she breastfed her wherever she happened to be, and didn’t care who was offended at a mother’s need to feed her child
she took her everywhere, strapped to her back or across her front in a sling, deposited her in the corner of rehearsal rooms, or on the table at meetings
she took her on tour on trains and planes in a travel cot that looked more like a carry-all, once almost sending her through the airport scanner, begging them not to arrest her over it
she created the position of seven godmothers and two godfathers
to ensure there’d be a supply of babysitters for when her child was no longer quite so compliant and portable
Yazz was allowed to wear exactly what she liked so long as she wasn’t endangering herself or her health
she wanted her to be self-expressed before they tried to crush her child’s free spirit through the oppressive regimentation of the education system
she has a photo of her daughter walking down the street wearing a plastic Roman army breastplate over an orange tutu, white fairy wings, a pair of yellow shorts over red and white stripy leggings, a different shoe on each foot (a sandal and a welly), lipstick smudged on her lips, cheeks and forehead (a phase), and her hair tied into an assortment of bunches with miniature dolls hanging off the ends
Amma ignored the pitying or judgemental looks from passers-by and small-minded mothers at the playground or nursery
Yazz was never told off for speaking her mind, although she was told off for swearing because she needed to develop her vocabulary
(Yazz, say you find Marissa unpleasant or unlikeable rather than describing her as a shit-faced smelly bottom)
and although she didn’t always get what she wanted, if she argued her case strongly enough, she was in with a chance
Amma wanted her daughter to be free, feminist and powerful
later she took her on personal development courses for children to give her the confidence and articulacy to flourish in any setting
big mistake
Mum, Yazz said at fourteen when she was pitching to go to Reading Music Festival with her friends, it would be to the detriment of my juvenile development if you curtailed my activities at this critical stage in my journey towards becoming the independent-minded and fully self-expressed adult you expect me to be, I mean, do you really want me rebelling against your old-fashioned rules by running away from the safety of my home to live on the streets and having to resort to prostitution to survive and thereafter drug addiction, crime, anorexia and abusive relationships with exploitative bastards twice my age before my early demise in a crack house?
Amma fretted the whole weekend her little girl was away
adult men had been ogling her daughter since before puberty
there are a lot more paedophiles out there than people realize
a year later Yazz was calling her a feminazi when she was on her way out to a party and Amma dared suggest she lower her skirt and heels and raise the scoop neck of her top so that at least 30% of her body mass was covered, as opposed to the 20% currently given a decency rating
not to mention The Boyfriend, glimpsed when he dropped her off in his car
as soon as Yazz was in the door, Amma was waiting in the hallway to ask her the sort of harmless question any parent would ask
who is he and what does he do? hoping Yazz would say he was in the sixth form, a relatively harmless schoolboy then
Yazz replied with dead-pan insolence, Mum, he’s a thirty-year-old psychopath who abducts vulnerable women and locks them in a cellar for weeks on end while he has his wicked way with them before chopping them into pieces and sticking them in the freezer for his winter stews
before waltzing upstairs to her room leaving a whiff of whacky-backy
nor is the child she raised to be a feminist calling herself one lately
feminism is so herd-like, Yazz told her, to be honest, even being a woman is passé these days, we had a non-binary activist at uni called Morgan Malenga who opened my eyes, I reckon we’re all going to be non-binary in the future, neither male nor female, which are gendered performances anyway, which means your women’s politics, Mumsy, will become redundant, and by the way, I’m humanitarian, which is on a much higher plane than feminism
do you even know what that is?
Amma misses her daughter now she’s away at university
not the spiteful snake that slithers out of her tongue to hurt her mother, because in Yazz’s world young people are the only ones with feelings
but she misses the Yazz who stomps about the place
who rushes in as if a hurricane’s just blown her into a room – where’s my bag/phone/bus pass/books/ticket/head?
the familiar background sounds when she’s around, the click of the bathroom door when she’s in it, even though it’s just the two of them in the house, a habit begun at puberty which Amma finds affronting
the exactly ten crunches of the pepper mill over the (canned!) tomato or mushroom soup that she prefers to Amma’s lovely homemade ones
the murmur of music and radio chatter coming from her bedroom in the morning
the sight of her daughter curled up on the sofa under a duvet in the living room on Saturdays, watching television, until she’s ready to go out at midnight
Amma can just about remember that she too used to go out late and return home on the morning bus
the house breathes differently when Yazz isn’t there
waiting for her to return and create some noise and chaos
she hopes she comes home after university
most of them do these days, don’t they?
they can’t afford otherwise
Yazz can stay forever
really.
Yazz
1
Yazz
sits on the seat chosen by Mum in the middle of the stalls, one of the best in the house, although she’d rather be hidden away at the back in case the play is another embarrassment
she’s tied her amazingly wild, energetic, strong and voluminous afro back because people sitting behind her in venues complain they can’t see the stage
when her afro’d compatriots accuse people of racism or microaggressions for this very reason, Yazz asks them how they’d feel if an unruly topiary hedge blocked their view of the stage at a concert?
two members of her uni squad, the Unfuckwithables, are seated either side of her, Waris and Courtney, hard workers like her because they’re all determined to get good degrees because without it they’re
stuffed
they’re all stuffed anyway, they agree
when they leave uni it’s gonna be with a huge debt and crazy competition for jobs and the outrageous rental prices out there mean her generation will have to move back home forever, which will lead to even more of them despairing at the future and what with the planet about to go to shit with the United Kingdom soon to be disunited from Europe which itself is hurtling down the reactionary road and making fascism fashionable again and it’s so crazy that the disgusting perma-tanned billionaire has set a new intellectual and moral low by being president of America and basically it all means that the older generation has RUINED EVERYTHING and her generation is doooooomed
unless they wrest intellectual control from their elders
sooner rather than later
Yazz is reading English Literature and plans to be a journalist with her own controversial column in a globally-read newspaper because she has a lot to say and it’s about time the whole world heard her