The International Writers Magazine - Our Tenth Year: Dreamscapes

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Skin Deep • Karen Murray Gow What’s the time Mr Wolf? The clock was moving. The time was telling me nothing. The clank of tins and smell of lumpy potatoes and cabbage progressing along the cubist corridors was telling me more; as it entered into my classroom. I look out of the window as discreetly as a five year old can, through the tissue paper, staining the glass. "What you looking at Karen?" Sandra Holland my mate asks.

I said, "nothing". A light shard beam’s in through the thinness of Scarlett catching my face.
"You are going red. Liar, liar, pants are on fire." I prepared to burn.

I was learning at school that difference matters: ginger, tall, thin or fat and that fleas belong to the poor. Heather was poor, Heather sat on her own. I was never going to sit on my own. I was also learning at school that parents’ differences also matter. This was the sixties, and the results of free love had not yet filtered acceptingly, to sit comfortably behind little desks. Deborah Thomson didn’t have a dad. Deborah Thomson’s mum was a bad, bad woman and Deborah needed to be told.
"Deborah ain`t got a dad, Deborah’s mum is bad." Angels’ faces pierce with their pitch. She was only saved from being called a Bastard, or her mum a slut, because our vocabulary had not quite developed enough, to twist the knife.

We are all dispersed into the hall. Metal buckets with rank mops edge the parquet. The sick smell of sawdust wallows, under the extra stench, of contained food. Now steaming out of casonagenic trays. Orderly but noisily, as only children can, we scrape chairs to sit at our allocated tables. Silenced by the universal putting together of hands. `Onward Christian soldiers. No Jehovah’s, Muslims or Hindus, have infiltrated the front line, all the other religions have gone to hell. We pray for our dinner; thankful that we are not like those poor, starving black children; foreign brown, dirty children. We are thankful that we are white.

Rings of carrots are pushed, by nice Cookie, into custard smeared hands. The hall silently deflates; releasing an air of energy as conkers smash, marbles clink and skipping ropes, whip the playground. I couldn’t concentrate on my timing. I could see the school gates. Open, welcoming, I was out on the first turn.
"Karen Gow?" Tall Cookie, mean Cookie, stands over me. "You are being picked up in ten minutes." She said.
I had been aware of this information from the time my mother kissed me goodbye at the front door. The dentist was scary but nothing compared to the pain of those chants. Or to sitting on your own.
A little Morris Minor drives slowly but surely and parks next to the playground.
"Your it," Mandy shouts. I was it, stuck firmly, in the mud.
Heather sat alone. Deborah was bullied. I had learnt, that mud, sticks.

I quickly find a chain and link arms, bonding to a scrum; safe as part of a whole. Whilst as discreet as a five year old can, I look towards the little car.
"What you looking at?" Mandy asks again. This time she follows my gaze to the car. The link breaks; the whole playground seems to look at the car. The black of a sensible shoe, a flash of a sensible amount of stocking, exposed before hitting the hem of a starched, blue pinafore. Creases fall obediently to the swipe of a hand. Her white collar contrasts against her black hair and her coffee, toffee, skin.

The black nurse, the brown nurse, the white teeth, what’s your name nurse walks into the playground. Mean Cookie looks insignificant against the pride of the Empire. Where Punka Whallers once cooled her brow and where privates saluted the protocol of stripes. Court Marshals, out weighed, their racist thoughts.

Forty percent, maybe fifty percent of the children knew the black nurse, brown nurse, what’s your name nurse. She had pulled them from their mother legs and slapped them into life. These post war children, these love children, these white, ignorant spoilt children. She thanked God, that she was black.

No words needed I walk towards her. She had not been spoilt at the suckle of a breast. She had not been spoilt by the love of a man. She turned on her sensible shoes as I reached her. Sensibly, I knew my place and walked to the car and got in.

I slunked shamefully down to avoid the eyes, as they wondered why the black nurse, brown nurse, what’s your name nurse had taken me. I heard the chants, as they questioned why my skin never whitened to meet the December snow. I felt the fear of persecution. I felt weak against the strength of this woman.
I had learnt before dinner the feeling of shame. I had learnt after dinner the feeling of pride.
"Sit up straight child." She said
"Yes Gran," I answered. I sat up.
© Karen Murray Gow October 2009
Karen is studying for her Masters in Creative Writing at the University of Portsmouth

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