What do you choose?
By Vicky Bloomfield
Trigger warning – contains reference to murder, domestic violence and sexual assault
When Storytime mamma told me, I had three subjects I could choose to write about, I was instantly drawn to choice. I chose choice.
What I know, is that so far in my life, the influence of choice feels like it has been accumulative and circular. The dice of luck and choice are rolled for us as children and then you slowly take over the game as you get older. Or something like that. Some sooner than others. Some later. That’s what I’ve come to know. And they say write about what you know, and it will always be truth.
Both the choices of my family and friends, in collaboration with my own decisions, are the sum of who I am. A concoction of choice and luck. And often, severely lacking in the latter.
My mum made the decision to disappear off to Spain with my dad, when he announced his love for her outside her house in Bexhill, on his motorbike in the 80’s. A gesture so romantic and impulsive, I’ve reimagined it in my mind like a movie over and over, since I was nine.
They both made the decision to take my sister along for the ride. My dad’s choice of lifestyle. He did what he knew and what he knew was drug smuggling. Their choice of music in the campervan my parents and sister were living in. Driving around Spain (and dad back and forth to Morocco) in a bubble of Talking Heads, Robert Plant and Roxy Music. Music that still provides the soundtrack, for a chapter of our narrative, for which I was effectively non-existent and then in utero. And I cannot help but conjure up visions of that time, when I hear certain songs by those bands. Time travelling back to the hot excitement of their lifestyle and love for one another.
My dad’s choice to let my clueless farmer uncle get a slice of the pie. In awe of his little brothers wild, hedonistic lifestyle. But utterly unprepared and unequipped, to handle the police when they pulled him over at Dover. My uncle’s choice to throw everyone else under the bus, so he would get off more lightly. His choice to give descriptions of everyone who would be coming across, on what ferry and exactly what vehicles. Precise details of where to look.
The trauma, fear and confusion caused to my sister who was 10 years old at the time. Being removed in a disco of flashing blue lights and the chaos of stoney faced border control police arresting our parents in a drug bust. My uncles decision to hang his head in shame in Court, unable to make eye contact with his family, least of all his brother, as his evidence condemned them all and he got a lesser sentence.
The choice of the judge to make an example of my mum. Despite her being heavily pregnant with me. This was the 80’s remember. A woman, no less, a pregnant woman, in mum’s position. The shame. The judges’ decision to send her to HMP Holloway, where I spent the first six months of my life. Mum’s decision to change my name. After her having her heart set on Joanne, she was persuaded by the insistence of her charismatic inmate, who took one look at me and hissed “She’s no Joanne, she’s a Vic”. And she was right. I am no Joanne. The guards decision to let mum be the first woman to be allowed out on day release with her baby for good behaviour. Her missioning up Seven Sisters Road like a trooper, with me in the pram, on an adventure for nappies. The fact that years later, at around 18, I ended up sharing a bizarre flat above a car wash on Seven Sisters Road with my bestie and co. has only just dawned on me as I write this. Remembering through my fingers.
Mums choice to allow the BBC, (who were allegedly making a documentary about Hollloway at the time), to only film her legs and me in the buggy, as she ploughed on up the street. I don’t have this footage and have searched the internet trying to find it and written to the Beeb – to no avail. Maybe it’s an urban myth attached to our family (there are many) or maybe there really is footage out there. I like to believe the latter. A few seconds of film floating about somewhere in the ether, like a time capsule, with mums legs and an infant me, exploring our first taste of freedom.
The shame that mum experienced because of her sentence, and the ongoing shame surrounding women, and especially mothers, who for a myriad of reasons, find themselves behind bars, is as rife as it was all those years ago. So often women find themselves in prison because of a man but that is another side of the same story, for a different time.
My dad made the decision to go “straight” after learning to be a brickie inside and both my parents’ made the choice to calm down, for the nine years that we had together after they (we!) were released. These were years where we lived a family life that vaguely resembled normal. Whatever the fuck that is. Except, in our house there was always a familiar fragrance floating through the air and mum and dads’ friends like Ray and Sue would come over. Ray a striking beanpole of a man, with a mass of shaggy greying shoulder length hair, always with his trusty bong in a Safeways carrier bag. Sue, a tornado of blonde corkscrew curls and red lipstick. No bag for Sue. She preferred to carry a box of wine.
Dad’s endless infidelities. Unable to stick to one choice when it came to women. Mum’s broken heart but decision to stay because she loved him so much. And he loved her too, I’ve no doubt about that. I felt the love between them and as such, I’ve always been a romantic. Their love for each other and for us, cushioned the impact of their chaos. Their union made me certain amongst so many other unknowns, that love does exist.
Dad’s susceptibility to hedonistic behaviour. The drug smuggling might have stopped but the wildness was in his soul. His chose to live and love in a certain way and, in the end, he paid the ultimate price. And so did mum when she found him dead in our loft. If you know you know and if you don’t, look up David Carradine and you’ll get the picture. Dad’s choice that fateful day, changed the fabric of our reality as a family. Mum’s financial choices after dad died. Choices that were so on point, it meant that we were left with some inheritance when she joined him in 2019. Mum’s choices all those years ago, that have afforded me the privilege to buy a house for our boy and our family, now. A garden of our own, where Covid or no Covid, we are safe and it is ours.
Mum came to the UK from Guyana, through no choice of her own and was essentially terrorised by our charismatic, bombastic and brutal Guyanese grandmother. Somehow, she managed amid all the trauma, chaos and tragedy that engulfed her along the way, to leave a slice of security for her daughters. Something to help us be OK, despite the fog of dementia that would eventually sweep her away. Mum and dad; chaotically intertwined souls, who frantically and magically existed together for such a limited time, and who now, at last, are reunited.
I am the sum of all the decisions made by all of the people in this story and more, as well as my own, of course. In the shadow of a yearlong pandemic, it feels fitting to talk about choice. If we are lucky, 2020 has given us the time to reflect on the luxury of choices that lay before us. That the quality of our choices, the diversity, the banalness of being bored, of feeling stuck, are in fact a privilege. That it’s a privilege not to choose between topping up the gas or food. That we are lucky if we don’t face the choice of whether or not to take a beating and get it over with, because he’s come home in a bad mood. It feels like a privilege when your choices reflect lifestyle rather than survival. And if your choices are reduced or extinguished altogether because of the colour of your skin, are they really choices at all?
The fact that I am sitting here finishing this story on mothers day seems synchronistic and circular and I can’t help but feel overcome with emotion when I think of the choices my mum had to navigate. It’s taken years for me to truly appreciate the impact of her strength, determination and resilience. She was a warrior. She battled huge adversity, for so many years and she did it for us.
And so it continues. To think about mum’s struggles, feels especially poignant after a week where International Women’s day was married with a grotesque media mogul, storming off National television a day later, due to his ever so fragile ego being bruised. Harry and Megan called out the obvious fact that the Monarchy, an establishment that holds white supremacy at its very core, is in fact an entirely racist institution and Sarah Everard, was murdered by a policeman, when she was trying to get home. As a friend, as a mother, as a survivor of past domestic abuse and sexual assault (that I chose not to report because I knew I would be torn apart due to being paralytically drunk when it happened) and nonetheless as a privileged white woman; it feels like these are unprecedented times. Times when we undoubtedly need to speak out and stand up to the atrocity of what happened to Sarah Everard, but to also wake up to reality that this is nothing new for black women, trans women and women of colour. Women who have been screaming at us for years, to acknowledge the violence and killing they are subjected to, especially at the hands of the police.
Violence that does not evoke the same media coverage, the same call to arms, the same rage within us. Blessing Olusegun’s death was not even worth investigating apparently and only really entered the public consciousness, as a stark fucking wake up call, that highlighted all the women we forget. And now it emerges that an officer sent cruel and inappropriate messages about Sarah Everard’s kidnap and murder, whilst guarding the area where her remains were discovered. Why are we shocked by this? This is the same institution where officers took selfies next to the murdered bodies of sisters Nicole Smallman and Bibaa Henry, after they were stabbed to death in Wembley Park. The culture of violence against women is inevitable, in white supremist patriarchal capitalism and until now, whether we like it or not, we have been complicit in maintaining this system.
This is our shadow work. Acknowledging such things, without defensiveness or justification and knowing that we have to do better. Raising children who not only feel a sense of empathy for the suffering and injustice of others but a sense of responsibility. Raising boys with eyes wide open to the choices that lay before them. So that they understand that to maintain the patriarchal status quo of violence towards women and masculine entitlement, is actually harmful to them as well. There’s a reason suicide is the biggest killer of men under 30 and it’s the same reason at least 3 women a week will die at the hands of male perpetrated domestic abuse. What we do onto others, we do to ourselves. As this story hopefully shows, our choices send out ripples of consequence that echo through the lives of the next generation, so we must choose wisely. I choose honesty. I choose doing the work. I choose setting better boundaries. I choose compassion. I choose admitting when I’m wrong and changing my opinion. I choose to reclaim the day, the night and the motherfucking planet. I choose strength and determination but most of all, whenever and wherever I can find it, I choose love. What do you choose?