The Sudden Appearance of Hope

Chapter 10

I was not always what I am now.

Once, I was remembered.

I had friends and family, teachers and homework.

I did badly at school and that was fine.

You’ll never amount to much with your attitude, said the geography teacher.

It’s not your subject, is it? said maths.

Just write it out!

One day in English, we were told we had to talk for a minute on a random subject. The girl before me, Emma Accrington, pulled the words “open-plan offices” from the hat on the teacher’s desk.

“I don’t know what this is,” she explained, twisting painfully before the staring class. “I guess it’s like an office but, you know, in the open air and that. Like, maybe everyone goes outside and like, there’s animals, yeah? Like, chickens and cows and that?”

The class laughed, and she laughed too, recognising the absurdity of it all, and when the teacher told me to speak next, I was still laughing, and couldn’t say a word about my subject — dog walking — for the tears running down my face.

Do you think you’re funny? asked my teacher as she gave me detention. Do you think you’ll ever do anything of worth?

Worth: the quality that renders something desirable or valuable.

Worthy: having the qualities that deserve action or regard.

Characterised by good intent, but lacking in humour.

A person notable in a particular sphere.

Synonyms: virtuous, good, ethical, high-principled, right-thinking, noble, righteous, venerable, conscientious, trustworthy, dependable, exemplary.

Antonyms: disreputable, unworthy. Nobody.

I was fifteen years old, and as I walked home through the grey winter, I knew that I was worthy of nothing at all.

When my school report came, Dad was silent. I waited for him to shout at me, but he wouldn’t. My mum shouted until she wept. Her skin was dark as burnt mahogany, her hair was already grey at the temples, cut to a perfect scalp around her skull. She wore a carrots and cauliflowers apron when she cooked, which she did five nights a week unless Dad was on night shifts, in which case he cooked before going out. When I was ten she said, “You will now learn how to cook!” and I sensed that this was not a matter on which there would be any arguing. Nyaring Ayun-Arden, my mum, co-ordinated customer service at the council-housing office and was a good cook, even though she loved sardines more than anything else.

“It’s just wonderful!” she exclaimed. “It’s fish, in a tin, for 16p!”

My dad said he’d met my mother at a community event.

My mum laughed and said, “You call it that!”

I ignored this as a silly adult joke, until one day my aunt Carol whispered, “Your mum walked across Sudan and up through Egypt, walked until she got to Istanbul, came to this country in the back of a truck and got work sorting laundry for the hotels, but ended up begging after they said they couldn’t pay immigrants minimum wage. Your dad picked her up, put her in the cells for a night, gave her a cuppa tea and a microwaved meal. Three years later she was running the reception desk at the big council office in the centre of town, and he’d just made sergeant. Your dad had forgotten her, but she didn’t forget, not your mum, and that was lucky for him.”

The year I was born, my mother’s sister, left behind in Sudan, also gave birth and called her child Sorrow. My mother, unaware of this, or even that her sister was alive, called me Hope. Her family were Neur, but to advance their lot in life, my grandfather had insisted they all learned Arabic, in the hope his children would one day enter the civil service. The civil service would not have them, but my mother sang to me in Arabic in my crib, and cursed in Arabic, and paced up and down the room berating me in Arabic, with the words, first in one language, then another, “You will speak many languages and have the opportunities I did not!”

As a child, I heard these words as condemnation. She had not had opportunities, and so now was forcing me, her daughter, to live the life she could not. It took until after I had lost my family for me to understand what she was trying to say.

“For a copper to marry an immigrant, particularly at that time,” mused my aunt, “it says a lot about their love. But then, your dad always was a good man first, and a copper second; it’s why his career’s been so slow. And your mum… she’s always believed in people. That’s why she called you Hope.”