My Name Is Why. Lemn Sissay
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the record, I did steal biscuits but not two whole packs. This exaggeration would come back to haunt me. What I did was this: I stole biscuits from the biscuit tin and then rearranged them in the tin in a stacked ‘roof-column system’ to hide the fact I had stolen them. Genius.
One holiday in Scotland at my granddad’s home the family left me in the cottage, as punishment for lying about stealing some cake. Sarah, Christopher, David and Catherine walked down the hill to Lochinver. I thought I had been locked in my room but the door was open. I sobbed my way downstairs. The rich smell of silver birchwood from the embers of the fire filled the front room. Wiping tears from my face, I saw on the table a half-cut ginger cake. The tears evaporated, replaced by butterflies in my stomach. Maybe I can have a piece, I thought. If I cut it in exactly the same way as it was already cut then no one will notice I’ve taken a slice. Genius. And so I did. Macavity was much cleverer than that. The cake tasted so good that I figured one more slice wouldn’t do any harm at all. There were no witnesses, but then there was only one suspect. It tasted so good. So I did it again. To this day I don’t know why I got into this habit of stealing biscuits and bits of cake. But I did. They told me I was devious.
The problem was that my first instinct was to say, I didn’t take the cake. I hadn’t considered that the reason they had left me in the cottage in the first place was as a punishment for stealing cake. Still, I denied that I had stolen the cake. Macavity would have had more guile and more style. Soon enough, after another hour in the bedroom, I realised that I had to admit to taking the cake. What I didn’t realise was the significance of my transgression. The lies worried them more than the theft.
This habit of stealing cake was the crack in the dam. There was something bad in me. Something I didn’t understand. ‘Don’t look at me with those big brown eyes’ was the strange refrain my mum would shout at me. I didn’t understand what she saw. If I argued that I didn’t know what she saw, then would I be lying? How could I see what she and my foster father saw?
Back at home, the front room was where I was punished. Same place we ‘entertained’ visitors, same place the books were, same place the social worker would sit. The leather sofa was polished to perfection and smelled of Pledge. Stealing cake and lying about it was an indication that the Devil was working inside me. The front room was where I was caned.
I loved the normal stuff. The middle room, where we mostly lived and watched The Clangers and Crackerjack! on the TV. The files tell a different story, though, a story narrated by my foster parents and filtered by the social worker. Within three years it will be reported that I threatened to kill the entire family, except for baby Helen.
CHAPTER 6
As the pastor dragged the ‘forgiven’
From the watery grave
They’d say ‘Jesus Christ’
And he’d shout ‘You are saved’
It was run by the Elders. Bryn Baptist Church, a mile from our home and a mile from Grandma and Granddad Munro’s. Occasionally, Granddad Munro played the organ when the regular organist was away. He was always slightly out of sync. Mum and Dad avoided looking at each other. My Granddad, with his missing teeth, flat cap and a twinkle in his eye, was the best granddad in the world.
Church was full of horrific stories: burned bodies and dead babies strewn in passageways, weeping and wailing mothers, a story of a woman who was turned into a pillar of salt, prostitutes and beggars, lepers and mass baby killings, people drowned in the huge flood and Jesus stabbed with huge nails, hung on a wooden cross, with a crown of thorns and blood pouring down His face. Poisonings, stabbings, burnings, child murders and rape.
‘Repent. Repent for your sins.’
The temperature rose with the pastor’s words. Girders of green, blue and red light fell upon the rapt congregation from the stained glass.
Mum threw up her arms. ‘Praise Him.’
So I threw up mine. Was I saved by Jesus? Shadows swooped over me as clouds swiped the light away. And then it was back again. The congregation flew to the sky. Chris, my brother, was looking at me, lips pressed together in a mean line, his eyes slanting.
‘You stink,’ I mouthed back at him.
‘Praise God, praise God,’ I sang out with the congregation.
I spent twelve years kneeling and praying. It’s what we did. It’s all I knew.
And it was the powerful rhetoric and lyricism of the church that took me to poetry. All stories in the Bible and in church had to be interpreted; everything was symbolic and analogous. Peter had lied and then repented. We should repent for our lies. The woman turned to salt for looking back. We should not look back. Jesus died so that we could live.
I wonder now at the literalness of it all. The cross on the front room wall was made of seashells and had a likeness of Jesus hanging on it. Dad decided to take Jesus (and the glue) off the cross because ‘He is risen’, although the glue was harder to pick off.
There is barely any mention of religion in my files. It wasn’t discussed with the social worker. In my parents’ eyes he was a heathen.
We seek the attention of the world from the moment we are born. An extrovert is just an introvert trying to prove they are not.
The child has an extrovert personality and is attention-seeking. He is bright academically but unable to sustain long periods of concentration and is therefore disruptive in classroom situations. He is given quite a lot of attention because of his a) pleasant personality, b) his colour and c) he is a foster child. The foster parents own children are somewhat overshadowed by this child.
CHAPTER 7
Dawn is a wake for dusk
Light will find what it must
What will be will be and thus
Shadows speak for us
The journey to Winnock became an oft-repeated one thoughout my childhood. Dad always stayed in the car when we got there. He stayed with Sarah because Sarah was too young. Winnick was a sprawling red-brick institution set in manicured greenery. It was the picture of order and quietude covering up the secrets and lies.
Mum, me and Chris walked through the front door to an archway and after Mum signed a register we stepped into the wide tiled corridor of the Asylum. It smelled of vomit, bleach, Savlon and urine. Our footsteps were louder here and followed by a sharp echo. Haunting moans pealed into the air as we stepped onwards. A nurse appeared as if from nowhere and rushed past us. Chris was chewing his lip and getting paler and paler. He’d developed a nervous habit of sucking his upper lip, leaving it dry and chapped.
Our long journey in this other world led to a big public room, like a cove, with lots of winged armchairs with women in them. I scanned the room slowly and I noticed that none of the women were right. They were holding their heads all wrong, they were strange, dribbling creatures. Then Mum spotted one of them and stepped quietly over to her. The woman had an overhang to her mouth, wolf-like, dribbling, hair like a nest, and she was rocking backwards and forwards, a twisted arm held out like a snapped twig. There was a familiar shape to her eyes.
‘This is Aunty,’ Mum said. ‘Say hello to your aunty.’
I pulled myself together. ‘Hello, Aunty,’ I said. I liked her and she liked me. I could see a twinkle in her twisted slow eye as her bent head rocked back and forward and her twisted elbow pushed out a clawed hand towards me and brushed my cheek. She couldn’t speak. But her grunts were enough for me to know.
Chris twitched and managed a mumble. Mum took out a hanky and lovingly wiped drool from Aunty’s mouth and chin. How long did we spend there, watching her rocking back and forth? I knew instinctively not to ask questions as we headed off.
Mum