They said that Margaret never spoke and that the others just stayed in their rooms and didn’t speak to each other. Catherine had had a farm. She had been and still was a very competent and cultured woman. Angela had run a guest house in Blackpool. And Barbara, liked to sing folk songs. She said her daughter liked to paint.
The table is covered with newspaper and strewn with inexpensive art materials. I have collected scraps of paper together, cheap scissors, wax crayons and oil pastels from the high street cheap shops, ‘school’ paint and brushes in jam jars. The mood is quiet as the women work their art, their silence interspersed with requests for different colours, for help. Occasionally they remember something from a long time ago. A song, a story, a half remembered memory. ‘ When I was at school I could see the road above me, through the window, I could see the people passing.’ ‘I used to do my hair in a bob.’ ‘ During the war we…’
A few yards beyond us the drone of ‘Countdown’ reminds us we are not alone. The other residents watch the telly. Margaret sticks out her tongue as she works, Catherine draws in a confident and measured way. She knows what she was doing. Angela works intently for what seems forever. Barbara somehow always managed to do something contrary. I’ve no idea why. For us in the art class the passage time seems to have no meaning.
I am a mother, an artist, a writer, I taught my children at home for many years. I’ve had no career but I’ve done a myriad of things, always moving sideways towards my own self development. I am black, a woman, I ache all over all the time, but I don’t let it get me down. Actually I’m not anymore black than white but in Wales that is irrelevant. I am different, made black, made other. The notion that I might indeed be white is an anaethema. I live on the edge of society and make a small living from people who are also in some ways, out.
The women and I get on. We are the ’invisible’, without a voice. They don’t have a place, I don’t have a place. They appreciate me and I care and appreciate them. They recognise me as having a place and function in their world, they have a place in my world. They tease me gently and accept my failings. I do the same to them. We are a community, albeit a small one, where there is human mutuality and dependency.
Through art we can communicate our authenticity and be more human. With them I feel loved. I feel part. Because of them I feel a sense of joy and human dignity. After one of our workshops I was so happy I completely forgot to buy my train ticket home.
When I talk about art here, I mean the process of art and not the end product. I mean scribbling and making marks on discarded pieces of paper. I mean something fundamental to a human being. Make your mark. Express yourself. Be creative. I say there are no mistakes. I say there is no such thing as I can’t do art. I show them that making art is fun, that there are no rules, that it improves the memory and makes you feel more confident, enriches your life. This is what art does for me, this is what it is doing for them. We make paper flowers, cards, weavings, little books, paint double decker buses, draw cats and make self portraits.
Human Rights legislation I am told was born out of the Holocaust in an attempt to establish a framework of certain rights and standards by which human dignity and worth might be maintained. I’ve heard a great deal about the Holocaust. When I was young I found it unbearable to watch the telly programmes about war. In the dictionary it gives a meaning of being a complete destruction of a large number of persons through fire. More than just killing a human being, the holocaust sought to destroy the human image itself.
But there is something hugely ironic here. Anybody who has something authentic to say about human rights, about race, about equality has no voice. And people in general who have something to really complain about are ignored. Voice as we understand it is about power, about who you identify with. The rhetoric of us giving them - the disadvantaged a voice is without substance. How can we congratulate ourselves on giving them something we shouldn’t have in the first place!
We live in a culture created through image. We speak through image and we die in the defence of image. Image like language which denotes where the line is drawn. For instance the image Posh and Becks are the definition of contemporary humanity. If you’re not like them you are not fully human, you are not part of a humanity that counts, that has a voice. It wasn’t up to the Jews to say whether they were Jews or Aryans, the Aryans. The Aryans decided who looked like them and who didn’t.
The image of the white female and the white male dominates our consciousness and dominates global consciousness. Everyone wants to be like the ubiquitous Posh and Beck, the perfect couple while carrying out their own brand of holocaust through the non acceptance of their own image. But nobody is in truth like them and they themselves are not like the image of them portrayed in the media. In the face of this image of a successful couple we are all the prejudiced minority where nobody can conform. The Aryan image of purity lives on through advertising, through the family, through nationalism. To imagine is the greatest illusion of all where everyone is rushing towards an image where wealth is equated with power and happiness. But to be human means to participate in what it means to be human, imperfect, vulnerable and dependent on others.
Human Rights legislation provides society with a standard, a framework of rights but the question of how we get on remains. And in a sense this is an impossible question, because the answer only returns us once more to the image, the model, the this is how we do it. People get on because they get on and ultimately no law can legislate for human feelings.
Yet making art offers humanity a glimmer of hope because making images, no matter how crude gives us a space to recreate and renegotiate our relations with society through our own creativity. Literally through our own hands, we can make changes happen and show our true colours which go way beyond the limitations of black and white, rich and poor, old and young.
By continuously redefining ourselves from moment to moment, by exposing the people we really are and leaving behind the safety of our fixed notions of ourselves, we can all work towards an authentic voice and participation in a new world.
Isabel Adonis
written to celebrate the 60th
Anniversary of the Declaration on Human Rights, December 10, 1948.
Sunday, 4 January 2009
Tuesday, 4 November 2008
Making art, making a new world
for the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights...10th December 2008.
- a synopsis.
Told simply the article explores themes of making relationship and community, race and identity, the all pervading and damaging role of image in our lives and the redemptive power of the process of making art.
Using an example of a group of marginalised elderly women living in a care home and defining myself in relation to them, I give voice to the artwork we do, the place we make for ourselves and what it brings to all our lives. Art gives us an opportunity to participate in a world as opposed to being left out of it.
I discuss generally a culture created by and pursuing a perfect image and identity, the consequence of which is a fragmentation of society. I make use of the Jewish holocaust and contemporary celebrity culture by way of example.
Human Rights legislation provides society with a standard, a framework of rights but the question of how we get on remains. And in a sense this is an impossible question, because the answer only returns us once more to the image, the model, the this is how we do it. People get on because they get on and ultimately no law can legislate for human feelings.
Yet making art offers humanity a glimmer of hope because making images, no matter how crude gives us a space to recreate and renegotiate our relations with society through our own creativity. Literally through our own hands, we can make change happen and show our true colours which go way beyond the limitations of black and white, rich and poor, old and young.
By continuously redefining ourselves from moment to moment, by exposing the people that we really are and leaving behind the safety of our fixed notions of ourselves we can all work towards an authentic voice and participation in a new world.
Isabel Adonis.
Tuesday, 26 August 2008
To Yemaya - on the anniversary of the slave trade 2007.
In which you are born.
In which you are born.
I remember so well the time when you are about to be born in early June of 1991. The days are hot, as hot as the summer is. A small group of ducks is playing together in the river behind our home. I am watching them. I am watching them for a long time. As I watch them I feel delight, I feel joy. The river is low. No more than what seems like a trickle of water runs under the bridge. Stones and pieces of slate are exposed. I watch the colours in the drying slate.
Sometimes from my window I can see children playing under the bridge. They can climb down at the end of the bridge, go under the broken fence and slip down the grassy bank to the high stone wall and from there jump onto the river bed. They are jumping from stone to stone. The trees are almost in full green, the leaves are catching a slight breeze and dancing in the light.
A few children walk across the bridge with their parents to play on the swings. Teenagers now too old for such pursuits hang about in idle expectation. There are of course those people who are neither playful nor expectant who purposefully pass through the woods along the path where they disappear into the trees. I remember a man once telling me that the woods are a place where quarrymen met in secret during the Great Strike. I am fascinated with him telling me this. I want to know more, I want to know so much more. He is a polite man, an old fashioned man who has a Welsh bookshop in the town.
The old men no longer walk to the bowling green behind the playground. The old men no longer crouch down and throw their black balls across the grass made smooth. The old men no longer have competitions there, no longer have competitions for cups and shields. They are not all old men, some of them are quite young. They have gone elsewhere. The boy who brings the milk is one of them.
The wooden pavilion has long been burnt down. I have a particular liking for wooden pavilions. I guess they remind me of lazy afternoons in Africa. I can just make out the old tennis courts and a few tennis players hitting balls where the ground is littered with broken glass. I am familiar with this view from my window, I never tire of looking. I never tire of looking at the woods and the river, I never tire of looking at the people, at trees, at mountains. I am straining my body now to look at the slate tips. I am looking to see if I notice any trees growing there. I think trees growing on piles of slate is interesting and a metaphor for the struggle of living. I like to see the thin and weedy silver birch trees which grow there which struggle to get light, which stand up against the wind.
But now I am watching, watching and waiting, imagining how it might be to have a baby in the woods for it is certainly warm enough. I have been awake for many nights listening to the water trickle down the valley, I have been awake with this new baby which is you inside of me. I am thinking of African women, I am thinking now of an African woman, I am thinking of Africa. I am thinking some part of me is Africa. I am thinking some part of me is an African woman. I want to be free, I am not free. I want to be free like the tree pushing its way through the dark slate and into the light. A tree does not want to be free, but I want to be free.
I watch the ducks from the window dipping in the rock pools. They are furry and quite young. I am thinking the baby in my belly must be a boy; I imagine I need a boy, I imagine I need the qualities of a boy. If you are a boy I am going to call you Sunny or Sonny. Sonny is my father’s childhood name and I am grieving for my father though I am not grieving for him, I am grieving for Africa and blackness; I am grieving for no-one, I am grieving for death, I am grieving for freedom, for nothng at all.
If I have a girl I will call her Megan; I like the name Megan though I do not know what it means. I like Welsh names like Llinos and Heulwen and Blodwen, but I think you are a Megan if you are a girl. My Catherine is six and she is making a baby book for you. I have shown her how to make a book. I show her how to fold plain paper to make the pages, how to hold them together with staples or just with a fold. I have taught her how to use a felt tip pen carefully and to always replace the lid. I have taught her how to write and how to do her letters top to bottom and how to do learn the principles of mathematics with matchsticks. All of these things I have taught her and many more things.
Catherine has no front teeth and her tongue sticks out when she laughs. She wears a blue and white school dress, with a narrow and white plastic belt, though she doesn’t go to school. I don’t like schools much. I spend a little time with her each day doing writing and reading and sums. She likes to draw pictures and play with her dolls. She has made a game which she calls all sorts university for all her Barbie dolls. She has dressed them all and has made them tiny little books. She is tall for six and I often imagine she is older. Her dresses get holes in the front around the waist and she will never wear trousers or tights. Her legs are quite blue in winter though her skin is brown. Her hair is very black and curly.
I am thinking of an African woman as I go down the stairs to the kitchen. A dark and beautiful woman with a broad mouth and a huge smile. I remind myself that Africa is inside of me, that I am descended from an African woman, that probably everyone is descended from an African woman. I am in the kitchen in the basement of the house when my waters break and I call Bob and say ‘take me to the hospital.’ I want to have a natural birth, I want to be natural but I am not. I don’t know what natural means. I guess this is what Africa means to me, a place in my imagination where I feel free of all of the constraints and conditions of living. But I cannot grasp what cannot be grasped. My waters break and Bob takes me to the hospital. He drives me in a green car along a leafy back road where I see the little cottages and the slate tip. I see where the path from the woods meets the road, I see a whole bank of silver birches with their leaves dancing in the breeze.
The road bends and I see the high slate wall and the paint factory. I know a woman whose husband is the manager of the paint factory and we are friends, at least we were. In front of the paint factory is a small field where she used to keep a pony or a very small horse. I see the tall mountains on the other side of the valley. I do not know with any certainty the names of the mountains, I have not climbed these mountains though I have walked up to them. They are beautiful and I feel their beauty as part of me.
I do not like the hospital, like I do not much like schools. I am not comfortable there. I do not care much for institutions and I don’t know why and I can only guess why. I am overwhelmed by such places, I am overwhelmed by places which have policies and too many rules, I am overwhelmed by conformity even while I can understand it. The hospital is called St David’s and it is the place where women have their babies. I look quite young but I am no longer young. To be having a baby at my age is to be an old woman.
I sit in a ward with other women for three days and wait. I am waiting for a birth, for a baby. Three days pass and there is no sign of a baby; the baby is still in my belly. The nurse says I should go on a drip but I don’t want to. The word drip is often used. I do not like them saying drip, it is without romance or love. Just drip. They are all saying drip. I resist drip and her. I say no because in my mind I want to be natural; but I don’t quite know how to be natural. After three days of waiting and three days of offering me drip she says the baby may be born dead. I am lonely and scared. I remember when she says if I don’t have the drip your baby will be born dead. I have heard something like that before. When I was pregnant with Catherine the consultant said something similar to me. He said your baby might be born dead. I wrote him a letter saying I did not like him saying such a thing and so he said he did not say the thing. And this is why I do not like institutions.
The following day I agree. I do not know what else to do. I feel so vulnerable. I feel so afraid. I do not want to feel afraid but I do. I am to have the drip. They - the nurses are always talking about a drip, the drip is what I must submit to. I do not like submitting, but in the end I must answer the call to the drip.
I am not to have anything to eat all day. I am to enter a white room, I am to have my arm attached to a white machine, I am to have my arm attached to the hospital’s newest piece of technology. It is a small box with dials and numbers. It is very important to them, it is not very important to me, I have never seen it before. I sense their relief, I sense their feeling of security, I sense my feeling of insecurity, I sense these two feelings match each other - the secure and the insecure. I wait while the drip, drips into me, though I am not aware of anything.
The room I am in is very white and bare: it looks cold, but it is very warm. It is not at all like the rooms at home. My room at home is red, my curtains are a patchwork of colours, my floor is bare wood and I have a home made sink. Bob has built it especially for me. I do not like this white room where I lie on a wide trolley and look at the white walls. I look at the window which is open but it does not open onto a river or ducks or trees. The air is warm, too warm.
A white machine drips artificial hormones at regular intervals through a tube into my arm. The nurse comes to check the machine every half an hour. I am in a delivery room all day but nothing at all happens. A black doctor comes in and makes a joke. I am rude to him and he goes away. No baby comes despite the drip, no baby comes all day. I hear a woman in the next room call out, I can hear she is having her baby, but I am not having mine. When it is dark outside the window the new machine explodes and begins to emit smoke. I look at it and I smile. I am having contractions now but still no baby comes. I am not having real contractions I am having synthetic ones created by the drip. This is what the nurse tells me.
I think it is funny, though not even that, I think it is mysterious that the drip has not worked, I am relieved it has not worked. I think my resistance has stopped it working and somehow I feel natural now that the medicine has not worked. I am relieved but disappointed and don’t know what to do next. I am wanting to be a natural mother like I imagine an African woman to be, but I have no idea how that might happen. I have eaten the right food, I have done my exercises, I have taken sufficient rest and read the ‘right’ books. Yet the Africa is out of reach.
I want to be alone in my failure. I know that failure can be good; it nourishes the soul. I want privacy and I pull the curtains about my bed and sit at the opening as if guarding my little space. I sit alone quietly and I do not speak to the other women. I feel the space extend before me and I feel a space inside me. When the space extends I feel whole, I feel real. I forget about what the nurses want for me, I forget about this drip, I quite forget about the white room. When the sun begins to sink, I notice the orange sky, I notice the blue and the orange colours all mixed together. I watch the dying rays of light coming through the window, a window which is high above the beds. I see the colours are pink and orange and blue. This is something I always enjoyed in Africa, watching the light. Africa is now coming in the window to me and I feel good.
Catherine comes to see me with Bob. She brings me a teddy. She is beautiful, her brown skin is like my skin, her hair like my hair. She is wearing a pale blue jacket which is far too big for her and her black hair is pulled back. There is a small hole in the waist of her red check dress where the thread has broken around the folds of her skirt. There is a huge white collar about her neck. Her hair is drawn back behind her face and she has a short fringe. She smiles through the gap in her teeth. She has a brown teddy in her hand and she gives it to me. She says, look what I have brought for you mummy. When Bob and Catherine leave I begin to cry; I feel lonely, I feel my isolation, I feel my alienation, I feel my difference, I do not fit, I cannot make myself fit.
I have tried to fit by sitting with the other white women. One of the older nurses or matrons passes me by in the ward and fingers my frizzy hair like a pet dog. I look up to see her smiling to herself as she walks away. I am angry with her but I hold back on my anger. I sit on my bed and pull at the blinds; I am quiet and calm when I feel a slight movement inside of me. I know what that is. I smile because I know it is you, this gentle tapping says I’m coming. I feel joy and relief. A nurse comes by and gives me a mild sleeping pill and I am grateful for it. I sleep beautifully and by the morning those initial soundings are coming with greater regularity. I am happy and excited. I remember a kind nurse saying to me that when a baby is coming it is coming and that there is no longer any holding back.
I go to tell the ward sister early in the morning of June 13 that my baby is coming, but she says I am mistaken. I am not mistaken. As she walks away to her separate room there is a huge movement inside of me and I call out to her in a single cry. She returns only to tell me to be quiet and to say that I cannot possibly return to the general ward where I will disturb the others. The movement in my body does not comply, it has its own rules even while it is about to enter a world of rules, of thoughts, of policies and possibilities. She says you have to go to the labour ward and wait there. She says I cannot return to the bed I am sleeping and resting in.
The way to the labour ward is along a very long and polished corridor it has windows looking out onto a car park. I have asked the nurse for a wheelchair but she refuses to order one for me. I begin my solitary journey and all the while I can feel you inching your way down and down. My body is bent over in fear lest you fall out and mess the floor before me which is shiny and polished by a machine. Another nurse puts me in a room which says Labour room 2 or something like that.
I keep repeating the baby is coming but she is not listening to me as if I were the last person to know about what is happening to me. She is impatient and she tells me to lie on a trolley, to be quiet and not to disturb the younger mothers to be. I keep repeating the baby is coming but she is not listening to me. I am left alone and within one minute I can feel you coming. There is no pushing, there is no labour to speak of, just the pushing. The feeling is sensual and I give in to it. There is no pain and there is no resistance. I haven’t known a birth like that. There is only a long and drawn out whooshing sound like a wave of water approaching. I look up and I see a baby appearing between my legs. I do not know how this happens and it is all a mystery to me. I see your elongated head and your matted hair. I see your mottled pinkish skin.
As you come into the world Bob and the nurse come through the door at just the right time. My baby is being born.
Making Black Dolls, Making New Lifе - constructing an identity
I was standing at the bridge behind my home in Bethesda giving advice to a woman. “Why don't you make dolls?” I said. And as I walked back to my house I said to myself, 'why don't I make dolls? I remembered something from my childhood. My father, originally from Guyana, then a lecturer at the University of Lagos was sitting at the table telling my mother, a white Welsh woman, about the artefacts he had found. He was terribly excited. “This is the real thing” he said, “this is not some African piece that's been made to look authentic.” He produced a little black carving, or ‘doll’ for her to look at. It was covered in mud and dried blood and didn't look much to me. At that time I was a little girl who was seen and not heard. He was the important person in the family and he was researching African sacred art. He wrote; he always wrote and I guess now that he was searching, not just to find these icons in Africa, but also to find himself, his true identity, his origins in Africa and make sense of his dislocated self. For me as a child it meant very little. It was normal for our African home, but not our Welsh home to be full of dolls, skulls, and bones of one kind or another that he had discovered and collected. He was literally searching in the earth itself for his ancestral home. This memory of Africa had a deep resonance for me. And then there was my mother, who collected bits of cloth as if they were her treasure. I remembered the heat: hot all the time from morning until night and as I mused on this I decided that I would make dolls, since I too was on my own journey of self discovery. I too needed to find a home. At first I made white dolls but none of them seemed right. Then my partner said, 'you must make black dolls.' And I felt a bit scared even though I knew he was right. It seemed not right to construct a black body: I felt weird and vulnerable as though some old feelings had come to life. But I knew he was right and I reluctantly did as I was told. Making that first black doll was difficult. It was so much harder than I had first envisaged. Every stitch, every cut in the material seemed to have a correspondence inside of me. I could feel my resistance and it was hard going. I stumbled and I was slow. I had so much trouble with the neck. This was the absolute worst thing for me. The doll's head came off and on, off and on, 1 just couldn't get it! I persevered, because I wasn't going to let this beat me. I was going to join the body to the mind! I made a little black doll for my daughter. It was small, about 12 inches: she was black with moveable limbs. I made her a bright green dress, with a full skirt and large sleeves and I embroidered her face. Next 1 made one for my other daughter. It was easier to make a doll for someone else than for me. It was a long time before I decided and felt confident enough to make one for myself. My black doll was bigger, taller and I gave her a black dress, gathered at the waist. To this day she remains my favourite doll, representing the repository of joy and the well of sorrow. She stands about twenty-four inches tall and she has two sticky-out plaits on either side of her head. I was hopeless at doing faces, so I decided that I wasn't going to make a face: this doll would represent the inner landscape and not an outer identity. Before going to Africa we had lived in a small flat in London. It was the early fifties and my father painted in our tiny front room, which also served as a bedroom for my parents. He would stand before his easel doing his proper art - drawing, perspective and painting canvases, following in the great white male tradition, even while he was a black man from Guyana. My mother, on the other hand was a white Welsh woman. She would design and make our dresses, darn beautifully, and make things from scraps. One Christmas they went to a jumble sale and bought me a doll. Even though I was only small I saw that the doll had a kind of life to it. It was a strange experience and one that would always stay with me. I had a fear and an excitement about dolls that I'm sure that many people share. The dolls I make are a synthesis of the creative forms of my parents, and in the figure of the doll I create a body of art. And a body of meaning. Making dolls for me brings together my parents, both black and white; the contradictions of white and black, expression and the culture in which I was raised. Being mixed race brings with it a myriad of contradiction. Making dolls brings together body and mind that is so often fragmented .in today's society. They have no faces so that they cannot be identified -this is an Indian doll, or this is a Chinese doll. I'm working into them an ambiguity of being this, but not being this, so that in a sense they have a self, a body but no racial or cultural marker. In an age where the multi-cultures are all clamouring to speak and be heard, the non-identity is the only identity that binds us. Making dolls is good. It is both therapeutic and creative. For those of us who cannot maintain two seemingly divergent cultures or identities, making dolls is a way of bringing complex personal and social issues together. Or for those who are dislocated and cannot find cultural meaning in this society this is a way to express those feelings of not fitting in. For instance in making my doll I can bring together, my mother, my father, my culture of origin in a new synthesis which although has an identity it is one of not being one. This is both a psychological and physical integration, which takes into account the inheritance of the past, which is crucial to well being. After making my first black girl doll, many other dolls followed. Yemaya , from the Yoruba, Umoja, symbolises the great mother, the ruler of the seas and rivers. Yemaya's colours are blue and white, the lace representing the froth on the water. Anansi is inspired from the West African spider stories. She has many arms to show her multitude of functions. African girl demonstrates her wealth in jewellery. The Dancing Clown represents fun and laughter. We live in a culture that is obsessed with being positive does not pride itself on being open and where expressing any negative feeling is not welcome. Yet it is in the very negative of ourselves that all the answers are to be sought. In making the doll the psychological division between what is positive and negative is blurred and the whole body of feeling can be expressed. For those people who cannot articulate their feelings, or cannot ‘talk’, doll making is a wonderful means to express all manner of issues. The doll is soft, like a child's toy. Some of my dolls are now hard as I'm beginning to make them stand up and take different poses. It is also a personal and homemade creation, bringing something new into the world, and encapsulating identity, culture, story and form. The dark outlook is not skin colour, though of course it could be, but represents the inner dark landscape that is common to us all. It is the identity that we all share. A few months after making my first doll I started to write. This doll seemed to know better than me what I should do with my life. I left little notes round the house as though I were a child trying to communicate something to someone. This was the faltering beginning of my writing career. I've been writing and making dolls ever since! The black doll is magical and makes it possible to navigate in the darkness of our inner lives and makes it possible to journey through the roads of our mind and the secrets and the lies that we tell ourselves. She is potent and a reflection of our unrealised potential and possibility. The black doll is a holy presence and like the doll I had as a child has the appearance of being alive, it is a reminder of childhood, tlie little magical character in a story or a bedtime friend. You know your doll and she knows you. When you make a doll you put something into it that is your very own, you put your own life into it and it in turn puts its life back into you. Dolls arc important in all the cultures of the world whatever they are made of, be it wood, iron, corn or cloth. They represent a little life or life in the making and provide a transformative process for those seeking meaning or changing their lives. "The doll is the homunculi, little life. It is the symbol of what lies buried in humans that is numinous... a small glowing facsimile of the original self." "No matter what mess we are in it lives out a life hidden within us." Women Who Run With The Wolves: Clarissa Pinkola Estes.
Monday, 12 May 2008
Doing the White Thing.
'It will be one of those white things,' my daughter said, talking about the conference I was to attend tomorrow. 'I mean there aren't any black people on my course.' She was doing a course in anthropology at Manchester University. The title of the conference, Beyond Multiculturalism, race and privilege, had interested me. I still didn't know what multiculturalism meant. I knew first hand why black people were disadvantaged from the moment of birth. If the conference was going to be about that, then I wanted to be there.
Suman Fernando spoke first. He is a short quiet man with many years' experience in the mental health field. He said he was unsure why he had been asked to the conference, that mental health field was a narrow field but that it did impinge on social justice. I, for one could see why it was important for him to be present. Diverse Minds, the black sector of the national Mind charity, existed because of racial inequality in the mental health services and if this conference was claiming to bring some measure of equality to the client/practitioner relationship then it was a good idea to have someone who could speak on that subject.
It was very difficult, he said to come to an understanding of what was going within the mental health field, but the facts spoke for themselves. There was an over diagnosis of schizophrenia amongst the black ethnic minorities. There were more black people held in compulsory detention, and this raised the question as to whether black people were madder than white people. He gave us figures to illustrate this as well as figures relating to school exclusion. These documented excessive compulsory detention and medication, which had led to a loss of trust, fear, frustration, anger and resentment.
What I found particularly interesting was how western psychiatry had developed alongside slavery and how European libertarian values and concepts flourished in a time of bondage. Western psychiatry grew out of these historical events. For instance at th e time of slavery, there was a mental illness called Drapetomania that gave rise to a slave trying to run away. This raised a laugh in the audience - we're not like that nowadays, are we? His talk finished with a brief mention of the new Mental Health Bill which would extend the definition of the mentally ill, putting dangerousness and protecting the public as the primary reasons for sectioning. I looked over the words coming up on the screen; I still had the notion of the runaway slave in my mind. If society is oppressive, and anti-social behaviour is a symptom of mental illness, then psychiatry is inevitably an instrument of oppression.
Salome Raheim, from the University of Iowa began by introducing the concept of privilege in addressing issues of race. Privilege is defined as a system of unearned advantages and benefits afforded to a social group but denied to others, which provide access to resources and opportunities and perpetuate that groups power advantage. Privilege is usually invisible to those who have it. She asked the audience for examples of their privilege and nobody spoke. I waited for a while before I said something. I pointed to the fact that I was on the one hand privileged by my white upbringing but disadvantaged by the colour of my skin. Salome acknowledged what I had to say but I soon became aware that that wasn't the answer that was required. Next to me the Indian lady related a long story about how her daughter was seriously bullied and how she was on a mission to change white peoples perceptions. Then a black man behind me spoke about how when he visited the Met he was aware that the suspicion was cast on him and not on white people. It was interesting that the only black people present spoke first. But once the ice was broken, white people started to speak.
Salome began to note down the answers from the white folk. She was on white privilege and she was sticking to that, jotting down notes on one side of her chart and on the other, it's unprivileged logical opposite. They included, entitlement, maximising one's own point of view, defining a person, the right to speak and the unthreatened standpoint. I recognised them all, and it wouldn't have been difficult for me to go on and on and on about the privileges of having a white skin. But I was beginning to feel like an outsider and that I shouldn't be there. This, as my daughter had said, was a white thing. Sitting there, I was feeling the very lack of privilege that my skin gave me, the very thing the conference was purporting to overcome.
The food laid out at lunchtime was excellent. Talking of privilege, I felt truly privileged to eat it. Vegetarians were not marginalised, for once. A white woman (I resent having to identify people by their racial characteristics but in this context I can't help it) came up to me and asked me if I had found the talk helpful. I wondered what she'd meant, helpful for what? I responded by saying that if I had had an opportunity to express wha t it was really like to live in a society of white privilege, people would be shocked, but being personal wasn't on the agenda. I said I thought that if people really listened then that would be a huge first step; that would be doing something. 'But do you not find that celebrating your culture helps you?' she said. 'It means nothing to me.' I said. It was clear that she hadn't understood what I had been saying - that I was a white person in a black skin. Do white people celebrate their culture in the way she was suggesting to me?
The Just Therapy Team from New Zealand took the afternoon session. At the heart of their approach was the meeting of cultures with a focus on what they called 'prime breaks.' Society and community is divided by differences in culture, gender, disability and race. The question was raised as to how these divisions can be healed on a day-to-day basis? They suggested that a space had to be made in the work setting and that each of the cultural groups should have their own caucus where they could meet to discuss these issues. All the cultural groups would then convene together to come to consensus. Pain was given a privileged status within this approach and every effort was made to make this arrangement 'liveable.' Not only did the Just Therapy team act as family therapists, they also took an active part in community development, including how trade affected the daily lives of people within the community. I raised the question as to the position of the mixed race person within this arrangement since for me all cultural identification is a form of power, but this wasn't well received.
If I could characterise this Conference I would say it was overwhelmingly white, apart from Suman whose voice seemed to strike a balance between the black and the white races. It wasn't just the skin colour of the participants; it was conference as a cultural ideological phenomenon. Those with knowledge and ideas spoke to the select few. The abstract concept of 'privilege' was passed on to the select group of white psychologists and psychotherapists in their own exclusive and mystifying language. I had the distinct feeling that what I was witnessing was the emergence of a new white club, where a new hierarchy of knowledge was being established. And while I could see that separation provided a safe forum for white people to discuss race, this was supposed to be a conference, and not group therapy. I felt my presence to be threatening, for being mixed race challenges every race theory and identification.
It is certainly the case that white people need to look at themselves as racial and cultural beings, but I was only too aware of the polarisation of this attitude. It is good to change focus, to look the other way, but I didn't get the feeling that that was happening. The concept of privilege was abstract and separate from feelings; there was to be no negotiation of white guilt here. This was the rational approach where the distress was seen elsewhere. In practice, white privilege was once again being supported. I don't know how many times I heard the audience being addressed as 'good people!' The very support they were being given was feeding the separation between client and practitioner. Thus power was maintained within the class groupings, with exclusive 'training' and esoteric language. If justice is a prerequisite for therapy, this turns the notion of white privilege on its head and puts the client, in pain, confusion and despair, back at the centre of communication. As Hugh Fox quite rightly said introducing the conference, when you feel pain you are on the right road, since it is the road of pain where transformation occurs.
The Just Therapy Team was the much more human approach. It was bigger in imagination and was moving in the right direction of integration of differences rather than polarising and fragmenting them. Their awareness of the imperialist nature of trade, of distributing funds, the near and far of influences on peoples' lives took the distress away from the individual and placed it within a general sense of society. Unlike Salome's approach they gave pain the privileged focus, making feelings and humanity itself the prime motivator.
It is interesting and no accident that in the discussion of privilege, money and power were not mentioned. This wasn't a conference about 'earned' privilege, and the almost hidden monetarist ideology was never acknowledged or questioned, except briefly by the Just Therapy team. I still had slavery on my mind, for when slavery was finally abolished, the slave-owners were compensated, not the slaves, who hadn't 'earned' anything! For me the situation for the ethnic minorities in the mental health system remains the same as in slavery. Those who find themselves angry and depressed and hurt and wanting to run away from their social position are deemed to be mentally ill by those white people who are in positions of po wer. The madness of the oppressor on the other hand is the normal common sense of “good” people.
Isabel Adonis.
Isabel Adonis is a writer, artist and educator. She has written many essays and articles on race culture and identity. She educated her four children herself for many years. She lives in Wales.
See her award winning essay and her artwork on:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/northwest/sites/llandudno/pages/isabeladonis.shtml
'It will be one of those white things,' my daughter said, talking about the conference I was to attend tomorrow. 'I mean there aren't any black people on my course.' She was doing a course in anthropology at Manchester University. The title of the conference, Beyond Multiculturalism, race and privilege, had interested me. I still didn't know what multiculturalism meant. I knew first hand why black people were disadvantaged from the moment of birth. If the conference was going to be about that, then I wanted to be there.
Suman Fernando spoke first. He is a short quiet man with many years' experience in the mental health field. He said he was unsure why he had been asked to the conference, that mental health field was a narrow field but that it did impinge on social justice. I, for one could see why it was important for him to be present. Diverse Minds, the black sector of the national Mind charity, existed because of racial inequality in the mental health services and if this conference was claiming to bring some measure of equality to the client/practitioner relationship then it was a good idea to have someone who could speak on that subject.
It was very difficult, he said to come to an understanding of what was going within the mental health field, but the facts spoke for themselves. There was an over diagnosis of schizophrenia amongst the black ethnic minorities. There were more black people held in compulsory detention, and this raised the question as to whether black people were madder than white people. He gave us figures to illustrate this as well as figures relating to school exclusion. These documented excessive compulsory detention and medication, which had led to a loss of trust, fear, frustration, anger and resentment.
What I found particularly interesting was how western psychiatry had developed alongside slavery and how European libertarian values and concepts flourished in a time of bondage. Western psychiatry grew out of these historical events. For instance at th e time of slavery, there was a mental illness called Drapetomania that gave rise to a slave trying to run away. This raised a laugh in the audience - we're not like that nowadays, are we? His talk finished with a brief mention of the new Mental Health Bill which would extend the definition of the mentally ill, putting dangerousness and protecting the public as the primary reasons for sectioning. I looked over the words coming up on the screen; I still had the notion of the runaway slave in my mind. If society is oppressive, and anti-social behaviour is a symptom of mental illness, then psychiatry is inevitably an instrument of oppression.
Salome Raheim, from the University of Iowa began by introducing the concept of privilege in addressing issues of race. Privilege is defined as a system of unearned advantages and benefits afforded to a social group but denied to others, which provide access to resources and opportunities and perpetuate that groups power advantage. Privilege is usually invisible to those who have it. She asked the audience for examples of their privilege and nobody spoke. I waited for a while before I said something. I pointed to the fact that I was on the one hand privileged by my white upbringing but disadvantaged by the colour of my skin. Salome acknowledged what I had to say but I soon became aware that that wasn't the answer that was required. Next to me the Indian lady related a long story about how her daughter was seriously bullied and how she was on a mission to change white peoples perceptions. Then a black man behind me spoke about how when he visited the Met he was aware that the suspicion was cast on him and not on white people. It was interesting that the only black people present spoke first. But once the ice was broken, white people started to speak.
Salome began to note down the answers from the white folk. She was on white privilege and she was sticking to that, jotting down notes on one side of her chart and on the other, it's unprivileged logical opposite. They included, entitlement, maximising one's own point of view, defining a person, the right to speak and the unthreatened standpoint. I recognised them all, and it wouldn't have been difficult for me to go on and on and on about the privileges of having a white skin. But I was beginning to feel like an outsider and that I shouldn't be there. This, as my daughter had said, was a white thing. Sitting there, I was feeling the very lack of privilege that my skin gave me, the very thing the conference was purporting to overcome.
The food laid out at lunchtime was excellent. Talking of privilege, I felt truly privileged to eat it. Vegetarians were not marginalised, for once. A white woman (I resent having to identify people by their racial characteristics but in this context I can't help it) came up to me and asked me if I had found the talk helpful. I wondered what she'd meant, helpful for what? I responded by saying that if I had had an opportunity to express wha t it was really like to live in a society of white privilege, people would be shocked, but being personal wasn't on the agenda. I said I thought that if people really listened then that would be a huge first step; that would be doing something. 'But do you not find that celebrating your culture helps you?' she said. 'It means nothing to me.' I said. It was clear that she hadn't understood what I had been saying - that I was a white person in a black skin. Do white people celebrate their culture in the way she was suggesting to me?
The Just Therapy Team from New Zealand took the afternoon session. At the heart of their approach was the meeting of cultures with a focus on what they called 'prime breaks.' Society and community is divided by differences in culture, gender, disability and race. The question was raised as to how these divisions can be healed on a day-to-day basis? They suggested that a space had to be made in the work setting and that each of the cultural groups should have their own caucus where they could meet to discuss these issues. All the cultural groups would then convene together to come to consensus. Pain was given a privileged status within this approach and every effort was made to make this arrangement 'liveable.' Not only did the Just Therapy team act as family therapists, they also took an active part in community development, including how trade affected the daily lives of people within the community. I raised the question as to the position of the mixed race person within this arrangement since for me all cultural identification is a form of power, but this wasn't well received.
If I could characterise this Conference I would say it was overwhelmingly white, apart from Suman whose voice seemed to strike a balance between the black and the white races. It wasn't just the skin colour of the participants; it was conference as a cultural ideological phenomenon. Those with knowledge and ideas spoke to the select few. The abstract concept of 'privilege' was passed on to the select group of white psychologists and psychotherapists in their own exclusive and mystifying language. I had the distinct feeling that what I was witnessing was the emergence of a new white club, where a new hierarchy of knowledge was being established. And while I could see that separation provided a safe forum for white people to discuss race, this was supposed to be a conference, and not group therapy. I felt my presence to be threatening, for being mixed race challenges every race theory and identification.
It is certainly the case that white people need to look at themselves as racial and cultural beings, but I was only too aware of the polarisation of this attitude. It is good to change focus, to look the other way, but I didn't get the feeling that that was happening. The concept of privilege was abstract and separate from feelings; there was to be no negotiation of white guilt here. This was the rational approach where the distress was seen elsewhere. In practice, white privilege was once again being supported. I don't know how many times I heard the audience being addressed as 'good people!' The very support they were being given was feeding the separation between client and practitioner. Thus power was maintained within the class groupings, with exclusive 'training' and esoteric language. If justice is a prerequisite for therapy, this turns the notion of white privilege on its head and puts the client, in pain, confusion and despair, back at the centre of communication. As Hugh Fox quite rightly said introducing the conference, when you feel pain you are on the right road, since it is the road of pain where transformation occurs.
The Just Therapy Team was the much more human approach. It was bigger in imagination and was moving in the right direction of integration of differences rather than polarising and fragmenting them. Their awareness of the imperialist nature of trade, of distributing funds, the near and far of influences on peoples' lives took the distress away from the individual and placed it within a general sense of society. Unlike Salome's approach they gave pain the privileged focus, making feelings and humanity itself the prime motivator.
It is interesting and no accident that in the discussion of privilege, money and power were not mentioned. This wasn't a conference about 'earned' privilege, and the almost hidden monetarist ideology was never acknowledged or questioned, except briefly by the Just Therapy team. I still had slavery on my mind, for when slavery was finally abolished, the slave-owners were compensated, not the slaves, who hadn't 'earned' anything! For me the situation for the ethnic minorities in the mental health system remains the same as in slavery. Those who find themselves angry and depressed and hurt and wanting to run away from their social position are deemed to be mentally ill by those white people who are in positions of po wer. The madness of the oppressor on the other hand is the normal common sense of “good” people.
Isabel Adonis.
Isabel Adonis is a writer, artist and educator. She has written many essays and articles on race culture and identity. She educated her four children herself for many years. She lives in Wales.
See her award winning essay and her artwork on:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/northwest/sites/llandudno/pages/isabeladonis.shtml
The Sweetie Shop.
This is what my Mam was like. She would get up every morning and take a bath in an inch of water. She made it hot, all hot. She got in quickly so as not to let the water go even just a bit cold. I think she will burn her feet when I hear her go aaah! in a long suspiration. This was the temperature of the water and not some sensual relief. Almost as soon as she was in the bath she was out; there was no hanging around enjoying herself or anything like that. Then she was out and rubbing herself hard dry; she didn't go for soft towels: and if I was around she would offer me her water which was by then just right and deliciously warm and all soapy with Fairy soap and occasionally some Lux soap flakes.
Dressed in the same old woollen dress that she'd bought in the sale in Marks, a dress that was routinely darned and in the most beautiful way of course - for she was an artist at that, she would rush downstairs to clear out the grate. I don't think she hesitated for one moment, after sleep, not looking round once. She had a long red handled broom for this task.. First she would pull off the front, dragging it and making a terrible noise - I couldn't stand that. Then she would clear all the ashes from underneath the fire basket and place them in a piece of newspaper, which she would wrap up carefully. The red broom which was about twenty-four inches long would be thrust up the chimney in the same way that she cleaned the inside of a chicken at Christmas, her Marigold hands urgently seeking any soot hanging about up there.
This task complete, she would put the grate back together again really noisily, and go out to the back yard to collect the small bucket she kept there for the purpose of
cleaning the grate, which she would do next because her life depended on it.
Then, as if she were following some inner dictum, she would put the seersucker tablecloth on the dining room table - it was kept in the second drawer down. In the first drawer was the bone cutlery that you weren't allowed to put in water, not that there was much of a chance of that; she wouldn't let anyone near the dishes. The table laid, she would disappear into the kitchen, put the kettle on, and make a cup of tea: well it was a panid she would say, and a smoke, and call her daughters to get up.
It was Saturday morning about ten o'clock. I was sat at the table - the last one, still playing with my plate. We'd had bacon and eggs that morning as a treat. Mam had sent me the day before to get two slices of bacon from Mrs Dryherst Denis at the corner shop - put it on the book, she said. When we had bacon she would grill it slowly so it didn't crisp too much. She would cut up the two pieces with a scissors into six pieces, so you all get a taste and an egg of course, from the man at the door, along with lots of white bread toast cut in the Welsh way- cut thin and across for sandwiches and cut down for toast.
I was lingering, savouring the taste of the marmalade and bacon because 1 wanted it all to last for ever and ever and it was a nice day that day and I looked at mam through the door and into the kitchen and I said: 'You know mam, when I grow up I want to be a sweet shop lady,' I watched and watched, as I sat at the table, and I was so excited and happy but she didn't look at me because by now she was on job four, or even five on her internal and eternal list of jobs to get done.
'Washing up.' she always said was the most important job in the house. She was always saying this and I suppose she meant it. Servant of servants, she lovingly stacked and washed each plate and rinsed each one; each piece of cutlery was individually washed and placed carefully on a tea towel to be dried and put away. I said, mam, mam, I -want to be a sweet shop lady but the kitchen was silent as she bent over the dishes in silent prayer.
'Clear the table and go down to Dunphy's and get some bread.'
My reverie shattered, I rose in reluctant obedience and took my plate to the kitchen. I returned to shake the tablecloth in the yard: folded it and returned it to the second drawer.
'Take 2/6 from my purse and get a tin loaf and a small Allinson loaf from Needham's, she said without looking.'
Maenan road was quiet and it was a nice day too. I crossed over the Conway road by the telephone depot. I didn't understand what went on there except that it was something to do with telephones. We'd just had ours and the number was 75065; it was printed forever on my brain like those jobs that mam did all the while. I watched the wind in the trees at the Lady Forester's Home because I had had this idea that when the wind blew that that was God secretly talking to you. Now that was because I had this poem called 'Who has seen the wind?' in a book that my dad gave me when he came from Africa once. That's what I thought this poem was about and God was always speaking to me on account of that poem.
It was Saturday morning, so the plant nursery was open and Mr. Roberts was there, though he didn't see me as I passed. I watched my feet and I watched the shapes in the pavement like I was dancing or something. I started to dream my dream about having a sweetie shop and I tried to remember all the different sweets I would have there. I made a list in my mind like the one that mam had in hers.
Boxes of liquorice with Catherine wheels and white chocolate buttons with hundreds and thousands and the brown chocolate ones Rowntrees pastilles and fruit gums, and those little boxes of them of course, Mars bars, because mam liked those, and Milky Ways and all kinds of Cadbury's chocolate, the penny bars and the tupenny bars and the sixpenny bars. I would have to get Bourneville bars with the red wrappers because daddy liked those. Those scented sweets for the old ladie- cachous and scented violets. Everton mints and Sharps toffees, lemon bonbons, Mint Imperials and sugared almonds. And Nuttals mintoes for Auntie Maggie, I mustn’t forget those.
The man behind the counter in Dunphy's knew me. He was tall with a navy blue, or brown cotton coat and grey hair. The counter was polished wood and I put my 2/6 down, and while he went in the back for the ordered bread I played with my feet, moving from one to the other like I wanted to go to the toilet, except that I didn't. I looked at the wood shelves, which went high up, to see how many things I could see. Uncle Ben's rice in an orange box - mam got that, and I saw all the biscuits in tins - bourbons and custard creams and ginger nuts. Mam didn't buy biscuits much. I could see the Stork margarine and the Welsh butter and that big red thing that they used to cut their bacon and ham and I was frightened of that. Then the man with the grey hair returned all at once and I stopped shuffling and watched him wrap my bread carefully and quietly in tissue paper, the edges curled quickly in his long bony fingers.
' One-and-three,' he said so politely and slowly and I gave him the 2/6 which was dry by now after me getting it all sweaty in my hand. I said 'bye' and went across the road, past a few shops. Then I saw Mrs Akie's shop and I noticed her pink nylon coat. She had grey hair too and was shuffling about like me. In the back of the shop I just caught a glimpse of Mr Akie whose face was all pink next to his white hair. He had a pair of scissors in his hand because he was cutting an old man's hair.
I looked quickly in and went on past to Needhams, just as mam had said. 'Could I have a small Allinson's please?' I said, like I was ever such a good girl, being so polite and all. She said 'that will be tenpence-ha'penny,' so just as I had calculated I had four pence ha'penny change, and after that I felt truly happy like I had a ticket to go to Rhyl Fun Fair.
So I left the shop with my two loaves of bread in a string bag and I walked slowly back to Mrs Akie’s, which I knew was the best place in the world to be. I tried not to notice what was going on in the back of the shop because Mam always said that the worst thing imaginable was a man shaving. So being a good girl I had to agree that it was the most disgustingest thing ever. I pretended I didn't notice that pink stuff by the big mirrors in the back because Mrs Akie said, hello and smiled at me: of course she knew full well what I wanted. So she stood behind her wooden counter, which had all kinds of things on it, like packets of razor blades - seven о 'clock was the cheapest and you got five in a pack. I knew this because I had bought them for daddy when he got back from Africa. I think she had Park Drive and Senior Service and Players Navy Cut too.
But what my lips and mouth longed for was on the other side of the shop behind the main display of sweets. Mrs Akie's let all the children go behind the counter. I took a quick look at the four big pennies and the ha'penny in my hand, which was getting all wet again, then I just relaxed as I entered my own heaven, like mam did when she was doing the washing up. All in front of me were all the things I loved the most. I clutched my money tightly and I stared in wonderment at the white sherbet. Next to it the lemon crystals had a rainbow running right through it, all-different from the white sherbet, which frothed up in your mouth. I looked for a long time at the lollies, the round ones and the toffee ones and the blackcurrant ones. The flat ones were the best for sherbet though. I saw the Bassets sherbet fountains, but they were tuppence, and the cough candy twists and the black Kop Kops, which had chewy stuff inside.
If somebody had seen my eyes they would have seen them popping out, but nobody thankfully was looking at me because Mrs Akie knew exactly what kids like me wanted. She just left you all alone until you were ready: she knew exactly that kids didn't like grown ups looking at them and trying to help them or anything like that. She knew, as if by magic the right amount of time to leave you and then she would say. 'Are you alright dear?'
I decided I was going to have two black jacks and two fruit salad chews; that would make one penny. Then I would have one ounce of fairy drops. They were little round fruit drops, you got loads for a penny and she would put them in a cone shaped bag. I waited and waited and I took my own time, in the dark behind the counter with just a bit of light coming through by the penny bars of Cadbury's chocolate and the Five Boys. I had spent tuppence and had tuppence ha'penny left. I saw the blue and yellow wrappers of Refreshers, those lovely sherbet chews, so I had one of
them. They lasted ages and it was lovely when the sherbet burst through into your mouth. That only left a penny ha'penny so I had two flying saucers for a ha'penny. I couldn't decide if I wanted a penny chocolate or some white chocolate pigs or a blackcurrant lolly. I liked the blue colour of the chocolate wrapper because I had decided that blue was my favourite colour. Mam said that when she went to Woods Colwyn Bay she would buy me a blue cardie.
When Mrs Akie finally came over to me I had made up my mind that I would have a
Cadbury bar. 'Are you alright dear?' she said sweetly and kindly and I looked over
with my brown eyes into her blue eyes, and it was that look that reminded me that
when I grew up, I wanted to be like her and have the right amount of time for
children. I felt so happy and rich with my sweeties as I stepped out of my sweetie
heaven.
I picked up mam's bread and walked up Queen's road. I had to decide which I would eat first and that took what seemed like a long time. I ate my chocolate bar first taking off the little bit of blue that was the wrapper and the little bit of foil and I stuck the stick all at once into my mouth. It was only the size of my finger so I soon gobbled that all up. I was humming and going up and down on the kerb; after which 1 looked very quickly at the face of the little black boy on my black jack, peeled off the wrapper and I ate that too. Then I decided to eat the other black jack quickly too because I remembered that they made your mouth all black and mam would know what I'd been up to. I ate a few fruit drops and then I ate a pink fruit salad chew and then crunched a few more fruit drops. I could hear mam warning me in my head about ruining my teeth but I didn't care. Then I had another fruit chew and I had reached the Lady Forester's home. Each time I ate something I had to put my bags down and wait a bit. So I stopped to look at the trees so very tall and dark and they were making strange noises as the wind was passing through and I smiled because I knew God was talking to me and I felt fine. I knew He wouldn't mind me spending the change. When I got to the path I was wondering what I would say to mam, but I didn't really care what she would say and she probably wouldn't even notice because by now she would be on job number forty two.
This is what my Mam was like. She would get up every morning and take a bath in an inch of water. She made it hot, all hot. She got in quickly so as not to let the water go even just a bit cold. I think she will burn her feet when I hear her go aaah! in a long suspiration. This was the temperature of the water and not some sensual relief. Almost as soon as she was in the bath she was out; there was no hanging around enjoying herself or anything like that. Then she was out and rubbing herself hard dry; she didn't go for soft towels: and if I was around she would offer me her water which was by then just right and deliciously warm and all soapy with Fairy soap and occasionally some Lux soap flakes.
Dressed in the same old woollen dress that she'd bought in the sale in Marks, a dress that was routinely darned and in the most beautiful way of course - for she was an artist at that, she would rush downstairs to clear out the grate. I don't think she hesitated for one moment, after sleep, not looking round once. She had a long red handled broom for this task.. First she would pull off the front, dragging it and making a terrible noise - I couldn't stand that. Then she would clear all the ashes from underneath the fire basket and place them in a piece of newspaper, which she would wrap up carefully. The red broom which was about twenty-four inches long would be thrust up the chimney in the same way that she cleaned the inside of a chicken at Christmas, her Marigold hands urgently seeking any soot hanging about up there.
This task complete, she would put the grate back together again really noisily, and go out to the back yard to collect the small bucket she kept there for the purpose of
cleaning the grate, which she would do next because her life depended on it.
Then, as if she were following some inner dictum, she would put the seersucker tablecloth on the dining room table - it was kept in the second drawer down. In the first drawer was the bone cutlery that you weren't allowed to put in water, not that there was much of a chance of that; she wouldn't let anyone near the dishes. The table laid, she would disappear into the kitchen, put the kettle on, and make a cup of tea: well it was a panid she would say, and a smoke, and call her daughters to get up.
It was Saturday morning about ten o'clock. I was sat at the table - the last one, still playing with my plate. We'd had bacon and eggs that morning as a treat. Mam had sent me the day before to get two slices of bacon from Mrs Dryherst Denis at the corner shop - put it on the book, she said. When we had bacon she would grill it slowly so it didn't crisp too much. She would cut up the two pieces with a scissors into six pieces, so you all get a taste and an egg of course, from the man at the door, along with lots of white bread toast cut in the Welsh way- cut thin and across for sandwiches and cut down for toast.
I was lingering, savouring the taste of the marmalade and bacon because 1 wanted it all to last for ever and ever and it was a nice day that day and I looked at mam through the door and into the kitchen and I said: 'You know mam, when I grow up I want to be a sweet shop lady,' I watched and watched, as I sat at the table, and I was so excited and happy but she didn't look at me because by now she was on job four, or even five on her internal and eternal list of jobs to get done.
'Washing up.' she always said was the most important job in the house. She was always saying this and I suppose she meant it. Servant of servants, she lovingly stacked and washed each plate and rinsed each one; each piece of cutlery was individually washed and placed carefully on a tea towel to be dried and put away. I said, mam, mam, I -want to be a sweet shop lady but the kitchen was silent as she bent over the dishes in silent prayer.
'Clear the table and go down to Dunphy's and get some bread.'
My reverie shattered, I rose in reluctant obedience and took my plate to the kitchen. I returned to shake the tablecloth in the yard: folded it and returned it to the second drawer.
'Take 2/6 from my purse and get a tin loaf and a small Allinson loaf from Needham's, she said without looking.'
Maenan road was quiet and it was a nice day too. I crossed over the Conway road by the telephone depot. I didn't understand what went on there except that it was something to do with telephones. We'd just had ours and the number was 75065; it was printed forever on my brain like those jobs that mam did all the while. I watched the wind in the trees at the Lady Forester's Home because I had had this idea that when the wind blew that that was God secretly talking to you. Now that was because I had this poem called 'Who has seen the wind?' in a book that my dad gave me when he came from Africa once. That's what I thought this poem was about and God was always speaking to me on account of that poem.
It was Saturday morning, so the plant nursery was open and Mr. Roberts was there, though he didn't see me as I passed. I watched my feet and I watched the shapes in the pavement like I was dancing or something. I started to dream my dream about having a sweetie shop and I tried to remember all the different sweets I would have there. I made a list in my mind like the one that mam had in hers.
Boxes of liquorice with Catherine wheels and white chocolate buttons with hundreds and thousands and the brown chocolate ones Rowntrees pastilles and fruit gums, and those little boxes of them of course, Mars bars, because mam liked those, and Milky Ways and all kinds of Cadbury's chocolate, the penny bars and the tupenny bars and the sixpenny bars. I would have to get Bourneville bars with the red wrappers because daddy liked those. Those scented sweets for the old ladie- cachous and scented violets. Everton mints and Sharps toffees, lemon bonbons, Mint Imperials and sugared almonds. And Nuttals mintoes for Auntie Maggie, I mustn’t forget those.
The man behind the counter in Dunphy's knew me. He was tall with a navy blue, or brown cotton coat and grey hair. The counter was polished wood and I put my 2/6 down, and while he went in the back for the ordered bread I played with my feet, moving from one to the other like I wanted to go to the toilet, except that I didn't. I looked at the wood shelves, which went high up, to see how many things I could see. Uncle Ben's rice in an orange box - mam got that, and I saw all the biscuits in tins - bourbons and custard creams and ginger nuts. Mam didn't buy biscuits much. I could see the Stork margarine and the Welsh butter and that big red thing that they used to cut their bacon and ham and I was frightened of that. Then the man with the grey hair returned all at once and I stopped shuffling and watched him wrap my bread carefully and quietly in tissue paper, the edges curled quickly in his long bony fingers.
' One-and-three,' he said so politely and slowly and I gave him the 2/6 which was dry by now after me getting it all sweaty in my hand. I said 'bye' and went across the road, past a few shops. Then I saw Mrs Akie's shop and I noticed her pink nylon coat. She had grey hair too and was shuffling about like me. In the back of the shop I just caught a glimpse of Mr Akie whose face was all pink next to his white hair. He had a pair of scissors in his hand because he was cutting an old man's hair.
I looked quickly in and went on past to Needhams, just as mam had said. 'Could I have a small Allinson's please?' I said, like I was ever such a good girl, being so polite and all. She said 'that will be tenpence-ha'penny,' so just as I had calculated I had four pence ha'penny change, and after that I felt truly happy like I had a ticket to go to Rhyl Fun Fair.
So I left the shop with my two loaves of bread in a string bag and I walked slowly back to Mrs Akie’s, which I knew was the best place in the world to be. I tried not to notice what was going on in the back of the shop because Mam always said that the worst thing imaginable was a man shaving. So being a good girl I had to agree that it was the most disgustingest thing ever. I pretended I didn't notice that pink stuff by the big mirrors in the back because Mrs Akie said, hello and smiled at me: of course she knew full well what I wanted. So she stood behind her wooden counter, which had all kinds of things on it, like packets of razor blades - seven о 'clock was the cheapest and you got five in a pack. I knew this because I had bought them for daddy when he got back from Africa. I think she had Park Drive and Senior Service and Players Navy Cut too.
But what my lips and mouth longed for was on the other side of the shop behind the main display of sweets. Mrs Akie's let all the children go behind the counter. I took a quick look at the four big pennies and the ha'penny in my hand, which was getting all wet again, then I just relaxed as I entered my own heaven, like mam did when she was doing the washing up. All in front of me were all the things I loved the most. I clutched my money tightly and I stared in wonderment at the white sherbet. Next to it the lemon crystals had a rainbow running right through it, all-different from the white sherbet, which frothed up in your mouth. I looked for a long time at the lollies, the round ones and the toffee ones and the blackcurrant ones. The flat ones were the best for sherbet though. I saw the Bassets sherbet fountains, but they were tuppence, and the cough candy twists and the black Kop Kops, which had chewy stuff inside.
If somebody had seen my eyes they would have seen them popping out, but nobody thankfully was looking at me because Mrs Akie knew exactly what kids like me wanted. She just left you all alone until you were ready: she knew exactly that kids didn't like grown ups looking at them and trying to help them or anything like that. She knew, as if by magic the right amount of time to leave you and then she would say. 'Are you alright dear?'
I decided I was going to have two black jacks and two fruit salad chews; that would make one penny. Then I would have one ounce of fairy drops. They were little round fruit drops, you got loads for a penny and she would put them in a cone shaped bag. I waited and waited and I took my own time, in the dark behind the counter with just a bit of light coming through by the penny bars of Cadbury's chocolate and the Five Boys. I had spent tuppence and had tuppence ha'penny left. I saw the blue and yellow wrappers of Refreshers, those lovely sherbet chews, so I had one of
them. They lasted ages and it was lovely when the sherbet burst through into your mouth. That only left a penny ha'penny so I had two flying saucers for a ha'penny. I couldn't decide if I wanted a penny chocolate or some white chocolate pigs or a blackcurrant lolly. I liked the blue colour of the chocolate wrapper because I had decided that blue was my favourite colour. Mam said that when she went to Woods Colwyn Bay she would buy me a blue cardie.
When Mrs Akie finally came over to me I had made up my mind that I would have a
Cadbury bar. 'Are you alright dear?' she said sweetly and kindly and I looked over
with my brown eyes into her blue eyes, and it was that look that reminded me that
when I grew up, I wanted to be like her and have the right amount of time for
children. I felt so happy and rich with my sweeties as I stepped out of my sweetie
heaven.
I picked up mam's bread and walked up Queen's road. I had to decide which I would eat first and that took what seemed like a long time. I ate my chocolate bar first taking off the little bit of blue that was the wrapper and the little bit of foil and I stuck the stick all at once into my mouth. It was only the size of my finger so I soon gobbled that all up. I was humming and going up and down on the kerb; after which 1 looked very quickly at the face of the little black boy on my black jack, peeled off the wrapper and I ate that too. Then I decided to eat the other black jack quickly too because I remembered that they made your mouth all black and mam would know what I'd been up to. I ate a few fruit drops and then I ate a pink fruit salad chew and then crunched a few more fruit drops. I could hear mam warning me in my head about ruining my teeth but I didn't care. Then I had another fruit chew and I had reached the Lady Forester's home. Each time I ate something I had to put my bags down and wait a bit. So I stopped to look at the trees so very tall and dark and they were making strange noises as the wind was passing through and I smiled because I knew God was talking to me and I felt fine. I knew He wouldn't mind me spending the change. When I got to the path I was wondering what I would say to mam, but I didn't really care what she would say and she probably wouldn't even notice because by now she would be on job number forty two.
I went to the Garden of Love
And saw what I never had seen;
A Chapel was built in the midst,
Where I used to play on the green.
And the gates of this chapel were shut,
And Thou shalt not writ over the door,
So I turned to the Garden Of Love
That so many sweet flowers bore.
And I saw it was filled with graves,
And tomb-stones where flowers should be:
And Priests in black-gowns, were walking their rounds,
And binding with briars, my joys and desires.
William Blake.
In my Mother’s Garden – the plagiarism of the heart.
When I was a little girl about ten or eleven I helped my mother tidy the garden so that it would look like something when my father came home from Africa. He worked abroad and we only got to see him now and then, mainly in the summer and occasionally at Christmas. We didn’t live together as a family. At other times the situation was reversed, my mother and young sisters would travel to Africa and the older ones would travel on later when the school holidays had begun. This summer however he was due home and preparations were being made for his return.
The garden was large and overgrown, stretching backward in an allotment shape from a rather ordinary looking semi detached house. It was a playground for the children of the street and it looked that way. No flowers grew there. The ground was lumpy and hard, covered in clumps of grass and weeds. The upkeep was too much for my mother and as I was only a young girl myself it was too much for me. She managed alone bringing up five daughters and often there was no money. That summer we did what we could with the garden though the results were meagre. The house hadn’t long been built: it had been a farmer’s field, the grass was tough and the soil wet from the water draining off a nearby mountain making the black soil heavy and difficult to work.
We dug and dug in rows, her with the fork and me with the spade. I would jump up on to the spade each time with childlike enthusiasm. We dug as if we were planting a vegetable garden. The soil was rich and smelt good. At last my father came home, he looked at the garden approvingly, and my younger sister, Madu who had not done the garden ran towards him saying ‘Daddy, I’ve done the garden.’ She was about 7 or 8 at the time. My mother and I, tired of hard work just stood watching in the background, amazed at what she had said. We watched the mutual pleasure emanating from their eyes.
I was always very close to my mum, and years later in our intimate moments; we would often come back to that story of the garden, which contained a significance we never quite realised. She would look at me and we would smile together locked in a conspiracy; she would say, ‘don't worry, you have a very different brain to the other girls.’ We valued truth over lies, relationship over image, we were always doing our best, being sensitive and serving others, full of compassion and womanly virtues – this was the flattering image we cultivated of ourselves as consolation for the loss of that male approval.
As I grew up the pattern continued. Madu always had the knack of appropriating what was mine and making it her own. She always craved to be first, and she always was first. People would often say to me, ’Oh you are jealous… oh it’s just sibling rivalry,’ and I would laugh with embarrassment, as if it was an unimportant childish thing, forgetting Cain and Abel, the first death and the first murder.
When we were very little, and shared a bed, our father had started to make a storybook, ‘Madu and Tutu’ about two black birds together. I was Tutu and my sister, Madu. It had hand painted pictures with writing underneath. But something happened that changed all our relationships, and the book was never finished. That affection was lost; I, at least, fell out of the nest.
I can see them smiling together now and I'm wondering what would have happened if I had spoken, if I had moved forward and opened my mouth. How different my life might have been. What a different road I might have travelled. I would have moved from voyeur to participant of life and not led my life in the shadows. And what would I have said? ‘I did it…daddy…it wasn’t Madu…it was mummy and me that dug the garden.’ And he would have stepped back and pulled on his large lips, opened slightly, his top lip tense and pulled tight in a grimaced smile, covering his teeth; his eyes would have lost their sparkle and he would have grunted something inaudible. There would have been no smile for me and nothing for mum. For the lines were already drawn and there was no point because there was no love, and I knew it and so did mum. This smile was only a conditional love; Madu’s lie amused him, pleased him for some reason. To maintain our own empty image we accepted that false transaction – a lie covering a lie.
We were frightened and we stayed frightened, women laughing amongst ourselves, disdaining men and the women who hang on them, for appropriating our work and our ideas and for not having any ideas of their own. My mother and I kept and nurtured our own conspiracy. We had done the real work; we were the real people. Our moral authority, our moral superiority was unquestionable and we relished our own false unnegotiable position. We were not slaves, we were masters and while my younger sister gained an identity of success; we gained our own exclusive position. What we could never say was that we wanted something too, admitting that would have been like a declaration of war on ourselves and on the image of the family.
I want to say that my sister stole my heart and sold it to my father, that she claimed a false identity but it doesn’t quite work. What’s all the fuss about? Daddy didn’t care anyway. I feel like I’ve always been plagiarised and I know on some level that it was not her fault but my own. I was responsible and so was my mother. When I look the word up in the dictionary and find that it comes from plagiarius meaning kidnapper – the stealing of a child, the stealing of a person, it seems to fit well. It’s not my heart but only my reputation that was stolen, but when love is conditional, reputation is everything and I lost heart. Now I want to redeem, reclaim, unsteal my heart, I want to award myself my own smile. But there is a dilemma. To get what I want I can either please daddy or become daddy, yet both of these images I don’t like. I would rather repress them. I need to lie down, to submit to his lying love or stand up, stand alone and face his lack of love with my own vulnerability and greatness. I need to smile at myself and claim these attributes as my own. I’m still scared. I can hear the critics saying, ‘you should be nice to your sister, it’s all the men’s fault anyway.’ I want to cling to my image of being good. If I claim to be the one who smiles, who entertains, I feel that I’ve let myself down, at the same time I recoil from being the father I hated, the father I wouldn’t support. I know that he didn’t believe Madu either, how could she have dug the garden, she was too small. But he goes along for the ride. It’s safer that way. It suits him because he cannot tolerate any honesty about the nature of his affections. As long as the lies are unquestioned everything will be alright, comfortable.
In the Caribbean there is a bird called the Booby bird? It is beautiful and strong. It flies out to the deep waters to dive for fish in the bright blue sea. Sometimes it dives deep and sometimes it jumps high to catch fish in mid flight. When it returns to land it is assailed by the frigate bird who does everything in its power to stop it taking its food to the nest…
When I look at the world I see a lot of father’s daughters, a lot of frigate birds, but I am a mother’s daughter, a Booby bird. I still fly out to sea, I’m still digging in the rich soil and the blackness, still digging in the garden of love.
Isabel Adonis.
And saw what I never had seen;
A Chapel was built in the midst,
Where I used to play on the green.
And the gates of this chapel were shut,
And Thou shalt not writ over the door,
So I turned to the Garden Of Love
That so many sweet flowers bore.
And I saw it was filled with graves,
And tomb-stones where flowers should be:
And Priests in black-gowns, were walking their rounds,
And binding with briars, my joys and desires.
William Blake.
In my Mother’s Garden – the plagiarism of the heart.
When I was a little girl about ten or eleven I helped my mother tidy the garden so that it would look like something when my father came home from Africa. He worked abroad and we only got to see him now and then, mainly in the summer and occasionally at Christmas. We didn’t live together as a family. At other times the situation was reversed, my mother and young sisters would travel to Africa and the older ones would travel on later when the school holidays had begun. This summer however he was due home and preparations were being made for his return.
The garden was large and overgrown, stretching backward in an allotment shape from a rather ordinary looking semi detached house. It was a playground for the children of the street and it looked that way. No flowers grew there. The ground was lumpy and hard, covered in clumps of grass and weeds. The upkeep was too much for my mother and as I was only a young girl myself it was too much for me. She managed alone bringing up five daughters and often there was no money. That summer we did what we could with the garden though the results were meagre. The house hadn’t long been built: it had been a farmer’s field, the grass was tough and the soil wet from the water draining off a nearby mountain making the black soil heavy and difficult to work.
We dug and dug in rows, her with the fork and me with the spade. I would jump up on to the spade each time with childlike enthusiasm. We dug as if we were planting a vegetable garden. The soil was rich and smelt good. At last my father came home, he looked at the garden approvingly, and my younger sister, Madu who had not done the garden ran towards him saying ‘Daddy, I’ve done the garden.’ She was about 7 or 8 at the time. My mother and I, tired of hard work just stood watching in the background, amazed at what she had said. We watched the mutual pleasure emanating from their eyes.
I was always very close to my mum, and years later in our intimate moments; we would often come back to that story of the garden, which contained a significance we never quite realised. She would look at me and we would smile together locked in a conspiracy; she would say, ‘don't worry, you have a very different brain to the other girls.’ We valued truth over lies, relationship over image, we were always doing our best, being sensitive and serving others, full of compassion and womanly virtues – this was the flattering image we cultivated of ourselves as consolation for the loss of that male approval.
As I grew up the pattern continued. Madu always had the knack of appropriating what was mine and making it her own. She always craved to be first, and she always was first. People would often say to me, ’Oh you are jealous… oh it’s just sibling rivalry,’ and I would laugh with embarrassment, as if it was an unimportant childish thing, forgetting Cain and Abel, the first death and the first murder.
When we were very little, and shared a bed, our father had started to make a storybook, ‘Madu and Tutu’ about two black birds together. I was Tutu and my sister, Madu. It had hand painted pictures with writing underneath. But something happened that changed all our relationships, and the book was never finished. That affection was lost; I, at least, fell out of the nest.
I can see them smiling together now and I'm wondering what would have happened if I had spoken, if I had moved forward and opened my mouth. How different my life might have been. What a different road I might have travelled. I would have moved from voyeur to participant of life and not led my life in the shadows. And what would I have said? ‘I did it…daddy…it wasn’t Madu…it was mummy and me that dug the garden.’ And he would have stepped back and pulled on his large lips, opened slightly, his top lip tense and pulled tight in a grimaced smile, covering his teeth; his eyes would have lost their sparkle and he would have grunted something inaudible. There would have been no smile for me and nothing for mum. For the lines were already drawn and there was no point because there was no love, and I knew it and so did mum. This smile was only a conditional love; Madu’s lie amused him, pleased him for some reason. To maintain our own empty image we accepted that false transaction – a lie covering a lie.
We were frightened and we stayed frightened, women laughing amongst ourselves, disdaining men and the women who hang on them, for appropriating our work and our ideas and for not having any ideas of their own. My mother and I kept and nurtured our own conspiracy. We had done the real work; we were the real people. Our moral authority, our moral superiority was unquestionable and we relished our own false unnegotiable position. We were not slaves, we were masters and while my younger sister gained an identity of success; we gained our own exclusive position. What we could never say was that we wanted something too, admitting that would have been like a declaration of war on ourselves and on the image of the family.
I want to say that my sister stole my heart and sold it to my father, that she claimed a false identity but it doesn’t quite work. What’s all the fuss about? Daddy didn’t care anyway. I feel like I’ve always been plagiarised and I know on some level that it was not her fault but my own. I was responsible and so was my mother. When I look the word up in the dictionary and find that it comes from plagiarius meaning kidnapper – the stealing of a child, the stealing of a person, it seems to fit well. It’s not my heart but only my reputation that was stolen, but when love is conditional, reputation is everything and I lost heart. Now I want to redeem, reclaim, unsteal my heart, I want to award myself my own smile. But there is a dilemma. To get what I want I can either please daddy or become daddy, yet both of these images I don’t like. I would rather repress them. I need to lie down, to submit to his lying love or stand up, stand alone and face his lack of love with my own vulnerability and greatness. I need to smile at myself and claim these attributes as my own. I’m still scared. I can hear the critics saying, ‘you should be nice to your sister, it’s all the men’s fault anyway.’ I want to cling to my image of being good. If I claim to be the one who smiles, who entertains, I feel that I’ve let myself down, at the same time I recoil from being the father I hated, the father I wouldn’t support. I know that he didn’t believe Madu either, how could she have dug the garden, she was too small. But he goes along for the ride. It’s safer that way. It suits him because he cannot tolerate any honesty about the nature of his affections. As long as the lies are unquestioned everything will be alright, comfortable.
In the Caribbean there is a bird called the Booby bird? It is beautiful and strong. It flies out to the deep waters to dive for fish in the bright blue sea. Sometimes it dives deep and sometimes it jumps high to catch fish in mid flight. When it returns to land it is assailed by the frigate bird who does everything in its power to stop it taking its food to the nest…
When I look at the world I see a lot of father’s daughters, a lot of frigate birds, but I am a mother’s daughter, a Booby bird. I still fly out to sea, I’m still digging in the rich soil and the blackness, still digging in the garden of love.
Isabel Adonis.
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