Writer's Top Tips & Story

You Can’t Be Two Things At Once

By Lynne Reid Banks

 “I hate you!”

That’s what my Ellie shouted at me today.   Of course I knew she didn’t mean it – I mean, she did, at the time, but not really, not really.   You don’t hate your mother on a permanent basis for taking away your iPod till you’ve done your homework.   I hope.

But part of the hurt was that Ellie’s anger brought back a time when  I hated  my mother for real.   Yes.  I hated her for a whole year, back in the eighties, when I was ten, like Ellie is now.   I never said “I hate you” but I know I did.

What did she do to me you ask.  Well, she didn’t take away anything I loved (no iPods then, of course, but we did have a very old black-and-white telly.)    She didn’t lock me and my brother in a cellar. She loved us and fed us and occasionally gave us treats.  So what was to hate?

She had something in her life more important than us, that’s what.   

Of course, she worked.  She had a job - she had to have, to keep us.  But that wasn’t what I resented.  What I resented was her obsession with fighting Apartheid.

Apartheid was the system in South Africa that separated black people from whites.   The white politicians made laws that forced black people out of their homes and onto the worst land and made them live terrible lives.   Often they didn’t get enough to eat.  If they wanted to work – only hard and dirty work, like in the mines and for white people in their homes – they had to carry passes to move about their own country.  If they were caught without a pass, or if they did or said anything the government didn’t like, they could be beaten or jailed or even killed. 

Mom explained all about it to us, lots of times.    I don’t think my brother Roly and I really wanted to hear about it.   We remembered South Africa as a beautiful, green, sunny place full of flowers and swimming pools and rich, happy white people.   Until Roly was eleven and I was eight, we’d had a lovely house there, and lots of relatives, and a great life, and then something bad happened and Daddy went to prison and Mom was banned and we came to England.   

England was so different!   Now we were poor and had to live in a dark basement flat in South London.   All the uncles and aunties were left behind.    Mom didn’t talk about them.  She said they were all racists and against Daddy and her for opposing Apartheid.   She said we had to be brave as lions, and ‘knuckle down’ and make the best of our new life.   But we thought our new life was rotten compared to our old one and we were secretly angry with our parents for spoiling it all and making everything change.

But the worst for me was Mom still being an activist.  Here, far away from it all, she was still fighting.  

After she finished work, most nights she’d be off to stand on a picket outside the South African embassy in Trafalgar Square, or to meetings.     Five or six times she was arrested, for obstruction and for collecting money for Daddy and the other political prisoners in South African jails.   Oh, I should have been proud of her!   She was brave, all right, standing up to ‘Thatcher’s lackeys’ as she called the police who often broke up the picket or arrested Mom and the others.   But all I knew was that Roly and I were left alone in the flat when we wanted her to be with us.

Well, no, we weren’t often actually alone.   Somebody was usually around, but they weren’t interested in us.  Most of them were the picketers, young people who were temporarily homeless and used to doss down on our floor.   Mom called them ‘my pickies’ and I thought – and Roly did too – that she loved them more than us.  She made us share everything with them, even our weekly sweets.    She said they needed feeding up, so as to be strong for the picket.

“What do they care about South Africa?” I asked her.  “They just stand there so you’ll look after them.”

“They do care,” Mom would say hotly.  “Maybe not when they first join, but the picket gives them a cause to fight for.   Everyone needs that!”

 This went on for a year or more.  I had this anger that was  just like hate deep inside me, especially after  I got worried about Roly.   Because I knew he was in a street gang - we lived in a really rough part of London - and sometimes when our so-called baby-sitters weren’t around, he would sneak out and stay out for hours, leaving me all by myself.  He never told me what they did, but I knew it couldn’t be anything good, because sometimes he brought back stuff that he hid from Mom.  I wanted to tell Mom he did it but somehow I couldn’t.   Mom had told us that the worst thing you can do is be a traitor.   In South Africa, if a black person ratted to the whites, he’d have a flaming tyre put round his neck.  

Well, one night the pickie who was supposed to mind us didn’t show up.   Roly sneaked out.   I sat and stared at telly, not seeing it.   I  felt so lonely and scared.   And suddenly I heard Roly running down the area stone steps.  It was early for him to be back, and when I opened the door he kind of fell in and shut the door behind him, quick, and leaned against it, panting and swallowing. 

He was all banged up.   He had blood coming through at the knees, his nose was bleeding too, and he was white as a ghost. 

“What?  What?” I asked, almost too scared to get my words out.

“A cop chased me,” he gasped.  “I fell over.   He grabbed me but I got free.   I ran – “   He was crying.  He fought not to, but he was.

And something just snapped.    This was all wrong!    I’d rather be a traitor and even be necklaced than have anything bad happen to Roly.   I needed to rat on him to Mom.  But where was she?   She was on the picket in Trafalgar Square, that’s where.  Instead of here where she belonged.

I grabbed a coat – it was winter – and my purse with my pocket-money and my school bus pass in it and I ran fast down the dark road, lamp-post to lamp-post, to the main road where the buses were.    I knew the right bus to take.   I’d been to Trafalgar Square twice, once with my class to the National Gallery and once with Mom when she took me and Roly so we’d know what the picket looked like.  She wanted us to be for it, but we weren’t.  Neither of us. 

The bus seemed to crawl for ever through the night streets.   I huddled there shivering, staring out of the window, the only kid alone in the bus.  The lights blurred past.   My eyes were misted, but it wasn’t tears - I don’t know what it was.    Outrage maybe.   I tried to practise in my head what I’d say to Mom – if I could find her.  She might not be on the picket tonight, she might be at a meeting, and what would I do then?  

At last I saw Nelson’s Column with the spotlights lighting it up.   As soon as the bus rounded the edge of the square I saw the picket.  Was Mom there?  The line was thin – maybe six or seven people.  I could read the banner – “Here We Stand Till Mandela is Free”.    Nelson Mandela was Mom’s hero.    He was the black man who had led the opposition to Apartheid.  He’d been in jail in South Africa for 22 years.    

I jumped off the bus and ran in front of it.   A black cab screeched its breaks and honked long and hard.   I ran across the square past the lions.   (“Be brave as lions!”)  South Africa House stood up tall and whitish in the lamplight.   There were two policemen outside!    Were they waiting for me?   No.  No.  Don’t be a baby.   They’re just on guard there.   Getting ready to arrest Mom, maybe.    Put her in jail and take her away for ever!  I had to get her back!

This time I waited for the lights, then I ran  to where the picket was.   They were chanting.

“Close – down – this nest of spies!  Stop their murders, stop their lies!”

I heard Mom before I saw her.   She was holding up the banner, and shouting the loudest.   When she saw me, she stopped cold, her mouth still open.  

“Laura!  What – what are you - “

“Mom, you got to come home.”

“I can’t, I’'m - "  “You got to!” I shouted.  “ Roly’s been – “  But I couldn’t say it.   I couldn’t rat.  “Hurt.”

That got to her.  She handed the banner-pole to one of the others without a word and we started to half-run towards the bus stop going back towards home.   While we waited, she shot questions at me....  I just said he’d fallen down.   But then out it came – not ratting, but the poisonous stuff inside me.

“You’re never there!   You’re always out!   You don’t love us, you love them, you love Nelson!   Other moms don’t need causes!  Why can’t we be your cause?”

She stared at me.   The bus came.  We rode all the way back in silence.  She just sat there.  She tried to hold my hand but I wouldn’t let her.    I was feeling furious and frightened all at once.  And sick with having shouted at her.  But she deserved it!  

Roly wasn’t in bed.   He was waiting, bare-legged in his broeks with his cut knees showing.   

“Where’d you go? “ he asked me.   Then he saw Mom behind me.   His eyes got big.  I knew what he was thinking.  I shook my head to tell him I hadn’t ratted.   And his face changed.  He looked suddenly grown up.            

Well.   Mom gave up the picket.   Not because I told her to, but because Roly ratted on himself.   He told her everything, and that decided it.    She never went back, until the February day in 1990 when Nelson Mandela was released and everything changed in South Africa.

On that day, Mom, who I didn’t hate any more, took Roly and me to Trafalgar Square where the picket had kept vigil day and night for three whole years, and let us be part of the celebrations.   There were speeches, but Mom didn’t make any.   And bottles of champagne were passed over the heads of the rejoicing crowd, but Mom didn’t drink any of it. 

“I’m happy he’s free,” she said.   “It’s enough.”   But I knew she was sad that she hadn’t more to feel proud of.    That she hadn’t stuck to the picket, because we hadn’t let her.

 So now I’m a mother, and I’ve learnt my lesson, of course.  I stay home and look after my kids and write cheques for the charities I want to help.  But I don’t stand on any pickets or walk in any demos or travel to any dangerous places.   I don’t volunteer.  Because you can’t be two things at once, a mother and an activist.  

But just sometimes I remember my mom that night, brave as a lion - holding the banner and shouting her chant in the teeth of that great building and those two coppers guarding it.  And I think to myself, maybe I’m missing something.   And I find myself wishing a funny wish:  that my kids get themselves a cause, before they grow too old to believe that any cause is worth sacrificing for.  

The End

A message from Lynne Reid Banks, this year's lead writer:

"I love the idea of Writng the World. I love it that here in Britain, kids are being helped to reach out to other countries. In the States, when I was going into schools there in the 80s and 90s, most kids hadn't a clue about anything outside their own country, and that just won't do these days when we know that we are truly one world, interdependent, every country affecting every other.  
 
I was in Trafalgar Square on that unforgettable day in February 1990 when Nelson Mandela was released from prison. I was afraid there'd be a terrible reckoning for all the hurt that black people had suffered under Apartheid. But then Desmond Tutu and others set up the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, to help people get over the pain of the past and start the 'Rainbow Nation' afresh.  This was truly inspiring. Not all those high hopes have yet come true, but when I visited, I thought it was one of the most exciting countries I've been to. 

I'm happy that the Polka Theatre invited me to write a South African-based story and I look forward to being part of Writing the World."