Assembly

by Natasha Brown

disorientating, prevents you from forming an identity. Living in a place you’re forever told to leave, without knowing, without knowledge. Without history.

After the war, the crumbling empire sent again for her colonial subjects. Not soldiers, this time, but nurses to carry a wavering NHS on their backs. Enoch Powell himself sailed upon Barbados and implored us, come. And so we came and built and mended and nursed; cooked and cleaned. We paid taxes, paid extortionate rent to the few landlords who would take us. We were hated. The National Front chased, burnt, stabbed, eradicated. Churchill set up task forces to get us out. Keep England White. Enoch, the once-intrepid recruiter, now warned of bloodied rivers if we didn’t leave. New laws were drawn up; our rights revoked.

some survived. And managed somehow, on meagre wages, to put a little aside. Eventually enough to move wife, husband and child from a rented room in a house shared by five families, to a two-up two-down all of their own. That they owned. And an ethic, a mindset, a drive was established then, that persists now. A relentless, uncompromising pursuit. • Transcends race, they say of exceptional, dead black people. As if that relentless overcoming, when taken to the limit, as time stretches on to infinity, itself overcomes even limits, even infinity, even this place. • I only know Jamaica from stories. Visiting aunts and uncles, cousins – family. Unwrapping wedges of breadfruit; Julie mangos; fruit cake; a rich buttery pear sliced open, spread on to harddough bread; stories about family, sitt...

But what it takes to get there isn’t what you need once you’ve arrived.

It’s not acceptance, not yet. It’s just a step further, closer.

Born here, parents born here, always lived here – still, never from here. Their culture becomes parody on my body.

Agree

aced the exams. Premonition or plan? Doesn’t matter, I keep chasing.

Be the best. Work harder, work smarter. Exceed every expectation. But also, be invisible, imperceptible. Don’t make anyone uncomfortable. Don’t inconvenience. Exist in the negative only, the space around. Do not insert yourself into the main narrative. Go unnoticed. Become the air. Open your eyes.

I wonder, who else in this household would he say that to? In his preferred social hierarchy, his understanding of fair, who is allowed to walk, to breathe, to enjoy a Saturday? He has bluish bags beneath his eyes and pronounced jowls. His entire body slumps as he stands there, waiting for his answer. He disgusts me, I realize. His impotent anger, his need to assert himself – to tell me who he thinks this world belongs to. I turn away, and start towards the steps at the back of the garden.

The answer: assimilation. Always, the pressure is there. Assimilate, assimilate … Dissolve yourself into the melting pot. And then flow out, pour into the mould. Bend your bones until they splinter and crack and you fit. Force yourself into their form. Assimilate, they say it, encouraging. Then frowning. Then again and again. And always there, quiet, beneath the urging language of tolerance and cohesion – disappear! Melt into London’s multicultural soup. Not like Lou. Not here. Not into this. I have lived life by the principle that when I face a problem, I must work to find an action I can take to overcome it; or accommodate it; or forge a new path around it; excavate the ground beneath it, even. This is how I’ve been prepared. This is how we prepare ourselves, teach our children to approach this place of obstacle after obstacle. Work twice as hard. Be twice as good. And always, assimilate. Because they watch (us). They’re taught how to, from school. They are taught to view our bodies (selves) as objects. They learn an MEDC/LEDC divide as geography – unquestionable as mountains, oceans and other