My Name Is Why. Lemn Sissay
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‘from birth’ and, as children have a sense for these things, I realised that no one mentioned her: not Grandma, her mum, or my mum, her sister.
My grandmother, Phyllis Munro, never visited her daughter with Mum and us. I wonder, does Catherine believe she took away what her sister needed? What a thought! People can be cruel to themselves. People can be cruel to each other. Was my mum born in shock that she had survived? Did she blame herself? Did her mother blame her? Was Catherine living with a constant sense that she was not good enough because she had taken the air from her sister? She would do everything to prove otherwise. She would foster a black baby and show her mother (who was a foster parent too) that she was good, in spite of what she had done to her sister inside her mother’s womb. I honestly believe that if my mum could have changed places with her sister in the asylum then she would.
Nature may be cruel but at least it is honest. It’s not the doings of the Devil or of God. My aunty hadn’t done anything wrong. Her sister hadn’t done anything wrong. Her mother hadn’t done wrong. This was not a curse for sins. If they could all let themselves see that this is the beauty of nature. My mother’s twin sister was beautiful. She was as beautiful as any catwalk model and her mind was as relevant as Alice Walker’s. It’s not my aunt who has the problem. It’s my grandmother who couldn’t look at her, and whose subsequent hatred of her other daughter – my mother – caused my mother’s inescapable feeling that she didn’t deserve to be alive. No Christmas and no birthday would rid my mother of the feeling that her twin sister had a birthday and a Christmas too.
All things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small!
There were two other sisters, Ruth and Sue, and a brother called Alec – my uncles and aunts. I think Sue was the adopted one. Ruth’s portrait hung in my grandmother’s front room above the fireplace. It hurt my mother, but not because she would take anything away from Ruth. It was because my mother felt her picture would never be on the wall because it would remind her mother of her other daughter, the one we visited.
I was born into a laburnum-tree family with its beauteous bloom and poisonous seeds. I saw Grandma at least once a week, and I loved her. Maybe she did love Catherine Greenwood, the twin who survived. Maybe she loved her so much she couldn’t show it. Because to show it would have made her feel she loved her daughter in the asylum less. Maybe Catherine was her favourite, the one she fought for, the one who survived; she was the first. But Catherine never felt it and consequently found love difficult to give.
Grandma Munro was always cutting her down to size. The disappointment inside Mum deepened and I guess it explained her begrudging discontentment with others. The parent and daughter reinforced each other’s dysfunctional behaviour like rutting stags caught in each other’s antlers. In fact, all they wanted of each other was love. This was the great rift. Catherine was the first daughter and Phyllis was the first mother. And the other daughter was in an asylum. This is how anger is stoked. Bitterness rots the vessel that carries it.
None of this is in the files. Grandma was a registered foster carer with the local council, like her daughter. I never saw any other foster children there. The only time I knew of a foster child being at her house was when I was sent there. Duncan Munro, Granddad, was an outpost, an ex-whisky-drinking, motorbike-riding maverick from Lochinver in the Highlands.
We holidayed there at every opportunity. He owned a picturesque cottage surrounded by hazelnut trees and silver birch that bowed down the hillside to the bay of Lochinver. My memories of those times are idyllic: the smell of wet heather and bracken, the majestic vision of Suilven in all its glory. If God lived anywhere it would be here, I reckoned.
Before settling down with Grandma, Granddad would often get mad drunk in Lochinver and jump on his motorbike and ride up the treacherous cliff edges like a hurricane. And now and again, I’d catch glimpses of that wild Highlander. The cottage had a little stream (a burn) that we used to bathe in. And we’d go down to the bay with him to get salmon, trout and mussels. I’ve loved mussels ever since.
He was a rugged, left-wing free spirit, and he’d ended up in Bryn, of all places, and there was something about me being ‘other’ and him being ‘other’ that gently brought us together amongst the nodding tomato plants of his green-house. I liked nothing more than standing there, clearing away weeds while he clipped the tomatoes and told me stories.
From seven to twelve Mum would send me to stay alone at my grandparents’ home in Bryn. Grandma made me mop the floors, polish the furniture, sweep the yard. I can’t remember any of my brothers and sisters being sent away. It’s only at the time of writing that I realise it was just me. I didn’t mind. I enjoyed chores.
My grandma was so overweight it would eventually kill her. She ruled over my mother with a rapier tongue and a cynical withering look, which could reduce Mum to tears. Grandma Munro was the queen of the chessboard. She surveyed the world like its aim was to take her out. There wasn’t space for grey areas in Grandma Munro or self-reflection. There was a pathological need to be right about things. There was little time for reflection. There was good and bad, right and wrong, heaven and hell. All of this clarity would belie the murkiness.
I can still hear the emptiness of the school song mocking and echoing down the corridors of the asylum.
All things bright and beautiful,
all creatures great and small.
All things wise and wonderful,
the Lord God made them all.
Was there something cruel in this family, a strong undercurrent threatening to drag me out into the wide ocean? Was there something about this family that locks its damaged children into places they can’t be seen and then punishes itself for the guilt it feels?
CHAPTER 8
Shadows plunder me
Beneath the sun and moon
The undercurrent under me
The electric bathroom
When my hands touched the tap, electricity surged through my body. It terrified me. I stood, naked in the bathtub, and screamed. Dad rushed in. Dad tried the tap with his hands. Nothing happened. Mum walked pensively into the bathroom. He asked me to do it again. I did and electricity shot through me. Again I screamed. Mum was standing behind him. ‘Again,’ she said. Dad tried it again. Nothing. And nodded that I should do it again. I pleaded with them and saw the disbelief. If they were thinking that my reaction was false, what were they thinking about me? I slowly drew both my hands to both taps. It happened again, electricity twisting my insides. It felt as if a layer of skin was being pulled from my body in the way a tablecloth can be pulled from a polished table. My mother looked more and more horrified. And this time she nodded for me to put my hands on the cold and hot taps.
Once again, Dad tried the taps. Nothing.
‘Grab one tap,’ she said.
By now I was crying, but they were both looking at me as if I was possessed. My dad nodded to me. My hands clasped the taps again. And again, my arms, fingers and teeth were pummelled by the electric current. I look at my mother and her face was full of disgust and dismay as if to say, ‘What is inside you?’. I thought, What have I done?
‘The water! He’s in the water!’ My dad was a schoolteacher. He lifted me out of the water and hugged me to him, tighter and tighter. ‘He’s in the water,’ he said.
This memory was so clear in my mind that I thought it must not have been a memory at all.
This is how it was reported in my files:
29.9.75 Visit to foster home Norman seen.
The home was in a chaotic state and Mrs. Greenwood very distressed. On Sunday the electric wiring had faulted and the bath was live when the children were bathing. Mr. Greenwood, Sarah and Norman were at risk and the two children received electric shocks. No medical attention was required. Consequently