My story begins without her or any knowledge of her.
CHAPTER 2
I will build an embassy
In your heart over time
There is a plot of land inside me
Build one in mine
The Greenwoods and I lived at Number 2, Osborne Road, where the swallows came each summer to nest in the eaves. It was a semi-detached house fronted by sandstone with a sheer, solid, red-brick gable-end wall flush to a cobbled street on the left. The garden at the front just about coped with a giant laburnum tree lunging from the bottom left corner. Google Dictionary tells me the laburnum is ‘a small European tree which has hanging clusters of yellow flowers followed by slender pods containing poisonous seeds. The hard timber is sometimes used as an ebony substitute.’
We had roses round the perimeter and a pathway on the right side. There was symmetry between our house and next door’s. Both had giant bay windows downstairs and up. Parallel to the cobbled street were the backs of houses facing Wigan Road where the big park was. At the front, beyond the laburnum tree, across Osborne Road, was the Flower Park.
There was a chemist and two doctors in Market Street, a baker’s and a butcher’s where we went on Saturdays, two junior schools, a grammar school and a comprehensive and the shoe shop where my mum worked her first job before she became a nurse. It was a small town sown with housing developments from different eras. They were separated by parks. There was no river. All the water was in the baptismal pool beneath the floorboards in front of the pulpit in the Baptist Church.
We attended Bryn Baptist on Wednesdays and Sundays. We wrapped ourselves in hymns and were lost amongst the flock. It’s where our friends and family were. And we prayed. We prayed at breakfast. We prayed at lunch. We prayed at dinner. We prayed before sleep and in the mornings. There was good and bad in the world. There was God and the Devil around us. There was darkness and light, daytime and night, black and white.
On the surface Ashton-in-Makerfield was a plain-speaking Lancashire town. Even the street names were plain-speaking: Liverpool Road led to Liverpool, Wigan Road to Wigan, Bryn Road to Bryn. Market Street is where the market was. And the road to hell went to hell. And racing through the fields, hidden from view, was the fast, furious East Lancs Road linking Manchester to Liverpool.
Ashton was adventureland – shop doors rang when they opened, milkmen whistled from milk floats, old men tipped their flat caps, a horse and cart drove through the mist early on Saturday morning. It was the rag and bone man shouting ‘Rag and Bone’ in three notes like church bells.
Norman Sissay 29th May, 1968.
Norman is a healthy contented child, who is well settled in this home. The foster parents are devoted to him as are also their respective families. He is a very affectionate child with a happy smiling face and large appealing eyes. Needless to say when he is taken out he attracts a great deal of attention.
Norman is well settled in his routine. He goes to bed between 6.0. and 6.30. in the evening and sleeps through until 8.0. o’clock the following morning. He has an excellent appetite, enjoys his food. The child experiences the occasional tummy upset, but this usually occurs when he gets too warm. The day I visited, there had been a change in the weather and Norman had been upset by it, but had quickly recovered from it. He was enjoying a bottle before going to bed.
Norman is very well and appears to be very happy at the present time. He is a contented child with a winsome smile, and huge liquid eyes, which at once attract people to him. He is very little trouble, and is contented both during the day and during the night. Mrs. Greenwood is pregnant and is expecting a baby at the end of August or beginning of September, but she does not seem to find Norman any trouble at all. She tucks him under her arm as nurses often do, and carries him about that way. She says she does not feel the strain. Arrangements 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