Brown Baby

by Nikesh Shukla

  Because it is not you who has built this myth that brown is dirty.

  A year or so later, you point at a brown girl in Nick Sharratt’s You Choose. ‘That’s me,’ you say.

  ‘Why did you pick her?’ I ask.

  ‘Because she’s smiling,’ you say. ‘I like it when people smile.’

  I ask you about the other smiling children on the page and you reply, like I’m an idiot embarrassing dad, ‘They’re white, Daddy. I’m a bit brown.’

  I look at Patty, her head poking out of a box. She may be out of favour. But it’s not because of the colour of her skin.

  Maybe these conversations need to happen in your own time and on your own time. I shouldn’t shy away from the truth. And the truth may be my own, distorted by my work and own life. But my truth shapes your worldview and I would rather have difficult and challenging conversations with you before others cement their projections of you onto you.

  You choose.

  In order for you to have that choice, I need to have that chat. That’s how I talk to you about your skin colour.

  I once texted your auntie Chimene and our friend Rosie to say, ‘Wow, I get it now how pervasive rape language is. I can see it. Obviously I always knew it was there. But having a daughter has really shown me how insidious it is.’

  ‘Congratulations,’ Chimene replied. ‘It’s so nice you had to have a daughter before you could see us as human beings . . .’

  She was joking but her point stung. I was texting her, asking for a proverbial cookie, because I thought I was ‘woke’ ‘feminist’ dad. What the hell did I know if I only understood what she went through and what space her body took up every single day now I had you?

  Why hadn’t I been there already?

  We had been at a relative’s house trying to shield you from cuddles from people you didn’t know very well. I’ve always made a point of asking if I can give you a cuddle or a kiss. I don’t ever want to push myself into your space if you don’t want me there. We have taught you to say ‘stop’ or ‘don’t like it’, if tickling pushes past a comfort point for you. We have worked hard to give you space around affection. If you don’t want to cuddle someone or kiss them hello or goodbye, that is up to you.

  An old school friend of mine hates being cuddled. He finds it incredibly uncomfortable. Always has done. And while our small group of friends would all embrace every day at school or meeting in Harrow town centre to go to the cinema or mooch round comic shops or ride the bus, he would stand idly to one side waiting till it was all done, his hands in his pockets. After a while, I just started hugging him. He needed to feel the love in the group too, I felt. He deserved the affection and solidarity coursing through my arms. The first time I did it, I could feel him wrenching himself backwards, away from me as much as he could. He developed a shark’s fin as a defence mechanism, the more I asked him to endure hugs. He would place his hand in front of his chest, offering to shake mine, as a compromise, a stiff shark’s fin, ready to prod should I ignore the signal.

  I ignored the signal and hugged him every single time, the poor bastard. I pushed through the shark’s fin and cuddled him for all he’s worth.

  I joked about it to a group of friends, with him present, and I could see that while he was laughing, he wasn’t really laughing. He was smiling but it was out of politeness rather than being in on the joke. I stopped cuddling him after that, respecting the handshake and not making a thing of it. You don’t have to hug anyone you don’t want to. Your autonomy is your own. Your body is your space. Your affection is not a given.

  It was harder when you were a baby because you were the first in our family since your favourite fai. And then you arrived, twenty-two years later, perfect, small, tetchy and popular. You were passed around so much as a baby. Your mum couldn’t be in the same room when it happened because she found it upsetting to watch. You getting more and more distressed and overstimulated. The family cooing in your face and rocking you till you went quiet or they passed you on in frustration. You wouldn’t sleep those nights, either. You found it hard to settle your mind, trying to navigate your way through new bodies, new odours, voices, modes of communication. Your nani was the biggest culprit. She insisted on holding on to you even when you were crying. This, she said, would ensure that she could comfort you as well as anyone else. She said that if you ended up back with Mummy or Daddy when you were upset then we would be the only ones who could offer you comfort.

  I understood her point of view but I wasn’t prepared to surrender your autonomy to someone else just because they promised it would make my life easier. When you were a little older, we were adamant. You will not be forced to cuddle anyone.

  At our relative’s house, we all sat around while you lay on the floor staring at the world, in your space but with different people leaning over you to give you cuddles. Some people we didn’t know well, people who were – how to put this civilly – part of the extended family, kept trying to pick you up. Which you hated. And I didn’t like it either. You were on the floor because you were trying to move, flipping from front to back, trying to get up on all-fours, shuffling inches forward and centimetres back. You were concentrating so hard. Every now and then you would get frustrated and I flipped you back onto your back to reset you. Start again. Try again. Try better.

  The relatives of relatives, let’s call them Villain 1 and Villain 2, would at different intervals pick you up. You cried every single time. Grunting and growling in frustration because a) you were trying to learn to move, goddammit, just let me crawl and go, and b) who the absolute fucking fuck were these strangers and why did they think I wanted to hang out with them?

  Wanting to not be rude, I’d give it a few minutes before rescuing you. Each time I could feel their bodies tighten, with anger. This is exactly the household I grew up in, sadly. Where children were dolls. To coo over and hold tight and smile at and say, look at me, I’m holding the baby. Don’t I look good holding the baby?

  It reminds me of men and papooses. You know the ones? The ones with the performative papoose. So they can show us all what a great dad they are, they have their babies in papooses, facing out, and they’re holding the baby’s tiny hands and they’re smiling at everyone they walk past, like, look at me, I’m holding the baby. Don’t I look good holding the baby?

  Who the absolute fucking fuck are these strangers and why do they care whether I think they’re a good dad? Stop smiling at me, weekend dad. Yes, I called you weekend dad. With your weekend dad papoose. And the baby is always facing out. Always.

  Hey there, Mr Weekend Dad, most babies look like moles. No one really thinks your baby is the cutest.

  Our children were like dolls for the family. When your fai was a baby and I was ten, everyone was getting ready for a party. Nani needed to put on a sari and I said I would look after fai. She was a dolly so she was plonked on my bed and I was told, I just had to watch her for five minutes. She would be fine. As soon as she was sitting on the bed, I realized she needed her little bell. She had a jingly bell on a ribbon she was obsessed with. She looked at me plaintively. She was so sweet and smiled a lot. And I just wanted to hug her. She was my dolly. But she wanted the bell. Where was the bell? She needed the bell. Thinking I had seen it in another room, I ran out into the hallway, shouting for Nani, asking where the bell was. She was on the move the second I left the room. I heard the shuffling on the bedclothes and looked back to her. She was on all-fours, finally free. I imagine she was thinking, finally no one is cuddling me, and I can move, and she was heading for my bedside table where her jingly bell sat, waiting for her to play with.

  As she plunged head first onto the floor, everything moved to slow motion. I was stuck in my tracks, staring at my little cousin, my responsibility, fall through the air, her forehead connecting with the floor below. She cried out and it pulled me out of myself. Instead of standing still, I ran to her. It was almost like an origin story.

  Peter Parker was haunted by the murder of his uncl
e Ben, and his accidental role in that murder taught him everything he needed to know about the burden of responsibility. About how our actions affect those outside of our circles as much as those inside, sometimes.

  He learned that with great power comes great responsibility. And it turns him into a goddamn hero.

  Watching your fai fall to the floor. Understanding my role in it. It changed me. And when your nani pushed past me to rescue her and pick her up and comfort her, I cried, screaming that I was sorry. Your nani was perturbed, staring at me, like why was I so upset? Krupa fai looked at me, crying, like I had let her down.

  And I felt like I had. I knew in that moment that I was changed forever. With great power comes great responsibility.

  I thought about that moment a lot in my life, that feeling of seeing Krupa fai helpless, and feeling like it was all my fault. I hated seeing you being picked up, and when you growled your frustration at Villain 2, being picked up again, your mother, frustrated, removed you to another room, just so you could have some space.

  A few minutes later, one of your fais, not being evil or vindictive in any way, just in full show-off mood to Villain 1 and Villain 2, came and grabbed you from your mum’s hands to take you over to Villain 2, desperate to hold you.

  I hated watching it. The way you had no idea what was going on. The way you had no choice. Even your cries of anger and frustration went unheeded.

  As we left, we said our goodbyes. You cried as Villain 1 tried to take you for a goodbye cuddle.

  ‘Goodbye,’ Villain 1 said. ‘Why are you crying?’

  Upset, you started calling for your mummy, again and again. We huddled in tighter around you, our bodies stiff. Villain 1 leant in, his eyes glinting, his teeth bared, the faintest tinge of a smile; a mongoose pretending to be a mouse.

  ‘Mummy, mummy, mummy,’ Villain 1 said, snarling. ‘What is all this mummy, mummy, mummy? I’m going to take you away from your mummy and you can come and live with me. Say goodbye to your mummy. You’re never going to see her again. You will come live at my house now.’

  He winked at me, and laughed. He wanted me to think he was joking. It wasn’t a funny joke but he had delivered what he considered a joke. Your mum and I both knew what he was doing to you. He was reminding you that your body was not yours to grant access to, your feelings were not important, and whether you wanted to or not, he could take you away. He was humiliated by you. Rejected. He couldn’t have his cuddle with this cute baby and so he had to remind her exactly who was in charge.

  I did nothing. I’m ashamed to tell you, I did and I said nothing. We took you upstairs for some quiet time to calm you down, knowing that the night ahead meant nightmares, a disturbed sleep, anxiety about the stranger who wished to take you away from your parents.

  You were so young, Ganga, and yet, here it was, the language of rape and male ownership. This wasn’t the interaction of person with cute baby. This was about telling you from a young age what the parameters of your life looked like. I was horrified, not only that it started so early, but that I had never seen through it before, examined it for what it was. Because for it to be dismissed so easily in that room, it was clear that it was normal.

  That’s what I texted Auntie Chimene.

  And once she had mocked me mercilessly and sufficiently for being a feminist woke dad, she said, yeah, it’s always been that way. Men are like this, she told me. Now you can see it, it’s what you choose to do about it that counts . . .

  ‘Especially if you want to be a Feminist Woke Dad,’ she added with a cry-laughing emoji.

  ‘Daddy,’ you ask me one day when we’re using a public toilet. ‘Why don’t you ever sit down to do a wee?’

  ‘Sometimes I do,’ I tell you.

  ‘Do you sit on your wallet when you wee?’ you ask.

  ‘No,’ I tell you. ‘I mostly wee standing up.’

  ‘Oh,’ you say.

  I tap my pocket. ‘My wallet is here,’ I say.

  You point at my willy. ‘Not there?’

  ‘That’s a willy not a wallet,’ I tell you.

  ‘For standing up?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say.

  You think about this, rocking your feet up and down, staring at the decor in this shipping container toilet we’re in. At the back of a hipster cafe.

  ‘Can I?’ you ask. ‘Can I wee standing up?’

  You wave your hands up and down as if to say, and if not, why not?

  ‘You can, but it would make a mess. It’s easier for people with willies,’ I tell you. I’m careful. I don’t want to get into a conversation that leaves you being binary about who has which set of genitals and what that then makes them capable of or allowed to do.

  ‘They look funny anyway,’ you tell me.

  I laugh as I wipe your bottom and lead you back to the cafe to join the rest of the family.

  It’s so depressingly easy to slip into cultural gender roles. Often without any effort or active decision or desire. You’ve become obsessed with wearing dresses. Before nursery, I watched as you lay down at the top of the stairs, naked except for a pair of Paw Patrol pants, thrusting your legs violently at the stair gate, screaming and crying because I had insisted you put leggings and a jumper on. It was pissing down outside. It was winter. You wanted to wear that summer dress with pandas on your grandma made you. And I said no. Because, sometimes in a rush, you don’t get to have a choice. When you have a choice, we tell you so. We will give you a choice. But when it’s up to us, you don’t get a say. It’s a tricky balance to strike. How do you delineate what is an adult decision and what is one you can make?

  When I make offers to your younger sister about what she would like to do, often trying to prioritize her because she doesn’t get to speak first that much, you will throw in a curveball suggestion, and because she is your chumchee, that’s the suggestion she will go with.

  ‘Do you want to go and play in the garden?’ I will ask her.

  ‘No,’ she will say. It’s one of those days. A NO day.

  ‘Okay, well, what about Lego? Do you want to play with Lego?’ I say, tersely, running back to the hob to try and sort out the rice bubbling over. My mum would mock me for my rice preparation. Burnt rice? Am I even desi?

  ‘Do you want to go to the park?’ you will suggest, giggling.

  ‘Park,’ the youngest will chant, gleefully. ‘Park, Daddy, park.’

  I’m fixing your lunch, I’m trying not to be mad. I turn my back.

  ‘It’s garden or it’s Lego. We’re not going to the park,’ I say, searching through the clumps for an edible mound of rice.

  Before I know it, your sister is on the floor, thrusting her legs violently at my legs like they’re a stair gate, screaming and crying that she wants to go to the park.

  The choice you’ve taken over what you wear and how it frames your identity, though, this has been led by external forces I cannot reckon with. It’s a combination of television and nursery and needing clear boundaries, I guess. When you were born, we insisted on gender neutral clothing. We didn’t want lots of pink. We didn’t want T-shirts that said ‘Little Princess’ or ‘Daddy’s Girl’ on them. We were gifted them, but they quickly ended up, unworn, at a charity shop. You were a baby. You knew not of your gender. Neither did we. You just lay there, feeding and kicking out your legs. All of your hand-me-downs were from your boy cousins, so they were blue and yellow and orange. Whenever you wore them out in public strangers would comment on how cute you are, because, well, brown babies attract the most affection from strangers. One even asked me if she could hold you.

  I declined.

  They would assume you were a boy, gender you as ‘he’ and say ‘he’s so cute’. I corrected the person once and he got annoyed with me.

  ‘Starting him early?’ the man asked innocently. I was in a record shop. You were in a sling, facing outwards, watching the world. Yes, I was a papoose dad myself once. Weekend Dad.

  I was flicking through records, marvelling at how expensive
they’d become, luxuriating in album art, because it was rare to experience the whole record sleeve when it was a small square on a phone screen. I scanned the backs of each, longing for the days of that first listen, reading along with the liner notes, checking where the samples were from, who programmed the drums, who was thanked, where the studios were.

  I looked up at my fellow crate digger, smiling, opposite me, flicking through noise records.

  ‘Oh, it’s a she,’ I said, absently. ‘Trying to get her into rap early. They should do radio edit albums for listening to with kids in the room.’

  The man, flustered, grabbed a record and started to walk away.

  ‘Sorry,’ he blurted, like an uncontrolled burp. ‘Maybe if she wore gender appropriate clothes, I wouldn’t have made that mistake.’

  ‘She’s just a baby,’ I said.

  ‘She’s wearing boy clothes,’ he replied.

  The demand to only wear dresses and have your hair long starts almost as soon as you enter the pre-school room at your nursery. Like you are finally hanging out with kids who have developed a greater sense of self than you possessed before. Then, your best friend, the one you did everything, usually boisterously, with, leaves nursery and you use this as an opportunity to assert yourself as a big girl. Your words.

  ‘I’m a big girl,’ you declare. ‘I’m not a baby,’ you qualify.

  We go with it because it’ll do you well, as you assert your independence, to know exactly who you are as you get older.

  However, what I start to realize as time goes on, is that it’s not just about getting older, the differentiation between baby and big girl. You’re telling me you’re a girl, and you’re starting to embrace what society dictates a girl should look like. Interestingly, it doesn’t radically alter your personality in any way. You don’t become the stereotype of a shy and demure girl, who should be seen and not heard. You retain that essence of yourself. Loud, independent, unfiltered. Which is exactly what a girl is. However, for a little while, I worry about this confirmation of ‘girl’ that comes with wearing dresses, only dresses, and freaking the fuck out when it’s insisted you wear something else. You want to wear your hair long. One time you bemoan the fact that it isn’t long and straight and blonde. And when you start referring to yourself as Elsa, and singing ‘Let It Go’, we see where this has come from. You’re trying to be the main character in Frozen. Except you haven’t seen Frozen. How do you know about Frozen?