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 children
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