I Am Not Your Baby Mother by Candice Brathwaite

Author:Candice Brathwaite
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Quercus Editions Ltd
Published: 2020-04-24T12:31:45+00:00

6

(senti)Mental tings

NHS Digital data shows that detention rates under the Mental Health Act during 2017–18 were four times higher for people in the ‘Black’ or ‘Black British’ group than those in the ‘White’ group.

Once back home, I struggled to settle into a routine with Esmé. She preferred to sleep all day and cry all night, and I resented that Bode wasn’t around for any of it. During the day he had to go to work and by dusk, he said he needed a full night’s sleep to perform well the next day. Most evenings he made it home for bath time at 6pm, so that became his thing. But in the unlikely event that he was running late, Esmé would not wait. We had worked hard to get her into a strict routine, and if she sensed that her bath was running behind schedule, all hell was bound to break loose. So, on those days it was all on me. I tried my best to just get on with it, but I didn’t know how. The only thing I knew about being a mother was that it could send you mad.

This went way back.

I was five or six when I first heard the word ‘depression’.

I don’t know what made me check on my mother that day. It was the middle of the afternoon and it just seemed so unlike her to sleep during the day.

‘Mummy. Mummy!’ I called, gently shaking her shoulder.

Her eyes rolled back and she groaned a little, but she wasn’t making much sense.

‘Mummy!’ I shouted. Even though I was young, I knew something was wrong. As she slumped onto her side, I ran to the phone and stabbed the number nine button three times, just like I’d seen on TV.

Soon, my tiny body was wobbling on a stool as I tried to pronounce all of the medication in the cupboard I was never allowed to open. The lady on the other end of the phone asked if I could reach the lock on the front door – which I could. She asked me to check on Mum to see if she was breathing and then come back to the phone to tell her, and then go and check her again. This went on until the ambulance arrived. I was frightened the people with the stretcher would think I had killed her.

Later, as she was placed in the back of an ambulance, I overheard my nan (whose number I knew off by heart and was able to give to the operator) speaking with the ambulance man.

‘Yes, she has overdosed before,’ Nan said quietly. ‘She suffers from depression quite badly.’

The next time I saw my dad, I asked him what depression was. My dad was a no-nonsense man who, in a situation like this, wouldn’t try to childproof the topic.

‘Listen, Cand,’ he said. ‘Depression isn’t a real thing. It’s supposed to mean when you’re a bit down or sad, but I don’t believe in it. I think it’s just an excuse for those of us who don’t want to face reality.

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