Girl Woman Other Read online

  Bernardine Evaristo

  * * *

  GIRL, WOMAN, OTHER

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Amma

  Yazz

  Dominique

  Chapter Two

  Carole

  Bummi

  LaTisha

  Chapter Three

  Shirley

  Winsome

  Penelope

  Chapter Four

  Megan/Morgan

  Hattie

  Grace

  Chapter Five

  The After-party

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Bernardine Evaristo is the award-winning author of seven books and numerous other published works, spanning fiction, poetry, essays, literary criticism and drama. She has won the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize, among many others, and is a Member of the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Society of Arts. She has also been awarded an MBE.

  By the same author

  Island of Abraham

  Lara

  The Emperor’s Babe

  Soul Tourists

  Blonde Roots

  Hello Mum (Quick Reads)

  Mr Loverman

  For the sisters & the sistas & the sistahs & the sistren & the women & the womxn & the wimmin & the womyn & our brethren & our bredrin & our brothers & our bruvs & our men & our mandem & the LGBTQI+ members of the human family

  Chapter One

  Amma

  1

  Amma

  is walking along the promenade of the waterway that bisects her city, a few early morning barges cruise slowly by

  to her left is the nautical-themed footbridge with its deck-like walkway and sailing mast pylons

  to her right is the bend in the river as it heads east past Waterloo Bridge towards the dome of St Paul’s

  she feels the sun begin to rise, the air still breezy before the city clogs up with heat and fumes

  a violinist plays something suitably uplifting further along the promenade

  Amma’s play, The Last Amazon of Dahomey, opens at the National tonight

  she thinks back to when she started out in theatre

  when she and her running mate, Dominique, developed a reputation for heckling shows that offended their political sensibilities

  their powerfully trained actors’ voices projected from the back of the stalls before they made a quick getaway

  they believed in protest that was public, disruptive and downright annoying to those at the other end of it

  she remembers pouring a pint of beer over the head of a director whose play featured semi-naked black women running around on stage behaving like idiots

  before doing a runner into the backstreets of Hammersmith

  howling

  Amma then spent decades on the fringe, a renegade lobbing hand grenades at the establishment that excluded her

  until the mainstream began to absorb what was once radical and she found herself hopeful of joining it

  which only happened when the first female artistic director assumed the helm of the National three years ago

  after so long hearing a polite no from her predecessors, she received a phone call just after breakfast one Monday morning when her life stretched emptily ahead with only online television dramas to look forward to

  love the script, must do it, will you also direct it for us? I know it’s short notice, but are you free for coffee this week at all?

  Amma takes a sip of her Americano with its customary kick-starter extra shot in it as she approaches the Brutalist grey arts complex ahead

  at least they try to enliven the bunker-like concrete with neon light displays these days and the venue has a reputation for being progressive rather than traditionalist

  years ago she expected to be evicted as soon as she dared walk through its doors, a time when people really did wear their smartest clothes to go to the theatre

  and looked down their noses at those not in the proper attire

  she wants people to bring their curiosity to her plays, doesn’t give a damn what they wear, has her own sod-you style, anyway, which has evolved, it’s true, away from the clichéd denim dungarees, Che Guevara beret, PLO scarf and ever-present badge of two interlocked female symbols (talk about wearing your heart on your sleeve, girl)

  these days she wears silver or gold trainers in winter, failsafe Birkies in summer

  winter, it’s black slacks, either baggy or tight depending on whether she’s a size 12 or 14 that week (a size smaller on top)

  summer, it’s patterned harem pants that end just below the knee

  winter, it’s bright asymmetric shirts, jumpers, jackets, coats

  year-round her peroxide dreadlocks are trained to stick up like candles on a birthday cake

  silver hoop earrings, chunky African bangles and pink lipstick

  are her perennial signature style statement

  Yazz

  recently described her style as ‘a mad old woman look, Mum’, pleads with her to shop in Marks & Spencer like normal mothers, refuses to be spotted alongside her when they’re supposed to be walking down the street together

  Yazz knows full well that Amma will always be anything but normal, and as she’s in her fifties, she’s not old yet, although try telling that to a nineteen-year-old; in any case, ageing is nothing to be ashamed of

  especially when the entire human race is in it together

  although sometimes it seems that she alone among her friends wants to celebrate getting older

  because it’s such a privilege to not die prematurely, she tells them as the night draws in around her kitchen table in her cosy terraced house in Brixton

  as they get stuck into the dishes each one has brought: chickpea stew, jerk chicken, Greek salad, lentil curry, roasted vegetables, Moroccan lamb, saffron rice, beetroot and kale salad, jollof quinoa and gluten-free pasta for the really irritating fusspots

  as they pour themselves glasses of wine, vodka (fewer calories), or something more liver-friendly if under doctor’s orders

  she expects them to approve of her bucking the trend of middle-aged moaning; instead she gets bemused smiles and what about arthritic flare-ups, memory loss and hot sweats?

  Amma passes the young busker

  she smiles with encouragement at the girl, who responds in kind

  she fishes out a few coins, places them in the violin case

  she isn’t ready to forgo cigarettes so leans on the riverside wall and lights one, hates herself for it

  the adverts told her generation it would make them appear grown-up, glamorous, powerful, clever, desirable and above all, cool

  no one told them it would actually make them dead

  she looks out at the river as she feels the warm smoke travel down her oesophagus soothing her nerves while trying to combat the adrenaline rush of the caffeine

  forty years of first nights and she’s still bricking it

  what if she’s slated by the critics? dismissed with a consensus of one-star reviews, what was the great National thinking allowing this rubbishy impostor into the building?

  of course she knows she’s not an impostor, she’s written fifteen plays and directed over forty, and as a critic once wrote, Amma Bonsu is a safe pair of hands who’s known to pull off risks

  what if the preview audiences who gave standing ovations were just being kind?

  oh shut up, Amma, you’re a veteran battle-axe, remember?

  look

  she’s got a fantastic cast: six older actresses (seen-it-all vets), six mid-careerists (survivors-so-far) and three fresh faces (naïve hopefuls), one of whom, the talented Simone, will wander in bleary-eyed to rehearsals, having forgotten to unplug the iron, turn off the stove or close her bedroom window and will waste precious rehearsal time phoning her flatmates in a panic

  a couple of months ago she’d have sold her grandmother into slavery to get this job, now she’s a spoilt little prima donna who ordered her director to pop out and fetch her a caramel latte a couple of weeks ago when it was just the two of them in a rehearsal room

  I’m so exhausted, Simone whinged, implying it was all Amma’s fault for making her work so hard

  needless to say, she dealt with Little Miss Simone Stevenson in the moment

  Little Miss Stevenson – who thinks that because she’s landed at the National straight out of drama school, she’s one step away from conquering Hollywood

  she’ll find out

  soon enough

  at times like these Amma misses Dominique, who long ago absconded to America

  they should be sharing her breakthrough career moment together

  they met in the eighties at an audition for a feature film set in a women’s prison (what else?)

  both were disillusioned at being put up for parts such as a slave, servant, prostitute, nanny or crim

  and still not getting the job

  they railed against their lot in a grotty Soho caff while devouring fried egg and bacon slathered between two slabs of soggy white bread washed down with builder’s tea alongside the sex workers who plied their trade on the streets outside

  long before Soho became a trendy gay colony

  look at me? Dominique said, and Amma did, there was nothing subservient, maternal or criminal about her

  she was über-cool, totally gorgeous, taller than most women, thinner than most women, with cut-glass cheekbones and smoky eyes with thick black lashes that literally cast a shadow on her face

  she wore leathers, kept her hair short except for a black fringe swept to one side, and rode about town on a battered old butcher’s bike chained up outside

  can’t they see I’m a living goddess? Dominique shouted with a flamboyant gesture, flicking her fringe, adopting a sultry pose as heads turned

  Amma was shorter, with African hips and thighs

  perfect slave girl material one director told her when she walked into an audition for a play about Emancipation

  whereupon she walked right back out again

  in turn a casting director told Dominique she was wasting his time when she turned up for a Victorian drama when there weren’t any black people in Britain then

  she said there were, called him ignorant before also leaving the room

  and in her case, slamming the door

  Amma realized she’d found a kindred spirit in Dominique who would kick arse with her

  and they’d both be pretty unemployable once news got around

  they went on to a local pub where the conversation continued and wine flowed

  Dominique was born in the St Pauls area of Bristol to an Afro-Guyanese mother, Cecilia, who tracked her lineage back to slavery, and an Indo-Guyanese father, Wintley, whose ancestors were indentured labourers from Calcutta

  the oldest of ten children who all looked more black than Asian and identified as such, especially as their father could relate to the Afro-Caribbean people he’d grown up with, but not to Indians fresh over from India

  Dominique guessed her own sexual preferences from puberty, wisely kept them to herself, unsure how her friends or family would react, not wanting to be a social outcast

  she tried boys a couple of times

  they enjoyed it

  she endured it

  aged sixteen, aspiring to become an actress, she headed for London where people proudly proclaimed their outsider identities on badges

  she slept rough under the Embankment arches and in shop doorways along the Strand, was interviewed by a black housing association where she lied and cried about escaping a father who’d beaten her

  the Jamaican housing officer wasn’t impressed, so you got beats, is it?

  Dominique escalated her complaint to one of paternal sexual abuse, was given an emergency room in a hostel; eighteen months later, after tearful weekly calls to the housing office, she landed a one-bedroom housing association flat in a small fifties block in Bloomsbury

  I did what I had to find a home, she told Amma, not my finest moment, I admit, still, no harm done, as my father will never know

  she went on a mission to educate herself in black history, culture, politics, feminism, discovered London’s alternative bookshops

  she walked into Sisterwrite in Islington where every single author of every single book was female and browsed for hours; she couldn’t afford to buy anything, and read the whole of Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology in weekly instalments, standing up, as well as anything by Audre Lorde she could get her hands on

  the booksellers didn’t seem to mind

  when I was accepted into a very orthodox drama school, I was already politicized and challenged them on everything, Amma

  the only person of colour in the whole school

  she demanded to know why the male parts in Shakespeare couldn’t be played by women and don’t even get me started on cross-racial casting, she shouted at the course director while everyone else, including the female students, stayed silent

  I realized I was on my own

  the next day I was taken aside by the school principal

  you’re here to become an actor not a politician

  you’ll be asked to leave if you keep causing trouble

  you have been warned, Dominique

  tell me about it, Amma replied, shut up or get out, right?

  as for me, I get my fighting spirit from my dad, Kwabena, who was a journalist campaigning for Independence in Ghana

  until he heard he was going to be arrested for sedition, legged it over here, ended up working on the railways where he met Mum at London Bridge station

  he was a ticket collector, she worked in the offices above the concourse

  he made sure to be the one to take her ticket, she made sure to be the last person to leave the train so she could exchange a few words with him

  Mum, Helen, is half-caste, born in 1935 in Scotland

  her father was a Nigerian student who vanished as soon as he finished his studies at the University of Aberdeen

  he never said goodbye

  years later her mother discovered he’d gone back to his wife and children in Nigeria

  she didn’t even know he had a wife and children

  Mum wasn’t the only half-caste in Aberdeen in the thirties and forties but she was rare enough to be made to feel it

  she left school early, went to secretarial college, headed down to London, just as it was being populated by African men who’d come to study or work

  Mum went to their dances and Soho clubs, they liked her lighter skin and looser hair

  she says she felt ugly until African men told her she wasn’t

  you should see what she looked like back then

  a cross between Lena Horne and Dorothy Dandridge

  so yeh, really ugly

  Mum hoped to spend their first date going to see a film and then on to her favourite spot, Club Afrique, right here in Soho, she’d dropped enough hints and loved to dance to highlife and West African jazz

  instead he took her to one of his socialist meetings in the backroom of a pub at the Elephant and Castle

  where a group of men sat guzzling beers and talking independence politics

  she sat there trying to act interested, impressed by his intellect

  he was impressed with her silent acquiescence, if you ask me

  they married and moved to Peckham

  I was their last child and first girl, Amma explained, blowing smoke into the already thickening fug of the room

  my three older brothers became lawyers and a doctor, their obedience to the expectations of our father meant I wasn’t pressurized to follow suit

  his only concern for me is marriage and chi ldren

  he thinks my acting career is a hobby until I have both

  Dad’s a socialist who wants a revolution to improve the lot of all of mankind

  literally

  I tell Mum she married a patriarch

  look at it this way, Amma, she says, your father was born male in Ghana in the 1920s whereas you were born female in London in the 1960s

  and your point is?

  you really can’t expect him to ‘get you’, as you put it

  I let her know she’s an apologist for the patriarchy and complicit in a system that oppresses all women

  she says human beings are complex

  I tell her not to patronize me

  Mum worked eight hours a day in paid employment, raised four children, maintained the home, made sure the patriarch’s dinner was on the table every night and his shirts were ironed every morning

  meanwhile, he was off saving the world

  his one domestic duty was to bring home the meat for Sunday lunch from the butcher’s – a suburban kind of hunter-gatherer thing

  I can tell Mum’s unfulfilled now we’ve all left home because she spends her time either cleaning it or redecorating it

  she’s never complained about her lot, or argued with him, a sure sign she’s oppressed

  she told me she tried to hold his hand in the early days, but he shook her off, said affection was an English affectation, she never tried again

  yet every year he gets her the soppiest Valentine card you can buy and he loves sentimental country music, sits in the kitchen on Sunday evenings listening to albums of Jim Reeves and Charley Pride

  tumbler of whisky in one hand, wiping tears away with the other

  Dad lives for campaigning meetings, demos, picketing Parliament and standing in Lewisham Market selling the Socialist Worker

  I grew up listening to his sermons during our evening meal on the evils of capitalism and colonialism and the merits of socialism

  it was his pulpit and we were his captive congregation

  it was like we were literally being force-fed his politics

  he’d probably be an important person in Ghana if he’d returned after Independence