by I. Bismuth

September 24: We spent this evening side by side on the sofa doing what we are underpaid to do. While I was busy marking the work of my undergraduates, Rose was tapping away at a re-telling for pre-school tolerance workshops of the traditional African tale of the entire Yoruban kingdom that yearns to be re-located to a nice part of Oxfordshire.

She had reached the point in the narrative just after the Brits-to-be have finalized their plan to apply for a grant to open a Yorubas-This-Is-Your-Lucky-Day Dating Agency, the first ever in rural England, only to receive the devastating news that there will be a delay of a fortnight in issuing their new passports. She was uncertain about the most appropriate characterization of this chilling hitch. Was a delay of two weeks best described as fascist, racist, or Nazi?

With my wide experience of the struggle against evil I was able to offer her an authoritative guide to correct usage. Fascist would be a delay of three weeks. Racist would be a delay of four weeks. And Nazi would be a request to consider the consequences of the re-location of an entire Yoruban kingdom to a nice part of Oxfordshire on the inhabitants of that nice part of Oxfordshire. Le mot juste for a delay of two weeks in issuing the passports is extremist.

She nodded and agreed that this captured the exact nuance of hate involved, and I reapplied myself to the essays of the next generation of the professionally sensitive.

Twenty minutes later we heard Lucy return home. Usually she puts her head around the door to announce her arrival and then disappears upstairs to teenageland. This time, however, she came all the way in and stood on the hearth rug biting her lower lip. I had not seen this nervous nibbling since she was an adult-goading twelve-year-old. Then it was a prelude to her confessing to having doubts as to why the moral status of every White person needs to be determined by the game of competitive racial betrayal.

“Mummy, Daddy,” she said. “I’ve got something to tell you.”

So it was to be another confession. Rose held my hand. I held my breath.

“Mummy, Daddy,” she repeated, as if our all agogness meant she did not have our full attention.

“Go on, Lucy,” said Rose. “What is it?”

“Mummy, Daddy — I’m going to have a baby.”

Rose let go of my hand. I let go of my breath. We were more puzzled than horrified. Certainly we were caught unawares, and though this sort of thing has nuisance value in any household, there was no call for lip-biting. Or if there was, there must be more to come. Perhaps hands and breath had been let go too soon.

Rose leaned forward and slipped into interrogation mode. “Have you made an appointment at the clinic?”

“My family is already planned, the start of it anyway. When I said I’m going to have a baby, I meant it.”

Rose knew when she was beaten. But that only meant her interrogation had to take a new direction.

“Do you know who the father is?”

“Of course I do. What do you think I am?”

“Is it Abdul?”

“Mm, Abdul. He was adorable. No, not Abdul.”

“Nkwanwu?”

“Mm, Nkwanwu. He was passionate. No, not Nkwanwu.”

“Tiwonge?”

“Mm, Tiwonge. He was tender. No, not Tiwonge.”

“Kwame?”

“Mm, Kwame. He was considerate. No, not Kwame.”

“Najib?”

“Mm, Najib. He was magnificent. No, not Najib.”

“Kalimba?”

“Mm, Kalimba. He was exciting. No, not Kalimba.”

“Manandafy?”

“Mm, Manandafy. He was dangerous. No, not Manandafy.”

“Foluwashola?”

“Mm, Foluwashola. He was magical. No, not Foluwashola”

“Seewoosagur?”

“Mm, Seewoosagur. He was rich. No, not Seewoosagur.”

“Not Abdul or Nkwanwu or Tiwonge or Kwame or Najib or Kalimba or Manandafy or Foluwashola or Seewoosagur. Who then?”

“Jack.”

I sensed that on Rose the potential energy of rage and disbelief was balanced like a book on the head of a student of deportment. She remained perfectly still, the model of the dignified sitter, unwilling to react to the worst until she knew it was the worst. After all, there must be Angolans called Jack, and Congolese and Cameroonians called Jack. Hasn’t there been a Harlem Globetrotter called Jack?

The good cop, I took over the questioning from my frozen partner. “Jack,” I repeated, managing a fatherly smile. “Is he a sportsman?”

“He goes fishing.”

“I meant, is he a good runner and jumper?”

“Not while he’s fishing.”

“Well, can he run fast and jump high?”

“I expect he could in an emergency.”

“Does he move with a natural sense of rhythm?”

“Fairly natural.”

“Is he impulsive?”

“No more than I am.”

“Is he noisy?”

“Not really.”

This was not going well.

“Where did you meet him?”

“At Sun-Up. He’s doing engineering.”

And now it was going from bad to worse.

But even engineering was not in itself enough to make the book fall off Rose’s head or to make me release the megatons, for surely there must be some Chinese and Sub-Continentals and assorted southeast Asians called Jack.

“Here,” said Lucy, producing a camera from somewhere about her person, “here’s a picture of him I took yesterday.”

She held the LCD screen in front of us.

“It must be the angle you took it from,” I said, “or a fault with the contrast, the brightness, the sharpness, the saturation. It makes him look a bit ... He seems almost to be ... He could be mistaken for a ...”

“Go on, Daddy, say it, say it. I’m not ashamed of a little word. Go on. Yes, the word is White. He looks a bit White. He does. He is a bit White. He is entirely White. And I don’t care. I don’t care what he is. I love him.”

An unearthly howl filled the air, and, a moment later, Hilda shot into the room clutching a Boreeteesh amulet and uttering incantations.

“No devils,” I said. “No devils. Rose fine. No devils. Go back kitchen.”

Unconvinced, she backed out, holding the amulet at arm’s length before her.

“Bizzy, Bizzy” said Rose, the tears streaming down her cheeks, “where did we go wrong? I thought we had done everything right. When she was four, she had her Six Million Reasons Why Europe Must Die Colouring Book. And I remember how proud she was to wear her I am seven and I am guilty T-shirt. And, when she was sixteen, she got her Genosuicide proves it—we’re really, really sorry tattoo. Didn’t we bring her up to be decent? Only last week, didn’t her course tutor say she shows a natural flair for Hitlerology? And now she does this to us!”

“I don’t know what all the fuss is about,” said Lucy. “I’m only doing what you did. I’m White. No, Mummy, don’t turn away. We have to use horrid words if we’re going to talk honestly about these things. I’m White. Yes, I am. And isn’t that because you chose Daddy?”

“That was all so long ago,” said Rose, wiping her face with my sleeve. “We were only just emerging from the Stone Age. The television and the schools were supposed to be Anti-Racist, but the techniques they used on us were barely adequate, whereas you have had nothing but the best. We didn’t really learn anything in those days, not even basic White self-loathing. Unacceptable attitudes were still given a chance to develop. So when I chose your father, I didn’t know any better.”

The award-winning author might have phrased that snippet of autobiography more felicitously.

“Oh, how could you, Lucy?” she wept on. “You are offered adorable, passionate, tender, considerate, magnificent, exciting, dangerous, magical, and rich, and you choose this!” She jabbed her finger at the screen.

“You mean tall, dark, and handsome?” said our cheeky daughter.

“Dark! You call that dark!”

“He has dark brown hair.”

“Dark brown hair! Ye gods!”

“Well, he has.”

“Don’t you know how selfish you are being, Lucy? Didn’t you ever consider what making your child White will mean to him?”

“Or her,” I said, confident I was making a valuable contribution to the discussion, only to be amazed when the high feeling of the scene caused Rose to give me a sidelong glance of exasperation and then to go on to give a whole speech in which she ostentatiously eschewed those epicene sentence-juddering pronounal speed humps him or her and he or she, and, for perfect balance, her or him and she or he.

“He’ll be growing up in an ever more Anti-Racist society,” she continued spouse-slightingly, “and when he starts looking around him, he’ll see that he’s different. And if he doesn’t, his contemporaries will. And they’ll take a delight in saying so. It’s a cruel world, Lucy. He’ll be an outsider. He’ll never know who he is or what he is. And he’ll curse you for giving him a face that doesn’t fit.”

Now it was Lucy’s turn to give an unearthly howl. This set Rose off again. And as their decibels climbed over one another to reach the supernatural, the door re-opened. This time I was quick enough to shoo Hilda out before she could start chanting.

When the three of us (actually, the two of them with ignored interventions from me) were too exhausted to go on proving we were right, and Lucy had finally barricaded herself into her room, I found a straw to clutch at.

Over our cocoa I told Rose that we must not lose hope. It may not be as bad as it seems. Many apparently drearily White folk are rescued from a lifetime of racial tedium by discovering that they are, in fact, though oceanically diluted, vibrant. Jack’s looks are admittedly not promising, but research into his family history, or a simple DNA test, could well show up a few darkening aliens in his ancestry. It would surely be of some comfort to find just one.