It was in this calm............

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It was in this calm and peaceful place that Leroy became “I” iSangoma. One day he would physically do that required visit to his homeland. To verify and hone his body worthy to be united with the “I” and so that he fully understood what he was told, he would be beaten with clothes hangers, pots, pans, shoe heels and broomsticks any thing that came to hand until they broke. Leroy's will never break as “I” iSangoma was there to protect him.

“Look at your nose how it broad, lord have mercy what we going to do about your nose. Then she would crush his nose between thumb and fore finger until Leroy yelped "If it grows any broader you will surely become an African. Its only African people have nose pronounced like that.” She pinched his nose between forefinger and thumb and pulled it attempting to extend it look like Pinocchio’s.

Aunt Mo's considered verdict was punctuated with a barrage of blows as they rained down on the

body of eight years. Leroy stood in a zinc bathtub. Tepid water rippled around his ankles he shivered uncontrollably, the tub rattled across the lino floor, his soft black limbs danced the shimmy as his teeth chattered his eyes swivelled blankly searching for a place to which they could fix onto.

“Stop the trembling! Stop the trembling!” Aunt Mo. Shouted.

Leroy tensed his body in an attempt to stop only to “tremble” even more.

“Are you afraid of me?”Thwack, thwack as the wet wash cloth made contact with his skin. No mama” Leroy said in self-defence.

“Well stop the trembling,” Thwack, she says hitting him with the cold washrag again. It was during one such incident of beating that iSangoma left they left the body of Leroy Marriot to monitor the situation from a safe distance. Watching I could see the madness of his guardian mother Aunt Mo possessed with a maddening anger. The pain Leroy suffered was often disproportionate to his bawling and screams. It was his outstanding game plan in a vain attempt to alleviate the blows. I iSangoma watched over the forlorn couple entwined in pain and misunderstanding.

Aunt Mo. was not to realise she was flogging a substance less body. She wielded the belt as it swung by the weight of the buckle.

“I (lick) tell, (lick) yu, (lick) nu, (lick) fi, (lick) come, (lick) home, (lick) late, why? (Lick). Yu, (lick) hard (lick) a (lick) hear (lick) in?”

Time had stood still for the body of Leroy, only the background noise of TV theme song to ‘Panorama’ registered in his mind as a marker to his pain as I the spirit danced to Peter and the Wolf by Prokefiev. The pain suffered by the child of eight years was impossible to endure it was safer viewing the incident from the ceiling. I shared the secret of our ability to separate with something deep down in the body’s empty shell. We had warning signals when the effort would be anticipated. The licks were concluded with a cursory "Who cyan hear must feel” and then pushed in to the corner left crying.

Total silence and a blank stare would indicate it’s time to break, (Out-of-here). She was trying to beat the African from herself, to dislodge and destroy her own ancestral memories.

The Queen of England was the original ruler to impose worship and devotion and love in our house; she was spoken of with reverence and often mentioned in the same breath as God. Whenever the National Anthem was played silence was maintained. Until the Test card came on with a continuous tone and only then would the TV be switched off. Our patriotic English life was a contradiction in terms to our seeking for freedom from the imperialists. Leroy lived in a Royalist house of Aunt Mo. and his father Ivan Marriott. Aunt Mo’s face became as large as the television set as it bore down on Leroy. She was not real, but another powerful image from the outside world, imposing itself onto Leroy’s reality. Suddenly the face and her body became smaller and smaller until it appeared distant in the far corner of the living room. Leroy became dislocated from his own presence in the room.

He found himself to be staring at Aunt Mo as she appeared to expand and retract. As he floated from the ground, yet was weighted by his experience. Leroy tried to escape his own gaze but yet he was transfixed to the spot. He felt light, then heavy, light then heavy and so it went on for what was an eternity. Somehow Aunt Mo. was not as amiable and as kind as the lovely warm white ladies at school or the beautiful white ladies that entered the living room and spoke in modulated feminine voices from the television screen. She was a woman, but yet in a different class Aunt Mo was in a class of her own. Her smile was not welcoming and kind it was a battering sneering parting of trembling troubled lips, a woman in torment with herself. Anger was anger something to enjoy and give full vent. Never holding back, not something to conceal and play with. As Leroy had learned to internalise his anger and suffer in eternal silence a living death. Anger and violence were to be enjoyed and savoured by aunt Mo.

The pain, the squirm the pleading were all part of the ritual... Leroy was an unruly child, his pain and screams were theatrical. Aunt Mo beat Leroy the louder he howled. What kind of man was this pathetic creature growing up to become Aunt Mo often wondered? A kind of man that would commit suicide at the first opportunity she concluded in her thoughts. On occasion, she told him just that. The beating and torture seemed to have had a converse effect rather than rejecting Africa, blackness and all his bad-ways, Leroy Marriott became more welded to the images of his ancestors and the life he had left and was still longing for somewhere in his past life. Here, the twist began, as a child Leroy became purposeful in his intent to become an African neither was he perturbed about his behaviour. The beatings reinforced and encouraged Leroy even more.