Guh bring the comb come mek mi do yuh hair “

“Noooo Mom , nooo”, Cries.

“Mi seh bring di comb!!!”

 

I walked off as she had just told me that my left leg was going to be amputated.

You see, my Mother, like so many Jamaican Mothers, didn’t take any nonsense. If she had to speak twice, it was one time too many.
Any British Caribbean girl knows the sheer horror of sitting between your Mother's legs while she butchered your scalp with the comb. And you daren’t move; otherwise, “clunk” right inna yuh head top!

 

Fast forward twenty five years, and I can now look back and laugh about what would now be classed as abuse.

My Mother and I haven’t always been on the same page. However, I have come to understand her much more now that I am an adult, especially since becoming a Mother myself.

 

My Mother was brought up in an era where children were seen and not heard. She always told me

“Unu lucky. In Jamaica, from yuh walk, yuh haffi work!”

I always wondered why you would ever give a three-year-old chores, but I guess I am lucky, in that respect.

It wasn’t until the recent influx of social media memes and youtube shorts that I realised that I wasn’t the only child dealt with in what seemed to be, a cold and detached way. Watching shorts from yard bwoys and prince marni had me howling with laughter, because suddenly I realised that this wasn’t just something that my Mother did; this was just the way that many Jamaican parents raised their children.

I wasn’t brought up in a Caribbean area or even in an area with an ethnic minority community. I had no-one from a similar background who lived anywhere near me. I was a little first generation British Caribbean girl who grew up in a predominantly white neighbourhood, so all I had to compare my childhood to was the English children who lived in the same cul-de-sac.

 

From what I could see, English parents didn’t shout, nor did they beat their children, which seemed like a life of luxury to me. I always thought my Mother didn’t like me. She would say no and never explain why.

She would lose her patience very quickly. She wouldn’t teach me how to do things, she would just expect me to pick it up and learn from watching her, just as she had learnt, I guess.

 

She would get angry if the house wasn’t exactly how she left it. My Mom definitely has OCD. Saturday mornings were known amongst many as the day of “clean up dis dyam house”, but actually in my household, so was every other day. Saturday mornings were the deep-cleaning version. My Mother would wake me up and expect me to clean the bathroom spotless while she went on her hands and knees to scrub the kitchen floor.

“Get up and clean the bathroom”

I hated cleaning the bathroom because it meant that I had to touch what we children called “the doo-doo hole”.

After I had grudgingly cleaned the sink and just about cleaned the floor, Mom would come and check, inspecting the place like Miss Trunchbull from Matilda. Once she approved of my standard of cleaning
she would walk out and I would electric slide into my bedroom quietly before she thought of another chore.
Ten minutes later, I’d hear

“Naaleeee”

My names Natalie but for some reason my Mom, along with the rest of the Birmingham population, refuses to pronounce the T.

“Yes Mom”.

“Guh put arn yuh clothes come follow mi a road”.

‘Mom no can I stay here? I’ll clean up the house, please Mom”

“Mi seh!! G.u.h put arn yuh clothes dem!"

“Jsgckgakcgkagsdgdkjhaskhfkhfkh! “

I’d mumble under my breath.
“I swear, when I’m sixteen Im leaving, I’m staying here, watch!”.

This was the worst day ever. I hated Saturday mornings. First cleaning and now this! How dare I be used to help out with maintaining the house.

Of course, I knew what was in store. My Mom was going to reintroduce child slave labour and use me as her personal 19th century mule!
Well, at least that’s how it felt to a lazy ten-year-old. I was sure that normal kids stay at home and watch Nickelodeon and CD:UK.

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Instead, I’d be left standing there with the bags in the stinky indoor bullring market where the stench of fish, chicken bottom and all the extra parts, were on sale and I didn’t want to be there.
Occasionally I’d cross paths with another poor old Caribbean British child in the market. We’d give each other ‘the look’ and hold up the hunger games symbol of hope.

Once my Mom had finished her 17.5 hour shopping trip to the bullring, we’d go home and she would absolutely throw down in the kitchen by cooking ‘Saturday soup’.

Mutton, dumplings, thyme, love and the rest of it. It was my absolute favourite meal as a kid. My Mom would cut my dumplings into triangles (and still does lol).

Now I find myself sharing these moments with my son.
In my Mother's house, every bed sheet and pillowcase was ironed and folded symmetrically. And yes, my mother would have her dining room table set at ALL times, but no, we were not allowed to sit at it.
She would send me out to play and would never come along. I taught myself how to ride my bike, climb trees, rollerblade, and do other child-like leisure activities. Things that I’d see other children
learn to do with their parents.

 

She would make me pancakes for Pancake Day, but would never let me help. She would get a Christmas tree and decorate it, but wouldn’t let me join in.

She wouldn’t put sugar on my cereal, or put salt on my food. Whilst my dad greeted me after school with a bag of sweets, my Mother would bring an apple (to my eight year old disgust).

She would make me read books daily, and clap me around the ear if I didn’t read fluently. By the time I was eight, I was reading children’s novels and could do all my times tables like I
was a calculator.

Of course in retrospect, I can now appreciate that she is responsible for the love I have for reading and writing and whilst I certainly wouldn’t mirror any of her parenting methods, I can sit here today and be grateful about the things she unknowingly taught me.

 

I have always been creative, as a child, I never knew where it came from, but now as an adult I can see that it was from my Mother.
My Mother would knit myself and my sibling’s jumpers that looked like they came from Marks and Spencer’s. She would sit in front of the fire with her knitting needles and wool, and create designs that I can only sit in astonishment over. She could bake pies and cakes like a pastry chef. She arranged flowers for weddings like she worked for inter-flora, and would never ask clients for a penny.
My mom didn’t show love outwardly in the traditional sense, but this was her way of showing love.

Knitting us jumpers for the winter. Brining us back slices of cake from any function she attended. If my Mother had half a slice of bread she would share it. She would always say.

“If anybody need food, yuh give dem”

I’m glad I can say that is something I do and will continue to.
Her morals and ethics came from her religious background, and 94% of Jamaicans are Christian. That meant going to church on Sundays. Church in the UK is punctual and two hours long. In a Jamaican church, expect to be able to take a nap, write a novel, and still have time for more praise and worship before you leave.

 

To my mother's disapproval, I am what most would call a tomboy. I still own more trainers than shoes. However, I do have two pairs of seven-year-old heels that I wear on special occasions. It is my theory that heels were handcrafted my Satan himself. Why would anyone want to walk around like a silent ninja once the pain sinks in?

So, Back to church. We’d enter

“Marnin sister Brown”

“Marning sister Scarlett”

Not even five minutes in and I’d be thinking

“I’m a celebrity, GET ME OUT OF HERE”

Praise and worship would start and the choir would start to sing

“Barn barn barn again, thank God Im born again”

All of a sudden from out of nowhere sister Marcia would draw for her tambourine like a samurai sword

“clan clan , clan clan clan”

Jamaicans sang traditional English hymns but would remix them like a Buju Banton riddim.
My eyes would pierce open like a deer in headlights in disbelief, amazement and annoyance simultaneously.

The Pastor would calm the congregation down bringing praise and worship to an end before he prepared to give his 75 hour long sermon. You would hear,

“HOLY HOLY! JEEEEEZUSSS”

You’d see the same old sister and brothers fainting at the front as pastor would lay hands on them. I don’t know what force they were overcome by, but it would make them shudder and almost convulse
into a frenzy. I had been pushed down to the front before, but I always wondered why I never fell back when I was touched. HMMM, strange that.

When church was over I would surely praise god at that moment in excitement because Sunday dinner was about to be served.

There are moments of melancholy that set in when I reminisce about parts of my childhood but when I think back, things start to make sense just that little bit more.

When I was a child I would wake up due to the illumination of my Moms car lights shining through my bedroom window as she drove on to our front driveway.

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I would then hide under my bed sheets as if I were asleep. Because I knew something in the house wouldn’t be done right and she would most likely be angry.

Now, I can see that my Mother was just tired. She worked twelve hour shifts as a theatre nurse, leaving the house at 7pm and returning at 7 am.

There isn’t anything she hasn’t seen, she has recalled stories of being in theatre with surgeons as they operated on patients with terminal cancer. She has had patients rushed into the emergency clinic foaming at the mouth with rabies. She has seen babies die, and has had to treat it as a day job , otherwise, how would you continue to do such a job?

She had five children, four under the age of 10. Like many Jamaican parents, my Mother had no idea of how to deal with being a black woman in a very racist Britain, while simultaneously being a wife, a nurse and a Parent. Often her short responses, lack of engagement and cold exterior was just the result of a woman who had the world on her shoulders, but never had been taught how to manage her emotions along with her responsibilities.

I never saw my Mom show many emotions, she was always tough. No hugs or kisses, you just had to get the job done to get through life and hugs and kisses would not cut it in the real world.

The first time I ever saw vulnerability from my Mother was during the Christmas season. My Grandmother was due to stay with us on Christmas day, but called to say she could not make it.

My Mother said ok, put the phone down and continued frying fish while she wept. At that very moment I saw a woman who just wanted the love of her own Mother, but had never been shown it. I am starting to see a pattern surrounding the breakdown within the family institute that has been passed down from generation to generation in the Afro-Caribbean community.

Although my mom seemed cold to us, in her eyes, she was trying to prepare us for the big, bad world. She did the best with what she had and I can see that now. She has lost her husband, her
daughter and her granddaughter.

 

Although my family all felt grief, my soul will always shudder at my Mothers scream down the phone when I confirmed that her sixteen year old granddaughter had passed away. I had heard the scream of a woman who had nothing. She screamed as though she had lost everything. I had heard the scream of a woman who felt pain and hurt. I had heard the scream of a Mother who had lost her child and I could, but only hang my head down in sympathy.

Since then, my Mother has been a pillar of support to our family, she has cooked and cleaned, she has looked after her grandchildren and she has been able to get up each day and continue to live this life, improving herself each day. She may not do all the things that I would expect , but she is trying.

 

My Mom says politically incorrect things, she says the most inappropriate things at the wrong times, to the point I could literally die where I stand at times lol. She frowns upon me when I speak patois in public (not that I could ever speak it well). She doesn’t like crowds of people and hates groups that are loud. In other words, she is so boujee, which is incredibly annoying.

I may not completely understand her, but she is my Mother and the very least I can do, is say,

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Thank you Mom.

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By Natalie Scarlett