Girl, Woman, Other. Bernardine Evaristo
wonderful, artistic, highly individualistic and rebellious self
she slipped free crusty pies filled with apple-flavoured lumps of sugar to the runaway rent boys she befriended who operated around the station
with no idea that in years to come she’d be attending their funerals
they didn’t realize unprotected sex meant a dance with death
nobody did
home was a derelict factory in Deptford with concrete walls, a collapsing ceiling and a community of rats that defeated all attempts at extermination
thereafter she moved into a series of similarly squalid squats until she found herself living in the most desirable squat in the whole of London, a Soviet-sized former office block at the back of King’s Cross
she was lucky enough to be one of the first to hear of it before it filled up
and stayed upstairs when bailiffs set a hydraulic excavator at the main door
which triggered violent countermeasures and prison sentences for the head-bangers who thought a bailiff down deserved a good kicking
they called it the Battle of King’s Cross
the building was thereafter known as the Republic of Freedomia
they were lucky, too, because the owner of the property, a certain Jack Staniforth, living tax-free in Monte Carlo, loaded from the profits of his family’s business in Sheffield cutlery, turned out to be sympathetic to their cause once news reached him from his estate holding company
he’d fought for the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War
and a bad-investment of a building in one of London’s seediest districts was a forgettable footnote to his accounts
if they looked after the place, he wrote
they could stay for free
they stopped the illegal tapping of electricity and opened an account with the London Electricity Board
likewise with the gas, hitherto powered by a single fifty pence piece jammed into a meter
they needed to set up a management system and gathered one Saturday morning in the lobby to thrash it out
the Marxists demanded they set up a Central Committee of the Workers’ Republic of Freedomia, which was a bit rich, Amma thought, seeing as most of them had taken ‘a principled stand against the running dogs of capitalism’ as an excuse to not work
the hippies suggested they form a commune and share everything, but they were so chilled and laid back, everybody talked over them
the environmentalists wanted to ban aerosols, plastic bags and deodorant, which turned everyone against them, even the punks who weren’t exactly known for smelling minty
the vegetarians demanded a non-meat policy, the vegans wanted it extended to non-dairy, the macrobiotics suggested everyone eat steamed white cabbage for breakfast
the Rastas wanted cannabis legalized, and a reserved plot on the land out back for their Nyabinghi gatherings
the Hari Krishnas wanted everyone to join them that very afternoon banging drums down Oxford Street
the punks wanted permission to play shouty music and were duly shouted down
the gay guys wanted anti-homophobic legislation enshrined into the building’s constitution, to which everyone replied, what constitution?
the radical feminists wanted women-only quarters, self-governed by a co-op
the lesbian radical feminists wanted their own quarters away from the non-lesbian radical feminists, also self-governed by a co-op
the black radical lesbian feminists wanted the same except with the condition that no whiteys of any gender were allowed inside
the anarchists walked out because any form of governance was a betrayal of everything they believed in
Amma preferred running solo, and mixing with others who didn’t try to impose their will on anyone else
in the end a straightforward rotating management committee was formed with various rules against drug-dealing, sexual harassment and voting Tory
the plot out back became a communal space featuring scrap metal sculptures
courtesy of the artists
Amma managed to lay claim to a typing pool so large she could jog around it
with its own private toilet and sink that she kept blissfully clean and suffused with floral scents
she coated the walls and ceiling with a striking blood-red paint, ripped up the corporate-grey carpet, threw a few raffia mats on the wooden floor, installed a second-hand cooker, fridge, bean bags, a futon, and a bath reclaimed from a junk yard
her room was big enough for parties and big enough for people to crash
the disco beats of Donna Summer, Sister Sledge, Minnie Riperton and Chaka Khan swirling on vinyl got her parties going
Roberta, Sarah, Edith, Etta and Mathilde Santing were the soundtracks to her end of night seductions
behind the eighteenth-century black lacquer Chinese screen, rescued from a skip outside the old Chinese Embassy
she worked her way through many of the women of Freedomia
she wanted one-night stands, most wanted more than that
it got to the point where she dreaded passing her former conquests in the corridors, like Maryse, a translator from Guadeloupe
if she wasn’t knocking on Amma’s door in the middle of the night begging to be let in, she was lurking outside it to harass whoever was getting what she wanted
this progressed to name-calling from her window whenever she saw Amma approach the building, all of it coming to a head when she tipped a bucket of vegetable peel over Amma one day as she passed beneath her window
infuriating both the environmentalists and the management committee who took it upon themselves to write to Amma that she ‘stop shitting on her own doorstep’
Amma wrote back how it was interesting that quickly people turned into totalitarian fascists once they’d been given a little power
but she’d learned her lesson and wasn’t short of attention; groupies queued up for Amma and Dominique as the main players of Bush Women Theatre
everyone from baby dykes in their late teens to women who could be their mothers
Amma didn’t discriminate, she bragged to her friends that her tastes were truly egalitarian as they traversed culture, class, creed, race, religion and generation
which, happily, gave her a bigger playing field than most
(she kept her predilection for big tits quiet because it was unfeminist to isolate body parts for sexual objectification)
Dominique was more selective and monogamous, serially so, she went for actresses, usually blonde, whose microscopic talent was overshadowed by their macroscopic beauty
or models whose looks were their talent
women-only bars were their hangouts
Fallen Angel, Rackets, the Bell, the Drill Hall Theatre bar on a Monday where the lesbianarati hung out, and Pearl’s shebeen in Brixton on a Friday night run by Pearl, a middle-aged Jamaican woman who stripped her basement of furniture, set up a sound system and charged at the door
Amma experienced commitment to one person as imprisonment, she hadn’t left home for a life of freedom and adventure to end up chained to another person’s desires
if she slept with a woman more than two or three times, they usually went from attractively independent to increasingly