Precious (20 page)

Fragility

IT IS NOT LONG before Nanny has a brainwave. She says that since I enjoy writing so much, I must write a letter to the judge, telling him who I’d like to win custody of me, and why. Mr Braithwaite, the solicitor, thinks this is a marvellous idea.

I, meanwhile, feel disappointed. I’d secretly begun to daydream about ‘appearing’ in court, being bought brand-new outfits fit to wear in front of a judge, and, most of all, stopping at Wimpy for tea each evening after the day’s ‘hearing’ was over.

But both Mr Braithwaite and the social workers have other ideas. Nanny says they’ve both agreed I’m too ‘fragile’ to speak in court. They reference the fact I recently emptied all of Aunty Wendy’s kitchen drawers onto the floor and sat amongst the debris, crying, claiming that monsters were coming to get me. And I’ve been caught at school, stealing a loaf of bread from one of the dinner ladies and then garbling something to the form teacher about God having given me the bread.

Mr Parsons, the social worker, feels that I’m still not in a bad enough state to be assessed by Dr Seaton, but that I’d benefit from a sedative. He writes in his report:

Anita’s general personality seems to have changed from a pleasant, happy and well-mannered child, to that of an irritable, unhappy and suspicious person.

This behaviour is not like me, the teachers say.

I’m not myself, according to Aunty Wendy.

I ask Nanny what they mean by ‘fragile’ and Nanny says, ‘You’re delicate, darling. Sensitive.’

I ask Uncle Mick why they’re saying I’m ‘fragile’ and he says, ‘It means they think you’re mental.’

So Nanny takes me in to see Dr Gillies, which pleases me because it means a morning off from school. Nanny is thrilled too because there is no place she loves more than the doctor’s surgery, with its hushed corridors and its antiseptic smell.

‘It’s her nerves, Doctor,’ Nanny says.

Dr Gillies appears uninterested. Nanny is always bringing me in here. She sits by my side, boulder-like handbag in her lap, while I look at my feet and the bored doctor gets out his stethoscope and presses his icy palm against my round belly to perform another of his fruitless examinations.

Last week we came about my eczema. And in the months preceding this one, about my tonsillitis, my urinary tract infections, my sinus infections, my constipation, my headaches, the fact my feet are flat and have no instep, my hay fever, my peculiarly shaped skeleton (my bottom seems to curve up and outwards), my mood swings, my nightmares.

‘She needs tranquillisers, just for a week or so, Doctor,’ says Nanny. ‘The social worker’s said so. The nerves are affecting her studies. The poor child can’t cope with the pressure of The Case.’

‘I thought the social worker said I needed sedatives, Nanny,’ I whisper.

‘Same thing, darling,’ Nanny says as Dr Gillies scrawls something unintelligible onto his prescription pad, tears it off and virtually tosses the little sheet of paper at us.

I take one of Dr Gillies’s sedative/tranquilliser pills and the nightmares begin to fade to white, giving way to gorgeous soothing daydreams filled with unicorns and fairies and gnomes, good witches and puppies. Everything in my life seems at once light and unreal, like my thoughts are suddenly wrapped in candy floss. This is surely almost as good as being at Great Almond Street.

One afternoon, I sit at Aunty Wendy’s kitchen table, smiling to myself and drinking Lucozade through a straw. Nanny’s dehydrated hand grips my plump wrist, bringing me back from my daydreams. There is a pad of baby-blue Basildon Bond notepaper in front of me with a new Berol pen laid across it.

‘Dear Judge,’ I write and I sit there biting the pen, waiting for further instruction.

Nanny stands over me, holding the edge of Aunty Wendy’s table tight.

‘This will determine our future, Nin,’ Nanny warns, and goes on to tell me, word-for-word, what to write in the letter. The letter is a mish-mash of truth and fantasy and writing it feels like writing one of my short stories. In between whispering words, Nanny’s breath comes out ragged and shallow. I can smell the stale coffee on her breath.

‘I have written to tell you how I feel about this court case,’ I write, in my neat, joined-up writing. ‘I have lived with Nanny in Fernmere for a long time and would like to remain in Fernmere.’

Aunty Wendy turns away from her washing-up to face us. She looks sceptical.

‘You’re being ridiculous, Mum. A kid her age wouldn’t say
remain
,’ Aunty Wendy says. ‘The bloody courts aren’t gonna believe a nine-year-old would use big words like that.’

‘Will you mind your own business, Wendy, you daft bitchie,’ says Nanny. I look up at Nanny, startled. She smiles down at me gently and tells me what to write for the next paragraph. She tells me to stop holding my pen so tightly as it’s making my handwriting come out spiky.

‘Nanny taught me to read when I was three and four,’ I write. This much of the letter is true. Nanny says I took to reading like a duck to water and that in this regard I am like Topsy who also loved reading and ‘learned her letters like magic’.

‘I have many friends in Fernmere,’ I continue. ‘And I like my teacher Mrs Southgate and my headmaster, Mr Franklin. I go to Brownies and country dancing and can swim fifty metres because I go regularly to swimming lessons. Nanny gives me lots of love and my mother does not when I have to stay there for short periods. My favourite meal is “roast” which Nanny cooks on a Sunday.

‘My mother cooks hot peppery meals that hurt my throat. I am working hard at school so that I might win a scholarship to a good school. If I went to London it would take me a long time to get used to the Nigerian way of life and it would put me off working at school. I had an unpleasant two weeks with my mother in the summer holidays. Obi, my cousin, stole a bar of chocolate from a shop. My mother made no attempt to take it back. So as I know it is wrong to steal, I had to. I have written this letter on my own and only me and you will see it. Yours sincerely, Anita Williams.’

My letter is sent in to the judge as evidence that I love my life in Fernmere. A photograph of me dressed up as Miss Biafra, grimacing at the camera with a vivid nylon scarf tied mammy-style around my head, is presented to the court as evidence that I am in touch with my ‘cultural background’.

But the judge is unimpressed. He says a child my age would not use such long words, that the entire tone of the letter suggests it was written by somebody other than me.

Nanny has a stack of paperwork from the judge crammed into her handbag and she starts crying as she tells me what it says. The judge has said that despite me being ‘anglicised’, I am still a coloured girl and that it seems best that I am re-introduced to the African way of life and sent back to my ‘perfectly good natural mother’.

But despite sort-of winning the case, my mother suddenly loses interest and stops turning up for the hearings. When the social workers and official solicitors ring her up she does not answer the phone. They write letters to her and the letters arrive back with ‘return to sender’ scrawled across the envelopes.

Years later, when I obtain the court files and social workers’ notes from this period, I read reports claiming my mother’s interest in the proceedings, and in me, waned quite suddenly in 1981. The files say my mother claimed she had no time to see me because she was travelling overseas a lot for work. She had one son and another on the way. She didn’t have enough money or time to travel to Fernmere to collect me for visits. She couldn’t afford the cost of long-distance phone calls from London to Fernmere.

My mother has a different story. She says she was treated in a racist, biased way. And that she felt ‘put off ’ after reading an affidavit submitted to the court by Mr Parsons, the social worker, a man who’d written lengthy reports about my mother despite never having met her or spoken to her. Mr Parsons had submitted the following statement to the court:

This is not an easy matter since cultural background is an important feature here and the mother’s attitude towards the children is common enough amongst the tribal customs of which she is influenced. In Nigeria and many other African states most children are ‘farmed out’ amongst the tribe and are treated as ‘possessions’ and therefore Anita’s mother is doing no more than her cultural background would demand. However, it would have been hoped that the completely different culture of the host country would have influenced the mother to accept a new approach to child care . . .

My heavily pregnant mother’s response to the above was to collapse on the courtroom floor, ‘out of anger’. She experienced severe stomach pains right there in the courtroom, she has said, and began haemorrhaging a ‘scary green liquid’.

Her own mother, in Nigeria, consequently advised her that I was a revolting, treacherous child who deserved no more of my mother’s time or attention. That if the stress of this ‘rubbish court case’ continued, my mother might die – and that no mother should be prepared to die for an undeserving child.

Neither Nanny nor my mother have custody of me now: I am a Ward of Court. Until I turn eighteen, the court has to make all the major decisions about me. The court says that for now, at least, I must remain with Nanny.

Aunty Wendy and Uncle Mick throw me a party in the newly built hut, on the marshy field that marks the edge of Woodview estate. It’s to commemorate winning the case and to celebrate my eleventh birthday. Nanny would have come but her nerves are playing up, so she’s at home in front of the TV.

Uncle Mick’s bought me a strawberry gateau with eleven pink candles in the middle. Nanny’s made a blancmange in the shape of a rabbit, nestled in a bed of bright green jelly which is supposed to look like grass. Aunty Wendy stands proudly in charge of a mop bucket filled with fruit punch that’s swimming with slices of orange and chunks of pineapple.

Our DJ, Uncle Mick, puts on Dexy’s Midnight Runner’s single, ‘Come On Eileen’, and everyone starts dancing, even the boys. It’s rare for a girl to have so many boys at her birthday party, but it’s not because I’m well liked because I’m not, particularly.

I managed to get them here by going up to the coolest boy in school, Tom, and handing him an invitation. I did this because the last time I saw my mother, she said something to me about bold people getting everything in life that they dream of. Tom – who has taken Eddie’s place in my heart – considered my invitation for a full week and came up to me on the playground and said, ‘All right. I’ll come.’ After that, the other boys in my year begged for invitations.

‘Come On Eileen’ slows right down and starts to build again in tempo and Uncle Mick clamps his hands over the headphones on his head. He is jerking his hips back and forth in tune with the beat. My mother walks in just as it reaches a crescendo.

My mother’s sudden arrival shocks and thrills me. She merely nods at me and ignores Aunty Wendy. Dressed in red and sparkling with gold jewellery, she plunges into the party and immediately announces that she will conduct a dancing contest. She will give the best dancer among us a twenty-pound note.

My mother marches across the rough floorboards to Uncle Mick and whispers a greeting to him, making me choke a little on my fruit punch.

It’s sad Nanny’s not here to see this. Nanny’s been saying my mother’s not welcome at my party since she hasn’t contributed a penny towards the cost of it; I’d love to see Nanny saying this to my mother’s face.

Uncle Mick puts Dexy’s Midnight Runners back on. My friends begin dancing furiously, for all they’re worth, forming a circle and nudging me – the girl with the rich, glamorous mother – into the centre of this circle. I feel bold and limitless, perhaps because Mother’s attitude is contagious or perhaps because her turning up to my party after all makes me feel so special.

I close my eyes and dance, giving my body over to the beat the way a tree surrenders to the wind. I dance until I feel droplets of sweat swimming from my hairline down the sides of my face, spinning and swaying through ‘Come On Eileen’ and ‘Dancing Queen’ and ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’.

When I open my eyes and finally stop dancing, my mother is next to me and I dare to look directly up into her amused eyes. I hold my breath and wait for her to hand me the twenty-pound note. She runs a gentle hand through my hair. ‘I see the straightener didn’t last,’ she says. ‘Your hair looks disgusting.’ And she walks up to my best friend Tara and slips a twenty-pound note into the waistband of Tara’s skirt.

Before she leaves, I say to my mother, ‘Thank you for coming to my birthday, Mummy.’

‘I wanted to wish you a happy birthday, Precious,’ my mother says. Her voice is loaded with bitterness as she adds, ‘I wanted to tell you that I’ve had another son, Chika. He nearly died before he was even born, because of you.’

After a sweat-inducing silence, I say, ‘What’s Chika like, Mummy?’

‘My son is beautiful,’ she says fiercely.

I flinch when she says ‘my son’, wondering why she doesn’t say ‘your brother’.

When Chika’s lying in his mother’s arms, he must not know that I exist or that she’s my mother too.

‘Any news of Agnes?’ my mother says.