The Day I Fell Off My Island

by Yvonne Bailey-Smith

  She looked down at her feet. ‘Can’t you just call me Patsy,’ she said, ‘like everyone else?’

  ‘Patricia was yuh island name,’ I replied. ‘But me can practise saying Patsy. An yuh nevah answer mi question.’

  ‘It’s nothing. He likes beating us. That’s all.’

  ‘It’s okay, yuh don’t have to tell me nutting if yuh nuh want to. Yuh school nice?’

  ‘I like it. I have loads of friends. That’s the best part. And the teachers are okay too, I suppose. Better than being in junior school, anyway.’

  A bell rang over the door as we entered the uniform shop. A man seated behind the counter stood up, exposing a huge belly, which forced him to shuffle sideways on to the shop floor.

  ‘You’re a bit late getting your uniform,’ he said, ‘changing school, are you, luv?’

  ‘Yes, sarh. I did go to a school in another country, sarh.’ Patsy stamped hard on my foot. ‘Is why yuh do that?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s sir, Erna,’ she hissed. ‘You sound mad when you keeping saying that “sarh” word!’

  ‘But yuh could just tell me. Yuh nuh have to mash up mi foot!’

  I handed the man the list.

  ‘Okay, that’s your lot.’ he said, placing the items on the counter a minute later.

  ‘Buy the plain one,’ Patsy whispered in my ear, ‘it’s easy to turn into a mini-skirt. Roll it up when you leave the house and down before you get back home.’

  My first day began with filling out enrolment forms with Miss Robinson, and so I was late for my first class and, as I walked in, twenty sets of eyes stared at me. I reached up and touched my head, concerned that I might have forgotten to remove the pair of cut-off tights I used to cover my hair at night.

  Then the teacher’s voice roared over the silence of the staring girls, ‘Erna Mullings, unroll that skirt at once and don’t ever enter my class in that state again!’

  Within seconds, my skirt was back to its normal length. I made a beeline for the back of the class where the only other three black girls were seated.

  During the first break, a bunch of white girls gathered around me and chanted, ‘Erna Mullings, the mini is for the road, not for school! Mini for the road, not for school!’

  It was a tough first week. Everything was unfamiliar, the way lessons were taught, the moving from class to class, the speed at which everyone spoke, the different accents. There was a black girl with a Liverpudlian accent, and Irish girls who sounded like they were from the Caribbean. And then there was Mr Anand, who was Indian. He taught Maths – the subject I feared the most – and wore a rather obvious toupee. Mrs Gregory, the sour-faced geography teacher, ripped my first attempts at homework from my exercise book and bawled me out in front of the class. ‘Don’t you know anything, Mullings?’ she said. ‘You write on both sides of the paper, not just the right! Are you simple, or something? You are wasting good paper.’ It was all so different from the schooling on my island. For a start, all my teachers had been black, apart from the Canadian Teacher Cavallo and my fellow pupils were all village children. I had had no problems understanding anything or anyone. But in this school, I felt like a dunce.

  At least I made a couple of friends: a wan-looking white girl with short mousy hair, named Katherine Smith, and a smart Guyanese girl with a bouncy Afro, named Jennifer Richards. Jennifer and I took an instant liking to each other.

  ‘Tell the truth now,’ Jennifer challenged Georgina Blake, one of two Jamaican sisters we sometimes hung out with in the playground. ‘Out of Erna and me, who has the best Angela Davis Afro?’

  ‘You both do,’ Georgina replied.

  ‘I agree,’ her sister, Rhea, echoed.

  ‘Who’s Angela Davis?’ I whispered, once we were out of earshot of the Blake sisters.

  Jennifer eyed me in amazement. ‘Girl, you’ve got a lot to learn!’ she said.

  Jennifer was the most single-minded person I had ever met and she had no problem making herself understood. Her hand constantly shot up in class in readiness to ask, or answer, questions. ‘Miss! Why is Africa so small on that map? It’s a big continent, Miss, but on this map Africa looks like it’s smaller than England, Miss, and that can’t be right, Miss. Even Guyana is bigger than England, Miss, and Africa is a continent, Miss.’

  ‘It’s a matter of scale, child,’ Miss Sour-Face had replied to that one.

  Jennifer was a good friend to have, and for the first time since I’d arrived in England I felt that I had made a real connection with someone.

  ‘I’ve lived here since I was seven,’ she said one afternoon, as we travelled in the school coach on our way to the playing fields for a game of hockey. ‘We came here after Dad died in a gold-mining accident. I don’t remember him really, but we have pictures at home. My mum is my best friend, apart from you, now. I can talk to her about anything, even boys.’

  ‘Yuh real lucky, Jennifer,’ I replied. ‘I can’t imagine my mada being mi friend. We barely speak. In fact, I can’t wait to go back to mi island. I don’t find anyting soh far to like bout dis place.’

  ‘I’m used to it,’ Jennifer said, ‘but I’ll definitely go and visit Guyana when I’m older. It’s a beautiful country.’

  I hated hockey. I was always left with badly bruised ankles from being deliberately whacked with the opposing players’ hockey sticks. After limping off the playing field one afternoon, I suggested to Mr Copeland, who was in charge of sports, that perhaps we should play cricket instead.

  ‘Cricket is for boys, Erna,’ Mr Copeland said. ‘Hockey is for girls’

  ‘But, sir, everyone play cricket on my island!’

  ‘Well, we’re not on your island, are we?’ he said, rolling his eyes.

  Jennifer, who’d been listening in, started laughing as soon as Mr Copeland had walked away.

  ‘Well, well, so we have a proper feminist in our midst, after all,’ she said.

  ‘A what?’ I asked.

  Jennifer took me by the arm and led me towards the changing rooms.

  ‘Erna,’ she said, ‘I think it’s time I taught you the facts of life.’

  ‘I already learnt those from mi grandma,’ I replied, stung by her criticism.

  Jennifer stared at me with her eyes crinkling in delight. ‘Oh, Erna,’ she said, ‘you do make me laugh!’

  Chapter 26

  I had started school in the depths of the winter and it was hard to imagine a time when it would not be cold. But when I woke early one late-March morning to see the leafless cherry trees suddenly ablaze with beautiful pink and white blossoms, I felt that perhaps there was some hope in this England place, after all. The days began to warm up and the first time I walked out of the front door wearing a dress and a pair of espadrilles, it felt like a miracle. No coat, no knitted hat and scarf, and definitely no clunky ugly wellington boots. Oh, the feeling of the warmth of the sun on my body again! With my eyes closed tightly, I imagined myself sitting on a low wall in my village, a basket of mangoes by my side, slowly eating my way through them as their delicious yellow juice escaped down my right arm and ran all the way to my elbow.

  The months passed quickly now, and everything that had seemed dead sprang into life. Even the people seemed different. On our street, laughter replaced surly conversation and people greeted each other with pleasantries and observations about the lovely weather. I was amazed. People did greet each other! At school, in the weeks leading up to the summer holidays, my classmates chatted eagerly about going away with their parents to romantic-sounding places, like Cornwall, Devon and Dorset. Some even boasted of going abroad to France or Spain.

  ‘Are you going to the seaside?’ I asked Katherine, on our last day at school.

  ‘Only to visit Nan and Granddad,’ she replied. ‘They moved to Hove when Granddad retired. Nan said she wanted to feel the sea breeze on her face every day right up until her time comes. They like it when we visit, but it’ll only be for a week.’

  ‘Well, I’m staying right here,’ Jennifer sai
d, ‘in Catford-onsea. My mum says she has to work to keep food on the table. No time for holidays.’

  ‘What about you, Erna?’ Katherine asked.

  ‘Me? My mother says she doesn’t understand why anyone would pay good money to go and sit in the houses of people they don’t know,’ I replied. ‘And, to be honest, I don’t get it either. All I’ve seen on the telly are white folks lying around half-naked on the sand with the sun burning them up. How is that fun?’

  Katherine laughed at my description of a typical English holiday. ‘I suppose it must seem funny,’ she said, ‘all these white people who want to get a tan, when they’re always saying they don’t like coloured people!’

  Jennifer rolled her eyes without comment.

  Just before the end of the summer term, I finally received a response from Grandpa Sippa. His letter was brief, and not quite what I had expected, but I still read it with tears in my eyes.

  June 1969

  Dear Erna,

  I hope when these few line of mine reaches you, they will find you in the best of health. Your letter reach me safely, but, as you know, I always have to wait for my hands to steady, so I can do the writing. I read your letter and the most advice I can give you, Erna, is keep your head in your studies and don’t mind big people and dem business.

  I can’t understand what happen in England, but everybody I know who go there settle down after time. I am sure you will settle down soon. If you mother feeling better, maybe you could remind her to put a little something in an envelope for me. Me sure that you can still remember, Erna, that life not easy over here at all, especially now. That is all I have to say for now. Look after yourself, child, and may the Lord God bless you as always,

  Your grandfather, Sippa.

  Grandpa’s letter left me feeling sad. I wished that I could’ve been there on my island, looking after him. But I knew full well that he would not want that. His firm belief was that being in England was what was best for me. So, I wiped my eyes, took a deep breath, and resolved that I would try and make the best of this England place. Summer, however, brought its own challenges. Despite my shaky start, school had brought routine and structure to my life. Without school, there was either playing with Patsy and the boys in the local park or the garden, or the rare treat of watching telly to alleviate our boredom. And that was only when the ugly Satan devil man wasn’t hogging the box. The only drama series he liked were the ones with cops and robbers in them. It was sport that he truly loved, and he watched everything that was on. He particularly liked boxing, which involved what Mother called ‘getting up to his antics’ while he watched – during a match, he would leap to his feet and shadow-box Clifton and Sonny, simultaneously shouting at the telly as if he was ringside.

  ‘Go on, throw him an uppercut! No, man, I said uppercut, you idiot! Swing man, go in with a right hook!’

  The only thing he watched apart from sport and cop dramas was anything with Shirley Bassey in it. He would fixate on the long split in her dress, drooling with pleasure, while I squirmed with disgust. Mother, on the other hand, never watched a single television programme. Her preference was to entertain herself with just one particular song, which she played repeatedly on the old record player until it drove me mad. It was titled ‘Honour Your Mother and Your Father’ – a verse from the Bible that had been turned into a hit record by Desmond Dekker. It was her mission to make sure that the church should remain ever-present in our house, even if it came in ska form.

  Most days we would head for the park with a football and a rounders bat and ball that we bought with the pocket money that Auntie Madge gave us. We never got anything from our mother or the devil man. Playing these games took me back to a carefree place where life felt simple and joyful. This routine of park, garden and telly seemed like it would be the pattern for the entire summer, until an announcement from our mother one Saturday night caught us by surprise.

  ‘I want you all up by six o’clock tomorrow morning, latest,’ she said. ‘We are going to the seaside.’

  The seaside? None of us had even seen the sea since our arrival in England and it was hard to contain our excitement.

  The following morning, we woke to discover a mountain of food that Mother had prepared the night before, and she presided over the transfer of this bounty to a robust-looking green Ford Transit van, with bench seats and windows along the side, which had miraculously replaced the devil man’s old Cortina – possibly with this trip in mind. Bubbling with excitement, we clambered in and set off on the tortuous journey from South London to the coast.

  This was my first trip outside of London and, once the excitement had worn off, I was disappointed that there was so little of interest along the route. The images in my head of forests and rivers and white sandy beaches were replaced by a seemingly endless crawl through grey London suburbia. When we finally arrived, three hours later, Southend was nothing like my tropical fantasy either. It had a dismal gravel beach that was dotted with dog’s mess. But my dashed expectations were forgotten when we discovered the Kursaal amusement park and the accompanying funfair rides that sprawled along the seafront, past the old pier that stuck out into the choppy grey sea, which had its own miniature railway. To my utter amazement the funfair included a roller coaster and a rotor ride, where you climbed inside a large barrel that spun around so fast you stuck to the sides. Mother gave us five shillings each to spend as we wished – a small fortune and the first time she’d ever given us money for any leisure activity – so we were able to enjoy as many fairground rides as we liked, and stuff our faces with ice-cream, candy floss and sugary pink sticks of rock. It was the best day I’d had with my family since my arrival in England. It was also the first time I saw my mother looking genuinely happy with us – playing with the twins, running up and down the beach with them, laughing, digging a hole in the sand and helping them to build a wobbly sandcastle.

  When we got home that evening and the younger children had gone to bed, I thought it might be a good time to tap into this softer side of my mother by asking her about my father. The ugly Satan devil man was on his night shift, so I went to my mother’s room at the top of the house and knocked gently on the door.

  ‘Its Erna’, I forewarned her.

  ‘Come in,’ she said. She was sitting on her bed, propped up with pillows, trawling through an Avon catalogue.

  I sat down tentatively on the far corner of the bed and was surprised not to be bawled out. Instead, she smiled broadly, and in that moment she looked exactly like Grandma.

  The conversation began well enough. ‘Did you love my father?’ I asked her simply.

  She glanced up from the catalogue, but gave no answer.

  I tried again. ‘It’s just that Papa did ask after you when I went to visit him.’

  Mother began rapidly turning the catalogue pages. ‘Well, do you hear me asking after him?’ Her tone was sharp and angry.

  I quickly changed the subject. ‘You must miss Grandma Melba,’ I said. ‘I don’t think I will ever stop missing her.’

  My mother slammed the catalogue shut and tossed it to the floor. ‘It’s you who killed your grandmother!’ she suddenly bellowed. She leapt off her bed and flounced out of the room. ‘And get out of my room,’ she shouted, as she slammed the door hard behind her.

  I was speechless. I tried to absorb her words, before pulling open the door and racing after her, anger rising in my belly. I caught up with her just as she was about to descend the last few stairs.

  I grabbed at her dress. ‘What do you mean?’ I asked her crossly.

  ‘You know what I mean!’ she shouted. She pushed me away from her, turned swiftly and started walking back up the stairs.

  I watched her with mounting dread. Our relationship had sunk to a new low. The end of the holidays could not come quickly enough.

  Chapter 27

  I spent the rest of the holidays revising with Jennifer and Katherine, trying to figure out the things I’d been struggling with in the classroom
. My final year in school began and I buried my head in my books. I finally got round to reading Jane Eyre, having first spied it on the school secretary’s desk the day I arrived to register. I read it over two nights. By the end, I was head over heels in love with gruff Mr Rochester and I desperately wanted to be his Jane. Mills & Boon and James Bond novels weren’t cutting it for me any more; I had graduated to the tragic heroines of Thomas Hardy and I was particularly taken with the fate of Tess in Tess of the d’Urbervilles. Hardy’s writing had a depth I could relate to and I was feeling a need to expand my reading and knowledge in general. I decided it was time to ask Jennifer, who was an avid reader herself, for recommendations. We’d started spending our weekends together, often on long walks, exploring places I had never been to, and had no idea existed: Hilly Fields, Brockwell Park, Greenwich Park, Horniman Gardens, and further afield to Battersea Park, and Crystal Palace with its hundred-and-fifty-year-old model dinosaurs. We even ventured as far away as Richmond Park in the west, and Hampstead Heath north of the river. I was amazed by the size of this city I was living in, and by the incredible variety and beauty of its green spaces. Now our talk was all about books and I was bowled over not just by how widely Jennifer read, but by her interest in black writers and poets. As we strolled through Camberwell Old Cemetery, among the tumbled gravestones one crisp February afternoon, Jennifer casually tossed some names at me.

  ‘Ever heard of Maya Angelou?’

  ‘No! Who’s she?’

  ‘Really, you’ve never heard of her?’

  ‘I said no, didn’t I?’

  ‘Wow. Who are you reading then, Emily Brontë?’ she mocked.

  I felt humiliated. I loved Emily Brontë! But I couldn’t admit that to her now that I realised that I was doing something deeply unfashionable in her eyes. But then I had no idea what writers were fashionable in Jennifer’s eyes.

  ‘No, of course not!’ I replied.