GROWING OUT
An Autobiography by
BARBARA BLAKE HANNAH
-------------------------------------
CHAPTER FIVE
Hair was so very important as I grew up. Hair was the dividing line
between white and black, between pretty and ugly, between upper and
lower class.
How I wished for a trace of “straight” in my natty profusion. Not so. At boarding school two kind older students would set aside one Sunday per term to wash and comb my sister’s and my hair. We would be excused from lunch because the torturous combing out usually never ended until midway through rest period after lunch. They seated us both on the school's open-air back verandah after the wash to dry out, before subjecting us to the pain of comb-out. The pain was awful, the humiliation worse. Those were the days before conditioners, de-tanglers, braid oil. A big tub of Vaseline stood next to the comb, and helped lubricate the tugs.
Ninety percent of the girls at my very top-drawer boarding school were white, or nearly so as made no difference. Many were rich girls from Haiti, Cuba, Venezuela, Curacao and other exotic places whose parents were wealthy enough to send their daughters to school in Jamaica. Thee were blondes, brunettes and redheads with long hair, some curled, some bobbed, but all a constant parade of envy-making hair beauty. I knew I could never have such hair and bore the mark of my inferiority with resignation.
Neither my sister nor I accepted the inferior status forced on us at this super-snob school because of our colour. We were known as rebellious, always receiving ‘order marks’ and ‘detentions’ for infringing rules. My sister, being ‘blacker’ than me, received the very worst treatment. Anything that went wrong at school was blamed on her first, and she was ostracized and scorned for being at the bottom of the colour ladder. Poor girl. I could not help her. I could not really understand the reasons for our treatment, racism being a totally new experience, so I adjusted as best I could to the circumstances and my loneliness by devouring every book I could lay my hands on to read.
The literature in the school libraries reflected our school’s attempt to perfectly imitate the best English boarding schools. Greek and Roman mythologies, histories of Europe, and English schoolgirl adventures. Accustomed to many books at home, I read my way through all the school’s libraries.
What
a diet!
Guaranteed to churn out one perfect English girl.
In the boarding school libraries I developed culturally into a Black
Englishwoman.
* * * *
My other friend in London was an Englishman who introduced me to a completely
different life. He was an amusing man of aristocratic connections, who
was kind, friendly and loved to have me as a dinner companion. I didn’t
realise that the most ‘in’ thing at that time was to have
a ‘spade’ (Black) girlfriend. I was not his girlfriend, but
his dinner and cocktail party companions did not know, and I was equally
ignorant of any ulterior motive his invitations held.
For a fact, he introduced me not only to his aristocratic friends (once he phoned to postpone a dinner engagement, as his friend Princess Margaret wanted to borrow his flat), but also to the very best London restaurants and gave me an opportunity to learn just what all those strange-sounding items of French, Greek, German, Italian and English menus were. I remember one time I ordered “ris de veau” thinking it was veal, to discover when the plate arrived that it was calves brains, and he just smiled indulgently as he made the waiter take it back and bring me something else. But even at that high social level, there were still strange things about the English that I would never accept.
For instance, one evening because of some specially early timing for a social event, I had to bathe and change at his flat. I had my bath, emptied the water and cleaned out the bath for him to follow. Imagine my shock when he asked me with some surprise why I had let out the water -- he had intended to bathe after me ‘to save hot water’! Could anyone be so filthy, I wondered. But the English had peculiar notions about bathing and we ‘dirty’ niggers were much too clean to get used to their habits of bathing once a week. Some landladies, I was told, charged West Indians extra rent if they wanted to bathe every day. Can you believe it?
The best thing about my friend, though was that he introduced me to the Brook Street Bureau, the leading and best temporary secretarial agency in London, phoning them up and making an appointment in his impeccable upper-class English accent for me to come in and be registered. Brook Street Bureau was a secretarial agency which hired out well-bred young ladies to offices where temporary or permanent help was required. There were many of these in the city, but Brook Street was the leading one with the highest caliber girls, and paying the best rates. I later learned that part of their reputation was because of the fact that they registered few ‘coloured’ temps on their books -- so exclusive were they.
However, I did not know this when I went in, and they were especially polite to me, particularly after I had demonstrated my above-average typing and shorthand skills perfected in Jamaica.
So now I had a job -- or several jobs. Each Monday morning I would report to the Bureau at its offices off Oxford Street to be given directions and instructions for that week’s work. Some jobs were far on the outskirts of the city, soul-destroying tasks to type forms and ledgers and bills ad infinitum.
“I am the temp,” I would introduce myself shyly, and then be shown to my desk and the pile of work.
I type fast and, moreover, I like to get my work over and done with quickly. Sometimes my efficiency was praised. More often I sensed a surprise and resentment at the fact that a foreigner was performing better than an English native. Most ‘temps’ were dissatisfied young girls who wanted to be models or get married, and who looked on temporary secretarial work as a necessary irritant on the road to achieving these goals. For me, it was not only survival, but a periscope for surveying the city and what it offered, so I gave my best.
I discovered later that a report was made on the service
given by each temp. I also discovered much later that before I was sent
to an office, the person requesting secretarial services was asked whether
they minded the fact that I was ‘coloured’.
“We have an excellent young lady -- there’s only one thing:
she’s coloured. Do you mind?”
I was working long term in a lawyers office when I found out, and then I understood why some Monday mornings I would wait in the Bureau’s reception area for many hours while girls who came in after me were sent out on assignments before me. When I found out what was going on behind the closed doors, I did not know whether to be angry with Brook Street Bureau or not. Were they apologizing for me as one would for a cripple? Were they just trying to save me embarrassment? Eventually I decided I didn’t care. Anyone who employed me soon discovered they had an above-average person in ability and intelligence.
Why did the English make themselves to difficult to be loved? I found the English a cold, unfriendly, unattractive and hypocritical people, and patience and endurance were my only survival strengths. The more I compared myself with them, the more I wondered how we in Jamaica could consider them our superiors.
As I began to discover the subtleties of English accent and class differences, I realized that the Englishmen who had come to live in Jamaica, whom we Jamaican girls worshiped and whom Jamaican businessmen hurried to establish in prosperity, came from beginnings in British slums where now lived the West Indian bus conductors, street painters and common labourers who were the object of racist contempt.
Yes, travel certainly broadens the mind.
Not that I was as bold in my thinking as the above would make you believe.
In fact, I was still shy of my own shadow and blessed only with a fierce
determination not to return to Jamaica until I had “succeeded”
-- at what, I did not yet know. Only God protected me, alone in that city
and country, from harm, decadence and discouragement. Instead, I was certain
that better would come.
I learned a lot about London from my Brook Street Bureau jobs, and I was glad I had the typing and shorthand skills that ensured that I could always find respectable employment.
Often my Bureau jobs were with one department or other of the British Council, the agency that handled British cultural and educational exchanges between the Mother Country and her colonial outposts. In 1964 there was still a great portion of the Empire remaining, and few persons thought there would ever be any change in the colonial status quo. There would always be black civil servants to be trained in colonial ways, students to be educated in English practices, and lecturers to be despatched to every corner of the Empire carrying their messages of English intellect and culture.
One of my temporary jobs with the British Council lasted for ten months, as I worked as secretary for a room of three female junior executives whose jobs handled the tuition, housing and minor needs of various foreign students from the Commonwealth. It was in that room, listening to their comments that I first heard expressed the polite comments of English racism.
To hear them speak without compassion or understanding of whatever misfortune had befallen one of their students -- most of whom were adult men and women ranging in years up to 60 -- was to hear contempt, impatience, criticism and irritation based on racial superiority expressed as a god-given right in analyzing every situation. As a foreigner myself, I was only too well aware of the culture shock and problems of adjustment that we all encountered, but I was too shy to even begin to explain how strange things must seem for a Pakistani, Kenyan or Barbadian who had never left his own country before, or even experienced cold for the first time.
Nor could I explain the behaviour of my people to them.
The ladies did what many people were to do to me -- they included me in
their conspiracy by excluding me from the criticisms of my fellow black
people, saying things like:
“But you’re not like them -- you’re educated.”
Or: “You’re not really black -- you’re almost white!”
Or: “You speak English so well, one could almost forget you’re
coloured.”
Polite racism. In 1965 I had no answer. Brought up as I had been in the neo-colonial Jamaican society to regard such comments as praise, I was guardedly happy to have passed the test to remain in their inner circle, but wary enough to keep my distance. If I had any notions of racial consciousness (which I did not), my upbringing had only imbedded into me an image of my superiority over the ‘lower classes’ -- of whom I definitely was not one, especially if the lower classes included Pakistanis who spat on the clean Oxford Street pavements (since their culture considered swallowing your flu phlegm a nasty thing to do), or Kenyans who did not have enough sense to know how to purchase a sweater, or Barbadians who were impertinent enough to proposition an English girl on the street and cause an international incident.
No sir, not me.
To be ‘coloured’ was a term of scorn only slightly better
than to be called an ‘immigrant’. “Immigrant”
was the word used to describe the flotsam and jetsam of West Indians,
Indians and Pakistanis who felt the brunt of racist prejudice while suffering
to survive at the very bottom of the English social, economic and employment
levels. I was definitely not an ‘immigrant’. 'Coloured', perhaps
-- although I did not like the phrase.
I preferred to be called a ‘spade’, which is how my small, growing circle of English friends referred to me. It was a more hip term, friendly, if you had to use one at all.
But why notice my colour at all?
I didn’t see my own colour and I didn’t mind yours, so all
I wanted was for you to ignore mine too.
Few did.
Sometimes out of the gloom of cold faces, one English face would light up, smile, ask eager questions, give much-needed help. But if you questioned this angel of assistance and love, you would soon find that nine cases out of ten, she was married to or living with a Black person.
For some reason, one didn’t get too close to those persons either. The Profumo Affair starring a member of the British Cabinet, English prostitute Christine Keeler and her Jamaican boyfriend Lucky Gordon, had happened only the year before and caused such mixed liaisons to be branded with the same brush. Since some West Indian women had given the species the reputation of being all prostitutes, any black men or women who were attractive, not too shabbily dressed and without an air of downpression were automatically assumed to be ‘on the game’.
I stepped angrily away from those red faces which peered into mine with the unasked question leering in their eyes, and sometimes on their lips.
ME! You should be so lucky!
* ** * *
But all was not grimness in life. In fact, it was often quite pleasant and sometimes exciting. I looked forward to the approaching winter with glee, eagerly anticipating my first sight of snow.
Meanwhile there was London to explore, and I enjoyed the exploration. It was exciting simply to shop for food, to discover new delights such as apples, pears and plums, to see the daffodills and anemones and peonies sold in beautiful bunches e by flower sellers outside the tube stations, to hear people talking in languages I didn’t understand. I felt like a real little explorer.
I took a bus to the Tate Gallery one Sunday and walked through the rooms and rooms of paintings which I had only seen before I books. I looked at them in their reality and began to understand what it was that made each a considered work of art, saw the size of the paintings, the intricacy of the brushwork, the clarity of colour, the boldness of style, the expertness of detail, the magnificence of conception.
There were the rooms of famous Turner skyscapes and seascapes; the gentle ballet dancers of Degas, the opulent Reynolds and Gainsboroughs, the pure Van Goghs, the sensuous Modidglianis, the brittle Giacomettis and the peculiar Picassos. More marvelous than all the paintings themselves was the Tate itself, with its huge, high-ceilinged rooms and rooms and rooms. There was so much to stare at, including the people who were staring at the pictures, and at me too.
I never got used to being stared at. Why was everyone always looking at me? It never occurred to me that it could have been because I was pretty. I assumed that it was because I was black.
“Prejudice” was a monster I lived with constantly, making
me wary of every encounter. For instance, I preferred to take the Tube
than ride on the bus. Why? Because taking the Tube meant that I could
often buy a ticket from a machine, or if not, from a window where the
seller didn’t have to touch me to hand over the ticket. Then again,
on the Tube I could find a seat by myself on the long benches which were
divided by arm rests. That way no one would have to touch me when they
sat down, not because I did not want to be touched (which, of course,
I didn’t) but because I was told and could observe that the white
people did not want to be touched by Blacks.
The bus was different. The white conductors, and conductresses especially, had a contempt in their voices when they took my fare, a resentment of my being on their bus which they openly displayed to all Black passengers. There would be some who would return change carefully, so as to not touch your black hand at all. And often, passengers would come on the bus who would see an empty seat beside you and stand, rather than sit beside you.
I tried to ignore these things, to pretend that they weren’t happening, but it was hard for me. I often swallowed a lump in my throat when these things happened. Was this not the England I had been taught about in school? I had waved my little Union Jack at the Queen when she came to Jamaica in 1952. I could sing Rule Britannia and God Save the Queen as well as anyone.
I knew the average mean rainfall of the British Isles, the geography of the Lake District, the names of spring flowers, the history of how Churchill won the war to make me free, and I had read my Wordsworth and Shakespeare to the very last word.
I was no
different from the English, I thought angrily.
Why did they hate me?
I hadn’t done them anything.
I wasn’t taking away their jobs.
I wasn’t an ‘immigrant”.
* * * *
Beverly, Roma and I used to discuss the subject at length. As winter approached, they had found a two-bed roomed flat in Earls Court near mine, and asked me to share it with them. I accepted eagerly. The bedsitter had been lonely, with only my guitar to keep me company on weekends. It was good to be back with people like myself.
Beverly and I were astonished, angry and afraid of the hostility we met in every single encounter -- whether in a crowded street, shop or in our workplaces. Everything had to be instantly assessed to see whether it represented a racist threat in response to our presence.
Roma’s attitude was different. They could all jump in a lake as far as she was concerned. She didn’t intend to stay in this god-forsaken country much longer. She didn’t give two hoots whether they liked her or not. She didn’t like them, or the way they lived. They were barbarians, and she didn’t see how they could look down on her, because she was busy looking down on them.
She made us howl with laughter.
The men weren’t
even good looking, she would say contemptuously, as we roared with laughter.
And with that condemnation, she dismissed them completely.
She was definitely not interested in fitting in.
The flat we lived in was, by London standards, very nice. To us, it was typical of the substandard living conditions the English (and we) tolerated. Owned by Greeks (again!) who lived downstairs (again!), our flat was no more than one large room divided by plyboard partitions into a living room, two bedrooms and a passage -- beyond which was a kitchen and bathroom, neither of which had been clean when we rented the flat and neither of which were ever to become clean, no matter how hard we tried, although we soon gave up.
It was furnished, but with what furniture! Overstuffed, frayed sofas with springs coming out of the bottom and beds with hollows in the center. There was only one light, hanging in the center of this big room whose rays never lit the various partitions. This meant that a night of reading a book was completely out of the question, unless you wanted to spoil your eyes. Also, one person coming in from an evening out would wake up everybody simply by turning on the light to see her way around the flat.
Most hysterical of all, was the flat’s wallpaper. We decided that
the landlords must have used a sample book to paper the room, because
no matter how we searched the nearly 100 different patterns, none was
repeated anywhere on the wall. We laughed about it endlessly, but in our
serious moments we realized that any notions we might have had of making
the flat our home, or turning it into a place we would be proud to entertain
in, would have to be forgotten. We didn’t even have dining chairs.
With no television to entertain us, we had laughter instead. Beverly and Roma worked at the Economist Intelligence Unit as secretaries, and they had a few friendly work mates who often visited and took us for simple dinners. They, semi-aristocratic young men generally in training for semi-diplomatic assignments abroad, or higher futures in institutions such as the BBC or the City, not only had no prejudices, but in fact enjoyed our happy and unusual company. We enjoyed theirs.
* * * *
At long last winter came.
Yes it was
fun, really.
It was damn cold, too. Inconveniently cold.
For instance, at the British Council they had a government rule that the heating could not be turned on until a certain date in October. So no matter now cold the day was, you just had to pretend it wasn’t. Iin my unprepared Jamaican clothes to which I had added some sweaters, I shivered in silence and wonder.
At home the heating, which was controlled from the landlord’s region, was never warm enough for us. We learned to sleep in several layers of clothing, as well as blankets. Most prized of all my possessions was a pair of big fur-lined boots. They looked like chopped-off galoshes three sizes too large, and Beverly and Roma could never contain their laughter each time I put them on. It used to make me angry to see them doubled up weakly on the floor whenever they saw my skinny little legs disappearing into the unattractive black boots.
But I had the last laugh the morning after the first snow had melted into slick ice on the neighbourhood sidewalks, and we walked the short distance from flat to Tube station. At least, I walked. Beverly and Roma, in their pointed-toed, stiletto-heeled shoes, skidded, slipped, skated and finally fell down. That morning, I had the last laugh. After that they regarded my boots with respect and a little envy.
But the snow was what made up for it all. The one beauty of our flat was that it overlooked a park, or what was called a ‘square’ -- an area of green grass and trees planted in the middle of a row of flats and providing a breathing space for the privileged owners of keys to the park gate. From two stories up, our view of the square and its trees made up for the ugly drabness of our flat.
To wake one morning and find that overnight the green below had been magically transformed to all white, was a miracle indeed. I pressed my nose to the window whose corners were piled with soft white powder, and looked unbelievingly down into the all-white world. Across the square was a line of animal prints, as if a dog had walked home through the snow. Otherwise, all was perfect and untouched. The naked branches of the trees were covered with the soft powder, and on one the tree nearest the window I could see clearly how it rested gently even on the slenderest tip.
It was a Christmas card picture in black and white. I wanted it to last forever.
So this was
snow!
I was seeing my first snow!
Barbara Blake, was this really you, sitting with your chin in your hands
looking out at snow in London?
I couldn’t believe any girl could be so fortunate, and I hugged myself with happiness. It was as if the snow confirmed that I was in England, and there to stay. Things could only get better, and at any rate they were better than Jamaica, because there wasn’t any snow in Jamaica. I didn’t know what the future held for me and I had no plans, except to survive and succeed.
But I was quite happy, thank you.
* * * *
As Christmas approached, I spent a weekend in Maidenhead -- one of those
picture-postcard English villages not too far out of London -- with a
Jamaican couple Sonia and John, and their young son. Like my friend Sally,
they too were white Jamaicans, but where Sally held on tenaciously to
her Jamaican-ness, Sonia and John expressed their English-ness. With their
young son, I explored the nearby Wild Wood made famous in the famous English
book “Wind In the Willows”. I felt quite happy to
be treading in the same footsteps, so to speak, as the famous Englishman
who had written the book.
I guess I, too, was expressing my English-ness, nurtured in my upbringing, education and social origin. But I am now aware that it was not only this upbringing which was bringing out this English-ness, but the prejudice I was constantly aware of which seemed to cause me to want to demonstrate as much as I could how English I was -- how much I deserved to be accepted, how, in fact, I was really no different at all -- except for the little matter of my skin colour.
It wasn’t that I wanted to be white, but that I desperately wanted to prove I could be as English as the English. I was certain that one day they all would see, and that day all the icy stares and frowns and looks of contempt would be transformed into smiles. Until then, I maintained a low self-esteem because of it. The pressure was everywhere and I was constantly aware of it.
* * * *
Christmas brought with it the magic of the big city and especially the grandeur of Oxford Street -- its length illuminated with the most incredibly beautiful decorations of sky-high lights, Santa Clauses, snowflakes, reindeer, bells, winking lights, Christmas music, Christmas spirit. Sally’s Selfridges store maintained its reputation for presenting the most excitingly-decorated Christmas windows. I forget what theme they used that year, and Sally had long gone back home by then, but I know that I spent an entire lunchtime simply walking past each of the twenty or thirty windows and just looking, looking, looking.
The top pop song of the season was Petula Clarke’s “Downtown” with its lines: “When you’re alone and life is making you lonely, you can always go Downtown.” At that moment in time, when England and Swinging London and its music culture was world dominant, Oxford Street was the Downtown the song promised, where you could "forget all your troubles, forget all your cares.”
An Englishman whom I had met in Jamaica had written me from Kenya telling me with love that if some day I was to stand on Oxford Street with all the lights twinkling bright, and I felt lonely at that moment, I only had to stretch out my hand and he would touch it.
I wondered if I missed Jamaica and such good friends, but with such romantic thoughts for my soul to feed on, there was no time for home-sickness. I spent the holiday with my friends in Maidenhead in front of a real fire, a real Christmas tree and a real colour television set showing old films, Christmas specials and Walt Disney cartoons. I was blissfully happy.
* * * *
I was totally unprepared for the chilblains. But then, you can’t have heaven on earth without some tribulations. The chilblains were determined to wipe out all enjoyment of my new-found winter heaven.
What were
chilblains?
Ah, me.
No one had bothered to warn me about chilblains.
I had them for some time before I knew what was the matter.
Let me try and explain.
First of all, my feet used to start getting very, very cold, so cold that I couldn’t feel them at all. But at the same time, my toes would become swollen, often so badly the it was impossible to put my feet in shoes. My home remedy was to try and keep my feet as warm as possible, so I would sit by the radiator, or put my feet in a basin of warm water, or wrap them in blankets. Soon, however, my feet and toes started to itch at special points and I would want to scratch those places frantically as if they were mosquito bites. But scratch as I did, warm them as I did, the situation only seemed to get worse, until I was a mass of agony from tip toe almost to my knees.
By the time someone explained that poor circulation, tight shoes and winter weather had caused tiny blood vessels in my feet to swell, shrink and leave behind blood clots, and that the worst thing to do in such condition was to apply heat, by that time the damage had been done and I became a permanent sufferer of winter chilblains. The first winter was the worst. Some days I had to stay home from work as none of my shoes would fit my feet, nursing my toes in an agony of wanting to scratch and knowing that if I did and the skin burst, the situation would be worse. That’s when the boots came in handy.
Agony! Sorrow! I made a joke of it, which made Beverly and Roma laugh.
But they didn’t laugh too much at winter. Every day more and more they complained about England, about its unfriendly people, strange ways, sub-standard living conditions and climate. Finally it was too much for them. Roma was adamant and Beverly, nearly finished a one-year course in film editing, shrugged her shoulders and off they both went back to Jamaica.
So I was on my own again.
I didn’t mind. The adventure was continuing and I was in its power. I found another flat two houses away, not much cleaner, same shabby furniture and sharing a bath this time (again, unfortunately). But I had been happy to find accommodation after my experience with answering advertisements in the daily papers.
“Hello.
I’d like to inquire about the flat you have advertised,” I’d
say in my best English.
The person at the other end of the phone would explain details of size,
fittings and location.
“I’ll come and have a look at it. There’s only one thing
-- I’m West Indian.”
There would
be a silence at the other end while the person thought. Then they’d
say:
“I’m sorry -- I’d forgotten it’s already rented.”
Or: “Well, I wouldn’t mind, but it’s the owner ...”
or ... “the neighbours”... or just plain simply: “No,
we don’t rent to coloureds.”
After a couple of these responses, one understandably began to get discouraged. It was worse if you presented yourself in person, following an address copied off the notice board outside the Tube station. You would think that they if actually laid eyes on you and saw that you were not a prostitute, not poorly dressed, and not too black, they might let the flat to you, but it was worse for your psyche to actually see the pleasure on their faces as they told you their lies and excuses.
Some had
the grace to be embarrassed.
“Look, love,” they would say in a kindly voice: “if
it was up to me, I’d let you the flat, but you know how it is, don’t
you?”
I wanted to shout: ‘YES I KNOW HOW IT IS! YOU’RE ALL BLOODY COLOUR PREJUDICED!”
I wanted to tell each of them how when they came to my country they lived like kings and queens in the best houses with the best maids and food and cars and privileges, just because they were white and English. I wanted to tell them that at that very moment, the most expensive hotels in my country were full of people like them being waited on hand and foot by people my colour, who were eager to please them and make their stay in my country as unforgettable as possible. I wanted to ask them why, if we didn’t hate them when they came to my country, did they hate me when I came to theirs.
But I couldn’t say any of that at that time. I could only think it.
Worse was still to come when I decided to place an advertisement in the paper myself. This time I stated “West Indian girl seeks furnished bedsitter,” and gave my phone number.
It is true that one can only learn from experience.
I received
only two phone calls. One was outrightly obscene. I hung up in fear.
The second caller said he had such accommodation to offer.
What was
the price, I asked. He would phone back. He did.
“I am a photographer,” he said. Then he stumbled on slowly
and I, uncomprehendingly, listened.
“Well if you would be prepared to pose for me occasionally, I would
let you have the place for free!”
It took a second or two for his meaning to sink in.
“No thank you.” I said quietly, and hung up.