break through to me—I’m gonna learn, catch up, be normal, change my seat to the front of the class. But again, it has not been that day.

  But thas the first day I’m telling you about. Today is not the first day and like I said I was on my way to maff class when Mrs Lichenstein, the principal, snatch me out the hall to her office. I’m really mad ’cause actually I like maff even though I don’t do nuffin’, don’t open my book even. I jus’ sit there for fifty minutes. I don’t cause trouble. In fac’ some of the other natives get restless I break on ’em. I say, “Shut up mutherfuckers I’m tryin’ to learn something.” First they laugh like trying to pull me into fuckin’ with Mr Wicher and disrupting the class. Then I get up ’n say, “Shut up mutherfuckers I’m tryin’ to learn something.” The coons clowning look confuse, Mr Wicher look confuse. But I’m big, five feet nine-ten, I weigh over two hundred pounds. Kids is scared of me. “Coon fool,” I tell one kid done jumped up. “Sit down, stop ackin’ silly.” Mr Wicher look me confuse but grateful. I’m like the polices for Mr Wicher. I keep law and order. I like him, I pretend he is my husband and we live together in Weschesser, wherever that is.

  I can see by his eyes Mr Wicher like me too. I wish I could tell him about all the pages being the same but I can’t. I’m getting pretty good grades. I usually do. I just wanna gone get the fuck out of I.S. 146 and go to high school and get my diploma.

  Anyway I’m in Mrs Lichenstein’s office. She’s looking at me, I’m looking at her. I don’t say nuffin’. Finally she say, “So Claireece, I see we’re expecting a little visitor.” But it’s not like a question, she’s telling me. I still don’t say nuffin’. She staring at me, from behind her big wooden desk, she got her white bitch hands folded together on top her desk.

  “Claireece.”

  Everybody call me Precious. I got three names—Claireece Precious Jones. Only mutherfuckers I hate call me Claireece.

  “How old are you Claireece?”

  White cunt box got my file on her desk. I see it. I ain’t that late to lunch. Bitch know how old I am.

  “Sixteen is ahh rather ahh,”—she clear her throat—“old to still be in junior high school.”

  I still don’t say nuffin’ she know so much let her ass do the talking.

  “Come now, you are pregnant, aren’t you Claireece?”

  She asking now, a few seconds ago the hoe just knew what I was.

  “Claireece?”

  She tryin’ to talk all gentle now and shit.

  “Claireece, I’m talking to you.”

  I still don’t say nuffin’. This hoe is keeping me from maff class. I like maff class. Mr Wicher like me in there, need me to keep those rowdy niggers in line. He nice, wear a dope suit every day. He do not come to school looking like some of these other nasty ass teachers.

  “I don’t want to miss no more of maff class,” I tell stupid ass Mrs Lichenstein.

  She look at me like I got three heads. What’s with this cunt bucket? (That’s what my muver call women she don’t like, cunt buckets. I kinda get it and I kinda don’t get it, but I like the way it sounds so I say it too.)

  I get up to go, Mrs Lichenstein ax me to please sit down, she not through with me yet. But I’m through with her, thas what she don’t get.

  “This is your second baby?” she says. I wonder what else it say in that file with my name on it. I hate her.

  “I think we should have a parent-teacher conference Claireece—me, you, and your mom.”

  “For what?” I say. “I ain’ done nuffin’ I doose my work. I ain’ in no trouble. My grades is good.”

  Mrs Lichenstein look at me again like I got three heads or a bad odor coming out my pussy or something.

  What my muver gon’ do I want to say. What is she gonna do? But I don’t say that. I jus’ say, “My muver is busy.”

  “Well, maybe I could arrange to come to your house—” The look on my face musta hit her, which is what I was gonna do if she said one more word. Come to my house! Nosy ass white bitch! I don’t think so! We don’t be coming to your house in Wesschesser or wherever the fuck you freaks live. Well I be damned, I done heard everything, white bitch wanna visit.

  “Well then Claireece, I’m afraid I’m going to have to suspend you—” “For what!”

  “You’re pregnant and—”

  “You can’t suspend me for being pregnant, I got rights!”

  “Your a
ttitude Claireece is one of total uncooperation—”

  I reached over the desk. I was gonna yank her fat ass out that chair. She fell backwards trying to get away from me ’n started screaming, “SECURITY SECURITY!”

  I was out the door and on the street and I could still hear her stupid ass screaming, “SECURITY SECURITY!”

  “Precious!” That’s my mother calling me.

  I don’t say nothin’. Mrs Lichenstein ain’ the only one noticin’. My mother been staring at my stomach. I know what’s coming. I keep washing dishes. We had fried chicken, mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans, and Wonder bread for dinner. I don’t know how many months pregnant I am. I don’t wanna stand here ’n hear Mama call me slut. Holler ’n shout on me all day like she did the last time I was pregnant. Slut! Nasty ass tramp! What you been doin’! Who! Who! WHOoooo like owl in Walt Disney movie I seen one time. Whooo? Ya wanna know who—

  “Claireece Precious Jones I’m talkin’ to you!”

  I still don’t answer her. I was standing at this sink the last time I was pregnant when them pains hit, wump! Ahh wump! I never felt no shit like that before. Sweat was breaking out on my forehead, pain like fire was eating me up. I jus’ standing there ’n pain hit me, then pain go sit down, then pain get up ’n hit me harder! ’N she standing there screaming at me, “Slut! Goddam slut! You fuckin’ cow! I don’t believe this, right under my nose. You been high tailing it round here.” Pain hit me again, then she hit me. I’m on the floor groaning, “Mommy please, Mommy please, please Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! MOMMY!” Then she KICK me side of my face! “Whore! Whore!” she screamin’. Then Miz West live down the hall pounding on the door, hollering “Mary! Mary! What you doin’! You gonna kill that chile! She need help not no beating, is you crazy!”