I. My First Lessons in Power Darren Page was a short teenager of about fifteen years of age and had more power than I knew any other person of that age to have: he was White and he had a gang. When I say "gang," I don't mean in the contemporary American sense-there were no drugs, guns, or knives. The gang was just a group of four to five teenage boys. But as an eleven-year-old girl, they were a gang to me, with their persistent words their weapons of destruction. Darren Page was never "Darren" to me. He was always "Darren Page"-I would never have dared to call him only by his first name. In fact, I never even used his name to his face. I knew my place. We went to the same school, and lived near each other in a working-class suburb in the English county of Kent. The Grove, as we called it, was a circle of houses with a park in the middle. It was a park of the 1980s, which meant the play equipment was simple, fun, and dangerous. It definitely wouldn't meet today's safety standards. There were baby swings with a concrete slab underneath, larger swings with another concrete slab underneath, and a huge slide with a metal runway that burned your bum in summer and was too cold to use in winter. It also had a concrete slab at the end. The area doubled as Darren Page's headquarters. I would often play in the park with my best friend Anne and her brother Alex. Anne and Alex lived on the other side of the park, so the park in the middle was our natural meeting place. We were good friends, if you ignored the constant power games that Anne played; she would change her mind at random intervals about whether I was her best friend or not. Thanks to living in foster families from an early age, I had a strong internal need to be "chosen," to belong, and to be chosen by Anne gave me the ultimate sense of belonging. But being in the park, making up plays and songs, seemingly content in the world of our collective imaginations, also involved the ever-present threat of Darren Page. His house was on a hill that overlooked the park, so you could always see him coming, and the three of us were always on high alert for his arrival. I have various memories of what would happen when Darren Page approached us. On some occasions all three of us would run-as fast as we could-to one of our houses and take cover (which house we ran to depended on how much time we had to escape once we had seen him appear). We usually had between one and three minutes to make it, depending on the pace at which he and his gang moved. But whether we had one or three minutes, I could always hear the racist insults ringing in my ears as my legs moved as fast as they could. "Oh, the fucking n***** is here!" Darren Page would shout. "I thought I could smell something!" "Is it the smell of monkeys?" another voice would yell, as they all laughed. "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me," the rhyme goes. But those words did hurt me-they were the soundtrack to my childhood. Growing up as "the only one in the village" takes its toll. Other times, I would be determined to stay, defiant in my right to be in the park. I would be on the swings with Anne and Alex, as Darren Page and his gang approached. "We are staying this time," we would say to each other. "We are staying." Darren Page and his gang would form a circle around us, at which point we had no choice but to stay. What had felt like a determined power move on our part suddenly became our downfall. Now we had to stay and we couldn't go anywhere. We would continue to swing back and forth cautiously as they harassed, bullied, and belittled me with their racist comments and attacked Anne and Alex for being with me. Occasionally we would do our best to talk back to them, but they were older and crueler. It was obvious to all of us, them and us, that we were completely powerless. They had the power. We were never able to hold our resolve for long. Soon enough, one of us would be so affected by what was being said that we would leave, and the others would follow. Sometimes we left crying. Sometimes we screamed insults back, which they ridiculed. Sometimes we just walked off in silence, filled with a rage that had no words. *** Being a Black foster child in 1980s England was nothing to envy. I wonder now what Anne and Alex thought about all of this. They chose to be my friends, which was brave of them-they were White but were bullied by association. But our friendship was confusing for me. I believed that Anne must be my real friend if she was willing to associate with me, and yet she was always playing power games with me. I would do anything for her approval, which is how I made my first early foray into shoplifting. At eleven years old, I was still very much in love with my baby doll (a White baby doll), but Anne made it very clear that I had to grow up and shoplifting was the way to grow up. I think my first "assignment" was to steal sweets. I succeeded. And I hated it. When I was eventually caught shoplifting, it was for my loot of fruit-smelling stationery, popular in the 1980s. Loved stationery then and love stationery now. I was walking out of the store when the shopkeeper's hand landed on my shoulder. I can still feel the pressure of that hand today and remember the shame of that moment. Shoplifting was never a "cool" thing for me. I did it because I wanted to belong to someone-Anne-and this was the price of admission. When waiting to be picked up by the police, all I kept thinking about was that my foster parents would send me and my sister away. At this time we were with a foster family who constantly threatened to send us "back to Nigeria," even though we had both been born in England. But as I traveled in the police car back to our foster family to face the music, the policeman gave me an even scarier outcome to mull over. "I could separate you and your sister, and you will never see each other again," he said. I did not want to be sent "back to Nigeria," a place that had been demonized for me by White people for my whole childhood, but I would go anywhere if it meant my sister and I would stay together. At the time I had no idea that the policeman didn't have the power to separate us. But I did know that he had more power than me, so I believed him. One thing I do remember vividly of those times is that no adult ever stood up for me. No grown-up ever told Darren Page that what he was doing was unacceptable. No one made me feel that we were allowed to be in the park just as much as anyone else. It was 1980s England, I was Black, and that was just the way it was. I never told my foster parents about the racist abuse I faced on a daily basis at the park or at school. I believed that was the way it was, that as a "blackie" and a "golliwog," I would be tolerated at the best of times-nothing more. I did not want to be a burden to my foster parents, so much of a burden that they would pass us on to more strangers or "send us back to Nigeria." *** It is said that when a person finds themselves near the bottom of a power structure (as I was), their need for dignity and survival induces them to find someone they think is even lower than they are. By sheer luck, Ruth moved to our street. Ruth's house was a little farther away than the rest of ours. She could see our house, Darren Page's house, and Anne and Alex's house from her front garden. Her house was not quite in the circle of houses around the park that made up The Grove, so location-wise she didn't quite belong. And when she moved in, it was decided that she and her family were "pikeys," an offensive slang term used for Gypsies. Ruth's family were not culturally Gypsies, a group with a rich and colorful history that experienced significant discrimination themselves throughout the 1980s. But they were called "Gypsies" because they were poorer than the rest of us. That made them the lowest of the low. The first time I met Ruth, I remember how shy and pretty she was-any blonde girl was pretty in my eyes. But her clothes and face were dirty. It was obvious her family had less money than the rest of us. Ruth never did anything to any of us. All she wanted was to be invited to play and to be accepted and to belong, just like me. But, sadly, that was never going to happen, because I sensed that she was even lower than me on The Grove hierarchy and I had a chance to exploit the minuscule opportunity for power that I had. Acting friendly and innocent, we would call on Ruth and invite her to the park. The first few times she was openhearted, enthusiastic, and eager to play with her new neighbors. But as time went by, her enthusiasm waned because our idea of "play" was to treat her like an object of ridicule, not a friend. We were horrible to her. We would taunt, bully, and shame her about everything we could: her clothes (even though most of mine were from charity stores before that was considered cool), her house (you could smell the "unwashed" smell from the street), her lisp, her parents. We picked her apart in every way we knew how, because it made us feel powerful. Now I had power, just like Darren Page. Then one day I had this idea that was so good, so funny, it was going to be remembered forever. I told Anne and Alex about the plan and I was so proud. It was genius-the ultimate humiliation for Ruth and the ultimate power play for me. *** When we all arrived at Ruth's house, she didn't really want to come out with us. But her mum encouraged her to "go and play with the nice children." We walked her to the side of the park near our house and offered her candy wrapped in shiny paper. She was hesitant, but we insisted. Eventually she agreed to eat it. I remember my eyes darting between the candy, Ruth's face, and the faces of my accomplices as she started to unwrap it. I was praying that she couldn't see or smell what we had done. I couldn't smell it, so I assumed she couldn't either. She hesitated, as anyone would if they were surrounded by a group of notoriously mean "friends" and were being made to eat something no one else was eating. She put the candy in her mouth and we were all silent. Until one of us couldn't hold it in anymore: "You just ate dog shit!" We all laughed at her. "You smell like shit and you eat shit!" She spat out the candy. I saw her face reddening. I heard our laughter and saw our pointing fingers. Then I saw the tears form in her eyes and I watched as they fell. And I stopped laughing. Her eyes were locked with mine, pleading, "What have I ever done to you? Why would you do this to me?" And my eyes replied, "I needed someone else to feel like shit for once." Ruth ran home as the three of us celebrated our genius. But before long, I was thinking how it didn't feel as good as I thought it would. I had stepped into Darren Page's shoes for a few moments because I wanted to feel like him. I wanted to have that power. But as seductive as that idea was, in that moment I knew it just wasn't me. Gaining that kind of power meant giving up who I was. I knew what I had done was bad. I had terrorized Ruth for no other reason than to elevate my status in The Grove, in my world. But it didn't feel comfortable. I felt like I was a bad person, and those feelings triggered many thoughts. Maybe I was fostered because I was bad? Maybe Darren Page always ran me out of the park because I was bad? Maybe I was the piece of shit all along. I had just proven how bad and dirty I was. And Ruth had seen it too; she had told me with her eyes. The thing is, control and command were the only forms of power I had ever been shown and I didn't know any better. But now that I had tasted that form of power-belittling others to feel better about myself-I realized it didn't make me more worthy and it didn't make me powerful. It made me feel like I was the lowest of the low, the absolute reverse of my intended outcome. What I needed to learn was that there are other forms of power. I needed to know about the power that I could build within myself for the benefit of others, but that was a long time coming. Excerpted from Power: A Woman's Guide to Living and Leading Without Apology by Kemi Nekvapil All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
