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
instead he’s President for Life of our family
he doesn’t know I’m a dyke, are you kidding? Mum told me not to tell him, it was hard enough telling her, she said she suspected when pencil skirts and curly perms were all the rage and I started wearing men’s Levis
she’s sure it’s a phase, which I’ll throw back at her when I’m forty
Dad has no time for ‘the fairies’ and laughs at all the homophobic jokes comedians make on telly every Saturday night when they’re not insulting their mother-in-law or black people
Amma spoke about going to her first black women’s group in Brixton in her last year at school, she’d seen a flyer at her local library
the woman who opened the door, Elaine, sported a perfect halo of an afro and her smooth limbs were clad tightly in light blue denim jeans and tight denim shirt
Amma wanted her on sight, followed her into the main room where women sat on sofas, chairs, cushions, cross-legged on the floor, drinking cups of coffee and cider
she nervously accepted cigarettes as they were passed around, sat on the floor leaning against a cat-mauled tweedy armchair, feeling Elaine’s warm leg against her arm
she listened as they debated what it meant to be a black woman
what it meant to be a feminist when white feminist organizations made them feel unwelcome
how it felt when people called them nigger, or racist thugs beat them up
what it was like when white men opened doors or gave up their seats on public transport for white women (which was sexist), but not for them (which was racist)
Amma could relate to their experiences, began to join in with the refrains of, we hear you, sister, we’ve all been there, sister
it felt like she was coming in from the cold
at the end of her first evening, the other women said their goodbyes and Amma offered to stay behind to wash up the cups and ashtrays with Elaine
they made out on one of the bumpy sofas in the glow of the streetlight to the accompaniment of police sirens haring by
it was the closest she’d come to making love to herself
it was another coming home
the next week when she went to the meeting
Elaine was canoodling with another woman
and blanked her completely
she never went again
Amma and Dominique stayed until they were turfed out, had worked their way through numerous glasses of red wine
they decided they needed to start their own theatre company to have careers as actors, because neither was prepared to betray their politics to find jobs
or shut their mouths to keep them
it seemed the obvious way forward
they scribbled ideas for names on hard toilet paper snaffled from the loo
Bush Women Theatre Company best captured their intentions
they would be a voice in theatre where there was silence
black and Asian women’s stories would get out there
they would create theatre on their own terms
it became the company’s motto
On Our Own Terms
or Not At All.
2
Living rooms became rehearsal spaces, old bangers transported props, costumes came from second-hand shops, sets were extracted from junk yards, they called on mates to help out, everyone learning on the job, ad hoc, throwing their lot in together
they wrote grant applications on old typewriters with missing keys, budgets felt as alien to Amma as quantum physics, she balked at becoming trapped behind a desk
she upset Dominique when she arrived for admin sessions late and left early claiming headaches or PMT
they rowed when she walked into a stationery shop and ran straight out again claiming it had brought on a panic attack
she had a go at Dominique when she didn’t deliver the script she’d promised to write but was out late night clubbing instead, or forgot her lines mid-show
six months after its inception, they were constantly at loggerheads
they’d hit it off as friends, only to find they couldn’t work together
Amma called a make-or-break meeting at hers
they sat down with wine and a Chinese takeaway and Dominique admitted she got more pleasure setting up tours for the company than putting herself in front of an audience, and preferred being herself to pretending to be other people
Amma admitted she loved writing, hated admin and was she really any good as an actor? she did anger brilliantly – which was the extent of her range
Dominique became the company manager, Amma the artistic director
they employed actresses, directors, designers, stage crews, set up national tours that lasted months
their plays, The Importance of Being Female, FGM: The Musical, Dis-arranged Marriage, Cunning Stunts, were performed in community centres, libraries, fringe theatres, at women’s festivals and conferences
they leafleted outside venues as audiences left and arrived, illegally plastered posters on to billboards in the dead of night
they started getting reviews in the alternative media, and even produced a monthly Bush Women samizdat
but due to pathetically poor sales and, to be honest, pathetically poor writing, it lasted for two issues after its grand launch one summer’s evening at Sisterwrite
where a group of women rolled up to enjoy the free plonk and spill out on to the pavement to light up and chat each other up
Amma supplemented her income working in a burger bar at Piccadilly Circus
where she sold hamburgers made of reconstituted cardboard topped with rehydrated onions and rubbery cheese
all of which she also ate for free in her breaks – which gave her spots
the orange nylon suit and hat she wore meant customers saw her as a uniformed servant to do their bidding
and not her wonderful, artistic, highly individualistic and rebellious self
she slipped free crusty pies filled with apple-flavoured lumps of sugar to the runaway rent boys she befriended who operated around the station
with no idea that in years to come she’d be attending their funerals
they didn’t realize unprotected sex meant a dance with death
nobody did
home was a derelict factory in Deptford with concrete walls, a collapsing ceiling and a community of rats that defeated all attempts at extermination
thereafter she moved into a series of similarly squalid squats until she found herself living in the most desirable squat in the whole of London, a Soviet-sized former office block at the back of King’s Cross