“Leroy! You are not African,” the many
voices said.
“You are a ‘Hinglish’ boy living in ‘Hingland’.” Leroy recognised
one of the screeching haunting voices as his guardian Aunt Mo’s. She had
reminded Leroy constantly throughout his childhood. The diminutive figure of
Aunt Mo. Was fixed at fifty. Her compact and neat persona was constantly on the
move. She was always able to look down on Leroy in spite of her height that
was Aunt Mo’s magical gift. Aunt Mo had the ability to look down on all that
were much taller than herself and reversed any possible intimidation factor.
He wide eyes questioned his own being in the presence of Aunt Mo. Leroy felt hollow as he
tried to avert his eyes. Her eyes were full of purpose where as Leroy’s were void
and opened pierced by fear, but open.
Leroy would retreat into a distant place in his mind, a place of safety and calm.
One day he would physically make that much needed trip to the far off place in his heart.
To ensure he fully understood what he was
told, he would be beaten with clothes hangers, pots, pans, shoe heels and
broomsticks any thing that came to hand until they broke. Leroy never broke.
“Look at
your nose how it broad, lord have mercy you have to do something about your
nose. If it grows any broader you will certainly turn into an African. Its only
African people have nose broad like that.”
Aunt Mo's considered logic as a tirade of blows rained down on his body of eight years. Leroy stood in a zinc bathtub. Tepid water rippled around his ankles he shivered uncontrollably, the tub rattled across the lino floor, his thin black limbs danced the shimmy as his teeth chattered his eyes swivelled blankly searching for a point to which they could fix.
“Stop the trembling! Stop the trembling!” Aunt Mo. Shouted. Leroy tensed his body in an attempt to stop only to “tremble” even more.
“Are you afraid of me?”
“No mama” Leroy said in self-defence.
“Well stop the trembling,” She says hitting him with the cold wash-rag It was during one such episode of beating that I the spirit left the body of Leroy Marriot to observe the situation from a safe distance.
Watching I could see the frenzy of his guardian mother Aunt Mo. possessed with a maddening anger. The pain Leroy suffered was often disproportionate to his bawling and screams. It was his dramatic game plan in a vain attempt to lessen the blows. I watched over the pathetic couple entwined in pain. Aunt Mo. was not to realise she was flogging a spirit less body. Time had stood still for the body of Leroy, only the background noise of television theme tune to ‘Panorama’ registered in his mind as a landmark to his suffering as I
danced to Peter and the Wolf by Prokefiev. The pain suffered by the child of eight years was incredible to bear it was safer viewing the episode from the ceiling. I shared the secret of our ability to separate with something deep down in the body’s empty shell. We had warning signals when the pain would be imminent. Total silence and a blank stare would indicate it’s time to split, (Out-of-here).
They were trying to beat the African from themselves, to dislodge and erase their very own ancestral memories. The Queen of England was loved in our house; she was spoken of with reverence and often mentioned in the same breath as God. Whenever the National Anthem was played there was silence until it ended, then the Test card would come on with a continuous tone and only then would the TV be switched off. Our patriotic English lifestyle was a contradiction in terms to our seeking for freedom from the imperialists. Leroy lived in a Royalist household of Aunt Mo. and his father Ivan Marriott. Aunt Mo’s face became as big as the television set as it bore down on Leroy. She was not real, but another powerful image from the outside world, imposing itself onto Leroy’s reality. Suddenly the face and her body became smaller and smaller until it appeared distant in the far corner of the living room. Leroy became dislocated from his own presence in the room. He found himself staring at the expanding and retracting figure.
As he floated from the ground, yet was weighted by his experience. Leroy tried to escape his own gaze but yet he was transfixed to the spot. He felt light, then heavy, light then heavy and so it went on for what was an
eternity.
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