You imagine if the man spoke to you he would say, it’s okay, I’m okay, you don’t need to sit here. You don’t need to sit and you sit and look past him into the darkness the train is moving through. A tunnel.
All the while the darkness allows you to look at him. Does he feel you looking at him? You suspect so. What does suspicion mean? What does suspicion do?
The soft gray-green of your cotton coat touches the sleeve of him. You are shoulder to shoulder though standing you could feel shadowed. You sit to repair whom who? You erase that thought. And it might be too late for that.
It might forever be too late or too early. The train moves too fast for your eyes to adjust to anything beyond the man, the window, the tiled tunnel, its slick darkness. Occasionally, a white light flickers by like a displaced sound.
From across the aisle tracks room harbor world a woman asks a man in the rows ahead if he would mind switching seats. She wishes to sit with her daughter or son. You hear but you don’t hear. You can’t see.
It’s then the man next to you turns to you. And as if from inside your own head you agree that if anyone asks you to move, you’ll tell them we are traveling as a family.
Leone Ross
Born in Coventry, England, she migrated as a six-year-old with her mother to Jamaica, where she was raised and educated. Graduating from the University of the West Indies in 1990, she returned to the UK and earned her MA in International Journalism from City University, in London, where she now lives. She has published two critically acclaimed novels, All the Blood Is Red (1996) and Orange Laughter (1999). Her fiction has been nominated for the Orange Prize, the V. S. Pritchett Award, the Scott Prize, the 2018 Jhalak Prize and the Edge Hill Award. Her short story collection Come Let Us Sing Anyway (2017) was called “searingly compassionate” by The Guardian. She teaches at Roehampton University in London, and is also an editor and a writing competition judge.
Why You Shouldn’t Take Yourself So Seriously
the flesh and bone woman who is on a date with a lyrical man she met online is sitting in a yellow toilet cubicle in a mid-priced noodle bar wondering whether she should make a run for it whether she should go out and see him again whether she should finish eating the crispy duck rolls he might offer to pay for when the bill comes but if she doesn’t go out again if she finds a way to exit the toilet then slip out and run down the road he will have to pay the bill by default and don’t they say that’s what makes women bitches and someone in the cubicle next to her farts and flushes at the same time to cover the noise she does that too in public spaces and sometimes even when she’s at home and the sweet-mouthed man she met on the Internet seems to be the kind of man who wouldn’t expect her to just leave would expect her to be a lady the truth be told she’s pissed off by the way he uses the word lady he’s been doing it all night when they met at the concrete theatre and he kissed her cheek and his breath smelled of cinnamon gum and he complimented her bright orange dress then again after they came out of the play him ushering her by the elbow and opening the door for her finally they were here together after weeks of increasingly liquid text messages and thoughtful phone calls that lasted until moonlight where they talked about the box sets they wanted to watch enshrined in someone else’s arms fingers thick with salty buttery popcorn and the places they dreamed of travelling Reykjavik for her because she passed through once on a connecting flight and the mountains looked blue and like a place you could find unicorns and New York for him because everybody had to go once and he was a bit embarrassed he hadn’t been yet and she actually told him she was lonely and then when the phone call was done she realised she’d picked off most of the Leave Me Blushing Scarlet nail polish on her left hand because she was so anxious about saying it but he was great and really honest when he explained he was over a year divorced and admitted he cheated yeah he could man-up and say it his wife she was a lady about the whole thing but the marriage just limped on afterwards then died the flesh-and-bone woman can’t drop the feeling that it’s a butter-knife kind of word seemingly harmless but if you stick it in hard enough it’ll do you damage like any other knife and all evening he’s been talking about how she’s a beautiful lady choosing her pre-theatre drink for her a good Spanish shiraz she’ll give him that and as he handed her the glass she thought his nails needed clipping chided herself for being fussy then admired his carefully groomed beard and thick eyelashes made her twitch a little you know where and this is why you have no man too contrary her aunties say fanning themselves and lip-curling and he told her about an upcoming art exhibition which seemed a reasonable thing to talk about on a date light and colour and emotion caused by art but did you like the play we just saw she thinks he’s talking about getting books in the art gallery bookstore afterwards because that’s half of the fun he said do you ever go and yeah she said but he’s not listening then I like to walk my lady along the river after an exhibition or the theatre he said and she’s aware that she’s still sitting on this toilet worried about the crispy duck roll that she took one bite out of before she felt her stomach turning which seems strange she ate light today why’s her stomach funny only had salad and chicken to keep skinny for this date and outside she’s sure that the guy is waiting and wondering and checking his phone which might buy her some more time because everybody gets caught up in Twitter or whatever on a pause maybe he’s even checking his dating profile to see if he has any more hits here is a girl with good tits here is a girl with big brown eyes here is a girl who says that she would like her neck squeezed tightly and how to do it here is a girl who says that she’s the whole package here is a girl who says this is a recent photograph when it’s not and here is a girl with a recent photograph with too many lines around her eyes and here is a girl who says she’s bisexual never say that you’re bisexual on your dating profile all you’ll get are messages about threesomes or messages from men who say that they are socially conscious vegan polyamorous people or morally responsible multi-daters or some such and she doesn’t trust men like that she thinks that it’s all just a nice way to say they want lots of pussy and she wishes that men would just say that and the woman in the thin cubicle beside her is wiping she’s intrigued that she can hear the wiping what kind of Velcro pussy does she have that you can hear the sound of toilet paper scraping on it and outside the lyrical man who she met on the Internet will probably be putting his phone back on the table by now wondering if she’s OK and she has to make a decision she checks her own phone OK it’s only been ten minutes ten minutes is fine most men expect a woman to be away for longer in the toilet especially if they’re a lady and call it a loo and when this man first contacted her on the Internet she really liked that he didn’t care for jumping out of planes or running for charity that none of his photographs had pictures of him embracing big cats or African children because that shit is all the same thing vanity and he said that what he wanted was a proper girlfriend a real girlfriend normal and he didn’t use any puns and most important of all he never said he wanted a girl who didn’t take herself too seriously that’s the phrase she sees the most online sees it come up again and again and again and again and again profile after profile and she doesn’t want to think about how many men’s profiles she’s looked at when she first started out she would read them carefully and respectfully but these days all she needs to do is look in their eyes to know whether they’re stupid to know whether they’re bitter to know whether they’re funny to know whether they like women to know whether they’re dangerous to know whether they only want sex to know whether they want a woman who doesn’t take herself too seriously and she thinks if she isn’t going to take herself seriously who is and why hasn’t he talked about the play yet the woman in the cubicle next to her with the Velcro pussy flushes and then flushes again and the woman on a date thinks that the woman in the cubicle next to her must be stupid because the toilet chain’s making wheezing noises and suddenly she realises that the woman is crying and without thinking about it she responds to the desp
erate sound because how could anyone ignore that barking pain are you OK she says and all she can hear is hiccuping and coughing are you OK please say something she says I’m sorry to disturb you I’m fine says the woman in the cubicle next to her I’m fine no you’re not I can hear you crying it’s not any business of yours and then there’s a long pause and the woman on the date asks the woman in the cubicle next to her whether she’s on a date and there is a shuffling and a sighing and I have to get out of here the other woman says and sorry to hold you up no it’s fine but she’s not moving and the woman who doesn’t like being called a lady can see through the gap at the bottom of the cubicle that her neighbour’s practical pink knickers are still around her ankles so she’s not going anywhere fast but she isn’t sure what to do next and she thinks about calling her best friend for an opinion but her best friend said she was going to see her ex today and everybody knows what a mess that is but her best friend is the kind of person who needs to sort through a mess’s colours and textures to be sure that she doesn’t want it any more and even though she’s supposed to call anyway to say that the lyrical man isn’t a serial killer she’s been on so many dates recently that nobody expects her to call and talk about a serial killer any more and anyway all a serial killer would do is wait until the check-in call was done then get to the killing bit in the past she’s been more likely to call and say a man is too tall and thin and since she’s a fluffy woman she can’t really be dating him because they’ll look like a number 10 walking down the street next to each other or she’s more likely to say that this other man has strange table manners and while she wants to make an excuse for him picking his teeth with the edge of his knife and then picking his own nose and eating it as if everything in this world should go in his mouth like he’s a two-year-old isn’t she entitled to say that’s a reason not to date a man when he eats his own body waste and she’s more likely to be calling her friend to say this other man over here only cares about money and only cares about clothes and she doesn’t respect this other-other man because he shrugs at the environment and explains why we’re all doomed anyway or he doesn’t care about reading or he doesn’t care about the upcoming elections and all the other men she’s said no to who are becoming a blur now she can’t remember how many of them have said don’t get me started on the feminazis she’s been noticing recently that you can type feminazi in your phone without predictive text protesting or changing it but you can never write fuck without the stupid thing changing it to duck or flock and seriously who is into birds on that level at all even though she does like birds she told one guy one time that she liked peacocks and swans and he said that wasn’t a very black girl thing to do and was any of this good enough reason to be sitting on a toilet seat wondering about stealing away the girl in the cubicle next to her is clearing her throat and blowing her nose now yeah says the girl in the cubicle next to her anyway and she pulls up her knickers and unlocks the door and shuffles out and the girl who cares about swans thinks she should have asked more questions that she should’ve tried to be a better person but she’s tired and she wishes she didn’t get upset about things and wishes she had longer legs and wishes that she didn’t want sex to mean something and she finally does what she came to do pulls her knickers down so she can see the torn lace and stare at the two spots of blood on the gusset that’s what her aunties call it the other woman is washing her hands and leaving and she wants to call her back who told her to wear a skirt to meet a stranger she’ll go back to the table now she’s here with him after all she walked along the river with him pulling her really despite everything she didn’t cry it’s too late to make a fuss she might as well go back to the duck roll and who else was there to tell her what happened during the play
what happened
she missed it
in the dark
and everybody saying
shhh shhhhhhh shhh
Kadija Sesay
She is a Sierra Leonean/British literary activist, publisher and editor. In the mid-1990s she worked for the Centreprise Literature Development Project as the Black Literature Development Co-ordinator and set up the newspaper Calabash. In 2001 she founded Sable LitMag and Sable LitFest. She has edited several anthologies of work by writers of African and Asian descent and published a poetry collection, Irki. She has also published short stories, essays, and articles in magazines, journals, anthologies and encyclopaedias in the UK, US and Africa; and has been broadcast on the BBC World Service. She is the co-founder of Mboka Festival in the Gambia. She has received several awards for her work in the creative arts, as well as an AHRC scholarship to research Black British Publishers. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, the George Bell Institute and of the Kennedy Arts Centre of Performance Arts Management.
Growing Up ChrisMus
Before growing up in a “free-thinking” Christian/Muslim household, my brother, my sister and I grew up in a working-class British one in Kent.
We were placed in private foster care as babies, so our bodies and brains were raised on traditional home-made English food that consisted of pies and puddings throughout the week. For breakfast we would have sugared toast dipped in hot tea. How Mum made a sausage embedded into Yorkshire pudding become a “toad-in-the-hole” was never explained—it just was—and as long as it was covered in brown gravy, we didn’t care. Apple crumble and custard followed for “afters”—we had the best of English. Our Friday night treat was a fish-and-chip “tea” with plenty of malt vinegar and “tommy sauce”, wrapped in newspaper; yokey egg with buttered fingers made up breakfast at weekends (Dad was expert at that). Roast dinner after Sunday school was, of course, a special meal with the proper trimmings—lamb with mint or chicken with sage and onion stuffing are what my taste buds still remember.
Our brains were fed with plenty of books, sent by our birth parents, from Dr Seuss (which I flicked through in an hour) to boarding-school’s bad boy Jennings, and I became fascinated and dreamy-eyed with Sense and Sensibility at the age of seven, but our parents decided that this was not the way they wanted their children raised.
Despite the difficulties for people of African descent finding a suitable place to live in London in the 1960s, especially with children, my parents removed us from the care of our foster parents to live on the first floor of a two-storey house in North London. We lived above Pakistani-born Danny who also had two rooms with his mum and two daughters. Upstairs were noisy people, and the bathroom. Danny’s family had their own bathroom!
It was here that “real Mum and Dad” started to raise us as “real African children”. All of our food came out of two pots—one with long-grain white rice, the other with stew—catering-sized pots filled with enough to feed a village, yet there were only six of us (my mum’s youngest sister became my big sister). At weekends, the pot of stew was plassas: green leafy stuff—crain-crain, cassava leaves, potato leaves that soaked up the deep amber palm oil, liberally decorated with shiny red Trinidad peppers, that real Mum bought in the Indian-owned African shops in Finsbury Park. She dropped in sixteen peppers the first time that she used them and, even without stirring, it was so hot that she had to cook another pot of unspiced stew to mix with the first one in order to reduce the pepper burn. It provided a new gargantuan feast of wonder for my brother, who as the eldest child and the only son was fed like a king, and so loved everything hot and spicy with meat—chunks of beef and dried fish that he dug out of the plassas—that I wondered how he had survived his early years in Kent without it. My mother could see that she had done the right thing by removing him.
Our dining-room-cum-living-room-cum-kitchen turned into a bedroom for my brother at night. Next door, in the large front room that held our life belongings, we three girls slept in the queen-size bed, while Mum and Dad slept on the floor. We never questioned the arrangement that gave my brother a room all to himself. He was not allowed to sleep in the same room as the girls although we had just left a house in Kent where he fought over and won the top bunk be
d. (Truthfully, I was the one who gave in, as I always did with my brother.) Things remained like that until we left those rooms a year later to move to a spacious, leaking, derelict house, waiting to be knocked down to make way for a new council estate. But my parents had a bedroom to themselves again and we had a garden in which we were allowed to play after we had completed our homework. That was our first proper home in London.
This was about the time when my parents really began to enforce certain harsh rules and conditions, as we saw it, although these were merely traditions and customs that my parents had carried with them from home and adapted to help them survive in England and to protect their family. We had an African household indoors, which our parents prayed would be sustained outside the home too. Private fostering was one of those customs that worked similar to the men’ pickin system back home, whereby children were sent to another family member who could provide more for them than their parents could at an early age. My parents had migrated to England, and the best people to speak English were, of course, the English, and this was one reason why my parents, while working at least one job each and attending college in the evening, chose to leave their children with the descendants of their colonial masters.
And so my parents, with their mixed Christian/Muslim marriage, which is not unusual in Sierra Leone (or indeed in most West African countries), were unintentionally raising mixed-up children, believing that they would get the best start in life that England had to offer. Nigerian/British comedian Gina Yashere has referred to this type of relationship in her stage performances as “ChrisMus” because, in fact, we are happy to join in with the major religious celebrations of both religions. The Sierra Leonean term is “Marabout Krio” (the Krios, traditionally, being predominantly Christian, and the Marabouts traditionally Muslim holy people).
New Daughters of Africa Page 55