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of his vicious ways from his parents. Luther and Joyce were very strict, some would say sick. I don’t call them Nana and Granddad, as I don’t believe they’ve earned those titles. They have seven children, three girls and four boys. All of them were beaten daily with broomsticks, belts and various other objects. Ray, my father, was the first to leave home, to be with my mum, which really upset them, as they were convinced he’d left to get away from them. In hindsight, they must have realised that their physical abuse of their children was wrong.

      They hated my mother. Originally, they were angry that Dad was marrying a white woman. They said that he was West Indian and, just because he’d been in the country for three or four years by the time he met my mum, he didn’t need to start acting like a white man. The four of them had a very strange relationship, often arguing among themselves then making up for a couple of years before falling out again. They never really had a good word to say about one another.

      One time Joyce called my father to say that my uncle Graham, who lived in the West Indies, was ill. According to her, he’d had a car crash and was in intensive care, so all her kids had to club together to pay for the hospital bills. At first, Dad believed her, but after he’d talked to all his brothers and sisters it became clear that she was lying. He then enticed her to our house by saying that he had a few grand waiting for her. But when she arrived he gave her a mouthful. I remember it so clearly, especially as it was so shocking to hear him talk to his mother like that. ‘You fucking money-hungry, fat old bitch’ was one insult I recall. Those words infuriated her, and quite rightly so. She ran towards him, but he grabbed her by the hair and threw her out of the house. I thought that would be the end of the matter, but half an hour later she was back.

      A cascade of two-pence coins started spilling through the letterbox, then she started ranting, ‘You and your kids will never have anything. You gonna suffer for the rest of your lives. Voodoo, voodoo, obia man a go haunt you for the rest of your fucking lives, you dirty mongrels.’ I swear those words stick with me to this day, and I have never looked at a two-pence coin in the same way since. They fell out for at least six months over that incident and didn’t make up until my uncle Graham miraculously recovered and came to visit us. Joyce then turned up with her tail between her legs. Everyone made up and our happy family was back together again. Well, not quite – my mother still took the blame for anything that went wrong with the family, Joyce always referring to her as ‘the white bitch’. Mum accepted everything her in-laws threw at her, and often took us to visit them over the weekend, acting as though we were a normal family.

      I feared just about everyone that my father knew, from his mother and father to his best friend. I can’t remember ever feeling safe in my home. It was a very confusing time, especially as my mother’s parents were so fantastic. They were great and we really looked forward to their visits. Nana came to see us nearly every day, Granddad most weekends. The difference between our two sets of grandparents was remarkable. We had the raving loonies on the one side and the quiet conservatives on the other. It’s a good job that we kids had Nana and Granddad to look forward to.

      My mother truly believed – in fact, insisted – that my dad’s behaviour was the normal action of a black man. She’d often told me that all black men hit their women and kids. It was just an accepted part of being with a black man, she would say. She stressed to me that one thing the woman should never try to do was leave him, or call the police, because he would kill her if he found her. What I never understood is what used to follow that warning. She’d say, ‘If you ever go out with a white man I’ll disown you. Yuk! No way is a daughter of mine going out with a pig. I have never, and will never, let a white man touch me.’

      She used to confuse me with her weird opinions, and even at a young age I used to think, Well, you’re white and so are Nana and Granddad, so what is so wrong with white people? I’m half-white. Why does she hate white men so much? But she often repeated those words to me and, being a young and impressionable child, for a while I believed her and started to think the same way. I always believed my mother, as any child would. Besides, I wanted so much to feel like her daughter and not just a Giro that she received every two weeks I was willing to accept all her ramblings.

      Not many people can say that their mother is a puppeteer. I’d like to be able to say it’s a privilege that mine is, but I can’t claim to feel any pride when I say that’s what she is. My mother was never one to show affection towards me and my brothers and sisters. She often left us feeling as though we were the adults and she was the child. We took care of the home, arguments, family fun and joyous occasions, while she sat back and lapped it all up. I believe that she resented having us to take care of but needed us to make her feel as though she’d achieved something with her life.

      I’ll never understand why my mother went so wrong. She’d had a regular, stable family upbringing with loving parents, so the way she is now seems all the more baffling. At the age of 11, she started rebelling against Nana and Granddad’s every wish. Playing outside with her friends until all hours; sneaking out when she had been grounded by Granddad; driving Nana to the point where she once tried to reshape her face by hitting her over the head with a frying pan. Nana still gets embarrassed when she tells me that story, but I suppose that hitting her daughter with anything at all, let alone something so heavy, was due to a mixture of anger and disbelief. Nana has often stressed how she had tried so hard to raise her kids with respect, yet her daughter was treating her as though she’d been a bad mother and neglected her. And repeatedly she has told me that she’d go into Mum’s room to check on her during the night and find her bed empty. Sometimes she’d find her at her friend’s house across the road, but more often than not she had to sit up and wait until Mum got back home in the early hours of the morning.

      Nana and Granddad also disapproved of the fact that she hung around with all the black kids at school. Nana has always denied being racist but, from what she told me, they were worried about their daughter going out with a black man, or what they called back then in the seventies ‘a coloured person’. She says that it was common then to feel that way, and assures me that she soon got used to the idea after we were born and loved us all no matter what colour we were.

      My mother bought most of her school friends by helping out the more underprivileged of them with a bit of lunch money. It was at school that she became very close friends with my aunt, which is how she met my father. Nowadays, she admits that she got close to Auntie Helen so that she could get to know Dad. She’d had enough of admiring him from a distance. By the time my parents started dating, my dad had already left school but my mum was only in her second year. They managed to keep their relationship a secret from Nana and Granddad for three years, until she had no choice when, at the age of 15, she fell pregnant with my brother Carl. Somehow, her pregnancy was kept secret for quite a while but by the time she was almost five months pregnant there was little way of hiding her bump, so the two of them had to tell Nana.

      Granddad left Nana to deal with the entire thing. It’s something he has often done – if he was ever disappointed with anyone, he would cut them off for a while as he didn’t like to show his anger. I have often wondered if he was scared of what he might do to them; if maybe he was a bit aggressive underneath his nice, kind smile. He liked to be calm and steered clear of losing his temper. I suppose he’s what some would call a real gentleman.

      The way my mother treated my grandparents has often made me wonder if she was a spoiled child, or maybe it was a way of getting a little more attention, as she was the youngest of three children. But, knowing my grandparents, I’m sure she was treated exactly the same as her brother and sister. So my inability to understand her behaviour remains to this day. Perhaps I’ll never know why my mother is the way she is.

       2

       Rays of Sunshine

      From a very young age, I was what you might call mentally overdeveloped. I knew much more than the other kids in my class did. When most of them would swear and be asked what it meant, they’d shrug their shoulders, but I knew what most swear words meant. ‘Fuck’ was the first

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