have been made for her mother to come and stay at her home and look after Norman when she goes into Hospital to have her baby. Mrs. Greenwood’s mother, Mrs. Munroe is herself one of our approved foster mothers, and we know that when this happens, Norman will be in excellent hands.
He is making normal progress for a child of his age, and as I said at the beginning, is a very happy little boy.
Child Care Officer.
15th October, 1968.
Norman was sitting in his High Chair when I visited today. He seems to be growing and developing into a sturdy little lad. He is very good with the new baby, and can say “My baby”. He has got over his initial jealousy which was in itself very slight. He is a very affectionate child, and likes to go up to the pram and say ah! and stroke, but when Mrs. Greenwood wasn’t looking, or at least when Norman thought she wasn’t looking, he often tried to nip or smack Christopher the new baby, however, he has quickly got over this, and is very loving towards him. The difficulty now is, he wants to pile all his toys on top of the baby in the pram.
Mrs. Greenwood is an excellent little mother, and does not seemed to be experiencing any difficulty in looking after the new baby and a toddler. Norman certainly isn’t being neglected because of the advent of the new baby.
In the end of September, the family went up to the North of Scotland taking the children with them. Norman, I understand caused quite a sensation, and naturally loved all the attention that he was given.
He keeps in good health and is extremely well cared for.
Child Care Officer.
14th November, 1968.
When I visited today, Norman was sitting enthralled on his potty. Mrs. Greenwood is having some difficulty in trying to get him toilet trained. He doesn’t take to this idea at all, and usually nothing happens when he is sitting on it, but he wets himself almost as soon as his trousers are put on. Just to demonstrate for me, how good he was, he immediately got up and placed the yellow plastic potty on his head and danced for me. This child certainly has a sense of rhythm and he was aware that he was causing great amusement. As, has been noted right from the beginning, this child loves to get attention. He is keeping fit and well and is developing into a very fine little boy. He has got a strong will of his own, but still he does not say very much, except Mummy and Daddy, and my baby. However, he knows everything that is being said to him, and one of his favourite words which he most certainly puts into action is ‘No’ if he doesn’t want to do something. I feel that this child will have to be guided rather than made to do things.
Christopher, the Greenwoods’ first-born child, my little brother, came along in July 1968. We were opposites. He was blue-eyed, albinoish timidity and I was a brown-eyed, Afro-haired potty-on-my-head kind of child. Sarah was born two years after Christopher and eight years later came Helen.
In an effort to demonstrate how she treats the children alike, Mrs. Greenwood calls them ‘toads’ ‘worms’ ‘snakes’ etc. If she uses one of these words to describe Norman, she will immediately say the same thing about Christopher.
Only fourteen months apart in age, Christopher and I fought like brothers – cats and dogs had nothing on us. I adored him.
The child is making good progress and plays extremely well with Christopher his foster brother, he is a very affectionate child, who needs to be shown that he is loved and wanted. Norman is very caring towards Sarah the baby, he no longer introduces her as my baby but stands by her pram, and with great dignity says ‘this is my sister’.
A few days before the family moved from their old home. Norman had come in from playing with his friends very distressed, because they had started to call him, ‘chocolate boy’.
When it came to the colour of my skin my parents referred to me as chocolate. It would have been impossible to ignore the dark-skinned heroes in 1970. Muhammad Ali was at his most famous that year. No one told me I was the same colour as him. No one told me I was the same colour as Martin Luther King. In my parents’ eyes, though, there were no black heroes. In their world, Africa was full of poor people waiting to be saved.
Racist comments from the outer world became more frequent. Mum and Dad’s response was to tell me to ignore it or to say back, ‘We are colour blind,’ or ‘We are all human beings. We are all God’s Children,’ or else: ‘Sticks and stones will break my bones but names will never hurt me.’ But names weren’t the problem. The underlying unkindness was the problem. We don’t fear the snakebite. We fear the venom. It has been formulated inside the snake from the moment it was born. It was the underlying unkindness of other children that bothered me because it came from their parents.
My mum fostered a child as her mother did before her; only my mum fostered a ‘coloured’ baby in 1967, in a time of racial intolerance in England. Some smiled and stopped to look at me in my pram and others spat on the back of her coat as she walked by. Years later they would do the same to me. So whatever this racism was, it would be the shadow to the light of my parents’ love.
CHAPTER 3
Meet me by the morning
On the corner of night
Where the mist rises
Where love might
Every street has its weird family. Often they are not weird at all, just bohemian, childless, pious, snobby, too well educated, super-stylish. They’re just different. You never think it’s your family, though. No one does. Our family loved God and God loved us. We feared God. We lived in love and in fear of God. It was a lot for me to take on board, especially as I also loved Jubblys, Curly Wurlys, R. White’s Lemonade, a quarter of Bon Bons, Sherbet Dip Dabs, Milky Bars. And I didn’t fear any of them.
I was a happy child, always listening to adults, to what was being said, trying to pick up the root of the conversation. I was inquisitive and unafraid. Another way of looking at it might be that I was so afraid of missing something that I had to know everything that was going on around me.
Granddad Munro made wooden chests for each of us. One for Norman. One for Christopher. One for Sarah. Outside we ran free. The Flower Park, the Big Park and the copse near the school – these were my adventure playgrounds. I was a regular candidate for the early-bed brigade and spent much of my time mooning at my friends from the bedroom window.
Mum called me in one day, but for once I wasn’t in trouble. Mum and Dad were in the kitchen. ‘Get upstairs!’ she shouted at me. But I didn’t go upstairs – not all the way. I stopped to listen as she continued with the same tone to my dad.
‘Just go out and do it. Now! Before the whole town sees it,’ she said, banging cutlery, rearranging chairs, slamming cupboards.
Mum was a nurse. I wondered whether she was like this in the hospital when she delivered the babies. ‘Just go, now! Here, take this, and you’ll need a bucket too, won’t you?’ The sarcastic tone hung in the air.
As Dad walked out the front
